Showing posts with label suspense. Show all posts
Showing posts with label suspense. Show all posts

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz


"...a car accident...called the ambulance...intensive care...nothing anyone could do...so sorry." The voices of the police at the door at three in the morning drift up the stairs to Alex as he listens from his bedroom door. Ian Rider, his uncle and the only parent he ever knew, is dead. But circumstances of his death don't sit right with Alex. Ian Rider, a banker, always wore his seat belt and he made sure Alex wore his; but he wasn't wearing one the night of the accident according to the police. Then when Alex returns from the funeral to see a Stryker & Son moving van pulling out of their home and discovers Ian's upstairs office is empty, Alex decides to do some investigating on his own. He locates Ian Rider's BMW at J. B. Stryker Auto Wreckers and discovers the driver's side has been riddled with bullets. After narrowly escaping danger in the wrecking yard, Alex is summoned to the Royal & General Bank, where Alex learns that Ian Rider was not a banker but a spy for the British Intelligence Agency, MI6. Ian was undercover on a case investigating the release of the Stormbreaker computer when he was killed and MI6 needs Alex Rider's help to finish the job.

Saturday, November 3, 2007

Code Orange by Caroline B. Cooney

Mr. Lynch's science research assignment on contagious diseases requires that students use at least four books.
"Books?" questions Mitty Blake. "Nobody uses books anymore. They're useless, especially in science. Facts change too fast." But Mr. Lynch wants students to use books for their report and not rely totally on the Internet. Mitty, a master procrastinator and slacker when in comes to school assignments, finds himself in a jam because he doesn't have any books on smallpox and it's the weekend and he's at his family's vacation home without access to book stores or libraries AND he has to show Mr. Lynch the books he's using tomorrow. So Mitty decides to use some of the antique medical books his mom uses for her interior decorating business. When he opens Principles of Contagious Disease, printed in Boston in 1899, Mitty is skeptical that he will find any useful information. Within the book he finds an envelope and hand-written upon the envelope in fountain pen ink is the label "Scabs--VM epidemic, 1902, Boston". Mitty opens the envelope, handles the some fragile scabs which crumble in his finger tips, and rubs his itchy nose. Has Mitty just infected himself with variola major, an airborn virus? Will he be the new Typhoid Mary of New York City? Code Orange will keep you turning pages to find out what will happen to Mitty, his parents, his friends and classmates and New York City.