Looking for an extreme thriller to get stuck into? We asked our readers to tell us the best thriller they’ve ever read and why. We collected the responses to produce this list of must-read titles for your next break.
Don’t Say a Word
Don’t say a Word by Andrew Klavan. It still gives me chills (寒冷) to think of anyone doing that to my family. It also sent me searching out all of Klavan’s other novels, and he is a master of the emotionally involving thriller, so it introduced me to a lot of good reading.-Lorraine Cormack
IT
IT by Stephen King. To this day I am scared of clowns and balloons. I don’t walk in the rain. The book has put the “IT” fear in me. —Eliatha Cyprus
Those Bones Are Not My Child
Those Bones Are Not My Child by Toni Cade Bambara. The story unfolds with the disappearance of a 12-year-old boy and his mother’s tireless search to find him. Throughout the pages of the novel, Bambara enveloped me into the mind of a community turned upside-down by violence. From beginning to end , her words offered me a heartbroken picture of a family changed by tragedy and a nonstop search of America’s past. It’s a believable and urgent story about love and loss.-Helen Schulz
Tell No One
Tell No One by Harlan Coben. A doctor’s sadness over his wife’s murder transforms into tricks, then addiction, once he doubts the possibility that she might still be alive. The story had one good plot twist (翻转) after another and I couldn’t put it down, although I had things to do! It messed with my head! -Mara Evans
1.Who is the author of Don’t Say a Word?
A.Stephen King. B.Harlan Coben.
C.Andrew Klavan. D.Toni Cade Bambara.
2.What is Helen Schulz’s favor book about?
A.Love and loss. B.Justice and fairness.
C.Life and hope. D.Devotion and friendship.
3.What is the purpose of the test?
A.To educate. B.To introduce.
C.To persuade. D.To convince.
阅读下面短文，然后按要求写一篇150词左右的英语短文。
Big or small, rejection affects us all. Harry Potter was rejected. So was The Twilight Saga. If authors J. K. Rowling and Stephenie Meyer hadn’t kept trying with publisher after publisher, we’d all have missed out on some great adventures.
Rejection doesn’t have to be about the big thing like not getting into your top college, not making the team, or not getting asked to the prom (舞会). Everyday situations can lead to the feeling of rejection, too, like if your joke doesn’t get a laugh, if no one remembers to save you a seat at the lunch table, or if the person you really like talks to everyone but you.
Feeling rejected is the opposite of feeling accepted. But being rejected (and we will all be at times) doesn’t mean someone isn’t liked, valued, or important. It just means that one time, in one situation, with one person, things didn’t work out.
Rejection hurts. But it’s impossible to avoid it altogether. In fact, you don’t want to— people who become too afraid of rejection might hold back from going after something they want. Sure, they avoid rejection, but they’re also 100% guaranteed to miss out on what they want but won’t try for.
（写作内容）
1. 以约30个词概括上文的主要内容。
2. 以约120个词就“How to deal with rejection”这一话题发表你的看法，内容包括：
(1) 讲述一次你被拒绝的经历； (2) 你当时的感受； (3) 你认为应该如何正确面对拒绝。
（写作要求）
作文中可以使用亲身经历或虚构的故事，也可以参照阅读材料的内容，但不得直接引用原文中的句子。
（评分标准）
概括准确，语言规范，内容合适，语篇连贯。
根据所读内容在文章后图表中的空格里填入最恰当的单词。注意：每空1个单词。
Introduction to anger
Anger is a natural reaction which comes out when we feel that we have not been given a fair treatment. The positive side of this negative emotion is that it has helped us to evolve as humans and cope in a better manner with our surroundings. However, it tends to become a problem when we fail to control it. Many a time it happens that your anger has hurt others or has spoiled one of your relationships for which you regret later. It has some bad effects on the health, too.
