Showing posts with label survival. Show all posts
Showing posts with label survival. Show all posts
May 12, 2018
Aug 2, 2016
May 1, 2016
Jan 1, 2016
My abandonment - Peter Rock
Booklist Reviews
Rock s previous novels and stories have been imbued with a sense of unease and uncertainty (The Unsettling, 2006). So it is with this deeply unsettling and finely wrought tale. It s narrated matter-of-factly by 13-year-old Caroline, who lives furtively in Forest Park, a large nature reserve on the edge of Portland, Oregon, with her father, who has turned his back on society. Their lives revolve around remaining invisible to the larger world. Homeschooled in the woods and at a public library, Caroline appears fully at home with minimal possessions and without much human contact. At first the lives of father and daughter seem nearly idyllic, but Rock deftly ratchets up the uncertainties, and the idyllic edges past the unusual toward the unthinkable and the tragic. Based on a true story (think Krakauer s Into the Wild), My Abandonment is a haunting novel, masterfully told. Copyright 2009 Booklist Reviews.
Check Availability
May 1, 2015
The country of Ice Cream Star - Sandra Newman
Summary: Enduring a nomadic existence in the aftermath of a disease that kills all humans once they reach the age of twenty, fifteen-year-old Ice Cream Star risks her freedom and life to travel dangerous territory in search of a cure.
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* In a future America, the population has been decimated by a mysterious disease, leaving only a few tribes governed by youths who dread the fatal sickness known as "posies," which afflicts everyone by their late teens. Ice Cream Fifteen Star lives with her tribe of Sengles in Massa Woods, scavenging abandoned homes and hunting for survival. Their leader, Ice Cream's beloved brother, Driver Eighteen, is already showing posies symptoms. When the Sengles capture a "roo" (a fabled light-skinned foreigner), and Ice Cream learns that he's reached the unattainable age of 30, she secures his promise that he'll help her steal the cure from the roos. But when another roo is spotted nearby, Ice Cream's roo, Pasha, convinces Driver and El Mayor (leader of the industrious Lowells) that the roos are positioning for an invasion, and they must flee. The journey forces the Sengles and Lowells to navigate power, rebellion, and war among unfamiliar civilizations as Ice Cream struggles to secure the cure without sacrificing her humanity or the lives that depend on her. Ice Cream's story, related in patois, is a richly detailed dystopian epic that blends elements of American history, popular culture, and political allegory with romance and thriller pacing. This suspenseful, provocative tale is The Hunger Games meets Lord of the Flies and The Walking Dead, only much, much better. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Could this be the next big book to capture readers all across the age spectrum? Don't bet against it. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.
Check Availability
Mar 1, 2015
In the kingdom of ice - Sides Hampton
Summary: In the late nineteenth century, people were obsessed by one of the last unmapped areas of the globe: the North Pole. No one knew what existed beyond the fortress of ice rimming the northern oceans, although theories abounded. The foremost cartographer in the world, a German named August Petermann, believed that warm currents sustained a verdant island at the top of the world. National glory would fall to whoever could plant his flag upon its shores. James Gordon Bennett, the eccentric and stupendously wealthy owner of The New York Herald, had recently captured the world's attention by dispatching Stanley to Africa to find Dr. Livingstone. Now he was keen to re-create that sensation on an even more epic scale. So he funded an official U.S. naval expedition to reach the Pole, choosing as its captain a young officer named George Washington De Long, who had gained fame for a rescue operation off the coast of Greenland. De Long led a team of 32 men deep into uncharted Arctic waters, carrying the aspirations of a young country burning to become a world power. On July 8, 1879, the USS Jeannette set sail from San Francisco to cheering crowds in the grip of "Arctic Fever." The ship sailed into uncharted seas, but soon was trapped in pack ice. Two years into the harrowing voyage, the hull was breached. Amid the rush of water and the shrieks of breaking wooden boards, the crew abandoned the ship. Less than an hour later, the Jeannette sank to the bottom, and the men found themselves marooned a thousand miles north of Siberia with only the barest supplies. Thus began their long march across the endless ice -- a frozen hell in the most lonesome corner of the world. Facing everything from snow blindness and polar bears to ferocious storms and frosty labyrinths, the expedition battled madness and starvation as they desperately strove for survival.
