Kill Your Darlings

Kill Your Darlings

Terence Blacker

Young Adult

Gregory Keays is a writer whose brilliant future is behind him. Corroded with envy, Gregory watches as his contemporaries produce better work and live happier lives while he teaches community college composition classes and compiles books about other books. One day, Gregory is convinced, the world will recognize his talents. In the meantime, his marriage to a new-age feng shui artist has become cold and distant, and his relationship with his reclusive teen-age son is in free-fall. But when a brilliant student enters his life, Gregory is offered one last, glorious chance to save his career.Soon, however, Gregory's Faustian pact with success unravels around him, and he must turn to darker, more duplicitous means to secure his fame. Set in the dangerous world where real life and literary ambition collide, Kill Your Darlings is an unforgettable novel of ego and delusion, villainy and the betrayal of love.
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Racing Manhattan

Racing Manhattan

Terence Blacker

Young Adult

Jay Barton has spent her life on the outside, being overlooked and mocked for her tomboy ways. All she wants to do is ride her favourite pony, which belongs to her much wealthier cousin. But then Jay shows a talent for winning the illegal pony races her uncle takes her to, and he starts to push her to take more and more risks. At 15, Jay decides to run away, to live the life of a stable hand.Her fortunes are changed when she meets Manhattan: a pedigree grey racehorse who has used up all her chances and is now neglected and despised. Jay recognises a fellow misfit. She fights to give Manhattan one last opportunity to show she is the champion she was born to be. Together, they face a world of prejudice and cruelty and fight back the only way they know – by becoming the best.
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The Twyning

The Twyning

Terence Blacker

Young Adult

In a harsh and dangerous world, a rat and a boy must each choose their way as their fates become inextricably linked. Efren is a young rat, unnoticed and timid among the kingdom of rats living in the London sewers. When the king dies, leaving the kingdom in upheaval, only Efren dares to journey into the human world, where he discovers a human doctor's plan to destroy London's entire rat population. Meanwhile, Peter, otherwise known as Dogboy, does odd jobs for both the scheming doctor and the town ratcatcher. But his gift for understanding animals — even rats — forces him to decide where his allegiances truly lie. Dogboy and Efren, along with the waifish girl Caz and her pet rat, Malaika, set out to test the strengths of friendship and loyalty against the gut-wrenching cruelties of the world.
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