We should control anger so that it does not cause harm to us or to those around us whom we love. One of the best ways to control anger is to get help from others. If you feel that you are unable to manage your anger, it can make you more upset. So tell someone that is close to you, a friend or a family member, about your problem. When you discuss a matter with others, there is a better chance of finding a solution to your problem. Besides, there are no better stress relievers than humor. When you feel that it is because of stress that your anger is becoming unmanageable, you can use humor. It can help you look at difficult things in a lighter way and you will feel better about the things around you.
Anger tends to make us have a lot of negative thoughts. Therefore, we have to change the negative thoughts into positive ones. For this you have to first refuse all the negative thoughts that are in your mind one by one. This can be done with a lot of practice. Once you are successful in that, you have to maintain your focus only on the positive things of life.
Meditation (冥想) is an excellent anger management technique. In addition, what we do is disconnect ourselves from the outer world and focus all our attention into the inner world. This helps us develop a sense of controlling our thoughts that tend to cause anger.
1. | Anger is a natural reaction which comes out when we have been treated2.. | |
Positive sides | ﹡Help us evolve as humans. | |
4.sides | ﹡Hurt others. | |
Some ways to6.your anger | Get help from others | Discuss your problems with your friend or a |
Use8. | It can help you see difficult things in a9.way. | |
Think10. | Refuse all the negative thoughts and focus only on positive things. | |
Practice meditation | Help us control our thoughts which tend to cause anger. |
Shelly hugged her husband."Be careful, Billy."
"Come on, Shell!" Bill rolled his eyes. "You worry too much, Honey. Me and the boys will be OK. It's just a three — day trip. We'll catch enough halibut to be able to fix up the baby's room the way you want it." '
"Billy, I love you and worry every time you go to sea, especially in winter."
"Shell, I promise I'll be careful. I may be the youngest captain in this port, but I'm the most careful. I learned at the helm of Daddy's boat, which I was practically raised on."
They hugged again. Bill planted a tender kiss on her cheek, rested his open palm on her slightly swollen stomach, "Besides, I need to be here. Little Billy will need his daddy." Shelly slapped him on the shoulder. "It's Billy Jean and you know it.”
Bill laughed, "Not on my watch, Girl. I gave you a boy to take over as captain."
Their laughter broke the tension. "I have to go, Shell. See you in a few days?" He turned to leave and then turned back, reached into the pocket of his heavy coat and pulled out an envelope."I almost forgot. Here's my letter?"
Shelly took the crisp envelope and slipped into the pocket of her dress. "Thanks，Billy.” It had been their custom since they started dating. Billy gave her a note before he went to sea. She wasn't allowed to open it until the next day. He usually wrote of love or sometimes something silly - both made her smile. She wrote a reply and left it on the kitchen table for him. Reading her reply was the first thing he did when he came home.
She watched as her husband walked the'length of the pier to where the forty-five foot “Shelly Girl” and his crew waited. He gave a final wave and climbed aboard.
Shelly stood by their pickup truck and watched until the boat rounded the point and disappeared from view. "I love you, Billy.” she whispered. "Be safe." ①
That evening, five hundred miles to the south, a small winter depression moved north along the Atlantic coast of the USA. Experts found an unexpected change in the jet stream, which would make the small depression become a raging winter storm. ②
Shelly woke in the morning and listened to the weather report on the battered radio sitting on kitchen table. The phone rang."Hello."
“Shelly?"
"Hi, Gail!" She recognized the voice of her friend, who was the wife of one of Billy's crew. “Have you heard the weather?"
"Hang on a second. I just turned the radio on." Shelly's face paled as she heard the weather person say a major winter depression had moved into the area. "Oh crap!"
"That's what [ said too.”
"They'll be OK, Gail. They're experienced fishermen." Shelly said to Gail It was a attempt to convince herself that her man would be safe. ③
Off the south shore of Nova Scotia, Bill struggled to control the Shelly Girl in the growing waves. Wind and water attacked Bill and his crew from all directions. The forty- and fifty-foot walls of water were too much of a challenge for the young captain.