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* With its western frontiers explored and the idea of Manifest Destiny still beckoning, the U.S. in the Gilded Age looked to the North Pole for adventure and conquest. U.S. naval officer George DeLong approached James Gordon Bennett, the wealthy and eccentric publisher of the New York Herald, to finance an expedition. After all, Bennett had sponsored the expedition for Stanley to find Livingstone in Africa and was forever on the hunt for the next sensational story. In July 1879, the USS Jeannette set sail with a crew of 32 men for uncharted waters. It was an extraordinary expedition, cheered on by scientists and adventurers around the world, hoping to verify the theory that beyond the polar ice girdle were warm currents and a habitable climate. Instead, the ill-fated ship found impassable ice pack that trapped it for two years until the hull was finally breached, and the men were forced to find their way across ice floes, 1,000 miles from Siberia. Facing snow blindness, frigid storms, polar bears, scarcity of food and water, and creeping madness, the men fought desperately to survive. Sides (Hellhound on His Trail, 2010) tapped amazing archival material, including diaries, letters, and the ship logs, to render a completely thrilling saga of survival in unbelievably harsh conditions. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.
Check Availability
Nov 1, 2014
To Sail a Darkling Sea - John Ringo
To Sail a Darkling Sea - Ringo, JohnSummary: With human civilization annihilated by a biological zombie plague, a rag tag fleet of yachts and freighters known as Wolf Squadron scours the Atlantic, searching for survivors. Within every abandoned liner and carrier lurks a potential horde of zombies but also holds the flickering hope of survivors. Now Wolf Squadron must clear the assault carrier USS Iwo Jima of infected before the trapped Marines and sailors succumb to starvation.
Booklist Reviews
In Under a Graveyard Sky (2013), Ringo introduced Steve Smith, an Australian ex-paratrooper; his wife, Stacey; and their teenage daughters, Sophia and Faith. After the zombie apocalypse, the family fled New York in a boat loaded with supplies and weaponry. Their initial plan was to find a place to hole up until the man-made plague died out, but soon they sought other vessels and set about rescuing their survivors (after first "clearing" the boats of the infected). Now the makeshift flotilla, operating with the cooperation of what remains of the U.S. government, has become a sort of oceangoing city. And the mission has grown in scope: along with clearing any vessels the flotilla encounters, Smith and his fellow sailors will attempt to clear small towns, making their way to Guantanamo Bay, where they will use the medical facilities to begin manufacturing a vaccine. Not only has Ringo found a mostly unexplored corner of the zombie landscape, he's using the zombie frame to tackle a broader theme: the collapse and rebirth of civilization. The zombie scenes are exciting, sure, but it's the human story that keeps us involved. A fine series.
Check Availability
May 1, 2014
The bear - Claire Cameron
Summary: "A powerfully suspenseful story narrated by a young girl who must fend for herself and her little brother after a brutal bear attack. While camping with her family on a remote island, five-year-old Anna awakes in the night to the sound of her mother screaming. A rogue black bear, 300 pounds of fury, is attacking the family's campsite, pouncing on her parents as prey. At her dying mother's faint urging, Anna manages to get her brother into the family's canoe and paddle away. But when the canoe dumps the two children on the edge of the woods, and the sister and brother must battle hunger, the elements, and a dangerous wilderness, we see Anna's heartbreaking love for her family--and her struggle to be brave when nothing in her world seems safe anymore. Told in the honest, raw voice of five-year-old Anna, this is a riveting story of love, courage, and survival"-- Provided by publisher.
Publishers Weekly Reviews
Inspired by a fatal 1991 bear attack on a couple camping on an island in Ontario's Algonquin Park, Cameron's novel of fear and survival recounts the fictional escape from a similar attack of five-year-old Anna and her two-year-old brother, Alex (nicknamed "Stick" for his sticky fingers). Anna's narrative begins midattack after her father has tossed her and her brother into the storage chest they call "Coleman." Squished in the darkness between Stick and her teddy bear, Anna sees a black furry animal through a crack, but all she can picture is her next-door neighbor's dog Snoopy. In daylight, she climbs out of Coleman to discover what remains of her father and to catch her mother's last words urging her to put her brother in the canoe and paddle away. What follows is a vividly portrayed wilderness ordeal (poison ivy, hunger, rain, isolation) juxtaposed with glimpses of the inner resources young Anna draws upon (imagination, family, memory, hope), all seen through the eyes of a child who can express, if not entirely understand, her own resentment and protectiveness of her brother, her love and longing for her parents, her fear and empathy for the predator, and her determination to persevere. Upping the emotional ante, Cameron shows the children's rescue, Anna's encounter in a hospital with a child psychologist, and, years later, her return to the island with Alex as adults. Intensity, as well as Anna's voice, make reading this book a challenging but ultimately uplifting experience. (Feb.)
