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Forever Peace

Joe Haldeman

Though its title is similar to The Forever War and both novels deal with soldiers in the future, Forever Peace is not a direct sequel, and takes place on Earth much closer to the present day. Using remotely controlled robots called "soldierboys" (which are nearly invincible), the Alliance military fights third world guerrillas in an endless series of economy-driven wars. As only first world nations possess the nanoforge technology that can produce anything from basic materials, conflict is asymmetric. The novel is told partly in first-person narration by the main character, Julian Class, and partly by an anonymous third-person narrator, who is able to comment on aspects of Julian's personality and background. The main protagonist, Julian Class, is a physicist and a mechanic who operates a soldierboy. Thanks to electronic "jacks" implanted in their skulls, mechanics are remotely linked to the machinery as well as to each other, being able to experience battle through the machines and read the thoughts of other mechanics who are simultaneously jacked in. After attempting suicide, Julian and his lover, Amelia "Blaze" Harding, are made aware of a problem with an automated particle physics project that could potentially trigger a new Big Bang that destroys the Earth and the rest of the universe. Because it's so easy to do, it is speculated that universes could potentially have only the lifespan of the first civilization that attempts such a project. When Julian, Blaze, and another physicist submit their paper to a journal's review board, they find themselves the target of "The Hammer of God" a Christian cult bent on hastening an anticipated end of the universe. As the Hammer of God has a secret presence throughout the government, Julian and Blaze narrowly miss being assassinated. Marty Larrin, one of the inventors of jacking technology, recruits Julian and Blaze in an attempt to using this technology to end war for all time; a little known secret is that jacking with someone else for a long enough period (about two weeks) will psychologically eliminate the ability to kill another human being. By "humanizing" the entire world, dangerous technology would not be a problem for human survival. They do so, stop the particle accelerator's construction, and war is eventually stopped.

Alaska

James A. Michener

A sweeping description of the formation of the North American continent. The reader follows the development of the Alaskan terrain over millennia. The city of Los Angeles is now some twenty-four hundred miles south of central Alaska, and since it is moving slowly northward as the San Andreas fault slides irresistibly along, the city is destined eventually to become part of Alaska. If the movement is two inches a year, which it often is, we can expect Los Angeles to arrive off Anchorage in about seventy-six million years. The plot of this chapter follows the mastodons, sabre-toothed tigers and woolly mammoths as they make their way into Alaska via the land bridge. First, the animals are discussed in general terms. Then, in the second half of the chapter, the reader learns about a specific mammoth named Mastadon, and another named Matriarch. The plot follows Matriarch and her family, as they encounter man for the first time. The reader meets some of the early Eskimos, particularly a man named Oogruk and his family. The chapter details the hunting of a whale as well as the beginning of hunting sea otters for fur by the Russians. This chapter tells of the early exploration of Alaska along with Russia's first encounters with the native peoples, including the brutal slaughter of many native people and sea otters. The duel referred to in the chapter's title is the one between the shamanism of the native people and the Christianity of the Russian settlers. After the men from one tribe are taken away to aid in hunting, the women and babies are left to fend for themselves. They learn to pilot kayaks, something that had been forbidden to them, and ultimately harpoon a small whale to ensure their survival. After the Russians return, a girl named Cidaq is "purchased" and taken to Kodiak Island, but not before she is brutally abused by one sailor in particular. On Kodiak, she consults with a shaman and his mummy and decides to seek revenge upon this man by converting to Christianity to marry him when he returns to Kodiak, believing that she can humiliate him by refusing to marry him at the last moment. However, she goes through with the wedding and becomes a battered wife. A priest on Kodiak falls in love with her, and after her husband is killed by a great tidal wave, Cidaq (rechristened Sofia) marries the priest, who changes his relationship with the church to become the kind of priest who can marry. At the end of the chapter, Michener states that Christianity won over shamanism, but in the process, the population of native people dwindled from more than 18,000 to fewer than 1,200. This chapter further details the clashes between the Native people and the Russians, most specifically the Battle of Sitka. The events are shown through the eyes of a Native named Raven-heart and an Arkady Voronov, the son of Father Vornov and Sofia Kuchovskaya (formerly Cidaq). Arkady Voronov marries a Russian woman who moves to Alaska, and together they navigate the Yukon River. The chapter also explains the death of Alexander Baranov and ends with the purchase of Alaska by the United States of America. This chapter shows the clash between two rival ship captains, Captains Schransky and Michael Healy. Meanwhile, Reverend Sheldon Jackson, a missionary, travels to Alaska to further establish it as a state, with the help of Senator Benjamin Harrison. He sets about establishing Christian missions of various denominations to further spread Christianity to the native people of Alaska. The eighth chapter tells of the chaos surrounding the Alaskan gold rush using the fictitious Venn family and a prospector named John Klope. It mentions the real character of Soapy Smith and his fatal duel with Frank Reid. It also details the hardships of crossing the Chilkoot Pass. Gold is discovered in Nome, and Tom Venn and his stepmother Missy pick up their stakes and move there. Tom is appointed manager of a branch of Ross and Raglan, a store that sells food and outdoor supplies. Missy's boyfriend Matt Murphy joins Tom and Missy in Nome, arriving there via bicycle. Although these characters are fictitious, the bike trip is based on the real bike trek of Max Hirshberg in 1900, and the troubles of gold mine thieving with judicial collusion is based upon the politician Alexander McKenzie and Judge Arthur H. Noyes. This chapter describes the formation and operation of a fictional company's cannery (an Alaskan first) on the Taku Inlet when Ross and Raglan appoint Tom Venn to be in charge of the cannery, the fishing and the Chinese laborers. Along the way, the company clashes with local members of the Tlingit tribe, whose fishing rights are being encroached upon. Tom begins on-and-off romances with two girls; one is Lydia Ross, the daughter of the owner of Ross and Raglan, and the other is Nancy Bigears, the daughter of a local Tlingit of whom Tom is very fond. At the end of the chapter, the reader learns that Tom marries Lydia, and that Nancy marries Ah Ting, a Chinese man who was once employed as a foreman at the salmon cannery before striking out on his own. In 1919, a government official arrives in a small town of Minnesota made up of immigrants of Swedish and Finnish descent, as well as those who have been in the United States for several generations. He recruits a group of families to move to Alaska and settle in the Matanuska Valley, where they will be provided with land that they will not begin to pay on for at least three years, as long as they promise to farm. This chapter follows the Flatch family closely, especially the children. LeRoy Flatch grows up to become a bush pilot and Flossie is an animal lover who falls in love with a local "half-breed" man of white and Eskimo descent. In a typical James Michener fashion, the final chapter is an interaction between various characters in preceding chapter or their descendants. Alaska is in the process of applying for statehood. Missy remains on the side advocating for statehood, while Tom Venn petitioned to keep Alaska a territory and under Seattle business control. In the end President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs the Alaska Statehood Act, making Alaska the 49th state of the Union.

The Shooting Star

Hergé

One particularly hot evening Tintin is out walking with his dog Snowy. Tintin then notices an extra star in the Great Bear. When he reaches home, he calls the observatory. They say that they have the phenomenon under observation and hang up. From his window, Tintin sees that the star is getting bigger every minute. He walks to the observatory and, after some trouble, gets inside. He meets a man called Philippulus who proclaims himself to be a prophet and tells him that "It is a Judgement! Woe!" Puzzled, Tintin proceeds to the main room with the giant telescope. There he meets the director of the observatory, Professor Decimus Phostle, who explains that the extra star is a meteor, a vast ball of fire making its way towards Earth, which will cause the end of the world tomorrow morning. In the end, however, the shooting star does not collide with the Earth, but passes by it. A piece of it, a meteorite, lands in the Arctic Ocean, causing an earthquake that lasts a mere few seconds. After an analysis of a spectroscopic photo of the meteorite, Phostle deduces that it is composed of an entirely new metal. He names this metal "Phostlite", but is dismayed to discover that the meteorite has landed in the sea and therefore, presumably, is lost. Tintin, however, realises that the meteorite could be protruding above the surface of the water. The Professor is persuaded to organise an expedition to find the metal and to retrieve a sample of it for further research. The expedition consists of leading scientists, as well as Tintin, Snowy and their friend, the alcoholic Captain Haddock (ironically serving as president of the Society for Sober Sailors), aboard the trawler Aurora. However, unknown to the Aurora expedition, another team has already set out aboard the polar expedition ship Peary, backed by a financier from São Rico, Mr. Bohlwinkel. The expedition becomes a race to be the first to land on the meteorite. Bohlwinkel attempts to sabotage the Aurora expedition by getting a henchman to plant a stick of dynamite on the ship on the eve of departure, but it is found and thrown overboard. While crossing the North Sea, the Aurora is almost rammed by another of Bohlwinkel's ships, but Haddock manages to steer his ship out of the way. Further setbacks occur at the Icelandic port of Akureyri, when Captain Haddock is informed that there is no fuel available. He is furious, but then he and Tintin come across an old friend of his, Captain Chester, who reveals that there is plenty of fuel and that the Golden Oil Company (which has a fuel monopoly) is owned by Bohlwinkel. The three of them devise a plan to run a hose from Chester's ship, Sirius, to the Aurora and thus trick Golden Oil into providing them with the fuel they need. Coming close to catching the Peary, the Aurora then receives an indistinct distress call from another ship and has to turn round in order to help. Inquiries by Tintin lead him to realise that the distress signal is a fake designed to further delay them. Resuming the journey, they then intercept a cable announcing that the Peary expedition has reached the meteorite but not actually claimed it yet. Tintin uses the ship's seaplane to parachute on to the meteorite and plant the expedition flag, beating the crew of the Peary by seconds. The Aurora expedition has won the race. Tintin makes camp while the ship's over-exerted engines are repaired. The next day he discovers the remarkable properties of Phostlite: his apple core instantly grows into an enormous tree full of oversized apples, and a maggot turns into a massive butterfly. Tintin is menaced by a giant spider and huge, exploding mushrooms before rescue arrives. Then a sudden seaquake shakes the meteorite to its core; the young reporter and Snowy retrieve a rock sample and jump to safety as the meteorite sinks into the sea. The triumphant expedition's return is reported on the radio. Bohlwinkel listens at first in frustrated silence, but then gets concerned at the news that law enforcement agencies are closing in on him over his attempts at destroying and delaying the Aurora. Back on the ship itself, as they prepare to dock, the Captain announces that they are short on one vital commodity—whisky.

The Mill on the Floss

George Eliot

The novel details the lives of Tom and Maggie Tulliver, a brother and sister growing up at Dorlcote Mill on the River Floss at its junction with the more minor River Ripple near the village of St. Ogg's in Lincolnshire, England. Both the river and the village are fictional. The novel is most probably set in the 1820s - a number of historical references place the events in the book after the Napoleonic Wars but before the Reform Act of 1832. The novel spans a period of 10 to 15 years, from Tom’s and Maggie’s childhood up until their deaths in a flood on the Floss. The book is fictional autobiography in part, reflecting the disgrace that George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) herself experienced while in a lengthy relationship with a married man, George Henry Lewes. Maggie Tulliver holds the central role in the book. The story begins when she is 9 years old, 13 years into her parent's marriage. Her relationship with her older brother Tom, and her romantic relationships with Philip Wakem, a hunchbacked, sensitive, and intellectual friend, and with Stephen Guest, a vivacious young socialite in St. Ogg's and assumed fiancé of Maggie’s cousin Lucy Deane, constitute the most significant narrative threads. Tom and Maggie have a close yet complex bond, which continues throughout the novel. Their relationship is coloured by Maggie's desire to recapture the unconditional love her father provides before his death. Tom’s pragmatic and reserved nature clashes with Maggie’s idealism and fervor for intellectual gains and experience. Various family crises, including bankruptcy, Mr. Tulliver’s rancorous relationship with Philip Wakem’s father, which results in the loss of the mill, and Mr. Tulliver’s untimely death, serve both to intensify Tom’s and Maggie’s differences and to highlight their love for each other. To help his father repay his debts, Tom leaves his school to enter a life of business. He eventually finds a measure of success, restoring the family’s former estate. Meanwhile Maggie languishes in the impoverished Tulliver home, her intellectual aptitude wasted in her socially isolated state. She passes through a period of intense spirituality, during which she renounces the world, spurred by Thomas à Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ. This renunciation is tested by a renewed friendship with Philip Wakem, with whom she had developed a friendship while he was a fellow pupil with Tom. Against the wishes of Tom and her father, who both despise the Wakems, Maggie secretly meets with Philip, and together they go for long walks through the woods. The relationship they forge is founded partially in Maggie’s heartfelt pity for broken and neglected human beings, as well as an outlet for her intellectual romantic desires. Philip’s and Maggie’s attraction is, in any case, inconsequential because of the family antipathy. Philip manages to coax a pledge of love from Maggie. When Tom discovers the relationship between the two, however, he forces his sister to renounce Philip, and with him her hopes of experiencing the broader, more cultured world he represents. Several more years pass, during which Mr. Tulliver dies. Lucy Deane invites Maggie to come and stay with her and experience the life of cultured leisure that she enjoys. This includes long hours conversing and playing music with Lucy's suitor, Stephen Guest, a prominent St. Ogg’s resident. Stephen and Maggie, against their rational judgments, become attracted to each other. The complication is further compounded by Philip Wakem’s friendship with Lucy and Stephen; he and Maggie are reintroduced, and Philip’s love for her is rekindled, while Maggie, no longer isolated, enjoys the clandestine attentions of Stephen Guest, putting her past professions for Philip in question. In the event Lucy intrigues to throw Philip and Maggie together on a short rowing trip down the Floss, but when Stephen unwittingly takes a sick Philip’s place, and Maggie and Stephen find themselves floating down the river, negligent of the distance they have covered, he proposes they board a passing boat to the next substantial city, Mudport, and get married. Maggie is too tired to argue about it. Stephen takes advantage of her weariness and hails the boat. They are taken on board the boat, and during the trip to Mudport, Maggie struggles between her love for Stephen and her duties to Philip and Lucy, contracted as it were in her past, when she was poor and isolated, and dependent on either of them for what good her life contained. Upon arrival in Mudport she rejects Stephen and makes her way back to St. Ogg's, where she lives for a brief period as an outcast, Stephen having fled to Holland. Although she immediately goes to Tom for forgiveness and shelter, he roughly sends her away, telling her that she will never again be welcome under his roof. Both Lucy and Philip forgive her, she in a moving reunion, he in an eloquent letter. Maggie’s brief exile ends when the river floods. The flood is considered by some to be a deus ex machina. Those who do not support this view cite the frequent references to flood as a foreshadowing which makes this natural occurrence less contrived. Having struggled through the waters in a boat to find Tom at the old mill, she sets out with him to rescue Lucy Deane and her family. In a brief tender moment, the brother and sister are reconciled from all past differences. When their boat capsizes, the two drown in an embrace, thus giving the book its Biblical epigraph, “In their death they were not divided."

Lullaby

Chuck Palahniuk

Lullaby is the story of Carl Streator, a newspaper reporter who has been assigned to write articles on a series of cases of sudden infant death syndrome, from which his own child had died. Streator discovers that his wife and child had died immediately after he read them a "culling song", or African chant, from a book entitled Poems and Rhymes Around the World. As Streator learns, the culling song has the power to kill anyone it is spoken to. Because of the stress of his life, it became unusually powerful, allowing him to kill by only thinking the poem. During his investigations into other SIDS cases for his article, he finds that a copy of the book was at the scene of each death. In every case, the book was open to a page that contained the "culling song". Streator unintentionally memorizes the deadly poem and he semi-voluntarily becomes a serial killer (killing, for example, annoying radio hosts and people who elbow into an elevator when he is late for work). He then turns to Helen Hoover Boyle, a real estate agent who has also found the culling song in the same book and knows of its destructive power. While she is unable to help him stop using the culling song, she is willing to help him stop anyone else from being able to use it again. The two of them decide to go on a road trip across the country to find all remaining copies of the book and remove and destroy the page containing the song. They are joined by Helen's assistant, Mona Sabbat, and Mona's boyfriend, an eco-terrorist named Oyster. Streator now must not only deal with the dangers of the culling song, but with the risk of it falling into the hands of Oyster, who may want to use it for sinister purposes. In addition to tracking down and destroying any copy of Poems and Rhymes Around the World, the foursome hope to find a "grimoire", a hypothesized spellbook that is the source of the culling spell. Streator wants to destroy it while the others in his group want to learn what other spells it contains—partly in the hope that there is a spell to resurrect the dead. Mona eventually figures out that the datebook Helen had been carrying throughout the trip is the grimoire they had been looking for, written in invisible ink. Helen had acquired it years earlier in the estate of the publisher of Poems and Rhymes Around the World whom she had killed with the culling spell. In the end, the grimoire is used and misused until Helen's body ends up dead with her mind in a police sergeant's body. This connection is made in the final chapters and concludes with the present; Streator and Helen (in the police sergeant's body) are together, searching for Mona and Oyster who have the entirety of the grimoire with the exception of the "culling song".

The Knight's Tale

Geoffrey Chaucer

Brothers Arcite and Palamon are captured and imprisoned by Theseus, duke of Athens following his intervention against Creon. Their cell is in the tower of Theseus's castle which overlooks his palace garden. In prison Palamon wakes early one morning in May, to see Emily (Emelia) in the courtyard; his moan is heard by Arcita, who then too wakes to see Emily, and falls in love with her as well. The competition brought about by this love causes them to hate each other. After some years, Arcita is released from prison through the good offices of Theseus's friend Pirithoos, and then returns to Athens in disguise and enters service in Emily's household. Palamon eventually escapes by drugging the jailer and while hiding in a grove overhears Arcita singing about love and fortune. They begin to duel with each other over who should get Emily, but are thwarted by the arrival of Theseus, who sentences them to gather 100 men apiece and fight a mass judicial tournament, the winner of which is to marry Emily. The forces assemble; Palamon prays to Venus to make Emily his wife; Emily prays to Diana to stay unmarried and that if that should prove impossible that she marry the one who really loves her; and Arcita prays to Mars for victory. Theseus lays down rules for the tournament so that if any man becomes seriously injured, he must be dragged out of the battle and is no longer in combat. Because of this, the story seems to claim at the end that there were almost no deaths on either side. Although both Palamon and Arcita fight valiantly, Palamon is wounded by a sword thrust from one of Arcita's men, and is unhorsed. Thesus declares the fight to be over. Arcita wins the battle, but following an intervention by Saturn, is wounded by his horse throwing him off and then falling on him before he can claim Emily as his prize. As he dies, he tells Emily that she should marry Palamon, because he would make a good husband for her, and so Palamon marries Emily. Therefore all prayers were fulfilled by the gods for those who asked for their assistance.

Le Père Goriot

Honoré de Balzac

The novel opens with an extended description of the Maison Vauquer, a boarding house in Paris' rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève covered with vines, owned by the widow Madame Vauquer. The residents include the law student Eugène de Rastignac, a mysterious agitator named Vautrin, and an elderly retired vermicelli-maker named Jean-Joachim Goriot. The old man is ridiculed frequently by the other boarders, who soon learn that he has bankrupted himself to support his two well-married daughters. Rastignac, who moved to Paris from the south of France, becomes attracted to the upper class. He has difficulty fitting in, but is tutored by his cousin, Madame de Beauséant, in the ways of high society. Rastignac endears himself to one of Goriot's daughters, Delphine, after extracting money from his own already-poor family. Vautrin, meanwhile, tries to convince Rastignac to pursue an unmarried woman named Victorine, whose family fortune is blocked only by her brother. He offers to clear the way for Rastignac by having the brother killed in a duel. Rastignac refuses to go along with the plot, balking at the idea of having someone killed to acquire their wealth, but he takes note of Vautrin's machinations. This is a lesson in the harsh realities of high society. Before long, the boarders learn that police are seeking Vautrin, revealed to be a master criminal nicknamed Trompe-la-Mort ("Cheater of Death"). Vautrin arranges for a friend to kill Victorine's brother, in the meantime, and is captured by the police. Goriot, supportive of Rastignac's interest in his daughter and furious with her husband's tyrannical control over her, finds himself unable to help. When his other daughter, Anastasie, informs him that she has been selling off her husband's family jewelry to pay her lover's debts, the old man is overcome with grief at his own impotence and suffers a stroke. Neither Delphine nor Anastasie will visit Goriot as he lies on his deathbed, and before dying he rages about their disrespect toward him. His funeral is attended only by Rastignac, a servant named Christophe, and two paid mourners. Goriot's daughters, rather than being present at the funeral, send their empty coaches, each bearing their families' respective coat of arms. After the short ceremony, Rastignac turns to face Paris as the lights of evening begin to appear. He sets out to dine with Delphine de Nucingen and declares to the city: "À nous deux, maintenant!" ("It's between you and me now!")

Lucky Jim

Kingsley Amis

The year in which the novel is set is never made explicit, but cannot be later than 1951. Jim Dixon is a medieval history lecturer at a redbrick university in the English Midlands. The comic dynamic of the novel is Dixon's rebellion against the cant and pretension he meets in academic life, and the uncontrolled escalation of this from private fantasy to public display. It seems a disastrous trajectory, but Jim is 'lucky', and the novel ends with possession of relative affluence, the London life he craves, and the girl. Dixon is a northern, grammar school-educated, lower middle class young man, and not a natural fit with the high cultural values he meets in academic society. The action takes place towards the end of the academic year, and having made an unsure start in the department, he is concerned not to lose his position at the end of his probationary first year. In his attempt to be awarded tenure, he tries to maintain a good relationship with his head of department, Professor Welch, an absent-minded and gauche pedant. He must also, to establish his credentials, ensure the publication of his first scholarly article, and with very little time remaining. Dixon struggles with an on-again off-again "girlfriend" Margaret Peel (a fellow lecturer and possibly based on Monica Jones, the sometime muse and companion of Amis' friend Philip Larkin), who is recovering from a failed suicide attempt in the wake of an unsuccessful relationship with a previous boyfriend. Margaret employs emotional blackmail to appeal to Dixon's sense of duty and pity to keep him in an ambiguous and sexless relationship. Professor Welch holds a musical weekend that seems to be an opportunity for Dixon to advance his standing amongst his colleagues, but this goes dreadfully wrong when Dixon gets drunk and burns his host's bedclothes. At the weekend, Dixon meets Christine Callaghan, a young Londoner and the latest girlfriend of Professor Welch's son Bertrand, an amateur painter whose affectedness particularly infuriates Dixon. After a bad start, Dixon realises he is attracted to Christine, who is far less pretentious than she initially appears. Dixon's obvious attempts to court Christine upset Bertrand who is using his relationship with her to reach her well-connected Scottish uncle, who is seeking an assistant in London. Dixon rescues Christine from the university's annual dance when Bertrand treats her badly. The pair kiss and make a tea date, but during the date Christine admits she feels too guilty about seeing Dixon behind Bertrand's back and because Dixon is supposed to be seeing Margaret. The two decide not to continue seeing each other. Meanwhile, Margaret's ex-boyfriend telephones Dixon and asks to see him to discuss Margaret. The novel reaches its climax during Dixon's public lecture on "Merrie England," which goes horribly wrong as Dixon, attempting to calm his nerves with an excess of alcohol, uncontrollably begins to mock Welch and everything else that he hates; he finally passes out. Welch, not unsympathetically, informs Dixon his employment will not be extended. However, Christine's uncle, who reveals a tacit respect for Dixon's individuality and attitude towards pretension, offers Dixon the coveted assistant job in London that pays much better than his lecturing position. Dixon then meets Margaret's ex-boyfriend, who reveals that he was not exactly Margaret's boyfriend at all, and the two realize that the suicide attempt was faked to emotionally blackmail both men. Dixon feels he is free of Margaret. Dixon finally has the last laugh, as Christine finds out Bertrand was also pursuing an affair with the wife of one of Dixon's former colleagues; she decides to pursue her relationship with Dixon. At the end of the book, Dixon and Christine bump into the Welches on the street; Jim cannot help walking right up to them, with Christine on his arm, and collapsing in laughter at how ridiculous they truly are.

Grim the Collier of Croydon

J. T.

The devil Belphagor comes to live on Earth for a time, to investigate reports that women have grown extreme in their misbehaviors and have made marriage a curse. He disguises himself as a Spanish doctor named Castiliano. He offers to cure a mute woman named Honoria if she will marry him in return — a proposal that is accepted by the young woman and her family. Once he cures her, however, she repudiates her marital promise, calling him a "base Spaniard" who she wouldn't allow her slave to marry. All the English seem to turn on him: he is bed-tricked into marrying Honoria's shrewish maid, who cheats on him; one of the maid's former suitors tries to kill him; and his wife eventually poisons him. Castiliano dies just as Belphagor's predetermined time on Earth expires, and the devil returns to Hell with great relief at escaping the toils of earthly existence and its ferocious females. (The play's depiction of its devil is surprisingly restrained; he is described as "patient, mild, and pitiful," and is rather a sympathetic character than otherwise. Its infernal domain, ruled by Pluto, is a mixture of Christian and classical elements.) In the play's subplot, Grim the collier is a simple and good-hearted soul who is devoted to his love, Joan of Badenstock. After complications with Clack the Miller and Parson Shorthose, Grim wins her in the end, with the help of Puck or Robin Goodfellow (alias Akercock; in this play, a devil like Belphagor). Grim-the-collier is also the common name for Pilosella aurantiaca (sometimes under the genus Hieracium). Other common names are Orange Hawkweed, Fox and Cubs, Devil's paintbrush and Red devil.

For Us, The Living: A Comedy of Customs

Robert A. Heinlein

Perry Nelson, a normal 1939 engineer, is driving his automobile when he has a blowout, skids over a cliff, and wakes up in the year 2086. Though he was apparently killed in the summer, he re-appears in extremely cold snow, nearly dies again by freezing, and is saved by a fur-clad woman named Diana. The exact circumstances of his being killed and reborn after a century and half are never explained. The later 21st Century people seem strangely incurious, showing little interest in how he had come to be among them and rather take his appearance for granted and proceed to explain to him the details of the social and political set-up of their world.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Mark Twain

