Is THAT how you say...?

I've been listening to a lot of audio-books lately, many of them narrated by British actors who can speak in an amazing range of dialects—not least of which is the sort of standard stage-English approved for use on the West End stage. After a life spent learning how to pronounce words from my nears and dears, from American TV, and from sound guess-work as I pick up vocabulary in books, I am surprised at how often I've been surprised by the pronunciation of many words I thought I knew how to say. Below are a few examples. I may add to this post as more come to mind.

Room—I would have thought this four-letter word would be a no-brainer. It's one of those words babies learn from their parents, especially in the context of a shouted "Go to your room!" Everyone I know says it with a long /u/ sound, rhyming it with boom, broom, doom, and gloom. And then come all these British audio-book actors, authoritatively correcting this received error. Evidently, room is supposed to have a short /u/, like the vowel sound in book. We Americans will have to work on that. It won't be easy.

Shone—Here's another simple, very common word that everyone I know, yours truly included, seems to have gotten wrong. We Yanks have been saying this with a long /o/ sound, rhyming with bone, drone, hone, and Jubilation T. Cornpone. But to a man (or woman), the Brits say it with a short /o/, rhyming with gone. I have to admit, there's sense in this. At least this way, you're less likely to confuse it with shown.

Quay—This word comes up a lot in the naval fiction I like to read, but its usage is actually much more widespread. While any given group of three or four Americans will probably disagree as to whether it should rhyme with way or why, the British (who, remember, had the language before we did), confidently stride forward and rhyme it with whee. Yes, it sounds just like key. You got a problem with that?

Figure—This may simply be a consequence of the fact that no language on earth has a sound resembling the American /r/. For what could be more quintessentially American than the spastic tightening of the final syllable of this word, as though it could be spelled "figyerrr." My uninformed guess as to the British pronunciation would have been "figyuh," with an indeterminate schwa sound at the end. Surprisingly, what you actually hear when a Brit says this word is the even more relaxed sounding "figguh," with no unwritten /y/ sound worked into the pattern.

Incognito—Americans, few of whom learned Latin as children, most likely think of this as two words (with a space after in, and stress on the syllable that sounds like "neat"), taking it to mean "in disguise." Actually it's one word, meaning "unrecognized," and in countries ruled by a monarchy it is still often used in its original sense of a royal personage going about in plain clothes and thus, by an unwritten social law, being treated like any ordinary person rather than someone to be bowed and scraped to. I have heard a least one British reader say it with emphasis on the "cog" syllable. I cannot be certain, on this basis, that it wasn't a slip. But it makes an interesting difference.

Exquisite—In the U.S., nearly everyone who searches for an adjective to stick in front of "care" or "pain" eventually settles for this one. And so we have all heard the word numerous times, and we're sure it bears the accent on the second syllable. So, when we hear a British audio-book reader put the emphasis on "ex," we do a double-take. That can't be right, can it? Well, this one I've heard from several different readers. That many actors speaking the standard dialect of the cradle of our language can't be wrong, no matter how weird it sounds.

Live-long—On the other hand, the folk-song "I've Been Working on the Railroad" is one of ours. And when we sing the hyphenated word "live-long," we make the first syllable sound like the verb live, which rhymes with give. So my ears perk up when I hear a British reader say that syllable like the adjective live, which rhymes with alive, chive, dive, drive, hive, jive, and strive. I wonder how he came at the idea that it should be said that way, other than by analogy to the greater number of words ending in "-ive." Actually, that doesn't sound like a bad reason. But has he never heard "I've Been Working on the Railroad"? I think this is one battleground that we Americans own!

Wednesday—After all the trouble my first-grade teacher took brow-beating me into accepting this as the spelling for "Wendz-day," along come the highly cultured audio-book readers of the works of George Eliot and Thomas Hardy, persistently pronouncing it "Wed'nz-day"—if not downright "Wed-ness-day." Well, I never!

Ate—Way back when I was hooked on phonics, I learned that "silent e" could turn a mat into a mate, a pat into a pate, and fat into fate. And so it was always my assumption—either by analogy to these examples or because everyone I know says it that way, that the past tense of the verb "eat" turned at into ate, rhyming with the number 8. But all my British audiobook readers say it as though "silent e" turned mat into met, pat into pet, and fat into a bounty hunter from that space movie. I always suspect that I'm mistaking a bit of regional dialect for the Queen's English, but that excuse gets harder to believe with each live-long chapter.

Grrrr...

Have you ever noticed that in English, many words beginning with gr- describe a complaining vocalization or an irritable disposition? Wiktionary offers the following definitions (among others):

Grunt: n. A short, snorting sound, often to show disapproval, or used as a reply when one is reluctant to speak.

Groan: n. A low, mournful sound uttered in pain or grief; a low, guttural sound uttered in frustration or disapproval.

Grumble: v. To complain.

Gripe: v. To complain; to whine.

Grizzle: v. (UK, slang) To whinge or whine.

Grouse: v. To complain or grumble.

Grumpy: adj. Unhappy, dissatisfied and/or irritable, a word which is particularly applied to babies and children or adults who are acting childishly.

Grump: n. A habitually grumpy or complaining person. v. To complain; to be grumpy.

Grouchy: adj. (originally US college student slang) Irritable; easily upset; angry; tending to complain.

Grouch: n. One who is grumpy or irritable. v. To be grumpy or irritable; to complain.

Growl: v. To utter a deep guttural sound, as an angry animal; to give forth an angry, grumbling sound.

Other unpleasant "gr" words include greed, grief, grimy, grisly, gritty, grotesque, grubby, gruesome, grudge, gruff, and maybe grunge. To be sure, there are lots of "gr" words that don't have any negative connotations. But still, this opening letter combination seems to bring more than its fair share of misery in its train. I don't know why this is. I'm just saying...

Hawthorne White

Tanglewood Tales
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Recommended Ages: 11+

You may have heard of the Tanglewood Music Festival in the Berkshire mountains of Massachusetts. This festival is named after the mansion where the festival is held. The mansion was named after the nearby cottage where Nathaniel Hawthorne stayed while writing this book. And the cottage, according to my sources, was named after this book—a sequel to the same author's A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys. Houston, Texas, has a neighborhood named after this book, and the state of Washington has an island ditto. These facts illustrate the love in which this book was once popularly held, and the influence of some of the people who loved it so.