Check Availability
Apr 1, 2014
Independent study - Joelle Charbonneau
Series: Testing Series
Summary: Now a freshman at the University in Tosu City with her hometown sweetheart, Tomas, Cia Vale attempts to expose the ugly truth behind the government's grueling and deadly Testing put her and her loved ones in great danger.
School Library Journal Reviews
Gr 6–10—In this sequel to The Testing (Houghton Harcourt, 2013), Cia is drawn deeper into the political machinations of Tosu City as she enters the University. She is accepted into the Government course of study, much to her disappointment. Now, joined by students from the City who did not have to endure the Testing, she must go through a hazing process that forces her to once again rely on her wits to survive. Cia must win an internship to continue on at the University; the alternative will be her death. Her love for Tomas takes a backseat in the narrative to make way for descriptions of how the factions are fighting for control of the capital and the Testing. The action is fast paced and the story line compelling. Fans won't have time to wonder why those who run the Testing place such a low value on the lives of their teen charges or why parents have asked so few questions about where their children end up. Readers will root for the likable and capable heroine. While the adults' motives are suspect and often inexplicable, Cia struggles to make good decisions, both ethically and intellectually. Fans of The Testing will be thrilled with this new installment and will be anxiously waiting for the story's conclusion.—Kristin Anderson, Columbus Metropolitan Library System, OH
Check Availability
Oct 1, 2013
The ocean at the end of the lane - Neil Gaiman
Summary: It began for our narrator forty years ago when the family lodger stole their car and committed suicide in it, stirring up ancient powers best left undisturbed. Dark creatures from beyond the world are on the loose, and it will take everything our narrator has just to stay alive: there is primal horror here, and menace unleashed - within his family and from the forces that have gathered to destroy it. His only defense is three women, on a farm at the end of the lane. The youngest of them claims that her duckpond is ocean. The oldest can remember the Big Bang.
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* In Gaiman's first novel for adults since Anansi Boys (2005), the never-named fiftyish narrator is back in his childhood homeland, rural Sussex, England, where he's just delivered the eulogy at a funeral. With "an hour or so to kill" afterward, he drives about—aimlessly, he thinks—until he's at the crucible of his consciousness: a farmhouse with a duck pond. There, when he was seven, lived the Hempstocks, a crone, a housewife, and an 11-year-old girl, who said they were grandmother, mother, and daughter. Now, he finds the crone and, eventually, the housewife—the same ones, unchanged—while the girl is still gone, just as she was at the end of the childhood adventure he recalls in a reverie that lasts all afternoon. He remembers how he became the vector for a malign force attempting to invade and waste our world. The three Hempstocks are guardians, from time almost immemorial, situated to block such forces and, should that fail, fight them. Gaiman mines mythological typology—the three-fold goddess, the water of life (the pond, actually an ocean)—and his own childhood milieu to build the cosmology and the theater of a story he tells more gracefully than any he's told since Stardust (1999). And don't worry about that "for adults" designation: it's a matter of tone. This lovely yarn is good for anyone who can read it. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: That this is the popular author's first book for adults in eight years pretty much sums up why this will be in demand. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.
Check Availability
Sep 1, 2013
The testing - Joe Charbonneau
Summary: It’s graduation day for sixteen-year-old Malencia Vale, and the entire Five Lakes Colony (the former Great Lakes) is celebrating. All Cia can think about—hope for—is whether she’ll be chosen for The Testing, a United Commonwealth program that selects the best and brightest new graduates to become possible leaders of the slowly revitalizing post-war civilization. When Cia is chosen, her father finally tells her about his own nightmarish half-memories of The Testing. Armed with his dire warnings (”Cia, trust no one”), she bravely heads off to Tosu City, far away from friends and family, perhaps forever. Danger, romance—and sheer terror—await.
Library Journal Review
Gr 7 Up-Like almost every 16-year-old in the United Commonwealth, Cia Vale hopes to be called for the Testing, her ticket out of rural Five Lakes Colony and into the University in Tosu City. Cia's father was selected, but only vaguely remembers the experience in nightmares. Her four older brothers were passed over. Just when she has resigned herself to life as a mechanic or farmer, she gets word that she is one of four students selected from Five Lakes and is expected to board the skimmer to Tosu City the next day, most likely never to return. The bulk of the book is taken up with the Testing-devious exercises to identify those with superior leadership skills as society has suffered through Seven Stages of War and desperately needs to repair the damage to living creatures and the environment. The mental and physical trials will weed out 80 percent of the candidates, leaving several maimed or dead. Cia teams up with Tomas for both practical and romantic reasons. She is independent and smart for the most part, and Tomas seems almost too good to be true. There are double-crosses, mutant life-forms, and booby traps to navigate before 20 hearty souls receive word that they have passed. Cia's story is expected to span a trilogy. The influence of The Hunger Games is obvious, and The Testing will satisfy readers who want similar dystopian adventures.-Maggie Knapp, Trinity Valley School, Fort Worth, TXα(c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC
Check Availability
Jul 1, 2013
How to lead a life of crime - Kirsten Miller
Summary: A Meth Dealer. A Prostitute. A Serial Killer.
