Datasets:

textminr

/

cmu-book-summaries

like 0

Follow

Textminr 3

Something Fresh

P. G. Wodehouse

The novel begins with Ashe Marson, a young writer employed by the Mammoth Publishing Company, the creator of the popular "Gridley Quayle" detective novels, doing his daily exercises. Joan Valentine, a young girl living in the same apartment building, looks on and laughs at him. Thus she and Ashe meet, discover that they work for the same publishing house, and Ashe is encouraged to look for a new opportunity among the newspaper ads. Meanwhile, Freddie Threepwood, the younger son of the 9th Earl of Emsworth, is engaged to be married to Aline Peters, the daughter of American millionaire J. Preston Peters. Freddie pays a visit to his friend R. Jones, hoping to "recover" some letters he sent in the past to a certain chorus-girl, feeling they might be dangerous in her hands, especially following the recent embarrassment of his cousin Lord Percy Stockheath. He pays Jones £500 to sort things out for him. Clarence Threepwood, the elderly Earl of Emsworth, calls on J. Preston Peters, Aline's father, a passionate collector of Egyptian scarabs. Peters shows him the most precious piece in his collection: a 4th dynasty Cheops. Mr. Peters is called to the telephone, and the absent-minded Earl, forgetting all about the scarab, puts it in his pocket. Aline Peters has lunch with her old friend George Emerson, a Hong Kong police officer who wishes to marry her. He proposes to her once more, and tells her that, having befriended Freddie Threepwood, he has been invited to Blandings. Mr Peters discovers the disappearance of his scarab, and suspects the Earl, but cannot confront him for fear of endangering his daughter's marriage. The Earl has already forgotten everything that happened, and thinks the scarab was a gift of Mr Peters. R. Jones finds the address of Freddie's ex-sweetheart, Joan Valentine, who tells him she has long since destroyed any letters she may have had from Freddie. As he is leaving, Aline Peters, a close friend of Joan, arrives on a visit, allowing the suspicious Jones to listen at the door. He hears Aline's father is offering £1,000 to anybody that can retrieve his scarab. Joan decides that she will go herself to Blandings Castle, posing as Aline's maid, recover the scarab and scoop the reward. Ashe, following Joan's advice, scours the adverts in the newspaper, and seeing one which grabs his attention, he goes along to an interview with Mr. Peters, who is looking for somebody to pose as his valet and steal the scarab. Ashe, showing Peters some pep, gets the job. Ashe tells Joan about this, and they both take the train to Blandings. During the trip Joan warns Ashe of the highly complicated system of etiquette observed among servants of a large house. She hopes her words will persuade him to give up his quest and remove himself as her competitor for the reward, but he resolves to do his best. After their arrival, Ashe meets Baxter, the Earl's efficient and suspicious secretary, on the way to Mr Peters' room, addressing him in a highly un-valet-like manner. He finds that Mr Peters, like Beach, the butler at the castle, has problems with his stomach, so persuades him to do some exercise and stop smoking cigars. At night, Ashe and Joan are both trying to get at the scarab when the watchful Baxter hears them. Ashe, with his prepared excuse of reading to the insomniac Mr Peters, helps Joan escape. Next morning, Ashe and Joan decide to become allies and, after flipping a coin, that Ashe will take first try at steaing the scarab. Aline is following the same diet as her father, composed mainly of legumes, and George, worrying she is suffering from malnutrition, prepares a feast to bring to her at night. As he makes his way to her room, he and Ashe collide in the dark hall of the castle and start a noisy fight. Baxter rushes in, but by the time the lights come on, Ashe and George have fled, leaving Baxter surrounded by food and broken china. He is blamed for waking everyone, and roundly criticised by his employer, Lord Emsworth, for sneaking food in the middle of the night. The next night is Joan's turn, but she finds the scarab is already gone. The following morning, Ashe finds that Freddie needs money to pay R. Jones for the letters to Joan; he confronts Freddie, who confesses to the theft, and Ashe gets the scarab and gives it to the rightful owner, Mr Peters. George Emerson, recalled to Hong Kong, sadly wishes Aline good luck with Freddie; Aline, her mothering instinct finally aroused by his disappointment, decides to leave Freddie and elope with him. Ashe and Joan finally realise they are made for each other, and enter Mr Peters' employ. Lord Emsworth agrees to let Freddie return to London, on condition he doesn't make a fool of himself again.

The Light of Other Days

Stephen Baxter

The wormhole technology is first used to send digital information via gamma rays, then developed further to transmit light waves. The media corporation who develops this advance can spy on anyone anywhere it chooses. A logical development from the laws of space-time allows light waves to be detected from the past. This enhances the wormhole technology into a "time viewer" where anyone opening a wormhole can view people and events from any point throughout time and space. When the technology is released to the general public, it effectively destroys all secrecy and privacy. The novel examines the philosophical issues that arise from the world's population (increasingly suffering from ecological and political disturbances) being aware that they could be under constant observation by anyone, or that they could observe anyone without their knowledge. Anyone is able to observe the true past events of their families and their heroes. An underground forms which attempts to escape this observation; corruption and crime are drastically reduced; nations discover the true causes and outcomes of international conflicts; and religions worldwide are forced to reevaluate their divine histories. As the underground movement grows, it utilizes a direct neural interface coupled with the unlimited communication provided by the wormhole technology to develop a group mind. One of the central themes of the novel is that history is biased towards viewpoints of the person who wrote it. Hence many great "historical" events often did not occur as they now are collectively remembered. For example, during the book's progression the time viewer technology shows that Jesus was the illegitimate son of a Roman centurion (although the apocryphal story of his visiting Great Britain was proven to be true), and that Moses was based on a collection of stories rather than the actions of a real person. In a climactic time-viewing experiment at the end of the novel, a time hole is opened to the beginning of life on Earth and it is discovered that all existing life is descended from a biological sample placed by intelligent beings (labeled Sisyphans) who inhabited the Earth over three billion years ago, trying to preserve genetic samples when geological and climatic changes and a large Bolide threatened an extinction level event.

Do I Hear a Waltz?

Richard Rodgers

New York City secretary Leona Samish arrives in Venice, where she is staying at the Pensione Fioria. There she meets Americans Eddie and Jennifer Yeager, who are living in Rome and have come to Venice for a vacation, and the McIlhennys, an older couple on a package tour. While shopping, Leona sees a ruby glass goblet in a store window and goes inside to inspect it. The owner, Renato di Rossi, tells her it is an authentic 18th century piece, not a reproduction. He offers not only to find her a matching glass to make up a pair, but to show her the sights of the city, as well. Leona refuses his offer and leaves, but returns the next day to buy the goblet. Later that day, a package with a second goblet is delivered to the hotel. Soon after, Renato arrives to invite Leona to join him for coffee in Piazza San Marco that evening. When the McIlhennys show her their purchase of a set of glasses exactly like hers, Leona believes Renato misrepresented their value, but Signora Fioria assures her they are antiques. Later in the day, Renato's son Vito comes to tell Leona that Renato will be late for their meeting because one of his children is ill and needs to see a doctor. Realizing Renato is married, she cancels their rendezvous. He comes to the pensione and explains he and his wife have not loved each other for years but divorce is not an option, not only because the country doesn't permit it, but because they have their children to consider, as well. To Leona, his casual attitude about extramarital affairs is wrong, but she still finds herself attracted to him, and agrees to keep their date. Meanwhile, the Yeagers are facing problems of their own. Eddie, finding himself enamoured with Signora Fioria, announces he wants to put distance between himself and the woman by returning to the United States. Renato arrives with a garnet necklace for Leona, who is thrilled with his gift and agrees to extend her stay in Venice. She hosts a party in the garden of the pensione, and as the party is in progress, Renato's son Vito comes to tell his father that the jeweler wants his money; overhearing this, Leona happily gives him the money. However, when she discovers Renato has received a commission on the sale of the necklace, she accuses him of being interested only in her money, and he leaves. Fioria and Jennifer attempt to comfort Leona, who drunkenly reveals Eddie and Fioria spent the previous evening together, only to immediately regret her words. The following day both the Yeagers and the McIlhennys check out of the pensione. On hearing Renato had been there before she awoke, Leona goes to his store to make amends, but he tells her a relationship with her would be impossible because of her complicated outlook on life. His affection for her is gone, and they part as friends.

The Integral Trees

Larry Niven

Quinn Tribe inhabits the "in tuft" of Dalton-Quinn tree. They normally subsist on the tree's cottony foliage, augmented by hunting and a flock of domesticated turkeys. But ever since the tree passed near Gold six earth years ago it has been falling in toward Voy, nearly dropping out of the Smoke Ring. As a result, the tribe is suffering from a severe drought. The tribe's leader, the Chairman, decides to send a party of nine up the tree, ostensibly to hunt and re-cut tribal markings into the trunk. The group consists mostly of cripples or people the Chairman dislikes, and including the Chairman's son-in-law (and rival), Clave, and Jeffer, the Scientist's apprentice. As they approach the midpoint they notice that the tribal markings are different. When the party reaches the midpoint of the tree, they are attacked by members of the Dalton-Quinn tribe living at the other end of the tree. During the battle a massive tremor splits the tree in half, causing the in tuft to fall farther in toward Voy (killing its inhabitants) allowing the out tuft to find a new equilibrium closer to the Smoke Ring's median. The seven surviving members of the Quinn Tribe and one of the attackers jump clear of the shattered tree, and are left adrift in the sky with only a few "jet pods" (high pressure seed cases that provide a temporary thrust when opened) as their only method of propulsion. Before dying of thirst, they manage to hook a passing "moby" (a flying whale-like creature), which takes them to a "jungle", a floating mass of plant life. They cut loose and crash, and find themselves in the middle of a battle between the Carther States, who live in the jungle, and slave-runners from London Tree. The group is split when six of them are captured by the slavers; the other two remain in the jungle. Carther States counter-attacks some weeks later, and the Quinn Tribe group is reunited. During the battle they manage to steal the London Tree's CARM (Cargo And Repair Module), a miniature spacecraft, a relic of the original settlers. Not fully understanding how to pilot the CARM, they engage its main motor, which sends them thousands of miles away before running out of fuel. As a result, they become the first Smoke Ring inhabitants in centuries to see the naked stars. Unknown to any of the inhabitants of the Smoke Ring, the ship their ancestors arrived in, Discipline, is still in orbit, and its AI autopilot, Kendy, is watching their progress. When Kendy sees the CARM dangerously far from the habitable area of the Ring he contacts them. With help from the on-board computer and after some interaction with Kendy, the occupants of the CARM eventually find their way safely back into the Smoke Ring. Unable to find their way back to any of the trees they know, they decide to settle on a new tree, which they dub Citizens Tree.

The Age of Innocence

Edith Wharton

Newland Archer, gentleman lawyer and heir to one of New York City's best families, is happily anticipating a highly desirable marriage to the sheltered and beautiful May Welland. Yet he finds reason to doubt his choice of bride after the appearance of Countess Ellen Olenska, May's exotic, beautiful thirty-year-old cousin, who has been living in Europe. Ellen has returned to New York after scandalously separating herself (per rumor) from a bad marriage to a Polish count. At first, Ellen's arrival and its potential taint to his bride-to-be's family disturbs him, but he becomes intrigued by the worldly Ellen who flouts New York society's fastidious rules. As Newland's admiration for the countess grows, so does his doubt about marrying May, a perfect product of Old New York society; his match with May no longer seems the ideal fate he had imagined. Ellen's decision to divorce Count Olenski is a social crisis for the other members of her family, who are terrified of scandal and disgrace. Living apart can be tolerated, but divorce is unacceptable. To save the Welland family's reputation, a law partner of Newland asks him to dissuade Countess Olenska from divorcing the count. He succeeds, but in the process comes to care for her; afraid of falling in love with Ellen, Newland begs May to accelerate their wedding date; May refuses. Newland tells Ellen he loves her; Ellen corresponds, but is horrified that their love will aggrieve May. She agrees to remain in America, separated but still married, only if they do not sexually consummate their love. Newland receives May's telegram agreeing to wed sooner. Newland and May marry. He tries forgetting Ellen but fails. His society marriage is loveless, and the social life he once found absorbing has become empty and joyless. Though Ellen lives in Washington and has remained distant, he is unable to cease loving her. Their paths cross while he and May are in Newport, Rhode Island. Newland discovers that Count Olenski wishes Ellen to return to him, but she has refused, despite her family pushing her to reconcile with her husband and return to Europe. Frustrated by her independence, the family has cut off her money, as the count had already done. Newland desperately seeks a way to leave May and be with Ellen, obsessed with how to finally possess her. Despairing of ever making Ellen his wife, he attempts to have her agree to be his mistress. Then Ellen is recalled to New York City to care for her sick grandmother, who accepts her decision to remain separated and agrees to reinstate her allowance. Back in New York and under renewed pressure from Newland, Ellen relents and agrees to consummate their relationship. However, Newland then discovers that Ellen has decided to return to Europe. Newland makes up his mind to abandon May and follow Ellen to Europe when May announces that she and Newland are throwing a farewell party for Ellen. That night, after the party, Newland resolves to tell May he is leaving her for Ellen. She interrupts him to tell him that she learned that morning that she is pregnant; she reveals that she had told Ellen of her pregnancy two weeks earlier, despite not being sure of it at the time. The implication is that she did it because she suspected the affair. Newland guesses that this is Ellen's reason for returning to Europe. Hopelessly trapped, Newland decides not to follow Ellen, surrendering his love for the sake of his children, remaining in a loveless marriage to May. Twenty-six years later, after May's death, Newland and his son are in Paris. The son, learning that his mother's cousin lives there, has arranged to visit Ellen in her Paris apartment. Newland is stunned at the prospect of seeing Ellen again. On arriving outside the apartment building, Newland sends up his son alone to meet Ellen, while he waits outside, watching the balcony of her apartment. Newland considers going up, but in the end decides not to; he walks back to his hotel without seeing her.

With Fire and Sword

Henryk Sienkiewicz

Despite some deviations, the book's historical framework is genuine and the fictional story is woven into real events. Many characters are historical figures, including Jeremi Wiśniowiecki and Bohdan Khmelnytsky (Pol. Bohdan Chmielnicki). Sienkiewicz researched memoirs and chronicles of the Polish nobility, or the szlachta, for details on life in 17th-century Poland. The book was written, according to the author, "to lift up the heart" of the Polish nation in the unhappy period following the failed January Insurrection during the era of the partitions of Poland. Thus it often favors epic plots and heroic scenes over historical accuracy. Nonetheless, Sienkiewicz's vivid language made it one of the most popular books about that particular place and era.

Sabriel

Garth Nix

After leaving her school, Sabriel crosses the Wall, using papers given to her by her father. Her goal is Abhorsen's House, the home of her father. After entering Death to obtain guidance from a projection of her dead mother, she narrowly avoids a fatal altercation with a Dead creature. As she continues her journey, she becomes aware that she is being stalked by a Mordicant, a powerful Dead creature. She is able to outrun the creature and reach the safety of Abhorsen's House, which is located on an island in the center of the river. (The Dead cannot cross fast and deep running water.) Inside Abhorsen's house, Sabriel is able to rest and obtain food and other supplies, as well as armor. She also meets Mogget, a Free Magic construct who takes the form of a small white cat, wearing a collar with a powerful binding spell on it and a miniature Saraneth hanging from it. Mogget insists on accompanying her on her journey to find her father. Later, they look out over the walls surrounding the house and discover the Dead attempting to build a bridge. Sabriel performs a ritual to summon a flood of water and then flees the house by Paperwing (a magically propelled plane-like structure.) While in the air, Sabriel and Mogget are attacked by the Dead, and Sabriel loosens Mogget's collar to avoid a fatal crash. They fall into a sinkhole, where Mogget, in his unbound form, attempts to murder Sabriel. However, she is able to bind him anew with a ring given to her for that purpose. The next day, Sabriel and Mogget walk through a tunnel to another sinkhole, which Mogget determines to be Holehallow, the historical burial place of the royal family. Each king is buried in a boat. Sabriel discovers that the figurehead on one of the boats is actually a man, who has been imprisoned in that form for two hundred years. The man tells Sabriel that he was a Royal Guard before his imprisonment, and asks to be called Touchstone (a jester's name) for reasons that remain cryptic. Sabriel, Touchstone, and Mogget continue their journey, stopping to help rid a seaside village of a Dead creature. They obtain a boat there and sail up the coast of the Old Kingdom until they reach Belisaere, the capital. They find the Abhorsen in an underground reservoir in Belisaere, trapped in Death. Since he has stayed too long in Death, he cannot return for long, but with what little time he has left, the Abhorsen tells Sabriel about the evil known as Kerrigor. Kerrigor has risen far from Death and intends to wreak havoc in the Old Kingdom and Ancelstierre. Sabriel releases her father from Death, and once they emerge from Death, father and daughter part for the last time — he, to ring the bell Astarael(the sound of which throws everyone who hears it far into the realm of Death) and delay Kerrigor's havoc; and she, to save Touchstone by bringing him (and herself) as far away from Astarael's music as possible. To prevent him from losing to Death, she kisses him roughly in order to keep him focused on Life. In the process of ringing Astarael, Sabriel's father releases Mogget. They succeed, but as long as Kerrigor's body is intact, he will rise from Death again and again. Sabriel and Touchstone use another Paperwing to bring them as close to the Wall as possible, and cross over to Ancelstierre to find Kerrigor's body, following the clairvoyant guidance of the Clayr twins Sanar and Ryelle. They find the body, and Sabriel finally defeats Kerrigor by binding him with Ranna and Mogget's collar. She dies but the previous Abhorsens prevent her from crossing into Final Death as she cannot die without someone else to take her place as Abhorsen. She wakes up with Touchstone before her, and both Mogget and Kerrigor asleep, bound by Ranna (the first of seven necromantic bells that instills sleep and quiescence in those who hear it).

The Amber Spyglass

Philip Pullman

At the end of The Subtle Knife, Marisa Coulter captured Lyra. She has now relocated her to a remote cave to hide her from the Magisterium, who are determined to kill Lyra before she yields to original sin. In order to keep her hidden, Marisa forces Lyra to drink drugged tea that puts her to sleep. While deeply asleep, Lyra dreams that she is in a wasteland (later realized as the land of the dead) talking to her deceased friend Roger Parslow, whom she promises to help. In Cittàgazze, two angels, Balthamos and Baruch, tell Will, the bearer of the Subtle Knife, that they are taking him to Lord Asriel. Will refuses to go until Lyra is rescued, to which the two assent. However, they are attacked by a soldier of the archangel Metatron, and Will uses the knife to cut a window into another world to escape. Baruch flies to Lord Asriel to tell him what has happened and to get help. Meanwhile, an assassin is dispatched from the Magisterium, as they have determined that Dr. Mary Malone is the "Tempter" (see Fall of Man). Mary, who has stepped through a window from her own world (assumed to be the readers' world/Will's world) into Cittàgazze, eventually enters another window into a stranger world. There she meets sapient, elephantine creatures who call themselves mulefa and use large seedpods attached to their feet as wheels. These creatures have a complex culture, intricate language, and an infectious laugh. Although from completely different worlds, Mary and the Mulefa establish a rapport which results in Mary's acceptance into Mulefa community, where she learns that the trees from which the seedpods are gathered have gradually been going extinct for about 300 years. Mary uses the tree sap lacquer and accidentally constructs a telescope (the 'amber spyglass' of the title) that allows her to see the elementary particles known as Dust. Dust adheres to all life-forms that have attained a level of intelligence associated with building civilizations. She sees that Dust is flying away in large streams rather than falling on and nourishing the trees on which the mulefa mutually depend. In his quest to rescue Lyra, Will meets Iorek Byrnison, the bear king of the armoured Panserbjørne, who are migrating south to avoid the Arctic melt caused by the effects of Lord Asriel's bridge (created at the end of Northern Lights). After challenging the bear to single combat to stop a raid on a nearby village, Will demonstrates the Knife on Iorek's armor; Iorek, seeing his helmet reduced to slivers in moments, accepts defeat. Iorek agrees to help rescue his beloved Lyra. Here, global warming is associated with similar disasters taking place throughout many worlds as a result of the upheavals regarding Dust. Three forces — Will, Iorek, and Balthamos; Lord Asriel's army; and the army of the Magisterium — converge on Mrs. Coulter's cave, where Will is able to wake Lyra from her deep sleep. He is cutting a window into another world when Mrs. Coulter turns and looks directly at him. For a moment, Will is reminded of his own mother; as a result, his concentration falters, and the knife shatters, having been unable to sever his affection. Because the window he has cut is open, Will, Lyra, and two Gallivespian spies of Lord Asriel's army (the Chevalier Tialys and the Lady Salmakia) manage to escape to another world. Although reluctant due to his discomfort about the power possessed by the knife, Iorek Byrnison repairs the Subtle Knife. Because Lyra promised Roger that she would help him, Will, Lyra, Tialys, and Salmakia travel and enter the world of the dead. They are forced to leave their dæmons behind, which is painful and akin to death. Will, Salmakia, and Tialys do not have visible, corporeal dæmons like Lyra, but they all do possess them. All of them feel the same pain when they are torn from their daemons upon entering the world of the dead. The entry into the world of the dead reflects Greek mythology when an aged boatman (not named in the novel, but presumably representing Charon) ferries souls across a river to a dark, joyless realm where the many worlds' dead are tormented by harpies. Lyra finds Roger's ghost among the other ghosts. Will, Lyra, and the Gallivespians decide to free all the ghosts, and strike a deal with the harpies; in exchange for guiding them to a suitable place to open the window, and leading all subsequent spirits to the window afterwards, the harpies will demand to hear the life stories of all the spirits who pass through their realm, and have a right to bar access to any who have nothing to tell- with the obvious exception of infants who are too young to have experienced anything-, thus encouraging all to live rich, full lives and experience the wonders of the present world. With the help of the harpies, they travel to the highest land point where Will cuts a door into another world. The ghosts step through and dissolve, freeing them from the realm of the dead and reuniting their atoms with nature, their daemons' atoms, and the world. Lord Asriel's forces capture Mrs. Coulter, but she escapes and flies off to warn the Consistorial Court. The Consistorial Court of Discipline arrests Mrs. Coulter; therefore, she allies herself with Asriel. She is also realizing the strength and depth of a mother's love for her child. Lord Asriel and Marisa talk, revealing that Asriel believes "sin" is simply enjoying life, which would be quelled by the Magisterium's desire for purity. Asriel has formed an army from all the worlds to conquer the Authority, who is the first angel created and thinks himself as god of the multiverse, and represents, in Asriel's mind, all the oppression that the Magisterium has caused. The final battle begins. Will and Lyra must return to this realm (Asriel's) to retrieve their daemons. Will's daemon, which was separated from him, is now a visible entity like Lyra's daemon. John Parry/Stanislaus Grumman/Will's father and Lee Scoresby go with them; instead of dissolving with the other ghosts, they and other ghosts decide to remain temporarily intact in order to join Lord Asriel's army to fight the Spectres, wraith-like creatures that devour adult souls in various worlds, reasoning that the Spectres attack daemons which they no longer possess. Mrs. Coulter enters the Clouded Mountain, citadel of the Authority, where she meets Regent Metatron. She offers to betray Asriel, letting Metatron think he will be able to kill him and get Lyra, but her ultimate hope is that he will destroy himself in the process. When she leads Metatron to Asriel, Mrs. Coulter is able to confess her scheme to him, and they unite to save Lyra and attack Metatron. All three fall into an Abyss between the worlds and cease to exist. Ironically, the Authority dies of his own frailty when Will and Lyra unknowingly free him from the crystal prison where Metatron trapped him; as he leaves the cage, he is so feeble that mere exposure to the atmosphere dissolves him into thin air. Lyra and Will, with the help of Gallivespians, Iorek's bear army, and the ghosts, find their daemons and escape the battle, entering into the mulefa world, where Tialys and Salmakia pass away (for Gallivespians live for only a short time). Here they encounter Mary, whom Lyra had met earlier in Will's world. They all exchange stories of what has happened, and Mary's story of why she decided not to be a nun anymore plants a seed in Lyra's mind. One day, while Will and Lyra are picnicking in the wood near their camp, Lyra puts a fruit to Will's lips. A few seconds later, the two of them realize they love each other and share their first kiss. The flow of Dust escaping is considerably slowed, and the new couple is enveloped in it. However, both the witch, Serafina Pekkala, and the female angel, Xaphania, pay them visits, each revealing news they do not want to hear. To their dismay, Xaphania reveals that all the openings between worlds - with the sole exception of the one leading out of the world of the dead to that of the mulefas - must be closed because each opening allows Dust to escape into oblivion, and each creation of a new opening generates a new Specter. Lyra and Will must return to their own home worlds, as they are unable to survive more than ten years in any world but their own. The two protagonists make an emotional farewell, but before they part, Lyra leads Will into the Oxford of his world, to the Botanic Gardens. There they promise to return to the Garden, to a corresponding bench which stands in both of their worlds, every year at Midsummer's day, to think of each other and to be together in this way. Lyra returns to Jordan College. Having suddenly lost the subconscious grace that enabled her to read the alethiometer by instinct, she decides to study alethiometry at a special school. Hereinafter, she and dæmon Pantalaimon (who has taken the permanent form of a pine marten) begin following John Parry's (and Will's) suggestion to build the idealised Republic of Heaven at home. Will, too, returns to his world, accompanied by Mary Malone, who remains his friend and ally. When he returns, he decides to break the Subtle knife by trying to open a window into another world while thinking about Lyra. During the return, Mary learns how to see her own daemon, who appears as a black Alpine chough. Will's daemon, named Kirjava by Serafina Pekkala, has taken the permanent form of a large, shadow-colored cat.

The Tao of Pooh

Benjamin Hoff

The book starts with a description of the vinegar tasters, which is an actual painting portraying the three great eastern thinkers, Confucius, the Buddha, and Laozi over a vat of vinegar. Each tasting the vinegar of "life," Confucius finds it sour, the Buddha finds it bitter, but Laozi, the traditional founder of Taoism, finds it satisfying. Then the story unfolds backing up this analogy. Hoff presents Winnie-the-Pooh and related others from A. A. Milne's stories as characters that interact with him while he writes The Tao of Pooh, but also quotes excerpts of their tales from Milne's actual books Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner, in order to exemplify his points. Hoff uses many of Milne's characters to symbolize ideas that differ from or accentuate Taoist tenets. Winnie-the-Pooh himself, for example, personifies the principles of wei wu wei, the Taoist concept of "effortless doing," and pu, the concept of being open to but unburdened by experience. In contrast, characters like Owl and Rabbit over-complicate problems, often over-thinking to the point of confusion, and Eeyore pessimistically complains and frets about existence, unable to just be. Hoff regards Pooh's simpleminded nature, unsophisticated worldview and instinctive problem-solving methods as conveniently representative of the Taoist philosophical foundation. The book also incorporates translated excerpts from various prominent Taoist texts, from authors such as Laozi and Zhuangzi.

Protagoras

Plato

The dialogue begins with an unnamed friend of Socrates asking him how his pursuit of the young Alcibiades, just now reputed to be growing his first beard, was proceeding. Socrates explains that while he has just been in the company of Alcibiades, he has just come from meeting with someone who is "more beautiful . . . No doubt the wisest of men nowadays-- if in your opinion the wisest is Protagoras"(309c-d). Socrates relates the story of how his young friend, Hippocrates, son of Apollodorus, came knocking on his door before daybreak and roused him out of bed. Hippocrates was in a big hurry to be present when Protagoras held court, as he was expected to do, at the home of Callias. Socrates warns the excitable Hippocrates that Sophists are dangerous. He tells him that the words of the Sophists go straight into the soul (psuchē) and can corrupt a person straightaway. Socrates says that buying wisdom from a Sophist is different from buying food and drink at the market. With food and drink, you never know what you are getting, but you can consult experts for advice before consuming anything that might be dangerous (313a-314c). Socrates says he regards Prodicus as a man of inspired genius (316a). He expresses the same admiration for Prodicus in another dialogue, the Theaetetus. Socrates later notes that Prodicus was assigned to sleep in a storage room that his host had cleaned out for the visit (315d). Socrates accompanies Hippocrates to the home of Callias, and they stand in the doorway chatting about "some point which had come up along the road" (314c). A eunuch opened the door, took one look at them, guessed they were Sophists, and slammed the door in their faces (314d). They knocked again, and this time assured the porter they were not Sophists, but only wanted to visit with Protagoras. The porter let them in, and it is at this point that Socrates recites the list of guests. Protagoras does not deny being a Sophist, and claims that it is an ancient and honorable art, the same art practiced by Homer and Hesiod. These poets, he says, used the arts as a screen, a front, to protect themselves from the charge. He says that he is more straightforward than the ancient artists, trainers, and musicians in frankly admitting that he is an educator. Protagoras says he is old enough now to be the father of any of the men present, and would like now to address himself to the whole company of people in the house. Socrates assumes that Prodicus would not want to miss the lecture, and so Callias and Alcibiades are sent to rouse him from his bed (317c-e). According to Francis Bacon, Prodicus is led to produce a speech in the dialogue (337a), which seems to Bacon as humiliating for him. Socrates asks Protagoras "in respect to what" Hippocrates will improve by associating with him, in the manner that by associating himself to a doctor he would improve in medicine (318d). Protagoras begins his discourse with the statement that a good Sophist can make his students into good citizens. Socrates says that this is fine and good, but that he personally believes that this is not feasible since virtue cannot be taught (319b). He adds that technical thinking (techne) can be imparted to students by teachers, but that wisdom cannot be. By way of example, Socrates points to the fact that while in matters concerning specialised labour one would only take advice from the appropriate specialist, like for example builders (τέκτονες) about construction, in matters of state everyone's opinions is considered, which proves that political virtue is within everyone, or that at least that is what Athenians in their democratic ideals believe. Another example is that Pericles did not manage to impart his wisdom to his sons (319e). Socrates' uses a similar example in the Meno. He then adds that Clinias, younger brother of Alcibiades, was taken from the family for fear that Alcibiades would corrupt him, and he was given back as a hopeless case. Socrates says he could give more examples, but thinks his point is sufficiently established. Protagoras says his claim that virtue can be taught is better made by a story than by reasoned arguments, and he recounts a myth about the origins of living things. He says that Epimetheus (whose name means "Afterthought") who was assigned the task of passing out the assets for survival, forgot to give mankind anything so his twin brother Prometheus (whose name means "Forethought") stole fire from Hephaestus and practical wisdom from Athena and gave them to man. However, man was never granted civic wisdom which belonged to Zeus or the art of politics, so the race was initially in danger of extinction. Zeus, however, sent Hermes to distribute shame and justice equally among human beings. To Protagoras, this answers Socrates's question why people think that wisdom about architecture or medicine is limited to the few while wisdom about justice and politics is thought to be more broadly understood (322d). Protagoras states that he has two good pieces of evidence that people agree with him. First, people do not rebuke the ugly, dwarfish, and weak, but pity them, because they cannot help being as they are (323d). Second, they do instruct people who are unjust and irreligious, hoping to impart goodness in them. He says that parents begin with their children from earliest childhood, and teachers carry on the task. Protagoras notes that none of this is surprising, but what would be surprising is if this were not the case (326e). He closes by addressing Socrates's question why, if virtue is teachable, the sons of virtuous men often lack virtue. Protagoras lays out a thought experiment where a hypothetical city state is resting its survival as such to the skill of flute playing. Being the most important thing for that society, parents would be eager to teach the skill to their sons. Not everyone would be successful though, as we can imagine, as some would have a greater natural inclination than others and often the son of a good flute player would turn out bad and vica versa. Any of them however, even the bad ones, would be better than an average citizen in the real world which might have never been taught how to play. Same goes for virtue, it is considered so important that everyone is taught to a certain degree, to the point that it seems like a part of human nature while it is not. (327b-d). Socrates admits that Protagoras has given an excellent answer and that there is only one small thing to clarify which he is certain that the Sophist will do easily. He asks Protagoras as to whether the attributes that form virtue, such as bravery, kindness and wisdom are one or many things, like for example the parts of a golden object which are fused together or that of a face which form a whole while retaining their individual substance (329d). Protagoras answers the second but avoids engaging in dialogue and digresses into a rhetoric which does not answer the question sufficiently but still manages to arouse the excitement of their young public. Socrates complains that Protagoras is long-winded, like a gong that booms when you strike it and won't stop until you lay a hand on it. It is a typical moment of Socrates opposite a Sophist where the latter is using eloquent speech to hide arguments that might not stand logical scrutiny while the former is trying to use his notorious question/answer format that will lead to a logical conclusion in his favour. Protagoras begins to bristle at this and so Socrates supposes that their styles are opposite. He personally doesn't like long-winded speeches like the one Protagoras just delivered, because he is forgetful and cannot follow the train of thought (334d), and Protagoras does not like to be peppered with questions that seem to lead them off track. Socrates gets up to leave, grousing that companionable talk is one thing and public speaking another (336b). After the intervention of several of the listeners, the men agree to compromise their styles so the discussion can continue. Socrates praises the Spartans as the best people in the world not only because of their fierceness in battle but because of their wisdom and philosophical skills. This is contrary to the common belief that the Spartans lacked in these issues and devoted themselves exclusively to physical training but Socrates claims that they are masters at concealing their skills. While they appear to be unimpressive speakers, at just the right moment, they can provide pithy phrases of wisdom (342e). He adds that Laconic brevity was the earliest characteristic of philosophy (343b). Then the debaters return to their previous analysis of Pittacus' and Simonides' poetry. On Socrates' interpretation, Pittacus claims that it is difficult to be a good man, but presumably possible. Simonides, on the other hand, claims that it is impossible to live without ever being a bad man, and even to be a good man on occasion is difficult (344a–45d). Simonides praises those who at least do not do wrong willingly. Socrates' interpretation is that, since Simonides was a wise man, he must know that no one does any wrong willingly; accordingly, he must mean that he will willingly praise those who do no wrong, not that some do wrong willingly and others unwillingly, only the latter garnering his praise (345d–46b). Socrates thus argues that the authority of Simonides does not stand against his understanding of virtue and whether anyone willingly does wrong. Socrates then broaches the initial question of whether virtue is one or many things, himself claiming that all virtue is knowledge and therefore one. He argues that the reason people act harmfully, to others or themselves, is because they only see the short term gains while ignoring the long term losses which might outweigh them, just like one makes errors in judging the size of objects that are far away. He says that if men were taught the art of calculating these things correctly, have a more exact knowledge that is, they would not act harmfully (357c-358d). Same goes for bravery. A brave swimmer is one who knows how to swim better and therefore, in a way, all virtues are essentially knowledge and can be considered one and the same, more like parts of golden objects (as discussed above) rather than the parts of a face. While Socrates seems to have won the argument, he points to the fact that if all virtue is knowledge, it can in fact be taught. He draws the conclusion that to an observer he and Protagoras would seem as crazy, having argued at great lengths only to mutually exchanged positions with Socrates now believing that virtue can be taught and Protagoras that all virtues are one instead of his initial position (361a). Protagoras acknowledges Socrates a notable opponent in dispute while being much younger than he and predicts that he could become one of the wisest men alive. Socrates departs for whatever business he claimed he had when he wanted to end the dialogue earlier.

Summer Lightning

P. G. Wodehouse

Hugo Carmody, who became secretary to Lord Emsworth following the failure of The Hot Spot, the night club he ran with Ronnie Fish, is conducting a secret affair with Millicent Threepwood, Emsworth's niece. They hide this from Lady Constance, who is distracted with worries that the book of memoirs her brother Galahad is working on will bring shame to the family. Ronnie, meanwhile, is secretly engaged to Sue Brown, a chorus girl and an old friend of Hugo. When they run into Lady Constance in London one day, Ronnie introduces Sue as Myra Schoonmaker, an American heiress he and his mother Lady Julia recently met in Biarritz. Ronnie travels to Blandings, where Baxter has just returned, called in by Lady Constance to steal the memoirs. Hoping to get money out of Lord Emsworth, his trustee, Ronnie claims to love pigs, but his uncle has seen him bouncing a tennis ball on the Empress' back, and is enraged. Ronnie, inspired, steals the pig, planning to return it and earn his uncle's gratitude, roping in Beach to help; they hide her in a cottage in the woods. Hugo is sent to London to fetch a detective; the job is refused by Percy Pilbeam. Hugo takes Sue out dancing, but when Ronnie arrives at the club he sees Pilbeam, who admires Sue, sat at her table. He runs amok, and spends a night in jail, and in the morning snubs Sue, who he believes has betrayed him. Millicent, feeling the same about Hugo, breaks off their engagement also. Meanwhile Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe, worrying about the memoirs, hires Pilbeam to retrieve them; Pilbeam agrees, realising he can use the pig-finding job to get into the castle. Sue heads to Blandings, posing as Myra Schoonmaker. Gally soon finds out the truth, when he has a meeting with Mortimer Mason, Sue's erstwhile employer, and he sees her in the gardens. Percy Pilbeam arrives, recognises Sue, and tries to get her help in his memoir-stealing scheme. Baxter, meanwhile, has grown suspicious that the pig was stolen by Carmody as a means of insuring his job; he spots Beach heading off to feed the pig, and follows him, just as the storm breaks. Beach reaches the cottage to find Hugo and Millicent, gone there to shelter from the rain. Their relationship is healed, Hugo having explained about Sue and Ronnie, and Beach, protecting Ronnie, claims he stole the pig for Hugo to return and win Lord Emsworth's favour. Beach leaves, as Carmody takes the pig to a new hiding spot. Baxter accuses Beach in front of Emsworth, and the three of them head to the cottage, Emsworth growing ever warier of Baxter's sanity. They find no pig, Carmody having moved it to Baxter's caravan, where Pilbeam, also caught in the rain, saw him stow it. While Emsworth, Lady Constance, Gally and Millicent go to dinner with Parsloe-Parsloe (lured away to leave the memoirs unguarded), Ronnie Fish confronts Pilbeam, and learns that Sue was indeed out in London with Carmody, and that she has come to Blandings to be near Ronnie. Pilbeam gets tipsy, and tells Beach about Sue, and then tells Carmody that he saw him hide the pig. Carmody, in a panic, calls Millicent at Matchingham Hall, and is advised to tell Emsworth where the pig is at once. He does so, Emsworth is overjoyed, and agrees to their marriage, much to Lady Constance's disgust. Meanwhile, Baxter receives a telegram from Myra Schoonmaker in Paris, and goes to the imposter Sue's room to retrieve a note he sent her, criticising Lord Emsworth. Trapped by Beach bringing her dinner, he hides under the bed while she and Ronnie are reunited. Ronnie spots Pilbeam climbing into the room to steal the book, and chases him downstairs; the returning dinner party assume they are fleeing Baxter, now confirmed as mad by the presence of the stolen pig in his caravan, and Emsworth charges into Sue's room with a shotgun. Baxter crawls out from under the bed, flustered and enraged by his experience and Emsworth's harsh words, reveals Sue's deception and storms off. Galahad, hearing that Sue Brown is Dolly Henderson's daughter, reveals that he loved her mother and views her as a kind of honorary daughter. He tells Lady Constance that he will suppress his book if she agrees to sanction Sue and Ronnie's marriage, and to persuade her sister Julia to do likewise. Pilbeam, hearing this as he once again climbs the drainpipe, and gives up his mission, leaving Galahad to tell Sue the story of Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe and the prawns...