And yet I would bet you're hearing about this book for the first time now. Here some writers would say, "So goes the world," and let it be. But I say it need not be so. Nathaniel Hawthorne is too important a figure in American literature to be allowed to remain only a figure, silhouetted against the dying light of a bygone age. His writing really is enjoyable, and some of it was designed for the enjoyment of kids. And even though kids' tastes may change, there still remains a good deal of charm and appeal in Hawthorne's retellings of the world's most timeless tales.

One thing you will appreciate about this book, if you come to it after reading Hawthorne's Wonder-Book, is that he dispenses with the precious little introductions to each story featuring college-boy Eustace Bright and his brood of smaller siblings and cousins. A preface to this book informs us that Eustace is still interested in adapting tales of the ancient heroes to the sensibilities of the children of his time. These stories, then, are further examples of how Eustace would tell such swashbuckling legends as...

• "The Minotaur"—in which Theseus tests his strength against a man-eating beast with the head of a bull and the body of a man;
• "The Pygmies"—in which Hercules grapples with a giant whose strength doubles every time he touches the ground;
• "The Dragon's Teeth"—in which Cadmus slays a dragon, sows its teeth in the ground, and grows a crop of warriors to found the city of Thebes;
• "Circe's Palace"—in which Odysseus, a.k.a. Ulysses, saves his ship's crew from a wily enchantress;
• "The Pomegranate Seed"—in which the grain goddess's daughter is taken captive by the lord of the underworld; and
• "The Golden Fleece"—in which Jason leads a pre-League of Justice force of fifty Greek heroes against a series of dangerous creatures.

These adventures also feature a giant clockwork man, a couple of fire-breathing bulls, winged menaces, humans transformed into beasts, and an army of Lilliputian warriors who send one of the greatest heroes in retreat.

Hawthorne's retelling of these tales may not be my favorite version. Sometimes his pacing slackens, and then again the ending is quite abrupt. What he leaves out of this child's album of adventures, however, may leave them hungering for more. This might, in fact, be a "gateway book," leading youngsters to study the stories of the Greek gods and heroes in more depth. With a light touch, a streak of gentle silliness, and a worldly-wise skepticism about the magic that fills his own stories, Hawthorne's version may indeed be just the right story-album to give an inquisitive youngster his or her first taste of the classic myths and tall tales. Growing children may forget where they heard or read these stories first. But I am sure it will make a difference if they start with a storyteller of the top grain.

The Search for Belle Prater
by Ruth White
Recommended Ages: 12+

In this companion to Belle Prater's Boy, Gypsy and her cousin Woodrow do a little more growing-up in the small town of Coal Station, Virginia. It's still the 1950s, when families like Gypsy's are just getting their first TV set and, by running a wire up to a mountaintop antenna, they can pick up all of two networks. Black people are still (inexplicably) described as colored folks, barred from entering many businesses, and required to sit at the back of the bus. And more than anything else—even more than having the operation to straighten his crossed eyes—Woodrow wants to find out what became of his mother, the Belle Prater of the title, who disappeared one night and left him alone with his hard-drinking, good-for-nothing father.

Woodrow now lives next door to Gypsy with their grandparents. The two cousins are approaching high school age, and are beginning to take more adult responsibility. So when a mysterious phone call comes on New Year's Eve—which happens to be Woodrow's birthday—it seems inevitable that the two cousins will investigate it... even if it means riding a bus by themselves to a West Virginia town sixty miles away and exploring the unknown, outside world without adult supervision. It has to be done, if only to find the tiniest clue to what became of Belle Prater.

There are some tense and even eerie moments during Woodrow and Gypsy's investigation; moments when their friendship feels strained; and period when Woodrow trades his usual high spirits for a depressed outlook that is normally unlike him. Besides their own search for clues in Bluefield, W.V., the pair also helps a motherless black boy find the loving family he never knew he had. They visit the scene of Belle's disappearance with a school friend who claims to have the sixth sense. And they make a strange discovery that will leave them, and perhaps you as well, wondering whether this is a simple coming-of-age story or a chilling tale of the paranormal.

But mostly it's a touching example of the former, packed with salt-of-the-earth characters from the heyday and home region of bluegrass music. Not only the characters but at times even the narrator speak in a soft, backwoodsy dialect that may raise your English teacher's disapproving eyebrow. The lead characters go right to your heart with their honesty, kindness, joke-telling sense of fun. Unique family customs, old-school social manners, and common-sense ways of getting by in a world without much of today's flashy technology, add their respective layers of interest to what is basically a story about learning to accept and live with the unfairness and sadness in life—without losing hold of its joys.

Ruth White has been writing books since the 1970s, but it's only since the turn of this century that she has really warmed up to it. Her titles, suggesting a special focus on childhood in the "mid-south" region of the U.S., include: Sweet Creek Holler; Tadpole; Buttermilk Hill; Way Down Deep; and A Month of Sundays. Visit Fantastic Fiction for more details.

Butcher Colfer Eliot Pratchett Thackeray

Cursor's Fury
by Jim Butcher
Recommended Ages: 14+

In this third book of the "Codex Alera" series, you finally find out what main character Tavi's name is short for. If you've been reading with your thinking cap on, it might not be so much a surprise as a thrill of the "At last, it's out in the open!" variety. Except that it isn't really out in the open, yet. By the end of this installment you and I, and a tiny handful of characters who are good at keeping secrets, know without a doubt that Tavi is the unacknowledged grandson of Gaius Sextus, the First Lord of Alera. Tavi himself doesn't know. And he's in no position to point out what name lends itself to be shortened so. He has enough to do keeping his cover as a low-ranking Legion officer under the name Rufus Scipio. For his first assignment as a Cursor, outside the capital city where he trained to be one of Gaius's special agents, Tavi is sent off to the back of beyond, where a new Legion is being formed. The First Aleran is a patchwork of units taken from all the different city-states of the realm, ideally loyal to Gaius alone, but realistically neutral at best, because of its mixed makeup.

Gaius says he wants eyes on the situation, but Tavi suspects that he is being sidelined from the action and intrigue surrounding the First Lord. Tavi has a lot to learn about being a legionare, let alone an officer. But that's all right, because most of his legion is manned by raw recruits, known as "fish." With only a few weeks on the road to train for his new cover, seconded by his academy pal Max, an old master named Magnus, and the exotic young Marat ambassador whose feelings toward him are more than possessive, Tavi must stay light on his feet. Keeping his cover, after all, means doing an endless dance to avoid revealing that he has no fury-crafting power. It doesn't help that one of his deadliest enemies—who happens to be Max's evil stepmother—suspects the truth and will go to any length to expose him. Nor does Tavi's immediate superior do him any favors, what with latrine duty being a widely accepted punishment for an uppity young subtribune.