Anywhere else, they’d be vermin. At the Mandel Academy, they’re called
prodigies. The most exclusive school in New York City has been training young
criminals for over a century. Only the most ruthless students are allowed to
graduate. The rest disappear.
Flick, a teenage pickpocket, has risen to the top of his class. But then Mandel
recruits a fierce new competitor who also happens to be Flick’s old flame.
They’ve been told only one of them will make it out of the Mandel Academy. Will
they find a way to save each other—or will the school destroy them both?
- (Penguin Putnam)
Kirkus Reviews
A teen pickpocket attends a school for the criminally minded. Tough, 17-year-old loner Flick lives on the streets of Manhattan's Lower East Side and makes ends meet by relieving the upper class of their wallets. His only ally is a teen girl named Joi, who operates an underground rescue camp for homeless teens and wields surgical tools like a pro. Enter well-dressed, smooth-talking Lucian Mandel, the headmaster of the infamous Mandel Academy, who makes him an offer he can't refuse: If Flick agrees to enroll in Mandel Academy, Lucian will hand over the evidence that connects Flick's wealthy father to the murder of his brother. Flick agrees, and he soon finds himself immersed in a student body of teen sociopathic murderers, liars, thieves and embezzlers--all embroiled in a violent race to the top of the class. Miller pens an enjoyable, fast-paced action novel that's full of danger, mystery, humor and violence, with lots of gross-out scenes and plenty of hairpin-turn plot twists that will keep readers guessing. Her only misstep in this exciting read is an overdose of references to Barrie's Peter Pan, but readers will still make the right connections to the characters and probably devour the novel in one setting. An enigmatic page turner full of intrigue. (Adventure. 14 & up) Copyright Kirkus 2012 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.
Check Availability
Aug 1, 2012
The walking dead - Robert Kirkman
The walking dead - Kirkman, Robert
Summary: "An epidemic of apocalyptic proportions has swept the globe causing the dead to rise and feed on the living. In a matter of months society has crumbled-- no government, no grocery stores, no mail delivery, no cable TV. In a world ruled by the dead, we are forced to finally start living"--P. [4] of cover.
Read Review from "No Flying, No Tights"
Check Availability
May 1, 2012
Beauty queens - Libba Bray
Summary: When a plane crash strands thirteen teen beauty contestants on a mysterious island, they struggle to survive, to get along with one another, to combat the island's other diabolical occupants, and to learn their dance numbers in case they are rescued in time for the competition.
BookPage Reviews
Girls gone radical
Libba Bray’s last novel, the award-winning Going Bovine, was heralded as a departure for the author, who had previously been best known for a trilogy of Victorian-era supernatural romances. Now, in Beauty Queens, Bray further pushes the boundaries in a work of social satire that skewers race, gender, standards of beauty and our hyper-saturated media culture. Oh, and did I mention that it’s also wicked funny?
When a plane carrying 50 contestants in the Miss Teen Dream pageant crash-lands on a (seemingly) deserted island, will it turn into Lord of the Flies? Or something else entirely? At first, the girls do split up into tribes—the Lost Girls and the Sparkle Ponies—but before long, they come to see their isolation as something of an opportunity. “There was something about the island that made the girls forget who they had been. . . . They were no longer performing. Waiting. Hoping. They were becoming. They were.” But what happens when these self-actualizing (and very, very fetching) young women encounter the hunky stars of reality TV’s “Captains Bodacious IV: Badder and More Bodaciouser”?
The surviving Miss Teen Dream contestants comprise a veritable United Nations of diversity—there’s the black girl, the Indian girl, the transgender contestant, the uptight virgin, the deaf one, the lesbian . . . but each girl’s remarkably distinctive voice and deeply personal backstory results in a narrative that’s equal parts compelling and crazy. Beauty Queens is pointed, riotous and unapologetically feminist, with each swerve toward preachiness cleverly counterbalanced with a hilarious barb or perfectly placed one-liner. “Do you think my new feminism make me look fat?” one character asks. Turns out, Bray shows us, feminism can look pretty darn hot after all.