Riddley Walker

Russell Hoban

Riddley Walker is set about two thousand years after a nuclear war has devastated world civilizations. The main action of the story begins when the young narrator, Riddley, stumbles upon efforts to recreate a weapon of the ancient world. The novel's characters live a harsh life in a small area which is presently the English county of Kent, and know nothing of the world outside of "Inland" (England). Their level of civilization is similar to England's prehistoric Iron Age, although they do not produce their own iron but salvage it from ancient machinery. Church and state have combined into one secretive institution, whose mythology, based on misinterpreted stories of the war and an old Catholic saint (Eustace), is enacted in puppet shows.

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

H. P. Lovecraft

The title character, Charles Dexter Ward, is a young man from a prominent Rhode Island family who (in the story's introduction) is said to have disappeared from a mental asylum after a prolonged period of insanity accompanied by minor, but unheard-of, physiological changes. The bulk of the story concerns the investigation conducted by the Wards' family doctor, Marinus Bicknell Willett, in an attempt to discover the reason for Ward's madness and the physiological changes. When Willett learns that Ward had spent the past several years attempting to discover the grave of his ill-reputed ancestor, Joseph Curwen, the doctor slowly begins to unravel the truth behind the legends surrounding Curwen, an eighteenth century shipping entrepreneur rumoured to have been an alchemist, but in reality a necromancer and mass-murderer. As Willett's investigations proceed, he finds that Charles had recovered Curwen's ashes, and through the use of magical formulae contained in documents found hidden in the wizard's former town house in Providence, Rhode Island, was able to call forth Curwen from his "essential saltes" and resurrect him. Willett also finds that Curwen, who resembles Charles enough to pass for him, has murdered and replaced his modern descendant and resumed his evil activities. Unfortunately for Curwen, due to culture shock, he is unable to entirely successfully impersonate Charles - his lack of understanding of the modern world leads to him (as Charles) being certified insane and imprisoned in an asylum. While Curwen is locked up, Willett's continuing investigations lead him to a bungalow in Pawtuxet Village, which Ward had purchased under the influence of Curwen. It turns out that this house is on the site of an old farm which was Curwen's headquarters for his nefarious doings; beneath is a vast catacomb that the wizard had built to serve as his lair during his previous lifetime. During a horrific journey through this labyrinth, Willet discovers the full truth about Curwen's crimes and also the means of returning him to the grave. During the expedition it is also revealed that Curwen has been engaged in a long-term conspiracy with certain other necromancers (associates from his previous life who have somehow escaped death) to raise and torture the world's wisest people in order to gain knowledge that will let them gain horrible power and threaten the future of mankind. Finally, while in Curwen's laboratory, Willett accidentally raises an ancient spirit (its identity is not made clear) which is an enemy of Curwen and his fellow necromancers. The doctor faints at this eventuality: he wakes up back in the bungalow. Willett finds that the entrance to the vaults has been sealed as if it had never existed, but finds a note from the spirit written in Latin in an Anglo-Saxon hand telling him to kill Curwen and destroy his body. Armed with this knowledge, Willett confronts Curwen at the asylum and succeeds in reversing the spell, reducing the undead sorcerer once again to dust. News reports reveal that Curwen's prime co-conspirators have met brutal deaths along with their households and their lairs have been destroyed, presumably the work of the spirit whom Willett raised. Much of the plot is revealed in letters, documents and other historical sources discovered by both Ward and Willett.

334

Thomas M. Disch

The future in 334 has brought few technological advances except for new medical techniques and recreational drugs. There have been no dramatic disasters, but overpopulation has made housing and other resources scarce; the response is a program of compulsory birth control and eugenics. A welfare state provides for basic needs through an all-encompassing agency called MODICUM, but there is an extreme class division between welfare recipients and professionals. The novel consists of five independent novellas (previously published separately) with a common setting but different characters, and a longer sub-novel called "334" whose many short sections trace the members of a single family forward and backward in time. The sections are as follows: * "The Death of Socrates": A high-school student finds that, due to poor scores on his Regents Examinations and his father's health history, he has been permanently forbidden to have children; he searches for ways to get extra credit. * "Bodies": Porters at Bellevue Hospital moonlight as body-snatchers catering to a necrophiliac brothel. Their task is complicated by the desire of some patients to be cryonically preserved for a better future. * "Everyday Life in the Later Roman Empire": A privileged government worker, trying to decide where to send her son to school, pursues a parallel existence in a hallucinogen-assisted role-playing game set in the year 334. * "Emancipation: A Romance of the Times to Come": A young professional man and woman face marital conflicts and parenthood, with several twists unique to the 2020s. * "Angouleme": A group of highly educated prepubescent children decides to commit a gratuitous murder in Battery Park. * "334": Vignettes of the Hanson family from 2021 to 2025.

N or M?

Agatha Christie

After the outbreak of the Second World War and many years after they worked for British intelligence, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford feel useless and sidelined. When Tommy is approached to go undercover once more, however, Tuppence decides to join him on his mission whether she is wanted or not. The duo begin a search for a German agent who may have infiltrated British command. Another British agent that was following these Germans left a cryptic message on his deathbed: "N or M. Song Susie". Grant knew that "Song Susie" stood for Sans Souci, a hotel in Leahampton, and N and M were two German spies, one male and one female. Tommy is to go to Sans Souci to investigate whether N, M or both are at the hotel and to figure out their identities.

The Mist

Stephen King

The morning after a violent thunderstorm, a thick unnatural mist quickly spreads across the small town of Bridgton, Maine, reducing visibility to near-zero and concealing numerous species of bizarre creatures which viciously attack anyone and anything that ventures out into the open. The bulk of the story details the plight of a large group of people who become trapped while shopping in the town supermarket, among them a commercial artist named David Drayton (the protagonist and narrator), David's young son Billy, and their estranged neighbor Brent Norton who accompanied them into town after Brent's car was smashed by a tree. Amongst others trapped in the market are a young woman named Amanda Dumfries and two soldiers from a nearby military installation, home to what is referred to as "The Arrowhead Project". The two soldiers' eventual joint suicide lends some credence to the theory of this Project being the source of the disaster. Soon after the mist comes, something plugs the store generator's exhaust vent. When a young bag boy named Norm steps outside to fix the problem, he is pulled into the mist by a swarm of tentacles. David and Ollie Weeks, the store's assistant manager, witness Norm's death and try to convince the remaining survivors of the danger lurking outside. Norton and a small group of others refuse to believe, accusing David of lying. They venture out into the mist to seek help, where they are killed by a huge, unseen creature. This, along with a deadly incursion into the store by a pterosaur-like creature and a disastrous expedition to the pharmacy next door, lead to paranoia and panic consuming the remaining survivors. This spiraling breakdown leads to the rise to power of a religious zealot named Mrs. Carmody who convinces the majority of the remaining survivors that these events fulfill the biblical prophecy of the end of times, and that a human sacrifice must be made to save them from the wrath of God. David and Ollie attempt to lead their remaining allies in a covert exit from the market, but are stopped by Mrs. Carmody, who orders her followers to kill her chosen victims: Billy and Amanda. However, Ollie, using a revolver found in Amanda's purse, kills Mrs. Carmody, causing her congregation to break up. En route to David's car, Ollie in turn is bisected by the claw of a very large creature looking similar to a giant lobster or crab. David, Billy, Amanda, and an elderly, yet tough, school teacher Hilda Reppler reach the car and leave Bridgton, driving south for hours through a mist-shrouded, monster-filled New England. After finding refuge for the night, David listens to a radio, and through the overwhelming static possibly hears a single word broadcast, "Hartford". With that one shred of hope, he prepares to drive on into an uncertain future.

The Seven Dials Mystery

Agatha Christie

A house party is taking place at Chimneys which has been rented out by the Marquess of Caterham for two years to Sir Oswald Coote, a self-made millionaire and his wife. As well as the couple, there is a party of young people staying there, three girls and four young men. One of them, Gerald "Gerry" Wade, has a deserved reputation for sleeping in very late in the morning, much to the annoyance of Lady Coote. The six youngsters plan a joke on Gerald by buying eight alarm clocks and putting them in his room that night after he has fallen asleep but timed to go off at irregular intervals the next morning, starting at 6.30 am. The next morning, all the clocks having rung at the prescribed times but Wade not having stirred from his bed, it is discovered that the young man is dead in his bed, having drunk an overdose of chloral during the night. The group is shocked and Jimmy and Ronny agree to drive over to Deane Priory where Loraine Wade, Gerry's step-sister, lives and break the news to her. On the way, Ronny hints at something about Gerry but stops full at confiding in Jimmy. Returning to Chimneys and going to Gerry's room, Jimmy points out to Ronny that the alarm clocks have been arranged on the mantelpiece but there are only seven of them; one is missing. It is later found in a hedge, having been thrown from Gerry's window. Several days later, Lord Caterham retakes possession of Chimneys at the end of its two-year lease from the Cootes. The inquest has taken place with a verdict of "Death by Misadventure" but no explanation has been reached for the rearrangement of the clocks. His daughter Bundle is a friend of Bill Eversleigh's and puzzling over the matter she decides to write to him. Gerry Wade died in her room and pulling out a part of her writing desk she finds an unfinished letter from Gerry to Loraine dated the day before he died. In it he speaks of being "awfully fit" but "so sleepy I can't keep my eyes open." Most strangely, he asks her to "forget what I said about that Seven Dials business." More puzzled than ever, she decides to go to London to see Bill. On the way there, a man steps out of a hedge and into the road. Bundle misses him but he collapses anyway, muttering about "Seven Dials..." and "Tell... Jimmy Thesiger." The man dies. Bundle manages to get the body into the car and to a doctor where she is told that the car didn't hit the man—he was shot. A card on the body identifies the man as being Ronny Devereux and Bundle recalls that he also was one of the Cootes' house party. She returns to Chimneys and tells her father all that has happened and he tells her in turn that during his absence he received a visit from George Lomax, the Under-Secretary for State for Foreign Affairs who received a strange warning letter written from the Seven Dials district of London. The next day Bundle finally makes it to London and gets Jimmy's address from Bill. Going there, she meets Loraine Wade who has also called in to see Jimmy and breaks the news of Ronny's death to Jimmy. Shocked, he recounts Ronny's behaviour in the car on the way to see Loraine for the first time and she, in turn, tells the two of them that the incident that Gerry referred to in his last letter to her was a list of names and dates she found with an address in Seven Dials on it when she accidentally opened one of her late half-brother's letters. He had then hinted to her of some secret society with reference to the Mafia. The three wonder if Gerry's death was murder and the removal of one of the alarm clocks, leaving seven dials, was a warning signal. Jimmy knows that Gerry was connected in some way with the Foreign Office and security services. Bundle tells the other two of the warning letter that George Lomax received and that he is holding a house party the next week at his house at Wyvern Abbey and Jimmy and Bundle decide to get themselves an invitation and join in. Bundle decides to go and see Superintendent Battle at Scotland Yard about the matter, but he proves unhelpful, aside hinting that Bill Eversleigh knows something about Seven Dials. The next evening, Bundle meets Bill for a night out and asks him what he knows. He tells her that Seven Dials is a seedy nightclub and gambling den and Bundle insists he takes her there. In the club, Bundle recognises the doorman as being Alfred, a former footman from Chimneys. The next day, after making arrangements through family connections to get into George Lomax’s party, Bundle returns to the Seven Dials club and questions Alfred as to why he left Chimneys. He tells her that the Cootes had as a guest a Russian gentleman called Mosgorovsky who offered him three times his footman's salary to leave his previous employment and work at the club. Bundle forces the scared man to show her round and he eventually takes her into a secret room in which there is a table and seven chairs. She forces Alfred to hide her in a cupboard in the room and several hours later is able to witness from her place of concealment a strange meeting as five people gather. They wear hoods over their evening wear with eye slits and clock faces on the hoods, each clock showing a different time between one o'clock and six o'clock and their accents reveal their different nationalities. One of the sinister group is a woman with a mole on her exposed shoulder blade. They talk of the absent Number Two and one of the figures complains about the always-missing Number Seven. They also talk of Lomax's party at Wyvern Abbey where a German called Eberhard will be present with a valuable invention. They talk of plans to divert suspicion from the inquest on Ronny Devereux and mention Bauer, the footman at Chimneys as being in their pay. The meeting over, the group leaves and Alfred frees Bundle from her watching place. The next day Bundle tells Jimmy of the meeting. They suspect Bauer of murdering Gerry and Jimmy tells Bundle that Eberhard has invented a formula which could make wire as strong as steel, revolutionising airplane manufacturing. The German government turned the invention down and the meeting at Wyvern Abbey is for a possible sale to the British, represented by Sir Stanley Digby, the Air Minister. The next Friday, Bundle and Jimmy arrive at Wyvern Abbey and are introduced to the other guests including the Cootes, Sir Stanley Digby, Terence O'Rourke and the beautiful Hungarian Countess Radzky. Bundle is further surprised to see Superintendent Battle there. He tells her that he is at Wyvern to "keep an eye on things". Bill Eversleigh also turns up. Jimmy has told Bill what Bundle told him of the meeting of the Seven Dials. Realising that Sir Stanley is only going to be staying one night at Wyvern, they work out that any theft of the formula is going to be attempted that night and Jimmy and Bill agree to keep two separate watches, changing over at 3.00 am, both using a pistol that Jimmy has brought with him. At 2.00 am Jimmy, on the first watch in an alcove in the hallway, thinks he hears a noise coming from the library, a room that leads on to the terrace. He finds nothing in the room and continues his watch from there. Bundle, previously told by Jimmy and Bill that there was no part in their plans for her, had meekly acquiesced but instead had changed her clothes into something more suitable, climbed down the ivy outside her room and had promptly run into Superintendent Battle, also on his own watch outside the house. He persuades her to go back. She does so but goes to check on Jimmy in his alcove. Finding that he has gone, and not knowing that he has moved to the library, she goes to Bill's bedroom but finds that she has made a mistake and it is the Countess's room but the Hungarian lady is also missing. Her puzzlement is interrupted by the noises of a tremendous struggle coming from the library and two gunshots. This noise also attracts the attention of Loraine Wade who has arrived at Wyvern at the dead of night. A few moments before the commotion, a paper packet lands at her feet as she walks along the darkened terrace. She picks it up and sees a man climbing down the ivy from above her. She turns and runs, almost straight into Battle whose questions are interrupted by the fight in the library. Running there, they find Jimmy unconscious and shot through his right arm. The household is woken by the noise and pours into the room. Jimmy comes round and tells how he fought the man who climbed down the ivy. They were both armed and each fired a shot. Sir Stanley rushes back to check his room but finds that the formula has gone. Battle is not perturbed as Loraine still holds the dropped packet and is able to return its precious contents. Sir Oswald Coote raises suspicions when he comes in from the terrace, having supposedly been on a late-night walk and having seen no one suspicious but having found the pistol of the escaped man on the lawn. The Countess is also found in the room, unconscious behind a screen. She tells a story of coming down for a book to read, being unable to sleep, and hearing what turned out to be Jimmy’s approach, hid from fear of him being a burglar. She passed out when the fight happened. Bill gallantly offers to help her to her room and Bundle suddenly spots a mole on the Countess's shoulder through her negligee: she is a member of the Seven Dials! She tells Battle the whole story of her spying on the association and the role the Countess plays and is told to leave matters alone. The next morning, Battle searches the scenes of the crime and finds the place where the assailant's pistol landed when it was thrown onto the lawn, only one set of footprints leading to this point—Sir Oswald's—and a charred, left-handed glove with marks of teeth in the fireplace. He theorises that the thief threw the gun onto the lawn from the terrace and then climbed back into the house via the ivy. Bundle hears news from Chimneys that the footman Bauer is missing and Sir Oswald leaps to the conclusion that he is their man. Before the house party breaks up, Jimmy asks Loraine to keep an eye on Bundle and make sure she doesn't get herself into danger by investigating on her own any more while he integrates himself with Lady Coote and gets an invitation to their new house in Letherbury, wanting to investigate Sir Oswald further, suspecting him of being the missing Number Seven from the Seven Dials. At Letherbury, Jimmy looks through Sir Oswald's study in the dead of night, is almost caught by Rupert Bateman but manages to talk his way out of the situation. The next day Loraine and Bundle arrive, their car having "broken down" a short distance away, and Jimmy is able to tell them that he has found no evidence that Sir Oswald is Number Seven. Several days later, Bill turns up at Jimmy's London flat. Ronny Devereux's executors have sent him a letter that Ronny left for Bill, should anything happen to him, and he finds its contents incredible. A short time later, Jimmy rings up Bundle and Loraine who are at Chimneys and tells the girls to meet him and Bill at the Seven Dials club, Bill's story being "the biggest scoop of the century." The two girls get their first and Bundle frightens Alfred away by telling him the police are after him. Jimmy arrives, having left Bill outside in the car and upon his request, Bundle shows him the secret room where the Seven Dials meet. Loraine interrupts them: something is wrong with Bill. In the car, they find him unconscious and take him into the club. Jimmy runs off to get a doctor and Bundle goes round the club looking for brandy for Bill but someone knocks her unconscious. She comes round in Bill's arms and Bundle is pleasantly surprised to hear words of love from him. They are interrupted by Mr Mosgorovsky who then takes them into an emergency meeting of the Seven Dials. Number Seven is there and reveals himself: it is Superintendent Battle. He tells Bundle that the Seven Dials is not an association of criminals but instead is a group of criminal-catchers and people who do secret service work for their country. Among the group, Mr Mosgorovsky is a member, Gerry Wade and Ronny Devereux were, the Countess having now taken Gerry's place but her real identity is the American actress, Babe St Maur. To Bundle's shock, another member of the association is Bill Eversleigh but that shock is increased when Battle tells her that the association has at last succeeded in getting their main target, an international criminal whose stock trade is the theft of secret formulae: Jimmy Thesiger who was arrested that afternoon together with his accomplice, Loraine Wade. Battle explains that Jimmy killed Gerry Wade when he got onto Jimmy's track. Ronny took the eighth clock from the dead man's room in an attempt to see if anyone reacted to there being "seven dials". Bauer was put into Chimneys by the Seven Dials to keep an eye on things but Jimmy was too clever for him. Ronny Devereux was killed when he started to get too close to the truth and the latter's last words were not a warning to Jimmy about the Seven Dials but the other way round. At Wyvern Abbey, there was no second man stealing the formula. Jimmy climbed up the ivy to Sir Stanley Digby's room, threw the formula down to Loraine, climbed back down the ivy and into the library where he staged the fight, shot himself in his right arm and threw the second pistol onto the lawn. As his right arm was disabled and he was right-handed he had to dispose of his left-handed glove, using his teeth hence the marks, in the fire. Bill's story of the papers Ronny left him were a fabrication to get Jimmy into the open. Jimmy gave Bill a drugged drink in his flat but it was not drunk. Bill feigned unconsciousness in the car outside the Seven Dials club. Jimmy never went for a doctor but hid himself in the club and it was he who knocked Bundle unconscious. His plan was to leave Bill and Bundle there as a "shock" to the then-unknown Number Seven. Bundle is offered the empty place in the Seven Dials and Bill also proposes to her. Lord Caterham is delighted: Bill is a golfer and he now has someone else to play with!

Travesties

Tom Stoppard

The play's setting is primarily Zürich, Switzerland during the First World War. Three important personalities were living in Zürich at that time: the modernist author James Joyce, the communist revolutionary Lenin, and the founder of Dada, Tristan Tzara. In the play the less notable English consular official Henry Carr, who is likewise a real person and was similarly in Zürich, recalls his perceptions and his experiences with these influential figures. As he reminisces Carr's memory becomes prone to distraction, and instead of predictable historical biography these characters are interpreted through the maze of his mind. Carr's memories are couched in a Zürich production of Oscar Wilde's play The Importance of Being Earnest in which he had a starring role. Stoppard uses this production and Carr's mixed feelings surrounding it as a framework to explore art, the war and revolution. Situations from Earnest feature prominently within the action. The characters in Travesties also include versions of two from Earnest, Gwendolen and Cecily, and the comedic situations of many of the other roles are shared by other characters. Stoppard uses many theatrical devices within the play, including puns, limericks, and an extended parody of the vaudeville song "Mister Gallagher and Mister Shean". The real Carr did play Algernon with a group of actors called The English Players, for whom the real James Joyce was the business manager. Carr and Joyce had an angry disagreement after the play, which led to legal action and accusations of slander by Joyce. The dispute was settled with the judge deciding in favour of both disputants on different counts. Joyce later parodied Carr, and the English Consul General in Zürich at that time, A. Percy Bennett, as two minor characters in Ulysses, with Carr being portrayed as a drunken, obscene soldier in the "Circe" episode. After the first performance of Travesties Stoppard received a letter from the real Henry Carr's widow, expressing her surprise that her late husband had found himself imagined as a character in Stoppard's play.

Ronia the Robber's Daughter

Astrid Lindgren

Set in the early Middle Ages, Ronia, the main character, is a girl growing up in a clan of robbers, who lives in a castle in the woodlands of Scandinavia. As the only child of Mattis, the chief, she is expected to become the leader of the clan someday. Their castle, Mattis's Fort, is split in two parts by a lightning bolt on the day of Ronia's birth. Soon afterwards, a different clan of robbers, the "Borkas", settles the other side of the mountain, resulting in much strife between the two clans. Ronia grows up with Mattis's clan of robbers as her only company. One day, Ronia sees Birk Borkason, the only son of the enemy chieftain, Borka, idling by the chasm that splits the two parts of the castle. He is the only other child she has ever met, and so she is sorry that he is a Borka. He engages her in a game of jumping across, which does not end until Birk almost falls down. Ronia saves him and they become friends. The following winter is long and cold and although Mattis's robbers are well fed, their counterparts are suffering on the other side of the chasm. Ronia brings food to Birk through a secret passageway. They get very close but both know that they cannot tell their families. Later that year Birk saves Ronia from being captured by the faeries only to be captured himself by Ronia's father. Ronia gives herself to the Borkas so she must be exchanged, but as a result her father disowns her and refuses to acknowledge her as his daughter. Birk and Ronia run away to the woods. Ultimately their families repent of their feuding, and everyone is reunited.

Pet Sematary

Stephen King

Louis Creed, a doctor from Chicago, moves to a house near the small town of Ludlow, Maine with his family: wife Rachel; their two young children, Ellen ("Ellie") and Gage; and Ellie's cat, Winston Churchill ("Church"). Their neighbor, an elderly man named Jud Crandall, warns Louis and Rachel about the highway that runs past their house; it is used by trucks from a nearby chemical plant that often pass by at high speeds. Jud and Louis become friends. Since Louis's father died when he was three, his relationship with Jud takes on a father-son dimension. A few weeks after the Creeds move in, Jud takes the family on a walk in the woods behind their home. A well-tended path leads to a pet cemetery (misspelled "sematary") where the children of the town bury their deceased animals, most of them dogs and cats killed by the trucks on the road. A heated argument erupts between Louis and Rachel the next day. Rachel disapproves of discussing death and she worries about how Ellie may be affected by what she saw at the cemetery. It is later explained that Rachel was traumatized by the early death of her sister, Zelda, from spinal meningitis. Louis has a traumatic experience as director of the University of Maine's campus health service when Victor Pascow, a student who is fatally injured after being struck by an automobile, addresses his dying words personally to Louis even though they have never met. On the night following Pascow's death, Louis is visited by the student's walking, conscious corpse, which leads him to the cemetery and refers specifically to the "deadfall", a dangerous pile of tree and bush limbs that form a barrier at the back. Pascow warns Louis not to "go beyond, no matter how much you feel you need to." Louis wakes up in bed the next morning convinced it was a dream, but discovers his feet and the bedsheets covered with dirt and pine needles. Louis dismisses the episode as a result of stress caused by Pascow's death coupled with his wife's anxieties about death. He accepts the situation as a bout of sleep walking. Louis is forced to confront death at Halloween, when Jud's wife, Norma, suffers a near-fatal heart attack. Thanks to Louis's immediate attention, Norma recovers. Jud is grateful for Louis's help, and decides to repay him after Church is run over by a truck at Thanksgiving. Rachel and the children are visiting her parents in Chicago, and Louis frets over breaking the news to Ellie. Jud takes him to the pet cemetery, supposedly to bury Church. Instead, Jud leads Louis beyond the deadfall to "the real cemetery": an ancient burial ground that was once used by the Micmacs, a Native American tribe. Following Jud's instructions, Louis buries the cat and constructs a cairn. The next afternoon, the cat returns home. However, while he used to be vibrant and lively, he now acts strangely and "a little dead," in Louis's words. Church hunts for mice and birds much more often, but rips them apart without eating them. The cat also gives off an unpleasant odor. Louis is disturbed by Church's resurrection and begins to regret his decision. Jud tells Louis about his dog Spot, who was brought back to life in the same manner when Jud was twelve. Louis asks if a person was ever buried in the Micmac grounds, to which Jud answers vehemently no. Several months later, Gage, who had just learned to walk, is run over by a speeding truck. At Gage's wake, Rachel's father, Irwin, who never respected Louis or his daughter's decision to marry him, berates Louis harshly, blaming Louis for the boy's death. The two fight in the funeral home's viewing room and upset the casket; Rachel witnesses the fight and becomes hysterical. Overcome with grief and despair, Louis considers bringing his son back to life with the power of the burial ground. Jud, guessing what Louis is planning, attempts to dissuade him by telling him the story of Timmy Baterman, a young man from Ludlow who was killed charging a machine gun nest on the road to Rome during World War II. His father, Bill, put Timmy's body in the burial ground, where he came back to life, and was seen by terrified townsfolk soon thereafter. Jud and three of his friends went to the Baterman house to confront the pair, but Timmy confronted each of them with indiscretions they had committed, indiscretions he had no way of knowing, thus giving the impression that the resurrected Timmy was actually some sort of demon who had possessed Timmy's body. Jud and his friends fled the house horrified, and Bill shot his son and burned his house to the ground, killing himself. Jud concludes that Gage died because he showed Louis the burial ground. There are hints that at some point the burial ground was used for victims of cannibalism and that it became the haunt of the Wendigo, a terrible creature of the forest, whose mere presence gives men a taste for the flesh of their own kind. In Jud's words the "ground had gone sour" and now corrupts any animal or person buried there. Despite Jud's warning and his own reservations, Louis's grief and guilt spur him to carry out his plan. Louis has Rachel and Ellie visit her parents in Chicago again, not telling them his intentions, intending to bury Gage and then spend a couple of days with him in private to 'diagnose' his son and determine if what happened to Timmy has happened to him. Louis exhumes his son's body and takes him to the burial site. Along the trail, the Wendigo nearly frightens him away but Louis's determination, combined with the power of the burial site, keeps him moving. Ellie has a nightmare featuring Victor Pascow on the flight to Chicago. Because of Ellie's near hysteria, and an agreement between Rachel and her daughter as to Louis's behavior, Rachel attempts to fly back to Maine, but misses her connecting flight at Boston and decides to drive the rest of the distance. Louis buries Gage at the burial ground. Gage returns as a demonic shadow of his former self, able to talk like an adult. He breaks into Jud's house and taunts Jud about his wife's implied infidelity, then kills Jud with one of Louis' scalpels. When Rachel arrives at Jud's house, Gage kills her also (and, it is implied, partially eats her corpse). This event pushes Louis's mind into its final stage of insanity. Louis kills Church and Gage with a fatal dose of morphine, and then grieves for his son by sitting in the corner of the hallway. Louis, now completely insane and having prematurely aged with shockingly white hair, burns down Jud's house, then carries Rachel's body to the burial ground, saying that he "waited too long" with Gage but is confident that Rachel will come back the same as before. After being interrogated by investigators about the fire, Louis waits until nightfall for Rachel to return. Playing solitaire, he hears his resurrected wife walk into the house, and the novel ends with Rachel speaking "Darling", her mouth sounding as if it is full of dirt.

Firestarter

Stephen King

Andy and Charlene "Charlie" McGee are a father-daughter pair on the run from a government agency known as The Shop, located in the fictional D.C. suburb of Longmont, Virginia. During his college years, Andy had participated in a Shop experiment dealing with "Lot 6", a drug with hallucinogenic effects similar to LSD. The drug gave his future wife, Victoria Tomlinson, minor telepathic abilities, and him an autohypnotic mind domination ability he refers to as "the push". Both his and Vicky's powers are physiologically limited; in his case, overuse of the Push gives him crippling migraine headaches and minute brain hemorrhages, but their daughter Charlie developed a frightening pyrokinetic ability, with the full extent of her power unknown. The novel begins in medias res with Charlie and Andy on the run from Shop agents in New York City. We learn through a combination of flashbacks and current narration that this is the latest in a series of attempts by the Shop to capture Andy and Charlie following an initial disastrous raid on the McGee family's quiet life in suburban Ohio. After years of Shop surveillance, a botched operation to take Charlie leaves her mother dead; Andy, receiving a psychic flash while having lunch with work colleagues, rushes home to discover his wife murdered and his daughter kidnapped. He then uses his push ability to track the slightly-cold trail of Charlie and the Shop agents, catching up to them at a rest stop on the Interstate. He uses the push to incapacitate the Shop agents, leaving one blind and the other comatose. Charlie and Andy flee and begin a life of running and hiding, using assumed identities. They move several times to avoid discovery before the Shop catches up to them in New York. Using a combination of the push, Charlie's power, and hitchhiking, the pair escape through Albany, New York and are taken in by a farmer named Irv Manders near Hastings, New York; however, they are tracked down by Shop agents, who attempt to kill Andy and take Charlie at the Manders farm. At Andy's instruction, Charlie unleashes her power, incinerating the entire farm and fending off the agents, killing a few of them. With nowhere else to turn, the pair flees to Vermont and take refuge in a cabin that had once belonged to Andy's grandfather. With the Manders farm operation disastrously botched, the director of the Shop, Captain James Hollister, or "Cap", calls in a Shop hitman named John Rainbird to capture the fugitives. Rainbird, a Cherokee and Vietnam veteran, is intrigued by Charlie's power and eventually becomes obsessed with her, determined to befriend her and eventually kill her. This time the operation is successful, and both Andy and Charlie are taken by the Shop. The pair is separated and imprisoned at the Shop headquarters. With his spirit broken, Andy becomes an overweight drug addict and seemingly loses his power, and is eventually deemed useless by the Shop. Charlie, however, defiantly refuses to cooperate with the Shop, and does not demonstrate her power for them. Six months pass until a power failure provides a turning point for the two: Andy, sick with fear and self-pity, somehow regains the push - subconsciously pushing himself to overcome his addiction - and Rainbird, masquerading as a simple janitor, befriends Charlie and gains her trust. By pretending to still be powerless and addicted, Andy manages to gain crucial information by pushing his psychiatrist. Under Rainbird's guidance, Charlie begins to demonstrate her power, which has grown to fearsome levels. After the suicide of his psychiatrist, Andy is able to meet and push Cap, using him to plan his and Charlie's escape from the facility, as well as finally communicating with Charlie. Rainbird discovers Andy's plan, however, and decides to use it to his advantage. Andy's plan succeeds, and he and Charlie are reunited for the first time in six months. Rainbird then interrupts the meeting at a barn, planning to kill them both. A crucial distraction is provided by Cap, who is losing his mind from a side effect of being pushed. Andy pushes Rainbird into leaping from the upper level of the barn, breaking his leg. Rainbird then shoots Andy in the head. Rainbird then fires another shot at Charlie, but she uses her power to melt the bullet in midair and then sets Rainbird and Cap on fire. A mortally wounded Andy then instructs Charlie to take revenge with her power and inform the public, to make sure the government cannot do anything like this ever again, and dies. A grief-stricken and furious Charlie then sets the barn on fire. She exits the barn and people start going after her. She uses her pyrokinesis to kill the employees and blow up their getaway vehicles. People try to flee and some do. Military men are called, but Charlie blows up their vehicles and when they fire at her she melts their bullets. Charlie blows up the building, shooting it sky-high. She leaves the Longmont facility burning, with almost all of its workers dead. The event is covered up by the government, and released to the papers as a terrorist firebomb attack. The Shop quickly reforms, under new leadership, and begins a manhunt for Charlie, who has returned to the Manders farm. After some deliberation, she comes up with a plan and leaves the Manders', just ahead of Shop operatives, and heads to New York City. She decides on Rolling Stone magazine as an unbiased, honest media source with no ties to the government, and the book ends as she arrives to tell them her story.

Rage

Stephen King

Charlie Decker, a Maine high school senior, is called to meeting with his principal over a previous incident in which Decker attacked his chemistry teacher with a heavy wrench. For unknown reasons, Charlie subjects the principal to a series of insulting remarks, resulting in his expulsion. Charlie storms out of the office and retrieves a pistol from his locker, setting its contents on fire. He then returns to his classroom and fatally shoots his Algebra teacher. The fire triggers an alarm, but Charlie forces his classmates to stay in the classroom, killing another teacher when he enters. As the students and teachers evacuate the school, police and media arrive at the scene. In the following four hours, Charlie toys with various authority figures who attempt to negotiate with him, including the principal, the school psychologist, and the local police chief. Charlie gives them certain commands, threatening to kill students if they do not comply. Charlie also admits to his hostages that he does not know what has compelled him to commit his deeds, believing he will regret them when the situation is over. As his fellow students start identifying with Charlie, he unwittingly turns his class into a sort of psychotherapy group, causing his schoolmates to semi-voluntarily tell embarrassing secrets regarding themselves and each other. Interspersed throughout are narrative flashbacks to Charlie's troubled childhood, particularly his tumultuous relationship with his abusive father. Several notable incidents include a violent disagreement between two female students, and a SWAT team sniper shooting Charlie in the chest. However, Charlie survives due to the bullet striking his locker's padlock, which he had earlier placed in his shirt pocket. Charlie finally comes to the realization that one student is really being held there against his will: a seeming "big man on campus" named Ted Jones, who is harboring his own secrets. Ted realizes this and attempts to escape the classroom, but the other students brutally assault him, driving him into a battered catatonic state. At 1:00 PM, Charlie releases the students. When the police chief enters the classroom, he shoots the now-unarmed Charlie when he attempts suicide by cop. Charlie survives and is found not guilty by reason of insanity, committed to a psychiatric hospital in Augusta until he is no longer a threat to society. The story ends with Charlie addressing the reader, "I have to turn off the light now. Good night."

The Regulators

Stephen King

The story takes place in the fictional town of Wentworth, Ohio, a typical suburban community. On Poplar Street, an autistic boy named Seth has gained the power to control reality through the help of a being known as Tak. Soon, Poplar Street begins to change shape, transforming from a quiet suburb into a wild west caricature based on what Seth has seen on his television. Meanwhile, the other residents of the street are being attacked by the many beings that Seth's imagination is creating, due to Tak's control over them. These residents are forced to work together to stop Seth and Tak from completely transforming the world around them and stop Tak before he kills anyone else. Seth's imagination is heavily influenced by a western called The Regulators and a cartoon called MotoKops 2200. The novel contains excerpts from scripts for both.

The Two Georges

Harry Turtledove

For more than two centuries, what would have become the United States and Canada has been the North American Union, a territory encompassing the northern portion of the continent except Alaska, retained under the rule of Russia. The Two Georges, a Gainsborough painting, commemorates the agreement between George Washington and King George III that created this part of the British Empire. The painting itself has become a symbol of national unity. While being displayed in New Liverpool, the painting is stolen while a crowd is distracted by the murder of "Honest" Dick (a.k.a. "Tricky" Dick), the Steamer King, a nationally-known used car salesman. Colonel Thomas Bushell of the Royal American Mounted Police leads the search for the painting, accompanied by its former curator Dr. Kathleen Flannery and Captain Samuel Stanley. Some days later, a ransom note is received from the Sons of Liberty, a terrorist organization that wants to see America independent of Britain. The Governor-General of the North American Union, Sir Martin Luther King, informs Bushell in confidence that the painting must be recovered before King Charles III's state visit, or the government will have to pay the Sons' ransom demand of fifty million pounds. The search takes Bushell, Flannery, and Stanley across the country via airship (an advanced form of dirigible), train, and steamer. They also meet many members of the Sons of Liberty, including Boston newspaper editor John F. Kennedy. After chasing many false leads and the wrong suspects, Bushell and his associates arrive at Victoria and find The Two Georges an hour before the King arrives. They also uncover the true culprits: the Holy Alliance, a union of France and Spain controlling almost everything from the Rio Grande to Cape Horn, and Bushell's superior officer and covert fanatic Sons of Liberty sympathizer, Lieutenant General Horace Bragg. Bushnell then thwarts Bragg's two tries to assassinate the King. Bragg is sent to the gallows, while Bushell and Stanley are both knighted by the King for their accomplishments.