But Tavi's time of quiet reconnoiter does not last long. He has only begun to settle into his cover as an inconspicuous, junior officer when civil war breaks out. The High Lord of Kalare has decided to make his move against the throne, and he has an army of fanatical slave-assassins on his side. Plus, Kalarus has allied himself with the wolf-like Canim, Alera's deadliest enemies. While those High Lords who remain loyal to Gaius are being hammered by Kalarus's legion—while Tavi's uncle Bernard and the latter's Cursor wife Amara lead a high-risk mission to rescue the hostages Kalarus has taken to ensure the neutrality of some key leaders—while Tavi's "aunt" Isana drains herself to the point of death to heal the family's gravely injured "slave" Fade—Tavi suddenly and unexpectedly rises to command of the First Aleran, just in time to face an invasion by sixty thousand Canim. And if his much smaller and mostly unprepared legion does not hold a bridge few of them have ever heard of, the entire realm may be lost.

A fury-crafter of great power might be able to stem the tide. But even now, as we find out exactly why Tavi has no furies, what can be done by a young man armed only with his wits, his instincts, and his iron will? How can one untried leader help the few people he has to help him, so as to get through a situation like this? That's what you'll find out in this book. I don't mean to spoil it with even the tiniest hint. But obviously, there will still be a realm, and it will have Tavi in it, to entertain us in Book 4: Captain's Fury.

Plugged
by Eoin Colfer
Recommended Ages: 14+

What happens when an author best known for his young adult fantasy novels pens an adult novel about crime, violence, and hair implants? Sheer mayhem! That's what happens when a former Irish Army sergeant, turned bouncer at a gambling den in the sleepy town of Cloisters, New Jersey, stumbles into the business of an unlicensed plastic surgeon, a small-time gangster named "Irish Mike," and a dirty lawyer who rips off drug dealers and sells their product at a steep markup. It all goes to show that you can take the peacekeeper out of the Lebanon, but... er... not sure where I was going with this.

Anyway, Daniel McAvoy—the aforesaid sergeant-turned-bouncer—has been feeling his age. He is getting sick of dealing with his sleazy boss, bouncing slimeballs from his club for making passes at the hostess he is sweet on, and losing his hair; sick of listening to the insane ranting of his upstairs neighbor Mrs. Delano, and of having flashbacks to his military service, to which he owes his acquaintance with the amiably gross Dr. Zebulon Kronsky. Things start getting frisky when Dan drops in at Zeb's office for the final treatment of his hair-replacement therapy. Instead of Zeb, he finds an enforcer for Irish Mike there, armed with a stiletto and looking for God-knows-what. Only one of them is leaving Zeb's office alive, and when that one turns out to be Dan, he knows his troubles have just begun. Troubles such as the murder of that sweetheart hostess, a run-in with a crooked cop, a hostage situation, steamy nights with two different women—very different, wink wink—and torture, beatings, and battles galore.

To survive this week of madness and murder, Daniel must trot out his considerable stash of weapons, his dormant combat and demolition skills, and his contacts with a gung-ho Irish corporal and a shrink named Dr. Moriarty. He fends off all but certain death with his fast reflexes, his well-honed instincts, and a fair supply of Irish luck. And I've tried not to mention the advice of the ghost in his head, the ghost of his missing friend Zeb, who insists that he's still alive and keeps urging Dan to find him before it's too late. Does Ghost Zeb push this book over the line into the fantasy genre? You be the judge. But first, you'd better brace yourself for a rush of tough action, hardboiled grittiness, "adult content advisory" situations, relentless suspense, and pitch-dark humor. If you ever thought Eoin Colfer's novels for teens were a little too grown-up, read this book and you'll see him in his element. He must have realized it himself, since a sequel, titled Screwed, comes out in May 2013.

Adam Bede
by George Eliot
Recommended Ages: 13+

In the imaginary village of Hayslope, on the frontier between the nonexistent English counties of Loamshire and Stonyshire, round about the year 1799, a strong, manly carpenter named Adam Bede lives with his doting mother (who becomes a widow in an early chapter) and his gentle, sensitive brother Seth. The brothers love the two pretty nieces of a prosperous farmer and his wife who live nearby. Adam's intended is a vain, saucy, but irresistibly pretty little thing named Hetty Sorrel; the girl Seth wants to marry is a tender, modestly beautiful Methodist lay preacher named Dinah Morris. But (SPOILER ALERT!) Dinah would rather have Adam than Seth; and as for Hetty, she fancies the young heir of the local squire, Arthur Donnithorne by name, and he fancies her too—though the wide difference between their stations in life mean that he can never do the honorable thing by her.

And so the stage is set for a novel that mixes up temptation, shame, jealousy, aborted wedding plans, a desperate elopement, an out-of-wedlock childbirth, murder, justice, the agony of lost love, the regret of a ruined friendship, the remorse of doing a wrong that cannot be righted, and a revolutionary (for its time) psychological portrait of the lives and loves of farm folk and the laboring class in upcountry England. Plus, on top of everything else, this book examines the tension between "church" (Anglicanism) and "chapel" (Methodism) in the British religious scene within a handful of years of the death of John Wesley, before the latter sect put an end to women preachers. One early chapter includes almost the whole text of a Methodist sermon; and the character of Dinah presents almost a living tract in favor of Methodist spiritual and moral virtues. Were it not for the facts that Dinah is admittedly atypical of her sect, that local Anglican rector Mr. Irwine presents an all but glowingly ideal portrait of his type of clergyman, and that the novel's hero (even from the perspective of 50 years later) prefers "church" of the Irwine school, one might almost suspect this book of being an advertisement for Methodism.

None of this prevents this book from being emotionally moving. The imagination relishes the scenery of the countryside and the village where the salt-of-the-earth characters live and work. The heart bleeds for the foolish, flighty Hetty; the strong, passionate Adam; and even Arthur, who succumbs to his own weakness, tries to cover it up with lies, and has to live with the self-reproach from one bad act that poisons the rest of his life and the lives of others. Dinah's compassion on Hetty is touching, her romance with Adam sweet. The narrator's consciousness of conjuring an image of a bygone time; the gentleness of her judgment on the character of such people as the misogynistic Mr. Massey, the sharp-tongued Mrs. Poyser, and the easy-going Mr. Irwine, lend a glow of melancholy goodness to the book; and the occasional touches of satire and humor come just when the relief of a good laugh seems most needed.