Copyright 2011 BookPage Reviews.
Check Availability
Mar 1, 2012
The maze runner trilogy - James Dashner
Summary: Sixteen-year-old Thomas wakes up with no memory in the middle of a maze and realizes he must work with the community in which he finds himself if he is to escape.
Kirkus Reviews
Boys come to the Glade via an empty freight elevator with no memory of how they got there or of their prior lives. This disorientation is made more frightening when they realize that to survive they must lock themselves in every night to avoid the horrors of the Grievers, beings that are part machine, part animal—and altogether deadly. The boys in the Glade send out Runners each day to find a way out through the Maze that surrounds their one patch of safety, with no success. Life goes on until one day the elevator delivers a girl. She brings a message: She is the last child to be sent, and there will be no more deliveries of food or supplies. Now the Glade is cut off, and as the Grievers gather for an all-out attack it's clear that it's now or never—the Maze must be solved. Dashner knows how to spin a tale and make the unbelievable realistic. Hard to put down, this is clearly just a first installment, and it will leave readers dying to find out what comes next. (Science fiction. 12 & up) Copyright Kirkus 2009 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.
Check Availability
Jan 2, 2012
Unbroken - Laura Hillenbrand
Summary: On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared--Lt. Louis Zamperini. Captured by the Japanese and driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor.
Kirkus Reviews
The author of Seabiscuit (2001) returns with another dynamic, well-researched story of guts overcoming odds.
Hillenbrand examines the life of Louis Zamperini, an American airman who, after his bomber crashed in the Pacific during World War II, survived 47 days on a life raft only to be captured by Japanese soldiers and subjected to inhuman treatment for the next two years at a series of POW camps. That his life spiraled out of control when he returned home to the United States is understandable. However, he was able to turn it around after meeting Billy Graham, and he became a Christian speaker and traveled to Japan to forgive his tormentors. The author reconstructs Zamperini's wild youth, when his hot temper, insubordination, and bold pranks seemed to foretell a future life of crime. His talents as a runner, however, changed all that, getting him to the 1936 Olympics and to the University of Southern California, where he was a star of the track team. When the story turns to World War II, Hillenbrand expands her narrative to include men who served with him in the Air Corps in the Pacific. Through letters and interviews, she brings to life not just the men who were with Zamperini on the life raft and in the Japanese camps, but the families they left behind. The suffering of the men is often difficult to read, for the details of starvation, thirst and shark attacks are followed by the specifics of the brutalities inflicted by the Japanese, particularly the sadistic Mutsuhiro Watanabe, who seemed dedicated to making Zamperini's life unbearable. Hillenbrand follows Watanabe's life after the Japanese surrender, providing the perfect foil to Zamperini's. When Zamperini wrote to his former tormentor to forgive him and attempted to meet him in person, Watanabe rejected him. Throughout are photographs of World War II bombers, POW camps, Zamperini and his fellow GIs and their families and sweethearts, providing a glimpse into a bygone era. Zamperini is still thriving at age 93.
Alternately stomach-wrenching, anger-arousing and spirit-lifting—and always gripping.
Copyright Kirkus 2010 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.
Check Availability
May 1, 2011
Unbroken - Laura Hillenbrand
Summary: On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared--Lt. Louis Zamperini. Captured by the Japanese and driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor.
Booklist Reviews
A second book by the author of Seabiscuit (2001) would get noticed, even if it weren't the enthralling and often grim story of Louie Zamperini. An Olympic runner during the 1930s, he flew B-24s during WWII. Taken prisoner by the Japanese, he endured a captivity harsh even by Japanese standards and was a physical and mental wreck at the end of the war. He was saved by the influence of Billy Graham, who inspired him to turn his life around, and afterward devoted himself to evangelical speeches and founding boys' camps. Still alive at 93, Zamperini now works with those Japanese individuals and groups who accept responsibility for Japanese mistreatment of POWs and wish to see Japan and the U.S. reconciled. He submitted to 75 interviews with the author as well as contributing a large mass of personal records. Fortunately, the author's skills are as polished as ever, and like its predecessor, this book has an impossible-to-put-down quality that one commonly associates with good thrillers. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: This departure from the author's previous best-seller will nevertheless be promoted as necessary reading for the many folks who enjoyed the first one or its movie version. Copyright 2010 Booklist Reviews.
Check Availability
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)