The novel is a satirical comedy that looks at 6th-Century England and its medieval culture through the eyes of Hank Morgan, a 19th-century resident of Hartford, Connecticut, who, after a blow to the head, awakens to find himself inexplicably transported back in time to early medieval England at the time of the legendary King Arthur. The fictional Mr. Morgan, who had an image of that time that had been colored over the years by romantic myths, takes on the task of analyzing the problems and sharing his knowledge from 1300 years in the future to modernize, Americanize, and improve the lives of the people. The story begins as a first person narrative in Warwick Castle, where a man details his recollection of a tale told to by an "interested stranger" who is personified as a knight through his simple language and familiarity with ancient armor. After a brief tale of Sir Launcelot of Camelot and his role in slaying two giants from the third-person narrative, the man named Hank Morgan enters and, after being given whiskey by the narrator, he is persuaded to reveal more of his story. Described through first-person narrative as a man familiar with the firearms and machinery trade, Hank is a man who had reached the level of superintendent due to his proficiency in firearms manufacturing, with two thousand subordinates. He describes the beginning of his tale by illustrating details of a disagreement with his subordinates, during which he sustained a head injury from a "crusher" to the head caused by a man named "Hercules" using a crowbar. After passing out from the blow, Hank describes waking up underneath an oak tree in a rural area of Camelot where a knight questions him for trespassing upon his land, and after establishing rapport, leads him towards Camelot castle. Upon recognizing that he has time-traveled to the sixth century, Hank realizes that he is the de facto smartest person on Earth, and with his knowledge he should soon be running things. Hank is ridiculed at King Arthur's court for his strange appearance and dress and is sentenced by King Arthur's court (particularly the magician Merlin) to burn at the stake on 22 June. By a stroke of luck, the date of the burning coincides with a historical solar eclipse in the year 528, of which Hank had learned in his earlier life. While in prison, he sends the boy Clarence to inform the King that he will blot out the sun if he is executed. Hank believes the current date to be 20 June; however, it is actually the 21st when he makes his threat, the day that the eclipse will occur at 12:03 p.m. When the King decides to burn him, the eclipse catches Hank by surprise. But he quickly uses it to his advantage and convinces the people that he caused the eclipse. He makes a bargain with the King, is released, and becomes the second most powerful person in the kingdom. Hank is given the position of principal minister to the King and is treated by all with the utmost fear and awe. His celebrity brings him to be known by a new title, elected by the people — "The Boss". However, he proclaims that his only income will be taken as a percentage of any increase in the kingdom's gross national product that he succeeds in creating for the state as Arthur's chief minister, which King Arthur sees as fair. Notwithstanding, the people fear him and he has his new title, Hank is still seen as somewhat of an equal. The people might grovel to him if he were a knight or some form of nobility, but without that, Hank faces problems from time to time, as he refuses to seek to join such ranks. After being made "the Boss", Hank learns about medieval practices and superstitions. Having superior knowledge, he is able to outdo the alleged sorcerers and miracle-working church officials. At one point, soon after the eclipse, people began gathering, hoping to see Hank perform another miracle. Merlin, jealous of Hank having replaced him both as the king's principal adviser and as the most powerful sorcerer of the realm, begins spreading rumors that Hank is a fake and cannot supply another miracle. Hank secretly manufactures gunpowder and a lightning rod, plants explosive charges in Merlin's tower, then places the lightning rod at the top and runs a wire to the explosive charges. He then announces (during a period when storms are frequent) that he will soon call down fire from heaven and destroy Merlin's tower, then challenges Merlin to use his sorcery to prevent it. Of course, Merlin's "incantations" fail utterly to prevent lightning striking the rod, triggering the explosive charges and leveling the tower, further diminishing Merlin's reputation. Hank Morgan, in his position as King's Minister, uses his authority and his modern knowledge to industrialize the country behind the back of the rest of the ruling class. His assistant is Clarence, a young boy he meets at court, whom he educates and gradually lets in on most of his secrets, and eventually comes to rely on heavily. Hank sets up secret schools, which teach modern ideas and modern English, thereby removing the new generation from medieval concepts, and secretly constructs hidden factories, which produce modern tools and weapons. He carefully selects the individuals he allows to enter his factories and schools, seeking to select only the most promising and least indoctrinated in medieval ideas, favoring selection of the young and malleable whenever possible. As Hank gradually adjusts to his new situation, he begins to attend medieval tournaments. A misunderstanding causes Sir Sagramore to challenge Hank to a duel to the death; the combat will take place when Sagramore returns from his quest for the Holy Grail. Hank accepts, and spends the next few years building up 19th-century infrastructure behind the nobility's back. At this point, he undertakes an adventure with a wandering girl named the Demoiselle Alisande a la Carteloise - nicknamed "Sandy" by Hank in short order - to save her royal "mistresses" being held captive by ogres. On the way, Hank struggles with the inconveniences of medieval plate armor, and also encounters Morgan le Fay. The "princesses", "ogres" and "castles" are all revealed to be actually pigs owned by peasant swineherds, although to Sandy they still appear as royalty. Hank buys the pigs from the peasants and the two leave. On the way back to Camelot, they find a travelling group of pilgrims headed for the Valley of Holiness. Another group of pilgrims, however, comes from that direction bearing the news that the valley's famous fountain has run dry. According to legend, long ago the fountain had gone dry before as soon as the monks of the valley's monastery built a bath with it; the bath was destroyed and the water instantly returned, but this time it has stopped with no clear cause. Hank is begged to restore the fountain, although Merlin is already trying. When Merlin fails, he claims that the fountain has been corrupted by a demon, and that it will never flow again. Hank, in order to look good, agrees that a demon has corrupted the fountain but also claims to be able to banish it; in reality, the "fountain" is simply leaking. He procures assistants from Camelot trained by himself, who bring along a pump and fireworks for special effects. They repair the fountain and Hank begins the "banishment" of the demon. At the end of several long German language phrases, he says "BGWJJILLIGKKK", which is simply a load of gibberish, but Merlin agrees with Hank that this is the name of the demon. The fountain restored, Hank goes on to debunk another magician who claims to be able to tell what any person in the world is doing, including King Arthur. However, Hank knows that the King is riding out to see the restored fountain, and not "resting from the chase" as the "false prophet" had foretold to the people. Hank correctly states that the King will arrive in the valley. Hank has an idea to travel amongst the poor disguised as a peasant to find out how they truly live. King Arthur joins him, but has extreme difficulty in acting like a peasant convincingly. Although Arthur is somewhat disillusioned about the national standard of life after hearing the story of a mother infected with smallpox, he still ends up getting Hank and himself hunted down by the members of a village after making several extremely erroneous remarks about agriculture. Although they are saved by a nobleman's entourage, the same nobleman later arrests them and sells them into slavery. Hank steals a piece of metal in London and uses it to create a makeshift lockpick. His plan is to free himself, the king, beat up their slave driver, and return to Camelot. However, before he can free the king, a man enters their quarters in the dark. Mistaking him for the slave driver, Hank rushes after him alone and starts a fight with him. They are both arrested. Although Hank lies his way out, in his absence the real slave driver has discovered Hank's escape. Since Hank was the most valuable slave — he was due to be sold the next day — the man becomes enraged and begins beating his other slaves, who fight back and kill him. All the slaves, including the king, will be hanged as soon as the missing one — Hank — is found. Hank is captured, but he and Arthur are rescued by a party of knights led by Lancelot, riding bicycles. Following this, the king becomes extremely bitter against slavery and vows to abolish it when they get free, much to Hank's delight. Sagramore returns from his quest, and fights Hank. Hank defeats him and seven others, including Galahad and Lancelot, using a lasso. When Merlin steals Hank's lasso, Sagramore returns to challenge him again. This time, Hank kills him with a revolver. He proceeds to challenge the knights of England to attack him en masse, which they do. After he kills nine more knights with his revolvers, the rest break and flee. The next day, Hank reveals his 19th century infrastructure to the country. With this fact he was called a wizard as he told Clarence to do so as well. Three years later, Hank has married Sandy and they have a baby. While asleep and dreaming, Hank says, "Hello-Central" — a reference to calling a 19th century telephone operator — and Sandy believes that the mystic phrase is a good name for the baby, and names it accordingly. However, the baby falls critically ill and Hank's doctors advise him to take his family overseas while the baby recovers. In reality, it is a ploy by the Catholic Church to get Hank out of the country, leaving the country without effective leadership. During the weeks that Hank is absent, Arthur discovers Guinevere's infidelity with Lancelot. This causes a war between Lancelot and Arthur, who is eventually killed by Sir Mordred. The church then publishes "The Interdict" which causes all people to break away from Hank and revolt. Hank meets with his good friend Clarence who informs him of the war thus far. As time goes on, Clarence gathers 52 young cadets, from ages 14 to 17, who are to fight against all of England. Hank's band fortifies itself in Merlin's Cave with a minefield, electric wire and Gatling guns. The Catholic Church sends an army of 30,000 knights to attack them, but the knights are slaughtered. However, Hank's men are now trapped in the cave by a wall of dead bodies. Hank attempts to go offer aid to any wounded, but is stabbed by the first man that they encounter. He is not seriously injured, but is bedridden. Disease begins to set in amongst them. One night, Clarence finds Merlin weaving a spell over Hank, proclaiming that he shall sleep for 1,300 years. Merlin begins laughing deliriously, but ends up electrocuting himself on one of the electric wires. Clarence and the others all apparently die from disease in the cave. More than a millennium later, the narrator finishes the manuscript and finds Hank on his deathbed having a dream about Sandy. He attempts to make one last "effect", but dies before he can finish it.

The Glass Menagerie

Tennessee Williams

The play is introduced to the audience by Tom, the narrator and protagonist, as a memory play based on his recollection of his mother Amanda and his sister Laura. Amanda's husband abandoned the family long ago. Although a survivor and a pragmatist, Amanda yearns for comforts and admiration she remembers from her days as a fêted Southern belle. She yearns especially for these things for her daughter Laura, a young woman with a limp and tremulous insecurity about the outside world. Tom works in a warehouse doing his best to support them. He chafes under the banality and boredom of everyday life and spends much of his spare time going to the movies at all hours of the night. Amanda is obsessed with finding a suitor for Laura, who spends most of her time with her collection of little glass animals. Eventually Tom brings home an acquaintance from work named Jim, who Amanda hopes will be the long-awaited suitor for Laura. Laura realizes that Jim is the boy she loved in high school and has thought of ever since. After a long evening, Jim and Laura are left alone by candlelight in the living room, waiting for electricity to be restored. During their long scene together, Jim diagnoses Laura's inferiority complex and kisses her. Jim and Laura then share a quiet dance, and he accidentally brushes against the glass menagerie, knocking the glass unicorn to the floor and breaking off its horn. Jim then reveals that he is already engaged to be married and then he leaves. When Amanda learns that Jim was engaged she assumes Tom knew and lashes out at him. As Tom speaks at the end of the play, it becomes clear that Tom left home soon afterward and has never returned. In Tom's final speech, he bids farewell to his mother and sister, telling Laura to blow out the candles in her room, which she does as the play ends.

Absolution Gap

Alastair Reynolds

The plot of the novel takes place in four separate time periods. The bulk of the novel is contained in the 2675 and 2727 sections. Queen Jasmina of the lighthugger Gnostic Ascension wakes Quaiche, a member of her crew, from Reefersleep. She is disappointed with him; despite his promises that he would improve the crew's fortunes, he has not done so. In fact, many of systems he has explored were filled with extremely valuable artifacts which he failed to detect and were picked up by other ships. As such, she gives him one last chance. Jasmina sends him to explore the star 107 Piscium and its planets. His lover, Morwenna, is sent with him in the scrimshaw suit, a sensory deprivation device which paralyzes and blinds its wearer until they remove it. On one of the moons of a gas giant he names Haldora (which also seems to disappear every so often for a few fractions of a second), he discovers an alien bridge, whose automated defense system attacks him. He crashes and finds he does not have enough oxygen to survive until his shuttle returns from the other side of Haldora. However, Haldora vanishes and his radio signal reaches the shuttle, which races to save him at maximum acceleration, killing Morwenna. On Ararat, 23 years after the events of Redemption Ark, Scorpio, a hyperpig, seeks out Nevil Clavain, who has left mainstream society, leaving Scorpio in charge. Scorpio seeks his aid in opening a capsule which has come down from space. Also with him is Vasko, a reasonably competent but naïve young man. They open the capsule and discover Ana Khouri. Khouri informs the colony that humanity is now at war with the Inhibitors. They are getting the relevant technology from Aura, Khouri's daughter, who has been modified by the Hades Matrix, an alien data repository. However, Skade has kidnapped her from Khouri's womb. Clavain and Scorpio lead a team who discover Skade in her crashed ship, which has been attacked by the Inhibitors, causing its Cryo-Arithmetic Engines to malfunction and cover the ship in ice. Skade agrees to give the colony Aura in return for Clavain's being tortured to death. Clavain agrees, but tells Scorpio to throw his corpse into the sea (where the Pattern Jugglers absorb him and reunite him with Galiana and Felka). The survivors are attacked by Inhibitor machinery, but Remontoire, a Conjoiner leading the war, protects them from space. Back in the colony, the leaders debate as to what to do next. They eventually decide to leave. Meanwhile, Captain Brannigan of the lighthugger Nostalgia for Infinity has been preparing to do so. After some deliberation, some fourteen thousand of the over 150,000 colonists board the ship, and it leaves. In space they meet Remontoire, who gives them Aura's technology to defend themselves. The leaders debate whether or not to go to the moon Hela (which Aura suggests they do) or Yellowstone, to help evacuate the planet. They decide to do the latter, but find they are too late; by the time they reach Yellowstone (in 2698), it has been overrun. As the crew collect the last refugees attempting to escape the system, a minor mutiny breaks out amongst the upper echelons, in which Scorpio's leadership is overturned and the other leaders take power as a group. This is due to Scorpio electing to rescue the last refugees off a shuttle that had been contaminated by the Inhibitors. After the final disputes are settled, the ship is redirected towards Hela. Rashmika Els, a 17 year old girl, leaves her home on Hela to search for her long-lost brother Harbin, who left to join the Cathedrals years before. The Cathedrals were set up by Quaiche after the 2615 timeline and constantly move across Hela (making use of various propulsion systems, such as legs and tracks) to "observe" Haldora and its disappearances (known as "vanishings"). It uses special indoctrinal viruses to maintain religious faith amongst its supporters, although certain areas, such as Rashmika's town, are exempt. She joins one of the caravans, a massive vehicle composed of several smaller units, to get to the "Permanent Way", where the cathedrals can be found. She has the ability to tell whenever people are lying to her, which makes Quaiche very interested in her. He uses false evidence to convince Rashmika that Harbin has become a supporter of the church. In fact he is dead. She arrives at Quaiche's Cathedral and begins working for him. In the Cathedral she suffers nightmares about a race called the "Shadows", who exist in a parallel Brane to our own. Their universe has been consumed by a rogue terraforming agent and they are trying to join Rashmika's. They had showed the Scuttlers, the long-extinct inhabitants of Hela, how to build a machine that could bring them across. In return they would destroy the Inhibitors. However, the Inhibitors allegedly destroyed the Scuttlers first. Meanwhile, the Nostalgia for Infinity makes its presence known to Hela and offers to protect it (Quaiche has been asking various lighthuggers for protection). Quaiche agrees and sends "delegates" onto the ship, who are actually soldiers. They attempt to take the ship, but the crew defeats them. Quaiche holds Khouri and Vasko hostage, as well as Rashmika (who is actually Aura). He reveals he actually wants the ship to change Hela's rotation with its engines to stop it spinning; this will permit him to keep watching Haldora eternally, without the need for moving Cathedrals. Brannigan agrees and lands, but not before he deploys a Cache Weapon on Haldora and destroys its exterior, revealing it to be the Shadows' transport mechanism. Quaiche and Grelier (his right-hand man) leave with Aura, but Quaiche panics and dies falling from the shuttle, whilst Grelier is killed by Brannigan's hypometric weapon when he tries to hold Aura hostage. The soldiers of the Cathedrals overwhelm Brannigan and destroy him. Scorpio arrives and rescues Aura, who suggests they take the Scrimshaw suit (now a prison for the Shadows' digital envoy), but Scorpio advises against doing so; Remontoire has shown him a shard of material from Ararat, which matches similar ones found on Hela. He believes that the race that made them also killed the Scuttlers for talking to the Shadows. They leave the Scrimshaw suit and retreat as the Cathedral is destroyed. As they walk away, Khouri asks Scorpio why he saved the shuttle in the Yellowstone system and it is revealed that he saw her husband, Fazil, was on the passenger manifest. The prologue and epilogue of the novel are both set in roughly 3125, four hundred years after the rest of the book. An unnamed woman and her guardian are standing on the surface of a Pattern Juggler planet which is being evacuated. The woman agrees with her guardian to spend one more hour before returning to their ship. She stares up towards the stars and has the machinery in her clothing magnify one of them, revealing it to be colored green. The epilogue reveals that the woman is in fact an older version of Aura (with her "protector" being Scorpio), reflecting on the events that happened after the battle on Hela. Scorpio turned out to be right; the race - known as the Nestbuilders - that wiped out the Scuttlers had been watching humanity and aided them. The Nestbuilders advised humanity to hide with them between the stars, but the humans instead used Nestbuilder weaponry to defeat the Inhibitors and cleanse human space of them. However, in doing so, they created a greater problem: the so called "Greenfly" machines, self-replicating terraformers programmed to destroy every object in a solar system and reorganize them into trillions of vegetation-filled habitats that orbited the star (behavior that is exactly the same as the threat described by the Shadows). The Inhibitors had kept them in check, but without the Inhibitors, the Greenfly are now out of control. Nothing the humans or Nestbuilders can do has stopped them. As such, humanity is evacuating towards the Pleiades. Aura reminisces on the decision she made not to invoke the Shadows. She decides that, before she returns to the ship, she will swim with the Pattern Jugglers and warn the people they have assimilated about what is coming. She enters the ocean as the novel ends. More can be found out about the Greenfly threat in the story "Galactic North", available in the book of the same name. This story outlines the origins of the greenfly and charts their progress until the year 40 000, by which point they have spread to such an extent that humans are forced to abandon the Milky Way Galaxy entirely.

Broken Angels

Richard Morgan

Some 30 years after Altered Carbon, Takeshi Kovacs is now serving in Carrera's Wedge, a mercenary organisation which joins a corporate war on a distant colony, Sanction IV, and fights the rebellion against the corporate-sponsored government. While having his latest body repaired after a disastrous campaign, Kovacs is approached by pilot Jan Schneider, who is looking for protection for an expedition to exploit a Martian artifact discovered just before the war broke out. "Martian" artifacts have been known for many years at this point, one of them being featured in Altered Carbon. Later it is realized that the "Martians" were not from Mars, but were a technologically advanced species that left artifacts on many planets, including Mars and Kovacs' home world. The artifact, located in the middle of the war zone, is actually a portal linked to a point in outer space where a Martian starship lies. Kovacs and Schneider formulate a plan to recover the portal and begin by rescuing Tanya Wardani, the archaeologist who coordinated the pre-war dig, from a prison camp. Unable to reach the heavily contested location alone, Kovacs enlists the support of one of the major companies involved in feeding the war, the Mandrake Corporation, which is represented by an executive named Matthias Hand. Kovacs and Hand buy hundreds of soldiers' stacks from "The Soul Market" and from them select an elite squad for the expedition. Hand secretly leaks information that prompts the rebels to drop nuclear bombs on the city of Sauberville close to the site, which clears the site of opposing forces and the recovery expedition begins. Near the artifact, an abandoned fishing boat is found with two dead bodies, drifting in its net. The artifact is a wormhole gate that allows instantaneous transport to an outer area of the Sanction star system where an ancient Martian warship is adrift. The archaeologist starts her work to translate the Martian "technoglyphs" on the artifact in order to activate it. While awaiting Wardani's progress, the party are slowly being poisoned by radioactive fallout from the blast. During their first night at the dig site, an unknown member of the party attempts to sabotage the mission by using a corrosion grenade to destroy equipment aboard their shuttle. Upon securing the area, they encounter a group of nanodes - microscopic machines that can assemble into an intelligent composite machine able to learn how to defend itself once attacked in a process like evolution. Hand reveals to Kovacs that nanodes were deployed by a rival representative of the Mandrake Corporation in an attempt to secure the site. The nanodes evolve into more and more aggressive forms which attack the squad several times, eventually killing two members. During the last and strongest attack by nanodes, Tanya succeeds in opening the portal which, when confronted by the nanodes, deactivates them. The party goes through the portal and finds a huge and inactive Martian starship, along with the bodies of Tanya's original archaeological team. Kovacs' squad enters the starship in order to place an ownership claim buoy inside. Kovacs notices that Schneider is free from radiation sickness. When confronted he escapes in the shuttle, killing another member in the process. Unknown to Schneider, Kovacs had mined the shuttle to explode on gate re-entry, apparently eliminating the mission's traitor. During their exploration, the Martian starship is attacked by an unknown starship which causes its automated defence systems to come online. During the attack the party begins to experience visions and emotions from the dead Martians and comes close to madness. Hand realizes the danger and orders Kovacs to shoot the others with a stunning weapon to render them unconscious. After the battle is over, the Wedge rescues and then imprisons the remaining members of the squad as one of them is wanted as a traitor by the Wedge. By this point Kovacs has become completely loyal to his new squad and retains no allegiance to the Wedge. During the traitor's torture, he is able to free his squad and kill the entire Wedge unit, apart from Carrera, who manages to escape through the portal. Despite being almost dead from radiation exposure, Kovacs follows him through and kills him. Kovacs realizes that Wardani sabotaged the first archaeological expedition after discovering that her team wanted to use the Martian ship as a weapon. She was responsible for the two corpses on the fishing boat and for closing the portal behind the others. She also destroyed the equipment in the shuttle to prevent the team from finding out what happened. Tanya confesses everything to Kovacs and decides to stay and oversee the recovery of the portal, while Kovacs trades the rights to the Martian ship for safe passage out of the war zone for the surviving members of his team, who leave for the Latimer system.

A Delicate Balance

Edward Albee

The play opens with Agnes, a brutal, scathing, upper class woman in her late 50’s, discussing the possibility of suddenly and quite easily losing her mind. When Tobias reassures Agnes that “we will all go mad before you,” Agnes admits that she could not really go mad because she needs to take care of him. Agnes exclaims that although she is astonished by her own thoughts of madness, it is her sister, Claire, who lives with them, who astonishes her the most. Claire appears and apologizes to Agnes that her own nature is such to bring out in her sister the full force of her brutality. This inspires a diatribe from Agnes concerning Claire’s lifestyle, namely, her alcoholism. Claire senses that Tobias and Agnes’s daughter Julia might be going on her fourth divorce and predicts that Julia will be coming home shortly. Agnes reenters, announcing that Julia is coming home. Tobias then tells the story of a cat that he once had that he had put to sleep because the cat stopped liking him. There is a knock on the door, and Harry and Edna, Agnes and Tobias’s best friends, ask if they can stay there. They have been frightened by something intangible and do not want to return to their own home. Act II opens with Agnes and Julia discussing the fact that Harry and Edna are occupying Julia’s old bedroom. Harry and Edna have spent the entire day in the room, not coming out even for meals. Julia whines to Tobias next about not having her room. Tobias discredits Julia for all the broken marriages that she has accumulated. There is mention of Julia’s brother who died while still young. Claire enters and chides Julia about her new divorce and about constantly returning home. Julia teases Claire back about her drinking. When asked if she knows what is going on with Harry and Edna, Agnes tells them that she knocked on the door but was too embarrassed, irritated, and apprehensive to pursue the matter. After asking Tobias for a drink, she announces that “there is no point in pressing” the issue of Harry and Edna. At the end of scene 1, Harry and Edna appear with their coats over their arms. They announce they are going home but will return with their suitcases. Scene ii opens with Julia and Agnes alone after dinner. Julia is disgusted with her mother’s desire to control everyone’s conversations and emotions. Agnes retorts, “There is a balance to be maintained . . . and I must be the fulcrum.” Agnes and Tobias leave to help Harry and Edna unload their suitcases from their car. Edna enters and tells Julia that it is time for her to grow up. Julia reminds Edna that she is a guest in the house, to which Edna responds that she and Harry are Agnes and Tobias’s best friends. When Harry enters, he goes to fix everyone a drink at the bar. Julia blocks him from the bar and insists that he stay away from it. Julia yells “I WANT . . . WHAT IS MINE!” and leaves the room. Agnes reminisces about the death of her son, “an unreal time.” She suspects that Tobias has been unfaithful, and asks Harry and Claire to confirm it, but they both deny it. After Tobias attempts to excuse Julia as being in hysterics, Julia reappears with a gun in her hand. She insists that Harry and Edna leave. Edna declares, “We have rights here. We belong,” and insists that she and Harry are staying there forever, “if need be.” Tobias has stayed up all night, and is making himself a morning cocktail. Agnes comes down from her room. She tells Tobias that it is his role to make all the decisions with regards to what to do about Edna and Harry. She reminds Tobias of the time when he prevented her from getting pregnant after the death of their son. Claire, Julia, Tobias, and Agnes all discuss their versions of why Harry and Edna are there and what they should do about it. Harry and Edna join them, and everyone in the room is drinking, despite the early hour of the morning. Edna announces that Harry wants to talk to Tobias alone, and the women exit. Harry tells Tobias that if the circumstances were reversed, he and Edna don’t think they would allow Tobias and Agnes to live at their house, in spite of the fact that they are best friends. Harry asks Tobias, “You don’t want us, do you, Toby?” Tobias delivers what the author refers to in the script notes as Tobias’s “aria.” Tobias answers that he does not really want Harry and Edna to stay there but that because they are friends, Harry and Edna have the right to be there. He goes with Harry to get their suitcases and put them back in their car. Agnes says to Edna, “Everything becomes… too late, finally.” The play ends on Agnes’s rumination that people sleep at night because they are afraid of the dark: “They say we sleep to let the demons out—to let the mind go raving mad…And when the daylight comes again... comes order with it.”

Coronation, or the Last of the Romanovs

Boris Akunin

The story is told from the perspective of Afanasi Ziukin, the majordomo of Grand Duke George Alexandrovich. Erast Fandorin investigates the abduction of Grand Duke Mikhail, the four-year-old youngest son of George Alexandrovitch, by criminal mastermind "Doctor Lind" whom Fandorin has been pursuing for several years. Their initial confrontation is briefly described in the novella "Dream Valley" from the Jade Rosary Beads collection. This time, Lind demands the Orlov diamond, a prerequisite for the upcoming coronation, as a ransom. Nicholas II is portrayed as dependent on his uncles Cyril and Simeon, the Governor-General of Moscow. Akunin distorts the Romanov family relations somewhat. The three uncles of Nicolas II (sons of Alexander II) are semi-fictitious: *George Alexandrovich, named after George Alexandrovitch, Nicholas' younger brother, but probably based on Nicholas' real uncle Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich; however, historical Alexei had no legitimate issue *Simeon Alexandrovich, the Governor General of Moscow is based on Nicholas' real uncle Sergei Alexandrovich. *Cyril Alexandrovich is based on Nicholas' real uncle Vladimir Alexandrovich of Russia, and named after Cyril, Vladimir's son.

Wolves of the Calla

Stephen King

After escaping the alternate Topeka and the evil wizard Randall Flagg, Roland's ka-tet travel to the farming village of Calla Bryn Sturgis where they meet the townsfolk, as well as Father Callahan, who was originally introduced in 'Salem's Lot. He and the townsfolk request the ka-tet's assistance in battling against the Wolves of Thunderclap, who come once a generation to take one child from each pair of the town's twins. After a few months of being away, the children are then returned "roont" (ruined) - mentally handicapped and destined to grow to enormous size and die young. The Wolves are due to come in about a month's time. Father Callahan also tells the gunslingers his remarkable story of how he left Maine following his battle with the vampire Kurt Barlow in the novel Salem's Lot. Since that encounter he has gained the ability to identify Type-3 vampires with a blue aura. After some time he begins killing these minor vampires as he finds them; however, this makes him a wanted man amongst the "low men" and so Callahan must go into exile. Eventually he is lured into a trap and dies, allowing him to enter Mid-World in 1983, much as Jake did when killed in The Gunslinger. He appears near the Calla with an evil magic ball called Black Thirteen, and is found by the Manni people in a place called The Doorway Cave. Not only do Roland of Gilead and his ka-tet have to protect the Calla-folken from the Wolves, they must also protect a single red rose that grows in a vacant lot on Second Avenue and Forty-Sixth Street in mid-town Manhattan of 1977. If it is destroyed, then the Tower (which is the rose in another form) will fall. In order to get back to New York to prevent this they must use the sinister Black Thirteen. To add to that, Roland and Jake have noticed bizarre changes in Susannah's behavior, which are linked to the event recounted in The Waste Lands when Susannah couples with the demon in the stone circle. Roland informs Eddie that Susannah has been impregnated by the demon, and though he fears for her safety he remains surprisingly calm. They promise to keep the fact that they know a secret from Susannah, but later Susannah reveals to the ka-tet that she herself has come to grips with it, and knowledge of a second personality living in Susannah named Mia "daughter of none" is shared. Jake finds out that his new friend Benny Slightman's father is a traitor by following him to a military outpost between the Calla and Thunderclap known as "The Dogan" (which is also featured in The Dark Tower: The Long Road Home). Jake tells Roland, who shows mercy by not killing Slightman, instead leaving him alive for his son and Jake's sake. The wolves attack, using weapons resembling the snitches found in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series (which are actually stamped 'Harry Potter Model') and lightsabers found in George Lucas' Star Wars, and are revealed to be robots and to have Doctor Doom-like visages. The gunslingers, along with some help from a few plate-throwing women in the Calla, defeat the wolves, all the while with the children safely hidden in a rice patch nearby. Mia takes over the body of Susannah and flees to the doorway cave, where she uses Black Thirteen to transport herself to New York.

The Good Earth

Pearl S. Buck

The story begins on Wang Lung's wedding day and follows the rise and fall of his fortunes. The House of Hwang, a family of wealthy landowners, lives in the nearby town, where Wang Lung's future wife, O-Lan, lives as a slave. As the House of Hwang slowly declines due to opium use, frequent spending, and uncontrolled borrowing, Wang Lung, through his own hard work and the skill of his wife, O-Lan, slowly earns enough money to buy land from the Hwang family. O-Lan delivers three sons and three daughters; the first daughter becomes mentally handicapped as a result of severe malnutrition brought on by famine. Her father greatly pities her and calls her "Poor Fool," a name by which she is addressed throughout her life. As soon as the second daughter is born, O-Lan kills her to spare her the misery of growing up in these hard times, and to give the remaining family a better chance to survive. During the devastating famine and drought, the family must flee to a large city in the south to find work. Wang Lung's malignant uncle offers to buy his possessions and land, but for significantly less than their value. The family sells everything except the land and the house. Wang Lung then faces the long journey south, contemplating how the family will survive walking, when he discovers that the "firewagon" (the Chinese word for the newly-built train) takes people south for a fee. While in the city, O-Lan and the children turn to begging while Wang Lung pulls a rickshaw. Wang Lung's father begs but does not earn any money, and sits looking at the city instead. They find themselves aliens among their more metropolitan countrymen who look different and speak in a fast accent. They no longer starve, due to the one-cent charitable meals of congee, but still live in abject poverty. Wang Lung longs to return to his land. When armies approach the city he can only work at night hauling merchandise out of fear of being conscripted. One time, his son brought home meat he had stolen. Furious, Wang Lung throws the meat on the ground; believing that if they kept stealing, his sons would grow up as thieves. O-Lan, however, calmly picks up the meat and begins cooking it again; representing that she preferred health to honesty. When a food riot erupts, Wang Lung unwillingly joins a mob that is looting a rich man's house and corners the man himself, who fears for his life and gives Wang Lung all the money he has in order to buy his safety. Meanwhile, his wife finds jewels from a hiding place in another house, hiding them between her breasts. Wang Lung uses the money to bring the family home, buy a new ox and farm tools, and hire servants to work the land for him. In time, the youngest children are born, a twin son and daughter. Using the jewels O-Lan looted from the house in the southern city, Wang Lung is able to buy the House of Hwang's remaining land. He is eventually able to send his first two sons to school and apprentice the third one as a merchant. As Wang Lung becomes more prosperous, he buys a concubine named Lotus. O-Lan dies, but not before witnessing her first son's wedding. Wang Lung and his family move into town and rent the old House of Hwang. Wang Lung, now an old man, wants peace, but there are always disputes, especially between his first and second sons, and particularly their wives. Wang Lung's third son runs away to become a soldier. At the end of the novel, Wang Lung overhears his sons planning to sell the land and tries to dissuade them. They say that they will do as he wishes, but smile knowingly at each other.