The force of the water flipped the boat over, tore the wheelhouse off and tossed Bill and his crew into the icy Atlantic.
The water, only a few degrees above the freezing point, soon overcame Bill's will to live. “Shelly!
He took a last painful breath of salt water and slipped below the surface. ④
The crisp envelope bent beneath her fingers as she laid it on her lap and read. "Shelly, you are my life,, my love and soon-to-be mother of our son一girl if that is what you really want. I'll always come home."
Shelly reached for the pen in her dress pocket. Tears dripped from her face and stained the paper she wrote on, “________."
Her note sits on their kitchen table still — never read.
1.Why was Shelly worried too much when Billy go to sea this time?
A.Because she and their baby Billy Jean needed Billy's protection and care.
B.Because she knew from the radio that a major winter depression would come.
C.Because she had a feeling that Billy would never return home.
D.Because she cared about Billy's safety in the sea, especially in winter.
2.What can we learn from the passage?
A.Billy could read Shelly's reply letter only when he returned home from the sea.
B.Billy and Shelly wrote letters to each other since they got married.
C.Shelly read Billy's letter eagerly each time she got his letter.
D.They exchanged their letters with each other every time Billy went out.
3.Which word can be filled in the blank in the passage?
A.weak B.strong C.hard D.desperate
4.Where can the sentences "Shell sat in her favorite spot on the porch of their weathered beach house, the salty air sticking to her heavy winter clothes. The oncoming storm blew sand across her winter boots.," be put in?
A.① B.② C.③ D.④
5.Which of the following may be Shelly's reply to Billy's letter?
A.Billy, you were so brave, I always knew.
B.Billy, I always knew the ocean was your home.
C.Billy, I always knew, you would come back.
D.Billy, I love you, I would always wait for you.
6.Which of the following can be the best title of this passage?
A.An unlucky Billy B.A storm in life
C.A broken Shelly D.Never read
“Without trust,” writes Rachel Botsman, “society cannot survive, and it certainly cannot thrive."
Clearly, we are in trouble. Two-thirds of people surveyed last year in 28 countries expressed low levels of trust in "mainstream institutions" of business, government and media.
In “Who Can You Trust?” Botsman, an Oxford lecturer offers a timely and accessible framework for understanding what trust is, how it works, why it matters and how it is evolving. It is an important guidance to the obstacles and opportunities we face as a society if we are to repair and redefine trust.
Through human history, trust has evolved in three basic stages: Local trust was enough when people lived in small communities and everybody knew everybody else; industrialization and urbanization required institutional trust so that people could trust complete strangers running governments, corporations, and standards for international trade, commerce and finance. We are now living through a massive global .shift of trust from institutions to individuals: distributed trust facilitated by high-tech platforms, many of which are run by the private sector.
This shift is caused by several factors. First, accountability is unequal. Rich, powerful and well-connected individuals have been able to accumulate vast quantities of often undocumented wealth by avoiding tax and anti-bribery laws, while ordinary people are likely to be caught and punished for lawbreaking. Second, people in power are no longer seen to deserve greater respect as the details of their lives are exposed.
Botsman does not prescribe how we deal with that. But if the old ways of giving and cancelling trust such as voting, markets and consumer choice are no longer functioning, then we must change or replace them. Systems must be "driven democratically and rationally," become more "transparent, inclusive, and accountable" and, most important, be designed to "put people first," which profit-driven platforms have failed to do sufficiently.
Tech executives are responding to the trust crisis mainly with promises of more and better technology. But Batsman warns that the responsibility for ensuring that the robots being used are trustworthy lies with the human beings who design and use them. We have not thought through how we hold those people accountable, let alone their robots. She warns against a natural tendency "to become over-reliant on machines." Ideally machines should be programmed to "understand" their own limitations and even seek human help or intervention.