The Adventure of the Lion's Mane

Arthur Conan Doyle

Holmes is enjoying his retirement in Sussex when one day at the beach, he meets his friend Harold Stackhurst, the headmaster of a nearby preparatory school called The Gables. No sooner have they met than Stackhurst's science master, Fitzroy McPherson, staggers up to them, obviously in agony and wearing only an overcoat and trousers. He collapses, manages to say something about a "lion's mane", and then dies. He is observed to have red welts all over his back, administered by a flexible weapon of some kind, for the marks curve over his shoulder and round his ribs. Moments later, Ian Murdoch, a mathematics teacher, comes up behind them. He has not seen the attack, and has only just arrived at the beach from the school. Holmes sees a couple of people far up the beach, but thinks they are much too far away to have had anything to do with McPherson's death. Likewise, the few fishing boats off the beach are too far out. It emerges that Murdoch and McPherson were friends, but had not always been. Murdoch is an enigmatic fellow with an occasional bad temper. He once threw McPherson's dog through a plate-glass window, for instance. Despite this, Stackhurst is sure that they were friends. McPherson also had a lover, and on further investigation, it turns out that Maud Bellamy was McPherson's fiancée. A note confirming a meeting with her was found on McPherson, but it gave no clear details. Holmes goes to look at the lagoon formed by a recent storm that local men have been using as a bathing pond. He sees McPherson's towel lying there dry and concludes that he never went into the water. Holmes arranges to have the caves and other nooks at the foot of the cliffs searched, expecting that that will turn up nothing and no-one. He is right. Stackhurst and Holmes decide to go and see Miss Bellamy to see whether she can shed any light on this perplexing mystery. Just as they are approaching The Haven, the Bellamys' house, they see Ian Murdoch emerge. Stackhurst demands to know what he was doing there, and an angry exchange ensues with Murdoch declaring in effect that it was none of Stackhurst's business. Stackhurst loses his temper and sacks Murdoch on the spot. He storms off to get ready to move out. They visit the Bellamys and find an amazingly beautiful woman in Maud Bellamy, but two most unpleasant men in her father and muscular brother. It seems that they did not approve of the liaison between Maud and McPherson. They do not even find out about the engagement until this meeting, such has been the secrecy of their affair. Maud says that she will help however she can, but it does not seem likely that she can do anything. It emerges, however, that Ian Murdoch was once a potential suitor to Miss Bellamy. Holmes begins to suspect that Murdoch may be responsible for McPherson's death, out of jealousy. A further mystifying clue presents itself when McPherson's dog is found dead at the very pool where McPherson met his end. It obviously died in agony, much as its master did. At this point, Holmes begins to suspect something else. The dead man's dying words, "lion's mane," have triggered a memory, but he cannot quite call it back to mind. Inspector Bardle of the Sussex Constabulary visits Holmes to ask if there is enough evidence to arrest Ian Murdoch. Holmes is sure that there is not. The case is most incomplete, especially as Murdoch has an alibi. He also could not have singlehandedly overcome McPherson, who was quite strong, despite having heart trouble. The two men also consider McPherson's wounds. The weals actually looked as though they may have been administered by a hot wire mesh, or perhaps a cat o' nine tails. Holmes has formed a theory which might explain McPherson's death and is about to go back to the bathing pond to test it. As he is about to leave, Murdoch arrives, helped in by Stackhurst, who is afraid that Murdoch might be dying; he fainted twice in pain. He has the same wounds on him that McPherson had. In great agony, he calls for brandy, passes out, but finally recovers. At the bathing pond, Holmes spots the murderer: it is a Lion's Mane Jellyfish (Cyanea capillata), a deadly creature about which Holmes has read. Holmes takes a rock and kills it. He shares the story by John George Wood of an encounter with just such a jellyfish with the other men. Murdoch is exonerated, of course. It turns out that he was acting as a go-between for McPherson and Maud, and did not wish to discuss it with anyone. The story ends on an upbeat note as Stackhurst forgives Murdoch and gives him his job back.

Oryx and Crake

Margaret Atwood

The novel begins after the collapse of civilization by an event that is not immediately identified. The protagonist is Snowman, a post-apocalyptic hermit character. He resides near a group of what he refers to as Crakers—strange human-like creatures. They bring Snowman food and consult him on matters that surpass their understanding. In addition, strange hybrid beasts such as wolvogs, pigoons and rakunks roam freely. As the story develops, these assorted lifeforms are revealed to be the products of genetic engineering. In flashbacks, we learn that Snowman was once a young boy named Jimmy, who grew up in the near, yet undefined past. His world was dominated by multinational corporations which kept their employees' families in privileged compounds separated from a global lower moiety of pleeblands. Shortly after Jimmy's family moved to the HelthWyzer corporate compound (where his father worked as a genographer) Jimmy met and befriended Glenn (referred to throughout the novel as Crake), a brilliant science student. Jimmy and Crake spend a lot of their leisure time playing online computer games such as Kwiktime Osama (a reference to Osama bin Laden) and Blood and Roses, smoking "skunkweed", or watching live executions, Noodie News, frog squashing, graphic surgery and child pornography. One of Crake's favourite pastimes is an online game called Extinctathon, a trivia game which requires immense knowledge of extinct animal and plant species. Using the codenames "Thickney" (Jimmy) and "Crake" (Glenn), they both play as teenagers. It is not until they are both in university that Jimmy discovers that Crake has advanced through the game to become a Grandmaster of Extinctathon. On another trip through the dark underbelly of the Web, they come across an Asian child pornography website, where Jimmy is struck and haunted by the eyes of a young girl. The two male characters pursue different educational paths: Crake attends the highly respected Watson-Crick Institute where he studies advanced bioengineering, but Jimmy ends up at the loathed Martha Graham Academy, where students study literature and the humanities, which are not valued fields of study except for their commercial and/or propaganda applications. After finishing school, Jimmy ends up writing ad copy, while Crake becomes a bioengineer. Crake uses his prominent position at the biotechnology corporation to launch a project to create the Crakers. His goal is to create a peaceful society where people will live harmoniously with each other and nature. These genetically engineered humans are leaf and grass-eating herbivores who only have sexual intercourse during limited breeding seasons when they are polyandrous. Crake eventually finds the girl from the child pornography website (or a woman who could be her) and hires her, as both a prostitute for himself, and a teacher for the Crakers. She takes the pseudonym Oryx, derived from the entry for Oryx beisa in Extinctathon. Jimmy identifies the haunting memory of the young girl with Oryx, though it is never made clear whether or not the two are the same person. Oryx eventually becomes intimately involved in the lives of Jimmy and Crake, and both fall in love with her. Oryx, however, views their relationship as strictly professional and only admires Crake as a scientist and "great man". For fun and affection she turns to Jimmy, though her feelings for him are not as clear. The two hide their relationship from Crake, and Jimmy is often plagued with the thought of Crake finding out about his betrayal. At the same time, Crake creates a virulent genetic pandemic disguised as a prophylactic agent that, apparently, killed off most humans except for Jimmy. Jimmy was unknowingly vaccinated by Crake with the intention of acting as a guardian for the Crakers. Crake's rationale is that he is heroically saving intelligent life from an inevitably dying society. In the story's climax, Crake's perfected "hot bioform", present in one of his company's products, is activated and spreads throughout the world. During the chaos, Crake presents himself to Jimmy, then kills Oryx by slitting her throat. Jimmy shoots Crake, resulting in his being left to obsess over his vanished world and unanswered questions. Jimmy contemplates abandoning the Crakers but is constantly haunted by the voice of Oryx, and reminded of his promise to her to watch over them. Snowman instills the Crakers with his own invented religion revolving around Crake and Oryx. Oryx becomes the guardian of the animals and Crake the creator god. During Snowman's journey to scavenge supplies, he is uncomfortable wearing shoes now that his feet have become toughened without them. He cuts his foot on a tiny sliver of glass. Infected by some descendant of transgenic experiments, his body cannot fight back, and his foot becomes inflamed. Returning to the Crakers, he learns that three ragged true humans have camped nearby. He follows the smoke from the fire and watches as they cook a rakunk. Uncertain of how he should approach them (Blast them to bits to protect the Crakers? Approach with open arms?) he checks his now not-working watch and thinks, "Time to go," leaving the reader to speculate as to what his actions and future will be.

Temple

Matthew Reilly

Professor William Race is a young linguist, working for NYU. One day, he is approached by a retired Col. Frank Nash, a physicist from the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, to translate a manuscript written in ancient Latin. Initially, Race is reluctant because Nash only describes what is required from him on the most vaguest terms and does not appear to be interested in the alternatives Race gives him. Race is relectant to join even when he hears that his brother, Marty, was the one who suggested his name. What clinches it, is that when Nash mentions the names of the civilians who are going to be on the trip, one of the names turns out to be Race's college sweetheart, Lauren, who left him many years ago. In a sudden impulse to see what she has done with herself, Race agrees to join the team. Nash assigns Van Lewen, a Sergent in the Green Berets, as Race's bodyguard and they move to the airport to fly to Peru. En route, Nash provides Race with photocopied pages of what turns out to be a copy of the Santiago Manuscript, which describes the adventures of Alberto Santiago a Spanish missionary in Peru whilst also holding the key to the final resting place of a legendary Incan idol, allegedly made of thyrium-261, an element that, when combined with the mass destruction weapon the Supernova, would destroy a third of the Earth's mass throwing it off from the orbit and effectively killing the planet. The team lands in Peru with mission leader Frank Nash, physicist Troy Copeland, archaeologist Gaby Lopez, anthropologist Walter Chambers, five Green Berets, his personal bodyguard, and his college sweetheart. But when the manuscript leads the team to an ancient Incan temple, the hunt becomes a fight for survival when their raid of the temple is taken over by hostile German terrorists. And the situation becomes even worse for Race and the team when an army of giant "rapa" cats, hellbent on ripping throats, snapping spines and mauling anyone who comes near them. Can Race lead the team to the idol, or is he leading them into disaster, and violent death?

The Man Who Folded Himself

David Gerrold

In 1975, Daniel Eakins, a young college student, is visited by his Uncle Jim. Uncle Jim offers to increase Daniel's monthly allowance for living expenses as long as Daniel promises to keep a diary. Shortly after, Uncle Jim dies, and Daniel inherits a 'Timebelt' from him that allows the wearer to travel through time. Daniel quickly learns how to use the Timebelt and makes a few short jumps into his own future. He meets an alternate version of himself, who accompanies him to a race-track where the pair make a fortune betting on horse-racing. The following day, Daniel realises that it is his turn to guide his younger self through the previous day at the races; through this and other events the time-travelling Daniel learns more about the belt, about the nature of the 'timestream', and about his personal identity. Daniel develops an interest in history, and uses the Timebelt to experience many of the significant events of world history and to view the future. He also changes the past to give himself a vast financial empire. At the same time, he begins to understand more of his own character, becoming less introverted and more confident in having a companion (either his past or future self) whom he is able to completely understand and relate to. No longer limited to living in a linear stretch of time, he sets about trying to change the world to fit his own desires, and having more and more strange experiences with his alternate selves. His activities result in a series of time paradoxes, which are explained by the existence of multiple universes and multiple histories: the Timebelt does not actually move the user around a single timeline, but to a new alternate reality which is the result of all the changes that Daniel has previously made to that reality. Daniel repeatedly encounters alternate versions of himself, ultimately having sex with himself and beginning a relationship with himself. He learns that the changes he has made to his timeline have erased all traces of his childhood and early life. Finding himself lonely and hoping to correct the situation, he jumps backwards in time, where he meets a female version of himself called Diane. He begins a relationship with Diane. Diane soon becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son. Shortly after, Daniel and Diane separate, and Daniel raises his son in 1950s America. As Daniel ages, he becomes more obsessed with returning to the relationship he had with Diane, and then with the thought of his own inevitable death. He spends much of his time at a house party set in 1999, enjoying the company of dozens of versions of himself at different ages. Daniel eventually realises that he has now become his Uncle Jim and that his son is actually the young future version of himself who will go on to inherit the Timebelt, and that his life has 'come full circle'. He makes preparations for after his death to ensure that the young Daniel experiences the same events that he did when he was the same age. The book ends with the young Daniel, who has read the now-complete diary, having to decide whether he will use the Timebelt.

The Four Feathers

A. E. W. Mason

The novel tells the story of a British officer, Harry Feversham, who resigns from his commission in the East Surrey Regiment just prior to Sir Garnet Wolseley's 1882 expedition to Egypt to suppress the rising of Arabi Pasha. He is faced with censure from three of his comrades, Captain Trench as well as Lieutenants Castleton and Willoughby for cowardice, which is signified by the delivery of three white feathers to him. He loses support of his Irish fiancée, Ethne Eustace, who too presents him with the fourth feather. His best friend in the regiment, Captain Durrance becomes his rival for Ethne. Harry talks with Lieutenant Sutch, a friend of his father, who is an imposing retired general and questions his own true motives, moreover he talks of his resolution to redeem himself by acts that will force his critics to take back the feathers, this might in turn encourage Ethne to take back the feather, which she gave him. He travels on his own to Egypt and Sudan, where in 1882 Muhammad Ahmed proclaimed himself the Mahdi (Guided One) and raised a Holy War. On January 26, 1885, his forces which were called Dervishes, captured Khartoum and killed its British governor, General Charles George Gordon. It was mainly in the eastern Sudan, where the British and Egyptians held Suakin, where the action takes place over the next six years. Durrance is blinded by sunstroke and invalided. Castleton is reportedly killed at Tamai,where a British square is briefly broken. Harry's first success came when he recovers lost letters of Gordon. He is aided by a Sudanese Arab, Abou Fatma. Later, disguised as a mad Greek musician, Harry gets imprisoned in Omdurman, where he rescues the Colonel Trench, who had been captured on a reconnaissance mission and they escape. Harry has his honour restored by Willoughby and then Trench giving to Ethne the feathers they've taken back. He returns to England, and sees Ethne for one last time as she has determined to devote herself to Col. Durrance, but Durrance explains that his travel to Germany to seek a cure for his blindness has been a pretense, to wait for Harry to redeem himself. Ethne and Harry wed, and Durrance travels to 'the East' as a civilian. The story is rich in characters and sub-plots, which the filmed versions perforce trim, along with making major changes in the story line, with the best known 1939 version centered on the 1898 campaign and battle of Omdurman, only hinted at as a future event in the novel.

Ice Station

Matthew Reilly

After a diving team at Wilkes Ice Station is killed, the station sends out a distress signal which is picked up and a team of United States Recon Marines lead by Shane Schofield, code named Scarecrow, arrives at the station. At the station he finds several French scientists have arrive and several more come after the Marine's arrival. The French however reveal themselves as actual soldiers and a fight ensues in the station, claiming the lives of Scarecrow's men Hollywood, Legs, Ratman, several scientists, and all of the French soldiers while Mother looses her leg, Samurai is badly injured, and two French scientists are captured. Schofield decides to send a team down to find an object below the ice where the diving team was going to. Later, Samurai is found dead via strangling, leaving the only people he trusts to be one of the scientists, Sarah Hensleigh and another soldier named Montana as he was with them at the time of Samurai's death. Hensleigh, Montana, and two other Marines, Gant, and Santa Cruz, are sent down to where the diving team vanished. While alone, Schofield is shot and killed. He later wakes up, found to have been accidentally resurrected by his attacker and is in the care of scientists James Renshaw, the believed killer of one of the other scientists at Wilkes. Watching a video of Schofield's death, they see the attacker and discover it to be one of Schofield's men, Snake. The two capture Snake before he is able to kill the wounded Mother. Meanwhile in the United States, Andrew Trent and Pete Cameron meet, Cameron being a news reporter and Trent being a former Marine using the alias of Andrew Wilcox to avoid being found by the U.S military who a few years back had tried to kill him. They hear the distress call from Shofield and Trent realizes that what happened to him was happening to Shofield. The team learns of an appending attack by the SAS and decide to flee the station. During the escape via stolen vehicles, Shofield and Renshaw's is pushed off a cliff, Shofield's close friend Book and the step-daughter of Sarah Hensleigh, Kirsty, are captured, while Rebound escapes with four of the scientists. Schofield manages to destroy a French submarine and he and Renshaw begin their journey back towards it. Meanwhile, the SAS Brigadier Trevor Barnaby kills the two remaining French scientists and feeds Book to a pod of Killer whales. Schofield returns to the station and manages to kill all of the SAS and Snake, and save Kirsty. Schofield receives a message from Trent with a list of members of a secret service known as the Intelligence Convergance Group which includes Snake and Montana. Gant and her team find what appears to be an alien ship which turns out to be a spy ship. Montana succeeds at killing Santa Cruz but mutated Elephant seals end up killing Montana. Schofield and the two others arrive and Hensleigh reveals herself to be an ICG agent, but is soon killed by a wounded Gant. Remembering the station is about to be destroyed, Schofield, Gant, Renshaw, Kirsty, and a Fur seal named Wendy escape on the spy plane and land on the USS Wasp where they destroy the ship. It is revealed that Mother had escaped Wilkes before its destruction and was saved by US forces. The survivors get to Hawaii where they are nearly killed by an ICG agent before being saved by Trent, Pete and Allison Cameron, and the captain of the USS Wasp. Renshaw assumes custody of Kirsty since he's the godfather and Shofield doesn't leave Gant's side until she recovers.

The Magic Mountain

Thomas Mann

The narrative opens in the decade before World War I. We are introduced to the central protagonist of the story, Hans Castorp, the only child of a Hamburg merchant family who, following the early death of his parents, has been brought up by his grandfather and subsequently by an uncle named James Tienappel. We encounter him when he is in his early 20s, about to take up a shipbuilding career in Hamburg, his home town. Just before beginning this professional career Castorp undertakes a journey to visit his tubercular cousin, Joachim Ziemssen, who is seeking a cure in a sanatorium in Davos, high up in the Swiss Alps. In the opening chapter, Hans is symbolically transported away from the familiar life and mundane obligations he has known, in what he later learns to call "the flatlands", to the rarefied mountain air and introspective little world of the sanatorium. Castorp's departure from the sanatorium is repeatedly delayed by his failing health. What at first appears to be a minor bronchial infection with slight fever is diagnosed by the sanatorium's chief doctor and director, Hofrat Behrens, as symptoms of tuberculosis. Hans is persuaded by Behrens to stay until his health improves. During his extended stay, Castorp meets and learns from a variety of characters, who together represent a microcosm of pre-war Europe. These include the secular humanist and encyclopedist Lodovico Settembrini (a student of Giosuè Carducci), the totalitarian Jew-turned-Jesuit Leo Naphta, the dionysian Dutch Mynheer Peeperkorn, and his romantic interest Madame Clavdia Chauchat. In the end, Castorp remains in the morbid atmosphere of the sanatorium for seven years. At the conclusion of the novel, the war begins, Castorp volunteers for the military, and his possible, or probable, demise upon the battlefield is portended.

The Bridge on the Drina

Ivo Andrić

At the beginning of the book Andrić focuses on a small Serbian boy taken from his mother as part of the levy of Christian subjects of the Sultan (devshirme). Andrić describes how the mothers of these children follow their sons wailing, until they reach a river where the children are taken across by ferry and the mothers can no longer follow. That child becomes a Muslim and, taking a Turkish name (Mehmed, later Mehmed pasha Sokolović), is promoted quickly and around the age of 60 becomes Grand Vizier. Yet, that moment of separation still haunts him and he decides to order the building of a bridge at a point on the river where he was parted from his mother. Already then, even before it has been built, Andrić is portraying the bridge as something with the power not merely to bridge a river but to heal divisions; yet it is quickly to become clear that in this role it is a flawed unifier. The construction work starts in 1566 and five years later the bridge is completed (together with a caravanserai or han), signifying a very important link between Sarajevo pashaluk (the territory of the present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina) and the rest of the Turkish empire, and replacing the unreliable boat transport across the river. The reader learns how serfs are forced to build it and how they variously strike and sabotage the construction site because of poor working conditions. The middle of the bridge, called "the kapia"—the gate, is wider, and it quickly becomes a popular meeting place for people from Višegrad and the surrounding area in a relaxed mood which is still typical of present-day Turkey and most of the Balkans. The reader also learns that there are no tensions between the Muslims (referred to as Turks throughout the novel), Christians (the Serbs), Sephardic Jews and the Roma people. Rather, they stand in solidarity with one another during the regular floods of the Drina. About a century later, Habsburg Austria conquers what is now Hungary and parts of the former Yugoslavia, and thus a crisis within the Turkish empire begins. Due to lack of state funds, the caravanserai is abandoned, while the bridge project is completed, so well-constructed that it stands for centuries without maintenance. The first nationalist tensions arise in the 19th century when the Serbian uprising in the neighbouring Belgrade pashaluk (now Serbia) begins. Even so, neighbour never raises a hand against neighbour; instead soldiers from all parts of the Empire establish a guard-point at the gate and behead suspect Serbs and potential rebels. After the Congress of Berlin, Serbia and Montenegro become fully independent countries while the Austro-Hungarian Empire receives a right to occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina and thus turn it into a protectorate. Since the completion of the bridge, time has seemed to stop, and the local people have many difficulties in accepting the numerous changes that come with Austrian rule. A barrack is built at the site of the caravanserai and the town suddenly experiences a substantial influx of foreigners. People from all parts of the Austro-Hungarian kingdom arrive, opening their businesses and bringing the customs of their native regions with them. A narrow gauge railway line is built to Sarajevo and the significance of the bridge is soon reduced, but not completely, as will become apparent subsequently. Thanks to this modernisation, children begin to be educated in Sarajevo, and later some of them continue their studies in Vienna. They bring home ideas from the rest of the world and, along with the newspapers that are now available in Višegrad, nationalistic ideas emerge, especially among Serbs. Another "contribution" to these changes is the crisis of the year 1908, when troubles in Turkey give Austria an excellent opportunity to annex Bosnia and Herzegovina formally. During this Annexation Crisis, it becomes evident that Austria sees the Kingdom of Serbia and its royal dynasty, the Karađorđevićs, as a serious obstacle to their further conquest of the Balkans. The Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913, when Turkey was almost completely pushed out of the Balkans, do not help to foster better relations between Serbs and Austrians, as they undermine the significance of the middle span of the bridge, with its friendly inter-ethnic relationships and camaraderie. Many young Serbian men pass over it at night and smuggle themselves across the border to Serbia. The reader never learns if the most famous of them, Gavrilo Princip, passes across this bridge, although historically it would have been a possibility. In 1914 Gavrilo Princip assassinates Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo and thus causes the First World War. Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia, and the Austrians begin to incite the non-Serbian population of Višegrad against the Serbs living in the town. The bridge with the old road to Sarajevo suddenly regains its importance, as the railway line is not adequate to transport all the materiel and soldiers who are preparing for the invasion of Serbia. However, the Austrians are swiftly defeated on their first invasion attempt and the Serbians start to advance towards Bosnia. The Drina river turns into the frontline of the conflict, so the Austrians evacuate Višegrad and blow up portions of the bridge.

The Castle

Franz Kafka

The narrator, K., arrives in a village governed by a mysterious bureaucracy that resides in a nearby castle. When seeking shelter at the town inn, he falsely gives himself out to be a land surveyor summoned by the castle authorities. He is quickly notified that his castle contact is an official named Klamm, who, in the introductory note, informs K. he will report to the Council Chairman. The Council Chairman informs K. that, through a mix up in communication between the castle and the village, he was erroneously requested but, trying to accommodate K., the Council Chairman offers him a position in the service of the school teacher as a caretaker. Meanwhile, K., unfamiliar with the customs, bureaucracy and processes of the village, continues to attempt to reach the official Klamm, which is considered a strong taboo to the villagers. The villagers hold the officials and the castle in the highest regard, justifying, quite elaborately at times, even though they do attempt to appear to know what the officials do, the actions of the officials are never explained; they simply defend it as being absurd any other way. The number of assumptions and justifications about the functions of the officials and their dealings are enumerated through lengthy monologues of the villagers. Everyone appears to have an explanation for the officials' actions that appear to be founded on assumptions and gossip. The descriptions given by the townspeople often contradict themselves by having very different features and routines within a single person's description, but they do not try to hide the ambiguity; instead, they praise it as any other action or feature of an official should be praised. One of the more obvious contradictions between the "official word" and the village conception is the dissertation by the secretary Erlanger on Frieda's required return to service as a barmaid. K. is the only villager that knows that the request is being forced by the castle (even though Frieda may be the genesis), with no consideration of the inhabitants of the village. The castle is the ultimate bureaucracy with copious paperwork that the bureaucracy maintains is "flawless". This flawlessness is, of course, a lie; it is a flaw in the paperwork that has brought K. to the village. There are other failures of the system which are occasionally referred to. K. witnesses a flagrant misprocessing after his nighttime interrogation by Erlanger as a servant destroys paperwork when he cannot determine who the recipient should be. The castle's occupants appear to be all adult men and there is little reference to the castle other than to its bureaucratic functions. The two notable instances are the reference to a fire brigade and that Otto Brunswick's wife declares herself to be from the castle. The latter declaration builds the importance of Hans (Otto's son) in K.'s eyes, as a way to gain access to the castle officials. The functions of the officials are never mentioned. The officials that are discussed have one or more secretaries that do their work in their village. Although the officials come to the village, they do not interact with the villagers unless they need female companionship, implied to be sexual in nature.

Invisible Monsters

Chuck Palahniuk

The story concerns an unnamed disfigured woman who goes by multiple identities which include Shannon McFarland, Daisy St. Patience and Bubba Joan. Identities that were given to her by Brandy Alexander, with whom she spends the majority of the book. The novel opens on the wedding day of Ms. Evie Cottrell, whose house is burning to the ground. Brandy has been shot by Evie, and asks the narrator to tell her life story. She remembers how she first met Brandy, and the story is told in a non-linear sequence of memories. The narrator is the daughter of a farmer. Her older brother, Shane, who is believed to have died from AIDS after running away from home, garnered most of her parents' attention so in an effort to have some attention for herself, our narrator seeks out a career in modeling. Her best friend in modeling school is Evelyn "Evie" Cottrell. They participate in an infomercial together and "perform" in front of customers in department store displays. It is about this time that Evie begins a secret relationship with the narrator's boyfriend, Manus Kelley. While driving down the highway, the narrator is shot in the face. The shot rips off her jaw. She immediately drives to the hospital where she recovers. There she meets Brandy Alexander. They quickly become friends. Brandy is learning to speak like a woman and the narrator is learning to speak without a lower jaw. Also during these sessions, Brandy attempts to teach the narrator how to give herself a new life, a new identity. She gives her a new name, Daisy St. Patience, the first among many new identities given to our narrator. Evie isn't aware of this new identity transformation our narrator is going through, and Evie begs her to come live with her. As soon as she arrives, Evie informs her that she has to leave for Cancún for a couple weeks, leaving our narrator alone in the house. The first night, someone breaks in, and it is revealed to be Manus Kelley, holding a huge kitchen knife. Because of the rapid non-linear motion of the novel's events, the narrator has often referred to Manus as Seth, an identity given to him by Brandy, and it is not until this moment in the novel that the reader learns that Manus and Seth are the same person. The narrator locks Manus in a closet and sets fire to the house. The narrator forces Manus to ingest pills and medication before releasing him only to lock him in the trunk of his own car. She flees to the only place she can think of, Brandy's apartment. While at Brandy Alexander's apartment (which is a hotel room), she meets the Rhea sisters, Brandy's roommates. The three are drag queens and performers who are paying for all of Brandy's operations. At the hotel room, the narrator learns that Brandy Alexander is really her brother, Shane, and that he strives to look like his sister (our narrator). Brandy then leaves with our narrator, now called Daisy, and Manus, now called Seth. They travel the country, and while pretending to be viewing rich homes for sale, steal whatever drugs or medication they can find in the medicine cabinets. Later, the narrator hears of Brandy's stories of sexual abuse from their father and later from a policeman, who she concludes must have been Manus. One day, they are pretending to view a home, and it turns out the Realtor is the mother of Evie Cottrell. Her mother reveals that they are marrying Evie off to save themselves trouble, and also discloses that Evie used to be a man. Our narrator steals a wedding invitation and the trio attend the wedding. Here again, the narrator sets fire to the home, and thus we are returned to the opening scene of the novel. It is revealed that Brandy originally met Evie in a transgender meeting or conference. Evie told Brandy of her sister's gun accident, and it is revealed that Brandy has known that the narrator, Shannon McFarland, was her sister from the beginning of their friendship. Who could have shot the narrator is another part of the plot, with multiple possible suspects being named. When Brandy makes her revelation, the narrator reveals that she shot herself to escape from being beautiful. This parallels Shane's decision to become a woman; as he is not actually transgender, "Brandy's" choice is just to disfigure himself beyond being in the control of others. Sitting in Brandy's room, Shannon realizes that she has never truly loved anyone. She looks down at Brandy and realizes that she loves her brother. She leaves her pocket book with all of her identification; she tells a sleeping Brandy that since Shane is still confused about what he wants out of life, he can have the only thing she has left, her identity. The novel ends with Shannon leaving the hospital and into the world to find a new start. In the Remix version, it is revealed that Shannon, now going by Daisy St. Patience full-time, has created a cemetery after her parents have died, in which you can bury relatives you disliked or hated with spiteful sayings carved into the tombstones. Additionally, Daisy creates a group for disfigured girls called "Elephant Women." In the end, we see her at her wedding, getting married to an unidentified man.

Speak

Laurie Halse Anderson

The summer before her freshman year of high school, Melinda Sordino meets Andy Evans at a party. Outside in the woods, Andy rapes her. Melinda calls 911, but does not know what to say. The police come and break up the party. Melinda does not tell anyone what happened to her, and no one asks. She starts high school at Merryweather High School as an outcast, shunned by her peers for calling the police. She remains silent and sinks into depression. Melinda is befriended by Heather, a new girl, who clings to Melinda only to ditch her for "the Marthas". As Melinda's depression deepens, she begins to skip school, withdrawing from her parents and other authority figures, who see her silence as means of getting "attention". Only in Mr. Freeman's art class can Melinda express her inner struggle, as he shows interest in her artwork. She slowly befriends her lab partner, David Petrakis, who encourages her to speak up for herself. Throughout the school year, the past unfolds and Melinda gains the strength to confront what happened to her. Melinda learns that "IT", Andy Evans, goes to her school. Eventually, she allows memories of what happened the night she was raped to surface. But she remains silent. However, when her ex-best friend, Rachel, starts to date Andy, Melinda feels obligated to warn her. At first, Rachel ignores the warning. Melinda tries again, telling Rachel that Andy raped her at the party, but Rachel does not believe her. As the school year comes to a close, Melinda decides she does not want to hide anymore. While cleaning out her hideaway (an old janitor's closet), Andy confronts her, accusing her of lying about the rape. When he tries to assault her again, she finds her voice and screams "no". She fights back. Using a mirror shard against Andy's neck, she silences him. As word spreads about what happened in the closet, Melinda is suddenly removed from her role as "outcast". Melinda is able to acknowledge and accept that Andy raped her. Melinda finally finds the words to say what happened. She speaks to Mr. Freeman.

Ripley Under Water

Patricia Highsmith

Having now mostly retired from his life of crime, Tom Ripley spends his days tending his garden and playing the harpsichord at his French home near Fontainbleau which he shares with his wife, Heloise. However, the calm and serenity of his life is shattered when obnoxious American David Pritchard arrives on the scene with his submissive, pathetically dysfunctional wife Janice. Pritchard is a decidedly eccentric stalker and heckler who has delved into Ripley's nefarious past. His current obsession is the disappearance of Thomas Murchison, an art collector whom Ripley murdered in Ripley Under Ground when he threatened to blow the lid off Ripley's art forgery scheme. Pritchard initially harasses Ripley by talking about his knowledge of the suspicious death of Dickie Greenleaf (who Ripley murdered in The Talented Mr. Ripley), photographing his house and following him on a trip to Tangier. While in Tangier, Ripley gets into a fight with Pritchard in a bar. Upon returning to France, Pritchard becomes a serious threat when he starts dragging local canals for Murchison's corpse and finally locates it. Pritchard dumps the skeletonized remains on Ripley's doorstep and then calls the police. Ripley finds and stashes the headless body before they arrive. That night, Ripley takes the remains to the Pritchards' temporary home nearby and dumps it in the pond outside. The Pritchards hear the splash and come out to investigate. They subsequently fall in while trying to hook the body with a garden tool. Both are apparently unable to swim and perish together in a mere two meters of water and muck. Police investigate but come up empty-handed. Ripley safely disposes of the last piece of evidence connecting him with Murchison, and the final installment of the Ripliad comes to a close.

The Broken Ear

Hergé

An idol that originally belonged to a Native American nation in South America is stolen from the Museum of Ethnography in Brussels. The following day it is back in the museum, along with a note apologizing for the inconvenience caused, saying that the reason for the theft had been a bet. Tintin, who is among the reporters looking into the story, realizes that the replacement is a fake, the distinction being an ear broken on the original but intact on the replacement. He peruses a book from his own library with an image of the idol, drawn by an explorer: it confirms that one of the ears is damaged, while the one back in the museum is not. Tintin then reads that a wood carver called Balthazar has died, apparently from a gas leak. However his parrot has survived despite the leak. Tintin realises he was murdered and the gas turned on later to make it look like an accident. Suspecting that Balthazar made a duplicate of the idol and was murdered, Tintin tries to obtain the man's parrot in order to get a clue to the killer's identity. But he soon discovers that a pair of South Americans – Alonso Perez and Ramon Bada – are also on the trail of the idol, following the same clues and employing more ruthless methods. They even make attempts on Tintin's life. The parrot eventually repeats the last words of his late owner, naming a man called Rodrigo Tortilla as his killer. Alonzo and Ramon know Tortilla, and Tintin, having tracked them down, overhears their conversation. This takes the three men, and their attempts to outwit each other, to South America, where the plot thickens. During the journey by ship, Alonzo and Ramon hear from a sailor of the cabin Tortilla is in. That night they murder Tortilla, coshing him and throwing him overboard. It was he who stole the idol from the museum and murdered Balthazar after getting him to produce the copy that Tortilla placed in the museum. Among his luggage is yet another replica of the stolen idol. Tintin, who was also on the ship in disguise, has Alonzo and Ramon arrested as they dock in the main port of the republic of San Theodoros. But when soldiers arrive on board to take them away, they are led by a colonel who knows Ramon and Alonzo and, once ashore, lets them go. He then helps them to lure Tintin to shore where he is framed for terrorism and sentenced to death by switching his luggage with another with is full of bombs. In San Theodoros General Alcazar and his rebels are fighting against the ruling General Tapioca. Just as Tintin finds himself at the gun tips of the firing squad, General Alcazar's rebels save him. Unusually, Tintin has been drinking heavily because, at the start of the execution, the soldiers found out that their guns had been tampered with and the commander treated him to a "little apertif" of aguardiente, the national drink. Thus, in a drunken state, Tintin proclaims his support for Alcazar in front of the firing squad, interrupted by an uprising. Now in command of the country, General Alcazar honours Tintin by making him Colonel. Alcazar's aide-de-camp, Colonel Diaz, suggests he make Tintin a corporal instead, as they have 49 corporals and 3,487 colonels. In anger Alcazar makes him a corporal and makes Tintin his new aide-de-camp. Tintin's new position of power is not without its problems. For one thing his humiliated predecessor swears revenge and makes several bungled attempts to kill him and Alcazar. Alonzo and Ramon also continue in their attempts to get rid of him and recover the genuine idol. The idol found in Tortilla's possession has turned out to be yet another fake. Tintin is lassoed by two men at night, knocked out, tied up, and taken to a house where Alonzo and Ramon are. They are erroneously convinced that Tintin knows the location of the original idol and do not believe his denials, forcing him to lie about its whereabouts. Tintin manages to escape when a lightning strike frees him just before Alonzo shoots him, and captures Alonzo and Ramon. He takes them to prison, but they are soon free again after escaping. To add to this, two rival oil companies, General American Oil and British South-American Petrol, manipulate the governments of San Theodoros and the neighbouring state of Nuevo Rico, pushing both countries to war in order to get control of some profitable oil fields. When Tintin attempts to prevent war, R.W. Trickler, a representative of General American Oil, arranges for him to be killed by a man named Pablo. Pablo's attempt fails, due to a simultaneous assassination attempt by Ramon. His thrown knife goes ahead of Tintin, cutting free a bunch of bananas which falls onto Pablo as he shoots at Tintin. Tintin captures Pablo, who begs for mercy, and lets him go. Trickler then frames Tintin for espionage and the young man is soon sentenced to death. Pablo, grateful that Tintin spared his life, assembles a gang of men, breaks into the prison and frees Tintin and Snowy. Tintin and Snowy escape by car to the border with Nuevo-Rico, but come under fire by Nuevo-Rican border guards with a Hotchkiss M1914 and a Pak 38. The incident is exaggerated in the press and used by the belligerent governments of both countries as justification for the war that Tintin tried to prevent. Tintin escapes the Nuevo-Ricans and discovers that he is not far from the Arumbaya River. The Arumbayas, who live isolated in the rainforest, were the original owners of the idol. The idol itself is of no real value and Tintin has been wondering why so many people have been willing to steal and kill for it. He believes that the Arumbayas hold the answer and convinces a reluctant native to take him to them. However the native later leaves Tintin. In the rainforest Tintin meets Ridgewell, a British explorer living with the Arumbayas. They are captured by the Rumbabas, the enemies of the Arumbayas, tied up, and taken to the village, where the natives plan to cut off their heads and shrink them. However an idol they are about to be sacrificed before seems to say it forbids their sacrifice, though after they are freed Ridgewell says he used ventriloquism. The witch-doctor has told a man to cure his son he must bring him the heart of the first animal he finds in the forest. Snowy brings Ridgewell's cloth and quiver, the cloth was used to bandage Snowy's tail when Ridgewell accidentally shot it with a dart when demonstrating his aim by shooting a flower. The man brings Snowy back live, thinking Ridgewell may be in danger, but the Witch-Doctor says if he tells anybody he will call down the spirits and the man's family will be turned into frogs. He hopes Ridgewell dies so he may regain control over the tribe. He is about to kill the bound Snowy, but Ridgewell and Tintin get to the village in time to stop him. Tintin learns that the idol was offered to a previous explorer called Walker (who also happens to be the author of the book "Travels in the Americas" (London, 1875) Tintin had read earlier) as a token of friendship during his stay with the tribe. But as soon as the explorers left, the Arumbayas discovered that a sacred stone had disappeared, which cured whoever touched it of snake-bite. Lopez, a Mestizo interpreter to the explorers, had stolen it. The Arumbayas were furious and pursued Walker's expedition, massacring almost all the explorers. Walker himself managed to escape with the idol while a wounded Lopez barely got himself out of the jungle. Tintin believes that Lopez hid the diamond in the idol so that he could retrieve the stone later. Tintin leaves the Arumbayas only to come across Alonzo and Ramon who have deserted from the San Theodoran Army after they were drafted during the war with Nuevo-Rico. Realizing he lied to them before, they again try to force him to reveal the location of the idol. However, Tintin manages to capture them. In Alonzo's wallet he finds a note signed by Lopez which confirms that the diamond is in the idol. The note once belonged to Rodrigo Tortilla, the man who originally stole the idol from the museum and was later murdered by Ramon and Alonzo. How Tortilla is connected to Lopez is not revealed. Alonzo and Ramon later escape from Tintin. Tintin and Snowy have reached a dead end so they return home, where they hear the news that San Theodoros has made peace with Nuevo-Rico, and the oil companies' machinations went for nothing because there was no oil after all. Then Tintin is surprised to find copies of the idol, with a broken ear, being sold in numerous shops. They go to the factory that produces them and meet Balthazar's brother, who had found the idol among his late brother's affairs. However he has sold the original idol to a wealthy American called Samuel Goldbarr, who has left for America. Ramon and Alonzo have already asked him. Using a plane Tintin manages to catch up with the ship, only to find that Alonzo and Ramon are already aboard and have finally got hold of the idol. During the confrontation the idol falls and breaks, revealing the diamond. All three of them try to save it, but it falls into the ocean and they fall into the ocean after it while fighting. Tintin is saved by the crew. However, Alonzo and Ramon drown (and are subsequently shown in one panel being pulled by little winged devils to Hell. However it is speculated this might be an imaginary sequence by Tintin or a hallucination). The diamond has been lost to the ocean. Tintin tells Mr Goldbarr the idol is stolen property and he agrees it should be returned. The original idol is glued and tied back together and returned to the museum.