Published in 1859, this was the first of Mary Ann Evans' novels under the pen-name of George Eliot. Naturally, it does not show the artist in her fullest command of her powers—but, after all, I consider her Middlemarch to be THE best novel I have ever read. Even a most excellent book must want some improvement alongside that masterpiece. This novel doesn't want much improvement, however. I know of few writers, if any, who were writing at its level up to Eliot's time, and not many more who have done so since. If you wonder what would possess me to include this book in a list of titles to interest today's growing young readers, the answer is simple: It is by books like this that we measure the excellence of any new novel that comes along. And this book will get the better of a comparison with most anything printed to this day.

Snuff
by Terry Pratchett
Recommended Ages: 13+

According to Fantastic Fiction, this is the 39th novel of Discworld—taking all the novels featuring Tiffany Aching, Granny Weatherwax, Rincewind, Death, the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, and whatnot in one heap. It's an amazing achievement, especially given that I was hoaxed into believing that Terry Pratchett was done writing them half a dozen books back. After all these books about a flat world balanced on the backs of four huge elephants perched, in their turn, atop a giant tortoise, Pratchett continues to break open new territory, find new depths, and conjure a unique blend of thrills, laughs, fantasy-world-magic, and real-world social commentary out of them.

Samuel Vimes is many things: husband, father, Captain of the City Watch, Duke of Ankh, and blackboard monitor (don't ask). Until now, country gentleman hasn't been one of them. Born and raised in the mean streets of Ankh-Morpork, he doesn't know what to do with himself when Lady Sibyll drags him off to the Shire Country for a holiday on her ancestral estate. She means for him to take a break from police work and spend it exploring the wonderful world of poo with their little son, the ever-inquisitive Sam Junior. But a copper is a copper wherever he goes, and Vimes very quickly picks up the scent of something rotten. On the surface it seems to be no more than a conspiracy to smuggle tobacco behind the Revenue's back. Digging a little deeper, Vimes finds a rocky layer of more dangerous substances whose traffic is a capital crime... a thin but explosively brittle crust of kidnapping, murder, and corruption... and a deep, dark, smelly pit of evil underlying it all.

This last evil may wear several names, such as "slavery" and "genocide"—even though its victims are mere goblins. In most jurisdictions, goblins are classified as vermin rather than as thinking, speaking people subject to, and protected by, the law. But Vimes' copperly instinct tells him that it's time for the law to change, especially after he meets one goblin girl who can make beautiful music... and sees the dead body of another, who begged for her life while she was being murdered. This puts Vimes on the trail of the sociopathic killer who did the deed, and of the "nobs" behind it—titled rich people who act as though laws are for other people. On that trail, he must escape the snare of a frame-up, rely on the services of a butler with an especially deadly skill-set, teach a gawky swineherd to be a copper, and race a wave of destruction down a raging river to save a bargeload of victims from a keen-edged villain. And there's more still.

At the time of this writing, this seems to be the latest Discworld novel in print. Nevertheless, I still have a bit of reading to do before I can say that I'm fully caught up. Two previous novels seem to have slipped by me in the detritus of the dam slam (a reference you'll have to read this book to understand). I am already reading Unseen Academicals, and I eagerly look forward to getting hold of the latest Tiffany Aching adventure, I Shall Wear Midnight. For once the Discworld catches you in its orbit, it's hard to break away. More to the point, Terry Pratchett's writing never seems to lose its spin. To abuse one of his pet phrases: I guess the leopard never changes his shorts!

The Rose and the Ring
by William Makepeace Thackeray
Recommended Ages: 10+

This hilarious fairy-tale spoof was written as a "fireside pantomime," to amuse a group of English children between Christmas and New Year while staying in an unnamed European city. Moreover, it was published under the pseudonym "Michael Angelo Titmarsh," if you please. Today's American children might not understand what's so funny about that name, let alone what a pantomime is or why it's remarkable to find the author of such big-boned books as The Luck of Barry Lyndon and Vanity Fair chronicling the romantic tomfoolery of the Princesses Angelica and Rosalba, and the Princes Bulbo and Giglio. But that won't stop them from giggling in all the right places.

These royal sillies dwell in the imaginary countries of Paflagonia and Crim Tartary. Two of them are rightful heirs, cheated out of their throne by a bit of misfortune that (in the wisdom of their fairy godmother) ought to do them good in the long run. The other two are the wrongful heirs—that is, the offspring of the vile usurpers, King Valoroso of the one country, and King Padella of the other. Their romantic entanglements are complicated by a magic ring and a buttonhole flower (guess which kind), both of which make the wearer irresistible to behold. Also mixed up in their off-again, on-again marriages, executions, rebellions, and wars, are such choicely named characters as the Countess Gruffanuff, Captain Hedzoff, Hogginarmo, and Sleibootz.

No one who is even the tiniest bit a child at heart is safe from laughing as our royal heroes and heroines are forced to keep horrible promises, face hungry lions in an arena, wander the countryside in rags, hope for a last-minute stay of execution, witness weird transformations, and deliver incredibly long speeches (which, lucky for us, Thackeray summarizes very succinctly). Finally, when everyone has fallen in love with the right person, the Fairy Blackstick delivers one last lesson. And if you've learned your lesson, it's that nothing is safe from a satirist's wit—even fairy stories. But with a light enough touch, even a tongue-in-cheek fairy tale can be magical.

There is a wrong way and a right way to read this book online for free. Unfortunately, I went with the wrong way: by downloading the $0.00 Kindle version. The right way would be to visit the Internet Archive and flip through a virtual hard copy of the book, complete with Thackeray's original illustrations—for the author was also, we find, a fairly talented artist, and would have been a top-drawer book illustrator, had not the misfortune of becoming a celebrated novelist befallen him. The latter version also preserves the doggerel verses embedded in the table of contents (omitted by Kindle), the original layout of several passages where the text is laid out in whimsical braces and parallel columns (which Kindle garbles beyond all recognition), and the correct spelling of several words that, I suspect, fell into the cracks of Kindle's spell-checker. But the biggest loss is the author's flamboyant drawings, especially at points where the narrator directs attention to them. So if your e-reader permits, or you can read online, go Internet Archive. Or, if you can swing it, find a used copy. It will be worth your while.