The Secret Garden

Frances Hodgson Burnett

Mary Lennox is a selfish 10-year-old girl, who is born in India to wealthy British parents. She is unwanted by her mother and father, and taken care of primarily by servants, who pacify her as much as possible to keep her out of the way. Spoiled and with a temper, she is unaffectionate, angry, rude and obstinate. Later, there is an earthquake which hits India and kills here mum and dad. She is discovered alone but alive after the house is abandoned. She is sent to Yorkshire, England to live with her uncle, Archibald Craven. At first, Mary is her usual self, sour and rude, disliking her uncle's large house, the people within it, and most of all the vast stretch of moor, which seems scrubby and gray after the winter. She is told that she must stay confined to her two rooms and that nobody will bother much with her and she must amuse herself. Martha Sowerby, her good-natured maidservant, tells Mary a story of the late Mrs. Craven, and how she would spend hours in a private garden growing roses. Later, Mrs. Craven was killed by an unfortunate accident, and Mr. Craven had the garden locked and the key buried. Mary is roused by this story and starts to soften her ill manner despite herself. Soon she begins to lose her disposition and gradually comes to enjoy the company of Martha, Ben Weatherstaff the gardener, and also that of a friendly robin redbreast to whom she attaches human qualities. Her appetite increases and she finds herself getting stronger as she plays by herself on the moor. Martha's mother buys Mary a skipping rope in order to encourage this, and she takes to it immediately. Mary's time is occupied by wondering about the secret garden and a strange crying sound that can sometimes be heard around the house which the servants ignore or deny. While exploring the gardens, Mary comes across a badger hole and finds a key belonging to the untended garden. She chances to ask Martha for garden tools, which Martha has delivered by Dickon, her twelve-year-old brother. Mary and Dickon take a liking to each other, as Dickon has a soft way with animals and a good nature. Eager to absorb his gardening knowledge, Mary unwillingly lets him into the secret of the garden, which he agrees to keep. That night, Mary hears the crying again. She follows the noise and, to her surprise, finds a small boy her age, living in a hidden bedroom. His name is Colin and she discovers that they are cousins: he is the son of her uncle; his mother died when he was a baby, and he suffers from an unspecified problem with his spine. Mary visits every day that week, distracting him from his troubles with stories of the moor, of Dickon and his animals and of the garden. It is decided he needs fresh air and the secret garden, which Mary finally admits she has access to. Colin is put into his wheelchair and brought outside into the garden, the first time he's been outdoors in years. While in the garden, the children are surprised to see Ben Weatherstaff looking over the wall on a ladder. Startled and angry to find the children there in his late mistress' (Colin's mother's) garden he admits he believed Colin to be a cripple. Colin stands up out of his chair to prove him wrong and finds that his legs are fine, though weak from not using them for a long time. Colin spends every day in the garden, becoming stronger. The children conspire to keep Colin's health a secret so he can surprise his father, who is traveling and mourning over his late wife. As Colin's health improves, his father's mood does as well, and he has a dream of his wife calling him into the garden that makes him immediately pack his bags and head home. He walks the outer wall in memory but hears voices inside, finds the door unlocked and is shocked to see the garden in full bloom with children in it and his son running around. The servants watch as Mr. Craven walks back to the manor, and all are stunned that Colin runs beside him.

The Sea, the Sea

Iris Murdoch

The Sea, the Sea is a tale of the strange obsessions that haunt a self-satisfied playwright and director as he begins to write his memoirs. Played out against a vividly rendered landscape and filled with allusions to myth and magic, Murdoch's novel exposes the jumble of motivations that drive her characters - the human vanity, jealousy, and lack of compassion behind the disguises they present to the world. Charles Arrowby, its central figure, decides to withdraw from the world and dwell in seclusion in a house by the sea. While there, by an extraordinary coincidence he encounters his first love, Mary Hartley Fitch, whom he has not seen since his love affair with her as an adolescent. Although she is almost unrecognisable in old age, and totally outside his theatrical world, he becomes obsessed by her, idealizing his former relationship with her and attempting to persuade her to elope with him. His inability to recognise the egotism and selfishness of his own romantic ideals is at the heart of the novel. After the farcical and abortive kidnapping of Mrs. Fitch by Arrowby, he is left to mull over her rejection in an enjoyably self-obsessional and self-aggrandising manner over the space of several chapters. "How much, I see as I look back, I read into it all, reading my own dream text and not looking at the reality... Yes of course I was in love with my own youth... Who is one's first love?"

Trinity

Leon Uris

The story opens with the funeral of Kilty Larkin, father of Tomas and grandfather of Conor. Amidst the ancient Irish Catholic mourning process, Conor has a vision of the town storyteller who tells Conor of the history of the Fenians, a rebel group from the early 19th century. This stirs the fire of rebellion in the now 12 year old Conor Larkin, and sets him onto the path for freedom for his Irish people. Soon after this, Seamus O'Neill, Conor's best friend, began school in town under a Protestant named Mr. Ingram. Conor, needed at home, helped his father in the fields, until he became an apprentice at a black smith shop. As the years passed the boys became friends with Mr. Ingram, who taught them of the power of books and the history of their Irish forefathers. Seamus goes to college in Dublin, and Conor heads to Derry, in the province of Ulster. Here he moves into Bogside and witnesses the extent of the disaster that has befallen the Irish people. Bogside is in tatters and in a state of despair that has stricken them since before the potato famine in 1845 and 1852. Held down by the Protestant reign in Derry's labor unions, the Catholics are dying slowly without hope. It is here in Derry where Conor discovers other like-minded Irish tired of the oppression of the Catholics by the British and Protestants. This small group, with the support of the few Irish politicians, will become the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the roots of Sinn Féin, and the whisper of freedom throughout Ireland.

The Discovery of Heaven

Harry Mulisch

The Discovery of Heaven tells the story of an angel-like being, who is ordered to return to Heaven the stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments, given to Moses by God, which symbolise in the book the link between Heaven and Earth. The divine being, however, cannot himself travel to Earth, and on several occasions in the book resorts to influencing events, being in effect a deliberate personification of deus ex machina. He affects the personal lives of three people (two men and one woman) in order that a child will be conceived. This child would then have an innate desire to seek out and return the Tablets. The book consists of four parts (dubbed "The Beginning of the Beginning", "The End of the Beginning", "The Beginning of the End", and "The End of the End"). In between these four parts, the angel-like being discusses "The Plan" with his superior, who is supposedly an archangel. The book begins with the angel reporting to his superior that 'the job is done', and beginning to recount the events. He explains that after seventy years' work and planning, he has created a messenger to return the Tablets, and how, in order for the messenger to be conceived, he first needed to allow the birth of the messenger's parents. He then explains how the First and Second World War were instrumental in this. The messenger's father, Max Delius, was born of a Jewish mother and a German officer in 1933. The messenger's mother, Ada Brons, is born in 1946 to Dutch parents, who also meet in WWII. A third man, Onno Quist, is born into a renowned Dutch Conservative political family, also in the year 1933. The angel arranges for the men, Onno and Max, to meet in 1967. Onno has just left a family gathering and is in need of a ride to Amsterdam. By apparent chance to the characters, but clearly a deus ex machina-effect to the reader, Max is the one to give him a ride. They become friends: Onno and Max's personalities are highly complementary. Onno is an introverted, rather arrogant and highly intelligent linguistic genius who, despite his gift for languages, studied law. While Onno is trying to 'find God' in the Diskos of Phaistos, Max is trying to 'discover Heaven' through astronomy. A more extroverted, erotomanious astronomer, Max is haunted by his rather dark family history: Max's mother, a Jewish woman, was purportedly murdered in Auschwitz, on instigation of his father, an Austrian officer in the Wehrmacht. After the war his father was imprisoned and later executed by the firing squad. Max was consequently raised by foster parents. Onno and Max's friendship reaches a high in the many vibrant conversations they have in Leiden and Amsterdam, in experiencing the revolution of the sixties. Their conversations are filled with great wit and intellect and range over many facets of life: science, history, politics, but especially religion and philosophy. Their friendship, however, absorbs them so much that it forces a break between Onno and his girlfriend, Helga. During a walk in Leiden they come across a small bookshop. Here Max meets Ada, the daughter of the owner and a gifted cellist. The two become three. Ada and Max fall in love. This is rather new for both of them: Ada, who is only twenty, loses her virginity to Max, who has never had a lasting relationship with a woman. One day, Max unwittingly causes Ada to break up with him by leaving abruptly during sex, telling Ada to just let herself come (Maak jezelf maar klaar. in Dutch). Max is also haunted by his family history. Moved by Roma music, who too suffered from the Shoah, he goes to Auschwitz, Poland, to seek his parents' history. Ada and Onno, left alone by the sudden departure of Max, fall in love. When Max returns he sees his best friend with his former girlfriend, but he accepts this change. Onno, meanwhile, has become deputy mayor for the Labour party in Amsterdam and begins his political career. Although nearly everything has changed, their friendship still seems very strong. The three of them then go to Cuba, (where Castro has recently gained power and is fashionable in the leftist elite), and Ada is asked to play the cello. In Cuba, Max and Onno are mistaken for the Dutch delegation to a revolutionary conference, which they attend more as a joke than anything else. On their last day on the island, Onno is seduced by a Cuban woman. At the beach, Max is unable to suppress his libido and makes love to Ada in the Cuban sea. Directly after this event, Onno and Ada meet each other in their hotel room, and sleep with each other. Back in the Netherlands, Ada finds out she is pregnant. The child was conceived in Cuba. She tells this to Onno, who then proposes to marry her, assuming the child is his. Max realizes the child is equally likely to be his and decides to leave Ada and Onno, filled with feelings of guilt. After the marriage, he leaves for Westerbork, (a former holding camp for Jews in the Netherlands who would subsequently be sent to concentration camps in Germany and Eastern Europe, now hosting one of Europe's biggest radio telescopes). Onno and Ada still visit Max. On one of their visits to Westerbork, Ada receives a phone call from a Leiden hospital: her father has had a heart attack. The three of them drive back to Leiden and are caught in bad weather. Their car crashes. Max and Onno escape without a scratch. Ada, however, is badly hurt and falls into a coma, but the child she is carrying has survived. Max is sent to Leiden to inform Ada's mother, Mrs. (Sophie) Brons, about the events. He arrives in Leiden in the middle of the night. Mr Brons has died and Ada is in coma. Mrs. Brons convinces Max that he must stay the night. Max and Mrs. Brons sleep together. Max begins to visit Mrs. Brons frequently. During the day the two maintain a formal relationship and are secretly lovers at night. Ada and Onno's child still survives and needs a home. Onno cannot take care of the child alone, and he also has a bright political future. Max suggests to Mrs. Brons that she move to Westerbork. Together they can raise Ada's child in Westerbork and continue their affair. The child is born through Caesarean section. The child has bright blue eyes and does not cry once, not even during labor. Onno calls the child Quinten. Max and Mrs. Brons move to an apartment near Westerbork in a former castle, now inhabited by artists and eccentrics. Quinten grows up to be an introverted, peaceful child as intelligent as his father. (The reader has the knowledge that Max is the father) He is obsessed by architecture, ancient keys and obelisks. Onno, who is absorbed by his political career, only infrequently visits his son. As Quinten grows up he is haunted by dreams of a strange, otherworldly place that has no outside but only an inside. This inside is filled with strange bridges, cranes and architecture. This fuels his interest in architecture and causes him to obsessively make drawings of this place. He also takes care of an old cemetery lot in the garden of the castle, where a racing horse is buried. He seems a rather strange child. Meanwhile Onno's political career is destroyed, when his visit to revolutionary Cuba is made public. His position within the Labour Party is unretainable and he is not promoted to minister of Defense. That same day, his new girlfriend (Helga again) is killed. With very little left to live for, Onno decides to disappear. Max, meanwhile, has returned to his old tricks. He leaves Mrs. Brons for another woman but still lives with her and Quinten. Scientifically he is on the verge of making a major astronomical discovery. When he discovers heaven (located beyond the Big Bang in negative space), he is killed by a freak meteoroid, sent from heaven by Angel. (In the movie, Gabriel sends the meteor, even after Angel complains and explains that they still need Max.) When Quinten is 16, he decides to look for his father. Except for his mother and grandmother he has very little that binds him to Westerbork. He goes to Italy. He visits Venice and Florence but through meetings with strange people, he is forced to flee both cities. He eventually arrives in Rome. In the Pantheon, he is approached by a strange man with a long beard and a raven on his shoulder. He realizes that it is his father. Onno has fled to Rome and has filled his life with his original quest to decipher the Diskos of Phaistos. Onno takes Quinten on a tour through Rome. Although they haven't seen each other in years, their relationship is close. Onno recognizes a lot of his friend, Max, in Quinten. When they visit the Lateran (one of Rome's holiest sights), Quinten is convinced that he remembers the place from his dreams and that the stone tablets are stored there. He becomes obsessed with the place and with the role of the stone tablets in Christianity and Judaism. After weeks of study, Quinten convinces his father to steal the stone tablet. One night they stay for too long in the Lateran and are locked in. With Quinten's study of ancient architecture and locksmithing and Onno's encyclopedic knowledge, they open the chapel of the Lateran and in a safe they find two stone tablets, grey slabs. Later they learn that the slabs are made of a bright blue gem. They take the first flight from Rome to Tel Aviv, Israel. Onno and Quinten stay in Jerusalem and visit the city's sights, including the Dome of the Rock, where the stone tablets were stored for ages when the Jews inhabited the city, before the Romans sacked the temple. After meeting an elderly woman who speaks Dutch, with very blue eyes and numbers tattooed on her arm, Onno realizes that she might be Max's mother and Quinten's grandmother. He goes to tell Quinten but cannot find him. In a state of distress, he calls Mrs. Brons. He learns that Ada has died; Mrs. Brons, a former nurse has performed euthanasia. While speaking with her on the phone, Onno suffers a stroke. Quinten has gone into a hallucinative state. In a sort of dream world, filled with references to Jewish mysticism, he returns to the Dome of the Rock with the stone tablets. He meets his father's raven and the race horse, whose burial place he kept. In the Dome of the Rock he ascends to heaven with the tablets. Back in heaven, the Angel is commended for his deeds by the Archangel. The Angel, however, feels remorse for breaking the link between heaven and earth. But the situation is no longer in his control.

A Prayer for Owen Meany

John Irving

The story is narrated by John Wheelwright, a former citizen of New Hampshire who has become a voluntary exile from the United States,having settled in Toronto, Canada and taken on Canadian citizenship. The story is narrated in two interwoven timeframes. The first timeframe is the perspective of John in the present day (1987). The second (much larger) timeframe is John's memories of the past, growing up in New Hampshire in the 1950s and 1960s alongside his best friend, Owen Meany. The present-day John works as an English teacher at the Bishop Strachan private girls' school in Toronto. He is a committed Christian (attending the Anglican Church), with a strong but important sense of right and wrong and an abiding, obsessive anger with the actions and attitude of America. The latter haunts him to intense degree; and he is known to his Canadian friends and associates as a fussy bachelor who cannot entirely embrace the Canadian identity that he has chosen. Some of them also suspect him of being homosexual, although the truth is that he has never lost his virginity. He engages in frequent and fervent tirades against the Reagan administration and although his teaching career is going moderately well, he still struggles with his past life. The truth of John’s attitude and choices is explained by his childhood friendship with Owen Meany, and by the details and repercussions of Owen’s life and death. These details, John makes clear, are responsible for his belief in God. John’s present-day narrative bookends, comments on and punctuates the narrative of the past, in which the vast majority of the novel’s events occur. John Wheelwright and Owen Meany are both residents of the (fictitious) town of Gravesend, New Hampshire. Despite being best friends since childhood, their backgrounds and attitudes are very different. John is the unambitious (and rather dull) descendant of several New England founding families with long and lofty pedigrees: most notably the Wheelwrights, who themselves are one of the leading Gravesend families. He is the illegitimate son of the vivacious Tabitha "Tabby" Wheelwright, and knows nothing about his absent father apart from the fact that he was someone his mother "met on the Boston & Maine railroad". Tabitha never had any intention of marrying John’s father and cheerfully refuses to reveal his identity. Instead, she weathers the scandal and brings John up at the family home of 80 Front Street as a single parent, with the bewildered and curious support of John’s formidable grandmother (and family matriarch) Harriet Wheelwright and his grandmother's maid Lydia. A significant percentage of John’s attention is taken up by the mystery of his parentage. Conversely, Owen is the child of a granite-quarrying family from the New Hampshire working class. He is affected by two mysterious conditions — one of which stunts his growth (unusually tiny as a child, his eventual adult height is under five feet tall) and the other of which has damaged his larynx (so that in order to be heard he has to shout through his nose in a penetrating childlike tone which John describes as a "wrecked" voice). Although he lacks John’s social and physical advantages, he is far more clever and possesses the conviction and determination that John conspicuously lacks. Owen also has an unusual relationship with his parents, both of whom seem afraid of him (although the reason why is not revealed until late in the novel). Owen’s father Mr. Meany is a class-conscious but pleasant man, apparently easily bent to his son's will, and his mother is a strange woman who isolates herself in her home (described as being almost catatonic, she rarely speaks or moves from her spot in front of the fireplace). Owen spends much of his time at the Wheelwright house with John and John's family. During the course of his life, Owen develops the conviction that he is "God’s instrument", although he does not know how until the end of his life. Despite his miniature stature and odd appearance (variously described as "ethereal", "adorable" and "creepy"), Owen has a striking personality which commands immediate attention and ensures that he dominates his surroundings. Owen is extremely intelligent and self-possessed, even as a child. He directs the actions of many of the people around him by either charming them, frightening them, or craftily manipulating them. Children and adults alike are drawn to Owen, and many people (such as John's mother Tabitha), are unable to resist touching him. Others' urges to touch him often put Owen in embarrassing situations, such as a Sunday School ritual in which his classmates hold him over their heads and pass him around the room. Owen himself is enchanted with Tabitha, and she adores him almost as much as she adores John. Eventually Tabitha meets a new man on the Boston & Maine railroad — Dan Needham, a good-natured teacher travelling to Gravesend to apply for a job teaching at the boy's private school, Gravesend Academy, to teach dramatic arts. Dan is awarded the position, and he and Tabitha become engaged, with the full approval of everyone (even Grandmother Wheelwright). Mysteriously, Tabitha makes Dan wait for four years before they are finally married. After the marriage, Tabitha and John move into Dan's apartment in the staff dormitory of Gravesend Academy. Tragedy strikes when Owen hits a foul ball at a Little League baseball game, which hits and kills Tabitha. The whole community is affected by Tabitha’s death, but life goes on. Despite Owen’s responsibility for Tabitha’s death, John refuses to blame him and the two of them remain close. The ball which killed Tabitha disappears, and John assumes Owen took it. Dan Needham takes John under his wing as his adoptive son and allows him to spend time at his apartment at Gravesend Academy. At this point, three more characters are introduced  — John’s cousins Hester (a tomboy), Simon and Noah (both rough-housing older boys). Owen begs to be introduced, but embarrasses himself by accidentally urinating on Hester when startled during a game of hide-and-seek. Despite this (and despite Hester’s antagonistic nature) all is forgiven, and Owen and Hester begin to develop an unorthodox closeness. Although John himself grows to be incestuously attracted to Hester, he puts these feelings away (chalking them up to lust, and by extension his absent father) especially after Owen admits his own serious attraction to Hester. Two major events (both theatrical) then occur, shaping the narrative. The Gravesend Players, the local amateur acting group, put on a performance of A Christmas Carol while the boys' Episcopal Church puts on a performance of The Nativity. Owen, with natural charisma, gets the parts of both baby Jesus and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. In A Christmas Carol, during the last performance, Owen becomes overwhelmed and faints, nearly delirious with fever. He claims to have seen his own name on Scrooge's grave, although Dan dismisses his concerns. During the chaotic performance of the Nativity play, Owen notices that his parents are in attendance — he sits up in his manger and shouts to his parents that it is a "sacrilege" that they should be there. This is revealed to be something to do with a "grave" injustice his parents were dealt at the hands of the Catholic Church. Owen does not specify what this injustice was, but it has resulted in his strong animosity towards Catholicism. Upon reaching Grade 9, both Owen and John are admitted to Gravesend Academy — Owen on the grounds of intelligence (he wins a scholarship) and with the financial backing of Harriet Wheelwright, and John simply because his stepfather teaches there. The unacademic John struggles to deal with the coursework, and Owen is there to help him. All through school, Owen and John practice "the Shot", a basketball move in which John lifts Owen over his head so that he may dunk the basketball. They practice it intermittently over the following years, eventually achieving the skill to dunk the ball in under three seconds. John finds no success with the search for his father, or the opposite sex, or his schoolwork — his failure in the last forces him to see the bumbling school psychiatrist, Doctor Dolder. Owen, in contrast, is a straight-A student, considered to be Harvard or Yale material. He also is more socially successful, having the attention of girls — though electing to date Hester (much to John’s chagrin), and becomes "The Voice", the pen name of his withering Socratic editorial in the school newspaper. In 1960, Owen is forced into an antagonistic relationship with the new school headmaster, the arrogant and dictatorial businessman-turned-educator Randy White. A series of confrontations between Owen and White — ending in several spectacular and symbolic pranks masterminded and executed by Owen — ends with Owen being kicked out of school on charges of vandalism, forging draft cards and various issues of anti-religious bigotry. In the process, White overreaches himself and ruins his own career as headmaster. The incident has, however, destroyed Owen’s chances of attending university. He has also become fixated upon his death. It's revealed that not only did he see his name on the grave during that fateful performance of ‘A Christmas Carol’, he also saw the date of his death: July 8, 1968. The Vietnam War begins, and Owen strikes a deal with the University of New Hampshire under which he will undergo ROTC training and a period of active service in the Army in return for a scholarship. He is still dating Hester, although she has become fervently anti-war and their relationship is stormy. Despite his determination to get into Vietnam, Owen ends up in Arizona as a casualty officer, bringing bodies of Arizona soldiers home from California. He later explains to John that he has had a recurring dream in which he saves many Vietnamese children, but is killed in the process. He believes this to happen on the date he saw on the grave, and strives to fulfil his destiny. His actions create discord, but he stays the course. John, meanwhile, has been working as a graduate student to avoid the dreaded draft. At the end of this work, he risks being drafted. Owen ensures that this does not happen by persuading John to let him amputate part of John’s trigger finger with a granite-cutting saw at the Meany quarry. John later learns from Owen's diary that Owen did this both to save his friend and to avoid John having to go to Vietnam, since Owen has seen him in the dream and is afraid he, like Owen, will die there. There is a break in the story at this point, flashing forward to the events surrounding and following Owen's funeral, and joining the two timeframes. In 1968, at the funeral, Mr. Meany confides in John. He claims that he never had sex with Owen's mother, and that he believes Owen to have been the product of a virgin birth, "like the Christ Child", a revelation which was rejected by their local Catholic priests (finally explaining Owen’s antipathy towards Catholicism). John is internally furious at Mr. Meany, but says nothing, even when Mr. Meany says that he told Owen this "fact" at the age of eleven (which John then blames for Owen's belief he was the Instrument of God). John also finally discovers the identity of his father, a man whom he has known all his life. It is Rev. Lewis Merrill, the ineffective (and married) local minister of the Congregationalist Church and of Gravesend Academy, who is also revealed as the secret hoarder of the baseball which killed Tabitha Wheelwright. The revelation is a depressing anticlimax for John, although it further seals his love for Dan Needham as his “real” father. It’s also revealed that a broken-hearted Hester went on to become a hard rock superstar in the 1970s and 1980s called “Hester The Molester”, and that her songs, videos and stage act (which appear to have some similarities to those of Alice Cooper) feature strong references to the soldier casualties of Vietnam and to Owen’s life and eventual death. The last part of the book covers the story of Owen's death in 1968. As the date approaches, Owen has invited John to visit him in Arizona for one last get-together. Owen has matured in his role — even praising Catholics, whom he had earlier despised. The duo, along with a Major, confront a low-class family whose son was killed in Vietnam. The entire family, save the boy's sister, is openly angry with the military. The boy’s brother Dick is particularly contemptuous and nihilistic, showing John and Owen the lethal weaponry which his brother smuggled back from Vietnam on a previous leave, including a Viet Cong grenade. As Owen and John and the Major meet at the airport, Owen becomes ecstatic that he may not die that day. However, a planeload of Vietnamese children arrive. Recognizing them from the dream, Owen knows that the time has arrived, although he is still not sure how the final events are going to happen. Owen and John escort the kids into the bathroom of the airport. At this point, Dick (who has been skulking around the airport) barges into the bathroom with his smuggled grenade, intent on killing some "dinks", even if they are children. He triggers the grenade’s fuse and contemptuously throws it to John. At this point, the apparent purposes of Owen’s condition and actions are revealed. His child’s voice and physique calm the frightened children, ensuring that they do not panic and that they therefore enable him to have the space to save them. On Owen’s command, John passes him the grenade, and the two friends use "the Shot" one last time to throw Owen up to the bathroom’s upper windowsill where the grenade explodes, maiming Owen but not the children. Dick is killed by the Major, who, along with John and some nuns, tries to save Owen. It is no use, however, and Owen dies from his injuries, beatific in the knowledge that he has fulfilled his task for God. John is left with the memory of his friend, and the firm belief that Owen and his life were a miracle. The last words of his narrative are an impassioned plea: "O God — please bring him back! I shall keep asking You."

This Present Darkness

Frank E. Peretti

This Present Darkness takes place in the small college town of Ashton. Bernice Kreuger, a reporter for the Clarion, Ashton's town newspaper, is falsely arrested on prostitution charges after taking a photograph at the annual Ashton Summer Festival. When she is released the next day, she discovers that the film in her camera was destroyed. Marshall Hogan, owner/editor-in-chief of the Clarion decides to go to the town police station/courthouse and confront Alf Brummel, the police chief, about the incident. Brummel denies any wrongdoing on behalf of the police department and insists it was all a mistake. Brummel then advises Marshall to drop the matter. Marshall does not fall for Brummel's story and, ignoring Brummel's advice, begins an investigation. As the investigation continues, Marshall and Bernice begin to realize that they're onto something much bigger than they thought. They slowly uncover a plot to take over the town via buying the college, that is being carried out by The Universal Consciousness Society, a powerful New Age group. When the Society decides Marshall has found out too much they take the Clarion, and his house. They also falsely accuse him of murder, adultery and molesting his daughter, who attends the college and who unwittingly has been pulled into the Society. When he and Bernice are caught in a desperate attempt to keep the society from winning out, he is arrested and thrown in jail, and she escapes, running off to find help. Meanwhile Hank Busche, the unwanted pastor of the little Ashton Community Church discovers that there are many demons in the town and wonders why they have all congregated here. When he gets to be a nuisance to the demons they have the Society falsely arrest him for rape. Hank and Marshall meet in jail. They compare stories and finally put both halves of the puzzle together. During the time that this is happening the story take on a spiritual dimension – revealing a perspective based on the idea of unseen forces at work. Meanwhile, Bernice finds help and makes contact with the County Prosecuter, the State Attorney General, and the Feds. When Alf Brummel finds out about this he releases Hank and Marshall. After Hank and Marshall are released they "team up" against the Universal Consciousness Society and the demons working to take over Ashton.

Oahspe: A New Bible

Oahspe includes doctrinal books, and precepts for behavior can be found throughout its many books. Freedom and responsibility are two themes reiterated throughout the text of Oahspe. Some core doctrines include an herbivorous diet (vegan, vegetable food only), peaceful living (no warring or violence; pacifism), living a life of virtue, and service to others. Oahspe exhibits great interest in understanding and applying general ethical principles. The suffix ISM in Faith-ism is defined meaning adherence or following an ideology. The Book of Inspiration in the Oahspe states "I will have no sect. I will have no creed". Oahspe speaks of the need for all religions to help the various nations and peoples to rise upward. It also speaks of what it calls "the religion of Gods themselves," in which its adherents have no need for intermediaries such as are Saviors and Idols, but who commune directly with the Creator of all. Oahspe purports to describe events in the spirit realms and their corresponding influence on events in the physical world starting from approximately 72,000 years ago and its believers think that its revelations also provide missing details of ancient historical accounts regarding the origins of earth's major religions. ===== Geology and Archeology ===== Oahspe gives many details regarding an alleged large continent called Pan or Whaga that once filled much of the Pacific Ocean. It also puts forward views on the causes of rapid loss or gain of fertility upon the earth. The largest of the Books are Book of Eskra, the recent history according to the Oahspe, and the Book of God's Word which teaches the record of Zarathustra. ===== Language and linguistics ===== Oahspe presents many illustrations of symbols said to be of ancient languages and of rites and ceremonies. It states the concept that there was an original language called Pan or the Panic Language, meaning "Earth Language," which originated from the ability of humans to mimic sounds. Its Book of Saphah has details on the claimed meanings and roots of many of the ancient words, symbols and ceremonies. ===== Evolution or progress ===== Oahspe contains chronologically-ordered accounts that are cosmological revelations concerning the evolution of humanity from approximately 78,000 years ago. This includes a narrative of the genesis of life on earth, from its start as a planet being formed from its beginnings as a comet, to its first life-forms and finally to the appearance of the human race and its progression from beast to spiritual maturity. ===== Cosmogony ===== Oahspe explains physical science as having its basis in subtler realms (which include spiritual forces), and then how to predict from them. Oahspe devotes an entire interior book to the subject, called the Book of Cosmogony and Prophecy, but a general overview can be read in the Book of Jehovih. Also, many examples and edifications are sprinkled throughout Oahspe. Other related subjects include physics and an integrating treatment of gravity, light, electricity, magnetism, and heat. ===== Cycles ===== The text describes cyclical events that occur within a range of greater and smaller cycles. For instance, according to Oahspe, the earth is traveling with the sun and its planets through regions of space in a large circuit of 4,700,000 years, which is divided into sections of 3,000 years average, which also occur within larger cycles of 24,000 years and 72,000 years, and so on. Each of these regions has variations in density and other qualities, and so, engender varying conditions that the Earth encounters. Also, explanation is given as to the rise and fall of civilizations. ===== Administration ===== The various regions mentioned in the previous Cycles section, are under the administration of spiritual or "etherean" beings with titles such as "God" and "Chief" and whose ranks and ages vary in ascending grade, from tens of thousands of years to hundreds of thousands of years old and older. Their dominions cover vast distances and include many spiritual and corporeal worlds of various grades and densities. These chief officers are designated "Sons and Daughters of Jehovih," and in accordance, the text of Oahspe contains separate sections or "books" such as the Book of Cpenta-Armij, Daughter of Jehovih, and also includes familiar names from non-Abrahamic religions, as in the Book of Apollo and Book of Thor, named as Sons of Jehovih. Each of these Chiefs, Chieftainesses, Gods and Goddesses are only advanced angels according to Oahspe. And every angel, regardless of rank or office, was once a mortal, either from this planet earth or from some other planet in the universe.