The Secret of Chimneys

Agatha Christie

Seven years previously, the Balkan state of Herzoslovakia had one of its periodic revolutions that resulted in the death and bodily mutilation of its monarch, King Nicholas IV and his wife Queen Varaga. The latter formerly was Angèle Mory, a dancer at the Folies Bergère, who had been bribed by the Herzoslovakian revolutionary organisation "Comrades of the Red Hand" to lure the King into a trap when he visited Paris, but instead double-crossed them, seduced and married Nicholas, and was introduced in Herzoslovakia as a Countess and descendant of the Romanoffs. When realizing the deception, the populace reacted with an uprising and the establishment of a republic which has been in force ever since. Now the people of Herzoslovakia wish to restore the monarchy and offer the vacant crown to the exiled Prince Michael Obolovitch, a distant relation of the murdered King. The British government is acting as powerbroker to the restoration in return for oil concessions in the state. The head of the syndicate who is financing the deal, Herman Isaacstein, is to meet Prince Michael at the English country house of Chimneys whose reluctant owner, the Marquis of Caterham, is bullied into hosting the get-together by George Lomax, a foreign office minister. A difficulty has arisen though: a Count Stylptitch, twice Prime Minister of Herzoslovakia and in exile in Paris since the revolution, died two months previously and his memoirs—believed to contain many indiscreet references to the Herzoslovakia monarchy—were smuggled to Bulawayo in the care of Jimmy McGrath, a gold prospector who four years ago saved the Count's life in Paris. As part of his will, the Count has asked McGrath to deliver the manuscript of his memoirs in person to publishers in London on or before 13 October in return for one thousand pounds and McGrath is due to arrive in London soon. However, McGrath's gold prospecting seems about to bear fruit and he is loath to leave Africa. In Bulawayo he meets an old friend and fellow adventurer, Anthony Cade, and asks him to impersonate him and deliver the manuscript for a quarter share. McGrath had another task for Anthony: by saving a drowning "Dago", coincidentally also a Herzoslovakian, he came into the possession of a set of letters from an Englishwoman called Virginia Revel to her lover, a Captain O'Neill, which the "Dago" had used to blackmail Mrs Revel and which McGrath wanted to be returned to her, thus saving her from further embarrassment. Anthony agreed to deliver both sets of documents. We learn that Virginia Revel is the widow of a former British diplomat to Herzoslovakia, whom everybody falls in love with and whom Lomax has asked to be one of the house party at Chimneys to charm Prince Michael. Arriving in London, Anthony checks into the Blitz hotel where several attempts by fair means and foul are made to obtain the manuscript. The final one is at night when a hotel waiter, Giuseppe, enters Anthony's room. He wakes and the two men fight but Giuseppe gets away, not with the manuscript but with Virginia Revel's letters. The next day Giuseppe visits Virginia and blackmails her with one of the letters. She doesn't reveal to the man that the letters are not hers, but playfully gives him 40 pounds and asks him to return the next evening for the rest. Anthony completes his task for Jimmy McGrath when a Mr Holmes of the publishers collects the manuscript from him and pays him. He only then receives, in the name of McGrath, a government invitation to the meeting at Chimneys where it is hoped he will be persuaded not to hand over the manuscript at all. Anthony decides to travel under his own name, stay at a village inn outside the house and investigate matters. Before that he looks up Virginia. When she returns home, she meets Anthony at the door and finds Giuseppe in her study, recently killed with a pistol bearing the engraving "Virginia". In Giuseppe's pocket is a scrap of paper with "Chimneys 11.45 Thursday". Anthony finds out about Virginia's invitation to that house and deduces that someone is attempting to prevent her going there. To outwit them he disposes of the body and follows Virginia, who instinctively trusts this "Ex-Eton and Oxford" stranger, to Chimneys. At 11.45 on the Thursday night a murder is committed at Chimneys on the eve of the concessions meeting. Travelling under the pseudonym of "Count Stanislaus" the murdered man is none other than Prince Michael Obolovitch. Superintendent Battle of Scotland Yard is called in to investigate. Footprints are spotted in the grass leading to and from the open window to the council chamber where the body was found and the police’s suspicions are immediately drawn to the arrival of a stranger at the village inn the night before, Anthony Cade. Further investigations are confounded though when the self-confident Anthony suddenly appears at the house and introduces himself; moreover he tells Battle and the police all of the events to date, judiciously omitting the story of Virginia's letters and the murder and concealment of Giuseppe. He further reveals to them that he did indeed come to Chimneys the previous night and manages to convince the investigators that he was lured there on a pretext and that he had been set up for the crime. When Anthony is shown the body of Prince Michael, he is shocked to recognize "Mr Holmes" who collected the memoirs from him. Aside from Isaacstein and Virginia (who vouches for Anthony) a third visitor to the house is the book collector Hiram P. Fish who is there to inspect Lord Caterham's collection of first editions. Two strands of investigation take place in the house: the official one and Anthony's own. The police are interested in who benefits from Prince Michael's death and are told that his successor for the vacant throne is Michael's first cousin, Prince Nicholas, a somewhat dissolute young man who perhaps has died in the Congo. Anthony asks Lord Caterham’s daughter, "Bundle" Brent, after the occupant of a room whose light he saw go on and off after he heard the shot at the time of the murder. This turns out to be Mademoiselle Brun, the French governess to her two young sisters, who has been with them only two months from her previous position in a Château in Dinard. There is a further French connection with the matter when Anthony finds a bearded stranger with a French accent on the grounds claiming to be lost while on a walk from his stay at the village inn. The French master jewel thief King Victor, a few months earlier released from jail, is a suspect, since Angèle Mory, in her days before Nicholas IV, was his accomplice and, while Queen, was very likely involved in King Victor's theft of the Koh-i-Noor diamond from the Tower of London (a paste copy being substituted and the public not being informed of the event). Queen Varaga was a guest at Chimneys at the time and it is believed she hid the jewel somewhere in the house and now, seven years after her death, King Victor has come to get it back. After impersonating the second-in-line Prince Nicholas in the United States for a scam, he is now rumored to be in England. Anthony meets the middle-aged Mlle Brun and gets permission to go to Dinard to follow up on her references. While he is away there is a midnight break-in at Chimneys when Virginia and Bill Eversleigh, one of Lomax's staff from the Foreign Office, surprise a shadowy intruder who is searching the council chamber. After a fight, the intruder gets away. Anthony returns from France—Mlle Brun has proven to be above suspicion—and learns of the break-in. Expecting another attempt, he joins Virginia and Bill that night when they successfully apprehend the bearded French stranger, only to discover it is Monsieur Lemoine of the Sûreté, whose arrival had been expected by Battle. This officer had seen movement in the council chamber, but the interference by Anthony and his friends meant the suspect got away again. Lemoine is on the trail of King Victor and he tells them that Angèle Mory sent coded letters to King Victor using the aliases of "Captain O’Neill" and "Virginia Revel" (who Mory knew from her husband's posting to the British Embassy in Herzoslovakia) and it is these that have been mistaken as the blackmailing letters. Stolen from King Victor, they found their way to Africa and, entirely coincidentally, to Jimmy McGrath. That afternoon, these letters mysteriously reappear on Anthony's dressing-table at Chimneys. Battle's theory is that King Victor, unable to decode the letters and aware that the council chamber is now watched, returned them to let the authorities decode the message and find the jewel, which he will then take at his convenience. They decide to take the bait and employ an expert codebreaker, Professor Wynwood, who deduces that the coded message tells that Stylptitch had re-hidden the jewel and had left the clue "Richmond seven straight eight left three right". Bundle equates this to an old passage behind a painting of the Earl of Richmond, but the trail only leads to another cipher (later revealed to represent a rose). Boris Anchoukoff, Prince Michael's loyal valet hands Anthony an address in Dover ("dropped by that foreign gentleman"), and Anthony slips off to explore that location. It is a den for King Victor's men and the "Comrades of the Red Hand". Just when Anthony locates a hostage, Mr Fish captures him with an automatic gun. Still, we find Anthony next making preparations and assembling all people at Chimneys. He reveals that the "Richmond" reference in the code was to a biography of the Earl of Richmond in the library. But this is a trap for the murderer of Prince Michael: Mlle Brun, in reality the supposedly dead Queen Varaga (whose "body" seven years ago was a substitution, mutilated beyond recognition). Caught searching for the jewel in the library, Varaga is killed in a struggle over her revolver with Anchoukoff. The real Mlle Brun may have been kidnapped on the passage from Dinard while the murder of Giuseppe in Virginia's house was indeed to stop Virginia from going to Chimneys as she may have recognised the former Queen. There was another visitor though who knew her—Prince Michael—and when he found her searching the council chamber, she shot him. Anthony reveals another substitution when he produces the real M Lemoine: the hostage in Dover. The impostor is none other than King Victor, who tries to escape, but is stopped by Mr. Fish, in reality an American agent. Anthony has several final surprises. The memoirs he gave to "Mr Holmes" were false: he gives the real memoirs (which have no incriminating anecdotes after all) to Jimmy to deliver to the publishers to get his one thousand pounds. The "Richmond" clue refers to a rose on the ground with the name "Richmond", where the Koh-i-Noor is subsequently recovered. Anthony then presents himself as the missing Prince Nicholas, who had disappeared himself in the Congo and through inconceivable coincidence was led into this adventure, and offers to be Herzoslovakia's next king. In the morning he has secretly married Virginia, who will be his Queen.

Tintin in the Congo

Hergé

Belgian reporter Tintin and his faithful dog Snowy travel to the Congo, where the pair are greeted by a cheering crowd of natives. Hiring a native boy, Coco, to assist him in his travels, Tintin has to rescue Snowy from being eaten by a crocodile prior to recognising a stowaway who had been aboard the ship that had brought them to the continent. The stowaway attempts to kill Tintin, who is saved by monkeys throwing coconuts down from a tree, knocking the villain unconscious. He then finds that Snowy has been kidnapped by a monkey, and rescues him. The next morning, Tintin, Snowy, and Coco crash their car into a train, which the reporter subsequently fixes and then tows to the Babaorum's village, where he is greeted by the king and accompanies him on a hunt the next day. During this, Tintin is knocked unconscious by a lion, but is rescued by Snowy, who bites the carnivore's tail off. Tintin gains the admiration of the natives, making the Babaorum witch-doctor Muganga jealous; with the help of the stowaway, he plots to accuse Tintin of destroying the tribe's sacred idol. Imprisoned by the villagers, Tintin is rescued by Coco and then shows them footage of Muganga conspiring with the stowaway to destroy the idol, something which incenses them. Tintin goes on to become a hero in the village, with one local woman bowing down to him and stating "White man very great! Has good spirits… White mister is big juju man!" Angered, Muganga starts a war between the Babaorum and their neighbours, the M'Hatuvu, whose king leads the attack on the Babaorum village. Tintin outwits them and the M'Hatuvu people subsequently cease hostilities and come to idolise Tintin too. Muganga and the stowaway then plot to kill Tintin by making it look like a leopard kill, but again Tintin survives, even saving Muganga from being killed by a boa constrictor, for which Muganga pleads mercy and ends his hostilities. The stowaway attempts to capture Tintin again, eventually succeeding disguised as a Catholic missionary. In the ensuing fight across a waterfall, the stowaway is eaten by crocodiles. After reading a letter that the stowaway had in his pocket, Tintin finds that a figure known only as A.C. has ordered that he be killed. Capturing a criminal who was trying to rendezvous with the now dead stowaway, Tintin learns that it is the American gangster Al Capone who has ordered his death. Capone had "decided to increase his fortune by controlling diamond production in Africa", and feared that Tintin might be onto his plans. With the aid of the colonial police, Tintin arrests the rest of the diamond smuggling gang.

The Black Island

Hergé

While walking in the Belgian countryside Tintin sees an airplane making an emergency landing. He goes to help and notices that it does not have a registration number on it. As he approaches the plane he is shot by the pilot. Tintin recovers at a hospital where police detectives Thomson and Thompson inform him that a similar plane has crashed in a field in Sussex, England. Tintin decides to investigate for himself. Tintin takes a train from Brussels to the coast in order to board the ferry from Ostend to Dover, England. During the journey he is framed for the assault and robbery of a fellow passenger (who is in fact part of the mysterious criminal gang Tintin has inadvertently stumbled upon). Thompson and Thomson arrest Tintin, but he escapes by handcuffing them to each other while they are asleep. Arriving in England, Tintin is kidnapped by the same men who framed him. They take him to a clifftop, intending to make him jump off it, but Tintin escapes with Snowy's help. His investigations lead him to Dr. J.W. Müller who, with his chauffeur Ivan, is part of a gang of money counterfeiters, led by Puschov, the so-called victim on the train. Tintin's pursuit of Müller and Ivan results in a plane crash in rural Scotland, where a friendly farmer gives him a kilt to wear. He visits the pub in the coastal village of Kiltoch, where he is told strange stories about the Black Island, where an evil beast is said to roam, killing humans. Tintin buys a boat from a villager and heads for the island, where he is almost killed by a gorilla named Ranko and finds his boat missing. Stranded on the island, Tintin discovers that it is the hideout of the gang of counterfeiters led by Puschov and Müller. Tintin temporarily manages to subdue the gang (they free themselves shortly afterwards) and calls the police on their radio signaling device after watching Thompson and Thomson win an air show race on a television set (though they didn't mean to). After a desperate holding-out action (in which Ranko's arm is broken), the gang is captured and Tintin returns to mainland Kiltoch, but the media and press do not stay very long after Ranko appears. The gang is jailed, the now submissive Ranko is placed in a Glasgow zoo, and Tintin decides to return home via a plane trip, which Thompson and Thomson, who have reconciled with Tintin, turn down due to their previous harrowing experience.

The Secret of the Unicorn

Hergé

Whilst browsing in a market in Brussels, Tintin purchases an old model ship which he wishes to give to his friend Captain Haddock as a gift. Two strangers, the model ship collector Ivan Ivanovitch Sakharine and a mysterious figure known as Barnaby, then unsuccessfully try to independently convince Tintin to sell the model to them. Returning with the model to his flat, Snowy knocks it over and its mainmast is broken. Repairing it, and showing the ship to Haddock, the latter is amazed that it is actually a model of the Unicorn, a 17th-century warship captained by his ancestor, Sir Francis Haddock. The model ship is subsequently stolen, and it is revealed that Sakharine owns an identical model of the Unicorn, although this was soon stolen. Returning to his flat, Tintin discovers a rolled-up parchment hidden under furniture, on which is a part of a riddle that points to the location of treasure, and he realises that this must have been hidden in the mast of the model which Snowy had broken. Informing Haddock about the riddle, the captain tells him of how Sir Francis Haddock battled with the pirate Red Rackham somewhere in the West Indies, before killing him in single combat and blowing up his ship. Haddock gets somewhat carried away in his telling of the story: destroying his flat while re-enacting the battle scenes. He also reveals that three models exist in total. Barnaby then turns up at Tintin's doorstep but is shot down by unknown assailants. Later Tintin is kidnapped by the perpetrators of the shooting. They are revealed to be the Bird brothers, two unscrupulous antique dealers who own a third model of the Unicorn. They are behind the theft of Tintin's model and Sakharine's parchment, knowing that only with all three parchments can the location of the treasure be found for the following book Red Rackham's treasure. Tintin escapes from the Bird brothers' country estate, Marlinspike Hall, whilst the Captain arrives with the police officers Thompson and Thomson to arrest them. However, it is found that they do not have two of the parchments. These are found to have been stolen by Aristides Silk, a kleptomaniac specialising in wallet-snatching. As the pickpocket is cornered, his cache of stolen wallets is found, amongst which are the Bird Brothers' wallets containing the missing two parchments. By combining the three parchments, Tintin and Haddock discover the coordinates of the hidden treasure, and begin to plan for an expedition to find it. The story ends where it started, leading Tintin to the rest of the treasure.

Red Rackham's Treasure

Hergé

In the previous adventure, The Secret of the Unicorn, Tintin and Captain Haddock discover three parchments revealing the location of the Unicorn, a 17th century navy ship commanded by Haddock's ancestor Sir Francis Haddock. The Unicorn was scuttled by Sir Francis while battling the pirate Red Rackham for his treasure. Tintin and Haddock believe that the pirate's treasure is in the remains of the sunken Unicorn. Tintin and Captain Haddock hire a fishing trawler, the Sirius, to search for the treasure. As the crew prepare for the search, their plans are discovered and publicized by the press, forcing Tintin and Haddock to deal with numerous strangers claiming to be Red Rackham's descendants and insisting on a share of the treasure. They are quickly driven away by Haddock, who reminds them he is the descendant of the man who killed Red Rackham. Another petitioner is Professor Cuthbert Calculus, an eccentric and hard-of-hearing inventor who offers the use of a special shark-shaped, electrically powered one-man submarine to help search for the sunken ship without being bothered by the numerous sharks in the area. The treasure hunters turn him down and prepare to embark. Before Tintin and the Captain clear the port, the two detectives Thomson and Thompson join the crew to protect their friends from the possible threat of the rival treasure hunters, the Bird brothers. Shortly after departure, Tintin and Haddock discover that Calculus has stowed away on board. The professor has stashed the unassembled parts of his submarine in the hold, removing the Captain's crates of whisky in the process. Despite initially threatening to throw Calculus into the hold on bread and water, Haddock grudgingly decides to keep him along for the trip. Tintin and Captain Haddock reach the location stated in Sir Francis Haddock's parchments. Initially, the party cannot find anything at the coordinates (, off the Mouchoir Bank), but then Tintin hypothesizes that Sir Francis Haddock used the Paris Meridian instead of Greenwich (which would yield , off the Navidad Bank). Sure enough, the ship reaches an unknown and uninhabited island. As they come ashore to explore it, the Captain stubs his toe on a piece of wood protruding from the sand, which is excavated and turns out to be the remains of Sir Francis Haddock's jolly boat. As they penetrate into the interior of the island, they encounter numerous skulls, which Tintin deduces are the remains of the island's cannibalistic former inhabitants. There is also a magnificent pagan icon of Sir Francis, and numerous parrots that repeat the Haddockian argot, which an amused Tintin realizes has been passed down for generations. Calculus's submarine proves useful in searching for the sunken Unicorn, while the actual examination of the wreck itself is performed with a hardhat diving suit. Thomson and Thompson soon begin to rue their decision to join the treasure hunt, because they are consigned to manning the air pumps supplying the diving suit when Tintin, and later the Captain, explore the wreck. While facing complications like shark attacks, they discover a cutlass, a gold bejeweled cross, a strongbox of old documents, the figurehead of the ship and, to Captain Haddock's delight, a large supply of vintage Jamaican rum. Although the search is otherwise unproductive, the crew spots a large wooden cross on the island itself and Tintin believes that the reference in Sir Francis' parchments to "the Eagle's cross" could refer to it as the marker for the treasure's location. Upon coming to the cross the party begins to dig, but after a while Tintin realizes that they are following a false lead, considering that Sir Francis would not deliberately leave his treasure on an island he did not intend to return to, so they return to the Sirius. Time passes. Although there are further dives to the wreck, they are unable to find the treasure itself and they go home disappointed. Calculus's examination of the documents from the retrieved strongbox allows him to determine that Sir Francis was the owner of the large estate of Marlinspike Hall, the former home of the Bird brothers. Upon this discovery, Tintin insists that Haddock must purchase the estate, which is up for auction. Calculus, who has received large sums of money from the government after a profitable sale of his submarine design, helps his friend acquire his family home. After purchasing the Hall, Tintin and Captain Haddock explore the cellars of the main house. Amongst the Bird Brothers' cluttered antiques they find a statue of Saint John holding a cross. Tintin suddenly shouts out, "The Eagle's cross!" as he remembers the Saint is called "The Eagle of Patmos". At the statue's feet is a globe. On it, Tintin locates the island where Sir Francis Haddock was marooned. He touches that point and discovers it to be a trigger button—the globe springs opens and Red Rackham's treasure is found hidden inside.

The Pelican Brief

John Grisham

The story begins with the assassination of two philosophically divergent Supreme Court Justices. Liberal Justice Rosenberg is killed at his home, while the conservative Justice Jensen is killed inside a gay porn cinema. The circumstances surrounding their deaths, as well as the deaths themselves, shock and confuse a politically divided nation. While the public speculates about who may have killed them and why, the main character, Darby Shaw, a Tulane University Law School student, decides to research the two justices' records and cases pending before the Court, suspecting the real motive might be simple greed, not politics. She writes a legal brief speculating that the assassinations were committed on behalf of Victor Mattiece, an oil tycoon wanting to drill for oil on Louisiana marshland which is a major habitat of an endangered species of pelican. A court case on appeal, filed on his behalf to gain access to the land, is expected to make its way to the Supreme Court. The two slain justices had a history of environmentalism — their only common view — and thus Darby surmises that Mattiece, who has a pre-existing business relationship with the President, hoped to turn the case in his favor by eliminating two justices, thus leaving his friend the President in a position to appoint new justices more likely to rule in his favor. Darby shows the brief, which becomes known as the 'Pelican Brief', to her law professor/mentor/lover, Thomas Callahan, who shows it to his Washington-based friend, Gavin Verheek, a lawyer working for the FBI. Both men are killed soon after. Afraid that she will become the next target, Darby goes on the run. She tries to hide by making a few disguises and almost getting killed. Eventually, she contacts the Washington Post reporter Gray Grantham, and the two set out to prove her brief correct. The various parties quickly take sides. The President and his Chief of Staff, Fletcher Coal, try to cover up the White House's connection to Mattiece, which would be politically damaging. The FBI wants to bring in Darby to protect her and to verify her story. Allies of Mattiece try to kill her to make sure the cover-up holds. Eventually, every piece of the story is in place. Grantham obtains videotaped testimony from a pseudonymous lawyer who calls himself "Garcia", as well as a document that points to involvement by Garcia's law firm which worked for Mattiece. With this evidence, Grantham and Darby approach the Post chief editor. The story appears in the next edition with front page photographs of Coal, Mattiece, etc. FBI chief Denton Voyles is ecstatic and shows up at Coal's residence early in the morning to confront him. Darby crisscrosses the country, then reaches an island in the Caribbean Sea. The story ends with Grantham joining Darby in the Caribbean and agreeing to stay for at least a month (after that one month at a time)

The Fall of the House of Usher

Edgar Allan Poe

The legend opens with the unnamed narrator arriving at the house of his friend, Roderick Usher, having received a letter from him in a distant part of the country complaining of an illness and asking for his help. Although Poe wrote this short story before the invention of modern psychological science, Roderick's pathagens can be described according to its terminology. They include a form of sensory overload known as hyperesthesia (hypersensitivity to light, sounds, smells, and tastes), hypochondria (an excessive preoccupation or worry about having a serious illness), and acute anxiety. It is revealed that Roderick's twin sister, Madeline, is also ill and falls into cataleptic, deathlike trances. The narrator is impressed with Roderick's paintings, and attempts to cheer him by reading with him and listening to his improvised musical compositions on the guitar. Roderick sings "The Haunted Palace", then tells the narrator that he believes the house he lives in to be alive, and that this sentience arises from the arrangement of the masonry and vegetation surrounding it. Roderick later informs the narrator that his sister has died and insists that she be entombed for two weeks in a vault (family tomb) in the house before being permanently buried. The narrator helps Roderick put the body in the tomb, and he notes that Madeline has rosy cheeks, as some do after death. They inter her, but over the next week both Roderick and the narrator find themselves becoming increasingly agitated for no apparent reason. A storm begins. Roderick comes to the narrator's bedroom, which is situated directly above the vault, and throws open his window to the storm. He notices that the tarn surrounding the house seems to glow in the dark, as it glowed in Roderick Usher's paintings, although there is no lightning. The narrator attempts to calm Roderick by reading aloud The Mad Tryst, a novel involving a knight named Ethelred who breaks into a hermit's dwelling in an attempt to escape an approaching storm, only to find a palace of gold guarded by a dragon. He also finds hanging on the wall a shield of shining brass on which is written a legend: that the one who slays the dragon wins the shield. With a stroke of his mace, Ethelred kills the dragon, who dies with a piercing shriek, and proceeds to take the shield, which falls to the floor with an unnerving clatter. As the narrator reads of the knight's forcible entry into the dwelling, cracking and ripping sounds are heard somewhere in the house. When the dragon is described as shrieking as it dies, a shriek is heard, again within the house. As he relates the shield falling from off the wall, a reverberation, metallic and hollow, can be heard. Roderick becomes increasingly hysterical, and eventually exclaims that these sounds are being made by his sister, who was in fact alive when she was entombed and that Roderick Usher knew that she was alive. The bedroom door is then blown open to reveal Madeline standing there. She falls on her brother, and both land on the floor as corpses. The narrator then flees the house, and, as he does so, notices a flash of light causing him to look back upon the House of Usher, in time to watch it break in two, the fragments sinking into the tarn.

Tintin and the Picaros

Hergé

Tintin hears in the news that Bianca Castafiore, her maid Irma, pianist Igor Wagner, and Thomson and Thompson have been imprisoned in San Theodoros for allegedly attempting to overthrow the military dictatorship of General Tapioca, who has yet again deposed Tintin's old friend, General Alcazar. Tintin, Calculus, and Haddock soon are accused themselves and, travelling to San Theodoros to clear their names (though Tintin at first refuses, only to change his mind and follow a couple of days later), find themselves caught in a trap laid by their old enemy, Colonel Sponsz, who has been sent by the Eastern Bloc nation of Borduria to assist Tapioca. Sponsz has concocted the conspiracy of which Tintin and his friends are accused in a plot to wreak revenge upon them for humiliating him in The Calculus Affair. Escaping, Tintin, Haddock, and Calculus join Alcazar and his small band of guerrillas, the Picaros, in the jungle near a village of the Arumbaya people. Meanwhile, in a show trial orchestrated by Sponsz, Castafiore is sentenced to life in prison and the Thompsons are ordered to be executed by a firing squad. All three show great contempt at the injustice of the proceedings. Tintin enlists Alcazar's help in freeing his friends, but upon arrival at his jungle headquarters, finds that Alcazar's men have become corrupt drunkards since Tapioca started dropping copious quantities of alcohol near their camp. Additionally, Alcazar is continually henpecked by his shrewish wife, Peggy, who nags him constantly about his failure to achieve a successful revolution. Fortunately, Calculus has invented a pill that makes alcohol disgusting to anyone who ingests it (which he proves to have tested on Haddock, much to the latter's annoyance). Tintin offers to use the pill to cure the Picaros of their alcoholism if Alcazar agrees to refrain from killing Tapioca and his men. Alcazar reluctantly agrees. Moments after his men are cured, Jolyon Wagg arrives with his musical troupe the Jolly Follies, who intend to perform at the upcoming carnival in San Theodoros. Alcazar, with a little advice from Tintin, launches an assault on Tapioca's palace during the carnival by 'borrowing' the troupe's costumes and sneaking his men into the capital. He topples Tapioca, but on Tintin's urging, does not execute him, as is the tradition. Tapioca is instead forced to publicly surrender his powers to Alcazar, and is banished, while a disappointed Sponsz is sent back to Borduria. Meanwhile, Thomson and Thompson are due to be shot on the same day as the carnival. Although as naive as ever in their observations, the detectives show courage by refusing to be blindfolded. Tintin and Haddock reach the state prison in time to prevent the executions from occurring. Castafiore, her maid, and her pianist are also released, and Alcazar can finally give his wife the palace he has promised. With all matters resolved, Tintin and his friends leave. As they fly home, Tintin and Haddock express gratitude about being able to go home. The second-to-last panel shows a final, skeptical political message: as under Tapioca, the city slums are filled with wretched, starving people and patrolled by apathetic police. Nothing has changed, except the police uniforms and a Viva Tapioca sign that has been changed to read Viva Alcazar.

Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder

Richard Dawkins

The first chapter describes several ways in which the universe appears beautiful and poetic when viewed scientifically. However, it first introduces an additional reason to embrace science. Time and space are vast, so the probability that the reader came to be alive here and now, as opposed to another time or place, was slim. More important, the probability that the reader came to be alive at all were even slimmer: the correct structure of atoms had to align in the universe. Given how special these circumstances are, the "noble" thing to do is employ the allotted several decades of human life towards understanding that universe. Rather than simply feeling connected with nature, one should rise above this "anaesthetic of familiarity" and observe the universe scientifically.

The Seven Crystal Balls

Hergé

On board a train, Tintin reads a newspaper article about seven explorers who have returned from a two-year ethnographic expedition in the Andes, where they unearthed the tomb of the Inca, Rascar Capac. A man says to him, "Think of all those Egyptologists, dying in mysterious circumstances after they'd opened the tomb of the pharaoh...You wait, the same will happen to those busybodies violating the Inca's burial chamber." Tintin's train arrives at Marlinspike Hall, the new home of his friends Captain Haddock and Professor Calculus. The Captain, now a member of the aristocracy, invites Tintin to an evening at the music hall. There they witness an unsettling performance of a clairvoyant who predicts the illness of one of the members of the expedition. They also view the act of Bianca Castafiore, as well as a knife thrower—whom Tintin recognizes is General Alcazar (stage name Ramon Zarate) former President of San Theodoros. They have a glass of aguardiente with the general who introduces them to his assistant Chiquito. A mysterious illness begins afflicting the members of the expedition; one by one, they fall into a mysterious coma. The only clue is fragments of a shattered crystal ball found near each victim. Concerned, Tintin, Captain Haddock, and Professor Calculus go to stay with Calculus's old friend and only expedition member yet to be affected, the ebullient Professor Tarragon. Tarragon is keeping Rascar Capac's mummy in his house and is being tightly guarded against any attack. A lightning storm strikes the house and sends a ball of fire down the chimney and onto the mummy—which evaporates. Tarragon, clearly shaken, informs them a prophecy has come true: Rascar Capac has returned to his element and punishment will descend upon the desecrators. After Tintin, Captain Haddock, and Professor Calculus are each visited in their nightmares by the mummy, the three awaken to find Professor Tarragon comatose with the telltale shards of crystal by his bed. The attacker bypassed the police watch by coming down the chimney. The police shoot the attacker as he flees, but fail to capture him. Tintin states the crystal balls have done their work and claimed the last of the seven. Tarragon awakens and screams about mysterious figures attacking him, before slipping back into a coma. The plot thickens even further when Calculus takes a stroll around Professor Tarragon's house, discovers a striking gold bracelet, puts it on (remarking on how nicely it goes with his coat), and then mysteriously disappears. The bracelet had previously been worn by the now-vanished mummy. While searching the grounds, Tintin and Haddock discover the attacker had eluded them by taking refuge in a tree and deduce that he then jumped Calculus and stole the mummy's jewels. Tintin and the Captain are then fired upon by an unseen gunman who escapes, having kidnapped Calculus, in a black car. The alarm is raised and the police set up road blocks, but the kidnappers switch cars and slip through the net. Tintin visits a hospital where all seven of the stricken explorers go through the same horror—they awaken from their coma, scream about figures attacking them, and slip back into their coma—at a precise time of day. Back at Marlinspike Hall, Captain Haddock is devastated by the loss of Professor Calculus. But after he receives a telephone call from the police, he disappears into his bedroom, then reappears—dressed as a sailor again and ready for travel. As he and Tintin drive to Westermouth, he explains the kidnapper's car was seen there; he believes the kidnappers boarded a ship with Calculus and he intends to follow. When they reach the docks, they find the kidnapper's car abandoned and they spot General Alcazar boarding a ship to South America. The General informs them his music hall career is over since the disappearance of his partner, Chiquito, one of the last descendants of the Incas. Tintin realizes Chiquito disappeared the same night Professor Tarragon was attacked and Calculus kidnapped and deduces he could be one of the kidnappers. Out of leads, Tintin and Haddock decide to go to a different dock, Bridgeport, to visit Haddock's friend, Captain Chester. Snowy retrieves an old hat found there, and Tintin recognizes it as belonging to Professor Calculus. Checking with the harbour master, they discover that Calculus must be on board the Pachacamac, which is bound for Peru. They board a flight and resolve to meet his ship there. The story is continued in Prisoners of the Sun.

In the Skin of a Lion

Michael Ondaatje

The first chapter, "Little Seeds," describes the growing years of the main character, Patrick Lewis, providing causation for his subsequent actions in the novel. As a young boy in Depot Creek, Ontario, Patrick watches the loggers arrive in town in the winter, work in the mills in the other seasons, and skate on the frozen river. Patrick's father, Hazen Lewis becomes a dynamiter and is meticulous in washing his clothes each evening to remove remnants of explosives on his apparel. These elements form the foundation of the subsequent narrative: Depot Creek, the loggers skating, learning about dynamite, etc. "The Bridge" deals with the construction of the Bloor Street Viaduct, which will link eastern Toronto with the center of the city and will carry traffic, water and electricity across the Don Valley. R.C. Harris, the city's Commissioner of Public Works often visits the bridge at night. One night, five nuns wander onto the unfinished bridge and one falls off. Nicholas Temelcoff, a Macedonian immigrant worker on the bridge, saves the nun who fell off the bridge, dislocating his arm. The nun, already missing her veil, tears her habit to make him a sling. Later, at a bar, he offers her brandy, compliments, and a new lease on life. Temelcoff is a silent man who struggles with English yet they are able to transcend their social and language barriers through the commonality of their scars— his from work, hers from being "always unlucky." This moment is the beginning of the nun's eventual transformation into the character Alice. He eventually falls asleep and wakes to find a doctor treating his arm and the nun gone. As a young man, Patrick leaves the profession that killed his father and sets out to find the vanished millionaire Ambrose Small. This leads him to Small's mistress Clara Dickens, and to a relationship with her. Eventually, Patrick loses interest in finding Small, hoping only to remove Clara from Small. Clara tells Patrick that she will leave him to go after Small and warns him not to follow her. Patrick is broken-hearted. Three years later Clara's friend Alice unexpectedly arrives. Alice shows Patrick great tenderness and tells him that Clara's mother might know where Clara is. Patrick sets out to search for Clara. On meeting Clara's mother, Patrick learns that Clara and Small are living in his old hometown. Patrick finds Small living in a house owned by a timber company and Small attempts to set him on fire—once by dropping kerosene on him and then by throwing a Molotov cocktail. Patrick manages to escape to his hotel room and is visited by Clara, who dresses his wounds and makes love to him before returning to Small. In 1930, Patrick is working as a dynamiter on a tunnel under Lake Ontario, a project of Commissioner Rowland Harris. Patrick rents an apartment in a Macedonian neighborhood. He is accepted into the neighborhood and is invited by Kosta, a fellow dynamiter, to a gathering at the Waterworks—a place where various nationalities gather for secret political discussions and entertainment. Patrick witnesses a performance in which an actor repeatedly smashes her hand against the stage and rushes forward to help her. He recognizes her as Alice Gull. His act of helping her turns out to be part of the show. Patrick visits Alice and learns about Hana, her nine-year-old daughter. Patrick and Alice become lovers. Patrick finds work in a leather company through Alice's friends and meets Nicholas Temelcoff, now a baker. On studying the bridge, Patrick learns about the nun that had fallen off, whose body was never found. He makes the connection after talking with Temelcoff and promises to look after Hana. Patrick travels by train, north of Huntsville. He takes a steamer to a Muskoka hotel frequented by the rich, carrying nothing but a black suitcase. He burns down the hotel, then leaves on a small boat. Arriving at an island, he meets the blind Elizabeth. We learn that Alice has died and Patrick has committed the act of arson out of anger. Patrick swims out to a boat. He knows he will be caught by the authorities and takes the time to recuperate and dry out his clothes. Three prisoners, Buck, Lewis and Caravaggio, are painting the roof of the Kingston Penitentiary. Patrick and Buck paint Caravaggio in the blue of the roof so he can hide and escape. He steals new clothes and changes his dressing. Jumping a milk train, he makes his way north toward cottage country. He has a scar from an attack from which Patrick saved him by yelling out a square dance call. Caravaggio recalls his first robbery, in the course of which he broke his ankle while retrieving a painting, so he had hidden in a mushroom factory where a young woman named Gianetta helped him recover, with whom he had escaped by dressing as a woman. Caravaggio enters the cottage of a woman whom he met on the lake and calls his wife to let her know he's all right. After talking to the cottage owner, he returns to his brother-in-law's house, reuniting with Gianetta. Four years later, Patrick is released from prison and meets Temelcoff at the Geranium Bakery. Hana, now sixteen, has been living with Temelcoff's family. Patrick takes responsibility for Hana. One night, she wakes him to say that Clara Dickens has called. She tells him that Small is dead and asks him to pick her up from Marmora. Realizing that the water supply is vulnerable to being cut off or poisoned, Harris installs guards at the Waterworks, which he built. Caravaggio introduces Patrick to his wife. They fraternize at a party for the rich, then steal a multi-million dollar yacht from a couple they chloroform. Patrick intends to blow up the Filtration Plant with dynamite and Caravaggio's help. Patrick enters the plant through the water intake. He places dynamite about the plant testing facility and carries the detonating box to Harris' office, where he accuses Harris of exploiting the workers and ignoring their plight. Patrick tells Harris how Alice Gull was killed and we learn that she accidentally picked up the wrong satchel, containing a bomb. Patrick exhausted, falls asleep, and in the morning Harris asks the police to defuse the bombs and bring a nurse for Patrick. Patrick awakes and goes with Hana to retrieve Clara. At Hana's urging, Patrick tells her about Clara. Patrick asks Hana to drive to Marmora. The book ends with " 'Lights' he said"

The World of Null-A

A. E. van Vogt

Gilbert Gosseyn, a man living in an apparent utopia where those with superior understanding and mental control rule the rest of humanity, wants to be tested by the giant Machine that determines such superiority. However, he finds that his memories are false. In his search for his real identity, he discovers that he has extra bodies that are activated when he dies (so that, in a sense, he cannot be killed), that a galactic society of humans exists outside the Solar system, a large interstellar empire wishes to conquer both the Earth and Venus (inhabited by masters of non-Aristotelian logic), and he has extra brain matter that, when properly trained, can allow him to move matter with his mind.

