• Complain

Caitlin Kittredge - The Iron Thorn  

Here you can read online Caitlin Kittredge - The Iron Thorn   full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 2011, publisher: Delacorte Press, genre: Art. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

No cover
  • Book:
    The Iron Thorn  
  • Author:
  • Publisher:
    Delacorte Press
  • Genre:
  • Year:
    2011
  • Rating:
    5 / 5
  • Favourites:
    Add to favourites
  • Your mark:
    • 100
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

The Iron Thorn  : summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "The Iron Thorn  " wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

Caitlin Kittredge: author's other books


Who wrote The Iron Thorn  ? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

The Iron Thorn   — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "The Iron Thorn  " online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make
This is a work of fiction Names characters places and incidents either are - photo 1

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright 2011 by Caitlin Kittredge
Illustrations copyright 2011 by Robert Lazzaretti

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Childrens Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

Visit us on the Web! www.randomhouse.com/teens

Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools,
visit us at www.randomhouse.com/teachers

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kittredge, Caitlin.
The Iron Thorn / Caitlin Kittredge. 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: In an alternate 1950s, mechanically gifted fifteen-year-old
Aoife Grayson, whose family has a history of going mad at sixteen,
must leave the totalitarian city of Lovecraft and venture into the world
of magic to solve the mystery of her brothers disappearance and the
mysteries surrounding her father and the Land of Thorn.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89598-2 [1. Fantasy.] I. Title.
PZ7.K67163lr 2011
[Fic]dc22
2010000972

Random House Childrens Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

v3.1

To Howard Phillips Lovecraft,
who first showed me that strange far place

Contents

The moon is dark,
and the gods dance in the night;
there is terror in the sky,
for upon the moon hath sunk an eclipse
foretold in no books of men.

H. P. L OVECRAFT

The Iron Thorn - photo 2

The Iron Thorn - photo 3

The Iron Thorn - photo 4

The Iron Thorn - image 5

The Iron Thorn - image 6

The Iron Thorn - image 7
The Ashes of the World

T HERE ARE SEVENTEEN madhouses in the city of Lovecraft. Ive visited all of them.

My mother likes to tell me about her dreams when I visit. She sits in the window of the Cristobel Charitable Asylum and strokes the iron bars covering the glass like they are the strings of a harp. I went to the lily field last night, she murmurs.

Her dreams are never dreams. They are always journeys, explorations, excavations of her mad mind, or, if her mood is bleak, ominous portents for me to heed.

The smooth brass gears of my chronometer churned past four-thirty and I put it back in my skirt pocket. Soon the asylum would close to visitors and I could go home. The dark came early in October. Its not safe for a girl to be out walking on her own, in Hallows Eve weather.

I called it that, the sort of days when the sky was the same color as the smoke from the Nephilim Foundry across the river, and you could taste winter on the back of your tongue.

When I didnt immediately reply, my mother picked up her hand mirror and threw it at my head. There was no glass in ithadnt been for years, at least six madhouses ago. The doctors wrote it into her file, neat and spidery, after she tried to cut her wrists open with the pieces. No mirrors. No glass. Patient is a danger to herself.

Im talking to you! she shouted. You might not think its important, but I went to the lily field! I saw the dead girls move their hands! Open eyes looking up! Up into the world that they so desperately desire!

Its a real shame that my mother is mad. She could make a fortune writing sensational novels, those gothics with the cheap covers and breakable spines that Mrs. Fortune, my house marm at the Lovecraft Academy, eats up.

My stomach closed like a fist, but my voice came out soothing. Ive had practice being soothing, calming. Too much practice. Nerissa, I said, because thats her name and we never address each other as mother and daughter but always as Nerissa and Aoife. Im listening to you. But youre not making any sense. Just like usual. I left the last part off. Shed only find something else to throw.

I picked up the mirror and ran my thumb over the backing. It was silver, and it had been pretty, once. When I was a child Id played at being beautiful while my mother sat by the window of Our Lady of Rationality, the first madhouse in my memory, run by Rationalist nuns. Their silent black-clad forms fluttered like specters outside my mothers cell while they prayed to the Master Builder, the epitome of human reason, for her recovery. All the medical science and logic in the world couldnt cure my mother, but the nuns tried. And when they failed, she was sent on to another madhouse, where no one prayed for anything.

Nerissa gave a snort, ruffling the ragged fringe above her eyes. Oh, am I? And what would you know of sense, miss? You and those ironmongers locked away in that dank school, the gears turning and turning to grind your bones

I stopped listening. Listen to my mother long enough and you started to believe her. And believing Nerissa broke my heart.

My thumb sank into the depression in the mirror frame, left where an unscrupulous orderly had pried out a ruby, or so my mother said. She accused everyone of everything, sooner or later. Id been a nightjar, come to drink her blood and steal her life, a ghost, a torturer, a spy. When she turned her rage on me, I gathered my books and left, knowing that we wouldnt speak again for weeks. On the days when she talked about her dreams, the visits could stretch for hours.

I went to the lily field , my mother whispered, pressing her forehead against the window bars. Her fingers slipped between them to leave ghost marks on the glass.

Time gone by, her dreams fascinated me. The lily field, the dark tower, the maidens fair. She told them over and over, in soft lyrical tones. No other mother told such fanciful bedtime stories. No other mother saw the lands beyond the living, the rational and the iron. Nerissa had been lost in dreams, in one fashion or another, my entire life.

Now each time I visited I hoped shed wake up from her fog. And each time, I left disappointed. When I graduated from the Lovecraft Academy, I could be too busy to see her at all, with my respectable job and respectable life. Until then, Nerissa needed someone to hear her dreams, and the duty fell to me. I felt the weight of being a dutiful daughter like a stone strapped to my legs.

I picked up my satchel and stood. Im going to go home. The air horn hadnt sounded the end of hours yet, but I could see the dark drawing in beyond the panes.

Nerissa was up, cat-quick, and wrapping her fingers around my wrist. Her hand was cold, like always, and her nightgown fluttered around her skin-and-bones body. I had always been taller, sturdier than my slight mother. Id say I took after my father, if Id ever met him.

Dont leave me here, Nerissa hissed. Dont leave me to look into their eyes alone. The dead girls will dance, Aoife, dance on the ashes of the world.

Next page
Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «The Iron Thorn  »

Look at similar books to The Iron Thorn  . We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


Caitlin Kittredge - Dark Days
Dark Days
Caitlin Kittredge
Caitlin Kittredge - Soul Trade
Soul Trade
Caitlin Kittredge
Caitlin Kittredge - The Mirrored Shard
The Mirrored Shard
Caitlin Kittredge
Caitlin Kittredge - The Nightmare Garden
The Nightmare Garden
Caitlin Kittredge
Caitlin Kittredge - Devil's Business
Devil's Business
Caitlin Kittredge
Caitlin Kittredge - Bone Gods
Bone Gods
Caitlin Kittredge
Caitlin Kittredge - Demon Bound
Demon Bound
Caitlin Kittredge
Caitlin Kittredge - Street Magic
Street Magic
Caitlin Kittredge
No cover
No cover
William Kittredge
No cover
No cover
Caitlin Kittredge
Beverly Lewis - The Thorn
The Thorn
Beverly Lewis
Reviews about «The Iron Thorn  »

Discussion, reviews of the book The Iron Thorn   and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.