Get Shorty

Elmore Leonard

The book's story centers around Chili Palmer, a small-time shylock (or loanshark) based in Miami, who is sent after Leo Devoe, who has scammed an airline out of $300,000 in life insurance by faking his own death. Leo had been aboard a plane whose flight was delayed, prompting Leo to disembark and go drinking in the airport bar. Leo misses the plane's actual takeoff, and when it crashes, his "widow" receives a check for $300,000, money which Leo takes to Las Vegas. His trail leads Chili to Las Vegas, where the loanshark finds a more interesting assignment: the casino is looking to collect from Harry Zimm, a horror film producer based in Los Angeles. Palmer, himself very interested in the movie industry, takes the extra assignment and heads for Los Angeles. Palmer lets his interest in the movie industry overshadow his collection job. He sneaks into the house of Karen Flores (Zimm's friend) in the middle of the night, startling both Zimm and Flores, and after he tells Zimm he has to pay his Las Vegas markers, he then explains that he has an idea for a movie. Zimm is immediately taken in by Palmer's charm and his movie idea, although Flores is still skeptical. Palmer recounts Leo Devoe's story in the third person, and recalls chasing Leo to Las Vegas as if it were an incomplete work of fiction. Flores is smart, and points out that the story clearly isn't fictional, she saw the plane crash in the news in the past week, and Palmer is obviously the shylock mentioned in the story. The next morning, Zimm asks for Chili's help in dealing with a good script he wants to buy. Zimm tells Chili that this script, Mr. Lovejoy, could be Academy Award worthy material. "It'll be my Driving Miss Daisy," Zimm assures Palmer. There are, however, two problems: Zimm doesn't own the script, his writer's widow Doris Saffron does, and she wants $500,000 for it; and he guaranteed a $200,000 investment from Bo Catlett, a local limo driver and drug dealer, to make another movie called Freaks. (Zimm gambled Catlett's $200,000 away in Vegas in hopes of making the $500,000 he needed for Mr. Lovejoy). In a meeting with Catlett and his sidekick Ronnie Wingate, Zimm and Palmer tell them that, while their investment in Freaks is sound, they are making another movie first. Catlett tells them to move the money into this new picture; Zimm says he cannot, as the new movie deal is "structured." Meanwhile, Catlett is involved in a Mexican drug deal which doesn't go through. He has left the payment in a locker at the L.A. airport, but the Colombian sent to receive the money, Yayo Portillo (Catlett keeps calling him Yahoo), doesn't feel safe unlocking the locker with so many DEA agents staked out nearby. Catlett later meets Yayo back at his home, and after Yayo threatens to tell the DEA who Bo is, Bo shoots him. Catlett soon offers the locker money to Zimm as an investment, telling him to send Palmer to get the money. Palmer senses something wrong, signs out a nearby locker as a test, and sure enough is taken for questioning by drug officials when he tries to open it. Palmer and Flores are meanwhile seeking the interests of Michael Weir, a top-tier Hollywood actor to whom Flores was once married, to play the lead in Zimm's film. The loose ends are tied up when Ray Barboni comes to Los Angeles looking for the money Palmer collected from Leo Devoe, only to find the key to the locker from the failed drug deal in one of Palmer's pockets. Thinking Palmer has stashed his cash in a locker, he goes to the airport and is busted by drug officials. In a final showdown with Catlett, Catlett is double-crossed by his partner, Bear. The novel ends with Zimm, Palmer and Flores having visited a few production studios and wondering why writing the ending of a story was always the hardest part.

Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo

Oscar Zeta Acosta

This character survives on drugs, alcohol, and counseling sessions until he transforms into a Chicano activist. At the end of the work, the protagonist adds the middle name of "Zeta," a symbol which represents his Chicano and Mexican culture and roots. By traveling to his birthplace, the lost character discovers himself and learns lessons on the road as he reflects on his life. On the back of some copy of the books it says "Oscar Zeta Acosta was famous as a Robin Hood Chicano Lawyer and notorious as the real-life model for Hunter S. Thompson's "Dr. Gonzo"" a character in book and movie "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." The first five chapters take place on July 1, 1967; the narrative, however, is frequently broken up by flashbacks that explain the narrator’s relationship with various characters. The story begins in the morning as the narrator is preparing to go to work. Standing naked in front of the mirror, he reflects on his large brown body and his general health. He is both constipated and suffers from ulcers, which cause him to vomit. While looking in the mirror, he seeks advice from his “three favorite men”: Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, and Edward G. Robinson. He also hears the voice of Dr. Serbin, his psychiatrist, who seems to be following him and who appears throughout the novel. The narrator masturbates in the shower while fantasizing about a friend’s wife. The narrator leaves his apartment in San Francisco and drives to Oakland where he works as a legal aid lawyer. He has worked in the office since he passed the bar exam 12 months before. To get through the tedium of filing countless restraining orders for battered women and to deal with his inability to help the clients in a system that favors those with the money to pay high priced lawyers, the narrator has spent the past year watching television, taking tranquillizers, and drinking. When he arrives at work he avoids going in to his office, unable to face the five women sitting in the waiting room. He assumes they have all been beaten by their husbands over the weekend. When he finally goes into his office, he learns that his secretary Pauline has died from cancer. Pauline has supported him in his job and has helped him negotiate the bureaucracy. The narrator did not know she was seriously ill. He decides that without Pauline’s support he cannot continue in the job. He leaves the office and heads back to San Francisco. On the drive he talks to himself and Dr. Serbin. He remembers the time three years before when he was sick for months with mononucleosis. During this time he met a neighbor in his apartment building, Cynthia, who was the sister of his friend Charlie Fisher. Cynthia introduced the narrator to marijuana and LSD. Through Cynthia he also met a couple, Alice and Ted Casey, a sailor. While he was bedridden, Alice and Cynthia cared for the narrator by bringing him soup. Later he became friends with Ted and Alice, regularly visiting their apartment. The friendship ended when the narrator tested Ted’s liberal views on relationships by broaching the subject of his sleeping with Alice while Ted was away on one of his trips. Ted acted as though he was indifferent and that it was Alice’s decision but later, through a friend, threatened to cut off the narrator balls. This ended the friendship. Returning to the central focus of the narrative, the narrator arrives at Ted Casey’s house and rings the bell. No one is home. He then goes to the office of his psychiatrist. Although the psychiatrist is meeting with a patient the narrator bangs on the door. When the psychiatrist opens the door, the narrator tells him he is leaving. The psychiatrist patiently asks him to wait, but the narrator leaves. Having stopped off to pick up some scotch and now already drunk, the narrator goes to Trader JJ’s, a San Francisco bar he frequents. He has backed his belongings and plans to store them in the bar’s basement. Inside the bar he talks with a mixed group of misfits who are his friends and form a community. They include Maria, a Jewish bisexual hustler and Jose, a struggling homosexual artist. The patrons of the bar function by insulting each other. Maria teases the narrator about a former girlfriend, June MacAdoo. The two had dated for three months two years before. Shortly after June unexpectedly dumped the narrator, the narrator found out he failed the bar examine. He studied for three months and retook the exam. This time he passed. He was still heart broken, however, and was no longer particularly interested in the law. After leaving some of his belongs at the bar the narrator visits Maryjane and Bertha, two friends. He regards the women as friends, having found he could not sleep with them because of impotence brought on by his broken heart. At their apartment the narrator finds not only the two women but Ted Casey. Ted is dressed in flashy cloths and bosses the two normally strong-willed women around. No longer a seaman, he has become a successful drug dealer. The narrator drinks most of a bottle of champagne that has been spiked with mescalin. The four drive in Ted’s Cadillac to an expensive Italian restaurant to eat. At the restaurant Ted shows off his wealth and his power. The group eats and snorts coke. After dinner the four drive to Trader JJ’s. Maryjane and Ted leave the car but Bertha and the narrator stay behind. The narrator initiates a brief sexual encounter that ends when he quickly cums. Bertha is sympathetic. The two then join the others in the bar. In the bar the narrator calls June, his ex-girlfriend. At first she seems interested in seeing him but then tells him she is engaged. The narrator hangs up. More drinking and drunken revelry takes place in the bar. The narrator eventually passes out, bringing an end to the day. This section of the story takes place over the course of three days as the narrator drives away from San Francisco. Taking drugs and drinking while he drives, the narrator’s thoughts focus on his childhood. He was born in El Paso but grew up from the age of five in Riverbank, a town of less than 4,000 people in California’s Central Valley. His parents were both Mexican: his father was an “indio” from Durango and his mother was from a poor family in Juarez. Together they crossed the border illegally to El Paso. His father was drafted in to the Navy during WWII and on his discharge was granted citizenship. The family lived in a two room shack. The father imposed strict discipline and order based on the regulations of the Navy’s The Seabee Manual. In the small town of Riverside, the narrator and his only brother, Bob, were outsiders. As Mexicans they were picked on by the Oakies, the poor whites. Other Mexicans also picked on the brothers because they were more recent immigrants. In addition to the Oakies and the Mexicans, the third group in the town was the Americans, the relatively wealthy white families. Among the incidents from childhood the narrator remembers is a childhood crush. Jane Addison was a new classmate and the daughter of the owner of the factory where the narrator’s mom worked. He scratched her initials on the back of his hand as a love gesture. He was deeply hurt when he showed her the nearly illegible lines to her and she laughed. Later she told the teacher in front of the class that the narrator stunk. After driving for two days, the narrator sees a beautiful blond hitchhiker. Karin Wilmington is a rich hippie, on her way from Mexico to Colorado. The narrator recounts his life story to Karen, although he says he is Samoan and that his name is Henry Hawk. This is one of several times in the story where the narrator assumes different identities, one of which is an Indian chief. The narrator and Karin find they have a friend in common, Turk, a crazy biker. The narrator splits up from Karin in Ketchum, Idaho but she leaves him a note inviting him to met her at her brother’s house in nearby Wilmington. In Ketchum, the narrator visits Hemingway’s grave. The narrator continues reflecting on his childhood. In high school, he played clarinet in the school band, was a starter on the variety football team, and was Class President. Yet he never studied and spent most of his time drinking with a group of four friends. The friends also went to a whore house regularly. For over a year the narrator never went with any of the girls. Finally, his friends tricked him into sleeping with Ruby, the very attractive Portuguese madam. During his Junior year in high school, the narrator fell in love with a Freshman named Alice Brown. Although she walked with a slight limp caused by polio, she was incredibly beautiful and the narrator was instantly attracted to her. The two began seeing each other but when her parents found out about the relationship they made her write the narrator a note saying she could not see him any more. Alice tells the narrator that her stepfather, a Baptist minister, threatened to divorce Alice’s mother if she allowed them to date. This was primarily because her stepfather hated Mexicans. The narrator and Alice continued seeing each other discreetly. During his senior year the narrator worked to have Alice crowned school queen. He was successful. At the winter dance were she was crowned he danced with her; unfortunately this led to her stepfather finding out about their relationship. When the narrator took her home from the dance the town sheriff was waiting at her house. He had brought the narrator’s parents as well. Pressure from the sheriff forces the narrator to agree not to see Alice. However, the narrator Alice and the narrator continued to see each other at school. Occasionally the narrator would have one of his white friends pick up Alice so they could attend a school dance together. After graduation the narrator, not knowing what else to do and having to wait for Alice to finish high school so they could marry, joined the Air Force. He played in the Air Force band and was stationed at nearby locations in California. For a while, the two continued to see each other whenever the narrator had leave but eventually he received a Dear John letter from her. During this time, a friend convinced the narrator to convert from Catholicism to the Baptist faith. The narrator adopted the religion enthusiastically. He began leading prayer groups and he impressed members of the local congregation with his ability to testify to sin. Shortly thereafter, he was transferred to a post in Panama. In his free time, which was considerable, he worked as a missionary to an Indian tribe in a rural village. Gradually, however, his faith waned. He went through the gospels and wrote out a list in favor and a list against what he read. The con list was far longer and the narrator gave up his belief. Afraid on confusing the Indians if he went back on his preaching, he continued giving them sermons on general themes such as brother lovely. After two years in Panama, the narrator was honorably discharged from the Air Force. He went to New Orleans where drank and smoke and briefly considered committing suicide but decided that jumping from a window would be too painful. In Wilmington, the narrator attends a Fourth of July party at a mansion with the rich friends of Karen. The party features peyote-spiked guacamole. The peyote and the drinking cause the narrator’s ulcers to act up. He throws up and is comforted by Karin. She recommends that he continue what she calls “his search” by looking for Bobby Miller at the Daisy Duck bar in Alpine. The narrator says that what he really needs is a doctor to help him with his ulcers. The next day the narrator wakes up on Hemingway’s grave. He does not remember how he got there. The section ends with him behind the wheel of his car heading to Alpine. The events of chapters 12-15 take place over, approximately, a week in Alpine. The narrator arrives in Alpine filled with self-pity. He finds that he has no one to blame and that by some measures he has been successful for someone who started where he did. Nonetheless, he is deeply dissatisfied. The first thing the narrator does in Alpine is go to a motel and sleep for twenty-four hours. When he wakes up he heads the to Daisy Duck bar to look for Bobby Miller. At the bar he finds Bobbi, a waitress, who is Bobby’s girlfriend. The narrator talks and dances with her. Bobbi then introduces the narrator to Bobby and a man called the King, who have just come in to the bar. The narrator is struck by Bobby’s calm and gentle disposition. King on the other hand is a rough biker, who makes threatening remarks about running greasers out of town. Miller invites the narrator to crash at his place but the narrator decides to stay in the motel. The narrator continues describing his life story. After his discharge from the Air Force, the narrator returned to Riverbank. He discovered that his brother had stolen all of his savings from a joint bank account. The narrator decided to attend a local community college. There he was influenced deeply by a creative writing professor, Doc Jennings. Doc Jennings encouraged the students to think for themselves and not to blindly accept convention wisdom. At one point, the teacher called the narrator to his office to encourage him to leave school if he wants to be a writer. After a year of classes the narrator finally took Doc Jennings advise and left school. He went to Los Angeles and took the exam to enter the police department. While driving in Los Angeles, the narrator was pulled over by an unmarked police car. The narrator, who was drunk, tried to drive away. Eventually he was stopped by a road block. When the case came to court the narrator refused the public defender and decided to represent himself. Several judges tried to talk him out of going to trial. The narrator went ahead with the case and was able to convince the jury that he was not guilty because the police car was unmarked, and, therefore, it was natural for someone who grew up in a rough area to try to flee. Immediately after the trial the narrator went looking for his friend Al. He learned from the landlord that Al had been on a drinking binge for a full month. The narrator found Al passed out in his apartment. The floor was covered with eggshells; apparently the only type of food Al had been eating. The narrator took Al to the county hospital but they would not admit him because he was drunk. Then narrator took to Al to a psychiatric hospital next door. There the narrator had to convince the admitting doctor that Al was insane in order to have him admitted. During the observation period Al’s sister visited but she sneaked past the nurse when she came in. This caused the doctors to think Al was imaging he had visitors. As a result, Al had to serve two months in a criminal psychiatric hospital. The incident with Al and his own arrest convinced the narrator to him to leave Los Angeles. The narrator went to San Francisco and enrolled at San Francisco State to study math and creative writing. The narrator wrote a manuscript about his relationship with Alice and the fights between Mexicans and Oakies in his home town. The narrator showed the manuscript to a supportive creative writing professor. The professor thought highly of the work but said that no one would publish a book about Mexicans. Giving up on writing, the narrator decided to go to law school. He attended night classes at San Francisco Law School and worked during the day as a copy boy at a newspaper. After five years he graduated from law school. Shortly after arriving in Alpine the narrator crashed his car. He had been smoking marijuana that Scott, a friend of Bobby, had brought from India. He had also mistakenly taken two tabs of acid that were in an aspirin bottle. When the narrator comes off his trip, he finds he is in King’s basement. Exploring the basement, he finds some recording equipment and drugs. He takes the drugs and listens to music. When he comes to, he is sitting with King on the porch. King tells him the sheriff is looking for him The narrator and King strike up a friendship. Both are serious about drinking. After talking and drinking for a while, the two head to town for more beer in spite of the risk of being spotted by the sheriff. After picking up more beer at the local grocery store, they head to a park where a group of hippies is gathering after a protest at the house of Gene McNamara. At the gathering the narrator gets into an altercation because the hippies think he is hassling a pair of nuns. Although the narrator does not know it, someone has written “Fuck the Pope” on his back. King takes the narrator to the bus station. While waiting for the bus to leave, King and the narrator continue talking. They have become friends and exchange symbolic gifts. Just before the bus leaves King the gives the narrator his phone number. The final section, while comprised a relatively few pages, covers a longer period than the other sections. The section is also different in that for the most part it does not contain flashbacks to previous events in the narrator’s life. The section begins with the narrator stepping off the bus in Vail. Broke, he works in a series of low paying jobs, repeatedly getting fired. In his free time he drinks, reads Dylan Thomas and Konrad Lorenz, and listens to Bob Dylan. After several months in Vail, he decides to return to El Paso, where he was born, “to see if I could find the object of my quest.” In El Paso he visits his old house and walks around his old neighborhood. Overcome by memories and sadness, he decides to go across the border to Juarez. In Juarez he is moved to see so many Mexicans with their brown skin and, most of all, people speaking Spanish openly in public. He remembers an incident in elementary school when the principal told him and his brother they could not speak Spanish at school. For the first time in his life he is attracted to Mexican women. His earlier loves fade to distant memories in the presence of so many beautiful brown skinned women. The narrator goes to a bar, which he observes is the same as any bar in any city in the United States. In the bar he meets two prostitutes and spends a week with them, eating, drinking and having sex, until his money runs out. The narrator gets into an argument with a clerk at the hotel after complaining about the lack of heat in his room. He winds up in jail. When he is brought before the judge he tries to explain in his broken Spanish that he is an attorney from the United States. The female judge lectures him on the behavior of Americans coming across the border to sleep with prostitutes and on his inability to speak proper Spanish. He accepts a fine and is allowed to leave. Feeling neither Mexican nor American the narrator heads back across the border. He does not have any papers but manages to convince the border guard that he is an American citizen. Across the border, he pawns his few belongings and calls his brother. His brother tells him about the La Raza movement that is taking shape in East L.A. In a flash the narrator sees this as his destiny. He immediately decides to head for Los Angeles. He imagines that he will call a meeting and becomes an organizer; he will start a movement of Brown Buffalos. After years of searching for an identify he feels he has finally found his place. The story ends with the narrator arriving in Los Angeles, ready to become a revolutionary activist.

The Naked Sun

Isaac Asimov

Ultimately, we find out that Delmarre's neighbor and fellow roboticist Jothan Leebig was working on a way of subverting the robots' inability to kill humans. This was achieved by understanding a missing word in the Three Laws of Robotics: "knowingly". He used this knowledge to cause the death of Rikaine at the hands of his wife Gladia, because Rikaine was opposed to his plans. Later on, he also managed to poison the Security Secretary using a pair of robots. The key to this technique is that a robot cannot knowingly kill a human or knowingly allow a human to come to harm. But if the robot does not know that its actions will cause harm, then it will not be stopped by the Laws. The future implication of this was pointed out by Elijah, that it can be extended to the point at which robots could be used to fight wars. (In the Asimov universe, this would otherwise be unthinkable, given the Three Laws.) Leebig kills himself before he can be taken into custody, because of a very Solarian fear of human contact. The irony is that the "human" he was afraid of was Olivaw, a robot. Despite knowledge of Gladia's guilt, Baley never discloses her role in the murder—in part because he feels sorry for her and believes that her breakdown was caused by the pressure of the Solarian way of life. He manages to have her sent to the Spacer capital planet of Aurora, where she can further her growth as a human being, something she could never do on Solaria. After investigating the murder to a satisfactory conclusion, Baley returns to Earth a hero. The information he brings back is invaluable to the government, which was predicting the downfall of Spacer societies; the similarities between the nature of Solarian society and Earth society in their closed natures suggests a fundamental flaw in the Terran society. A more thorough description of the aftereffects can be found in the sequel to the Naked Sun, The Robots of Dawn. We also discover the remote end-point of Solaria's odd development in Foundation and Earth. The Foundation series and the Spacer/Robot series seem originally to have been separate, though with some overlap of ideas. If the Galactic Empire is the far future, where have the robots gone? In Foundation's Edge Asimov begins to supply the answer, expanded in the other sequels and prequels.

The Man Who Was Thursday

G. K. Chesterton

In Edwardian era London, Gabriel Syme is recruited at Scotland Yard to a secret anti-anarchist police corps. Lucian Gregory, an anarchistic poet, lives in the suburb of Saffron Park. Syme meets him at a party and they debate the meaning of poetry. Gregory argues that revolt is the basis of poetry. Syme demurs, insisting that the essence of poetry is not revolution, but rather law. He antagonizes Gregory by asserting that the most poetical of human creations is the timetable for the London Underground. He suggests that Gregory isn't really serious about his anarchism. This so irritates Gregory that he takes Syme to an underground anarchist meeting place, revealing that his public endorsement of anarchy is a ruse to make him seem harmless, when in fact he is an influential member of the local chapter of the European anarchist council. The central council consists of seven men, each using the name of a day of the week as a code name, and the position of Thursday is about to be elected by Gregory's local chapter. Gregory expects to win the election, but just before the election Syme reveals to Gregory after an oath of secrecy that he is a secret policeman. Fearful Syme may use his speech in evidence of a prosecution, Gregory's weakened words fail to convince the local chapter that he is sufficiently dangerous for the job. Syme makes a rousing anarchist speech and wins the vote. He is sent immediately as the chapter's delegate to the central council. In his efforts to thwart the council's intentions, however, Syme discovers that five of the other six members are also undercover detectives; each was employed just as mysteriously and assigned to defeat the Council. They all soon find out that they were fighting each other and not real anarchists; such was the mastermind plan of their president Sunday. In a surreal conclusion, Sunday himself is unmasked as only seeming to be terrible; in fact, he is a force of good like the detectives. However, he is unable to give an answer to the question of why he caused so much trouble and pain for the detectives. Gregory, the only real anarchist, seems to challenge the good council. His accusation is that they, as rulers, have never suffered like Gregory and their other subjects, and so their power is illegitimate. However, Syme is able to refute this accusation immediately because of the terrors inflicted by Sunday on the rest of the council. The dream ends when Sunday himself is asked if he has ever suffered. His last words, "can ye drink of the cup that I drink of?", is the question that Jesus asks St. James and St. John in the Gospel of Mark, chapter 10, vs 38–39, to challenge their commitment in becoming his disciples.

A Simple Plan

Scott Smith

Three men find an airplane crashed in a forest. The pilot is dead and the cockpit contains a gym bag with $4.4 million in one-hundred-dollar notes. They decide to keep the money, dividing it equally, but their plans go wrong when others come close to discovering their secret, resulting in multiple murders.

Farewell, My Lovely

Raymond Chandler

Private detective Philip Marlowe is investigating a dead-end case when he sees a felon, Moose Malloy, barging into a nightclub looking for his ex-girlfriend Velma Valento. The club has changed owners and is now owned by and run for african americans only so no one there knows her. Malloy ends up killing the manager and escaping. Due to the racism prevalent in Los Angeles at the time the murder of a black man is a low priority for the police and is given to a detective called Nulty who has a reputation for laziness and incompetence. Marlowe advises Nulty to look for Malloy's girlfriend but Nulty would rather not work that hard, preferring to rely on the fact that Malloy sticks out in a crowd due to his size and loud clothes. Nulty does encourage Marlowe to look for the girl though, telling him "You been in jams with us boys before... Next time it ain't doing you any harm to have a pal." Marlowe decides to follow up and look for the girl, partly because he could use some good will with the LAPD and partly because he hasn't had a real case for a while and "even a no charge job was a change." He tracks down the widow of the former owner, who claims Malloy's girl friend was a girl named Velma but that Velma is dead. But Marlowe catches her hiding a photo of someone he assumes is Velma. Marlowe receives a call from a man named Lindsay Marriott, who says his friend was robbed of a rare necklace. He is delivering the ransom payment that night, and wants help. Marlowe is suspicious, but agrees to ride along. They go to a deserted canyon for the drop-off and Marlowe gets out and waits in the dark. No one shows, but when he returns to the car, he is hit on the head from behind. When he awakes, Marriott is lying on the ground dead. A passerby named Anne Riordan drives by and takes him home. The police are wary of Marlowe’s story but let him go. Anne Riordan visits him and tells him she is a policeman's daughter with an interest in local crime. She says she learned the rare necklace belongs to a Mrs. Lewin Lockridge Grayle, wife of a wealthy elderly man. She promises to meet Mrs. Grayle and get her to hire Marlowe to find the necklace. Marlowe examines some marijuana cigarettes he found on Marriott’s body and discovers a card for a psychic named Jules Amthor. He makes an appointment to see him. On a hunch, he investigates the club owner’s widow and learns her house is paid for by Marriott. Marlowe visits Mrs. Grayle but she is more interested in coming on to him than finding her necklace. He then visits Amthor in his office, and probes for his connection to Marriott and the drugs. Amthor dismisses his questions, then has him assaulted and thrown out by two crooked policemen, who lock him up in a private hospital. He escapes, but on the way out sees Malloy sitting freely in another room. He discusses the case with Anne Riordan and the police, who are annoyed at his continued involvement. They suspect Marriott of blackmailing wealthy women, in league with Amthor. Marriott hid the cards inside the drugs to implicate Amthor if he were found dead, but they doubt Amthor is the killer. Marlowe investigates the crooked cops and learns they were essentially unwitting dupes for Amthor, who thought Marlowe was trying to blackmail him. The hospital is an unrelated front for dope peddling and hiding fugitives. Marlowe now suspects Malloy moved to a hideout on a local gambling boat. He sneaks on board, and despite being caught by the gangster owner, manages to get him to pass a message through his criminal network to Malloy. Back home, Mrs. Grayle wants to see him, so he invites her over. Malloy shows up first, and Marlowe hints he knows what Malloy has been trying to find out. Mrs. Grayle arrives and Malloy hides. Marlowe confronts her: she is Velma and had used Marriott to help conceal her new identity. He bought off the club owner’s widow for her, but when Malloy and Marlowe began looking for her, she needed to cut all her past ties. She tricked Marriott into going to the canyon so she could kill him, but killing Marlowe too would have been too risky. Malloy steps out and Velma shoots him fatally, then flees. Amthor, the hospital owner, and the crooked cops are all exposed to the law. Velma is eventually tracked down in Baltimore and kills herself.

The Long Goodbye

Raymond Chandler

The novel opens outside a club called The Dancers. It is late October or early November 1949. Philip Marlowe meets a drunk named Terry Lennox, a man with scars on one side of his face. They forge an uneasy friendship over the next few months. Everything changes when Lennox shows up late one night (in June 1950) at Marlowe's place, asking for a ride to the Tijuana airport. Marlowe agrees as long as Lennox doesn't tell him any details of why he's running. On his return to LA, it is revealed that Lennox's wife was found dead in her pool house, and that she had died before Lennox fled. Marlowe is arrested on suspicion of murder after refusing to co-operate with investigators, who want him to confess that he helped Lennox flee. After three days of antagonizing his interrogators, Marlowe is released when Lennox is (allegedly) found dead of a suicide in Otatoclán with a full written confession by his side. Marlowe gets home to find a cryptic note from Lennox containing a "portrait of Madison" (a $5000 bill). Marlowe gets a call from a New York publisher named Howard Spencer, asking him to investigate a case. One of his best writers, Roger Wade, has a drinking problem and has been missing for three days. Initially Marlowe refuses, but after Wade's wife, Eileen, also asks for Marlowe's help, he consents. Marlowe ends up finding Wade in a makeshift detox facility in a soon-to-be-abandoned ranch out in the desert. He takes his fee, but the Wades' stories don't match. The Wades each try to convince Marlowe to stay at their house to keep Roger writing instead of drinking, and though he refuses, he ends up making further trips to the Wades' house at their behest. On one such trip, he finds Wade passed out in the grass with a cut on his head. Mrs. Wade ends up in a sort of trance and attempts to seduce Marlowe, thinking he's a former lover of hers who died ten years earlier in World War II. As all of this occurs, Marlowe is repeatedly threatened to lay off the Lennox case, first by a friend of Lennox's named Mendy Menendez, then by Lennox's father-in-law, the police, the Wades' servant (a Chileno named Candy), and Wade's wife. Marlowe also learns that Terry Lennox had previously lived as Paul Marston who was married previously and was probably from England. Wade calls Marlowe again, asking him to come by to have lunch with him. Wade ends up drinking himself into a stupor, so Marlowe takes a walk outside, and when he returns Mrs. Wade is ringing the doorbell, saying she forgot her key. Marlowe finds Wade dead on the couch, apparently from suicide, but Eileen Wade accuses Marlowe of killing her husband. Candy initially tries to frame Marlowe, but his claims are undermined in an interrogation. Marlowe gets a call from Spencer regarding Wade's death and he bullies Spencer into taking him to see Mrs. Wade. Once there, Marlowe grills her on the death of Terry Lennox's wife. Eileen first tries to blame it all on Roger, but Marlowe doesn't buy her story and argues that she killed both Mrs. Lennox and Roger Wade and that Paul Marston (Lennox) was actually her first husband, presumed killed in action with the Special Air Service off the coast of Norway or by the Gestapo. The next morning, Marlowe gets a call that Eileen Wade killed herself, leaving a confession note that she killed Mrs. Lennox and Roger Wade. Marlowe still refuses to let the story lie. He's assaulted by Menendez, who ends up arrested in a setup arranged by a fellow hood (and erstwhile cop) named Randy Starr, who served with Menendez and Lennox/Marston during the war. Finally, Marlowe gets a visit from a Mexican man who claims to have been there when Lennox was killed in his hotel room. Marlowe listens to his story, and then says that he didn't buy it, because the Mexican man is none other than a post-cosmetic-surgery Terry Lennox.