The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses

Robert Louis Stevenson

In the reign of "old King Henry VI" (1422–1461, 1470–1471) and during the Wars of the Roses (1455–1487) the story begins with the Tunstall Moat House alarm bell being rung to begin mustering troops for its absent lord Sir Daniel Brackley, who intends to join the Battle of Risingham. It is then that the "fellowship" known as "The Black Arrow" headquartered in Tunstall Forest begins to strike with its "four black arrows" for the "four black hearts" of Brackley and three of his retainers: Nicholas Appleyard, Bennet Hatch, and Sir Oliver Oates, the parson. The rhyme that is posted in connection with this attack gets the protagonist Richard Shelton, ward of Sir Daniel, to become curious about the fate of his father Sir Harry Shelton. Having been dispatched to Kettley, where Sir Daniel was quartered, and sent to Tunstall Moat House by return dispatch, he falls in with a fugitive from Sir Daniel, Joanna Sedley, disguised as a boy and going by the alias of John Matcham. She is an heiress kidnapped by Sir Daniel, who wanted to obtain guardianship over her. Coincidentally, Sir Daniel was intending to marry Joanna to Dick himself; and, in her male disguise, Joanna brings up the matter to Dick, affording her the opportunity of feeling him out on the subject. Dick says he is not interested, but he does ask her if his intended bride is good-looking and of pleasant disposition. While making their way through Tunstall Forest, Joanna tries to persuade Dick to turn against Sir Daniel in sympathy with the Black Arrow outlaws, whose camp they discover near the ruins of Grimstone manor. The next day they are met in the forest by Sir Daniel himself disguised as a leper and making his way back to the Moat House after his side was defeated at the Battle of Risingham. Dick and Joan then follow Sir Daniel to the Moat House. Here Dick changes sides when he finds out that Sir Daniel is the real murderer of his father and escapes injured from the Moat House. He is rescued by the outlaws of the Black Arrow with whom he throws in his lot for the rest of the story. The second half of the novel, Books 3-5, tells how Dick rescues his true love Joanna from the clutches of Sir Daniel with the help of both the Black Arrow fellowship and the Yorkist army led by Richard Crookback, the future Richard III of England. The second half of the narrative centers around Shoreby, where the Lancastrian forces are well entrenched. Robert Louis Stevenson inserts seafaring adventure in chapters 4-6 of Book 3 as Dick and the outlaws steal a ship and attempt a seaside rescue of Joanna, who is being kept in a house by the sea. They are unsuccessful, and after Joanna is moved to Sir Daniel's main quarters in Shoreby, Dick then visits her in the guise of a Franciscan friar, which was a disguise used during the Wars of the Roses. Stevenson, the popularizer of the tales of the Arabian nights, has Dick tell the tale of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves in Book 4, chapter 6 to help him escape from the ruined sea captain Arblaster, whose ship Dick and the outlaws had stolen. In the course of shadowing Sir Daniel in his goings to and from the house by the sea, Dick and the outlaws, who have made their Shoreby headquarters the "Goat and Bagpipes" alehouse, encounter another group of spies interested in Joanna. After a skirmish in the dark in which the outlaws prevail, Dick finds that he has conquered Joanna's lawful guardian Lord Foxham. Foxham, a Yorkist, promises to give Joanna to Dick in marriage depending on the outcome of a contemplated seaside rescue. There is irony in Foxham scolding Dick, who is nobly born, for consorting with outlaws when the outlaws are recruited in Dick and Foxham's plans to rescue Joanna. Seriously wounded in the failed seaside rescue, Foxham writes letters of recommendation for Dick to Richard Crookback since he must retire temporarily from action. Richard Crookback, Duke of Gloucester, makes his appearance in Book 5, with whom Dick keeps Lord Foxham's rendezvous. Dick's accurate knowledge of the Lancastrian forces in Shoreby aid Crookback in winning the battle. Dick is also successful as one of Crookback's commanders. A delighted Crookback knights Dick on the field of battle and, following their Yorkist victory, gives him fifty horsemen to pursue Sir Daniel, who has escaped Shoreby with Joanna. Dick succeeds in rescuing Joanna, but loses his men in the process. He, Joanna, and Alicia Risingham travel to Holywood where he and Joanna are finally married. In this way he keeps his initial pledge to Joanna to see her safe to Holywood. In the early morning of his wedding day Dick takes a walk on the outskirts of Holywood. He encounters a fugitive Sir Daniel trying to enter Holywood seaport to escape to France or Burgundy. Because it is his wedding day, Dick does not want to soil his hands with Sir Daniel's blood, so he simply bars his way by challenging him either to hand to hand combat or alerting a Yorkist perimeter patrol. Prudently, Sir Daniel opts to go away. Just after he leaves Dick he is shot by Ellis Duckworth with the last black arrow. Duckworth found in prayer by Dick tells him, "But be at rest; the Black Arrow flieth nevermore - the fellowship is broken." Sir Richard and Lady Shelton live in Tunstall Moat House untroubled by the rest of the Wars of the Roses. They provide for both Captain Arblaster and the outlaw Lawless by pensioning them and settling them in Tunstall hamlet. Lawless does a volte face by returning to the Franciscan order as a friar by the name of Brother Honestus.

Interesting Times

Terry Pratchett

The events of the novel are a "game" between the Discworld gods Fate and The Lady (Luck) with the Discworld as their game board. At the end, the Lady says "I never play to win but I do play not to lose", and shows the gods Rincewind confronted by Australian-aborigine-type warriors. After Eric. The Patrician of Ankh-Morpork is sent a letter from the Agatean Empire on the Counterweight Continent commanding him to "send us the Great Wizzard", the spelling on the hat of Rincewind. The Hex brings Rincewind, and exchanges him in the Aurient Agatean Empire with a live cannon. As usual, The Luggage follows, but having returned to the land of his wood and construction, feels free to seek a mate and reproduce, re-appearing at the end. On the Counterweight Continent, Rincewind joins a previous companion Cohen the Barbarian who intends to steal the country with six other aged heroes, The Silver Horde. Child rebels have been inspired by "What I did on My Holidays", written by Twoflower, his companion in The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic. The villainous Vizier Hong leads one of the five families — Hong, Tang, Fang, Sung, and McSweeney, and secretly funds the revolution which is only good for putting up polite posters, and sets them up to take the blame after killing the Emperor. When captured with two young rebel girls, Rincewind discovers Twoflower in the next cell, missing father to the girls, and tries to convince them to stay safe in the cells while he scouts, that is, runs as far away as possible. Meanwhile, the Cohen Horde infiltrate the Forbidden city via underground sewers, take the empty throne, but are called out to face the besieging army. Back in the University, Hex is calculating the spell to bring Rincewind back, but the butterfly of Luck drops a small glob of honey, distracting an ant, altering the calculation. Rincewind falls into a mysterious cave, filled with terracotta statues, the original, legendary Red Army of the first Emperor. In magic armour, he leads the terracotta army against the five family armies, winning mostly by accident. Cohen returns to Hunghung victorious, and re-proclaims himself Emperor. Just as Twoflower challenges Hong for the death of his wife, the Unseen University returns the lit cannon, that kills Hong and Horde's "Teach" Ronald Saveloy, who tried to civilize the barbarians with alternative vocabulary for swear words and polite behavior, but finally agreed to fight alongside and rides off with a Valkyrie. Rincewind is transported to "XXXX", an unexplored continent and another adventure.

Prisoners of the Sun

Hergé

In the previous adventure, The Seven Crystal Balls, seven explorers have been afflicted with a mysterious illness after unearthing the tomb of the mummified Inca, Rascar Capac. Professor Calculus has been kidnapped by a band of men including the Quechua native Peruvian Chiquito, one of the last descendants of the Incas. Tintin and Captain Haddock discover their friend is on board the cargo ship Pachacamac bound for Callao, Peru and are on a flight to rescue him. When Tintin and Haddock intercept the ship, Tintin encounters Chiquito and learns Calculus is to be put to death for wearing the bracelet belonging to the Inca mummy. Unable to rescue Calculus, Tintin and the Captain must set off on the trail of the natives who have taken him. It leads them through the small town of Santa Clara, to the mountain town of Jauga, where a train is sabotaged in an attempt to kill them. They find both the authorities and the locals extremely unwilling to help them track Calculus' kidnappers because of the wrath of the Inca. Tintin encounters a young Quechua native boy named Zorrino, whom he protects from two bullying men of white descent. For that, a mysterious Indian gives Tintin a medallion, telling him it will save him from danger. Zorrino then offers to take them to the Temple of the Sun, where he claims their friend is being held prisoner by the Inca. "The Inca, in these days?" asks Tintin. "White men not know, señor." replies Zorrino. "Only you know." The Temple lies deep in the Andes, and the journey there is long and eventful, involving hindrance from natives and the Captain being terrorised by local wildlife. Finally, Tintin, Haddock, and Zorrino come upon the Temple of the Sun—and stumble right into a group of Inca who have survived until modern-day times. They are brought before the noble Prince of the Sun; on the left stands Chiquito, on the right stands Huascar, the mysterious Quechua Tintin encountered in Jauga. Zorrino is saved from harm when Tintin gives him Huascar's medallion, but Tintin and Haddock are sentenced to death for their sacrilegious intrusion. The Inca prince tells them they may choose the hour that the Sun himself will set alight the pyre for which they are destined. Tintin and Haddock end up on the same pyre as Professor Calculus. Tintin has, however, chosen the hour of their death to coincide with a solar eclipse, and the terrified Inca believe Tintin can command Pachacamac, their god, the Sun. The Inca prince implores Tintin to make the Sun show his light again. At Tintin's command, the Sun obeys, and the three are quickly set free. Afterwards, the Prince of the Sun tells them the seven crystal balls used against the explorers who had excavated Rascar Capac's tomb contained a "mystic liquid" obtained from coca, which plunged the seven explorers into a deep sleep. Each time the Inca high priest cast his spell over seven wax figures he could use them as he willed, as punishment for their sacrilege. Tintin convinces the Inca prince the explorers wished only to make known to the world the splendours of their civilisation. The Inca prince orders Huascar to destroy the wax figures and at that moment in Europe the seven explorers awaken. After swearing on their own accord to keep the colony's existence secret, Tintin, Captain Haddock and Professor Calculus are bestowed with a gift of gold and jewels, only a sample of the treasure of the Incas for which the Spanish conquerors searched in vain for so long. Zorrino decides to stay with the Incas; his new friends return safely to Europe.

Land of Black Gold

Hergé

Car engines are spontaneously exploding all over the country. The reason is narrowed down to the petrol used in the cars which is tampered in some way to cause an explosion. As a result most form of transport from cars to airlines are cutting down on fuel usage, thus affecting the economy. Furthermore political tensions are heightening, leading the world to the brink of war, and Captain Haddock is mobilised in anticipation of an outbreak of hostilities. Following different leads, Tintin and Thomson and Thompson set off for Khemed (a fictional country in the Middle East) on board a petrol tanker. Upon arrival, the three are framed and arrested by the authorities under various charges. The Thompsons are cleared and released, but Tintin is kidnapped by Arab insurgents. (In the original version of the story he initially arrived in the port of Haifa in British-governed Palestine and was first kidnapped by members of the Irgun, before being subsequently abducted by Arabs.) In the course of his adventures, Tintin re-encounters an old enemy, Dr. J.W. Müller (see The Black Island for back story), whom he sees sabotaging an oil pipeline. He reunites with the Thompsons and eventually arrives in Wadesdah, the capital of Khemed, where he comes across his old friend, the Portuguese merchant Senhor Oliveira da Figueira. When the local Emir Ben Kalish Ezab's young son, Prince Abdullah, is kidnapped, Tintin suspects that Müller (who is masquerading as an archaeologist under the name of Professor Smith) is responsible. He pursues Müller in hopes of rescuing the prince and gets into his study. After an incident involving sneezing powder he is able to knock out Muller. He ties him up, gags him, and hides him behind the sofa. He then rescues the Prince and later captures Muller. Captain Haddock comes along near the end of the book, but it is never explained how this happens. In the process he discovers the doctor to be the agent of a foreign power responsible for the tampering of the fuel supplies, having invented a type of chemical in tablet form that increases the explosive power of oil by a significant amount. The Thom(p)son's find the tablets and swallow them, thinking them to be aspirin, causing them to belch continuously, and grow long hair and beards that change colour. After analysing the tablets, Professor Calculus comes up with remedies for the Thompsons and a means of countering the affected oil supplies, though, while carrying out his tests, he half-destroys Captain Haddock's Marlinspike Hall, earning the Captain's fury.

The Present and the Past

Ivy Compton-Burnett

When the novel opens Catherine has decided she can bear it no longer not to see her boys. Openly confessing that she is breaking her promise, she announces that she would like a reunion. In the meantime Cassius Clare has remarried and has had three more children by the second Mrs Clare: eight-year-old Henry, seven-year-old Megan, and Tobias, aged three. With the help of a head nurse, a nursemaid, and a governess, Flavia Clare has been a perfect mother to all five children, never drawing a line between her own flesh and blood and the two oldest children by her husband's first marriage. But when Fabian and Guy learn about her natural mother's plans, the biological bond proves to be stronger than any care that could be given them by their stepmother, and they want to meet her. Cassius Clare, in an awkward position of wanting to please each member of his family, agrees to Catherine's wish, although right from the start it is clear to all members of the family that she will want to see her two sons on a regular basis once the first meeting has taken place. To Cassius Clare's dismay, the two women get on astonishingly well with each other. Seemingly without a job which demands his time and attention, Clare feels neglected and soon starts pitying himself. This feeling is enhanced when, casually conversing with his sons, he realizes that they do not think highly of him either. For example, asked to say which people he likes best, 13 year-old Fabian comes up with the following list: (1) Catherine, his biological mother; (2) Guy, his brother; and (3) Flavia (whom he calls "Mater"), his stepmother—with his father altogether absent from the list. Similarly, three-year-old Tobias's favourites turn out to be Catherine, Bennet, the head nurse; his sister Megan; and William, the middle-aged gardener. It seems Cassius Clare takes these pronouncements very seriously, in spite of their being uttered by children. His only comfort is his father, a man of over 70 who has moved in with his son's family after his wife's death and who is just waiting for his own. The one other person who seems to be close to him is Alfred Ainger, the 40-year-old butler. Clare actually discusses with his father how the family might react if he committed suicide and how the natural order of things would be turned upside down if he died before his own father. It never becomes quite clear whether this conversation is meant to be a cry for help. When people keep paying no attention whatsoever to him, Cassius Clare takes his father's pills, ten of which taken together constitute a lethal dose. Clare, however, as a sort of "compromise", takes only four tablets, thus deceiving his family, who think he has really tried to kill himself. A doctor is called for, but he cannot do anything about Clare's condition: the patient just has to wait until the effects of the drug wear off. Cassius Clare considers his scheme to have been at least partly successful when, unexpectedly, Tobias finds the phial with the remaining tablets, and, as there are more of them left than he has claimed, Clare's "deceit" is discovered. Everybody, including the servants, are embarrassed that the head of the family is both weak and a liar, and after Clare's speedy recovery he is appalled to find out that he is still not given the amount of love and attention he thinks he is entitled to. When, obviously only a few days later, Ainger finds him lying on the sofa in very much the same manner as during his faked suicide attempt, the butler does not do anything about it: he neither calls the doctor, nor does he inform Flavia about her husband's state. When the family eventually do start worrying about Clare's health the latter is already dead: now it turns out that, at the age of 52, he has had a heart attack (or something like that), that his life could have been saved but that he has just been left dying without any help. The remaining family members now realize that far-reaching changes will have to be made. Although they do not blame each other or themselves for Clare's death, they all agree that the two women could not possibly go on living under the same roof and raising their five children together. Catherine is prepared to leave the house for good, but on condition that she can take her two sons with her if they wish to go. When Catherine puts the question to them, it is Fabian who spontaneously decides to go with his biological mother. Guy, on the other hand, would not want to leave "Mater", but his relationship to his older brother proves to be the stronger, and so he makes up his mind to go with him.

Jenny lives with Eric and Martin

Susanne Bösche

The story describes a few days in the life of a five-year-old named Jenny, her father, Eric, and his boyfriend Martin who lives with them. Jenny's mother Karen lives nearby and often visits the household. The book covers such small adventures as * Jenny, Eric and Martin going to the laundrette together * Jenny, Martin and Karen preparing a surprise birthday party for Eric * Eric and Martin having a small quarrel and making up * A woman expressing homophobic disgust when passing the family in the street. This is the subject of a later discussion between Eric and Jenny.

Explorers on the Moon

Hergé

The story continues from Destination Moon. Professor Calculus is taking Tintin, Tintin's dog Snowy, Captain Haddock and Calculus' assistant Frank Wolff to the Moon in his rocket. However, the detectives Thomson and Thompson come up from the hold, having mistaken the time of the launch (1:34 a.m. instead of 1:34 p.m.) and been left on board while carrying out a final security check, putting the expedition at risk due to the new strain on the oxygen supply, designed for four people and Snowy and now forced to accommodate six. The mission remains frought with difficulties. The Thompsons accidentally turn off the nuclear power motor, which stops the artificial gravity and sends everyone floating until Tintin restarts the motor. Haddock has smuggled some whisky aboard in hollowed-out books, becomes drunk, and engages in an unscheduled spacewalk that results in him briefly becoming a satellite of the asteroid Adonis. Tintin also dons a space suit to fetch him, and, in a very rare display of temper, berates the Captain for his recklessness. When the rocket engine must temporarily be shut down in order to execute the turnaround maneuver that will enable it to land on the Moon right side up, the momentary lack of artificial gravity also poses problems for Haddock, who has neglected to put on his magnetic boots in time. Additionally, Thomson and Thompson suffer a relapse of the condition caused by their ingestion of the energy-multiplying substance Formula Fourteen (see Land of Black Gold); as a result, they once more sprout thick hair that grows at lightning speed and frequently changes color. The spacecraft eventually lands safely in the Hipparchus Crater, and by agreement among the crew, Tintin is the first to set foot on the Moon (the first human to do so). Everyone then gets a chance to walk about; even the Captain enjoys it, but upon seeing the Earth, expresses unease over whether they will survive to see it again. The crew soon starts unpacking the scientific payload – telescopes, cameras, and a battery-powered expedition tank. Calculus decides to reduce the total stay on the lunar surface from fourteen Earth days to six in order to conserve oxygen. Three days later, the Captain, Wolff and Tintin take the battery-powered tank to explore some stalactite caves in the direction of the Ptolemaeus Crater; inside a cave Snowy slips into an ice-covered fissure, damaging his two-way radio, and there is a minor drama in rescuing him, but they all return to the rocket safely. Tintin decides to rest up and have lunch with Wolff while the Captain, Calculus, Thomson and Thompson immediately go out in the tank again on a 48-hour trip to explore the lunar caves in detail, as Calculus suspects they might find uranium or radium deposits there. A sudden turn of events occurs when the spy plot broached in Destination Moon is revealed: Wolff has been working with a secret agent from a foreign power, the brutish and autocratic Colonel Jorgen, whom Tintin had previously encountered and defeated in King Ottokar's Sceptre, has been hiding in the rocket since it was launched eight days previously (having been smuggled aboard along with technical equipment). When Tintin goes below to fetch some supplies for lunch, Jorgen knocks him out and binds him, then tries to seize control of the rocket, which he plans to fly back to his own country, leaving the others marooned on the Moon. Outside, from the Moon tank, the Captain, Calculus, Thomson and Thompson watch, horrified, as the rocket blasts off, but comes crashing back down and coming to rest. Jorgen wrongly accuses Wolff of sabotaging the launching gear and nearly shoots him, but Tintin stops him. Tintin has freed himself and succeeded in foiling the plot, but in order to do so had been forced to sabotage the rocket to prevent Jorgen's attempted liftoff. Wolff reveals to the stunned group his history of gambling debts, which Jorgen's employers have used to blackmail him into aiding them involuntarily. After the group interrogates Jorgen and Wolff, Tintin eventually locks them in the hold. Calculus determines that the crew needs at least four days to repair the damaged rocket, while the remaining oxygen supply will last at most four days. Due to the strain on the oxygen supplies, the crew decides to abandon most of the equipment and to cut short the lunar stay. The repair work is completed slightly ahead of schedule after three days, and the rocket cleared for lift-off. Even so, shortly before lift-off, the Captain becomes the first among them to experience a bout of dizziness due to build-up of carbon dioxide. The lift-off is successful, but the rocket is put off course, and by the time the crew awake from the liftoff-induced blackout and correct it, they have lost additional time and thus consumed more oxygen. Halfway back to Earth, Jorgen escapes after overpowering the detectives, who have attempted to secure the prisoners more thoroughly. When Jorgen declares his intention to kill Tintin and the others, Wolff intervenes and a fight ensues; the gun goes off, killing Jorgen. However, even without Jorgen there isn't enough oxygen to make it home. Overcome with guilt, Wolff sacrifices himself by opening the airlock and going out into space while the others are unconscious, leaving behind a moving farewell note that asks for forgiveness. The rest of the group continues towards Earth as their oxygen runs low. Everyone soon falls unconscious, but Tintin barely manages to set the rocket up to land on auto-pilot. After the ship lands, firemen break the door open. On the tarmac, everyone is revived, except for the Captain. A doctor is giving a prostrate Haddock oxygen, but fears that his heart is worn out because "It seems he was a great whisky drinker." Suddenly roused by the sound of the word "whisky", Captain Haddock wakes up with a start. Everyone rejoices and a ground crew member returns with a bottle of whisky. In the bliss of the moment, Calculus joyfully announces that "we will return" to the Moon (referring to mankind in general), whereupon Haddock furiously declares that he will never be seen inside a rocket again. He then promptly walks away, only to trip and a fall over a stretcher in the midst of declaring that "Man's proper place ... is on dear old Earth!"

The Calculus Affair

Hergé

During a thunderstorm, Tintin and Captain Haddock shelter in Marlinspike Hall. During the storm, several items of glass and china within the house break for no apparent reason. An insurance agent, Jolyon Wagg barges into the hall seeking shelter. He claims that all the windows of his car have somehow blown to bits. More mysterious incidents of glass breaking occur. After the storm, gunshots are heard outside. Professor Calculus returns from his laboratory with bullet holes in his hat. Investigating outside, Tintin discovers a wounded man in the grounds. He disappears before he can be questioned. The next day a preoccupied Calculus leaves to attend a conference on nuclear physics in Geneva, Switzerland. With him gone the glass breaking stops, leading Tintin to suspect Calculus may have been responsible for it. He and the Captain investigate inside his laboratory, finding a strange device and boxes of broken glass. Suddenly they are surprised by a man in trenchcoat and mask, who escapes after punching the Captain and Snowy. He drops a key and a packet of cigarettes with the name of the Hotel Cornavin (where Calculus is staying in Geneva) scrawled onto it. Believing that Calculus is in danger, Tintin and Haddock decide to follow him to Switzerland. In Geneva, Tintin and Haddock miss Calculus at his hotel by seconds, delayed by two men dressed in the same trenchcoats as the man in the lab. They track Calculus to Nyon, at the home of Professor Topolino, an expert in ultrasonics. On the way to Nyon their taxi is forced into a nearby lake by the same two men from the hotel, but they manage to survive and reach Topolino's house. Calculus's umbrella is there, but he is not. Topolino is found bound and gagged in his own cellar. Topolino claims that it was Calculus's doing but when shown a photograph of the professor he does not recognise him. They deduce that someone impersonated Calculus, imprisoned Topolino in his cellar and then kidnapped the real Calculus upon his arrival. As they come to this conclusion, the same two men who had earlier hampered Tintin and Haddock's efforts to find Calculus in Geneva blow up Topolino's house in an attempt to get rid of them all, but they survive nonetheless. Tintin and Haddock conclude that Calculus had invented a sonic device capable of destroying glass and china, and potentially converted into a terrible weapon. Concerned of the consequences of his invention, he had decided to talk it over with Topolino. But Topolino's manservant, a Bordurian named Boris, learned of this and informed his country's intelligence service. It soon dawns on them that rival teams of agents from both Syldavia and Borduria are after the device. Abducted at first by Bordurians, Calculus is then snatched by Syldavian agents in spite of Tintin and Haddock's efforts to rescue him. Pursuing the Syldavians in a helicopter across Lake Geneva into Haute-Savoie, France, they chase a boat and then a car carrying Calculus, but the helicopter runs out of fuel and they lose them. After being pursued by Tintin and Haddock through the French countryside, the Syldavians escape in a plane, with Calculus as their prisoner. However, the plane is forced down over Bordurian territory, meaning Calculus is back in Bordurian hands. Tintin and Haddock set off for Szohôd, Borduria in hope of finding their friend again. The Bordurians are alerted to their arrival by the two men in Geneva (who were Bordurian secret agents), and they are intercepted at the airport by the Bordurian Secret Police (ZEP). Assigned two minders who take them to a luxury hotel and keep them in bugged rooms, Tintin and Haddock manage to escape and hide in the Szohôd Opera House, where Bianca Castafiore is performing. She invites them into her dressing room but is visited by Colonel Sponsz, chief of ZEP, in her dressing room. Tintin and Haddock hide in Bianca's closet, overhearing the conversation between Sponsz and Castafiore. Sponsz reveals Calculus's location, a gaol in the fortress of Bakhine, and the stress on him to surrender his plans. If he does give them up, then he will be handed over to two officials from the International Red Cross, to whom he must swear that he went to the Bordurians of his own accord and gave them his plans voluntarily. Sponsz also reveals that the papers for the officials and Calculus' release are in his overcoat, hanging in the closet in which Tintin and Haddock are hiding. Overhearing all this, Tintin and Haddock steal the papers and, disguising themselves as the two Red Cross officials, acquire Calculus' release. When Sponsz is told of this, he quickly raises the alarm, but the three friends manage to escape to the border in a car and later, a tank. When they arrive back in Marlinspike, they find that Jolyon Wagg's family is staying there and has nearly wrecked the house. Realising the destructive potential of his invention, Calculus burns his plans....by lighting them with Haddock's pipe while it is placed in Haddock's mouth. Haddock is incensed, calling Calculus a "jack-in-a-box". The hard-of-hearing Calculus thinks that Haddock has said "chicken pox", and tells Jolyon Wagg that Haddock is suffering from this disease. While Wagg at first interprets it as a joke, he then remembers that chicken pox is infectious, and Wagg doesn't want to be infected, so he and his family leave Marlinspike.

The Dragon Reborn

Robert Jordan

Rand al'Thor, having been declared the Dragon Reborn by Moiraine Damodred at the end of the second book, The Great Hunt, secretly leaves the Shienaran camp in the Mountains of Mist to go to Tear to prove himself the Dragon Reborn. Along the way he is hunted by Darkhounds and Darkfriends. Min has left the camp by order of Moiraine to report to the Amyrlin on what has transpired. Moiraine, Lan Mandragoran, Loial, and Perrin Aybara chase after Rand. Along the way, they encounter a Hunter for the Horn, Zarine Bashere, who prefers to be called Faile Bashere. They battle Darkhounds, and discover that the Forsaken Sammael rules in Illian. Mat Cauthon is taken to Tar Valon by Verin Mathwin, Nynaeve al'Meara, Egwene al'Vere, Elayne Trakand, and Hurin. The women skirmish with Children of the Light before entering one of the villages at the end of a bridge leading to Tar Valon. Immediately after arrival in Tar Valon Hurin departs to report to King Easar in Shienar as well as his fellow Borderlanders. The Amyrlin Seat, Siuan Sanche, sets Nynaeve, Egwene, with Elayne joining them later, to the task of hunting down the Black Ajah. A lead sends the trio traveling to Tear. In the White Tower, through the use of a sa'angreal by Aes Sedai, Mat is permanently healed of the corruptive influence of the ruby dagger of Shadar Logoth. Once healed Mat defeats Galad Damodred and Gawyn Trakand at the same time in a practice sword battle using a quarter staff. This wins him enough money to gamble with and escape from Tar Valon. Elayne entrusts Mat with a letter to her mother Queen Morgase, explaining that she will be leaving the White Tower for some time. Mat finds Thom Merrilin in an inn. The pair escape Tar Valon together and travel to Andor, where Mat delivers the letter and learns of a plot by Queen Morgase's lover, Lord Gaebril, to murder Elayne, Daughter-Heir of Andor. Seeking to prevent that murder, Mat pursues the women, who are already on their way to Tear. In Tear, Nynaeve, Egwene, and Elayne are unwillingly betrayed by Juilin Sandar, a thief catcher, (who was under the influence of a form of Compulsion from Liandrin) to the Black Ajah and then imprisoned in the Stone of Tear, where they are rescued by Mat and a repentant Juilin. Faile falls into a Black Ajah trap meant for Moiraine, and Perrin risks his life in the World of Dreams to rescue her. Rand and the Forsaken Be'lal duel in the Stone of Tear. Moiraine interrupts the battle and kills Be'lal with balefire. Ba'alzamon appears, disables Moiraine, and attacks Rand. Rand takes Callandor, proving himself the Dragon Reborn, and, with it, kills Ba'alzamon. Rand thinks he has killed the Dark One, who he believes was Ba'alzamon, but Moiraine tells him that the Dark One is not human, and therefore cannot have been Ba'alzamon, because Ba'alzamon left behind a corpse. Egwene, remembering a parchment of prophecy that Verin Sedai showed her, instead deduces that the corpse is possibly Ishamael, Chief among the Forsaken. The Aiel in Tear take the Stone and reveal themselves as the People of the Dragon.

The Fires of Heaven

Robert Jordan

Chasing the Shaido Aiel, who have crossed over the Spine of the World and are pillaging Cairhien, Rand al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn and the Car'a'carn, leads his Aiel over the Spine as well. The two Aiel armies meet in the Second Battle of Cairhien, which is by far the largest battle in the Westland since the time of Artur Hawkwing, 1000 years past. At the start of the battle, Mat Cauthon saves some troops from a Shaido ambush. Guiding these troops throughout the day, he wins numerous battles using the memories of past generals he received in The Shadow Rising. He personally kills the Shaido leader, Couladin, in battle, and the Shaido Aiel retreat in defeat. Falsely believing Queen Morgase Trakand of Andor died at the hands of the Forsaken, Rahvin, who is masquerading as Lord Gaebril, an angry Rand prepares to Travel to Caemlyn with a small Aiel strike force. Before he can do so, Lanfear, learning that Rand slept with Aviendha, is furious with jealousy and attempts to kill them. Moiraine Damodred grabs Lanfear and both topple through the doorframe ter'angreal that Mat used in the waste. After they fall through, the ter'angreal is damaged by fire and destroyed. Both Moiraine and Lanfear are presumed dead. Rand attacks Caemlyn, and Mat, Asmodean and Aviendha go with him as well. Shortly after arrival, Rand's companions are killed by Rahvin's wielding of the One Power. Rand begins a desperate, fury driven chase to eradicate Rahvin in Tel'aran'rhiod, after the Forsaken opens a portal of sorts leading to there. After a lengthy chase and duel, Rand destroys Rahvin with a tremendous burst of balefire, erasing Rahvin's actions he undertook whilst killing Mat, Aviendha and Asmodean. Afterwards, Asmodean is killed by an unknown figure right after a shock of recognition. Meanwhile, Nynaeve al'Meara and Elayne Trakand travel through lands filled with Seanchan left behind from the battle at Toman Head, Dragonsworn, bandits, and Whitecloaks, attempting to find the base of the rebel Aes Sedai. Nynaeve finally remembers that the rebel Aes Sedai are in Salidar; after they arrive, Nynaeve is able to trap the Forsaken Moghedien in Tel'aran'rhiod with the use of an a'dam. In Tel'aran'rhiod, Nynaeve goes to Caemlyn where she finds Rahvin. She distracts him with fire until Rand appears and finishes him off.

The Shadow Rising

Robert Jordan

At the beginning of the book, all of the major protagonists are together at the Stone of Tear, where Rand al'Thor has just taken (at the end of The Dragon Reborn) the crystal sword Callandor from The Stone, showing the world that he is The Dragon Reborn. Selene reveals herself to be Lanfear, one of the Forsaken, and tells Rand to join her. The Stone of Tear is then stormed by Trollocs and Fades, sent by another Forsaken Sammael (Lanfear did not have anything to do with this). Another Forsaken, Semirhage, also sends shadowspawn into the Stone of Tear, to oppose Sammael's forces. In defense, Rand uses Callandor to send a lightning storm to kill all of the Trollocs and Fades, leaving some believing Rand has gone mad. Rand declares his intention to go follow the People of the Dragon, the Aiel, back to their home, the Aiel Waste. Egwene al'Vere and Moiraine Damodred resolve to accompany him. Mat Cauthon, unsure of what to do, finds answers within the Stone of Tear's Aelfinn ter'angreal, and is prompted to follow Rand to the Aiel Waste. Perrin Aybara, after hearing rumors of trouble in Two Rivers, chooses to return home to the Two Rivers, and Faile Bashere goes with him. Elayne Trakand, Nynaeve al'Meara, and Thom Merrilin decide to go to Tarabon to hunt the Black Ajah. Also Min Farshaw arrives in Tar Valon to report to the Amyrlin Siuan Sanche, inadvertently setting off a chain of events that will lead to a Tower split. Thus, The Shadow Rising follows four groups of characters in four main plotlines. Rand uses a Portal Stone to transport Mat, Egwene, Moiraine, and the Aiel at the Stone of Tear from Tear to the Aiel Waste, where Taardad and Shaido Aiel are waiting for them. The Aiel Wise Ones have Moiraine, Aviendha (a former maiden of the spear seeking to become a Wise One), and Rand enter Rhuidean, and allow Mat to go with Rand. All three enter ter'angreal in Rhuidean. Rand walks through the crystal garden that is the proving ground for Aiel chiefs. He relives portions of the lives of various Aiel (his paternal ancestors) before and just after the Breaking, and learns that the Aiel once shunned violence and served Aes Sedai. The true Aiel from the Age of Legends live on as Tinkers, seeking the Song they once sang to the plants. Rand survives the trial and emerges with dragon markings on both arms, proving him to be He Who Comes With the Dawn, the Car'a'carn, the Chief of Chiefs of the Aiel. Mat finds a doorway ter'angreal similar to the one he entered in Tear. He enters the door seeking answers to the questions he asked of the Snake creatures during his previous visit. He encounters their Fox counterparts, who bargain for gifts instead of answering questions (he later speculates that the Eelfinn are namesake for the children's game of Snakes and Foxes, which there is no way of winning). He comes out with the gaps in his memory filled with those of men long dead and with fluency in the Old Tongue. He is also gifted with a spear called an ashandarei and a medallion ter'angreal that protects against the One Power. Rand finds Mat has been hanged from the Tree of Life as the price for these gifts, but he is able to revive Mat. From this point on Mat wears a black scarf around his neck to hide the hanging scars. Moiraine remains in Rhuidean longer than the others, delaying the departure of the party. Having visited the three-hooped ter'angreal used by the Wise Ones she has some knowledge of the future. The Wise Ones assign Aviendha the task of teaching Rand Aiel customs as they travel to Cold Rocks Hold. On the way to Cold Rocks Hold they come across a group of merchants. The Aiel have the merchants follow them to Cold Rocks Hold. At Al'cair Dal, both Rand al'Thor and Couladin of the Shaido Aiel declare themselves to be He Who Comes With the Dawn. Rand is forced to reveal the secret history of the Aiel in the Age of Legends to prove to the clan chiefs that he did enter Rhuidean and is truly He Who Comes With the Dawn, whereas Couladin is an impostor and did not. An uproar breaks out among the Aiel, and, hoping to avert violence, Rand uses the One Power to bring a rainstorm to the Aiel Waste for the first time since the Breaking of the World. After fighting breaks out among the Aiel, Rand chases after Asmodean, who had previously been disguised as a gleeman traveling with the merchants. Going by the alias Jasin Natael, Asmodean is after the ter'angreal access keys to the Choedan Kal, the most powerful sa'angreal ever constructed. They battle at Rhuidean, and Rand defeats Asmodean by cutting him off from the Dark One. Lanfear arrives and allows Rand to live and then helps him by limiting Asmodean's ability to channel the One Power: Asmodean will be forced to teach Rand how to use the One Power (something only a male Forsaken can do) because the Shadow will now believe him to be a traitor. When Rand returns to Al'cair Dal, he finds that most of the Aiel, except for the Shaido and a few others, have acknowledged him as the Car'a'carn and joined him. In the Two Rivers, Perrin discovers that the people are caught between Trollocs, led by Slayer, and the Children of the Light, with whom Padan Fain is working, who believe Perrin is a Darkfriend. He also finds Verin Mathwin and Alanna Mosvani, both Aes Sedai, in the Two Rivers. They are searching for girls to bring to the White Tower to become Aes Sedai, since both Egwene and Nynaeve came from the Two Rivers and are strong in the Power. With the help of Blademaster Tam al'Thor and Abell Cauthon, Perrin leads the people of the Two Rivers to war against the Trollocs, and the villagers begin to call him Lord Perrin, and Perrin Goldeneyes, titles that he tries without success to discourage. Before the final victory, Perrin marries Faile, and drives out Lord Luc after discovering that Luc is indeed Slayer. In the city of Tanchico in Tarabon, Elayne and Nynaeve encounter Moghedien and the Black Ajah and remove a male a'dam from their possession. Elayne and Nynaeve also meet Bayle Domon and the Seanchan Egeanin. They 'befriend' the Panarch Amathera, whom they rescue from Temaile, who is tormenting her. They also manage to collect one of the Seals on the Dark One's prison. Nynaeve and Moghedien end up battling, discovering that they are equal in power. Nynaeve shields the Forsaken, but they are discovered by one of the Black Ajah, who damages the palace using a ter'angreal that makes balefire. In the confusion, Moghedien escapes. Min Farshaw arrives at the White Tower to report to the Amyrlin, as Moiraine bid her to do. Her arrival is noted by Elaida, who discovers that something is going on between Moiraine, Siuan and the Dragon Reborn. Min remains in the Tower in the guise of Elmindreda, a giddy, empty-headed woman unable to decide between two suitors. Elaida and her supporters confront and depose Siuan, stilling her and Leane Sharif her Keeper of the Chronicles. Elaida is Raised (made Amyrlin) and many Aes Sedai flee. Min hides, and with the help of the cook Laras, frees the deposed Amyrlin Seat and Leane. Min, Siuan and Leane are recognized by Gawyn Trakand as they try to flee the Tower grounds. He is reluctant to help Siuan since the disappearance of Elayne, but he helps them escape because Min asks it, and because it means helping Egwene as well. While riding through the city toward freedom across one of the bridges, they come across the gentled Logain, whom they talk into going with them.