Jack and Yani Love HP

Jack and Yani Love Harry Potter
by Mary E. Twomey
Recommended Ages: 14+

Here is a fun romantic novel about 20- and 30-somethings caught up in a swirl of "fandoms," from Peewee Herman to Fringe, from Anne Rice's vampire novels to Twilight, from a San Diego comic-con to a blog about candy bars, and of course, Harry Potter. Jack and Yani have been across-the-hallway best friends since the day she shared his calculus textbook in college. Though they have their differences—for example, she is a messy follower of pop-culture phenomena like Harry Potter and Twilight, while he is a neat freak who reads serious literature and can quote Kerouac while drunk—they complete each other. All their friends know it. They just haven't admitted it to themselves. Yet.

Then Jack throws a surprise 30th-birthday party for Yani, and she suddenly realizes that she needs to see about making her dreams come true before it's too late. And so Jack wakes up to a note telling him that she's gone on a road trip by herself, hoping to forget that she is in love with him. At first dragged along by their mutual friends, then spurred by his own desperate urgency, Jack chases after her in a madcap tour of fandom tourist traps.

While Yani fulfills her lifelong dreams and finds nothing but an empty feeling of loneliness, Jack survives Vominator videos, unwitting brushes with real-life celebrities, a whirlwind romance between two of his friends, several roadkill funerals, and a series of audiobooks that make believers of an SUV full of Harry Potter and Twilight doubters—all while traveling three-quarters of the way around the continental U.S. with something like the cast of The Hangover.

Sympathetic fangirls (and fanboys) are sure to laugh at their high jinks, go "Awww" over their romances, blush at a bit of naughtiness, and squirm with envy of their experiences at ComicCon and elsewhere. You may even feel a nifty bite of suspense now and then. Many of us will relate to the heady blend of pride and embarrassment, boldness and goofiness that true fans can feel when sharing their enthusiasms with strangers, or even with their not-so-enthusiastic friends. Some of us may even share fond memories of experiencing the Harry Potter audiobooks and videos together, and seeing the light of fandom dawning in each other's eyes.

I, for one, was impressed by the way the entries in Jack and Yani's joint candy-criticism blog jived with the stages of their soulful love story—to say nothing of their good taste in selecting Zagnut as the best candy bar ever. Like that delicious but under-appreciated treat, this book is nutty but winsomely sweet, bringing several distinctive flavors into a satisfying balance. This will be less surprising when you realize that this is not Mary Twomey's first novel. Here, for example is some information about her quartet of space fantasy novels. If she's not careful, she may find herself being followed by a fandom of her own.

MuggleNet thanks this book's author and publisher for making a free PDF of the novel available for review. If you would like to buy the book for your Kindle, please visit Amazon.

Riordan Stroud Wodehouse

The Lost Hero
by Rick Riordan
Recommended Ages: 13+

The "Percy Jackson and the Olympians" series is over, but the adventures of the young demigods at Camp Halfblood continue in a series called "Heroes of Olympus," which begins with this book. When Jason wakes up on the bus during a school field trip to the Grand Canyon, he has no memory of who he is or how he got there. This is disturbing news to his best friend Leo and his girlfriend Piper, who both have months worth of memories of their relationship with Jason—but before they can cope with the truth that these memories are false, the three friends must survive an attack by wind spirits sent to destroy them.

You see, all three of these youngsters happen to be demigods—children with a human parent on one side and a Greek or Roman god on the other. I add the words "or Roman" because, for some reason, Jason speaks Latin rather than Greek, and keeps blurting out the names of Roman deities such as Jupiter and Juno, rather than their Greek counterparts Zeus and Hera. It is Hera who has taken Jason's memory; Hera who sends a vision to Annabeth, a veteran halfblood camper, telling her that Jason will be the key to discovering where her boyfriend Percy disappeared to; Hera who sends the campers a terrifying prophecy of what will happen if she, Hera, is not rescued from a new enemy who holds her captive and who will sacrifice her, Hera, in four days' time. Unless the halfblood kids put a stop to it, Hera's sacrifice will be the beginning of a conflict even bigger than the recent Titan War II, threatening the health and well-being of everybody on Earth. And though Hera has heretofore been the least demigod-friendly of the Olympian gods—especially where the kid's divine parent is her husband—she has personally sponsored Jason son-of-Jupiter at Camp Halfblood, claiming that he is the key to bringing together the seven heroes who must save the world.

To start with, however, three heroes must go on a quest to save Hera. Jason, naturally, is to lead the quest. He is joined by Leo, a son of Hephaestus with a knack for building gadgets, fixing things, and—his big secret—handling fire. A rare and dangerous talent, that. Piper, meanwhile, learns that she is a daughter of Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty—ironic qualities for a girl who is secretly under orders to betray her friends to the death, if she wants her kidnapped movie-star father to survive. Together with a flying mechanical dragon, a gung-ho satyr (a dude with the horns, hooves, and appetite of a goat), and an occasional leg-up from somebody or other's newfound mom or dad, the three kids make their way across the continental U.S., while each of them separately struggles with a painful secret or a personal mystery. Jason discovers more about who he is and where he's been. Leo begins to get over his mother's fiery death and grows more confident as a monster-slaying hero. And Piper learns to face the danger to her father and to her friends with honor.

The threat they will face, however, is more deadly than any of them could have anticipated. No longer must monsters wait in line to be returned to the world after being destroyed by a demigod; no sooner are they turned into gold dust than they start to re-form again. Mortal villains from the most savage chapters of history are returning to life—fiends like witchy Medea, gold-crazy Midas, and a swordsman who styles himself the Reaper of Men. Clearly, someone has opened the door that separates the world of the living from that of the dead. And that someone is awakening, gathering a terrible army, and recruiting minor deities to betray the gods and sabotage the campers' quest. As their chances of survival shrink to ludicrous littleness, the realization grows that if the kids fail in their quest, the result will be really, really bad.

Cheer up, though! You can't seriously think they fail. There are at least two more books in the series! But nor is the crisis over. Saving Hera may be the easy part. Getting the gods and demigods to work together will be even tougher, now that Zeus (or Jupiter) has closed Olympus. And perhaps even more dangerous is the threat of civil war among the demigods who... Well, let's not give too much away. If you really want to find out what could tear the halfbloods apart, read this book. And then watch this hilarious, action-packed, and surprisingly educational series continue in The Son of Neptune and The Mark of Athena.