The Once and Future King

T. H. White

Most of the book "takes place on the isle of Gramarye", and it chronicles the raising and educating of King Arthur, his rule as a king, and the romance between Sir Lancelot and Queen Guenever. It ends immediately before Arthur's final battle against his illegitimate son Mordred. Though White admits his book's source material is loosely derived from Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur (The Death of Arthur), he reinterprets the epic events, filling them with renewed meaning for a world enduring the Second World War. The book is divided into four parts: *The Sword in the Stone (1938) *The Queen of Air and Darkness (1939) (published separately in somewhat different form as The Witch in the Wood) *The Ill-Made Knight (1940) (which is the longest book and focuses mostly on the character Lancelot) *The Candle in the Wind (First published in the composite edition, 1958) A final part called The Book of Merlyn (written 1941, published 1971) was published separately (ISBN 0-292-70769-X) following White's death. It chronicles Arthur's final lessons from Merlyn before his death, although some parts of it were incorporated into the final editions of the previous books. An often quoted passage from the book is the story that the badger calls his "dissertation," a retelling of the Creation story from Genesis.

Relic

Douglas Preston

In and around a fictionalized version of New York City's American Museum of Natural History, a few select characters must solve a string of brutal murders that take place inside the museum during the days preceding the opening of "Superstition", a spectacular blockbuster exhibition. Evidence begins to point suspiciously to a doomed expedition undertaken by the museum several years earlier to the Brazilian rainforest in search of the lost Kothoga tribe. It becomes apparent that behind the murders is Mbwun (translation: "He Who Walks On All Fours")—the Kothoga's crazed lizard god, whose father happens to be a demon analogous to Satan, according to Kothoga legend. A relic depicting Mbwun is to be shown for the first time at the upcoming exhibition. It also appears that several museum leaders had known about previous murders on the museum's premises and that they had conspired to keep these murders a secret so as not to damage the reputation of the museum.

The Mayor of Casterbridge: The Life and Death of a Man of Character

Thomas Hardy

At a country fair near Casterbridge, Wessex, a young hay-trusser named Michael Henchard overindulges in rum-laced furmity and quarrels with his wife, Susan. Spurred by alcohol, he decides to auction off his wife and baby daughter, Elizabeth-Jane, to a sailor, Mr. Newson, for five guineas. Once sober the next day, he is too late to recover his family, particularly since his reluctance to reveal his own bad conduct keeps him from conducting an effective search. When he realizes that his wife and daughter are gone, probably for good, he swears not to touch liquor again for as many years as he has lived so far (21). Eighteen years later, Henchard, now a successful grain merchant, is the eponymous Mayor of Casterbridge, known for his staunch sobriety. He is well respected for his financial acumen and his work ethic, but he is not well liked. Impulsive, selfish behavior and a violent temper are still part of his character, as are dishonesty and secretive activity. All these years, Henchard has kept the details surrounding the "loss" of his wife a secret. The people in Casterbridge believe he is a widower, although he never explicitly says that his first wife died. He lies by omission instead, allowing other people to believe something false. Over time he finds it convenient to believe Susan probably is dead. While traveling to the island of Jersey on business, Henchard falls in love with a young woman named Lucette Le Sueur, who nurses him back to health after an illness. The book implies that Lucette (Lucetta, in English) and Henchard have a sexual relationship, and Lucetta's reputation is ruined by her association with Henchard. When Henchard returns to Casterbridge he leaves Lucetta to face the social consequences of their fling. In order to rejoin polite society she must marry him, but there is a problem: Henchard is already technically married. Although Henchard never told Lucetta exactly how he "lost" his wife to begin with, he does tell her he has a wife who "is dead probably dead, but who may return". Besotted, Lucetta develops a relationship with him despite the risk. Yet just as Henchard is about to send for Lucetta, Susan unexpectedly appears in Casterbridge with her daughter, Elizabeth-Jane, who is now fully grown. Susan and Elizabeth-Jane are both very poor. Newson appears to have been lost at sea, and without means to earn an income Susan is looking for Henchard again. Susan, who is not a very intelligent or sophisticated woman, believed for a long time that her "marriage" to Newson was perfectly legitimate. Only recently, just before Newson's disappearance, had Susan begun to question whether or not she was still legally married to Henchard. Just as Susan and Elizabeth-Jane arrive in town, a tidy Scotsman, Donald Farfrae, is passing through on his way to America. The energetic, amiable Farfrae happens to be in Henchard's line of work. He has experience as a grain and corn merchant, and is on the cutting edge of agricultural science. He befriends Henchard and helps him out of a bad financial situation by giving him some timely advice. Henchard persuades him to stay and offers him a job as his corn factor, rudely dismissing a man named Jopp to whom he had already offered the job. Hiring Farfrae is a stroke of business genius for Henchard, who although hardworking is not well educated. Henchard also makes Farfrae a close friend and confides in him about his history and personal life. Henchard is also reunited with Susan and the fully grown Elizabeth-Jane. To preserve appearances, Henchard sets Susan and Elizabeth-Jane up in a nearby house. He pretends to court Susan, and marries her. Both Henchard and Elizabeth-Jane's mother keep their history from their daughter. Henchard also keeps Lucetta a secret. He writes to her, informing her that their marriage is off. Lucetta is devastated and asks for the return of her letters. Henchard attempts to return them, but Lucetta misses the appointment owing to a family emergency that is not explained until later in the book. The return of his wife and daughter sets in motion a decline in Henchard's fortunes. Yet Susan and Elizabeth-Jane are not the root cause of Henchard's fall. Henchard alone makes the decisions that bring him down, and much of his bad luck is the delayed and cumulative consequence of how Henchard treats other people. His relationship with Farfrae deteriorates gradually as Farfrae becomes more popular than Henchard. In addition to being more friendly and amiable, Farfrae is better informed, better educated, and in short everything Henchard himself wants to be. Henchard feels threatened by Farfrae, particularly when Elizabeth-Jane starts to fall in love with him. The competition between Donald Farfrae and Henchard grows. Eventually they part company and Farfrae sets himself up as an independent hay and corn merchant. The rivalry and resentment for the most part is one-sided, and Farfrae conducts himself with scrupulous honesty and fair dealing. Henchard meanwhile makes increasingly aggressive, risky business decisions that put him in financial danger. The business rivalry leads to Henchard's standing in the way of a marriage between Donald and Elizabeth-Jane, until after Susan's death, at which point Henchard learns he is not Elizabeth-Jane's father, and he realizes that if she marries Farfrae, he will be rid of her. The Elizabeth-Jane he auctioned off died in infancy; this second Elizabeth-Jane is Newson's daughter. He learns this secret, however, after Susan's death when he reads a letter which Susan, on her deathbed, marked to be opened only after Elizabeth-Jane's marriage. Feeling ashamed and hard done by, Henchard conceals the secret from Elizabeth-Jane, but grows cold and cruel towards her. In the meantime, Henchard's former mistress, Lucetta, arrives from Jersey and purchases a house in Casterbridge. She has inherited money from a wealthy relative who died; in fact, it was this relative's death that had kept her from picking up her letters from Henchard. Initially she wants to pick up her relationship with him where it left off, but propriety requires that they wait a while. She takes Elizabeth-Jane into her household as a companion, thinking it will give Henchard an excuse to come to visit, but the plan backfires because of Henchard's hatred of Elizabeth-Jane. She also learns a little bit more about Henchard, specifically, the details of how he sold his first wife become public knowledge when the furmity vendor who witnessed the sale makes the story public. Henchard does not deny the story, but when Lucetta hears a little bit more about what kind of man Henchard really is, she stops rationalizing his conduct in terms of what she wants to believe. For the first time, she starts to see him more clearly, and she no longer particularly likes what she sees. Donald Farfrae, who visits Lucetta's house to see Elizabeth-Jane and who becomes completely distracted by Lucetta, has no idea that Lucetta is the mysterious woman who was informally engaged to Henchard. Since Henchard is such a reluctant and secretive suitor who in no way reveals his attachment to Lucetta to anybody, Lucetta starts to question whether her engagement to Henchard is valid. She, too, is lying about her past: she claims to be from Bath, not Jersey, and she has taken the surname of her wealthy relative. Yet she came to Casterbridge seeking Henchard, and sent him letters after Susan's death indicating that she wanted to resume and legitimize the relationship. Although initially reluctant, he gradually realizes that he wants to marry Lucetta, particularly since he is having financial trouble due to some speculations having gone bad. Lenders are unwilling to extend credit to him, and he believes that they would extend credit if they at least believed he was about to be married to a wealthy woman. Frustrated by her stalling, Henchard bullies Lucetta into agreeing to marry him. But by this point she is in love with Farfrae. The two run away one weekend and get married, and Lucetta does not have the nerve to tell Henchard until well after the fact. Henchard's credit collapses, he becomes bankrupt, and he sells all his personal possessions to pay creditors. As Henchard's fortunes decline, Farfrae's rise. He buys Henchard's old business and employs Henchard as a journeyman day-laborer. Farfrae is always trying to help the man who helped him get started, whom he still regards as a friend and a former mentor. He does not realize Henchard is his enemy, even though the town council and Elizabeth-Jane both warn him. Lucetta, feeling safe and comfortable in her marriage with Farfrae, keeps her former relationship with Henchard a secret. This secret is revealed when Henchard foolishly lets his enemy Jopp deliver Lucetta's old love letters. Jopp makes the secret public and the townspeople publicly shame Henchard and Lucetta. Lucetta, who by this point is pregnant, dies of an epileptic seizure. When Newson, Elizabeth-Jane's biological father, returns, Henchard is afraid of losing her companionship and tells Newson she is dead. Henchard is once again impoverished, and, as soon as the twenty-first year of his oath is up, he starts drinking again. By the time Elizabeth-Jane, who months later is married to Donald Farfrae and reunited with Newson, goes looking for Henchard to forgive him, he has died and left a will requesting no funeral "That Elizabeth-Jane Farfrae be not told of my death, or made to grieve on account of me. "& that I be not bury'd in consecrated ground. "& that no sexton be asked to toll the bell. "& that nobody is wished to see my dead body. "& that no mourners walk behind me at my funeral. "& that no flowers be planted on my grave, "& that no man remember me. "To this I put my name.

Life of Pi

Yann Martel

Life of Pi is divided into three sections. In the first, the main character, Pi, an adult, reminisces about his childhood. He was named Piscine Molitor Patel after a swimming pool in France. He changes his name to "Pi" when he begins secondary school, because he is tired of being taunted with the nickname "Pissing Patel". His father owns a zoo in Pondicherry, providing Pi with a relatively affluent lifestyle and some understanding of animal psychology. Pi was born a Hindu, but as a fourteen-year-old he is introduced to Christianity and Islam, and starts to follow all three religions as he "just wants to love god." He tries to understand God through the lens of each religion and comes to recognize benefits in each one. Eventually, his family decides to sell their animals and move to Canada due to political concerns in India. In the second part of the novel, Pi's family embark on a small Japanese boat to Canada carrying some of the animals from their zoo, but a few days out of port the ship suddenly sinks. Pi ends up in a small lifeboat with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, a spotted hyena, an injured zebra, and an orangutan. The other humans and animals on the ship all drown. The hungry hyena tears off the zebra's leg, and spends the next several days eating the zebra bit by bit. The hyena also kills the orangutan. Richard Parker then kills and eats the hyena. Pi is left as the only other survivor. Pi finds food and water supplies on the boat, but as they grow scarce, Pi begins fishing. Pi feeds Richard Parker so that the tiger will not eat him; he also wants to keep the tiger alive to avoid total solitude on the ocean. Pi ensures that the tiger considers Pi the alpha animal and will therefore refrain from attacking him. Pi recounts that after an indeterminate time at sea, the pair encountered a mysterious island, seemingly constructed of edible algae supporting a forest and a large population of meerkats. Following a period of recuperation, Pi becomes afraid of the island after discovering that the algae is carnivorous, and leaves with the tiger. In all, Pi survives 227 days in the lifeboat, often half delusional with thirst and hunger. The lifeboat reaches the coast of Mexico and Richard Parker escapes into the nearby jungle, so that rescuers find only Pi. The third part of the novel is a conversation between two officials from the Maritime Department in the Japanese Ministry of Transport. They seek to ascertain why the ship sank, so they interview Pi, but they do not believe his story. Pi then tells a similar story, but this time without animals. Instead, he recounts a story of human brutality, being adrift on a lifeboat with his mother, a sailor with a broken leg, and the ship's cook, who killed the sailor and Pi's mother and cut them up to use as bait and food. Parallels to Pi's first story lead the Japanese officials to believe that the orangutan represents his mother, the zebra represents the sailor, the hyena represents the cook, and Richard Parker is Pi himself. Pi asks if this new story is acceptable, or if he should change any parts that are still too unbelievable; the officials change the subject back to the sinking of the ship. After giving all the relevant information, Pi asks which of the two stories they prefer. Since the officials cannot prove which story is true and neither is relevant to the reasons behind the shipwreck, they choose the story with the animals. Pi thanks them and says, "and so it goes with God".

Le Morte d'Arthur

Thomas Malory

Arthur is born to Uther Pendragon and Igraine and then taken by Sir Ector to be fostered in the country. He later becomes the king of a leaderless England when he removes the fated sword from the stone. Arthur goes on to win many battles due to his military prowess and Merlin’s counsel. He then consolidates his kingdom. This first book also tells "The Tale of Balyn and Balan", which ends in accidental fratricide, and the begetting of Mordred, Arthur’s incestuous son by his half-sister, Morgause (though Arthur did not know her as his half-sister). On Merlin's advice, and reminiscent of Herod's killing of the innocents in scripture, Arthur takes every newborn boy in his kingdom and sends them to sea in a boat. The boat crashes and all but Mordred, who later kills his father, perish. This is mentioned matter-of-factly, with no apparent moral overtone. Arthur marries Guinevere, and inherits the Round Table from her father Leodegrance. At Pentecost, Arthur gathers his knights at Camelot and establishes the Round Table company. All swear to the Pentecostal Oath as a guide for knightly conduct. In this first book, Malory addresses 15th century preoccupations with legitimacy and societal unrest, which will appear throughout the rest of the work. As Malorian scholar Helen Cooper states in Sir Thomas Malory: Le Morte D'arthur - The Winchester Manuscript, the prose style (as opposed to verse), which mimics historical documents of the time, lends an air of authority to the whole work. She goes on to state that this allowed contemporaries to read the book as a history rather than as a work of fiction, therefore making it a model of order for Malory's violent and chaotic times during the War of the Roses. Malory's concern with legitimacy reflects the concerns of 15th century England, where many were claiming their rights to power through violence and bloodshed. Genealogy was a way to legitimize power in a less arbitrary manner, and Malory calls this into question. The Pentecostal Oath (the Oath of the Round Table) counterbalances a lack of moral centre exemplified in the fratricide in "The Tale of Balyn and Balan". Also, once in power, Arthur becomes a king of dubious morals even while he is held up as a beacon of hope. Arthur's most immoral acts are the begetting of Mordred (which is not a strong example, since Arthur had lain with a woman whom he did not know was his half-sister) and the following mass infanticide, which only add to Arthur's shaky morality and cast Merlin in a negative light from which he never emerges. There is even the notion of being overly moral, in that Arthur on two occasions is prepared to burn Guinevere at the stake (reminiscent of King Saul's willingness to sacrifice even his son, Jonathan, if he had done wrong). Arthur's unique notion of morality plagues him for the whole of his reign. The attempt to kill off the infants harks to the tale of Herod seeking to kill the infant Jesus. Thus there is a mixture of splendid, David-like, kingship, and low, Herod-like royalty, that both find their place in Arthur. In the end, the book still holds out for hope even while the questions of legitimacy and morality continue in the books to follow. Arthur and his knights continually try and fail to live up to their chivalric codes, yet remain figures invested with Malory’s desperate optimism. This book, detailing Arthur's march on Rome, is heavily based on the Middle English Alliterative Morte Arthure, which in turn is heavily based on Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae. The opening of Book V finds Arthur and his kingdom without an enemy. His throne is secure, his knights have proven themselves through a series of quests, Sir Lancelot and Sir Tristan have arrived and the court is feasting. When envoys from Emperor Lucius of Rome arrive and accuse Arthur of refusing tribute, "contrary to the statutes and decrees made by the noble and worthy Julius Caesar", Arthur and his knights are stirring for a fight. They are "many days rested" and excited, "for now shall we have warre and worshype." Arthur invokes the lineage of Ser Belyne and Sir Bryne, legendary British conquerors of Rome, and through their blood lineage demands tribute from Lucius under the argument that Britain conquered Rome first. Lucius, apprised of the situation by his envoys, raises a heathen army of the East, composed of Spaniards and Saracens, as well as other enemies of the Christian world. Rome is supposed to be the seat of Christianity, but it is more foreign and corrupt than the courts of Arthur and his allies. Departing from Geoffrey of Monmouth's history in which Mordred is left in charge, Malory's Arthur leaves his court in the hands of Sir Constantine of Cornwall and an advisor. Arthur sails to Normandy to meet his cousin Hoel, but he finds a giant terrorizing the people from the holy island of Mont St. Michel. This giant is the embodiment of senseless violence and chaos, a monster who eats men and rapes women to death. He uses sex as a violent act of control and appetite, divorced from sensuality or reason. Arthur battles him alone, an act of public relations intended to inspire his knights. The fight is closely documented by Malory, a blow-by-blow description of blood and gore. The giant dies after Arthur "swappis his genytrottys in sondir" and "kut his baly in sundir, that oute wente the gore". When Arthur does fight Lucius and his armies it is almost anticlimactic, when compared to his struggles with the giant. Arthur and his armies defeat the Romans, Arthur is crowned Emperor, a proxy government is arranged for the Roman Empire and Arthur returns to London where his queen welcomes him royally. This book is Malory's attempt to validate violence as a right to rule. In the Geoffrey of Monmouth history Arthur refutes the basis of Rome's demands because "nothing acquired by force and violence is justly possessed by anyone". His demand of tribute is a parallel request that emphasizes the absurdity of Rome's request. In the end, Malory seems to find violence lacking. Despite the neat resolution with Arthur as Emperor he never again tries this "might makes right" tactic. Similarly, Malory's treatment of the Giant of Mont St. Michel seems to be an exploration of violence in his own society where powerful men committed seemingly senseless acts of violence. In this tale, Malory establishes Lancelot as King Arthur's most revered knight. Among Lancelot's numerous episodic adventures include being enchanted into a deep sleep by Morgan le Fay and having to escape her castle, proving victorious in a tournament fighting on behalf of King Bagdemagus, slaying the mighty Sir Turquine who had been holding several of Arthur's knights prisoner, and also overcoming the betrayal of a damsel to defend himself unarmed against Sir Phelot. These adventures address several major issues developed throughout Le Morte Darthur. Among the most important is the fact Lancelot always adheres to the Pentecostal Oath. Throughout this tale he assists damsels in distress and provides mercy for knights he has defeated in battle. However, the world Lancelot lives in is too complicated for simple mandates. This can be seen when a damsel betrays Lancelot and he must fight Sir Phelot unarmed. Although Lancelot aspires to live by an ethical code, the actions of others make it difficult for the Pentecostal Oath to fully establish a social order. Another major issue this text addresses is demonstrated when Morgan le Fay enchants Lancelot. This action reflects a feminization of magic along with a clear indication that Merlin’s role within the text has been diminished. The tournament fighting in this tale indicates a shift away from war towards a more mediated and virtuous form of violence. On courtly love, Malory attempts to shift the focus of courtly love from adultery to service by having Lancelot admit to doing everything he does for Guinevere, but never admit to having an adulterous relationship with her. However, a close parsing of his words can perhaps allow Lancelot to retain his honorable word, for he never says that he has not lain with the queen, but rather that if anyone makes such a claim, he will fight them (the assumption being that God will cause the liar to lose). Further, since Lancelot—who in all of the book never breaks his word or lies—claims that the queen was never untrue to her lord, then it seems to be the case that he must consider his love of the queen to be somehow pure or special, not an act of unfaithfulness to the king he loves and serves. Although this forbidden love is the catalyst of the fall of Camelot (i.e., the Round Table, for it was at Camelot/Winchester that the Round Table met, though Arthur lived and governed from another location), the book's moral handling of the adultery between Lancelot and Guinevere (and the love between Tristan and Isoud) implies that it is understood that if a love is somehow true and pure—especially if the knights be especially noble and honorable—that it is seen more as a foible than the depraved act of adultery. Only in the end of the book, when Arthur is dead and Guinevere has become a nun, does she reproach herself and Lancelot for their love, now understanding that it brought about the fall of Camelot, the death of 100,000 knights, and her great sorrow. Thus, she wills to spend the rest of her life offering penitence for what, in earlier chapters, seemed of no particular moral concern (outside of the care to not be caught in the act). In fact, it is understood that Lancelot is of such honor that he would never have committed adultery without the express willingness or invitation of Guinevere. In this way, Malory focused on the ennobling aspects of courtly love. The attempt is undercut by the other characters who constantly insinuate that Lancelot is sleeping with Guinevere. Lancelot's obsessive denial that the queen had been untrue implies that he only defines himself through his actions towards women. Furthermore, Lancelot and Guinevere function within the French romantic tradition wherein Guinevere provides Lancelot with order. On numerous occasions he refuses the love of other women and sends Guinevere knights he has defeated in battle who must appeal to her for forgiveness. This proves somewhat problematic because it provides some evidence of Lancelot's love for the queen, which is ultimately used to force division between Lancelot and Arthur. The tale of Sir Gareth begins with his arrival at court as le bel inconnu, or the fair unknown. He comes without a name and therefore without a past. Sir Kay mockingly calls the unknown young man "Beaumains," and treats him with contempt and condescension. An unknown woman, later revealed to be the Dame Lynette, eventually comes to court asking for assistance against the Red Knight of the Red Lands, and Gareth takes up the quest. On his quest, he encounters the Black, Green, Red, and Blue knights and the Red knight of the Red Lands. He kills the Black Knight, incorporates the others into Arthur’s court, and rescues Lynette's sister Lyonesse. Lustily in love with Lyonesse, Gareth conspires to consummate their relationship before marrying. Only by the magical intervention of Lynette is their tryst unsuccessful, thus preserving Gareth's virginity and, presumably, his standing with God. Gareth later counsels Lyonesse to report to King Arthur and pretend she doesn’t know where he is; instead, he tells her to announce a tournament of his knights against the Round Table. This allows Gareth to disguise himself and win honor by defeating his brother knights. The heralds eventually acknowledge that he is Sir Gareth right as he strikes down Sir Gawain, his brother. The book ends with Gareth rejoining his fellow knights and marrying Lyonesse. In the book, there are only two knights that have ever held against Sir Lancelot in tournament: Tristram and Gareth. This was always under conditions where one or both parties were unknown by the other, for these knights loved each other "passingly well." Gareth was knighted by Lancelot himself when he took upon him the adventure on behalf of Dame Lynette. Much later, Gareth is accidentally slain by his beloved Lancelot when Guinevere is rescued from being burnt at the stake by King Arthur. This story seems unengaged with the problems that Malory addresses elsewhere in the text: there is no known source for this book, and in other tales, knights are always interacting with other knights from the Round Table, but not here. There are no consequences for Gareth’s battles with them as there are during battles with other knights from the Round Table. The second half of the book brings into question Gareth’s true commitment to the chivalric code. He displays decidedly underhanded behavior in his quest for worship and personal fulfillment. Gareth uses deceit to achieve his aims ; however, pays a price for his deception as he strikes his brother Gawaine from his horse - he breaks one of the strongest bonds of loyalty by winning honor through the defeat of a kinsman. Although the book concludes happily, it raises a number of questions of whether Gareth is a successful knight . The book presents matrimony as one possible way of validating the knightly order, but Gareth's example is fraught with complications that serve to undermine it as a viable option. In one sense, his marriage has been presented as a stabilizing force in chivalric society - Gareth’s tale stands in contrast to the Tristram or the Lancelot. However, Gareth’s readiness to sleep with Lyonesse before marriage questions how dedicated Gareth is to the ideal. In “The Fyrste and the Secunde Boke of Syr Trystrams de Lyones,” Malory tells the tales of Sir Tristan (Trystram), Sir Dinadan, Sir Palamedes, Sir La Cote De Male Tayle, Sir Alexander, and a variety of other knights. Based on the French Prose Tristan, or a lost English adaptation of it, Malory's Tristan section is the literal centerpiece of Le Morte D’Arthur as well as the longest of the eight books. The book displays a very realistic and jaded view of the world of chivalry. It is rife with adultery, characterized most visibly in Sir Tristan and the Belle Isolde. However, it should be noted that Sir Tristan had met and fallen in love with Isolde earlier, and that his uncle, King Mark, jealous of Tristan and seeking to undermine him, appears to seek marriage to Isolde for just such a hateful purpose, going so far as to ask Tristan to go and seek her hand on his behalf (which Tristan, understanding that to be his knightly duty, does). Sir Tristan is the namesake of the book and his adulterous relationship with Isolde, his uncle Mark’s wife, is one of the focuses of the section. The knights, Tristan included, operate on very personal or political concerns rather than just the standard provided by the world of Pentecostal Oath as we have seen it so far. One knight, Sir Dinidan, takes this so far as to run away or refuse to fight if he sees any risk. However, it should be understood that Sir Dinidan is a playful, humorous knight that, in later chapters, shows himself to be brave and noble. It is unclear whether his refusals to fight are part of his comic character or otherwise. Other knights, even knights of the Round Table, make requests that show the dark side of the world of chivalry. In one episode, Sir Bleoberys, one of Lancelot’s cousins, claims another knight’s wife for his own and rides away with her until stopped by Sir Tristan. In another, when Tristan defeats Sir Blamore, another knight of the Round Table, Blamore asks Tristan to kill him because he would rather die than have his reputation tarnished by the defeat. The variety of episodes and the alleged lack of a cohesive nature in the Tristan narrative raise questions about its role in Malory’s text entirely. However, the book foreshadows the rest of the text as well as includes and interacts with characters and tales discussed in other parts of the work. It can be seen as an exploration of the secular chivalry and a discussion of honor or “worship” when it is founded in a sense of shame and pride. If Le Morte is viewed as a text in which Malory is attempting to define knighthood, then Tristan becomes an important critique of chivalry and knighthood as he interacts with the real world, rather than attempting to create an example as he does with some of the other books. Of all the knights, Tristan most mirrors that of Lancelot. He loves a queen, the wife of another. Also, Tristan is considered a knight as strong and able as even Lancelot, though they became beloved friends. We find in the book, and only in passing in the latter chapters, that Tristan, after taking Isolde from King Mark and living with her for some time (due to King Mark's treasonous behavior, etc.), returned her to King Mark, only to be later treasonously killed by King Mark while he, Tristan, was "harping" (he was noted in the book for being one of the greatest of musicians and falconers). Malory’s primary source for "The Noble Tale of the Sangreal" is the French Vulgate Cycle’s La Queste Del Saint Graal. Within Malory's version, the text chronicles the adventures of numerous knights in their quest to achieve the Holy Grail. The Grail first appears in the hall of King Arthur "coverde with whyght samyte", and it miraculously produces meat and drink for the knights. Gawain is the first to declare that he "shall laboure in the Queste of the Sankgreall". His reason for embarking on the quest is that he may see the Grail "more opynly than hit hath bene shewed" before, in addition to the potential for more "metys and drynkes". Likewise, Lancelot, Percival, Bors, and Galahad also decide to undergo the quest. Their exploits intermingle with encounters with young maidens and hermits, who offer advice and interpret dreams along the way. Despite the presence of hermits, the text overall lacks an officiating Catholic presence. It might be argued, however, that this is not the case, for not only does the pope send a papal bull to end the war between Arthur and Lancelot, but there are bishops, the "receiving the Savior"/communion, making of the cross, and references to the Virgin Mary. There are also instances of penance when hermits advise Gawain, Lancelot, and others to atone for their sins. Whereas Gawain simply refuses to do so, Lancelot recognizes his offense of placing Queen Guinevere before God. And though he does at that point renounce this transgression, later, after seeing all of the Grail that he will be permitted to see, he yields and falls again for Guinevere. The only knights to achieve the Grail are Percival, Bors, and Galahad. The story culminates with Galahad vanishing before the eyes of his fellow knights as his soul departs "to Jesu Cryste" by means of a "grete multitude of angels [who] bare hit up to hevyn". After the confusion of the secular moral code as manifested in the Pentecostal Oath within "The Fyrst and the Secunde Boke of Syr Trystrams de Lyones", Malory attempts to construct a new mode of chivalry by placing an emphasis on religion and Christianity in "The Sankgreal". However, the role of the Catholic Church is drastically subverted within the text, and this illustrates 15th-century England’s movement away from the establishment of the Church and toward mysticism. Within the text the Church offers a venue through which the Pentecostal Oath can be upheld, whereas the strict moral code imposed by religion foreshadows an almost certain failure on the part of the knights. For example, Gawain is often dubbed a secular knight, as he refuses to do penance for his sins, claiming the tribulations that coexist with knighthood as a sort of secular penance. Likewise, Lancelot, for all his sincerity, is unable to completely escape his adulterous love of Guinevere, and is thus destined to fail where Galahad will succeed. This coincides with the personification of perfection in the form of Galahad. Because Galahad is the only knight who lives entirely without sin, this leaves both the audience and the other knights with a model of perfection that seemingly cannot be emulated either through chivalry or religion. At the beginning of the book "Sir Launcelot and Queene Gwenyvere", Malory tells his readers that the pair started behaving carelessly in public, stating that "Launcelot began to resort unto the Queene Guinevere again and forget the promise and the perfection that he made in the Quest… and so they loved together more hotter than they did beforehand"(Cooper, 402). They indulged in "privy draughts together" and behaved in such a way that "many in the court spoke of it"(Cooper, 402). This book also includes the "knight of the cart" episode, where Mellyagaunce kidnapped Guinevere and her unarmed knights and held them prisoner in his castle. After Mellyagaunce's archers killed his horse, Launcelot had to ride to the castle in a cart in order to save the queen. Knowing Lancelot was on his way, Mellyagaunce pleaded to Guinevere for mercy, which she granted and then forced Lancelot to stifle his rage against Mellyagaunce. In this same book Malory mentions Lancelot and Guinevere's adultery. Malory says, "So, to passe upon this tale, Sir Launcelot wente to bedde with the Quene and toke no force of his hurte honed, but toke his plesaunce and hys lyknge untyll hit was the dawning of the day" (633). Sir Mellyagaunce, upon finding blood in Guinevere's bed, was so convinced of her unfaithfulness to Arthur that he was willing to fight in an attempt to prove it to others. After Guinevere made it known that she wanted Mellyagaunce dead, Launcelot killed him even though Mellyagaunce begged for mercy (but only after Mellyagaunce agreed to continue fighting with Lancelot's helmet removed, his left side body armor removed, and his left hand tied behind his back—Lancelot felt it necessary to finish the bout, but would not slay Mellyagaunce unless Mellyagaunce agreed to continue fighting). This is the first time Malory explicitly mentions the couple's adultery. Malory purposely shows this event as occurring once. He intends for his readers to believe the couple's adultery was much more than a singular incident. The moment lacks romance or chivalry. The entire text depends upon this adulterous moment, and yet Malory sums it up into one sentence. Malory's refusal to expand upon their adultery demonstrates his insistence that adultery is always dangerous and never ennobling. But it could also be argued that Malory's reluctance to describe their physical adultery demonstrates a reluctance on his part to condemn them for it, which is supported by his assertion that Guinevere had a good end to her life because she was a true and honest lover to Lancelot . The book ends with Lancelot's healing of Sir Urry of Hungary, where Malory notes that Lancelot is the only knight out of hundreds to succeed in this endeavor. Malory presents Guinevere in a more negative light than his French predecessors. Guinevere appearss so contemptible in this book that it is difficult to understand Lancelot's loving her. Malory goes so far as to suggest Guinevere uses charms or enchantments to win Lancelot's love. While Guinevere remains unlikeable throughout this book, Lancelot is a more problematic character. He is a flawed knight, certainly, but the best one Malory gives us. He has committed treason unto King Arthur and yet is the only knight virtuous enough to heal Sir Urry. After healing Sir Urry, Lancelot wept as a "chylde that had bene beatyn" (644) because he recognized his own failure as a person and as a knight. Malory tries to contrast virtue and love with desire and failure as he further emphasizes the instability of the relationship between Lancelot and Guinevere and, ultimately, the text itself. There is some reason to think that Malory may have been ambivalent about their adultery because it was supposedly of such a noble and endearing type. That is, it was not simply sexual, but based on a true love of each other (though both loved Arthur also). Guinevere is given to fits of jealousy and pettiness when she finds that Lancelot has shown any degree of affection toward another woman, regardless of the situation (e.g., the enchantment that caused him to sire Galahad). But though she has these flaws, Arthur and Lancelot both hold her the best woman of the world. Mordred and Agravaine have been scheming to uncover Lancelot and Guinevere's adultery for quite some time. When they find an opportune moment to finally and concretely reveal the adulterous relationship, Lancelot kills Agravaine and several others and escapes. Arthur is forced to sentence Guinevere to burn at the stake, and orders his surviving nephews, Gawain, Mordred, Gareth, and Gaheris, to guard the scene, knowing Lancelot will attempt a rescue. Gawain flatly refuses to be part of any act that will treat the queen shamefully. His younger brothers, Gaheris and Gareth, unable to deny the king's request that they escort Guinevere to the stake to be burnt, advise that they will do so at his command, but they will not arm themselves except for their helmets. When Lancelot's party raids the execution, many knights are killed, including, by accident, Gareth and Gaheris. Gawain, bent on revenge for their deaths, prompts Arthur into a war with Lancelot, first at his castle in northern England. At this point the Pope steps in and issues a bull to end the violence between Arthur's and Lancelot's factions. Shortly thereafter, Arthur pursues Lancelot to his home in France to continue the fight. Gawain challenges Lancelot to a duel, but loses and asks Lancelot to kill him; Lancelot refuses and grants him mercy before leaving. This event plays out twice, each time Lancelot playing a medieval version of rope-a-dope due to Gawain's enchantment/blessing to grow stronger between 9 a.m. and noon, then striking down Gawain, but sparing his life. Arthur receives a message that Mordred, whom he had left in charge back in Britain, has usurped his throne, and he leads his forces back home. In the invasion Gawain is mortally injured, and writes to Lancelot, asking for his help against Mordred, and for forgiveness for separating the Round Table. In a dream, the departed Gawain tells Arthur to wait thirty days for Lancelot to return to England before fighting Mordred, and Arthur sends Lucan and Bedivere to make a temporary peace treaty. At the exchange, an unnamed knight draws his sword to kill an adder. The other knights construe this as treachery and a declaration of war. Seeing no other recourse, at the Battle of Salisbury, Arthur charges Mordred and impales him with a spear. But with the last of his strength, Mordred impales himself even further, so as to come within striking distance of King Arthur, then gives a mortal blow to Arthur’s head. As he is dying, Arthur commands Bedivere to cast Excalibur into the lake, where it is retrieved by the hand of the Lady of the Lake. A barge appears, carrying ladies in black hoods (one being Morgan le Fay), who take Arthur to his grave. After the passing of King Arthur, Malory provides a denouement, mostly following the lives (and deaths) of Guinevere, Lancelot, and Lancelot's kinsmen. When Lancelot returns to Dover, he mourns the deaths of his comrades. Lancelot travels to Almesbury to see Guinevere. During the civil war, Guinevere is portrayed as a scapegoat for violence without developing her perspective or motivation. However, after Arthur's death, Guinevere retires to a convent in penitence for her infidelity. Her contrition is sincere and permanent; Lancelot is unable to sway her to come away with him. Instead, Lancelot becomes a monk, and is joined in monastic life by his kinsmen. Arthur's successor is appointed (Constantine, son of King Carados of Scotland), and the realm that Arthur created is significantly changed. After the deaths of Guinevere and Lancelot, Sirs Bors, Hector, Blamore, and Bleoberis head to the Holy Land to crusade against the Turks, where they die on Good Friday.