1876

Gore Vidal

The novel focuses on Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler who has recently returned to the USA after more than 30 years in Europe, where he married into minor Napoleonic nobility; he is accompanied by his beautiful young widowed daughter Emma, the Princesse d'Agrigente, who immediately becomes the darling of New York high society. Despite his fame and affluent image, Schuyler finds work as a journalist because his wealth has been destroyed by the 1873 monetary crisis and his daughter's late husband has left her penniless. Schuyler also supports the Democratic candidate, Samuel J. Tilden, Governor of New York, because he hopes to secure himself a diplomatic position with the incoming administration that will enable him to return to Europe. The early chapters detail the Schuylers' introduction into New York society and the engagement between Emma and John Day Apgar, a wealthy but rather dull young lawyer and scion of a leading New York family. The later chapters chronicle Schuyler's sojourn in Washington, DC and Emma's growing friendship with the wealthy Denise Sanford and her boorish husband William. Emma and Denise become close friends but after Denise dies in childbirth Emma breaks off her engagement to Apgar and marries Sanford instead. The political backdrop to the story is the 1876 U.S. presidential election, a close run contest between Tilden and the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. Tilden won the popular vote, but there was a dispute over the results in four states, including Florida. In Florida, the Republican leaders of the State initially reported a victory for Tilden, before deciding that in fact Hayes had won. Vidal builds up to this historic crisis through the activities of a mixed cast of historical and fictional characters, some of the latter having previously appeared in Burr, or having descended from characters in that novel.

Last of the Curlews

Fred Bodsworth

The story follows the bird throughout a year during its migration to South America and return to the Canadian Arctic in search of a mate. Although somewhat anthropomorphic in parts, the book paints a realistic and detailed picture of this bird's life and behaviour. The book may have been somewhat premature in that there were confirmed sightings of this bird in 1963 and there were a number of unconfirmed sightings after that date. However, this bird may now be extinct.

Reaper Man

Terry Pratchett

The Auditors of Reality are beings who watch the Discworld to ensure everything obeys The Rules. As Death starts developing a personality the Auditors feel that he does not perform his Duty in the right way. They send him to live like everyone else. Assuming the name "Bill Door", he works as a farm hand for the elderly Miss Flitworth. While every other species creates a new Death for themselves, humans need more time for their Death to be completed. As a result, the life force of dead humans starts to build up; this results in poltergeist activity, ghosts, and other paranormal phenomena. Most notable is the return of the recently deceased wizard Windle Poons, who was really looking forward to reincarnation. After several misadventures, including being accosted by his oldest friends, he finds himself attending the Fresh Start club, an undead-rights group led by Reg Shoe. The Fresh Start club and the wizards of Unseen University discover that the city of Ankh-Morpork is being invaded by a parasitic lifeform that feeds on cities and hatches from eggs that resemble snow globes. Tracking its middle form, shopping carts, the Fresh Start club and the wizards invade and destroy the third form, a shopping mall. When humankind finally thinks of a New Death, one with a crown and without any humanity or human face, it goes to take Bill Door. Death/Door, having planned for this moment for some time, outwits and destroys it. Having defeated the New Death, Death absorbs the other Deaths back into him, with the exception of the Death of Rats (and ultimately, the Death of Fleas). Death confronts Azrael, the Death of the Universe, and states that the Deaths have to care or they do not exist and there is nothing but Oblivion, which must also end some time. Death asks for and receives some time. He meets up with Miss Flitworth again and offers her unlimited dreams. She asks to go to the local Harvest Dance. They prepare and join the townspeople for a full night of dancing. As the sun is coming up, Miss Flitworth realizes she had died hours before the dance even started. Death escorts her through history to her old fiancé. Returning to the city of Ankh Morpork he meets up with Windle Poons, finally taking him to his just reward, whatever it is. At the end there is also a discussion between Death and the Death of Rats over what the Death of Rats should "ride", Death suggests a dog while the Death of Rats suggests a cat.

Men at Arms

Terry Pratchett

Edward d'Eath, an Assassin and son of a down-and-out noble family, becomes convinced that the restoration of the Ankh-Morpork monarchy will solve the social change in the city which he blames for his family's humbling. Obsessively researching the history of the royal family he becomes convinced that an heir to the throne is still alive living within Ankh-Morpork, but these efforts are met with skepticism by his peers. Meanwhile, Captain Samuel Vimes, captain of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, is confronted by new problems. About to be married to Sybil Ramkin, richest woman in Ankh-Morpork, he has to deal with the new recruits first: a dwarf, a troll, and a werewolf, representatives of ethnic minorities in the city. He also has to figure out who stole a mysterious device from the Assassins' Guild and solve a string of gruesome, seemingly random murders. As the story progresses, it is made clear that d'Eath has stolen the gonne, the Disc's first and only handheld firearm. He meant to use it to set the rightful king on the throne, but the device (invented by Leonard of Quirm) appears to have a strange mind of its own. After d'Eath takes it to Dr. Cruces, head of the Assassin's Guild, along with his evidence of the king's identity, he is murdered by Dr. Cruces who then becomes a puppet of the gonne. The Watch foil his attempt on the Patrician's life, losing Cuddy in the process, and Vimes and Carrot Ironfoundersson tail him into the sewers. After a brief struggle, Vimes manages to take the gonne and corner Cruces in his office in the Assassin's Guild. With Carrot's help, he resists the weapon's allure and Carrot, learning of his apparent heritage as the heir, kills Dr. Cruces with his distinctly non-magic sword. The gonne is destroyed, and Vimes takes over in the revived post of Commander of the Watch. Following his promotion to Commander of the City Watch (and becoming Sir Samuel Vimes as a consequence), the role of Captain of the Watch is given to Carrot. They spend some time together re-organising the Watch, combining the Day and Night Watches into one force, expanding the membership and creating an effective police force around the city. The evidence that Carrot may be the true King of Ankh-Morpork vanishes, along with the gonne, despite both having been entrusted to the care of Carrot himself. Following Acting-Constable Cuddys' funeral, Vimes suggests that the coffin was heavier than expected, which Carrot agrees may have been the case. Carrot later mentions to the Patrician that he is sure that they are "well guarded", an apparent reference to the tradition of burying dwarfs with weapons with which to face the next life, implying the gonne is serving Cuddy in this way.

Hogfather

Terry Pratchett

In the novel, the Auditors strike again by deciding to eliminate the Hogfather because he does not fit into their view of the universe. They meet with Lord Downey, head of the Assassin's Guild, and commission the services of Mr Teatime, whose particular brand of insane genius makes him an ideal candidate for the assassination of the Hogfather and other anthropomorphic personifications. Death decides to take over for the Hogfather in order to make people continue to believe in him, wearing a long red cloak and a beard, but things start to become complicated because he is taking the children's wishes too literally. Meanwhile, Death's granddaughter Susan must find out what's happened to the real Hogfather. She visits his Castle of Bones only to find the hung-over Bilious, the "Oh God" of Hangovers, whom she rescues before the castle collapses due to the lack of belief. In an attempt to cure Bilious, Susan visits the Unseen University, where it is discovered that several of these small gods and beings are being created. The University's thinking machine, Hex, explains that there is 'spare belief' in the world – due to the absence of the Hogfather – which is being used to create them. Susan and Bilious then travel to the land of the Tooth Fairy where they discover that Jonathan Teatime has 'killed' the Hogfather by collecting millions of children's teeth and using them to control the children, forcing them to stop believing in the Hogfather. Upon throwing the Assassin off the tower and apparently killing him, Susan clears the teeth away and brings back the Hogfather by rescuing him from the Auditors, who have taken the forms of dogs. They cannot return to their original state and so cannot stop themselves falling off a cliff. Afterwards, Teatime tracks Susan to the Gaiters' nursery, but is killed by Susan using the nursery poker, which passes through Death because "it only kills monsters".

Thief of Time

Terry Pratchett

The Auditors are upset because the human race (although this appears to include all races on the Discworld, not just the humans) are living their lives in - what the Auditors consider to be - an unpredictable (and therefore not understandable) way. To fix this matter once and for all, they decide to convince a young clock maker, Jeremy Clockson, in Ankh-Morpork to build a perfect glass clock. They do not reveal that this will imprison Time (the anthropomorphic personification) and thereby freeze time (the physical quantity) on the Discworld. By freezing time, the Auditors intend to eliminate the unpredictability that humans cause through their everyday actions (and have enough time, for once, to file all the paperwork). Death discovers their plans, but is unable to act directly because of previous agreements with the Auditors. Instead, Death sends his granddaughter Susan to stop them, assisted (apparently) by the Death of Rats and Quoth the Raven. Meanwhile, in a distant valley, a young apprentice of the History Monks, Lobsang Ludd, is apprenticed to Lu-Tze, known throughout the Oi Dong Monastery as 'The Sweeper'. Following a highly impressive patch-up job with time (the physical quantity) by Lobsang, he and Lu-Tze are brought before the Abbot, where they hear that a glass clock is being built. Lu-Tze knows of such a clock's side-effects, since he was sent to prevent a previous clock from being built in Überwald. However, due to the difficulties inherent in Überwald (including the difficulty in determining which specific bolt of lightning hitting which castle might start the glass clock) he failed to stop the original - but Time only froze for a moment before a metal spring snapped and caused the clock to shatter. Having figured out that the new glass clock would be likely built in Ankh-Morpork, Lu-Tze and Lobsang head for the city to try to stop Jeremy from building it. The Auditors end up using one of their own as an agent when contacting Jeremy. Myria LeJean takes a human form and becomes quite disturbed by "her" experiences as "she" becomes more human and individual, as opposed to the collective Auditors. As she begins to understand more about humans, she opposes the activation of the clock and finds ways to delay its creation. This annoys the other Auditors who create human bodies of their own and - naming themselves after colours (in a possible play on the secret identities in Reservoir Dogs) - they prevent Myria from smashing the clock with a hammer, and organise a localised storm, a bolt of lightning hits Jeremy Clockson's workshop and the clock is started. Lobsang Ludd is just smashing his way through the window of the workshop at the moment the clock starts, having been delayed when he went back to help Lu-Tze, but he is too late to stop it… However, Lobsang is able to continue moving. He meets Susan Sto Helit (whose own attempts to stop the clock being started were less successful) and finds out after his time-storer stops spinning, that, as a creature not limited by time, he was not affected by the starting of the glass clock. Meeting up with Myria LeJean, they work to correct the problem and fight the Auditors. Since Myria is no longer part of the Collective hive mind of the Auditors, Susan suggests she change her name to Unity - which she likes. Susan and the newly-named Unity discover that Lobsang Ludd and Jeremy Clockson seem to share an astonishing mental connection. When Lobsang speaks, Jeremy (who was knocked unconscious by the lightning that started the clock and whose body was moved away from the Auditors by Myria/Unity) attempts to form the same words, despite his comatose state. Susan is able to shed light on this when she reveals that she met the midwife who brought Lobsang and Jeremy into the world - none other than the "best midwife in the world" - Nanny Ogg. Nanny has told her that she delivered two boys an instant apart and Susan realises that both Lobsang and Jeremy are the same person. Lobsang and Jeremy become infused, although they are nothing more than blue mist to begin with. Susan continues to call the mist Lobsang, since she is told that "Lobsang had the better memories". Using chocolate, Susan, Unity and a re-animated Lu-Tze kill a number of Auditors (the taste sensation of chocolate literally blows them away) and Lobsang is able to destroy the clock, freeing Time and unfreezing time. He then meets with his mother, Time, and his father, Wen the Eternally Surprised (the first Abbot of Oi Dong monastery) before effectively taking over Time's job. He attempts to learn Lu-Tze's fifth surprise (an ongoing theme in the novel as the sweeper refuses to tell him), after which he is defeated in the iron dojo by Lu-Tze, but passes his training anyway and becomes a sweeper. He asks Lu-Tze's advice about Susan and he returns to Ankh-Morpork, where the two have an unspecified "perfect moment." Throughout the story, Death is trying to round-up the other Horsemen of the Apocalypse, War, Famine and Pestilence, none of whom want to join up (compare with Sourcery when the Four Horsemen of the "Apocralypse" ride out, but having stopped off at the pub three of them have their Horses stolen). The Fifth Horseman - Ronnie Soak (originally called Kaos - Soak spelled backwards - as in Chaos) who left before they became famous - agrees to join Death in the fight against the Auditors, and the other three also arrive as the battle prepares to start. Kaos is useful due to his sword of chaos, which goes against the rules and though flaming, is used to keep his milk cool. An Angel with an Iron book appears during the battle. It is not explained who won the fight, but since Death (at least) appears in books set chronologically later it can only be assumed that the Horsemen triumphed.

Code of the Lifemaker

James P. Hogan

About 1,000,000 B.C., an unidentified alien race sent out robotic factories to many worlds in their part of the galaxy to prepare for future settlement. One of those factory ships suffers severe radiation damage from a near-miss by a supernova and goes off course, drifting in space for a hundred thousand years before landing on the Saturnian moon Titan. Due to a malfunction in its database it begins producing imperfect copies that begin to evolve on their own. (The description of this background is presented in a prologue that proved sufficiently popular among readers that it was later anthologized on its own in a collection of Hogan's short fiction.) The resulting machine ecosystem eventually gives rise to humanoid robots with human-like intellects who develop a civilization similar to early civilization of Earth. Almost all of them have reverence for their mythical creator, a being they call the "Lifemaker". Early in the 21st century, the North Atlantic Space Organization (combining NASA and NATO) dispatched the Orion with a cover story of terraforming Mars for human habitation. Karl Zambendorf, a con artist who is present on this expedition to verify ESP over interplanetary distances, prematurely learns that the Orion and its crew of researchers is headed for Titan, where the discovery of the Taloids has been kept need-to-know on Earth. When the Orion arrives, the first landing party sets down in a freethinking state where Thirg, a Taloid who was cast out of his home state Kroaxia, has fled. They are mistaken for the Lifemaker because they have come from the sky, which the Taloids cannot see out of due to Titan's atmosphere. But Thirg becomes more discerning as he and the humans begin to understand more of each others' speech. Thirg's brother Groork has come from Kroaxia to apprehend him, but Zambendorf intercepts him and sends him back to Kroaxia as a prophet. Zambendorf learned that NASO plans to exploit Titan's natural resources and use the Taloids to build the factories they need, reducing them to slaves. The NASO business administrators on the Orion are already in agreement with the Kroaxian government to use human (the Taloids call humans "Lumians" because they glow brightly in their infrared vision) weapons to conquer Titan, believing the Kroaxian leadership buttressed by priests will be the easiest to control. Zambendorf, in his unanticipated role as Messenger for the Lifemaker, has given Groork guidelines akin to the Ten Commandments for his people to prevent a war from starting. "All Taloids are brothers" and "No Taloid is to enslave or be a slave" does not sit well with the ruling establishment of Kroaxia, and Groork is saved by the Orion crew not working for NASO. There will be use of Titan's resources, but the partnership between humans and Taloids will be one of equals.

Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity

Lawrence Lessig

This book is an outgrowth of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Eldred v. Ashcroft, which Lessig lost. Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the U.S. Constitution says, "The Congress shall have Power ... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." Several times in the past century, congress has extended the copyright law in several ways. One way was to extend the term "on the installment plan". Another was to broaden the scope to include not only copying but creating "derivative works". This latter broadening is so ambiguous that it provides a foundation for massive abuse of power by companies holding large copyright portfolios. For example, the Recording Industry Association of America sued a freshman at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) for $10,000,000 for improving a search engine used only inside RPI. Lessig cites another example where Fox demanded $10,000 for the rights to use a 4.5 second video clip with The Simpsons playing on a television in a corner of a scene in a documentary. Anyone producing a collage of video clips can potentially be similarly sued on the grounds the collage is a "derivative work" of something copyrighted or that the collage contains a shot that is copyrighted. Lessig argues that this substantially limits the growth of creative arts and culture, in violation of the US Constitution; the Supreme Court ruled that Congress has the constitutional authority to properly balance competing interests on cases like this. In the preface of Free Culture, Lessig compares this book with a previous book of his, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, which propounded that software has the effect of law. Free Culture's message is different, Lessig writes, because it is "about the consequence of the Internet to a part of our tradition that is much more fundamental, and, as hard as this is for a geek-wanna-be to admit, much more important." (pg. xiv) Professor Lessig analyzes the tension that exists between the concepts of piracy and property in the intellectual property realm in the context of what he calls the present "depressingly compromised process of making law" that has been captured in most nations by multinational corporations that are interested in the accumulation of capital and not the free exchange of ideas. The book also chronicles his prosecution of Eldred and his attempt to develop the Eldred Act, also known as the Public Domain Enhancement Act or the Copyright Deregulation Act. Lessig concludes his book by suggesting that as society evolves into an information society there is a choice to be made to decide if that society is to be free or feudal in nature. In his afterword he suggests that free software pioneer Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation model of making content available is not against the capitalist approach that has allowed such corporate models as Westlaw and LexisNexis to have subscribers to pay for materials that are essentially in the public domain but with underlying licenses like those created by his organization Creative Commons. He also argues for the creation of shorter renewable periods of copyright and a limitation on derivative rights, such as limiting a publisher's ability to stop the publication of copies of an author's book on the internet for non-commercial purposes or create a compulsory licensing scheme to ensure that creators obtain direct royalties for their works based upon their usage statistics and some kind of taxation scheme such as suggested by professor William Fisher of Harvard Law School http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/tfisher/PTKChapter6.pdf that is similar to a longstanding proposal of Richard Stallman.

Killing Mr. Griffin

Lois Duncan

Brian Griffin is a high school English/literature teacher who never accepts late homework and is demanding of his students. After he gives out F's to a group of students who turn in papers late, the students—the "popular" crowd—decide to get revenge by kidnapping him. The group of friends includes Mark Kinney, the mastermind of the "prank", David Ruggles, president of the high school's senior class, Jeff Garrett, a basketball player, and Betsy Cline, the head cheerleader. Mr. Griffin recognized a paper Mark plagiarized, with help from his college-age girlfriend, as being from the college at which Mr. Griffin had worked as an assistant professor. Jeff obeys Mark, despite his parents' disapproval of Mark, and does things for the group like driving them around and often paying for their meals. Betsy is a spoiled and manipulative, but popular, girl, who has a crush on Mark. David is working toward a state university scholarship, which is grade-based; the previous English teacher, Dolly Luna, gave him As, but Mr. Griffin gives him Cs. David faces further pressures, as he needs ultimately to help support his family, since his mother is in a dead-end secretarial job, his nagging and lazy grandmother lives with them, and his father is out of the picture. The students take Mr. Griffin to a spot in the mountains so remote, that Mark is the only one who has used it, for outings with his former girlfriend, Lana Turnbolt. Betsy arrives in the parking lot after the boys have left with Mr. Griffin, thanks to a speeding ticket. Susan was supposed to ride with Betsy, but doesn't want any part in the scheme and Betsy leaves without her. The group taunts Mr. Griffin, telling him to beg for his life or they would kill him. They take Mr. Griffin's medicine and destroy it. Mark tells Mr. Griffin to beg or they will abandon him there overnight; Mr. Griffin refuses, so the students leave. Susan defies Mark and begs David to go check on Mr. Griffin. The two find him dead, as a result of heart failure from not taking his medication, and they hurry to find the other students. Mark decides to cover up the death instead of going to the police. Mr. Griffin's wife goes to the police the next day, because her husband has not returned home. A police officer pulls Susan from class to question her, because she was the last person to see Mr. Griffin alive to their knowledge. Mark meets her in the hallway before she reaches the office and instructs Susan on what to tell the police: Mr. Griffin spent the whole conference looking at his watch and left with a pretty woman. Everyone except for Susan heads to the mountains and they bury Mr. Griffin. Jeff repaints the car gray, telling his parents that he's fixing a friend's car. He and Betsy drive it to the airport and wipe the fingerprints from the steering wheel. Susan does not help, because the group is afraid she might have a nervous breakdown. Betsy, who has a crush on Mark, resents Betsy's role in disposing of the evidence, and is jealous that Mark is spending so much time with a plain girl like Susan. Kathy Griffin visits Susan's home, upset because she believes that Susan lied in her report to the police, as Mr. Griffin couldn't have been wearing his watch that day, because it was at home, broken. She asks Susan to contact her if Susan remembers anything more. Days later, Mark's ex-girlfriend, Lana, has a picnic with her fiancee at the secret place in the mountains. The couple discovers Mr. Griffin’s medicine bottle. Informing the police, they also mention there was a patch of dirt that looked like it had been recently uprooted. The police investigate, and find Mr. Griffin's body buried in the hole. Brian Griffin's murder is all over the news. David’s grandmother finds Mr. Griffin's ring that David stole, but believes it belongs to David's father, and that David has been secretly meeting with his father. David's mother does not take his grandmother seriously, but the conspirators know they need to hide or destroy the ring since it is evidence of their crime. However, the grandmother will not return the ring to David until she gets to meet with David's father. David's grandmother is killed, a neighbor referring to the killer suspect as a "boy in a brown sweater." When David learns that she is dead, he is overcome with grief and takes no further part in the plot. Susan makes the connection, knowing that Mark has a brown sweater he wears all the time, and that Mark would stop at nothing to get what he needed - in this case, the ring. Susan threatens to tell the police all that the group has done. Mark orders Jeff and Betsy to bind Susan and they leave. Mark tells Susan what really happened to his father - that he set their house on fire and killed his father. Susan realizes that he's going to do the same to her. He sets her curtains on fire and Susan realizes he intends to do the same to her. Miraculously, Susan is saved by Kathy Griffin, who recognizes her husband's Chevy in Susan's driveway when she sees Susan's house on fire. Though the car had been repainted, the gray color can't be made out in the dark, and Mrs. Griffin recognizes the patched upholstery. The conspiracy unravels with all of those involved facing varying criminal charges, except for Susan who is granted amnesty in exchange for her testimony at Mark's three murder trials. The novel ends with Susan's mother telling her that Mark will be blamed for manipulating her along with the other students, because he has been diagnosed as a psychopath.

Peer Gynt

Henrik Ibsen

Peer Gynt is the son of the once highly regarded Jon Gynt. Jon Gynt spent all his money on feasting and living lavishly, and had to go from his farm as a wandering salesman, leaving his wife and son behind in debt. Åse, the mother, wished to raise her son to restore the lost fortune of his father, but Peer is soon to be considered useless. He is a poet and a braggart, not unlike the youngest son from Norwegian fairy tales, the "Ash Lad", with whom he shares some characteristics. As the play opens, Peer gives an account of a reindeer hunt that went awry, a famous theatrical scene generally known as "the Buckride." His mother scorns him for his vivid imagination, and taunts him because he spoiled his chances with Ingrid, the daughter of the richest farmer. Peer leaves for Ingrid's wedding, scheduled for the following day, because he may still get a chance with the bride. His mother follows quickly to stop him from shaming himself completely. At the wedding, Peer is taunted and laughed at by the other guests, especially the local blacksmith, Aslak, who holds a grudge after an earlier brawl. In the same wedding, Peer meets a family of Haugean newcomers from another valley. He instantly notices the elder daughter, Solveig, and asks her to dance. She refuses because her father would disapprove and because Peer's reputation has preceded him. She leaves, and Peer starts drinking. When he hears that the bride has locked herself in, he seizes the opportunity and runs away with the bride, and spends the night with her in the mountains. Peer is banished for kidnapping Ingrid. As he wanders the mountains, his mother, Solveig, and Solveig's father search for him. Peer meets three amorous dairy-maids who are waiting to be courted by trolls (a folklore motif from Gudbrandsdalen). He becomes highly intoxicated with them and spends the next day alone suffering from a hangover. He runs head-first into a rock and swoons, and the rest of the second act probably takes place in Peer's dreams. He comes across a woman clad in green who claims to be the daughter of the troll mountain king. Together they ride into the mountain hall, and the troll king gives Peer the opportunity to become a troll if Peer would marry his daughter. Peer agrees to a number of conditions, but declines in the end. He is then confronted with the fact that the green-clad woman is with child. Peer denies this; he claims not to have touched her, but the wise troll king replies that he begat the child in his head. Crucial for the plot and understanding of the play is the question asked by the troll king: What is the difference between troll and man? The answer given by the Old Man of the Mountain is: "Out there, where sky shines, humans say: 'To thyself be true.' In here, trolls say: 'Be true to yourself and to hell with the world.'" Egoism is a typical trait of the trolls in this play. From then on, Peer uses this as his motto, always proclaiming that he is himself, whatever that is. He then meets one of the most interesting characters, the Bøyg — a creature who has no real description. Asked the question "Who are you?" The Bøyg answers, "Myself". In time, Peer also takes the Bøyg's important saying as a motto: "Go around." The rest of his life, he "beats around the bush" instead of facing himself or the truth. Upon waking up, he is confronted by Helga, Solveig's sister, who gives him food and regards from her sister. Peer gives the girl a silver button for Solveig to keep, and asks that she not forget him. As an outlaw, Peer struggles to build his own cottage in the hills. Solveig turns up and insists on living with him. She has made her choice, she says, and there will be no return for her. Peer is delighted and welcomes her, but as she enters the cabin, an elderly-appearing woman in green garments appears with a limping boy at her side. This is the green-clad woman from the mountain hall, and her half-human brat is the child begotten by Peer from his mind during his stay there. She has cursed Peer by forcing him to remember her, and all his previous sins, when facing Solveig. Peer hears a ghostly voice saying, "Go roundabout, Peer", and decides to leave. He tells Solveig he has something heavy to fetch. He returns in time for his mother's death, and then sets off overseas. Peer is away for many years, taking part in various occupations and playing various roles including that of a businessman engaged in enterprises on the coast of Morocco. Here, he explains his view of life, and we learn that he is a businessman taking part in unethical transactions, including sending heathen images to China and trading slaves. In his defence, he points out that he has also sent missionaries to China, and that he treated his slaves well. His companions rob him, after he decides to support the Turkish in suppressing a Greek revolt, and leave him alone on the shore. Then he finds some stolen bedouin gear, and, in these clothes, he is hailed as a prophet by a local tribe. He tries to seduce Anitra, the chieftain's daughter, but she steals his money and rings, gets away, and leaves him. Then he decides to become a historian, and travels to Egypt. He wanders through the desert, passes the Memnon and the Sphinx. As he addresses the Sphinx, believing her to be the Bøyg, he encounters the keeper of the local madhouse, himself insane, who regards Peer as the bringer of supreme wisdom. Peer comes to the madhouse, and understands that all of the patients live in their own worlds, being themselves to such a degree that no one cares for anyone else. In his youth, Peer had dreamt of becoming an emperor. In this place, he is finally hailed as one — the emperor of the "self." Peer despairs and calls for the "Keeper of all fools," i.e. God. Finally, on his way home as an old man, he is shipwrecked. Among those on board, he meets the Strange Passenger, who wants to make use of Peer's corpse to find out where dreams have their origin. This passenger scares Peer out of his wits. He lands on shore bereft of all of his possessions, a pitiful and grumpy old man. Back home in Norway, Peer Gynt attends a peasant funeral, and an auction, where he offers for sale everything from his earlier life. The auction takes place at the very farm where the wedding once was held. Peer stumbles along, and is confronted with all that he did not do, his unsung songs, his unmade works, his unwept tears, and his questions that were never asked. His mother comes back and claims that her deathbed went awry. He did not lead her to heaven with his ramblings. Peer escapes and is confronted with the Button-molder, who maintains that Peer's soul must be melted down with other faulty goods unless he can explain when and where in life he has been "himself." Peer protests. He has been only that, and nothing else. Then he meets the troll king, who states that he has been a troll, not a man, most of his life. The molder comes along and says that he has to come up with something if he is not to be melted down. Peer looks for a priest to confess his sins, and a character named the Lean One (who is the Devil), turns up. He believes Peer cannot be accounted a real sinner who can be sent to hell. He has not done anything serious. Peer despairs in the end, understanding that his life is forfeited. He understands he is nothing. But at the same moment, Solveig starts to sing — the cabin he himself built, is close at hand, but he dares not enter. The Bøyg in him tells him "around." The molder shows up and demands a list of sins, but Peer has none to give, unless Solveig can vouch for him. Then he breaks through to her, asking her for his sins. But she answers: "You have not sinned at all, my dearest boy." Peer does not understand — he believes himself lost. Then he asks her: "Where has Peer Gynt been since we last met? Where was I as the one I should have been, whole and true, with the mark of God on my brow?" She answers; "In my faith, in my hope, in my love." Peer screams and calls his mother, and hides himself in her lap. Solveig sings her lullaby for him, and we might presume he dies in this last scene of the play, although there are no stage directions or dialogue to indicate that he actually does. Behind the corner, the button-molder, who is sent by God, still waits, with the words: "Peer, we shall meet at the last cross-roads, and then we shall see if... I'll say no more."

Venus and Adonis

William Shakespeare

As Adonis is preparing to go hunting, Venus "seizeth on his sweating palm" and "Backward she push'd him, as she would be thrust" (for purposes of sexual intercourse). We find next that "Panting he lies, and breatheth in her face," while Venus tells him "Be bold to play, our sport is not in sight." She persuades him to kiss her, although Adonis is not very interested, thinking he is too young, and cares only for hunting. After they part, Adonis is soon killed in a hunting "accident". The poem contains what may be Shakespeare's most graphic depiction of sexual excitement.

A Wrinkle in Time

Madeleine L'Engle

:In the novel, the name of the protagonist Meg's mother is consistently written with a period after her title, but the names of the three angelic beings disguised as humans "Mrs Whatsit", "Mrs Who", and "Mrs Which" have no period after their titles of "Mrs". This plot summary and the remainder of the article reflect the convention of the novel. Meg Murry's classmates and teachers see her as a troublesome student. Her family knows that she is emotionally immature but also see her as capable of great things. The family includes her beautiful scientist mother; her mysteriously absent scientist father; her 10-year-old twin brothers, the athletic Sandy and Dennys; and her five year-old brother Charles Wallace Murry, a super-genius. The book begins with the line "It was a dark and stormy night," an allusion to the opening words in Edward George Bulwer-Lytton's 1830 novel Paul Clifford. Unable to sleep during a thunderstorm, Meg descends from her attic room to find that Charles Wallace sitting at the table drinking milk and eating bread and jam . then they are joined by their mother, they are visited by their new eccentric neighbor, Mrs Whatsit. In the course of conversation, Mrs Whatsit casually mentions there is such a thing as a tesseract, which causes Mrs. Murry to almost faint. The next morning, Meg discovers the term refers to a scientific concept her father was working on before his mysterious disappearance. The following afternoon, Meg and Charles Wallace encounter Meg's schoolmate, Calvin O'Keefe, a high-school junior who, although he is a "big man on campus", considers himself a misfit as well. They go to visit an old haunted house near town which Charles Wallace already knows as the home of Mrs Whatsit. There they encounter a companion of Mrs Whatsit, the equally strange Mrs Who. She promises that she and her friends will help Meg find and rescue her father. A budding love interest develops between Meg and Calvin. In the evening, Charles Wallace declares it is time for them to go on their mission to save their father. This is accompanied by the appearance of the third member of the "Mrs W's", Mrs Which, who appears to materialize out of nothing. Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who, and Mrs Which turn out to be supernatural beings who transport Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin O'Keefe through the universe by means of tesseract, a fifth-dimensional phenomenon explained as being similar to folding the fabric of space and time. Their first stop is the planet Uriel, a Utopian world filled with joyous, Centaur-like beings who live always in a state of light and love. There the "Mrs Ws" reveal to the children that the universe is under attack from an evil being who appears as a large dark cloud called The Black Thing. The children are then taken elsewhere to visit a woman who is a kind of medium (the "Happy Medium") with a crystal ball. In it, they see that Earth is partially covered by the darkness, although great religious figures, philosophers, and artists have been fighting against it. Mrs Whatsit is revealed to be a former star who exploded in an act of self-sacrifice to fight the darkness. The children then travel to the dark planet of Camazotz which is entirely dominated by the Black Thing. Meg's father is trapped there. They find that all the inhabitants behave in a mechanistic way and seem to be all under the control of a single mind. At the planet's central headquarters (described as CENTRAL Central Intelligence) they discover a red-eyed man with telepathic abilities who can cast a hypnotic spell over their minds. He claims to know the whereabouts of their father. Charles Wallace deliberately looks into the red eyes of the man allowing himself to be taken over by the mind controlling the planet in order to find their father. Under its influence, he takes Meg and Calvin to the place where Dr. Murry is being held prisoner because he would not succumb to the group mind. The planet turns out to be controlled by an evil disembodied brain with powerful telepathic abilities, which the inhabitants of Camazotz call "IT". Charles Wallace takes them to the place where IT is held, and in close proximity to IT, all of them are threatened by a possible telepathic takeover of their minds. To escape, Dr. Murry "tessers" Calvin, Meg and himself away from Camazotz, but Charles Wallace is left behind, still under the influence of IT. The experience of tessering through The Black Thing nearly kills Meg, because Murry does not know how to protect her from the Black Thing which surrounds the planet. When they arrive on the neighboring planet of Ixchel, Meg is nearly frozen and paralyzed. Calvin and the Murrys are discovered by the planet's inhabitants: large, sightless "beasts" with tentacles and four arms who prove both wise and gentle. Meg's paralysis is cured under the care of one inhabitant, whom Meg nicknames "Aunt Beast". When the trio of Whatsit, Who, and Which arrive, they charge Meg with rescuing Charles Wallace from IT. They each give her gifts. Mrs Whatsit gives Meg her love. Mrs Who quotes to Meg a passage from the Bible about God choosing the foolish of the world to confound the wise, and the weak to confound the strong. Mrs Which tells Meg that she has one thing that IT does not have. Upon arriving at the building where IT is housed, Charles Wallace is still there under IT's influence. Meg realizes that the one thing she has that IT does not is love. She focuses all her love at Charles Wallace and is able to free him from IT's control. Mrs Whatsit tessers the Murrys and Calvin back to Earth, where they are reunited with Mrs. Murry and the twins.

Lord of Chaos

Robert Jordan

The deposed Queen of Andor, Morgase Trakand, goes to Amadicia to seek aid in returning to the throne. However, she is as good as taken captive by the Lord Captain Commander of the Children of the Light, Pedron Niall. In response to the declaration of amnesty for men who can channel by Rand al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn, Mazrim Taim, a previous False Dragon who had wrought destruction in the Borderlands, swears allegiance to him. Rand has Mazrim Taim lead and train the newly-established Asha'man at the so-called Black Tower. Rand is diplomatically courted by both the rebel Aes Sedai in Salidar, who send an envoy to Caemlyn, and the Aes Sedai of the White Tower, who send an envoy to Cairhien. In Emond's Field, Perrin Aybara, making his return to the series after his absence in the previous book, feels the pull of ta'veren upon ta'veren and heads to Caemlyn to join Rand. Wrongly thinking the Salidar Aes Sedai few in number and cowed, Rand sends Mat Cauthon to retrieve Elayne Trakand and win the allegiance of the rebel Aes Sedai. Mat discovers that Egwene al'Vere has been named the Amyrlin Seat of the rebel Aes Sedai, and when she sends Nynaeve al'Meara and Elayne to Ebou Dar in Altara to search for a ter'angreal with which to break the Dark One's control of the climate, Mat goes with them. Shortly after Perrin joins up with him, Rand is secretly kidnapped by Elaida's Aes Sedai, who begin journeying back to Tar Valon. Along the way Rand is tortured severely and constantly, which has long-lasting effects on his psyche. Learning of the kidnapping, Perrin leads a mixed force of Rand's followers after the Aes Sedai, leading to the climactic Battle of Dumai's Wells. At the end of the battle, the rebel Aes Sedai are forced to swear fealty to the Dragon Reborn while the surviving White Tower Aes Sedai, who kidnapped Rand, remain captives.

The Outsiders

S. E. Hinton

Ponyboy, a member of the Greasers gang, is leaving a movie theater when a group of Socs jumps him. His older brothers Darry and Sodapop save him. The next night, Ponyboy and his friends Dally and Johnny meet Cherry Valance and Marcia at a drive-in movie theatre. Ponyboy realizes that Cherry is nothing like the Socs he has met before. The Greasers walk Cherry and Marcia home, and Socs Bob Sheldon and Randy Adderson see them and think the boys are trying to pick up their girlfriends. Cherry and Marcia prevent a fight by leaving with Bob and Randy willingly. When Ponyboy comes home very late, Darry gets angry and hits him. Ponyboy runs away and meets up with Johnny. As they wander around the neighborhood, Bob, Randy, and three other drunk Socs confront them. After a Soc nearly drowns Ponyboy in a fountain, a terrified Johnny stabs Bob, accidentally killing him. Ponyboy and Johnny find Dally, who gives them money and a loaded gun and tells them to hide in an abandoned church. They stay there for a few days, during which time Ponyboy reads Gone with the Wind to Johnny and recites the poem "Nothing Gold Can Stay" by Robert Frost. When Dally comes to get them, he reveals that the fights between the rival groups have exploded in intensity since Bob's death. Johnny decides to turn himself in, but the boys then notice that the church has caught on fire and several children are trapped inside. When Johnny and Ponyboy rush to rescue them, burning timber falls on Johnny, breaking his back. Dally rescues Johnny. Ponyboy is relatively unscathed and spends a short time in the hospital. When his brothers arrive to see him, Darry breaks down and cries. Ponyboy then realizes that Darry cares about him, and is only hard on Ponyboy because he wants him to have a good future. Two-Bit informs Ponyboy that he and Johnny have been declared heroes for rescuing the kids, but Johnny will be charged with manslaughter for Bob's death. He also says that the Greasers and Socs have agreed to settle their turf war with a major rumble. The Greasers win the fight. After the rumble, Dally and Ponyboy visit Johnny and see him die. An overcome Dally rushes out of the hospital and robs a store. When he points is empty gun at the police, they shoot and kill him. Ponyboy faints and stays sick and delirious for nearly a week. While recovering, he tries to convince himself that Johnny is not dead and that he is the one who killed Bob. When Ponyboy goes back to school, his grades drop. Although he is failing English, his teacher says he will pass him if he writes a decent theme. In the copy of Gone with the Wind that Johnny gave him before dying, Ponyboy finds a note from Johnny describing how he will die proudly after saving the kids from the fire. Johnny also urges Ponyboy to "stay gold". Ponyboy decides to write his English assignment about the recent events, and begins: "When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home..."

