"Under the Dome" by Stephen King

Title: Under the Dome

Author: Stephen King

First Published: 2003

Publisher: Scribner

Pages: 1092

Genre: Science Fiction

Format/Source: Kindle/Amazon

"[He] looked up and saw [her] brains drying high on one wall. What she used to think with now looked like a clot of oatmeal. He burst into tears."

 
On the morning of October 21, out of the blue, an invisible barrier appears all around Chester's Mill, Maine. The first two victims of the "Dome Day" are the two passengers of a little plane that crashes into the "Dome", the hand of a gardener who happened to be reaching over the town limits the exact moment is cut off by the force field, it's owner dies of blood loss.

Aside from killing another half-a-dozen or so people and one woodchuck, the Dome also prevents Dale Barbara, nicknamed Barbie, a cook and Ex-Iraq solider from leaving the town after a physical conflict with the son of the town's second selectman.

As the town scrambles to adapt with this situation, this selectman, Big Jim Rennie, is quick to hatch a plan and try to take on control over Chester's Mill, whatever the price is.

But Barbie and Julia Shumway - the publisher of the local paper - see through this plan and suspect there's a little more to Big Jim than the dutiful selectman and used car dealer than it seems.

"Neverwhere" by Neil Gaiman - review

Title: Neverwhere
Author: Neil Gaiman
First Published: 1996
Publisher: Harper Torch Fiction
Pages: 383
Genere: Fantasy/Adventure
Format/Source: Paperback - Christmas Gift

"Richard had noticed that events were cowards: they didn't occur singly, but instead they would run in packs and leap out at him all at once."

It all starts when Londoner Richard Mayhew helps a mysterious girl he finds injured pavement and takes her home. Twentyfour hours later the girl has left and he finds that his life was practically erased: His desk at his work was put away, his apartment is for rent and his fiancée doesn't recognise him. Even weirder, nobody even notices him anymore. The only alternative he sees is to look for the girl he found on the sidewalk and so he tumbles into London Below - a strange world of mysterious creatures, baronies and a little magic. Where there is an earl in Earl's Court (an London Underground car) and black friars at Blackfriars. The girl Richard helped turns out to be, in fact, a lady, the lady Door.

As Richard finds out, the Lady's family has been murdered not long ago and she is pursued by the two most feared cutthroats in London Below - Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar. To find out why her family was killed, Door sets out to find the angel Islington - together with the strange, cunning and deceiving Marquis de Carabas who still owed Door a favour; the bodyguard Hunter, a fierce hunter whose aspiration it is to kill the Great Beast of London; and the upworlder Richard who has no idea what he got himself into and who just wants his life back.

"The Alchemist" by Paul Coelho - Review

Title: The Alchemist
Author: Paul Coelho
First Published: 1988
Original Language: Portugese

Publisher: Harper San Francisco
Pages: 197 (including bookclub guide, interview etc.)   
Genere: Adventure/Bildungsroman

"The secret is here in the present. If you pay attention to the present, you can improve upon it. And, if you improve on the present, what comes later will also be better." - The Seer

The Andalusian sheperd boy Satiago dreams of a treasure that lies under the great pyramids. A man who claims to be the king of Salomon gives him two stones that should tell his faith and advises him to follow his personal legend, his destiny. The next day the boy sells all his sheep and sets out from Spain to Egypt to find his treasure. On his way he encounters an Englishman, his true love, a few thieves and an alchemist who teaches him that everything on this world is the same and everyhing speaks one language, the "language of the world".

"Angels and Demons" by Dan Brown - Review

Title: Angels and Demons
Author: Dan Brown
First Published: 2000
Publisher: Corgi Books
Pages: 620 
Genere: Suspense Thriller
Source: Borrowed (Library)

"Science and religion are not at odds. Science is simply too young to understand." - Camerlengo Patrick McKenna

Harvard Symbologist Robert Langdon is woken at night to help investigate the death of physicist Leonardo Vetra who was cruelly murdered and branded with a symbol of an ancient brotherhood - The Illuminati. Initially deemed extinguished, this brotherhood stole a canister of antimatter, an undetectable explosive which is now hidden somewhere in the Vatican, the headquarter of the brotherhood's oldest enemy.

At the same time, as the catholic church prepares for the election of a new pope, the four top candidates are abducted with the message that every hour one of these cardinals will be publicly murdered until, after the last one has been killed, the antimatter will destroy the catholic church for good.

Langdon, joined by Vetra's daughter, the beautiful scientist Vittoria, chases through Rome on a trail layed by the Illuminati themselves out 400 year before in an attemt to saved the cardinals and find the antimatter before it is too late.