The Robots of Dawn

Isaac Asimov

The book opens with detective Elijah Baley on Earth, training with his son and others to tolerate the outside, in spite of their socially ingrained agoraphobia. He is ordered to go to the police headquarters. There, he is told that the Spacer world of Aurora has requested through diplomatic channels that he go to Aurora. He is told that the mind of R. Jander Panell, a humaniform robot identical to R. Daneel Olivaw, has been destroyed via a mental block—"roboticide", as Baley later terms it. The robot's inventor, Han Fastolfe, has been implicated. Fastolfe, who was last seen in The Caves of Steel, is the best roboticist on Aurora. He has admitted that he is the only person with the skill to have done it, although he denies doing it. Fastolfe is also a prominent member of the Auroran political faction that favors Earth. Implication in the crime threatens his political career; therefore, it is politically expedient that he be exonerated. While en route to Aurora, Baley once again is partnered with R. Daneel Olivaw, as well as R. Giskard Reventlov, another of Fastolfe's robots. On Aurora, he sets out to solve the crime. He interviews Gladia Delmarre (who first appeared in The Naked Sun; the Aurorans have given her the surname "Solaria" instead). Jander was a member of her staff before he was shut down. We find out that Gladia had a secret sexual relationship with Jander. She even considered him to be her husband. Baley later interviews Fastolfe's estranged daughter, Vasilia Fastolfe (although she disdains the use of her surname and prefers to use "Aliena" instead). Vasilia claims that her father is a monster, and would do anything necessary to advance his theories of a science that can predict the future—psychohistory. This includes the murder of Jander, if it would help him observe Gladia's responses. Vasilia also makes clear her desire to own Giskard, who was her nanny. Following that, Baley interviews Santirix Gremionis. Gremionis is an Auroran who is attracted to both Gladia and Vasilia. With each of them, he committed the Auroran taboo of offering himself repeatedly (sexually) after they had rejected him. Gremionis denies involvement in the murder, and says he has reported Baley to the Chairman (the executive of the Auroran Government) for slander. Vasilia subtly manipulated him into falling in love with Gladia, and he realizes it only after Baley asks him about it directly. Next, Baley interviews Kelden Amadiro. Amadiro is Fastolfe's chief political rival and head of the Robotics Institute. He explains the Institute's political motivations—that they wish to see Aurora and only Aurora colonize the rest of the Galaxy. Humaniform robots are an integral part of their planned colonization, although Fastolfe is the only one who can construct them. The Institute has been attempting, futilely, to construct one. On the way back to the Fastolfe residence from the interview with Amadiro, Baley's airfoil (a car that uses airjets to float slightly off the ground) is forced to stop. The air compressor has been sabotaged. Baley, suspecting that it was done by Amadiro in an attempt to kidnap Daneel, orders him and Giskard to flee the car. A few minutes later, several robots arrive and interrogate Baley. Baley tells them that he ordered Daneel back to the Robotics Institute, and they leave. Baley flees the car into the thunderstorm outside. His agoraphobia gets the best of him, and he falls unconscious. He awakes in Gladia's home. He is told that they had stopped not far from her house. Daneel and Giskard fled there and quickly formed a rescue party, which recovered Baley not long after he passed out. The next day, Baley goes to a prearranged meeting with the Chairman, who holds political sway over the entire situation, and is intent upon ending the crisis. Present at the meeting are the Chairman, Baley, Fastolfe, and Amadiro. Baley confronts Amadiro with a question. During Baley's interview with him, Amadiro said that he knew of the relationship between Gladia and Jander. Baley asks him how he could have known of it, since it was a secret. Amadiro says he heard it from someone, but cannot remember who it was that he heard it from. Baley says that the only person he could have heard it from would have been Jander himself. Baley then gives the solution to the mystery of who killed Jander. While Gladia was on her frequent walks with Gremionis, Amadiro took the opportunity to contact Jander via trimensional viewing (telepresence) and question him. The questions would allow Amadiro to understand how Jander was designed, which in turn would allow Amadiro himself to create a humaniform robot. Apparently, this created enough entropy in Jander's positronic brain to kill him. The Chairman is satisfied with this explanation. Amadiro is forced to agree to support Fastolfe's policies, which are immediately put into effect. Earth benefits greatly from this. Baley, however, secretly has another suspect in mind. During his investigation, he had noticed that Giskard many times had acted as if he had knowledge of what others were thinking. He confronts Giskard, who admits it. Vasilia unknowingly gave Giskard this ability during childhood experiments. Using knowledge derived from Han Fastolfe's mind, Giskard shut down Jander. This was to thwart Amadiro's attempt to build humaniform robots. Giskard allows Baley to remember this knowledge of Giskard's abilities, but puts a block in Baley's mind that prevents him from revealing the secret.

Peril at End House

Agatha Christie

Detective Hercule Poirot and Captain Arthur Hastings are holidaying when they meet a young girl, who casually mentions that she has escaped certain death at least thrice. Poirot suspects that somebody is out to get her, and his suspicions prove true. He finds many characters that are shady and may have some reason to kill the girl. Despite Poirot's best efforts, a murder does occur, but not of the intended victim. When the motive itself is unclear, why did the murder take place?

The Subtle Knife

Philip Pullman

Evading the police after accidentally killing an intruder in the night, twelve-year-old Will Parry discovers an invisible window in mid air. It leads him to Cittàgazze, an apparently deserted city in another world. There, Will encounters 12-year-old Lyra Silvertongue and her daemon Pantalaimon, who came here after entering the hole in the sky that her father, Lord Asriel, created at the end of Northern Lights. Meanwhile, the witch Serafina Pekkala, who was separated from Lyra during a battle in Northern Lights, is searching for her. She discovers that the Magisterium and Lyra's mother, Mrs. Coulter, are torturing a witch to discover the prophecy that surrounds Lyra. She kills that witch when begged, and leaves to call a meeting of the witches council. The witches vote to band together and join Lyra's father, Lord Asriel, in his fight against the Magisterium. Lee Scoresby, a supporter of Lyra, ventures out to find the explorer Stanislaus Grumman, who is rumored to know of an object that gives protection to whoever holds it, with the intent of ensuring Lyra obtains that protection. In Cittàgazze, Will and Lyra become allies; they discover they come from parallel Oxfords in different universes and decide to travel back into Will's world to gather more information. Will wants to find out about his father, who vanished during an expedition; Lyra is looking for Scholars who know about Dust. Lyra is told by her alethiometer (a device that reveals truth) to seek the physicist researcher Dr. Mary Malone who unknowingly is researching Dust (under the name Dark Matter/"Shadows"). Lyra revisits Dr. Malone the next day, but after accepting a ride from the well-dressed Sir Charles Latrom, she discovers that Sir Charles has stolen her alethiometer and she asks Will to help her retrieve it. When Lyra and Will confront Sir Charles, he readily admits that he has stolen the alethiometer and blackmails the pair into retrieving a mysterious knife from Cittàgazze in exchange for its return. They defeat the youth who holds the knife but Will receives a distinctive wound - the loss of two fingers - which the knife's true guardian explains as the sign that he is now the next true guardian of the Subtle Knife, a tool that cuts windows between worlds and cuts easily through anything - both material and spiritual. He explains further that this world is haunted by soul-eating Spectres, which prey on older children and adults but are invisible to children of their age, and that the knife must not fall into Sir Charles' hands. Lyra and Will plan to steal back the alethiometer by using the knife. While doing so, Sir Charles arrives with Mrs. Coulter, and Lyra realizes that Sir Charles is really Lord Boreal, a friend of Mrs. Coulter who came to Will's world long ago and established himself in a position of power. Will, overhearing their conversation, also hears news of his father, who had discovered a doorway between the worlds. Will and Lyra return to Cittagazze, and pursued by children seeking revenge for the death of the knife's holder, are found and rescued by Serafina Pekkala. She attempts to heal Will's wound with a spell, but fails. They then continue on to find Will's father. Back in Will's world, Dr. Malone is visited by Sir Charles, purporting to be a figure of authority, who tells them that their funding will be discontinued if they do not cooperate with his wishes. Dr. Malone quits her job, but returns later that night to follow Lyra's suggestion that she attempt to communicate with the Shadows she is studying. She is told to travel through the same window between worlds used by Will and Lyra, and that her role is to "play the serpent" and that all her life's work has led to this. She is told where to begin her journey and to destroy her work to prevent others using it. Lee Scoresby finally finds Grumman living as a shaman known as Jopari, an abbreviation of his true name John Parry. Grumman has summoned Scoresby so he can be taken to the world where the bearer of the Subtle Knife is, and instruct the bearer in his task, which is to find and help Lord Asriel's rebellion against The Authority (God). They set off in Scoresby's hot-air balloon. Pursued by Magisterium soldiers, they are forced to land. Scoresby dies holding off the soldiers so that Grumman can complete his task. Mrs. Coulter tricks Sir Charles into revealing the secret of the knife, then after murdering him, uses the Spectres which she has learned to control to torture a witch into revealing the prophecy about Lyra as well as Will and Lyra's location and the manner of their protection by the witch clans. The prophecy is that Lyra is fated to be the second Eve, and Mrs. Coulter states her intention to destroy Lyra rather than risk a second Fall. Serafina goes to aid Scoresby, having heard his last plea for help, and Will encounters Grumman, who staunches the bleeding in his hand and instructs him in his task. They begin to realise they are long-separated father and son, but a moment later Grumman is killed by a vengeful witch who loved Grumman, as he had not returned her love. Will returns to camp to find a pair of angels, Balthamos and Baruch, waiting to guide him to Lord Asriel. He agrees and goes to awaken Lyra, but discovers that she is now missing and her guardian witches have been killed by Spectres. Will finds Lyra's abandoned alethiometer. He refuses to go with the angels until he finds Lyra. This concludes the second novel, with the trilogy concluding in the next book, The Amber Spyglass.

The Horse and His Boy

C. S. Lewis

A boy by the name of Shasta is found as a baby and raised by Arsheesh, a Calormene fisherman. As the story begins, Shasta overhears Arsheesh agreeing to sell him to a powerful Calormene feudal nobleman. Shasta is relieved to discover that he is not really Arsheesh's son, since there was little love between them. While Shasta awaits his new master in the stable, Bree, the nobleman's stallion, astounds Shasta by speaking to him. The horse suggests that they escape a life of servitude by riding north together to Narnia. They meet another pair of escaping travellers, Aravis, a young Calormene aristocrat, and her talking horse, Hwin. Aravis is fleeing to avoid a forced marriage with the Tisroc's grand vizier. The four must travel through Tashbaan, the bustling capital of Calormen. There they encounter a procession of visiting Narnian royalty, who mistake Shasta for Corin, a prince of Archenland, who was separated from their group earlier that day. Unsure what to do, Shasta goes with the Narnians and overhears their plans to escape from Calormen to prevent a forced marriage of Queen Susan with the Tisroc's son, Rabadash. Shasta escapes when the real Prince Corin returns. Meanwhile, Aravis has been spotted by her friend Lasaraleen. She asks Lasaraleen not to betray her, and to help her escape from Tashbaan. Lasaraleen cannot understand why Aravis would want to abandon the life of a Calormene princess, but she helps Aravis escape through the palace. On the way, they hide when the Tisroc, Rabadash, and the Grand Vizier approach. Unfortunately, they've hidden in the very room where the men are about to meet. Aravis overhears the Tisroc and Rabadash as they discuss the Narnians' escape. The Tisroc gives Rabadash permission to invade Archenland and Narnia while High King Peter is preoccupied battling giants to the north. Outside Tashbaan, Aravis rejoins Shasta and the horses. The four set out across the desert, and a lion (later revealed to be Aslan) frightens the travellers into fleeing swiftly enough to outrun Rabadash's army. Shasta arrives in Archenland in time to warn King Lune of the approaching Calormenes, and the army of Archenland prepares to defend their kingdom. When Rabadash and his army arrive at King Lune's castle, they are disappointed to find their prey on guard and waiting for them. A battle ensues, with no clear outcome until an army from Narnia, led by Edmund and Lucy, reinforces the defenders. The Northern alliance of Archenland and Narnia wins a complete victory over the Calormenes, and Rabadash is captured. Rabadash rebuffs King Lune's merciful offer of conditional release. Aslan appears and warns Rabadash to accept King Lune's mercy before his doom strikes. Rabadash rebuffs Aslan as well, so his doom strikes: he is turned into a donkey. His true form will be restored if he stands before the altar of Tash at the Autumn Feast. However, he will become a donkey again if he strays more than ten miles from the Temple of Tash, and there will be no return. For this reason Rabadash pursues peaceful policies when he becomes Tisroc as he dare not risk the ten mile limit by going to war. People call him "Rabadash the Peacemaker" but in reality they consider him "Rabadash the Ridiculous" as they never forget his donkey transformation. His name becomes a synonym for a stupid person over future generations in Calormen. The victorious King Lune recognizes Shasta as Cor, the long-lost identical twin of Prince Corin and, as barely the elder of the two, the heir to the throne. Aravis and Cor live in Archenland thereafter and eventually marry years later, and their son becomes the most famous king of Archenland.

The Story of the Stone

Barry Hughart

The abbot of a humble monastery in the Valley of Sorrows calls upon Master Li and Number Ten Ox to investigate the killing of a monk and the theft of a seemingly inconsequential manuscript from its library. Suspicion soon lands on the infamous Laughing Prince Liu Sheng--who has been dead for about 750 years. To solve this mystery and others, the incongruous duo will have to travel across China, outwit a half-barbarian king, and saunter into (and out of) Hell itself.

The Mists of Avalon

Marion Zimmer Bradley

Mists of Avalon is a generations-spanning retelling of the Arthurian legend, but bringing it back to its Brythonic roots (see Matter of Britain). Its protagonist is Morgaine, who witnesses the rise of Uther Pendragon to the throne of Camelot. As a child, she is taken to Avalon by High Priestess Viviane, her maternal aunt, to become a priestess of the Mother Goddess and witnesses the rising tension between the old Pagan and the new Christian religions. At one point, she is given in a fertility ritual to a young man she will later learn is Arthur, her half-brother. Unbeknownst to Arthur, Morgaine conceives a child, Gwydion, later called Mordred, as a result of the ritual. After Uther dies, his son Arthur claims the throne. Morgaine and Viviane give him the magic sword Excalibur, and with the combined force of Avalon and Camelot, Arthur drives the invasion of the Saxons away. But when his wife Gwenhwyfar fails to produce a child, she is convinced that it is a punishment of God: firstly for the presence of pagan elements (a stance which Morgaine deeply resents), and secondly, for her forbidden love for Arthur's finest knight Lancelet. She increasingly becomes a religious fanatic, and relationships between Avalon and Camelot (i.e. Morgaine and herself) become hostile. When the knights of the Round Table of Camelot leave to search for the Holy Grail, Mordred seeks to usurp the throne. In a climactic battle, Arthur's and Mordred's armies square off, and in the end Avalon and Arthur are magically removed from the circles of the world. It is Morgaine alone who lives to tell the tale of Camelot.

The Book of Merlyn

T. H. White

The book opens as King Arthur prepares himself for his final battle. Merlyn reappears to complete Arthur's education and discover the cause of wars. As he did in The Sword in the Stone, Merlyn again demonstrates ethics and politics to Arthur by transforming him into various animals. The last chapter of the book takes place only hours before the final battle between King Arthur and his son and nephew Mordred. Arthur does not want to fight after everything that he has learned from Merlyn. He makes a deal with Mordred to split England in half. Mordred accepts. During the making of this deal, a snake comes upon one of Mordred's soldiers. The soldier draws his sword. The opposing side, unaware of the snake, takes this as an act of betrayal. Arthur's troops attack Mordred's, and both Arthur and Mordred die in the battle that follows. Guenever joins a convent, and remains there till death. Lancelot becomes a hermit and dies a hermit. His last miracle was making the room that he died in smell like heaven.

The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus

Christopher Marlowe

As a prologue, the Chorus tells us what type of play Doctor Faustus is. It is not about war and courtly love, but about Faustus, who was born of lower class parents. This can be seen as a departure from the medieval tradition; Faustus holds a lower status than kings and saints, but his story is still worth telling. It gives an introduction to his wisdom and abilities, most notably in academia, in which he excels so tremendously that he is awarded a doctorate. During this opening, we also get our first clue to the source of Faustus's downfall. Faustus's tale is likened to that of Icarus, who flew too close to the sun and fell to his death when the sun melted his waxen wings. This is indeed a hint to Faustus's end as well as bringing our attention to the idea of hubris (excessive pride) which is represented in the Icarus story. Faustus comments that he has reached the end of every subject he has studied. He appreciates Logic as being a tool for arguing; Medicine as being unvalued unless it allowed raising the dead and immortality; Law as being upstanding and above him; Divinity as useless because he feels that all humans commit sin, and thus to have sins punishable by death complicates the logic of Divinity. He dismisses it as "What doctrine call you this? Que sera, sera" (What will be, shall be). He calls upon his servant Wagner to bring forth Valdes and Cornelius, two famous magicians. The Good Angel and the Bad Angel dispense their own perspective of his interest in Satan. Though Faustus is momentarily dissuaded, proclaiming "How am I glutted with conceit of this?", he is apparently won over by the possibilities Magic offers to him. Valdes declares that if Faustus devotes himself to Magic, he must vow not to study anything else and points out that great things are indeed possible with someone of Faustus's standing. Faustus's absence is noted by two scholars who are less accomplished than Faustus himself. They request that Wagner reveal Faustus's present location, a request which Wagner haughtily denies. The two scholars worry about Faustus falling deep into the art of Magic and leave to inform the King. Faustus summons a devil, in the presence of Lucifer and other devils although Faustus is unaware of it. After creating a magic circle and speaking an incantation in which he revokes his baptism, Faustus sees a devil named Mephistophilis appear before him. Faustus is unable to tolerate the hideous looks of the devil and commands it to change its appearance. Faustus, in seeing the obedience of the devil (for changing form), takes pride in his skill. He tries to bind the devil to his service but is unable to because Mephistophilis already serves Lucifer, the prince of devils. Mephistophilis also reveals that it was not Faustus's power that summoned him but rather that if anyone abjures the scriptures it results in the Devil coming to claim their soul. Mephistophilis introduces the history of Lucifer and the other devils while indirectly telling Faustus that hell has no circumference and is more of a state of mind than a physical location. Faustus inquiries into the nature of hell lead to Mephistophilis saying: "Oh, Faustus, leave these frivolous demands, which strikes a terror to my fainting soul". Using Mephistophilis as a messenger, Faustus strikes a deal with Lucifer: he is to be allotted twenty-four years of life on Earth, during which time he will have Mephistophilis as his personal servant. At the end he will give his soul over to Lucifer as payment and spend the rest of time as one damned to Hell. This deal is to be sealed in Faustus's own blood. After cutting his arm, the wound is divinely healed and the Latin words "Homo, fuge!" (Fly, man!) then appear upon it. Despite the dramatic nature of this divine intervention, Faustus disregards the inscription with the assertion that he is already damned by his actions thus far and therefore left with no place to which he could flee. Mephistophilis brings coals to break the wound open again, and thus Faustus is able to take his oath that was written in his own blood. Faustus begins by asking Mephistophilis a series of science-related questions. However, the devil seems to be quite evasive and finishes with a Latin phrase, "Per inoequalem motum respectu totius" ("through unequal motion with respect to the whole thing"). This sentence has not the slightest scientific value, thus giving the impression that Mephistophilis is untrustworthy. Two angels, one good and one bad, appear to Faustus: the good angel urges him to repent and revoke his oath to Lucifer. This is the largest fault of Faustus throughout the play: he is blind to his own salvation. Though he is told initially by Mephistophilis to "leave these frivolous demands", Faustus remains set on his soul's damnation. Lucifer brings to Faustus the personification of the seven deadly sins. Faustus fails to see them as warnings and ignores them. From this point until the end of the play, Faustus does nothing worthwhile, having begun his pact with the attitude that he would be able to do anything. Faustus appears to scholars and warns them that he is damned and will not be long on the earth. He gives a speech about how he is damned and eventually seems to repent for his deeds. Mephistophilis comes to collect his soul, and we are told that he exits back to hell with him. The text leaves Faustus's final confrontation with Mephistophilis offstage, and his final fate obvious. The scene following begins with Faustus's friends discovering his clothes strewn about the stage: from this they conclude that Faustus was damned. However, his friends decide to give him a final party, a religious ceremony that hints at salvation. The discovery of the clothes is a scene present only in the later 'B text' of the play — in the earlier version of the play devils carry Faustus off the stage. The theological implications of Doctor Faustus have been the subject of considerable debate throughout the last century. Among the most complicated points of contention is whether the play supports or challenges the Calvinist doctrine of absolute predestination, which dominated the lectures and writings of many English scholars in the latter half of the sixteenth century. According to Calvin, predestination meant that God, acting of his own free will, elects some people to be saved and others to be damned — thus, the individual has no control over his own ultimate fate. This doctrine was the source of great controversy because it was seen by the so-called anti-Calvinists to limit man's free will in regard to faith and salvation, and to present a dilemma in terms of theodicy. At the time Doctor Faustus was performed, this doctrine was on the rise in England, and under the direction of Puritan theologians at Cambridge and Oxford had come to be considered the orthodox position of the Church of England. Nevertheless, it remained the source of vigorous and, at times, heated debate between Calvinist scholars, such as William Whitaker and William Perkins, and anti-Calvinists, such as William Barrett and Peter Baro. The dispute between these Cambridge intellectuals had quite nearly reached its zenith by the time Marlowe was a student there in the 1580s, and likely would have influenced him deeply, as it did many of his fellow students. Concerning the fate of Faustus, the Calvinist concludes that his damnation was inevitable. His rejection of God and subsequent inability to repent are taken as evidence that he never really belonged to the elect, but rather had been predestined from the very beginning for reprobation. In his Chiefe Points of Christian Religion, Theodore Beza, the successor to John Calvin, describes the category of sinner into which Faustus would most likely have been cast: ::To conclude, they which are most miserable of all, those climb a degree higher, that their fall might be more grievous: for they are raised so high by some gift of grace, that they are little moved with some taste of the heavenly gift: so that for the time they seem to have received the seed...But this is plain, that the spirit of adoption, which we have said to be only proper unto them which are never cast forth, but are written in the secret of God's people, is never communicated to them, for were they of the elect they should remain still with the elect. All these therefore (because of necessity, and yet willingly, as they which are under the slavery of sin, return to their vomit, and fall away from faith) are plucked up by the roots, to be cast into the fire. For the Calvinist, Faustus represents the worst kind of sinner, having tasted the heavenly gift and rejected it. His damnation is justified and deserved because he was never truly adopted among the elect. According to this view, the play demonstrates Calvin's "three-tiered concept of causation," in which the damnation of Faustus is first willed by God, then by Satan, and finally, by himself. As Calvin himself explains it in his Institutes of Christian Religion: ::We see therefore that it is no absurdity, that one self act be ascribed to God, to Satan, and to man: but the diversity in the end and manner of doing, causeth that therein appeareth the justice of God to be without fault, and also the wickedness of Satan and man, bewrayeth itself to their reproach. The anti-Calvinist view, however, finds such thinking repugnant, and prefers to interpret Doctor Faustus as a criticism of such doctrines. One of the greatest critics of Calvinism in Marlowe's day was Peter Baro, who argued that such teachings fostered despair among believers, rather than repentance among sinners. He claimed, in fact, that Calvinism created a theodical dilemma: ::What shall we say then? That this question so long debated of the Philosophers, most wise men, and yet undetermined, cannot even of Divines, and men endued with heavenly wisdom, be discussed and decided? And that God hath in this case laid a crosse upon learned men, wherein they might perpetually torment themselves? I cannot so think. Baro recognized the threat of despair which faced the Protestant church if it did not come to an agreement of how to understand the fundamentals. For him, the Calvinists were overcomplicating the issues of faith and repentance, and thereby causing great and unnecessary confusion among struggling believers. Faustus himself confesses a similar sentiment regarding predestination: :::"The reward of sin is death." That's hard. :::..."If we say that we have no sin, :::We deceive ourselves, and there's no truth in us." :::Why then belike we must sin, :::And so consequently die. :::Ay, we must die an everlasting death. :::What doctrine call you this? Che sera, sera, :::"What will be, shall be"? Divinity, adieu! Ultimately, however, the theology of Marlowe and the text of Doctor Faustus remain far too ambiguous for any kind of conclusive interpretation.