A growing number of people hope that new trust mechanisms can be established through the use of exciting new technologies such as the blockchain（区块链）. In essence, blockchains are digital public ledgers of transactions that cannot be changed, thereby creating greater transparency and accountability and making corruption much harder.
However, Botsman warns that the blockchain is no panacea for human trust. Whether blockchain systems lead to more accountable governance and a more just global economy will depend on their design and the intentions of those who build them. There is no app for fixing trust.
"Who Can You Trust?" does make a clear case for why it is important for the companies, governments and other institutions to be much more transparent and subject themselves to new mechanisms that can credibly hold them accountable. It is the only way they can hope to earn and maintain trust in the future.
1.Which of the following orders of trust evolution is right?
A.institutional trust→ industrialized trust→ individual trust
B.urbanized trust→ local trust→ institutional trust
C.local trust→ institutional trust→ distributed trust
D.local trust→ urbanized trust →individual trust
2.What can we conclude from the passage?
A.Profit-driven platforms pay no attention to the importance of people.
B.It is the people who design and use technology that count in restoring trust.
C.New technologies, such as the blockchain can prevent corruption from happening.
D.People should rely on new technologies to create transparency and accountability.
3.What do the underlined words “no panacea" mean?
A.not a Herculean task B.a hard nut
C.not a cure-all medicine D.a catch -22
4.What's the author's attitude toward the possibility of using technology to restore trust?
A.Supportive B.Negative
C.Indifferent D.Skeptical
You are about to hear a strange but true story. Legend has it that, Harry Houdini, the master magician, once claimed that he could break out of any jail cell in the world. All he had to do was walk into that jail cell with his street clothes on. 'I will be out of there in one hour. No problem!' He said. A very old jail down South heard about Houdini's claims and they accepted the challenge. On the day of the event, many people gathered outside. Very confidently, Houdini walked into the jail and into the cell and they shut the metal door behind him.
The first thing Houdini did was to take off his coat. Then, very strangely, he took off his belt. Secretly hidden in Houdini's belt, was a ten-inch piece of steel; very tough and very flexible and Houdini started working.
In about 30 minutes, that confident expression Houdini had when he walked in disappeared. In one hour, he was bathed in sweat. And at the end of two hours, Houdini in defeat, collapsed against the door, which then opened. It opened because you see, that door had never been locked. But that's not entirely true is it? That door was locked. It was firmly and thoroughly locked in Houdini's mind, which meant it was locked as if the best locksmith in the world had put his lock on it.
The mind is powerful. How many doors in your life do you think are locked but aren't? how many times have you been stuck in the mental prison of over thinking something that really had a simple solution. There is an ancient African proverb that says when there is no enemy within, the enemy outside can do us no harm.
Your mind is the most powerful force you will ever face. It will tell you lies. It will tell you can't do that. You're not meant for that. You're not good enough for that. You can't go on anymore. You don't have the energy. You must thank it for its opinion and carry on. Because as Houdini showed us the only locked doors that exist are in your own mind. The doors in reality are open and all you have to do is walk through.
1.Why couldn't Harry Houdini open the door within two hours?
A.Because he didn't open the door with his mind.
B.Because the door was locked by the best locksmith.
C.Because he had thought the door was locked.
D.Because he overestimated his own ability to open the door.
2.Which of the following story shows the "locked door," in our mind?
A.Bring the painted dragon to life by putting in the pupils of its eyes.
B.One tends to stand still and refuse to make progress.
C.The donkey has exhausted its skills against the tiger.
D.Lock the stable door after the horse has been stolen.
3.We can conclude from the passage EXCEPT ?
A.The biggest enemy in your life is in fact the enemy in your mind.
B.If you walk through the door in mind, your potential will be unlimited.
C.Unless you defeat the enemy outside, you will not defeat your enemy inside.
D.Life is really simple, but we insist on making it rigid and complicated.