The Manuscript Found in Saragossa

Jan Potocki

The Manuscript Found in Saragossa collects intertwining stories, all of them set in whole or in part in Spain, with a large and colorful cast of Gypsies, thieves, inquisitors, a cabbalist, a geometer, the cabbalist's beautiful sister, two Moorish princesses (Emina and Zubeida), and others that the brave, perhaps foolhardy, Walloon Guard Alphonse van Worden meets, imagines or reads about in the Sierra Morena mountains of 18th-century Spain while en route to Madrid. Recounted to the narrator over the course of sixty-six days, the novel's stories quickly overshadow van Worden's frame story. The bulk of the stories revolve around the Gypsy chief Avadoro, whose story becomes a frame story itself. Eventually the narrative focus moves again toward van Worden's frame story and a conspiracy involving an underground — or perhaps entirely hallucinated — Muslim society, revealing the connections and correspondences between the hundred or so stories told over the novel's sixty-six days. The stories cover a wide range of genres and subjects, including the gothic, the picaresque, the erotic, the historical, the moral, and the philosophic; and as a whole the novel reflects Potocki's far-ranging interests, especially his deep fascination with secret societies, the supernatural, and "Oriental" cultures. The novel's stories-within-stories sometimes reach several levels of depth, and characters and themes — a few prominent themes being honor, disguise, metamorphosis, and conspiracy — recur and change shape throughout. Because of its rich and varied interlocking structure, the novel echoes favorable comparison to many celebrated literary antecedents such as the ancient BCE Jatakas and Panchatantra as well as the medieval Arabian Nights and Decameron.

The Power and the Glory

Graham Greene

The main character in the story is a nameless '[whisky priest]]', who combines a great power for self-destruction with pitiful cravenness, an almost painful penitence and a desperate quest for dignity. By the end, though, the priest "acquires a real holiness." The other main character is a lieutenant of the police who is given the task of hunting down this priest. This Lieutenant—also nameless but thought to be based upon Tomás Garrido Canabal— is a committed socialist who despises everything that the church stands for. The story starts with the arrival of the priest in a country town in an area where Catholicism is outlawed, and then follows him on his trip through Mexico, where he is trying to minister to the people as best as he can. He is also haunted by his personal demons, especially by the fact that he had fathered a child in his parish some years before. He meets the child, but is unable to feel repentant about what happened. Rather, he feels a deep love for the evil-looking and awkward little girl and decides to do everything in his power to save her from damnation. The priest's opposite player among the clericals is Padre José, a priest who has been forced to renounce his faith and marry a woman (by order of the government) and lives as a state pensioner. During his journey the priest also encounters a mestizo who later reveals himself to be a Judas figure. The lieutenant, on the other hand, is morally irreproachable, yet he is cold and inhumane. While he is supposedly "living for the people", he puts into practice a diabolic plan of taking hostages from villages and shooting them, if it proves that the priest has sojourned in a village but is not denounced. The lieutenant has also had bad experiences with the church in his youth, and as a result there is a personal element in his search for the whisky priest. The lieutenant thinks that all members of the clergy are fundamentally evil, and believes that the church is corrupt, and does nothing but provide delusion to the people. In his flight from the lieutenant and his posse, the priest escapes into a neighbouring province, only to re-connect with the mestizo, who persuades the priest to return in order to hear the confession of a dying man. Though the priest suspects that it is a trap, he feels compelled to fulfil his priestly duty. Although he finds the dying man, it is a trap and the lieutenant captures the priest. The lieutenant admits he has nothing against the priest as a man, but he must be shot “as a danger”. On the eve of the execution, the lieutenant shows mercy and attempts to enlist Padre José to hear the condemned man's confession. The lieutenant is convinced that he has "cleared the province of priests". In the final scene, however, another priest arrives in the town - which, among other possible readings, suggests that the Catholic Church cannot be destroyed.

The End of the Affair

Graham Greene

The novel focuses on Maurice Bendrix, a rising writer during World War II in London, and Sarah Miles, the wife of an impotent civil servant. Bendrix is loosely based on Greene himself, and he reflects often on the act of writing a novel. Sarah is based loosely on Greene's mistress at the time, Catherine Walston, to whom the book is dedicated. Bendrix and Sarah fall in love quickly, but he soon realizes that the affair will end as quickly as it began. The relationship suffers from his overt and admitted jealousy. He is frustrated by her refusal to divorce Henry, her amiable but boring husband. When a bomb blasts Bendrix's flat as he is with Sarah, he is nearly killed. After this, Sarah breaks off the affair with no apparent explanation. Later, Bendrix is still wracked with jealousy when he sees Henry crossing the Common that separates their flats. Henry has finally started to suspect something, and Bendrix decides to go to a private detective to discover Sarah's new lover. Through her diary, he learns that, when she thought he was dead after the bombing, she made a promise to God not to see Bendrix again if He allowed him to live again. Greene describes Sarah's struggles. After her sudden death from a lung infection brought to a climax by walking on the Common in the rain, several miraculous events occur, advocating for some kind of meaningfulness to Sarah's faith. By the last page of the novel, Bendrix may have come to believe in a God as well, though not to love Him. The End of the Affair is the fourth and last of Greene's explicitly Catholic novels.

Master Harold...and the Boys

Athol Fugard

Seventeen year-old Hally spends time with two middle-aged African servants, Sam and Willie, whom he has known all his life. On a rainy afternoon, Sam and Willie are practicing ballroom steps in preparation for a major competition. Sam is quickly characterized as being the more worldly of the two. When Willie, in broken English, describes his ballroom partner as lacking enthusiasm, Sam correctly diagnoses the problem: Willie beats her if she doesn't know the steps. Hally then arrives from school. Sam is on an equal intellectual footing with Hally; Willie, for his part, always calls the white boy "Master Harold." The conversation moves from Hally's school-work, to an intellectual discussion on "A Man of Magnitude", to flashbacks of Hally, Sam and Willie when they lived in a Boarding House. Hally warmly remembers the simple act of flying a kite Sam had made for him out of junk, which we learn later, Sam made to cheer Hally up after Hally was embarrassed greatly by his father's drunkenness. Conversation then turns to Hally's 500-word English composition. The play reaches an emotional apex as the beauty of the ballroom dancing floor ("a world without collisions") is used as a transcendent metaphor for life and a creative paper topic... But almost immediately despair returns: Hally's tyrannical father has been in the hospital recently, undergoing medical complications due to the leg he lost in World War II, but it appears that today he is coming home. Hally, distraught with this news, unleashes on his two black friends years of anger, pain and the vicarious racism from his father, creating possibly permanent rifts in his relationship with them. For the first time, apart from hints throughout the play, Hally begins explicitly to treat Sam and Willie as subservient help rather than as friends or playmates, insisting that Sam call him "Master Harold" and spitting on him, among other things. Sam is hurt and angry but understands that Hally is really causing himself the most pain. There is a glimmer of hope for reconciliation at the end, when Sam addresses Hally by his nickname again and asks to start over the next day, hearkening back to the simple days of the kite. Hally responds "It's still raining, Sam. You can't fly kites on rainy days, remember," then walks out into the rain. Sam and Willie end the play consoling each other by ballroom dancing together.

The Idiot

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Prince Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin, a fair-haired young man in his late twenties and a descendant of one of the oldest Russian lines of nobility, arrives in St. Petersburg on a November morning. He has spent the last four years in a Swiss clinic for treatment of his epilepsy and supposed intellectual deficiencies. On the train journey to Russia Myshkin meets Parfyon Semyonovich Rogozhin, and is struck by his passionate intensity, particularly in relation to a beautiful woman with whom he is obsessed. Myshkin's only relation in St. Petersburg is the very distant Lizaveta Prokofyevna Yepanchin. Madame Yepanchin is the wife of General Yepanchin, a wealthy and respected man in his late fifties. The prince makes the acquaintance of the Yepanchins, who have three daughters—Alexandra, Adelaida, and Aglaya, the last being the youngest and the most beautiful. General Yepanchin has an ambitious and vain assistant named Gavrila Ardalyonovich Ivolgin (nicknamed Ganya) whom Myshkin also meets during his visit to the household. Ganya, though actually in love with Aglaya, is trying to marry Anastassya Filippovna Barashkov, an extraordinarily beautiful femme fatale who was once the mistress of the aristocrat Totsky. Totsky has promised Ganya 75,000 rubles if he marries the "fallen" Nastassya Filippovna instead. As Myshkin is so innocent and naïve, Ganya openly discusses the subject of the proposed marriage in front of the prince. It turns out that Nastassya Filippovna is the same woman pursued obsessively by Rogozhin, and Ganya asks the Prince whether Rogozhin would marry her. The Prince replies that he might well marry her and then murder her a week later. The prince rents a room in the Ivolgin apartment, also occupied by Ganya; Ganya's sister Varvara Ardalyonovna (Varya); his mother, Nina Alexandrovna; his teenage brother, Nikolai (Kolya); his father, General Ivolgin; and another lodger named Ferdyshchenko. Nastassya Filippovna arrives and insults Ganya's family, which has refused to accept her as a possible wife for Ganya. Myshkin restrains her from continuing. The insult is compounded by the arrival of Rogozhin accompanied by a rowdy crowd of drunks and rogues. On the strength of his newly inherited fortune, Rogozhin promises to bring 100,000 rubles to Nastassya Filippovna's birthday party that evening, at which she is to announce whom she shall marry. Among the guests at the party are Totsky, General Yepanchin, Ganya, Ferdyshchenko, Ptitsyn—a usurer friend of Ganya's who is a suitor to Varya Ivolgin—and others. With the acquiescence of Kolya, Prince Myshkin arrives, uninvited. Following Myshkin's advice, Nastassya Filippovna refuses Ganya's proposal. Rogozhin arrives with the promised 100,000 rubles, but Myshkin himself offers to marry Nastassya Filippovna instead, announcing that he has recently received a large inheritance. Though surprised and deeply touched by Myshkin's love, Nastassya Filippovna, after throwing the 100,000 rubles in the fire and telling Ganya they are his if he wants to get them out, chooses to leave with Rogozhin. Myshkin follows them. For the next six months or so Nastassya Filippovna is torn between Myshkin's compassionate and insightful love for her and a self-punishing desire to ruin herself by submitting to Rogozhin's passion. Myshkin is tormented by her suffering, and Rogozhin is tormented by her love for Myshkin and frequently expressed disdain for his own claims on her. Myshkin's inheritance turns out to be smaller than expected and shrinks further as he satisfies the often fraudulent claims of creditors and alleged relatives. Finally, he returns to St. Petersburg and visits Rogozhin's house. They discuss religion and exchange crosses. But the main topic of their discussion is Nastassya Filippovna. Myshkin becomes increasingly horrified at Rogozhin's attitude to her. Rogozhin confesses to beating her in a jealous rage, and raises the possibility of cutting her throat. Later that day, Rogozhin, motivated by jealousy, attempts to stab Myshkin in the hall of the prince's hotel, but an unanticipated epileptic fit saves the prince. Myshkin then leaves St. Petersburg for Pavlovsk, a nearby town popular as a summer residence of St. Petersburg nobility. The prince rents several rooms from Lebedev, a rogue functionary who is, however, a highly complex character, first introduced at the time Myshkin meets Rogozhin on the train to Petersburg. Most of the novel's characters—the Yepanchins, the Ivolgins, Varya and her husband Ptitsyn, and Nastassya Filippovna—spend the summer in Pavlovsk as well. Burdovsky, a young man who claims to be the son of Myshkin's late benefactor, Pavlishchev, demands money from Myshkin as a "just" reimbursement for Pavlishchev's support. Burdovsky is supported by a group of insolent young men who include the consumptive seventeen-year old Hippolite Terentyev, a friend of Kolya Ivolgin. Although Burdovsky's claim is obviously fraudulent—he is not Pavlishchev's son at all—Myshkin is willing to help Burdovsky financially. The prince now spends much of his time at the Yepanchins'. He falls in love with Aglaya and she appears to reciprocate his feelings. A haughty, willful, and capricious girl, she refuses to publicly admit her love and in fact often openly mocks him. Yet her family begins to acknowledge him as her fiancé and even stages a dinner party in the couple's honor for members of the Russian nobility. Over the course of an ardent speech on religion and the future of aristocracy, Myshkin accidentally breaks a beautiful Chinese vase. Later that evening he suffers a mild epileptic fit. Guests and family agree that the sickly prince is not a good match for Aglaya. Yet Aglaya does not renounce Myshkin and even arranges to meet Nastassya Filippovna, who has been writing her letters in an attempt to persuade her to marry Myshkin. At the meeting the two women confront the Prince and demand that he choose between Aglaya, whom he loves romantically, and Nastassya Filippovna, for whom he has compassionate pity. Myshkin demurs, prompting Aglaya to depart, ending all hope for an engagement between them. Nastassya Filippovna then renews her vow to marry the Prince, but goes off with Rogozhin instead. The prince follows Nastassya and Rogozhin to St. Petersburg and learns that Rogozhin has slain Nastassya Filippovna during the night. The two men keep vigil over her body, which Rogozhin has laid out in his study. Rogozhin is sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor in Siberia, Myshkin goes mad and returns to the sanitorium, and Aglaya, against the wishes of her family, marries a wealthy, exiled Polish count that later is discovered to be neither wealthy, nor a count, nor an exile—at least, not a political exile—and who, along with a Catholic priest, has turned her against her family.

Telempath

Spider Robinson

The novel's protagonist, Isham Stone, is on a mission to kill the man allegedly responsible for the destruction of civilization: a scientist named Wendell Carlson, currently living alone at the former Columbia University in what used to be New York City. Isham has been told by his father, scientist Jacob Stone, that Carlson is a madman who brought the world to its current state by releasing a "hyperosmic plague": a virus that increases the sensitivity of the human sense of smell by many hundred times. With their senses of smell thus heightened, humans were unable to tolerate the odors produced by their own pollution-producing technology; the result was mass insanity and widespread rioting. Another result was the discovery of a species of "Muskys" — intelligent plasmoids — that live in the Earth's upper atmosphere and feed on human pollutants. The curtailment of technological activity has caused them to approach the planet's surface and attack human beings, on whose fear they are apparently able to feed. Isham sets out for New York and succeeds in locating Carlson. He learns from Carlson, however, that the man actually responsible for developing and releasing the plague is Isham's father Jacob. Isham returns to his home colony and sets a trap to kill his father, then returns to New York. The original novella By Any Other Name ends at this point. The novel continues as Isham's old teacher, Collaci, sets out to bring him back from New York to face a murder charge. Isham is successfully captured, but before he can be tried, his colony is attacked by Agros (anti-technology worshippers of Pan) and he is taken prisoner. Eventually Isham manages to bring about a measure of peace between the scientists and the neo-Luddites — and also learns that his father is not dead. The newly reconciled factions of humanity set out to rebuild civilization.

Tell Me Your Dreams

Sidney Sheldon

The main characters of the book are Ashley Patterson, an introverted workaholic, her co-workers, Toni Prescott, an outgoing singer and dancer, and shy artist Alette Peters and Ashley's father. The three women do not get along very well, because of their dissimilar natures. Toni and Alette generally maintain a friendship, with Alette a calming influence, but Toni dislikes Ashley and criticizes her harshly. All three have issues with their mothers having told them they'd never amount to anything. Ashley fears that somebody is following her. She finds her house lights turned on when she returns from work, her personal effects in disarray, and someone has written "You will die" on her mirror with a lipstick. She thinks someone's broken into her house. She requests a police escort, but the next morning, the police officer assigned to this duty is found dead in her apartment. Two other murders have already taken place, with an identical pattern. All the murdered men had been castrated and were having sex before being murdered. Evidence points to the same woman being involved in all three cases. When a gift from one of the murdered men to Toni is found among Ashley's things, she is identified as the killer and arrested. At this point, it is revealed that the three women are three selves of a woman suffering from multiple personality disorder. Ashley's father persuades an attorney friend to represent Ashley. The second half of the novel deals with the trial, complete with endless squabbling between opposing psychiatrists as to whether or not MPD is real. Finally when Ashley's advocate introduces Toni, the violent alter of Ashley, the court is convinced that Ashley is innocent. Ashley is committed to an insane asylum and in the course of therapy is introduced to her two "alters" and relives the horrific events that shattered her mind. She was sexually abused during her childhood, and this made her to develop a strong hatred towards men. In the asylum, Ashley is treated for MPD by doctor Gilbert. He is attracted to her and during her crisis, he too feels her pain and wants to comfort her. It is revealed that her father was the one who sexually abused her, and caused her to develop Dissociative Identity Disorder and also was the cause for the creation of the alter Toni,and becomes a thing of her mother's detest. And later in her life when they are living in Italy during her teenage she is once again assaulted by her piano teacher and that leads the creation of Alette. The structuring of both the alters is very interesting, Since the first alter represents her struggle and fear as a helpless child without sexual maturity, The alter (Toni) develops into a protective one and becomes murderous when encountered with similar conditions, While the second alter (Alette)represents her feeling of shame and pain of being breached, thus this alter develops into a source of console exhibiting warmth and motherly love and has good rapport with Ashley. However, Ashley's alter (Toni) was enraged when she saw the news that her father because the woman he is about to marry has a three-year-old daughter. She was afraid that the girl would suffer the fate she had. Doctor Gilbert drains anger out of Toni by showing the news everyday therefore making Toni softer every passing day. This softer side of Toni was only a front to show Doctor Gilbert she has finally accepted everything so she and Alette (another alter) could get out of the asylum to kill her father who is staying in Hamptons for Christmas.In the end, Doctor Gilbert releases her from the asylum as he believes she is cured. In the end Ashley is shown to be traveling in a train when Toni (her violent alter) suddenly shows up and go Hamptons, where her father was staying,to kill him. Toni on the last part of the novel:

The Doomsday Conspiracy

Sidney Sheldon

The protagonist of the story is Robert Bellamy, a man hired by the NSA to locate the several bus passengers in Switzerland who had accidentally seen a weather balloon with some top secret equipment (later on identified as a UFO) collapsing in the woods. As Robert locates the passengers one by one, they are mysteriously killed. Each murder has been meticulously staged to appear as an accident. Robert's marriage also dissolves, as his wife, starved for attention by Robert, marries a rich business tycoon Monte Banks. As Commander Robert Bellamy of US Navy is in the verge of completion of his mission, he learns that he is being hunted by an unknown lethal force. Robert runs escaping from the attackers from Washington to Zurich, Rome and Paris. As the story unfolds to reveal Bellamy's past - why the woman he loves cannot return his love, why his most beloved friends become his deadly enemies. Bellamy finally learns that the investigation ends in the place where he had started it.

Altered Carbon

Richard Morgan

In the novel's somewhat dystopian world, human personalities can be stored digitally and downloaded into new bodies, called sleeves. Most people have cortical stacks in their spinal columns that store their memories. If their body dies, their stack can be stored indefinitely. Catholics have arranged that they will not be resleeved as they believe that the soul goes to Heaven when they die, and so would not pass on to the new sleeve. This makes Catholics targets for murder, since killers know their victim will not be resleeved to testify. A UN resolution to alter this legal position forms one strand of the novel's plot, in order to allow the authorities to temporarily sleeve a deceased Catholic woman to testify in a murder trial. While most people can afford to get resleeved at the end of their lives, they are unable to update their bodies and most go through the full aging process each time which discourages most from resleeving more than once or twice. So while normal people can live indefinitely in theory, most choose not to. Only the wealthy are able to acquire replacement bodies on a continual basis. The long-lived are called Meths, a reference to the Biblical figure Methuselah. The very rich are also able to keep copies of their minds in remote storage, which they update regularly. This ensures that even if their stack is destroyed, they can be resleeved. One such Meth—a man named Laurens Bancroft—has apparently committed suicide, in which his stack was destroyed. He is resleeved from a backup. Because his stack is on a 48 hour back-up schedule, he has no memories of his actions during the previous 48 hours. He believes his apparent suicide was actually a murder and hires Takeshi Kovacs to investigate his death. Kovacs is an ex Envoy, a military unit formed to cope with the challenge of interstellar warfare. Faster-than-light travel is only possible by subspace transmission, called needlecasting, of a digitally stored consciousness to "download centers" where resleeving into physical bodies can be carried out. Transmitting normal soldiers in this way would severely inhibit their effectiveness, since they would have to cope with a new body and an unknown environment while fighting. To combat this, Envoy training emphasises mental techniques necessary to survive in different bodies over physical strength, and the sleeve in which they are transmitted has special neuro-chemical sensors which amplify the power of the five senses, intuition and physical capabilities. The effectiveness of the Envoy Corps' training is such that Envoys are banned from holding governmental positions on most worlds. Kovacs is persistently wracked by his memories of the action taken by the Envoy Corps in a battle on the planet Sharya and especially by the military debacle on Innenin, in which the Corps suffered extensive casualties after their stacks were infected with a lethal virus, Rawling 4851. Kovacs, killed in the novel's prologue and stored in digital form, is downloaded into a sleeve formerly inhabited by Bay City (formerly San Francisco) policeman Elias Ryker. The plot unfolds through Kovacs' narrative. Kovacs eventually solves the mystery, but only after a great deal of violence, including torture in virtual reality, which he is able to bear only because of his Envoy training.

Death on the Nile

Agatha Christie

While dining out in London one evening, Hercule Poirot notices a young woman, Jacqueline de Bellefort, dining and dancing with her fiancé, Simon Doyle. Poirot also notices that Jackie (a nickname given to her and used by intimates; short for Jacqueline) is very much smitten and is in love with Simon. The next day, Jacqueline takes Simon to meet her best friend, wealthy young heiress Linnet Ridgeway, in the hopes that Linnet will offer Simon a job. Three months later, Simon has broken off his engagement to Jacqueline and married Linnet. Poirot happens to encounter the couple on their honeymoon to Egypt, where he himself is on holiday. At their shared hotel in Cairo, Poirot sees an apparent chance meeting between the Doyles and Jacqueline. Afterwards, Linnet approaches Poirot and confides that Jacqueline has been stalking them since they were married, which is antagonizing both of them. Poirot says the Doyles have no legal recourse, but tries to reason with Jacqueline in private, urging her to let go of her attachment to Simon and not "open [her] heart to evil." Jacqueline refuses to listen, confiding that she has been dreaming of killing Linnet. Attempting to give Jacqueline the slip, the Doyles plan an extended stay in Cairo, while secretly booking passage on the same Nile river cruise as Poirot. To their rage, Jacqueline learns their plans and appears on board with them. Other passengers include: *American erotica novelist Salome Otterbourne and her daughter, Rosalie; *Mrs. Allerton and her son, Tim; *Linnet's American trustee, Andrew Pennington, who happened to run into her in Egypt; *Linnet's maid, Louise Bourget; *American socialite Marie Van Schuyler and her younger cousin, Cornelia Robson; *Miss Van Schuyler's nurse, Miss Bowers; *A young traveler named, Mr. Ferguson, an outspoken Socialist; *Archaeologist, Signor Richetti; *A diffident young man named James Fanthorp; *An Austrian physician named Dr. Bessner. *A husband of an Egyptian native Fleetwood; While taking a tour of some ancient ruins, a boulder falls from a cliff, narrowly missing Linnet and Simon. They suspect Jacqueline at first, but find out she was on the boat the whole time and could not have done it. Poirot meets his friend Colonel Race, who is joining everyone on the boat for the return trip. Race tells Poirot that one of the passengers is a deadly criminal who has murdered several other people, only Race has not yet identified him. That night on the boat, Jacqueline gets into a drunken rage, takes out a pistol, and shoots Simon in the leg, then breaks down in a hysterical state of remorse. At Simon's insistence, the two other persons present, Cornelia and Mr. Fanthorp, help Jacqueline back to her cabin, and then fetch Dr. Bessner to see to Simon's wound. Nurse Bowers stays in Jacqueline's room all night. Later, Fanthorp tells Bessner the gun is missing. The next day, Linnet is found dead with a bullet in her head. Race takes charge of the situation and asks Poirot to handle the investigation. Several clues seem to incriminate Jacqueline – a "J" written in blood on the wall above Linnet's head, for instance – but Miss Bowers assures Poirot that Jacqueline never left her cabin that night. Dr. Bessner also assures Poirot that Simon's leg wound completely incapacitated him, and so he could not have moved from his bed, even if he wanted to. Race and Poirot theorize that Linnet had some other enemy among the passengers, who took advantage of the scene in the lounge to murder her and implicate Jacqueline. Poirot also notices that Linnet's pearl necklace is missing from her room. Poirot then interviews all the passengers. Several of them heard a splash shortly after midnight, and Miss Van Schuyler claims that she looked out her window and saw Rosalie Otterbourne throw something overboard. But Rosalie denies this. A short time later, the murder weapon is recovered from the Nile – Jacqueline's pistol, wrapped in Miss Van Schuyler's missing velvet stole. To Poirot this makes no sense, when someone wanting to incriminate Jacqueline would have left her pistol behind to incriminate her. Louise Bourget is interviewed in Dr. Bessner's cabin, while Bessner is ministering to Simon. She says she saw nothing on the night of the murder, but would have done "if" she had left her cabin. This choice of words sounds strange to Poirot. When Race announces that the cabins will be searched for the missing pearls, Miss Bowers returns them, confiding that Miss Van Schuyler took them from Linnet's cabin, being a secret kleptomaniac. But Poirot examines the string and finds it is a fake, meaning the real necklace was stolen sometime earlier. Poirot eventually realizes that Salome Otterbourne is a secret alcoholic, and what Rosalie was throwing overboard was her mother's hidden cache of spirits. Rosalie admits this, but firmly denies seeing anyone leaving Linnet's cabin on the night of the murder. When Louise Bourget is found murdered in her cabin, clutching a large-denomination banknote, Race and Poirot deduce that she had seen the real murderer leave Linnet's cabin, and was trying to blackmail him or her. Poirot and Race enter Dr. Bessner's cabin and tell the doctor and Simon what happened. Salome Otterbourne enters and says she knows who killed Linnet and Louise, because she saw that person enter and leave Louise's cabin. Simon yells at her to tell him. Before she can finish her story, a shot is fired from the deck outside, killing her. Before Poirot and Race can get outside, the shooter is gone, having dropped a gun that Poirot recognizes from Andrew Pennington's luggage. Poirot announces that he has solved the case; for him the most salient clues were: *the fact that Poirot only drinks wine with dinner, while his two usual dinner companions, the Allertons, drink something else; *two bottles of nail polish in Linnet's room, one labelled "Cardinal" (a deep, dark red) and the other "Rose" (pale pink), but both of which contain red coloring; *the fact that Jacqueline's gun was thrown overboard; and *the circumstances of Louise and Mrs. Otterbourne's deaths. Before explaining his solution to the crime, Poirot decides to clear away some of the lesser mysteries first, by interviewing several of the passengers in turn: *Andrew Pennington admits that he has speculated, illegally, with Linnet's holdings; he was hoping to replace the funds before she came of age, but upon her marriage she gained full control of her estate; on learning of her marriage, Pennington rushed to Egypt to stage a "chance" encounter with Linnet and dupe her into signing legal documents that would exculpate him; he abandoned the plan when he found that Linnet was a shrewd woman who read anything she was asked to sign in detail; in desperation, he tried to kill her by dropping the boulder on her, but that is as far as he went, and he swears that he did not murder her; *Fanthorp is revealed to be a young attorney with Linnet's British solicitors, who sent him to Egypt to spy on Pennington, suspicious of his intentions; *Tim is exposed as a society jewel thief, working in partnership with his cousin, a down-on-her-luck socialite. Tim stole the pearls from Linnet's cabin that night and substituted the fake string for them, but, likewise, swears he didn't kill her; he does not know if Linnet was already dead when he entered her cabin; Rosalie admits that she saw Tim enter and leave Linnet's cabin, but she has come to love Tim, and was trying to protect him; Poirot clears Tim of the murder and agrees not to report his thievery to the police; Tim promises to reform and happily asks Rosalie to marry him, to the delight of his mother. *Signor Richetti is exposed as the foreign agent and criminal Race is after, after Race hears of a telegram Richetti received, using a code that Race recognizes; Poirot finally explains the real mystery to Race, Miss Robson, and Dr. Bessner. Their first idea, that the murder was conceived on the spur of the moment after the scene in the lounge, was mistaken; in fact, the murder was planned months in advance – by Jacqueline and Simon. Jacqueline used Cornelia Robson as a witness and pretended to shoot Simon in the leg. Simon faked being wounded with red ink, hidden in Linnet's nail polish bottle. While Cornelia Robson left to get Jacqueline back to her cabin and Jim Fanthorp called Dr. Bessner, Simon picked up the gun, ran to Linnet's cabin, shot her, and then came back to the lounge and shot himself in the leg, using the velvet stole as a muffler. He reloaded two bullets back into the gun, wrapped it in the stole and threw the bundle overboard before anyone came back. Dr. Bessner then examined him and confirmed that his wound left him unable to have left the lounge. Before the murder, Jacqueline or Simon drugged Poirot's usual bottle of wine, ensuring that he would sleep through the night so he will not participate in the event. All is not well, for Louise Bourget, the maid, saw Simon enter and leave Linnet's cabin. She blackmailed Simon and demanded money for hushing her up. But Simon told Jacqueline about it privately. Jacqueline entered Louise's cabin and stabbed her. However, Mrs. Otterbourne saw Jacqueline entering the maid's door. She came to Simon and Poirot to tell what she saw, but Simon yelled at Mrs. Otterbourne in a voice loud enough for Jacqueline to hear it – who acted quickly and shot Mrs. Otterbourne. Confronted, Simon and Jacqueline confess to the plot. Jacqueline says that she and Simon have always been in love, and Simon never cared for Linnet, even when she tried to steal him away from Jacqueline. Jacqueline tells Poirot that the idea of murdering Linnet for her money was Simon's, but she planned it, knowing Simon was not smart enough to pull it off by himself. As the passengers are disembarking, Jacqueline reveals a second pistol, which she hid in Rosalie Otterbourne's cabin, and kills both Simon and herself, sparing them both from more gruesome and humiliating deaths. Poirot confesses that he knew about the second pistol, and wanted to give Jacqueline the chance to take a more humane way out. In addition to Tim and Rosalie, there is another unexpected love match: Cornelia Robson accepts Dr. Bessner's proposal, to the stupefaction of Mr. Ferguson, who had been courting her, in his own uncouth way, during the whole trip.

Dot and the Kangaroo

Ethel Pedley

A 5-year-old girl named Dot is lost in the outback after chasing a hare into the wood and losing sight of her home. She is approached by a red kangaroo who gives her some berries to eat. Upon eating the berries, Dot is able to understand the language of all animals, and she tells the kangaroo her plight. The kangaroo, who has lost her own joey, decides to help little Dot despite her own fear of humans. The book is filled with criticism on negative human interference in the wild in 1884.

New English Bible

Because of its scholarly translators, the New English Bible has been considered one of the more important translations of the Bible to be produced following the Second World War. F. F. Bruce, then Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis in the University of Manchester, declared that "To the sponsors and translators of the New English Bible the English speaking world owes an immense debt. They have given us a version which is contemporary in idiom, up-to-date in scholarship, attractive, and at times exciting in content..." However, T. S. Eliot comments that the New English Bible "astonishes in its combination of the vulgar, the trivial and the pedantic."

The Seven-Per-Cent Solution

Nicholas Meyer

An introduction states that two canonical Holmes adventures were fabrications. These are "The Final Problem", in which Holmes apparently died along with Prof. James Moriarty, and "The Empty House", wherein Holmes reappeared after a three-year absence and revealed that he had not been killed after all. The Seven-Per-Cent Solutions Watson explains that they were published to conceal the truth concerning Holmes’ "Great Hiatus". The novel begins in 1891, when Holmes first informs Watson of his belief that Professor James Moriarty is a "Napoleon of Crime". The novel presents this view as nothing more than the fevered imagining of Holmes' cocaine-sodden mind; it further states that Moriarty was the childhood mathematics tutor of Sherlock and his brother Mycroft. Moriarty meets Watson, denies that he is a criminal and reluctantly threatens to pursue legal action unless the latter's accusations cease. The heart of the novel consists of an account of Holmes’ recovery from his addiction. Watson and Holmes’ brother Mycroft induce Holmes to travel to Vienna, where Watson introduces him to Dr. Freud. Using a treatment consisting largely of hypnosis, Freud helps Holmes shake off his addiction and his delusions about Moriarty, but neither he nor Watson can revive Holmes’ dejected spirit. What finally does the job is a whiff of mystery: one of the doctor's patients is kidnapped and Holmes’ curiosity is sufficiently aroused. The case takes the three men on a breakneck train ride across Austria in pursuit of a foe who is about to launch a war involving all of Europe. Holmes remarks during the denouement that they have succeeded only in postponing such a conflict, not preventing it; Holmes would later become involved in a "European War" in 1914. One final hypnosis session reveals a key traumatic event in Holmes' childhood: his father murdered his mother for adultery and committed suicide afterwards. It was Moriarty who informed Holmes and his brother of their deaths, and his tutor then became a dark and malignant figure in his subconscious. Freud and Watson conclude that Holmes, consciously unable to face the emotional ramifications of this event, has pushed them deep into his unconscious while finding outlets in fighting evil, pursuing justice, and many of his famous eccentricities, including his cocaine habit. However, they decide not to discuss these subjects with Holmes, believing that he would not accept them, and that it would needlessly complicate his recovery. Watson returns to London, but Holmes decides to travel alone for a while, advising Watson to claim that he had been killed, and thus the famed "Great Hiatus" is more or less preserved. It is during these travels that the events of Meyer's sequel The Canary Trainer occur.

Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth

Chris Ware

Jimmy Corrigan is a meek, lonely middle aged man who meets his father for the first time in a Michigan town over Thanksgiving weekend. Jimmy is an awkward and cheerless character with an overbearing mother and a very limited social life. Jimmy attempts to escape his unhappiness via an active imagination that gets him into awkward situations. A parallel story set in the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 shows Jimmy's grandfather as a lonely little boy and his difficult relationship with an abusive father, Jimmy's great grandfather. Another storyline shows Jimmy as a lonesome child of divorce, suggesting that this was Jimmy's "real" childhood, while his "Smartest Kid on Earth" adventures are probably his fantasies.

Palestine

Joe Sacco

The book takes place over a two-month period in late 1991 early 1992, with occasional flashbacks to the expulsion of the Arabs, the beginning of the Intifada, the Gulf War and other events in the more immediate past. Sacco spent this time meeting with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the narrative focuses on the minute details of everyday life in the occupied territories, presenting the daily struggles, humiliations and frustrations of the Palestinians. Sacco’s visit to Israel and the occupied territories is presented chronologically, from his arrival to his departure, through dramatic scenes with only a handful of diversions to present the historical and personal background. Most of the scenes in the book are conversations between Sacco and Palestinians, and though the events they talk about are presented visually the dialogue is always present as a form of narration for the events. Sacco devotes whole pages to drawings of the destitution and squalor prevalent in the occupied territories. Though Sacco is the principal narrator at times he steps aside and allows other characters to present their stories uninterrupted and without interpretation. In his drawings, though most of the panels are presented as a “side view” of Sacco, other characters and their surroundings, there are several panels which present the scene as it looks from Sacco’s point of view. There are also panels which present a bird’s eye view of places like the refugee camps or Jerusalem. In Palestine Sacco positions himself knowingly as the westerner going to the Middle East to confront a reality unfamiliar to his American audience. Sacco does not delude himself that as a "neutral" observer he can remain invisible and have no effect on the events around him, instead accepting his role and concentrating on his personal experience of the situation. Though his goal is to document events and interview Palestinians he is affected by the reality of the occupied territories and cannot help but participate in, and comment on, demonstrations, funerals, roadblocks and encounters with soldiers. Towards the end he becomes even more active as he shares food and lodgings with the Palestinians he interviews and even breaks curfew with them while in the Gaza Strip. In the book Sacco references Joseph Conrad's Under Western Eyes, Heart of Darkness, and Edward Said's Orientalism to draw links between the situation he is witnessing and colonialism. Towards the end of the book Sacco acknowledges that he has not reflected Israel enough, that it would take a whole other trip to present that side of things.

Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron

Daniel Clowes

Like A Velvet Glove Cast In Iron is about a man named Clay Loudermilk and his attempts to locate his estranged wife, Barbara Allen. (The song "the Ballad of Barbara Allen" forms a commentary on the story with its elements of unrequited love, loss, and death.) For reasons unknown, Clay is in the audience at a porno theatre when he sees a bizarre BDSM feature (also titled Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron), the star dominatrix of which is revealed to be his wife. Clay sets out to locate her and becomes embroiled in a series of misadventures involving an incredibly bizarre and varied cast of supporting characters. Clay is victimized by two crazed policemen, meets a religious cult led by a mass-murderer who intend to overthrow the American government, conspiracy theorists who believe that the reins of the world's political power somehow revolve around a series of dime store novelty figures, an inhumanly malformed, potato-like young woman and her nymphomaniacal mother, and various other freaks and weirdos. During one dream sequence, the infamous Foot Foot, from the song by The Shaggs, gnaws on Clay's leg. The happy-face icon of "Mr. Jones" also appears in various places through the story, tattooed into people, carved on to Clay's foot, as a ghost-like character, in Hitler's birthmark, and on the sign for Value Ape shops. It signifies the way in which logos pervade our societies, and links to the conspiracy elements of the story. The true nature of the potato-woman's father is never learned by Mr. loudermilk, but the reader will see suggestions of the Cthulhu Mythos. The phrase "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?", referencing the bizarre Dan Rather incident (some years before the R.E.M. song did the same thing), is used as part of the "Mr. Jones" conspiracy sub-plot. There are, in addition, references to child porn and . The story is for adults only, and has a violent, ugly climax.