The Iron Heel

Jack London

The novel is based on the (fictional) "Everhard Manuscript" written by Avis Everhard which she hid and which was subsequently found centuries later. In addition, this novel has an introduction and series of (often lengthy) footnotes written from the perspective of scholar Anthony Meredith. Meredith writes from around 2600 AD or 419 B.O.M. (the Brotherhood of Man). Jack London thus writes at two levels, often having Meredith condescendingly correcting the errors of Everhard yet, at the same time, exposing the often incomplete understanding of this distant future perspective. Meredith's introduction also acts as a deliberate "spoiler" (the term did not yet exist at the time of writing). Before ever getting a chance to get to know Avis and Ernest, how they fell in love or how Avis became politically involved, the reader is already told that all their struggles and hopes would end in total failure and repression, and that both of them would be summarily executed. This gives all that follows the air of a foreordained tragedy. There is still left the consolation that a happy end would come for humanity as a whole – though hundreds of years too late for Avis and Ernest as individuals; the cruel oligarchy would fall, and the two will be vindicated and respected by posterity as pioneers and martyrs. (George Orwell would forty years later specifically and explicitly deny that consolation to his Winston Smith though he confirms it in appendix, and so would other later dystopian writers.) The Manuscript itself covers the years 1912 through 1932 in which the Oligarchy (or "Iron Heel") arose in the United States. In Asia, Japan conquered East Asia and created its own empire, India gained independence, and Europe became socialist. Canada, Mexico, and Cuba formed their own Oligarchies and were aligned with the U.S. (London remains silent as to the fates of South America, Africa, and the Middle East.) In North America, the Oligarchy maintains power for three centuries until the Revolution succeeds and ushers in the Brotherhood of Man. During the years of the novel, the First Revolt is described and preparations for the Second Revolt are discussed. From the perspective of Everhard, the imminent Second Revolt is sure to succeed but, from the distant future perspective of Meredith, we readers realize that Everhard's hopes were to be crushed for centuries to come. The Oligarchy are the largest monopoly trusts (or robber barons) who manage to squeeze out the middle class by bankrupting most small to mid-sized business as well as reducing all farmers to effective serfdom. This Oligarchy maintains power through a "labor caste" and the Mercenaries. Labor in essential industries like steel and rail are elevated and given decent wages, housing, and education. Indeed, the tragic turn in the novel (and Jack London's core warning to his contemporaries) is the treachery of these favored unions which break with the other unions and side with the Oligarchy. Further, a second, military caste is formed: the Mercenaries. The Mercenaries are officially the army of the US but are in fact in the employ of the Oligarchs. Asgard is the name of a fictional wonder-city, a city constructed by the Oligarchy to be admired and appreciated as well as lived in. Thousands of proletarians live in poverty there, and are used whenever a public work needs to be completed, such as the building of levee or a canal. The Manuscript is Everhard's autobiography as she tells of: her privileged childhood as the daughter of an accomplished scientist; her marriage to the socialist revolutionary Ernest Everhard; the fall of the US republic; and her years in the underground resistance from the First Revolt through the years leading to the Second Revolt. By telling the story of Avis Everhard, the novel is essentially an adventurous tale heavily strewn with social commentary of an alternate future (from a 1907 perspective). However, the future perspective of the scholar Meredith deepens the tragic plight of Everhard and her revolutionary comrades.

Martin Eden

Jack London

Living in Oakland at the beginning of the 20th century, Martin Eden struggles to rise above his destitute, proletarian circumstances through an intense and passionate pursuit of self-education, hoping to achieve a place among the literary elite. His principal motivation is his love for Ruth Morse. Because Eden is a rough, uneducated sailor from a working-class background and the Morses are a bourgeois family, a union between them would be impossible until he reaches their level of wealth and refinement. Over a period of two years, Eden promises Ruth that success will come, but just before it does, Ruth loses her patience and rejects him in a letter, saying, "if only you had settled down ... and attempted to make something of yourself". By the time Eden attains the favour of the publishers and the bourgeoisie who had shunned him, he has already developed a grudge against them and become jaded by toil and unrequited love. Instead of enjoying his success, he retreats into a quiet indifference, interrupted only to rail mentally against the genteelness of bourgeois society or to donate his new wealth to working-class friends and family. The novel ends with Eden committing suicide by drowning, which contributed to what researcher Clarice Stasz calls the "biographical myth" that Jack London's own death was a suicide. London's oldest daughter Joan commented that in spite of its tragic ending, the book is often regarded as "a 'success' story ... which inspired not only a whole generation of young writers but other different fields who, without aid or encouragement, attained their objectives through great struggle".

The Valley of the Moon

Jack London

The novel Valley of the Moon is a story of a working-class couple, Billy and Saxon Roberts, struggling laborers in Oakland at the Turn-of-the-Century, who left the city life behind and searched Central and Northern California for a suitable farmland to own. The book is notable for the scenes in which the proletarian hero enjoys fellowship with the artists' colony in Carmel, and he settles in the Valley of the Moon. It begins with Billy as a Teamster and Saxon working in a laundry. Billy has also boxed professionally with some success, but decided there was no future in it. He was particularly upset by one bout in which he was fighting a friend and they had to go on fighting and making a good show after his friend injured one hand. Their early married life is disrupted by a major wave of strikes. Billy is involved in violent attacks on scabs and goes to jail. Saxon loses her baby in the backwash of the violence. She hears socialist arguments but does not definitely accept them. She also meets an old woman who takes a very individualist view, describing how she successfully attached herself to a series of rich men. She also meets a lad called Jack who has built his own boat and seems modeled on Jack London's own teenage years. When Billy gets out of jail, Saxon insist that they leave the city and try to get their own farm. They have memories of when the government gave out land free, but find that is long past. They pass through an area where the earliest European settlers have been displaced by Portuguese. There is a detailed description of how the Portuguese, who arrived very poor, have flourished by using the land more intensively. They also stay a few days with a middle-class woman who grows flowers along with her vegetables and has a flourishing business selling high-quality products to rich people. Moving on, they find an artists' colony which they like, but they move on, still looking for their own place. Billy begins dealing in horses as well as driving them. He also returns to the boxing ring, using a new name so he will not be identified against an up-and-coming boxer. Saxon is scared for him, but in fact he wins the fight in the first few seconds, much faster than he intended. This gets him 300 dollars for a pair of horses he wants. Invited to a rematch, he accepts and finds it much harder, but still wins. He resolves to fight no more. They also encounter well-known writer and journalist 'Jack Hastings', generally considered to be a self-portrait of Jack London as he then was. His wife—presumably modeled on London's second wife—is also described as very much like Saxon. They are directed to a suitable place to settle, and do settle. There is also much talk about the wastefulness of the early American farmers, exhausting the land and moving on. These reflect Jack London's views on sustainable agriculture. They find their 'valley of the moon' and presumably live happily ever after. A character in the book says that this is the Native American meaning of 'Sonoma Valley'. This was Jack London's belief, though it is disputed.

At Swim-Two-Birds

Flann O'Brien

At Swim-Two-Birds presents itself as a first-person story by an unnamed Irish student of literature. The student believes that "one beginning and one ending for a book was a thing I did not agree with", and he accordingly sets three apparently quite separate stories in motion. The first concerns the Pooka MacPhellimey, "a member of the devil class". The second is about a young man named John Furriskey, who turns out to be a fictional character created by another of the student's creations, Dermot Trellis, a cynical writer of Westerns. The third consists of the student's adaptations of Irish legends, mostly concerning Finn Mac Cool and Mad King Sweeney. In the autobiographical frame story, the student recounts details of his life. He lives with his uncle, who works as a clerk in the Guinness Brewery in Dublin. The uncle is a complacent and self-consciously respectable bachelor who suspects that the student does very little studying. This seems to be the case, as by his own account the student spends more time drinking stout with his college friends, lying in bed and working on his book, than he does going to class. The stories that the student is writing soon become intertwined with each other. John Furriskey meets and befriends two of Trellis's other characters, Antony Lamont and Paul Shanahan. They each become resentful of Trellis's control over their destinies, and manage to drug him so that he will spend more time asleep, giving them the freedom to lead quiet domestic lives rather than be ruled by the lurid plots of his novels. Meanwhile, Trellis creates Sheila Lamont (Antony Lamont's sister) in order that Furriskey might seduce and betray her, but "blinded by her beauty" Trellis "so far forgets himself as to assault her himself." Sheila, in due course, gives birth to a child named Orlick, who is born as a polite and articulate young man with a gift for writing fiction. The entire group of Trellis's characters, by now including Finn, Sweeney, the urbane Pooka and an invisible and quarrelsome Good Fairy who lives in the Pooka's pocket, convenes in Trellis's fictional Red Swan Hotel where they devise a way to overthrow their author. Encouraged by the others, Orlick starts writing a novel about his father in which Trellis is tried by his own creations, found guilty and viciously tortured. Just as Orlick's novel is about to climax with Trellis' death, the college student passes his exams and At Swim-Two-Birds ends.

Startide Rising

David Brin

In the year 2489 C.E.http://www.reocities.com/Area51/Corridor/8611/brin.htm, Terran spaceship Streaker — crewed by 150 uplifted dolphins, seven humans, and one uplifted chimpanzee — discovers a derelict fleet of 50,000 spaceships the size of small moons in a shallow cluster. They appear to belong to the Progenitors, the legendary "first race" which uplifted the other species. The captain's gig is sent to investigate but is destroyed along with one of the derelict craft — killing 10 crew members. Streaker manages to recover some artifacts from the destroyed derelict and one well-preserved alien body. The crew of Streaker uses psi-cast to inform Earth of their discovery and to send a hologram of the alien. When Streaker receives a reply, it is in code. Decrypted, it says only: “Go into hiding. Await Orders. Do not reply.” Attempting to comply, Streaker is ambushed at the Morgran transfer point and pursued by opposing fleets of fanatical alien races — all of them wanting the cluster co-ordinates, and all of them desperate to prevent their enemies from getting them. The novel begins about one month http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http://www.geocities.com/albmont/brin_sr.htm&date=2009-10-25+12:17:11 after the discovery in the cluster as Streaker arrives on the planet Kithrup in an attempt to hide and make repairs. Almost immediately, the aliens begin to arrive — dashing Streakers hopes of hiding, but some time remains for repairs when the alien armadas begin fighting each other. A Thennanin dreadnought is damaged during the fighting and crashes into the ocean near Streakers hiding place. The resultant tsunami strands several crew and causes several of the uplifted dolphins (called NeoFins) to panic and revert to an instinctual, pre-uplifted mental state. Some of the stranded crew encounter pre-sentient natives (called Kiqui). Meanwhile, on Streaker, several crew members secretly plan a mutiny and defection while the officers plan to salvage parts from the Thennanin wreck. Streaker cannot be moved for fear of detection and because of the ongoing repairs, and so the salvage team uses undersea transportation to get to the wreck. The salvage team discovers the wreck's hull is mostly undamaged, and the Terrans form a plan to hide Streaker inside the Thennanin dreadnought hull and make their escape. As a bonus, several crew members salvage the Thennanin dreadnought's micro-branch of the galactic library for comparison with the Streakers own copy, as Earth suspects their libraries have been sabotaged, with certain information redacted by the senior patron races. The mutinous crew, led by Takkata-Jim, cripple Captain Creideiki. Before he can be caught, Takkata-Jim flees in a shuttle, but the shuttle has been sabotaged by the loyal crew, and he is sent into the middle of the battle over Kithrup with his puny guns set to fire when any ship approaches and his radio disabled. Takkata-Jim draws off the two largest remaining fleets. In the confusion, Streaker almost escapes without incident hidden in the Thennanin hull, but is confronted by several ships belonging to the Brothers of the Night (Brethren). Streaker is saved when six Thennanin ships, saving one of their "own", drive off the Brethren. Streaker then flees to the transfer point, but before fleeing, sends a mocking transmission to the alien armadas. The dolphins in the novel speak three languages: Primal, Trinary and Anglic. Primal and Trinary are represented as haiku-esque poems (two of the human characters quote Yosa Buson), while Anglic is a hypothetical English-derivative (not to be confused with the actual Anglic family of languages containing modern English, its ancestors, and its close relatives like Scots), rendered for the reader as standard English. The book shifts point of view frequently from character to character, ranging from humans, to dolphins, to a number of the alien races which are trying to destroy, capture, or help the Streaker. This allows the reader to get some idea of how the crew of the Streaker fits within the larger context of Galactic affairs. All of the alien races described in this book are further described and illustrated in the book Contacting Aliens: An Illustrated Guide to David Brin's Uplift Universe.

Rilla of Ingleside

Lucy Maud Montgomery

Set almost a decade after Rainbow Valley, Europe is on the brink of the First World War, and Anne's youngest daughter Rilla is an irrepressible almost-15-year-old, excited about her first adult party and blissfully unaware of the chaos that the Western world is about to enter. Her parents worry because Rilla seems not to have any ambition, is not interested in attending college, and is more concerned with having fun. (In an aside, it is revealed that Marilla has died; her date of death is not specified but Rilla states it was before she was old enough to know her very well.) Once the Continent descends into war, Jem Blythe and Jerry Meredith promptly enlist, upsetting Anne, Nan, and Faith Meredith (who Rilla suspects is engaged to Jem). Rilla's brother Walter, who is of age, does not enlist, ostensibly due to a recent bout with typhoid but truly because he fears the ugliness of war and death. He confides in Rilla that he feels he is a coward. The enlisted boys report to Kingsport for training. Jem's dog, Dog Monday, takes up a vigil at the Glen train station waiting for Jem to come back. Rilla's siblings Nan, Di, and Walter return to Redmond College, and Shirley returns to Queen's Academy, leaving Rilla anxiously alone at home with her parents, their spinster housekeeper Susan Baker, and Gertrude Oliver, a teacher who is boarding with the Blythes while her fiance reports to the front. As the war drags on, Rilla matures, organizing the Junior Red Cross in her village. While collecting donations for the war effort, she comes across a house where a young mother has just died with her husband away at war, leaving no one to care for her two-week-old son. Rilla takes the sickly little boy back to Ingleside in a soup tureen, naming him "James Kitchener Anderson" after his father and Herbert Kitchener, British Secretary of State for War. Rilla's father Gilbert challenges her to raise the war orphan, and although she doesn't like babies at all, she rises to the occasion, eventually coming to love "Jims" as her own. Rilla and her family pay anxious attention to all the war news as the conflict spreads and thousands die. Rilla grows much closer to Walter, who some townsfolk and fellow students have branded a slacker, an insult he feels deeply. Rilla feels that Walter finally regards her as a chum, not just as his little sister. Walter eventually does enlist, as does Rilla's newfound love interest, Kenneth Ford (the son of Owen and Leslie Ford, who met in Anne's House of Dreams), who asks her to promise she will not kiss anyone else until he returns. She keeps this a secret for much of the book, unsure what it means. Her mother later tells her that "if Leslie West's son asked you to keep your lips for him, I think you may consider yourself engaged to him." As the war continues, Walter is killed in action at Courcelette. His death had been foreshadowed in an earlier book, Anne of Ingleside (written years after this one), when Walter imagines "the piper" calling them all from their beloved Rainbow Valley. In Walter's last letter to Rilla, written the day before his death, he tells her that he is no longer afraid and believes it may be better for him to die than to go on living with his memories of war forever spoiling life's beauty. Rilla gives the letter to Una Meredith, who Rilla suspects had been in love with Walter, though she had never spoken of it to either of them. Anne's youngest son, Shirley, comes of age and immediately joins the flying corps. Jerry Meredith is wounded at Vimy Ridge, and in early May 1918, Jem is reported wounded and missing following a trench raid. The Blythes spend nearly five months not knowing Jem's fate until they finally receive a telegram from him: he had been taken prisoner in Germany, but eventually escaped to Holland and is now proceeding to England for medical treatment. When the war finally ends, the rest of the boys from Glen St. Mary return home. Mary Vance and Miller Douglas announce plans to marry, with Miller deciding to pursue a career in Mr. Flagg's store after losing a leg in the war. Jem returns on an afternoon train and is met by a joyful Dog Monday. Jims' father returns with a young English bride and takes Jims to live with them nearby; Rilla is glad she can still remain part of Jims' life. Life after war resumes. Jem plans to return to college, since he and Faith cannot be married until he finishes studying medicine. Faith, Nan, and Diana plan to teach school, while Jerry, Carl, and Shirley will return to Redmond, along with Una, who plans to take a Household Science course. Finally, Kenneth returns home and proposes to Rilla with the question "Is it Rilla-my-Rilla?"—to which Rilla lisps, "Yeth," a rare slip into her childhood habit.

The Pickwick Papers

Charles Dickens

Written for publication as a serial, The Pickwick Papers is a sequence of loosely-related adventures. The action is given as occurring 1827–8, though critics have noted some seeming anachronisms. The novel's main character, Samuel Pickwick, Esquire, is a kind and wealthy old gentleman, and the founder and perpetual president of the Pickwick Club. To extend his researches into the quaint and curious phenomena of life, he suggests that he and three other "Pickwickians" (Mr Nathaniel Winkle, Mr Augustus Snodgrass, and Mr Tracy Tupman) should make journeys to remote places from London and report on their findings to the other members of the club. Their travels throughout the English countryside by coach provide the chief theme of the novel. A distinctive and valuable feature of the work is the generally accurate descriptions of the old coaching inns of England. Its main literary value and appeal is formed by its numerous memorable characters. Each character in The Pickwick Papers, as in many other Dickens novels, is drawn comically, often with exaggerated personalities. Alfred Jingle, who joins the cast in chapter two, provides an aura of comic villainy. His devious tricks repeatedly land the Pickwickians in trouble. These include Jingle's nearly-successful attempted elopement with the spinster Rachael Wardle of Dingley Dell manor, misadventures with Dr Slammer, and others. Further humour is provided when the comic cockney Sam Weller makes his advent in chapter 10 of the novel. First seen working at the White Hart Inn in The Borough, Weller is taken on by Mr Pickwick as a personal servant and companion on his travels and provides his own oblique ongoing narrative on the proceedings. The relationship between the idealistic and unworldly Pickwick and the astute cockney Weller has been likened to that between Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Other notable adventures include Mr Pickwick's attempts to defend a lawsuit brought by his landlady, Mrs Bardell, who (through an apparent misunderstanding on her part) is suing him for the breach of promise to marry her. Another is Mr Pickwick's incarceration at Fleet prison for his stubborn refusal to pay the compensation to her because he doesn't want to give a penny to Mrs Bardell's lawyers, the unscrupulous firm of Messrs. Dodson and Fogg. The general humorous tone is here briefly replaced by biting social satire (including against the legal establishment) and foreshadows major themes in Dickens' later books. Mr Pickwick, Sam Weller, and Weller Senior also appear in Dickens's serial, Master Humphrey's Clock.

Quarantine

Greg Egan

The novel is set in the near future (2034–2080), after the solar system has been surrounded by an impenetrable shield (constructed by either aliens or extra-solar humans) known as the Bubble. The Bubble permits no light to enter the solar system, and as a consequence the stars can no longer be seen. This seems to be mere background at first, but in fact it is central to the plot. In the novel a physical process in the human brain is responsible for collapsing quantum wavefunctions representing systems into particular eigenstates. Human observations of the universe were reducing its diversity and potentiality (for instance, by rendering it uninhabitable to beings that relied on stars being something other than the enormous nuclear fusion-powered furnaces human astronomers have observed them to be). Hence it is suggested that the Bubble was constructed to prevent humanity from wreaking massive destruction on the rest of the universe through the process of mere observation. In the course of the novel, the situation is further complicated when human researchers discover a way of modifying the brain to provide conscious control over the process, allowing people to suspend wavefunction collapse at will, and to choose which state the wavefunction will collapse to. This allows a person to choose how any nondeterministic event (such as flipping a coin) will turn out, provided that he is not being observed by anyone who is still involuntarily collapsing wavefunctions. This is used to perform a variety of low-probability tricks, such as tunneling through locked doors or getting past guards who happen to all be looking the other way as the person passes. The novel contains ideas not related to quantum mechanics. Of particular note is the fact that people habitually download software to run in their brains. Such "neural mods" (whose titles are always given in boldface, such as Sentinel or P3) are installed by insufflating several drops of fluid carrying genetically modified microorganisms, which in turn carry nanomachines capable of rewiring nerve cells. The story's narrator accepts a case to investigate the disappearance of a woman from a psychiatric Institute, which leads him to the Ensemble. This is an organization that is developing a wavefunction collapse inhibitor neural mod, the "eigenstate mod". This mod allows the user to stop being an observer in the sense of quantum mechanics and consequently to "smear", i.e. to exist in a superposition of different states at the same time and to pick eigenstates of personal preference from the range of possible states, when the personal wavefunction is collapsed. He is put under the control of the Ensemble by the forced installation of a "loyalty mod" in his brain which makes loyal support for the organization his highest goal. The narrator meets a group of other Ensemble loyalists (the Canon) who have discovered that their keepers have failed to specify exactly what they are to be loyal to (except by its name) and consequently, being its most loyal members, start to define what the Ensemble is themselves. The narrator, working with the Canon, then proceeds to steal the eigenstate mod. A rogue member of the Canon infects all of humanity with the software. (Normally, neither the microorganisms nor the nanomachines involved in installing neural mods can survive long outside the human body, but in this case the rogue scientist uses the eigenstate-control mod to modify their properties.) As a result, causality is weakened all over the globe, and the untrained humans, not knowing what to do with their newfound freedom, break down the fabric of reality as the stars suddenly reappear in the sky then turn into an almost blinding flash as the heavens fill with lights and possibilities undreamed of... Then things suddenly are back to normal (less the loyalty mod) and two main characters debrief each other on a park bench, trying to understand how the "smeared" humanity was able to control events BEFORE people were all infected with the eigen-mod and WHY the "smeared" humanity chose to return the world to normal (one theory put forward is that they reached the edge of the bubble, had a nice chat with the aliens and decided to go home and enjoy life as it was).

Perfume

Patrick Süskind

Grenouille (French for "frog") was born in Paris, France, July 17 of 1738. His mother gives birth to him while working at a fish stall. She has had given birth four times previously while working, which were all either stillbirths or near-dead, so she cuts his umbilical cord and leaves him to die. However, Grenouille cries out from inside the pile of fish heads and guts, and his mother is caught, tried for multiple infanticide, found guilty and is decapitated. As a child, Grenouille is passed along different wet nurses, who give him away due to him being too greedy, and then is given to a parish church, which gives him to a wet nurse named Jeanne Bussie. She returns to the parish priest a few months later, saying that the child is possessed by the devil, as he drinks her dry and has no scent. The priest does not believe her, saying that there was no way that the child could be possessed by the devil. He sends the wet nurse away and cuddles Grenouille for a while. Curious, the priest, Terrier, leans in to take a smell. He expects to smell at least a little bit of scent, but he does not. Grenouille wakes up then and starts sniffing at the air, and Terrier feels as if the baby is sniffing at his soul, looking at his deepest secrets. Recoiling, he finds himself thinking of the baby as a devil. He runs out of the parish and across town, and gives the child to a orphanage on the outskirts of the city. Grenouille has an extraordinary power to discern odors. He navigates the orphanage using only his nose, and barely uses his sight. The other children do not hate him, but they did try to suffocate him several times without knowing precisely why. Grenouille grew up cold and unfeeling; he was unafraid of anything and took punishment easily. When the owner of the orphanage discovers that Grenouille can locate hidden money with his sense of scent, she became afraid and later got rid of him by apprenticing him to a tanner. Later in life, the orphanage owner loses all her money and dies in a disgraceful way that she was afraid of. Grenouille explores the city during his free time, and memorizes all the smells of Paris. He has no bias or preferences against scent and seeks out every smell and every variation of every smell that he can find. He seeks scents for the sake of knowing, and he had no purpose in gathering all the scents but to satisfy his greed for smells. One day, on a day when he had memorized nearly all the smells of the city, he smells a scent that he has never smelled before. Entranced, he traces it with his nose, and finds that the source of this scent is a young, virginal girl just passing puberty (14-15 years old), who is slicing plums. Grenouille's heart starts beating; it is the start of a passion, but Grenouille, who has never felt anything like love or affection before, does not know what it is. Unnoticed, he gets closer to her, to get a better smell of her scent. The girl feels that something is not right and turns, sees Grenouille, and freezes in terror. Grenouille clamps his hand over her mouth. Scared, the girl does not fight back. Grenouille smothers her, with his eyes closed and concerned only with her scent. When she dies, he strips her, lays her down on the ground and smells her scent until it disappears from her body due to death. He does his best to remember every bit of her scent. This is the first time he felt a smell as being "good". In a happy daze, Grenouille returns to the tanner's shop where he sleeps. He decides that he must become a creator of scents, the greatest perfumer in the world, in order to create scents like the scent of the girl. He starts organizing the millions of scents he had gathered in his mental library into thousands of categories, such as fine, coarse, good, bad, fetid, and ambrosial. In his quest to isolate and preserve scents, he becomes apprenticed to a once great perfumer, Baldini, and proves himself a talented pupil. His superior power to discern and dissect scents helps create wondrous perfumes and makes Baldini the most popular perfumer in Paris. However, Grenouille's ambitions are unmatched by technology: he cannot isolate the scent of inorganic materials, such as glass and iron, with the alembic that they use. At this shock, Grenouille falls ill with smallpox, presumably psychosomatically as a reaction to his body giving up on life as his quest can never be fulfilled. Yet Baldini has grown to cherish Grenouille for his skills and on his deathbed Baldini reveals to him that there are techniques other than distillation that can be used to preserve such odours. At this news, Grenouille miraculously recovers and resolves to journey to the city of Grasse, the home of the greatest perfumers, to continue his quest. After Grenouille leaves, great misfortune falls upon Baldini and his shop is destroyed, while he dies. On his way to Grasse, Grenouille travels the countryside and discovers that he is disgusted with the scent of humanity. As he travels, he first avoids a city, then towns, then starts avoiding people that he can smell that are miles away. He reaches the Massif Central, and finds a haven where he is liberated from the smell of humans. In the morning he laps at a thin stream of water for a couple hours and eat whatever he can get, including moss. After that, he crawls into a long, deep shaft in the ground, as far as he can get, where he is shielded from all scent except for dirt, rock, and water. There he wedges himself against the stone and falls into a sort of meditation, first imagining himself as the creator of his world—Grenouille the Great—, "seeding" the world with seeds of scent. Later, tired from the act of creation, he retreats into a purple palace with a vast and grand library of scents inside his mind, served by scentless spectres who bring him "vials" of his favourite scents while reading a book of all the scents he had ever smelled. And every day before he falls asleep he is brought the scent memory vial of the plum-slicing girl, and gets drunk with its splendor before sleeping. One day he wakes up from a nightmare, dreaming of being suffocated by a white fog. He knows that the white fog is his own odor, but he can't smell it. To shake off the confusion he examines his own scent for the first time. Going layer by layer from his surroundings and through his (now tattered) clothes and down to the grime and dirt he is covered in, he soon realizes that he has no scent at all. He is calm at this revelation, and squats in the dirt, simply nodding to himself. After a while, he dons his tattered clothing and leaves the mountain, after seven years of live there. Grenouille journeys to Montpellier with a fabricated story about being kidnapped, kept in a cave, fed by a basket on a rope, and released after 7 years without having any contact with anyone at all during that time. He catches the eye of the amateur scientist, the Marquis de La Taillade-Espinasse, who uses Grenouille to test his thesis of the "so-called fluidum letale". It was a basic theory that the ground and objects from the ground release a slow poison that causes aging, and that being away from the ground and in high altitudes would counteract that poison. The Marquis combines a treatment of decontamination and revitalization for Grenouille, and subsequently Grenouille looks like a clean gentleman for the first time in his life. However, Grenouille understands after the treatment, when he looks into a mirror, that the fluidum letale has no merit to it, and that his appearance has power. Grenouille in turn tricks his way into the laboratory of a perfumier. There he creates a body odour for himself from ingredients including "cat shit", "cheese", and "vinegar", which imitates human odor. Previously, nobody would notice Grenouille due to his lack of scent, but his new "disguise" tricks people into thinking that it is the scent of a human, and he is accepted by society. This event tells Grenouille how foolish the other humans were, since they were fooled by a simple perfume that he had made, and turns his hate for them into contempt. He decides that he wants to become the God of the world by controlling the world with his perfume, as he had been God in the dreams in the mountain. Grenouille runs away from Montpellier, whereas the Marquis wanted to keep Grenouille for his experiments and lectures. The Marquis later disappears after he climbed a tall mountain without gear and clothes in a blizzard to prove his theory of fluidum letale. Finally moving to Grasse, Grenouille once again becomes intoxicated by the scent of a young girl transitioning through puberty to womanhood: Laure. He believes her scent to be greater than that of the plum-slicing girl, but he also believes that she is not quite mature and plans to wait two more years until he can capture her scent at its peak, when she is sexually mature and her scent is at its purest. From a perfumier's widow and a working journeyman in Grasse, Grenouille learns how to trap scent in oil, not just in water as he did with an alembic, and experiments with animals. He discovers that he has to kill the animals to get a scent that is not polluted with fear and feces. While contemplating the scent of Laure, he is struck by the thought that whatever perfume that he could make would eventually run out. He shakes in fear, then realizes that he has to mix Laure's scent with those of others to make the ultimate perfume; one which will polish the scent into a even greater perfume make him be worshipped as a god. He starts a chain of murders; silently killing 24 beautiful virgin girls that have just reached sexual maturity. The victims were always naked, shaved, and had their virginity intact, which scared the villagers. Eventually, after two years of murders have passed, Laure's father pieces together the pattern of murders and realises that Laure, the most beautiful and beloved young woman in the city and just going through puberty, is most likely to be the next victim. He flees with Laure to hide and protect her, but Grenouille pursues them and kills Laure, capturing her scent. Grenouille is apprehended soon after completing his perfume and sentenced to death. On the day of his execution, the intoxicating scent of Laure combined with the backdrop essences of the 24 virgins he murdered overwhelms all present, and instead of an execution the whole town is overwhelmed by a mix of divine reverence and carnal passion, erupting into a massive orgy. The journeyman that Grenouille worked under is accused instead, and he is executed. Grenouille is pardoned for his crimes, blessed and revered, and Laure's father even wants to adopt him. Grenouille agrees, but has no desire to uphold his agreement. He had lived life in solitude, and found it unbearable. Likewise, he could not live among people. His only desire by then is to go to Paris to die. In Paris, Grenouille approaches a group of low-life people—thieves, murderers, whores, etc. He is not wearing any scent, so they do not notice him. When they do notice Grenouille, it is when he sprinkles some of his perfume on himself. Overcome with a sudden carnal passion and love, even more so than the people of Grasse, they jump on him with the desire to keep him to themselves. fighting for Grenouille, they draw knives and butcher him, consuming his body. After the passion wears off, the people look around and feel slightly disgusted and embarrassed for having just eaten a human being, but they have an overwhelming internal sense of happiness. They are "uncommonly proud. For the first time they had done something out of Love." (quote)

Rama II

Gentry Lee

70 years after the events of Rendezvous with Rama, a second Raman vessel enters our solar system. Its arrival is expected and an expedition is sent to unlock more of Rama's mysteries, but the crew are unprepared both for what they find and for the conflicts that arise between them. Rama II brings new characters into a new story and is mostly unrelated to the original and largely serves to set up its own sequels. It ends with three of the twelve astronauts stranded inside Rama as it travels out of the solar system, Nicole des Jardins Wakefield, Richard Wakefield and Michael O'Toole. Unlike Rendezvous with Rama, which depicted a utopian future and focused almost entirely on the hard science fiction elements regarding the scientific wonders of the alien spacecraft, Rama II and its sequels deconstruct Clarke's vision of human colonies throughout the solar system through a global economic crisis that forced their almost total deactivation. Then follows a very different storytelling that brings forward contemporary issues like abortion, racism, drug abuse and organized crime.