The Golem's Eye
by Jonathan Stroud
Recommended Ages: 13+

If a boxed set of Harry Potter were to fall through the looking-glass, what came out the other side might be a lot like the "Bartimaeus Trilogy," of which this is Book 2. The fantasy world in this series is somewhat of a bizarro, backward-land version of Harry's wizarding world, which forms a secret enclave within the present-day world of us ordinary muggles. In Bartimaeus' world, the British empire is openly run by magicians, while the majority of the population—dismissively called "commoners"—toils in a condition not far above slavery. The press and the schools feed them a steady diet of pro-magician propaganda. The scales of justice are rigged in favor of the magicians. The security and police forces keep the people too frightened to rise up, including an elite squad of werewolves known as the Night Police—without even the ironic touch of a silent K. Ever since the magician William Gladstone took over the government in the 1860s and led a wave of conquest across Europe as far as Prague, the world has trembled beneath the jack-boot of British magic. Even the American colonies remain under British power.

But their grip is starting to slip. While the most powerful magicians in the land are busy stepping on each other, climbing the ladder of government service by means of knives stuck in one another's backs, discontent is beginning to stir. And not just discontent: resistance. Kitty Jones, for example, has a resilience to many forms of magical attack. Her resistance cell, led by an elderly art-supply merchant named Pennyfeather, is full of people who are either resilient to magic, or able to see auras of magical power, or gifted in some similar way. Kitty joined up after a magician put the hurt on her best friend Jakob because of an accident with a cricket ball. Now she is starting to worry that the group is taking big risks but achieving nothing. Instead of gathering discontented commoners into their movement, their resistance group carries out small acts of sabotage and burglary that hurt ordinary people more than magicians. They are being hunted as traitors and picked off one by one.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the social divide, who do we find working his ambitious way to the top but a fourteen-year-old magician named John Mandrake—Nathaniel to his friends—which is to say, nobody. Nathaniel's only fear is that the djinni Bartimaeus, who helped him get started in his government career, will come back and reveal his secret birth-name to all. Nevertheless, he finds himself with no choice but to summon Bartimaeus again, since his career as Assistant to the Minister of Internal Affairs will soon end, probably along with his life, unless he gets to the bottom of a series of terrorist attacks. At first Nathaniel confuses the high jinks of Kitty's resistance group with the more serious attacks of a golem, a giant remotely controlled mud-man who has been spreading chaos, death, and (for the beleaguered government) political embarrassment all over London. Without reliable support from anyone in his department—with growing suspicions that a high-level traitor is involved—and with political rivals sabotaging his investigation at every turn, young Mr. Mandrake follows a thread of clues to Prague and back. And though the forces spread against him are more numerous, better armed, and highly organized, he holds his own with the aid of one Bartimaeus, fourth-level djinni.

What Nathaniel/John Mandrake lacks in personal appeal, Bartimaeus makes up. The portions of the story told from his first-person point of view are effervescent with irreverent humor. A natural leader among demons (ranking from afrits and marids down to lowly imps and foliots), Bartimaeus brings a steady flow of smart-mouthed banter to every scene he is in. The entertainment value of his patter is often enhanced by the way it makes Nathaniel squirm, especially in the presence of people he wants to impress. The frequent footnotes, in which the djinni confides further details of his sorcerous background, are comedic highlights. In one of them, Bartimaeus explains the seven levels of reality, of which most humans can only perceive the first and lowest level. He then adds: "For example, there's probably something invisible with lots of tentacles hovering behind your back right NOW."

Eventually, inevitably, the career paths of Kitty and Nathaniel intersect. He suspects her of being one of only two survivors when her resistance cell makes the hideous mistake of plundering Gladstone's tomb. Thanks to this mostly thwarted break-in, a deadly afrit runs amok across London, clothed in Gladstone's skeleton. A magician's staff that once brought Europe to its knees is now at large. Using Jakob as a hostage, Nathaniel must bring Kitty in and recover the staff or his life and career are over. Meanwhile, his every move is being watched by the highest level of government ministers, including the very traitor who controls the golem that nobody but Nathaniel believes in. And when young magician, golem, afrit, hostage, and staff come together in one blind alley at the climax of the tale, Nathaniel's only hope for survival lies in the hands of a mutinous djinni and a resistance fighter who has everything to gain from his death. In Harry Potter's world, the most likely person to save an enemy's bacon would be Harry Potter. But in this instance, the nearest thing to Harry Potter is the one whose bacon needs to be saved—and he is, if you'll pardon my Sanskrit, a son of a bitch.

Will Kitty's human decency overcome her dislike? Will they live to fight another day? Will Robbie spoil everything by answering these questions? Well, if you need a clue, let it be the fact that the trilogy continues with Book 3, Ptolemy's Gate. Plus, just to throw a whiff of irony across the word "trilogy" on the front cover of the book, there's now a fourth book in the sequence: The Ring of Solomon, though this is reportedly a prequel. Other magical tales by the same author include Buried Fire, The Leap, The Last Siege, and Heroes of the Valley. Plus, coming in September 2013 is the first book of his new "Lockwood & Co" series, Screaming Staircase.

Ukridge
by P. G. Wodehouse
Recommended Ages: 12+

This collection of ten short stories, also published under the title He Rather Enjoyed It, is devoted to the escapades of one Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge, who also features in 13 other shorts (collected elsewhere) and the novel Love Among the Chickens. Because the stories in this book share a number of characters in common—besides the S.F.U. himself and his oft-exasperated biographer James "Corky" Corcoran—and thanks to other interrelated details, it almost holds together as a novel. That it doesn't quite manage to do so is due mostly to the chaotic nature of its central character and the side-splittingly funny episodes into which his life seems fated to divide itself.

Ukridge and Corky were old public-school chums, before the former got himself expelled. Even well into adulthood, he hasn't lost the knack for getting into trouble—most of the time, dragging one or more of his friends along with him. Big, loud, and full of mesmerizing charisma, he dresses like a slob when he isn't borrowing one of his friends' best clothes. He is always mooching off his more solvent pals, and frequently enlists their aid (willing or not) in a series of daft schemes that he believes certain to make him ludicrously rich—but which usually leave him as broke as ever. The only thing more hilarious than Ukridge's money-making schemes are the disasters that upset them. But apart from a harrumph of, "Upon my sam, it's a bit hard," he takes it all in good spirit and is never knocked down for long.

