The Best and Worst of What I Read in 2009 -Part E (in the order read)
Discover the best and worst books of 2009 in Part E, featuring Ender's Game, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October. This curated reading list ranks sci-fi, romance, and fantasy favorites like the Bridgerton series and Laurell K. Hamilton, highlighting must-reads and misses from a year of eclectic fiction.
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Jennifer Government
by Max Barry
In the near future, corporations rule the world and the one who defies them is pursued relentlessly.
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The Hunt for Red October
by Tom Clancy
The classic Cold War novel about a race between the Soviet and American fleets to find an errant Russian submarine.
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Kitty and the Midnight Hour
by Carrie Vaughn
Kitty Norville is a midnight-shift DJ for a Denver radio station-and a werewolf in the closet. Sick of lame song requests, she accidentally starts 'The Midnight Hour', a late-night advice show for the supernaturally disadvantaged. After desperate vampires, werewolves, and witches across the country begin calling in to share their woes, her new show is a raging success. But it's Kitty who can use some help. With one sexy werewolf-hunter and a few homicidal undead on her tail, Kitty may have bitten off more than she can chew...
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Strange Candy
by Laurell K. Hamilton
A collection of short fiction features "The Girl Who Was Infatuated with Death," an Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter story, as well as "House of Wizards," "Stealing Souls," and "Those Who Seek Forgiveness."
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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 25th Anniversary Edition
by Douglas Adams
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Extremely funny . . . inspired lunacy . . . [and] over much too soon.”—The Washington Post Book World SOON TO BE A HULU SERIES • Now celebrating the pivotal 42nd anniversary of the original radio show on which the book was based. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read Seconds before Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised edition of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy who, for the last fifteen years, has been posing as an out-of-work actor. Together, this dynamic pair began a journey through space aided by a galaxyful of fellow travelers: Zaphod Beeblebrox—the two-headed, three-armed ex-hippie and totally out-to-lunch president of the galaxy; Trillian (formerly Tricia McMillan), Zaphod’s girlfriend, whom Arthur tried to pick up at a cocktail party once upon a time zone; Marvin, a paranoid, brilliant, and chronically depressed robot; and Veet Voojagig, a former graduate student obsessed with the disappearance of all the ballpoint pens he’s bought over the years. Where are these pens? Why are we born? Why do we die? For all the answers, stick your thumb to the stars! Praise for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy “A whimsical oddyssey . . . Characters frolic through the galaxy with infectious joy.”—Publishers Weekly “Irresistable!”—The Boston Globe
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The Scent of Shadows
by Vicki Pettersson
When she was sixteen, Joanna Archer was brutally assaulted and left to die in the Nevada desert. By rights, she should be dead. Now a photographer by day, she prowls a different Las Vegas after sunset—a grim, secret Sin City where Light battles Shadow—seeking answers to whom or what she really is . . . and revenge for the horrors she was forced to endure. But the nightmare is just beginning—for the demons are hunting Joanna, and the powerful shadows want her for their own . . .
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Ender's Game
by Orson Scott Card
From New York Times bestselling author Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game—adapted to film in 2013 starring Asa Butterfield and Harrison Ford—is the classic Hugo and Nebula award-winning science fiction novel of a young boy's recruitment into the midst of an interstellar war. In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race's next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidates for the soldier-training program but didn't make the cut—young Ender is the Wiggin drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training. Ender's skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the alien invaders. His psychological battles include loneliness, fear that he is becoming like the cruel brother he remembers, and fanning the flames of devotion to his beloved sister. Is Ender the general Earth needs? But Ender is not the only result of the genetic experiments. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Ender's two older siblings are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. Between the three of them lie the abilities to remake a world. If, that is, the world survives. Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game is the winner of the 1985 Nebula Award for Best Novel and the 1986 Hugo Award for Best Novel. THE ENDER UNIVERSE Ender series Ender’s Game / Ender in Exile / Speaker for the Dead / Xenocide / Children of the Mind Ender’s Shadow series Ender’s Shadow / Shadow of the Hegemon / Shadow Puppets / Shadow of the Giant / Shadows in Flight Children of the Fleet The First Formic War (with Aaron Johnston) Earth Unaware / Earth Afire / Earth Awakens The Second Formic War (with Aaron Johnston) The Swarm /The Hive Ender novellas A War of Gifts /First Meetings
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Boy Meets Girl
by Meg Cabot
Meet Kate Mackenzie. She: works for the T.O.D. (short for Tyrannical Office Despot, also known as Amy Jenkins, Director of the Human Resources Division at the New York Journal) is sleeping on the couch because her boyfriend of ten years refuses to commit can't find an affordable studio apartment anywhere in New York City thinks things can't get any worse. They can. Because: the T.O.D. is making her fire the most popular employee in the paper's senior staff dining room that employee is now suing Kate for wrongful termination, and now Kate has to give a deposition in front of Mitch Hertzog, the scion of one of Manhattan's wealthiest law families, who embraces everything Kate most despises ... but also happens to have a nice smile and a killer bod. The last thing anybody -- least of all Kate Mackenzie -- expects to find in a legal arbitration is love. But that's the kind of thing that can happen when ... Boy Meets Girl.
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Romancing Mister Bridgerton
by Julia Quinn
Penelope Featherington has secretly adored her best friend's brother for . . . well, it feels like forever. After half a lifetime of watching Colin Bridgerton from afar, she thinks she knows everything about him, until she stumbles across his deepest secret . . . and fears she doesn't know him at all. Colin Bridgerton is tired of being thought nothing but an empty-headed charmer, tired of everyone's preoccupation with the notorious gossip columnist Lady Whistledown, who can't seem to publish an edition without mentioning him in the first paragraph. But when Colin returns to London from a trop aboard he discovers notyhing in his life is quite the same—especially Penelope Featherington! The girl haunting his dreams. But when he discovers that Penelope has secrets of her own, this elusive bachelor must decide . . . is she his biggest threat—or his promise of a happy ending?
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Night Embrace
by Sherrilyn Kenyon
In this second installment in the bestselling Dark-Hunter series, Talon meets Sunshine, who is the key to ending his curse once and for all.
