Bøger af Richard J O'Brien

It's the perfect summer day for Tommy Holcomb and his friends to play stick ball. When a storm comes, a lightning strike opens up a hole in the ground. Tommy falls through the hole, and lands in a strange new world. The place is called Fragmenta. Once there, Tommy befriends Aronia, a twenty-foot tall blue caterpillar woman, and Glipt, a dwarf and self-proclaimed Grand Inquisitor who interrogates him to no end. Tommy learns from Aronia and Glipt that children are scarce in Fragmenta. Human children are considered the rarest. On Fragmenta, they are bought and sold for the magic that exists within them. Soon, Tommy is kidnapped and hauled onto an airship where children are held captive. He meets a boy named Raveesh who suffered a circumstance similar to Tommy's. As the boys make their journey toward a land island called Derkaloosh, Tommy befriends the ship captain's bodyguard Jamros, a giant and a devotee of the butterfly goddess Aronia. With Jamros's aid, Tommy plots his escape. Now, all Tommy must do is locate Aronia to find a way home.

A few months after Bobby O''Malley joins the army to pay for his college education, he learns that his father is dying. O''Malley returns home to see his father one last time and bury him. Afterward, he is forced to put off his mourning, so he can continue his new role as an infantry soldier. In 1985, during a decade of excess, that role means mostly falling in with the wrong people and drinking to dull the pain of loss. Along the way, O''Malley makes some friends, falls in love with a married woman, and learns a secret about his father that changes his life.