Observe and laugh as Ukridge tries his hand at managing a boxer, training dogs, making political campaign speeches, and brokering a real estate deal. Grin at his missteps as he kidnaps a parrot, outruns his creditors, and pretends to own a limousine driven by a drinking buddy. Ukridge gets arrested over a misunderstanding, gets engaged to be married without meaning to, scalps tickets to a private dance, and tries to dine out on his aunt's fame as a novelist even after she disowns him. Plus, he sends Corky onto a fair number of dodgy missions, such as impersonating a journalist on assignment—which proves doubly awkward when, after the ruse is detected, he actually does get sent on assignment.

The outcome is ten pieces of light, springy humor and shining wit, lampooning the more disreputable side of the British upper class. It mixes in a bit of romance, some sporting fun (especially boxing), a sepia-printed cameo of life as a down-and-out student in the early 1900s, a touch of crime, a kiss of politics, and a passing breeze of satire on the evangelical revivals of the Billy Sunday era. My favorite bits involved boxing, a sport whose humorous possibilities have not been sufficiently explored. Reading these rib-ticklers, or hearing them read by a comic actor such as Jonathan Cecil, will certainly foster what Ukridge calls a "big, broad, flexible outlook." Or, to put it another way, it will make you laugh as you realize that a flair for failure—failing with style—can more than compensate for a lack of success.

Bellairs Brontë Hornung

The Face in the Frost
by John Bellairs
Recommended Ages: 12+

John Bellairs (1938-91) specialized in writing spooky tales of the mysterious and macabre for younger readers. One of the most mysterious and macabre things about him is the fact that he went on writing them after his death. It turns out that four of his books were completed by Brad Strickland based on sketches left unrealized at the author's death; Strickland then went on to write at least nine more books based on characters Bellairs created. This accounts for the strange fact that 31 novels are listed on Bellairs's bibliography, though he only lived to write 18 of them. There may be more pseudo-Bellairs spookiness to come, including a film franchise. Is this a good thing? I suppose the jury is out. Some fans of Bellairs may appreciate the chance to see his work continue, compensating in some degree for his untimely loss. Others may feel emotions ranging from irritation at having to distinguish between books Bellairs really wrote and those ghost-written after his death, to heartbreak at seeing a most unique creative mind lose control over the fruit of his imagination.

My personal feelings, however, are not mixed. I do not plan to read anything to which Brad Strickland set his hand. The way I mean to mourn for the genius of John Bellairs is to read all the books that he actually wrote, period. To that end, I made this book my first real purchase at the Amazon Kindle Store (not counting dozens of books that can be "bought" for $0.00). After reading its 11 chapters in one swift, delicious afternoon, I find that the $7.39 I spent on this Kindle book was a really good deal. I look forward to keeping it, treasuring it, re-reading it, singing its praises, and sharing it—starting here, with you.

Most of Bellairs's work was aimed at a juvenile audience. Evidently this is because his publisher, from some time in the early 1970s, discouraged him from trying to write adult fantasy, a genre that had not yet begun to thrive. So Bellairs devoted most of his novels to the adventures of young Lewis Barnavelt, Johnny Dixon, and Anthony Monday. First, however, he gave us this one book about a grown-up wizard named Prospero (not the one in The Tempest by Shakespeare), his best friend Roger Bacon, and their chillingly dangerous search for the root of a great evil that has begun to darken their unnamed country. Bellairs did write a short prequel to this novel, but it was lost when the fantasy anthology in which it was to be published, wasn't. He also started to write a sequel to this book, titled The Dolphin Cross—but neither Bellairs himself, during the last decade of his life, nor his ghost-writers since, ever finished it. So there is a wistfulness in enjoying this book, wherein one recognizes its integrity as one of the finest early examples of the wizard novel and regrets the unfulfilled prospect of more of the same.

In this respect, Bellairs's masterpiece (really his first novel, though it was his third book) begins to attract comparisons to the writings of Mervyn Peake. Both authors were powerhouses of adult fantasy before it became a bestselling genre. Both of them died too soon, leaving behind the torso of unfinished novels for other authors to complete. Both authors had a flair for rich, descriptive, strikingly original utterance. And both authors had a distinct way of blending whimsical silliness with dark, Gothically spooky stylings. The key difference is that Bellairs did it in much leaner, economical prose. His action moves at a brisk pace, taking both characters and readers farther in fewer words. This book, in which so much promise is tantalizingly but compactly embodied, shows Bellairs to be a master of charm, eloquence, and wit, the soul of which is brevity. It is not a long novel. But I think it could be a great one.

Prospero and Roger are admirable wizards. Undeniably goofy, in the cracked-but-great tradition of Gandalf and Dumbledore, they study hard—setting an example for all aspiring wizards. But while they have weird powers at their fingertips, they also have tender and noble hearts, and very human dreads and terrors. And so, as they explore the creepy mystery behind the unseasonable frost spreading across the land, and the evil face that traces itself in the frost on so many people's windows, and the stirrings of violence and chaos that threaten to set the Northern and Southern Kingdom at each other's throats, you can't help feeling their fears and sorrows along with them. In short, you will love them, and thrill to the creepy mystery-adventure through which this book leads them. And then, if you are as sensible as I trust you will be by now, you will place The Face in the Frost in your bookcase or Kindle folder alongside such beautiful tales of wizardry as The Last Unicorn and The Wizard of Earthsea.

Villette
by Charlotte Brontë
Recommended Ages: 14+

This 1853 novel is important in many ways. For one, it is the last novel to be completed by any of the three celebrated Brontë sisters, and it shows the furthest development of an artist whose career as a published author started with Jane Eyre. It draws on its author's experiences as an English teacher at a boarding school in Brussels, where (among other unhappy experiences) she suffered from loneliness, homesickness, and possibly an inappropriate but unrequited attachment to her married employer. It also depicts characters based on other people Ms. Brontë knew, reacts critically to styles of art and entertainment she had experienced, and expresses a deeply negative view of Roman Catholicism as a facet of the author's devout Protestantism.

