BOOK PICKS.Byline: The Register-Guard "A Great and Terrible Beauty A Great and Terrible Beauty is the first novel in a fantasy trilogy by Libba Bray. It is told from the perspective of Gemma Doyle, a girl in the late 1800s. Plot Summary " By Libba Bray Delacourt Press, 2003 Ages 12 and up Set in a Victorian-era boarding school, this story is an intriguing thematic combination of fantasy, Gothic mystery and teen friendship, all mixed with touches of horror and just enough romance. Until the day Gemma turns 16, she has lived a sheltered life in India with her parents. She longs to go to school in England and does not understand her mother's refusal to send her. On that fateful fate·ful adj. 1. Vitally affecting subsequent events; being of great consequence; momentous: a fateful decision to counterattack. 2. Controlled by or as if by fate; predetermined. 3. birthday, she and her mother argue about that very subject, and Gemma runs away. As she runs, she has a disturbing vision in which her mother dies. She rushes back to find her mother has died, violently. As her father retreats into opium opium, substance derived by collecting and drying the milky juice in the unripe seed pods of the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum. Opium varies in color from yellow to dark brown and has a characteristic odor and a bitter taste. addiction, her conventional and proper older brother takes charge of Gemma. Still grieving grieving Mourning, see there for her mother, she has the misfortune to get her earlier wish - she is sent to the strange and forbidding English boarding school, Spence, the same school her mother attended, a school whose mysterious history includes a fire that took the lives of three girls, 20 years earlier. At school, Gemma is snubbed by the other students until she manages to blackmail blackmail, in law, exaction of money from another by threat of exposure of criminal action or of disreputable conduct. The term was originally used for the tribute levied until the 18th cent. her way into a friendship with the powerful Felicity and the beautiful Pippa. Along with Ann, her plain and unhappy roommate, the girls begin a dangerous journey into a strange world, using Gemma's new and frightening magical powers, powers that seem to give them freedom from the Victorian restrictions that control their lives and limit their futures. With a beautiful young Indian man sent for unknown reasons to watch over Gemma, the journey will surely captivate readers. - Barbara Thompson Barbara Thompson is the name of
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