David Boring

Daniel Clowes

David Boring is a story told in the first person by its eponymous protagonist, concerning his sometimes fantastic and sometimes mundane exploits and misadventures in and out of big city life. Much of the plot of the book concerns David's attempt to obtain a woman whom he considers his feminine ideal, based largely on the characteristics of his first cousin, Pamela, with whom he shared some innocent adolescent kisses at a family summer retreat. Shortly after attending the funeral of a friend, David meets, dates, and is abandoned by Wanda, a woman whom he considers the perfect fulfillment of this ideal. After sinking into an all-consuming depression for weeks, David is shot in the head by an unknown attacker in front of his own home, but survives with only a small dent in his forehead. David, his mother, their extended family, and David's roommate and friend Dot all end up stranded on a small island, Hulligan's Wharf, which the family owns and uses for vacations. David's great-uncle August shows up, proclaims that terrorist gas attacks have contaminated the mainland, and later dies. While on the island, David has a sexual tryst with his mother's cousin, Mrs. Capon, who later disappears that very night. At the same time, Dot has begun a relationship with Iris, Mrs. Capon's daughter, who is married to Manfred. Manfred tries to kill Dot by drugging her and throwing her into the water while she sleeps, but she wakes up in time to grab Iris, beat up Manfred, and escape by boat. When word gets around that David suspects Manfred of killing Mrs. Capon as well, Manfred tries to pummel him, but is stopped by Mr. Hulligan, the island's caretaker. When the food runs out, David and Mr. Hulligan are abandoned by Manfred and David's mother, and barely make it ashore on a makeshift raft. They discover (as Mr. Hulligan believed all along) that the terrorist attack was not the world-ending catastrophe August had believed. David returns home and begins a relationship with a woman named Naomi. He soon discovers that the man who shot him was a professor named Karkes, who was similarly abandoned by Wanda, and assumed that she had left him for David. He and Karkes enter into a strange friendship, discussing their mutual obsession with Wanda and attempting to track her down. In his search, David meets Judy, Wanda's sister, who resembles her strongly. David decides that, contrary to his earlier belief that Wanda was the fulfillment of his ideal, Wanda was in fact merely a flawed version of Judy. His relationship with Naomi falls apart, and she flees to Norway, fearing further terrorist attacks on America. Judy is attracted to David, but is worried about her husband. After they meet and kiss, her husband shows up at David's apartment and knocks him unconscious with a baseball bat. Meanwhile, Dot's relationship with Iris has failed, and Iris leaves her for Agent Roy Smith, who is investigating the murders of Mrs. Capon and Whitey. Smith resolves to frame David and Dot for Whitey's murder, in order to eliminate any competition for Iris, whom he marries. David and Karkes track Wanda down to a weird cult commune, finding that Wanda is the only one there, the others having "gone on." Neither David nor Karkes asks what that means. Although David and Karkes agree to "let the best man win," David intends to deceive and defeat Karkes by letting him have Wanda, whom he considers a lesser version of Judy. David loudly and publicly declares his love for Judy, but this only earns him another beating at the hands of her husband. David aimlessly wanders his way around the docks, where he is tracked down by Smith and his superior, Lieutenant Anemone. Smith tries to shoot David, but only grazes his head before Smith and Anemone are both shot by Dot. The two escape to Hulligan's Wharf, where David finds his long-lost cousin Pamela and her baby. She fled to the island for her child's safety, and has several months of food supply, planning to start a vegetable garden so that they can survive indefinitely. David and Pamela begin an adult relationship. The group spends more than four months on the island with no sign of the police or poison gas. The occurrence of further terrorist attacks is suggested, but not directly stated. At the book's end, David expresses the conviction that he is happy and thankful, and does not care how long he has to live. The question of whether the pair have days, weeks, months, or years of bliss is never answered.

The Shipping News

E. Annie Proulx

The story centers on Quoyle, a newspaper pressroom worker from upstate New York whose father emigrated from Newfoundland. Shortly after his parents' suicide, Quoyle's unfaithful and abusive wife Petal leaves town and attempts to sell their two daughters to sex traffickers. Soon thereafter, Petal and her lover are killed in a car accident; the young girls are located by police and returned to Quoyle. Despite his daughters' safe return, Quoyle's life is collapsing, and his paternal aunt, Agnis Hamm, convinces him to return to Newfoundland for a new beginning. They return to their ancestral home on Quoyle's Point. He obtains work as a traffic accident reporter for the Gammy Bird, the local newspaper in Killick-Claw, a small town. The Gammy Bird's editor also asks him to document the shipping news, arrivals and departures from the local port, which soon grows into Quoyle's signature articles on boats of interest in the harbour. Quoyle gradually makes friends within the community, learns about his own troubled family background, and begins a relationship with a local woman, Wavey. Quoyle's growth in confidence and emotional strength, as well as his ability to be comfortable in a loving relationship, become the book's main focus. Quoyle learns deep and disturbing secrets about his ancestors that emerge in strange ways.

A Time for Judas

Morley Callaghan

The title refers to the friendship between the scribe, Philo, and Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Jesus. The premise is that Judas was actually Jesus' most trusted disciple, and chose him for the important job of "betraying" him to the authorities. In other words, Judas was following Jesus' instructions. He tells his story to Philo, who writes it all down on papyrus, seals it up in a Greek jar, and hides it until it is discovered in the 20th century. The story goes that Judas hanged himself, not because he was ashamed of betraying Jesus, but because he had not kept the secret as Jesus had made him promise to do.

Waldo

Robert A. Heinlein

As the story opens, a dancer is performing feats of astonishing virtuosity on stage. Afterward, in the dressing room, while preparing to depart for his other job as a neurosurgeon, Waldo reminisces to a reporter about what made him take up dancing. The rest of the story is told as a flashback. The scene changes to James Stevens, Chief Engineer of North American Power-Air, or NAPA. Stevens is desperate to discover what is causing vehicles driven by broadcast power to cease functioning without reason. Society has harnessed cheap atomic power, broadcast by NAPA, to run homes, factories, ground vehicles, and even personal aircraft which can travel into space. If the failures continue, not only will he be out of a job but the entire power system of the country could collapse. The heart of the technology is the "deKalb receptor", which picks up the power beam and feeds it to the rest of the system. The deKalbs are failing, and no-one, not even Dr. Rambeau of the Research department, can identify the cause. In desperation, Stevens approaches Doc Grimes, the Farthingwaite-Jones family physician who has known Waldo since birth, to try to persuade Waldo to help. Waldo has a grudge against NAPA after losing a legal battle with them some years before. Grimes is Waldo's only friend, or as Grimes puts it, the only person who dares to be rude to him. Waldo lives in a satellite in high orbit, where the lack of gravity allows him to move around despite his weakness. He makes his living as a consulting engineer, with a specialty in fine motor skills. He is training a machinist using remote controlled waldoes when Grimes and Stevens arrive. Waldo introduces Stevens to his home, and his pets, both adapted to free fall. Baldur the dog is a large mastiff raised from puppyhood in orbit, while the singing bird Ariel, hatched in space, has learned to fly in a completely new way. The atmosphere is cordial, but once Grimes reveals Stevens' purpose, Waldo turns hostile. Nothing, not even the collapse of Earth society, would persuade him to help NAPA. Stevens leaves, but Grimes has a few words with Waldo, pointing out where his food comes from and so forth. Waldo reluctantly takes the case, but Grimes insists on one more condition: Waldo must figure out what effect broadcast power has on humans. Grimes is seeing a slow weakening of the human physique, and he blames the radiant power industry. Stevens returns to Earth, to find that one of his engineers who had experienced a power failure in his personal craft has returned. He tells Stevens that he fixed the deKalbs. Stevens is doubtful, since the devices often start working as mysteriously as they stop. The engineer, McLeod, presses the issue. He was on his way to look at a crashed aircar, only to have his own vehicle break down in Pennsylvania Dutch country, where he grew up. Visiting an old hex doctor, known as Gramps Schneider, McLeod lets him look at the deKalbs. Schneider announces that "now the fingers will make", meaning the antennas on the deKalbs will work. McLeod finds to his surprise that the deKalbs are indeed functional. However he has saved a surprise for Stevens. In operation, the antennas now flex and wiggle like fingers reaching for something. Waldo, meanwhile, is working on the problem. Having satisfied himself that the deKalbs really are having basic problems, he also realizes that Grimes is right. Then he gets a call from Dr. Rambeau, who seems to have come unhinged. Having seen the wiggling deKalbs, he announces that he knows what is happening. "Magic is loose in the world!" he tells Waldo. He shows Waldo some tricks he can do now that he understands magic. He sticks a penknife through his hand and withdraws it without any bleeding, which Waldo finds unimpressive. "Hysterical vascular control, a perfect clinical case," he thinks. Then Rambeau places the knife on the palm of his hand and turns the hand palm down, the knife staying in place. To Waldo, with his firm footing in the physical sciences, this is either a trick or something truly impossible. He calls Stevens to have Rambeau brought to him, but Stevens reports that Rambeau somehow escaped from his restraints without actually unfastening them. Not only that, he has made another set of deKalbs behave as strangely as McLeod's. Waldo is his usual self at first, calling Stevens incompetent, but then he seems to mellow. He thanks Stevens instead, and asks to have Rambeau's notes and equipment shipped up to him. Seeing the eccentric deKalbs, Waldo realizes that he must learn what happened to them. Schneider will not leave his home, so Waldo has to go back to Earth, an experience he dreads. Shipped down in a medical craft, with Grimes in attendance, he lies in his waterbed while Schneider examines him. Schneider thinks he should get up and walk, but Waldo protests he cannot. Schneider tells him he must "reach out for the power". According to Schneider, the "Other World is close by and full of power", waiting only for someone to grab it. In Schneider's hands, Waldo does indeed experience a sense of well-being, and is able to lift up a coffee cup one-handed for the first time in his life. Schneider explains an old philosophy, how things can both be true and not true, especially that something which can be true for this world might not be for the Other World. Since our minds sit in the Other World, this is important. McLeod, according to Schneider, was "tired and fretful", and found one of the "bad truths", causing the deKalbs to fail. Schneider simply looked for the other truth, and the deKalbs worked again. At first, returning to his home, Waldo thinks the journey wasted. Not really expecting anything, he tries Schneider's methods on a failed deKalb. To his astonishment, they begin to work in just the same fashion as McLeod's. At this point Stevens calls him to say that things are getting much worse. Waldo, thrown off balance by the "impossible" thing he has just seen, decides to twit Stevens with Rambeau's words: "Magic is loose in the world!" Having seen Waldo's sudden change of heart when Rambeau vanished, Stevens is now convinced that Waldo has come unglued as well—an unnerving prospect, if Waldo is the only one who can fix the problem. Waldo realizes that Stevens' and Grimes' problems are related. Radiant power is affecting the human nervous system. People feel weak, rundown, fretful, and somehow transfer their malaise to the deKalbs. He also realizes something that Stevens has not noticed. The repaired deKalbs work without broadcast power! Apparently they draw energy from Schneider's "Other World". Waldo uses this to effect his revenge. Summoning NAPA's representatives to his home, he demonstrates that he can fix deKalbs and can train others to fix them. The repairs are 100% reliable, he asserts. Having received their formal acknowledgment that he has fulfilled his contract, he unveils the "Jones-Schneider deKalb", a Rube Goldberg contraption which appears to draw power from nowhere. He tells them that with this he can put NAPA out of business. Of course, NAPA offers a settlement from which Waldo profits hugely, even though the new deKalb is a repaired one with a lot of distracting technology attached. Having triumphed, Waldo must satisfy himself that he is right. The "Other World" is just a space-time continuum, he thinks, possibly with a different value for the speed of light. It could be right next to our continuum, separated by an infinitesimal amount. If, as Schneider asserts, the mind sits in the Other World, that would explain many things. Eventually Waldo realizes that he himself can draw strength from the Other World. At first he fails, but after a dream in which Rambeau pops in and out of the Other World to threaten him, he finds that he can indeed be strong. Tricking Grimes and Stevens into taking him to Earth again, he walks out of the craft, almost causing Grimes to have a heart attack. As he prepares to lead a life on Earth, he has to deal with the fallout from his previous manners. Stevens tells Waldo that, had he not been crippled, some of the things he used to say would have gotten him into a fight. Thinking Stevens means that he should fight now, Waldo knocks him out. Once he recovers, Stevens explains that he no longer feels that way. In fact, he thinks Waldo would be a good friend once he learns some manners. Returning to the dancer, who is of course Waldo, we see him depart the dressing room with great bonhomie. His principal assistant is the former Chairman of the Board at North American Power-Air.

The Fifth Elephant

Terry Pratchett

The Ankh-Morpork City Watch is expanding; there is now a Traffic department with traffic cameras implemented using iconograph technology and a wheel clamping team, and the clacks is beginning to replace homing pigeons for communications between officers. The Watch is also investigating the theft of the replica Scone of Stone, a parody of the real-life Stone of Scone, from the Ankh-Morpork Dwarf Bread Museum. (The Scone of Stone in the novel is kept under close guard in a dwarf mine in Überwald, and will form a vital part of the forthcoming coronation ceremony of the dwarfs' new Low King.) Samuel Vimes, Commander of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch and Duke of Ankh, is sent to the remote region of Überwald as an ambassador to take advantage of the coronation to negotiate with the new Low King on increased imports of fat. (Underground fat deposits are abundant in Überwald as a fifth discworld-supporting elephant impacted there in prehistoric times, according to legend.) Überwald is also the traditional home of the Disc's dwarfs who are about to enthrone a new Low King. A cabal of local werewolves seek to exploit this opportunity to destabilize the already deeply divided dwarf society. They instigate the apparent theft of the real Scone of Stone from its closely guarded cave, hoping to cause a civil war between traditionalists and progressive dwarfs and isolate the country under the werewolves' feudal leadership. In his official capacity as ambassador Vimes meets the leaders of the local vampires, werewolves and dwarfs, starting to investigate the planned putsch along the way. Meanwhile, back in Ankh-Morpork, Angua learns that Wolfgang, her werewolf brother, is the head of the conspiracy and sets out to Überwald to stop him. Consequently Carrot also abandons the Watch and pursues her across the country, leaving an overburdened Colon as acting captain. As captain, Colon becomes increasingly strict and paranoid, punishing other members of the watch for minor offences which they did not commit, such as demoting Constable Visit to Lance Constable for supposedly stealing a sugar lump. In response Corporal Nobby Nobbs sets up the Guild of Watchmen in protest. The other members of the Watch join and protest against Colon, but eventually it dwindles to just Nobby, Visit, zombie Constable Reg Shoe and golem Constable Dorfl. The Ankh-Morpork City Watch recover the replica Scone of Stone. It is undamaged, but they suspect that someone has made a replica of the replica. In Uberwald, Vimes extends his activities to include an unofficial investigation into the theft of the real Scone of Stone. He rapidly determines that the dwarfs' system of guard on it is nothing like as secure as the dwarfs think it is and that the Scone could have been stolen in a number of different ways without too much difficulty, but nevertheless later concludes that it was not in fact stolen, but destroyed in situ and its remains concealed by mixing them with the sand on the floor of the cave. Following an attempt on the designated Low King's life Vimes is imprisoned by the dwarfs but escapes. On the run across the wintry countryside he is chased by the conspiring werewolves. Carrot and Angua arrive just in time to save Vimes from the murderous pack. Vimes' wife has been taken to the castle of Angua's werewolf family so the commander and his entourage set out to save her. Managing to defeat the power-hungry Wolfgang they are also able to restore the Scone of Stone. Back in their embassy the Morporkians are once more attacked by Wolfgang. In a final stand-off, he resists arrest and is killed by Commander Vimes with a Clacks flare. With the Low King's regalia returned the enthronement ceremony finally takes place and Vimes is granted prime rates for fat imports to Ankh-Morpork, thus fulfilling his original mission. The book finishes with Carrot and Angua returning to Ankh-Morpork. Carrot takes back his old rank of captain with Colon returning to his duties as a sergeant and ordering him and Nobby to gather the rest of the Watch together.

The Confusion

Neal Stephenson

Though the first publication of the Series in 3 volumes combined the two novels Bonanza and The Juncto, here the plots will be dealt with as separate entities, true to the author's original intention. The beginning of Bonanza finds Jack Shaftoe awakened from a syphilitic blackout of nearly three years. During this time he was a pirate galley slave. The other members of his bench, a motley crew who call themselves "The Cabal" from Africa, the Far East and Europe, create a plot to capture silver illegally shipped from Central America by a Spanish Viceroy; they convince the Pasha of Algiers and their owner to sponsor this endeavor for their freedom and a cut in the profit. They capture the ship, but upon boarding it, they find it full, not of silver as they had expected, but of gold. Fleeing the Spanish they are followed by a frigate in the employ of the duc d'Arcachon, an investor in their plan and a man who wishes to kill Jack for ruining a party in The King of the Vagabonds. Believing the Duke plans to cheat the Cabal in the investment, they sail to Egypt and transport the gold over land to Cairo. In Cairo the Cabal negotiates with d'Arcachon's men for a meeting with the duc himself; as an inducement for this meeting they offer to hand over Jack. Jack cuts off the head of the duc to avenge Eliza, whom the duc had enslaved over a decade earlier. Fighting ensues between the Cabal and d'Arcachon's musketeers. The Cabal manages to escape (short several of its members and a good portion of the gold), fleeing toward Mocha. Realizing that they are no longer welcome in any European port, they carry the gold to India, where they are captured by a pirate queen who takes the gold. The Cabal is left penniless and its members are dispersed. Some are recruited in the army of a local king. Jack ends up working in an animal hospital in Ahmedabad. A year later, Jack reunites with a few members of the Cabal and conceives a plan to carry goods through a route that no traders can use because it is controlled by armies of plunderers. Jack shows the Cabal how to produce phosphorus from urine, and they use it to fight their way through. For this role in opening up the trade route, Jack is rewarded with a temporary, three-year kingship over an impoverished part of India. During his reign, Jack directs the construction of a ship made of durable teak wood, using funds invested by the pirate queen who had seized the Cabal's gold, and Sophie, Electress of Hanover. The ship is christened Minerva. The Cabal carries watered steel and other valuable items from India to Japan, and trades them for mercury. Mercury fetches a high price in the Americas, which need it for use in silver mines. A Spanish Galleon secretly agrees to show Minerva the way across the Pacific and help them establish trade in the Americas. The Galleon sinks, and Minerva takes on the two sole survivors, one of whom is Edmund de Ath. Jack, another member of the Cabal, and de Ath are imprisoned and tortured by the Spanish Inquisition but are able to buy their way out with silver that they got in trade for mercury. Jack receives a letter from Eliza urging him to meet her in Qwghlm. Laden with precious metals, Minerva sails there only to find that the invitation was a trap; the French capture them and seize their gold and silver. The letter had been faked by Edmund de Ath, actually Édouard de Gex in disguise, who had been working with Vrej, one of the Cabal members, who believed his family had been wronged by Jack. Minerva and her crew are allowed to leave sans cargo, but Jack is imprisoned by the duc d'Arcachon, son of the man whose head Jack cut off in Cairo, and husband of Eliza. Upon discovering the deceit, Vrej kills the duc d'Arcachon, before committing suicide to prevent retaliation upon his family. The duc had planned to imprison Jack for the rest of his life, but the King of France Louis XIV frees him in order to enlist his help in sacking the Tower of London, England's mint, in order to cripple the enemy country's economy. The book opens explaining how Bob Shaftoe had come into possession of the correspondence of d'Avaux, the French diplomat whom Eliza had fooled as a double agent for William of Orange in Quicksilver. Eliza has been captured by Jean Bart in an attempt to escape to England, and is confined to a house in Dunkerque. There both her lover Rossignol, the King's cryptographer, and d'Avaux rush to her. Under blackmail by d'Avaux, Eliza concedes in indefinitely loaning the vast fortune she has earned through trade in Amsterdam to fund the King's war efforts. Her loss of fortune forces Eliza to return to court life, where she learns that the duc d'Arcachon was the man who had enslaved her and her mother from the isle of Qwghlm. Eliza soon begins plotting to kill him. However, before she can do so, she learns of d'Arcachon's death at the hands of Jack. Jack had pronounced over the body of d'Arcachon that he killed him for a lover. Upon the return of his head to France, d'Avaux realizes who the lover of Jack is. Before Eliza's relationship with Jack can be revealed, Eliza marries Étienne, the son of the duc and becomes Duchess d'Arcachon. After the marriage, however, Eliza's illegitimate child with Rossignol is kidnapped under the orders of Lothar von Hacklheber in order to maintain leverage over her. To exact her revenge, Eliza engages in a series of financial maneuvers involving the French preparations to invade England. The invasion is ultimately called off in the aftermath of the Battles of Barfleur and La Hogue, but Eliza's manipulations succeed at making her wealthier than ever, while bringing the house of Hacklheber to its knees. The story refocuses on Bob Shaftoe, as he and the Black Torrent Guard participate in William III's campaign against James II in Ireland. The second half of the book follows the lives of Eliza, Leibniz, Newton, Waterhouse, and Sophia Charlotte over the next 10 years. Waterhouse confronts Newton over his increasingly unstable behavior and his fruitless attempts to derive a "theory of everything" under the enabling influence of Newton's close friend Fatio. Several characters from the Royal Society form "the Juncto", a society that aims to reignite the British commerce through a monetary reform. The Juncto creates the Bank of England and offers Newton a job as the director of the Mint. Eliza is infected with smallpox, but survives. She meets her old friend Princess Eleanor, who was exiled to a dower-house by her second husband, John George IV; she pays him back by infecting him with smallpox as well, and he turns out not to be as lucky. Princess Eleanor dies, and her daughter, Caroline, is adopted by Sophia Charlotte. Caroline turns out to be a bright girl with an interest in natural sciences and she soon forms a friendship with Leibniz. The story ends in 1702 with Eliza a wealthy duchess of Arcachon and Qwghlm and a widow, Newton at the head of the London Mint, Waterhouse having made the decision to move to Massachusetts and to work on his Logic Mill away from European distractions, Sophia Charlotte the queen of the newly-formed Kingdom of Prussia, and Leibniz the president of Prussian Academy of Sciences.

Northern Lights

Philip Pullman

The novel is set in a parallel world to ours, in a world controlled largely by a theocratic international organisation, the Magisterium, which actively suppresses heresy. On this world, human souls exist externally in the form of sentient "dæmons": animal spiritual beings that constantly accompany, aid, and comfort their humans. Lyra Belacqua—a 12-year-old girl who has been allowed to run somewhat wild with her beloved dæmon, Pantalaimon—awaits the arrival of her uncle and guardian, Lord Asriel, at Jordan College, a (fictional) Oxford University college. She spies on him moments before he is scheduled to begin a lecture, and in doing so, saves his life when she stops him from drinking wine poisoned by the college's Master. Moments before the college's Scholars enter the room, Lyra hides in the coat closet and secretly watches Asriel's lecture, thus learning of "Dust", the name given to elementary particles that are apparently attracted to adults more than children. The lecture also sparks Lyra's fascination for Arctic exploration when Asriel shows images of a city skyline in some parallel universe that can be viewed through the northern lights. The purpose of the lecture is to convince the Scholars that other worlds exist so that they will fund Asriel's ongoing research, which the Magisterium considers heretical. After Asriel leaves Jordan, successful in his effort for financial backing, Lyra begins hearing rumours of the Gobblers, a mysterious group that has been kidnapping children throughout England, allegedly for the purposes of torture or experimentation. Shortly after her own friend Roger Parslow goes missing, Lyra meets Mrs Coulter, a beautiful and adventurous woman, and agrees when invited by the Master to go and live with her. Before Lyra leaves the college, the Master secretly entrusts Lyra with an alethiometer, a "truth teller" which resembles a four-handed pocket watch that will honestly answer any possible question asked by a skilled user. Although unable to read or understand its complex symbols at first, Lyra takes it with her, and gradually begins to use the device fluently over the course of the narrative—something which, it is later revealed, no adult can do as well as she. Lyra believes that the Master, who tried to poison Asriel, gives Lyra the alethiometer so that she will deliver it to Asriel as a reparation, or token of apology, for the earlier attempt on his life. It later seems clear that the Master tried to poison Asriel under pressure from the Magisterium. After living a charmed several weeks with Mrs Coulter, Lyra discovers that Mrs Coulter is the leader of the Gobblers, officially known as the General Oblation Board: the secret, Magisterium-approved, child-stealing organisation. Horrified, Lyra flees and is rescued in London by the Gyptians, a nomadic people who reveal that Lord Asriel and Mrs Coulter are in fact Lyra's father and mother. The Gyptians tell Lyra the true story of her parents and she begins life with the Gyptians at sea. The Gyptians have been hit hardest by the Gobblers' kidnapping activities and they ultimately plan an expedition to the Arctic to rescue all of the missing children, including Roger. On a stop in Trollesund, Lyra meets Iorek Byrnison, an outcast prince of the sapient panserbjørne, or "armoured bears". His armour, stolen from him by the villagers, is akin to his soul, and without it Iorek is bound in servitude to the village. Lyra uses her alethiometer to locate it for him and in return he—and an old friend of his, an aeronaut named Lee Scoresby—agrees to help her on her quest. She also learns that Lord Asriel is being held in exile by the panserbjørne at Svalbard. The Trollesund consul of the witches tells the Gyptians that there is a prophecy about Lyra's destiny, which she must not know about, and that it seems the witch clans are choosing sides in preparation for some imminent war. The party consisting of Gyptians, Iorek Byrnison, Lee Scoresby, and Lyra continue north toward where they are told the Gobblers hold the children, at a place called Bolvangar. Guided by the alethiometer, Lyra detours at a village and finds, to her horror, a boy who has been severed from his dæmon. Lyra understands now that the Gobblers are deliberately cutting the bond between human and dæmon (a process called "intercision"): an uncanny notion analogous to a human body being split from its soul. Though Lyra brings the boy back to her party, his psychological devastation overcomes him and he eventually dies. In the Arctic wilderness, the party is soon attacked by bounty hunters and Lyra, captured, is taken directly to Bolvangar: a research station for the General Oblation Board. Superficially, Bolvangar is run like a benign chidren's centre, complete with scheduled activities for its captured children, who are suspicious but overall compliant. At Bolvangar, Lyra locates Roger and devises a plan for all of the children to escape, knowing through the alethiometer that the Gyptian-led rescue party is still on its way. Mrs Coulter arrives, evidently as a supervisor to the facility, just as Lyra is caught spying by staff-members. The staff decide to silence Lyra through intercision, involving their newly developed dæmon-cutting guillotine; however, she is rescued at the last moment by Mrs Coulter who is shocked to see her. Mrs Coulter then tries to coax the alethiometer away from her but Lyra has switched the alethiometer case for a decoy, distracting Mrs Coulter long enough to activate the station's emergency alarm. In the commotion, Lyra sets the station on fire and leads the other children outside where they are met by Lee Scoresby, Iorek Byrnison, the Gyptians, and their new allies, the witch-clan of Serafina Pekkala. Using Lee Scoresby's hot air balloon, Lyra, Roger, and Iorek leave the scene as a battle erupts involving the Gyptians and witches against Bolvangar's mercenary guards and staff. Lyra befriends Serafina Pekkala and later learns that all of the children have been successfully rescued from Bolvangar. Determined to deliver the alethiometer to Lord Asriel, Lyra now directs the witches to tow the balloon toward Svalbard; however, Lyra falls out of the basket near Svalbard and is quickly taken prisoner by the panserbjørne in their castle. Although captive, Lyra is able to trick their usurping bear-king, Iofur Raknison, into agreeing to fight Iorek, by claiming that she is Iorek's dæmon, and that if Iofur killed Iorek, then she would become Iofur's dæmon—something no bear has and Iofur wants more than anything. Arriving at the castle to rescue Lyra, Iorek successfully kills Iofur in the fight and thus is made king himself. Lyra—now nicknamed "Lyra Silvertongue" by Iorek as a token of her ability—travels onward to Lord Asriel’s house of exile, accompanied by Iorek and Roger. Despite being exiled, Lord Asriel has become so influential that he has accumulated the necessary equipment to continue his research on Dust. He explains to Lyra all he knows of Dust: the Church's view that it is deeply sinful, his belief that Dust is somehow related to the source of all death and misery, the existence of parallel universes from which Dust originates, and his final goal—he intends to visit the other universes, find the source of Dust (and, therefore, the source of all death and misery), and ultimately destroy it, triumuphantly claiming that "Death is going to die". As Lyra sleeps, Asriel leaves to fulfill his great experiment, bringing along his scientific equipment and taking Roger by force. Lyra awakes and pursues them, discovering that she has indeed brought her father what he wanted, though not in the way she thought; it was not the alethiometer he needed, but rather, it was Roger. The severing of a child's dæmon releases an enormous amount of energy, which Lord Asriel needs to complete his task. Lyra is unable to save Roger in time though, and his death provides sufficient energy to tear a hole through the northern lights into a parallel universe, ripping the sky apart. Lord Asriel and Mrs Coulter (who catches up with him by zeppelin) face the newly revealed world and romantically embrace, but Mrs Coulter feels unable to go with Asriel and painfully declines his invitation. Without further comment, Lord Asriel walks into the new universe alone and Mrs Coulter departs back the way she came. Devastated at her part in rescuing Roger only to bring him to his death, Lyra decides that Dust, contrary to what all adults have told her, may be a force of good rather than evil. She and her dæmon Pantalaimon vow to discover if this is true and to stop Asriel; they then follow him through the opening in the sky. This concludes the first novel, with the trilogy continuing in the next book, The Subtle Knife.

The Science of Discworld II: The Globe

In the story, the wizards are transported to Roundworld (the real universe, inadvertently created during the first book) during the Elizabethan era. This is the first time they learn there are humans on Roundworld; they previously learnt that something would escape an Ice Age by heading for the stars via a space elevator, but missed which species it was. They are befriended by the magician John Dee, who is understandably confused by their appearance. Back at Unseen University, the thinking machine Hex informs the remaining faculty (Ponder Stibbons, the Librarian and Rincewind) that history has changed and humanity no longer makes it to the stars. The reason for this is, apparently, an infestation of elves feeding off human imagination and encouraging them to be scared of the dark. The wizards travel back in time to suppress the elvish influence, but this only makes things worse; people are no longer superstitious, but they are no longer creative either. In the "new" 17th century humans are still in the Stone Age. Then Rincewind suggests doing the opposite, encouraging humanity to be more creative. They travel through time doing this, with the intent of creating a history in which William Shakespeare writes A Midsummer Night's Dream. This achievement is symbolic of a new way of thinking, the human imagination is now sophisticated enough that stories can be told about stories. With the elves now seen as a harmless fiction, their power over Roundworld is gone.

Moon Palace

Paul Auster

Marco Fogg is an orphan and his Uncle Victor his only caretaker. Fogg starts college, and nine months later moves from the dormitory into his own apartment furnished with 1492 books given to him by Uncle Victor. Uncle Victor dies before Fogg finishes college and leaves him without friends and family. Marco inherits some money which he uses to pay for Uncle Victor's funeral. He becomes an introvert, spends his time reading, and thinks, "Why should I get a job? I have enough to do living through the days." After selling the books one by one in order to survive Fogg loses his apartment and seeks shelter in Central Park. He meets Kitty Wu and begins a furious romance after he has been rescued from Central Park by his friend Zimmer and Kitty Wu. Eventually he finds a job taking care of Thomas Effing, who, he learns much later, is his grandfather. Fogg learns about the complicated history of his parents, and Effings' previous identity as the painter Julian Barber. When Effing dies, leaving money to Fogg, Marco and Kitty Wu set up a house together in Chinatown. After an abortion Fogg breaks up with Kitty Wu and travels across the U.S. to search for himself. He begins his journey with his father Solomon Barber, who dies shortly after an accident on Westlawn Cemetery, where Fogg's mother is buried. Marco continues his journey alone, which ends on a lonely California beach: "This is where I start, [...] this is where my life begins." Marco Stanley Fogg, aka M.S., is the son of Emily Fogg. He doesn't know his father. His mother dies because of a car accident when he is eleven years old. He moves to his Uncle Victor, who raises him until Marco goes to a boarding school in Chicago. When he reaches college age, he goes to Columbia University in New York City. After spending his freshman year in a college dormitory, he rents an apartment in New York. Uncle Victor dies, which makes Marco lose track. After paying the funeral costs, Marco realizes that very little of the money that Uncle Victor gave him is left. He decides to let himself decay, to get out of touch with the world. He makes no effort to earn money. His electricity is cut off, he loses weight, and finally he is told that he must leave his apartment. The day before he is thrown out, Marco decides to ask Zimmer, an old college friend with whom he has lost contact, for help. Zimmer has moved to another apartment, so when Marco arrives at Zimmer's old apartment, he is invited by some strangers to join their breakfast. At that breakfast he meets Kitty Wu for the first time. She seems to fall in love with him. The next day, Marco has to leave his flat, and finds himself on the streets of Manhattan. Central Park becomes Marco's new home. Here he seeks shelter from the pressure of the Manhattan streets. He finds food in the garbage cans. Marco even manages to stay in touch with what is going on in the world by reading newspapers left by visitors. Although life in Central Park is not very comfortable, he feels at ease because he's enjoying his solitude and he restores the balance between his inner and outer self. At first, the weather is very good, so where to stay is not a big problem. But after a few weeks the weather changes. In a strong rain shower, Marco becomes ill and retires to a cave in Central Park. After some days of delirium, he crawls out of the cave and has wild hallucinations while lying outside. There, he is finally found by Zimmer and Kitty Wu, who have been looking for him for the whole time. Due to the fever he mistakes Kitty for an Indian and calls her Pocahontas. Zimmer (the German word for room) is a good friend, hosts Marco in his apartment, bears all his expenses, and helps him to recover. But when Marco has to go to the army physical, he is still rated unfit because of his poor physical and mental state. Marco feels very bad about living at Zimmer's costs, so he finally persuades him to let him do a French translation for him to earn some money. Then he meets Kitty again, and decides to leave Zimmer. They lose touch, and when, after thirteen years, they happen to run into each other in a busy street, Marco learns that Zimmer has married and become a typical middle-class citizen. After he has finished his work on the translation, Marco searches for another job offer. He finds a job at Effing's, where he is hired for reading books to Effing and driving the old, blind and disabled man through the city of New York in his wheelchair. Effing is a strange man who tries to teach Marco in his own way, taking nothing for granted. Marco has to describe to Effing all the things he can see while driving around. This way, Marco learns to look at the things around him very precisely. After, Effing tells Marco to do the main work he was hired for: Write his obituary. Effing tells him the main facts of his life as the famous painter Julian Barber and his conversion to Thomas Effing. He went to Utah with Byrne, a topographer, and Scoresby, a guide, to paint the vast country. Byrne fell from a high place and the guide flees from the place, leaving Barber alone in the middle of the desert. Barber finds a cave where a hermit used to live and begins to live there. He kills the Gresham brothers, 3 bandits, and takes the money to San Francisco, where he officially takes the name "Thomas Effing". He becomes rich, but one day someone tells him he's very similar to Julian Barber, a famous painter who disappeared. He sinks in depression and fear and begins frequenting China Town, taking drugs, etc. But one day someone attacks him, rushes and hits a street lamp, becoming paraplegic. He stops having such an unhealthy life, and decides to go to France. He comes back to the USA in 1939 fleeing from the Nazis. Solomon Barber is Marco's father and Effing's son. He is extremely fat (which contrasts to Marco's period of starvation) and didn't know his father nor that he has a son. He inherits most of the fortune of Effing. He meets Marco after the death of Effing to learn about his father and finds a son. Marco, in the family cyclic pattern, doesn't know that Barber is his father. Barber had a relationship with one of his students, Emily, and never knew she was pregnant. Marco learns the truth when he sees Barber crying in front of Emily's grave.

Independent People

Halldór Laxness

Independent People is the story of the sheep farmer Guðbjartur Jónsson, generally known in the novel as Bjartur of Summerhouses, and his struggle for independence. The "first chapter summons up the days when the world was first settled, in 874 AD—for that is the year when the Norsemen arrived in Iceland, and one of the book's wry conceits is that no other world but Iceland exists. ... The book is set in the early decades of the twentieth century but ... Independent People is a pointedly timeless tale. It reminds us that life on an Icelandic croft had scarcely altered over a millennium". As the story begins, Bjartur ("bright" or "fair") has recently managed to put down the first payment on his own farm, after eighteen years working as a shepherd at Útirauðsmýri, the home of the well-to-do local bailiff, a man he detests. The land that he buys is said to be cursed by Saint Columba, referred to as "the fiend Kolumkilli", and haunted by an evil woman named Gunnvör, who made a pact with Kólumkilli. Defiantly, Bjartur refuses to add a stone to Gunnvör's cairn to appease her, and in his optimism also changes the name of the farm from Winterhouses to Summerhouses. He is also newly wed to a young woman called Rósa, a fellow worker at Rauðsmýri, and is determined that they should live as independent people. However, Rósa is miserable in her new home, which does not compare well to the luxury she was used to at Rauðsmýri. Bjartur also discovers that she is pregnant by Ingólfur Arnarson Jónsson, the son of the bailiff. In the autumn, Bjartur and the other men of the district ride up into the mountains on the annual sheep round-up, leaving Rósa behind with a gimmer to keep her company. Terrified by a storm one night, desperate for meat and convinced that the gimmer is possessed by the devil, Rósa kills and eats the animal. When Bjartur returns, he assumes that Rósa has set the animal loose. When he cannot find her when it comes time to put the sheep inside for the winter, he once more leaves his wife, by now heavily pregnant, to search the mountains for the gimmer. He is delayed by a blizzard, and nearly dies of exposure. On his return to Summerhouses he finds that Rósa has died in childbirth. His dog Titla is curled around the baby girl, still clinging to life due to the warmth of the dog. With help from Rauðsmýri, the child survives; Bjartur decides to raise her as his daughter, and names her Ásta Sóllilja ("beloved sun lily"). The narrative begins again almost thirteen years later. Bjartur is now remarried to a woman who had been a charity case on the parish, Finna. The other new inhabitants are Hallbera, Finna's mother, and the three surviving sons of Bjartur's second marriage: Helgi, Gvendur (Guðmundur) and Nonni (Jón). The rest of the novel charts the drudgery and the battle for survival of life in Summerhouses, the misery, dreams and rebellions of the inhabitants and what appears to be the curse of Summerhouses taking effect. In the middle of the novel, however, World War I commences and the prices for Icelandic mutton and wool soar, so that even the poorest farmers begin to dream of relief from their poverty. Particularly central is the relationship between Bjartur and Ásta Sóllilja.