If its narrator, an outwardly cool but inwardly troubled young lady named Lucy Snowe, really reflects the author's attitudes and feelings, this novel must then reveal Charlotte Brontë to be anything but the model of a conventional, Victorian girl—demure, dutiful, spotlessly virtuous in thought and deed, etc. Rather, it seems to be the confession of a spiritually troubled young woman who suffered greatly from solitude, heartbreak, and depression; who, while bearing these afflictions, sought to make her own way in the world, armored with a fiercely independent spirit and at times a biting wit; who frankly admitted feeling unlawful desires and entertaining such mental house-guests as jealousy, peevishness, a dread of ghosts, and near-suicidal despair. It is a daring story in that its narrator is sometimes unreliable, deceiving the reader or playing coy with the nature of her afflictions (such as exactly what became of her immediate family); even its ending is ambiguous, suggesting that something dreadful happened but inviting the reader to imagine a happy ending instead.

We first meet Lucy Snowe as a girl staying with her godmother Mrs. Bretton and the latter's son Graham, along with an even littler house-guest named Paulina Hume. No sooner is the stage set for some melodrama than this episode passes, and the setting changes, and we find a grown-up Lucy waiting at the bedside of an elderly invalid who confides the heartbreak of her life during the first of the book's many moving passages. Through some tragedy or another, Lucy finds herself alone in the world and decides to try being a governess or a teacher somewhere across the sea. She settles in a country called Labassecour (somewhere in the neighborhood of Belgium), in the capital city called Villette (modeled on Brussels), at a boarding school directed by a Madame Beck, quickly moving up from being a nanny to Mme. Beck's own children to teaching English in the school itself. All this time she suffers from the culture-shock of being surrounded by people who speak a different language and practice a different religion; until, left alone during a school break, she becomes so completely miserable that it almost kills her.

This crisis is not so much relieved as succeeded by a new set of problems. Lucy loses her heart to a handsome, English doctor who (she belatedly reveals) is our own Graham Bretton from the beginning of the book. But as kind as "Dr. John" is (don't ask), he never gives his heart to her. Lucy's torment is exquisite as she schools herself to bury her passion for Graham while, at the same time, trying to ensure that he chooses the right girl of two beautiful cousins. Then she starts to have feelings for the brusque, moody M. Paul Emanuel (the "M" stands for "Monsieur," silly)—a relative of Mme. Beck's, who teaches literature and other subjects when he isn't trying to bring Lucy under the discipline of the Catholic Church. Even as it grows increasingly obvious that their love can never be—their religious differences being only one of the reasons—Lucy's desperate need for some kind of happiness becomes so unbearably urgent that it may make you squirm. And does she find it? Ah! That's where the book cheats you; or rather, it forces you to choose between the happy ending you would like and the probable ending that you wouldn't.

Make no mistake, this book will lead you on a gruelling journey. It is a fascinating one, though—full of scenes and characters and ideas and details that form a speaking picture of Lucy Snowe, Villette, the school, and a whole remarkable way of life. Perhaps as deeply as any novel can, without becoming unreadable, it explores the inner workings of one woman's heart in a situation in life that is not conducive to a conventional storyline with a tidy ending, a neat resolution, or poetic justice for its good and bad characters. It is, in fact, more or less a slice of life with all the unpoetical injustices left in and, where a happy ending is wanted, at best the memory of a circumscribed period of incomplete happiness, followed by... Well, whatever life brings next.

If you want the girl to end up in Mr. Rochester's arms, read Jane Eyre. To meet a young woman whose mundane outer struggles and colossal inward ones continue indefinitely, this is your book. The other story may be more in line with your romantic ideas. But this one seems, at times, to be opening your heart and reading it back at you. I'm neither a woman, nor a teacher, nor a foreign traveler, nor a victim of unfulfilled love... but I recognize many of the feelings Lucy Snowe feels in this book. And so in struggling to understand Lucy, one might perhaps feel a comforting sensation of Being Understood.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE ADVISORY: To understand some of the dialogue in this book, it may be helpful to study a year or two worth of French. Evidently Charlotte Brontë assumed that her appreciative reader would have such a background of linguistic study. It might be interesting to know how these passages play in French translations of the novel, but enough said.

The Black Mask
by E. W. Hornung
Recommended Ages: 12+

Published in the U.S. under the relatively pedestrian title Raffles: The Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman, this is the second collection of adventures of gentleman burglar A. J. Raffles and his school chum, sidekick, and biographer Bunny. These characters seem to have been invented as foils to Holmes and Watson, the celebrated creation of Hornung's friend and brother-in-law Arthur Conan Doyle. Though they are not so well-known today, anyone who reads British fiction written in the first quarter or so of the 20th century must have had their interest piqued by references to Raffles, whose name stood for a while as a proverb for any merry rogue who made off with millions while posing as a sportsman, a magnetic figure of fashion and culture, admired by men and women alike.

In this book, however, Raffles has moved beyond the phase of his career when he plied his criminal craft under the cover of being a celebrated cricket player. Presumed dead since his escape over the side of a cruise ship in The Amateur Cracksman, he has returned to England resolved to stay dead in the eyes of the law. Bunny, meanwhile, has done a bit of time for their joint crimes, and has emerged into a society that does not promise much to a man of his experience. The pair are reunited in the guise of an elderly invalid and his personal attendant, resuming their criminal lifestyle while taking pains to uphold the public's belief that Raffles is dead.

All in all, the eight capers in this volume are cloaked in a vapor of melancholy that sets them apart from the rollicking fun of the previous set. Raffles daringly swipes a priceless artifact from under the very noses of a museum's guards, only to admire its beauty for a while before sending it to Queen Victoria as a jubilee gift—a display of sentiment that even Bunny considers unlike his worshiped friend. One chapter is devoted to the story of a tragic romance with an Italian girl, another to Raffles' narrow escape from gruesome death at the hands of a vengeful crime boss. There is a duel of wits (to the death) with a fellow tradesman; the revival of an "old flame" with a married woman, leading Raffles to fake his death a second time; an interlude of more or less successful burglaries carried out on bicycles, while our rascally heroes hide out under a new identity; and finally—and I mean finally—the Boer War, in which the patriotism in Bunny and Raffles is so stirred up that they risk exposure and death to fight for their country. And these risks become all too real when they recognize a corporal in their unit as an enemy spy.

The end really comes for Raffles in this book, yet somehow it is not the end of the stories published about him. E. W. Hornung went on to write another book of Raffles stories—A Thief in the Night—as well as a novel—Mr. Justice Raffles. The same author wrote a considerable number of other books, which are listed here. And while hard copies of these entertainments can vary from cheap reproductions to expensive used books, the free Kindle book makes for a fiendishly clever way to steal an hour of fun out of a snow day, a rainy afternoon, a dull lunch break, or a holiday at the beach.