Planet of Exile

Ursula K. Le Guin

The story is set on Werel, the third planet of the Gamma Draconis system. The planet has an orbital period of 60 Earth years, and is approaching its correspondingly long winter. The main characters belong to one of two major groups: Wold and his daughter Rolery are members of the Tevarans, a tribe of humanoid extraterrestrial indigenous to the planet. Jakob Agat is a young man from a dwindling colony of Earth humans that have been effectively marooned on the planet. Although both populations share a common genetic heritage in the Hainish people, the difference is significant enough to prevent interbreeding (at least, so it is believed at the beginning of the story). The relationship between the two groups has long been tense and characterized by limited interaction. However, with the approaching dangers of winter and mauraders, the visit of curious young Rolery to the colony becomes a sign of coming changes.

Fortress Besieged

Qian Zhongshu

Set in the 1930s it follows the misadventures of Fang Hung-chien, a bumbling everyman who wastes his time studying abroad, and secures a fake degree when learning he has run out of money and must return home to China. The first part of the novel is set on the boat home, where Fang courts two young ladies. Fang was the son of a country gentleman. A marriage had been arranged for him while at university, but the intended wife died before he could see her. After completing a degree in Chinese literature, he went to Europe where he studied at several universities without pursuing a degree. After being pressured by his family, he bought a fake degree from an American Irishman. The year was 1937, and Fang was returning to China from Europe along with other graduating Chinese students. One fellow traveler was Miss Su, in her late 20s. She is quite pretty in a thin and pallid style, but her choosy attitude towards men means she is still unattached and getting slightly desperate. Another young lady on board was Miss Pao, who tended towards the tanned and voluptuous. Fang pursued Miss Pao with some success during the voyage. However, when the boat reached Hong Kong, Miss Pao disembarked into the embrace of her fiancee, a middle-aged, balding doctor, and Fang realised he had been used. Fang then became more intimate with Miss Su. However, after they disembarked at Shanghai, Fang became occupied with finding a job, and attending matchmaking sessions arranged by his parents and former in-laws. After one failed attempt, Fang decided to contact Miss Su. While visiting her he also met her cousin, Miss T'ang, and another suitor of Miss Su's. The second section follows his securing a teaching post at a new university - where his fake credentials are used to keep him in line, and in the third part, it centers on his disastrous marriage. The novel ends with his wife leaving him, while he listens to a clock chiming.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

C. S. Lewis

The two youngest Pevensie children, Lucy and Edmund, are staying with their odious cousin Eustace Scrubb while their older brother Peter is studying for his university entrance exams with Professor Kirke, and their older sister Susan is traveling through America with their parents. Edmund, Lucy, and Eustace are drawn into the Narnian world through a picture of a ship at sea. (The painting, hanging neglected in the guest bedroom that the Pevensie children were using, had been an unwanted present to Eustace's parents.) The three children land in the ocean near the pictured vessel, the titular Dawn Treader, and are taken aboard. The Dawn Treader is the ship of Caspian X, King of Narnia, who was the key character in the previous book (Prince Caspian). Edmund and Lucy (along with Peter and Susan) helped him gain the throne from his evil uncle Miraz. Three years have passed since then, peace has been established in Narnia, and Caspian has undertaken his oath to find the seven lost Lords of Narnia. Lucy and Edmund are delighted to be back in Narnia, but Eustace is less enthusiastic, as he has never been there before and had taunted his cousins with his belief that the country never existed. The Talking Mouse Reepicheep is also on board, as he hopes to find Aslan's Country beyond the seas of the "utter East". They first make landfall in the Lone Islands, nominally Narnian territory but fallen away from Narnian ways: in particular the slave trade flourishes here, despite Narnian law stating that it is forbidden. Caspian, Lucy, Edmund, Eustace and Reepicheep are captured as merchandise by a slave trader, and a man "buys" Caspian before they even reach the slave market. He turns out to be the first lost lord, Lord Bern, who moved to the islands and married a woman there after being banished from Narnia by Miraz. When Caspian reveals his identity, Bern acknowledges him as King. Caspian reclaims the islands for Narnia, and replaces Gumpas, the greedy governor, with Lord Bern, whom he names Duke of the Lone Islands. At the second island they visit, Eustace leaves the group to avoid participating in the work needed to render the ship seaworthy after a storm has damaged it, and hides in a dead dragon's cave to escape a sudden downpour. The dragon's treasure arouses his greed: he fills his pockets with gold and jewels and puts on a large golden bracelet; but as he sleeps, he is transformed into a dragon. As a dragon, he becomes aware of how bad his previous behaviour was, and uses his strength to help make amends. Caspian recognizes the bracelet: it belonged to Lord Octesian, another of the lost lords. They speculate that the dragon killed Octesian — or even that the dragon was Octesian. Aslan turns Eustace back into a boy, and as a result of his experiences he is now a much nicer person. They make stops at Burnt Island; at Deathwater Island (so named for a pool of water which turns everything immersed in it into gold, including one of the missing lords who turns out to have been Lord Restimar); at the Duffers' Island, where Lucy herself encounters Aslan; and at the Island Where Dreams Come True — called the Dark Island since it is permanently hidden in darkness. They rescue a desperate Lord Rhoop from this last. Eventually they reach the Island of the Star, where they find the three remaining lost lords in enchanted sleep. Ramandu, the fallen star who lives on the island, tells them that the only way to awaken them is to sail to the edge of the world and there to leave one member of the crew behind. The Dawn Treader continues sailing into an area where merpeople dwell and the water turns sweet rather than salty. At last the water becomes so shallow that the ship can go no farther. Caspian orders a boat lowered and announces that he will go to the world's end with Reepicheep. The crew object, saying that as King of Narnia he has no right to abandon them. Caspian goes to his cabin in a temper, but returns to say that Aslan appeared in his cabin and told him that only Lucy, Edmund, Eustace, and Reepicheep will go on. These four named venture in a small boat through a sea of lilies until they reach a wall of water that extends into the sky. Fulfilling Ramandu's condition, Reepicheep paddles his coracle up the waterfall and is never again seen in Narnia (Lewis hints that he reaches Aslan's Country). Edmund, Eustace, and Lucy find a lamb, who transforms into Aslan and tells them that Edmund and Lucy will not return to Narnia – that they should learn to know him by another name in their own world. He then sends the children home. In their own world, everyone remarks on how Eustace has changed and "you'd never know him for the same boy" - although his mother believes that Edmund and Lucy have been a bad influence on him.

The Silver Chair

C. S. Lewis

The story starts when Eustace Scrubb, introduced in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, is driven into the company of classmate Jill Pole at their miserable school Experiment House. The impetus is their need to find sanctuary from the gang of school bullies who run rampant in this laissez-faire and mismanaged school run by an incompetent headmistress. Eustace confides to Jill that he has recently been "out of this world" to a land called Narnia, and that his experiences there have led to the changes in his behaviour that everyone seems to have noticed. Jill initially believes that Eustace is lying, but when he promises and asks her to attempt to go to Narnia with him, she agrees. When the bullies are about to converge on the two, Eustace suggests asking for Aslan's help, and the two blunder through a gate that leads them to a high cliff in Aslan's Country. Jill shows off by approaching the cliff's edge, and Eustace, trying to pull her back, falls over the edge. Aslan appears and saves Eustace by blowing him to Narnia. He charges Jill with helping Eustace find Prince Rilian of Narnia (the son of King Caspian X, he disappeared some years before), and he gives Jill four Signs to guide her and Eustace on their quest. The fourth and final Sign is that at a key moment they will be asked to do something in Aslan's name. Aslan then blows Jill into Narnia, where she arrives a few moments after Eustace—just as an elderly and frail King takes ship and sails from the harbor. Jill remembers the Signs, and asks Eustace if he has seen an 'old friend'. They eventually realize that the departing King is actually King Caspian X, who has set off to search for Aslan or his son. Trumpkin the Dwarf, now Lord Regent and quite deaf, provides Jill and Eustace with rooms in Cair Paravel, but on the advice of Glimfeather the Owl they make no mention of their quest. Instead, they are summoned by Master Glimfeather to a Parliament of his fellow talking owls (a pun on Chaucer's Parlement of Foules, but also a nod towards the use of the word "parliament" as a collective noun for owls). The owls explain that Caspian's son, Prince Rilian, disappeared while searching for the green serpent that killed his mother, and is under the spell of an enchantress. Jill and Eustace are flown to the marshes on the northern edge of Narnia where they are partnered with the delightfully gloomy but stalwart Marsh-wiggle Puddleglum, who serves as a guide, hunter for food in the wilderness, and down-to-earth voice of reason. They journey toward the giant-lands north of Narnia after crossing the River Shribble. The first giants they encounter take no notice of them, and the trio continue north where they encounter a deep and sinister canyon. The only route across this barrier is an enormous and ancient bridge, many times larger in scale than anything a human might normally use. Hungry and suffering from exposure, they cross the bridge and meet the Lady of the Green Kirtle accompanied by a silent knight in black armour. She encourages them to proceed northward to Harfang, the castle of the "Gentle Giants". There, she tells them, they will find warm beds and hot food while the Giants celebrate their Autumn Feast. Jill and Eustace are overtaken at the thought of comfort and warmth, and forget all about the signs and the quest, with only straight-headed Puddleglum arguing against the journey to Harfang. Upon their arrival, they find the Gentle Giants only too pleased to "have them for their Autumn Feast." After a night of rest, the three look out a window of the castle and discover the obvious ruins of a giant city in the valley below. They also see the words "Under Me" engraved on the road, which they recognize as Aslan's third Sign. Later they make another discovery: that the giants are planning to eat them for the Autumn Feast. After finding an unguarded door, Scrubb, Pole, and Puddleglum escape the castle only to be chased by hunting dogs and giant nobles. They take shelter in a cave under the ruined city, where they fall down a long dark slope into Underland. Battered and bruised, they are now in complete darkness; but they have followed the Sign that said "Under Me". They are found by an army of earthmen, who take them aboard a boat across a Sunless Sea to the city ruled by the Lady of the Green Kirtle. Her protégé, a young man, greets the travellers pleasantly but does not seem right in the head. He explains that he suffers from nightly psychotic episodes, and during these episodes he must, by the Lady's orders, be bound to a silver chair; for if he is released, he will turn into a deadly green serpent and kill everyone in sight. The threesome determine to witness the youth in his torment, as they sense it could be the key to their quest. When the young man is tied to his chair, his "ravings" seem instead to indicate desperation to escape an enchanted captivity. After launching a battery of dire threats, the youth finally begs his companions to release him in the name of Aslan. Recognizing the fourth Sign, they hesitantly do so. Far from their apprehension of him turning into a serpent or killing them, the young man thanks them. He declares that he is the vanished Prince Rilian, kept underground by the Lady of the Green Kirtle as part of her plot to conquer Overland. The Green Lady returns and tries to bewitch them all into forgetting who they are. The barefoot Puddleglum stamps out the enchantress's magical fire and breaks her spell. The enraged Lady transforms herself into a green serpent, and Rilian realizes that he has been enslaved all these years by his mother's murderer. Rilian kills the serpent with the help of Eustace and Puddleglum, and leads the travellers to escape from Underland. The gnomes, who had also been magically enslaved by the Lady, are now freed by her death and joyfully return to their home even deeper in the earth, a land called Bism. One of them shows Rilian's party a route to the surface before leaving. Rilian returns to Cair Paravel as King Caspian is returning home, and Caspian is reunited with his long-lost son just before dying. Aslan appears and congratulates Eustace and Jill on achieving their goal, then returns them to the stream in his country where Jill first met him. The body of King Caspian appears in the stream, and Aslan instructs Eustace to drive a thorn into the lion's paw. Eustace obeys, and Aslan's blood flows over the dead King, who is revived and returned to youth. Aslan explains that when Jill and Eustace return to their own world, Caspian will go with them briefly, to help set things right there. At the portal between the worlds, Aslan roars, and part of the wall surrounding Experiment House collapses. Caspian, Eustace, and Jill cross the wall and give the school bullies a sound thrashing. The beaten bullies run back towards the school in terror, having also seen Aslan, who lets them glimpse his back as part of the plan. In the confusion Eustace and Jill sneak back into the school building and change into their school clothes, while Aslan and Caspian return to Aslan's country. The headmistress calls the police with a wild story of armed hoodlums and an enormous lion on the school grounds; subsequent enquiries expose her incompetence and mismanagement. The worst of the bullies are expelled and the incompetent headmistress given a new job - failing as a school inspector, she is eventually elected to Parliament. Experiment House becomes a well-managed learning institution, and Eustace and Jill remain good friends.

Geek Love

Katherine Dunn

The novel takes place in two time periods: the first deals with the Binewski children's constant struggle against each other through life. They especially have to deal with the Machiavellian Arty as he develops his own cult: Arturism. In this cult, Arty persuades people to have their limbs amputated so that they can be like Arty, the cult leader, in their search for the principle he calls PIP ("Peace, Isolation, Purity"). Each member moves up in stages, losing increasingly significant chunks of their body, starting with their toes and fingers. As Arty battles his siblings to maintain control over his followers, competition between their respective freak shows slowly begins to take over their lives. The second story is set in the present and is centered on Oly's daughter, Miranda. Nineteen-year-old Miranda does not know Oly is her mother. She lives on a trust fund created by Oly before she gave up her daughter to be raised by nuns. This had been urged by her brother Arty, who was also Miranda's father (not through sexual intercourse, but by the telekinetic powers of Chick, who carried Arty's sperm directly to Oly's ovum). Oly lives in the same rooming house as Miranda so she can "spy" on her. Miranda has a special defect of her own, a small tail, which she flaunts at a local fetish strip club. There she meets Mary Lick, who tries to convince her to have the tail cut off. Lick is a wealthy woman who pays attractive women to get disfiguring operations, ostensibly so they may live up to their potential instead of becoming sex objects; it is implied, however, that Lick's real motivation is to punish them for being more attractive than she is. Oly plans to stop Lick in order to protect her daughter.

City of Illusions

Ursula K. Le Guin

The story starts as a man is found by a small community (housed in one building) in a forest area in eastern North America. He is naked except for a gold ring on one finger, has no memory except of motor skills at a level equivalent to that of a one-year-old and has bizarre, amber, cat-like eyes.  The villagers choose to welcome and nurture him, naming him Falk (Yellow).  They teach him to speak, educate him about the Earth, and teach him from a book they consider holy, which is Le Guin's "long-translated" version of the Tao Te Ching. Also they teach him about the nature of the never-seen Shing. After six years, Falk is told by the leader of the community that he needs to understand his origins, and as such sets off alone for Es Toch, the city of the Shing in the mountains of western North America. He encounters many obstacles to learning the truth about himself and about the Shing, along with evidence of the barbarism of current human society.  Along the way, it is sometimes suggested to him that the image he holds of the Shing is a distorted one; that they respect the idea of 'reverence for life' and are essentially benevolent and non-alien rulers. This suggestion comes from both telepathic animals who remind him for their own self-defense, and from Estrel, a young woman whom Falk meets after being captured by the Basnasska tribe in the great plains. Falk escapes this violent community with Estrel, to reach the city under her guidance. Falk finally reaches Es Toch, where Estrel betrays him into the hands of the Shing and laughs as she does so. He is told that he is part of a crew of a starship of alien/human hybrids from a planet called Werel and meets a young man, Orry, who came with him in the ship. At this point it becomes clear that Estrel is a human collaborator working for the Shing, and that she had been sent to retrieve him from the wilds of so-called Continent 1. The Shing tell Falk that * they are in fact humans; * the conflict between the League and an alien invader never occurred: on the contrary, the League self-destructed through civil war and exploitation; * the "enemy" is an invention of the Shing rulers themselves to try and ensure through fear that world peace endures under their benevolent, if misunderstood, rule; * Falk's expedition was attacked by rebels who then erased Falk's memory of his previous self; * and the Shing, who managed to save only Orry from the rebel attack, now want to restore Falk's previous identity. Falk however believes that the Shing are non-human liars and that their true intent is to determine for their own purposes, the location of his home-planet. Seeing no other way forward, Falk consents to have his memory erased. The mind of the original Werelian, Agad Ramarren, is restored and the Falk personality is apparently destroyed. He emerges as a new person with pre-Falk memories and vastly greater scientific knowledge. Ramarren's first name, Agad, recalls Jakob Agat, one of the chief protagonists of Planet of Exile: of whom he is a descendant. However, thanks to a memory triggering mnemonic device Falk had left for himself (an instruction, through young Orry, to read the beginning of the book he travels with, his translation of the Tao Te Ching), the Falk personality is revived. After some instability Falk's and Ramarren's minds come to coexist. By comparing the knowledge given to them before and after Ramarren's reemergence, the joint minds are able to detect the essential dishonesty of the Shing's rule and the fact that the alien conquerors can lie telepathically. It was this power that had enabled the not very numerous Shing: "exiles or pirates or empire-builders from some distant star", to overthrow the League of All Worlds twelve centuries before. The Werelians' mental powers are significantly greater than those of their human ancestors. The Shing are inhibited by a cultural dread of killing or being killed and would have no effective defense against any expedition that came forewarned. Still ignorant of the survival of the Falk persona, the Shing hope to send Ramarren back to Werel to present their version of Earth as a happy garden planet prospering under their benign guidance and in no need of outside help. Falk/Ramarren, now fully aware of the brutalized and misruled reality, pretends to accept this, postponing the return journey. Eventually, while on a pleasure trip to view another part of the Earth, the Shing he is with takes telepathic control of Ramarren but is then overcome by Falk, operating as a separate person. Now controlling the Shing, he makes his escape, manipulating his prisoner to show him where to find the ship that would take him home, and how to program it. (He discovers here that the Shing use a totally alien system of mathematics, quite different from the Cetian mathematics used by all human worlds.) Falk/Ramarren finally leaves for his planet, with Orry and the captive Shing who he has used. He can go back home and organize the liberation of the Earth, but this means cutting himself off from his friends there. While City of Illusions concludes at this point, Falk/Ramarren's mission apparently succeeds in bringing freedom to the home world of Terra. In The Left Hand of Darkness, Genly Ai comes from Earth and remembers the 'Age of the Enemy' as something dreadful but now past. He also knows of the Werelians, now called Alterrans. The fate of the Shing is not mentioned, either there or in any later book.

Malafrena

Ursula K. Le Guin

The story takes place from 1825 to 1830, when Orsinia is ruled by the Austrian Empire. The hero is Itale Sorde, the son of the owner of an estate on a lake called Malafrena in a valley of the same name. Itale leaves the estate, against his father's will, to engage in nationalistic and revolutionary politics in the capital.

The Mosquito Coast

Paul Theroux

The film opens with Charlie Fox (River Phoenix) explaining that his father, Allie Fox (Harrison Ford), is a brilliant inventor with "nine patents, six pending." Allie has grown fed up with the American Dream and American consumerism, believing that Americans "buy junk, sell junk and eat junk," and that there is an impending nuclear war on the horizon as a result of American greed and crime. Allie and Charlie go to a hardware store to buy components for a new invention, an ice machine known as Fat Boy. Upon seeing that the product was made in Japan, Allie refuses to purchase it. After Allie and Charlie acquire the components at a local dump, he finishes assembling his creation. Allie's boss and asparagus farm owner, Mr. Polski (Dick O'Neill) complains that Allie is not tending to the asparagus, which is rotting. Allie, Charlie, and Allie's youngest son, Jerry (Jadrien Steele), meet Mr. Polski, and Allie shows him "Fat Boy." The machine leaves Polski unimpressed. As he drives past the fields, a dejected Allie comments on immigrants picking asparagus, and says that where they come from, they might think of ice as a luxury. The home of the migrant workers is in a state of disarray, exemplifying their poverty. That night, Jerry tells "Mother" (Helen Mirren), that he believes something terrible is about to happen. Mother rebuffs her son, explaining that she believes something good will happen. The next morning, Allie throws a party for the immigrant workers before telling his family that they're leaving the United States. After they board a Panamanian barge, the family meets Reverend Spellgood (Andre Gregory), a Christian missionary, his wife (Melanie Boland), and their daughter, Emily (Martha Plimpton). Emily flirts with Charlie. Allie and the Reverend begrudgingly try to get along, despite having entirely different religious views. When the barge docks in Belize City, the families disembark and go their separate ways. Allie, with the consent of the Belize government, purchases a small village called Jeronimo in the rainforest along the river. Mr. Haddy (Conrad Roberts) takes Allie and his family upriver to Jeronimo. Allie meets the inhabitants and proceeds to start building a new, 'advanced' civilization, in the process inventing many new things. The locals take kindly to Allie and his family, but Allie's will to build a utopic civilization keeps them working to their limits. One day, Reverend Spellgood arrives to convert Jeronimo's citizens. In the process, Allie and Spellgood angrily denounce each other, leading to a permanent schism: Allie believes Spellgood to be a religious zealot; Spellgood believes Allie to be a communist. Allie sets to constructing a huge version of "Fat Boy" that can supply Jeronimo with ice. Upon completing the machine, Allie hears rumors of a native tribe in the mountains that have never seen ice. Allie recruits his two sons to carry a load of ice into the jungle to supply the tribe. Upon arriving, Allie finds that the load has melted, and that the tribe has already been visited by missionaries. When Allie returns to Jeronimo, he learns that Spellgood has left with much of the populace, scaring them with stories of God's biblical destruction. The near-empty town is visited by rebels, who demand to use Jeronimo as a guerrilla base. Allie and his family accept to accommodate them while Allie constructs a plan to be rid of them. Set on freezing them to death, Allie bunks the rebels up in the giant ice machine, tells Charlie to lock its only other exit, and activates it. The rebels, waking in panic, try to shoot their way through. To Allie's horror, the rebels' gunfire sets off an explosion within the machine. By the next morning, both the machine and the family's home is in ruins. Worse, the chemicals from the destroyed machine have severely polluted the river. Forced downstream, Allie and his family arrive at the coast. Mother and the children rejoice, believing they can return to the United States. Allie, refusing to believe his dream has been shattered, announces that they have all they need on the beach and, lying, tells the family that America's been destroyed in a nuclear war. Settling on the beach in a houseboat he has built, and refusing assistance from Mr. Haddy, a paranoid Allie believes that the family has accomplished building a utopia. One night, the storm surge from a tropical cyclone nearly forces the family out to sea until Charlie reveals that he has been hiding motor components given to him by Mr. Haddy, allowing them to start the motor on the boat. The family becomes physically and emotionally weaker for lack of food, shelter, and other human companionship. Traveling upstream once again, the family stumbles across Spellgood's compound. Coming ashore, Allie sees barbed wire, and believes the settlement to be a Christian concentration camp. While the rest of the family sleeps, Charlie and Jerry sneak over to the Spellgood home. After finding out that the United States was not destroyed and that Emily will assist them in escaping from Allie, Charlie obtains the keys to a jeep. Before Charlie can convince Mother and his sisters to leave, Allie sets Spellgood's church on fire. Spellgood shoots Allie, paralyzing him from the neck down. The family escapes aboard the boat. The film concludes with the group traveling downriver again, where Allie drifts in and out of consciousness. Allie asks his wife if they are going upstream. She lies to him - going against the wishes of her husband for the first time. Charlie's final narration reports the death of Allie, but gives hope that the rest of the family can live their lives freely from now on.

The Awakening

Kate Chopin

The novel opens with the Pontellier family vacationing on Grand Isle at a resort on the Gulf of Mexico managed by Madame Lebrun and her two sons, Robert and Victor. The Pontellier family is composed of Léonce Pontellier, a businessman of Louisiana Creole heritage; his wife Edna, and their two sons, Etienne and Raoul. Edna spends most of her time with her close friend Adèle Ratignolle. In a boisterious and cheery manner, Adèle reminds Edna of her duties as a wife and mother. At Grand Isle, Edna eventually forms a connection with Robert Lebrun, a charming and earnest young man who actively seeks Edna's attention and affections. When they fall deeply in love, Robert senses the doomed nature of such a relationship, flees to Mexico under the guise of pursuing a nameless business venture. At this point in the novel, the narrative focus shifts to Edna's complex, shifting emotions as she reconciles her maternal duties with her desire to be with Robert and her desire for social freedom. With the summer vacation over, the Pontelliers return to New Orleans. Edna gradually reassesses her priorities and takes a more active role in her own happiness. She starts to isolate herself from New Orleans society and withdraw from some of the duties traditionally associated with motherhood. Léonce eventually calls in a doctor to diagnose her, fearing she is losing her mental faculties. The doctor advises Léonce to let her be. When Léonce prepares to travel to New York City on business, he sends the boys to his mother and leaves Edna alone at home for an extended period. This gives Edna physical and emotional room to breathe and think over various aspects of her life. While her husband is still away, she moves out of her house and into a small bungalow nearby, spicing up this transitional period by dallying with Alcée Arobin, a persistent suitor with a reputation for being free with his affections. For the first time in the novel, Edna is shown as a sexual being, but the affair proves awkward and emotionally fraught. The other person to whom Edna reaches out during this time is Mademoiselle Reisz, a gifted recitalist whose playing is renowned throughout New Orleans but who maintains a generally hermetic existence. At a party earlier in the novel, Edna is profoundly moved by Mademoiselle Reisz's playing. Mademoiselle Reisz is in contact with Robert while he is in Mexico, receiving letters from him regularly. Edna begs her to reveal their contents, which she does, proving to Edna that Robert is thinking about her. Eventually Robert returns to New Orleans. At first aloof (and finding excuses not to be near Edna), he eventually confesses his passionate love for her. He admits that the business trip to Mexico was an excuse to get away from a relationship that would never work. Edna is called away to help Adèle with a difficult childbirth. Adèle pleads with Edna to think of what she would be turning her back on if she did not behave appropriately. When Edna returns home, she finds a note from Robert stating that he has left forever. Devastated, Edna rushes back to Grand Isle, where she had first met Robert Lebrun. The novel ends with Edna allowing herself to be overtaken by the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

The Blithedale Romance

Nathaniel Hawthorne

The novel takes place in the utopian community of Blithedale, presumably in the mid-1800s. The main character, Miles Coverdale, embarks on a quest for betterment of the world through the agrarian lifestyle and community of the Blithedale Farm. The story begins with Coverdale's chat with a character named Old Moodie, who reappears throughout the story. The legend of the mysterious Veiled Lady is introduced; she is a popular clairvoyant who disappears unannounced from the social scene. Coverdale then makes the voyage to Blithedale, where he is introduced to such characters as Zenobia and Mr. and Mrs. Silas Foster. At their first community dinner they are interrupted by the arrival of Hollingsworth, a previous acquaintance of Coverdale's, who is carrying a frail, pale girl. Though Hollingsworth believes the girl (whose age is never clarified) is an expected guest, none of the Blithedale citizens recognize her. She immediately develops a strong attachment to Zenobia, and reveals her name to be Priscilla. Soon after, Coverdale becomes severely ill and is bedridden. Hollingsworth takes care of him, as does Zenobia, and he returns to health shortly. However, during his sickness, he believes he is on the brink of death and develops a closeness with Hollingsworth due to their anxiety-ridden situation and discussion of worldly ideals. As he recovers and spring comes, the residents of the community begin to work the land successfully and prove to their neighbors the plausibility of their cause. Priscilla starts to open up, and relationships between the other characters develop as well. Tension in the friendship between Coverdale and Hollingsworth intensifies as their philosophical disagreements continue. Meanwhile, Zenobia and Hollingsworth become close and rumor flies they might build a house together. Mr. Moodie makes a reappearance and asks about Priscilla and Zenobia for reasons to be revealed later. Coverdale then meets a stranger who turns out to be a Professor Westervelt. Westervelt asks also about Zenobia and Hollingsworth. Coverdale does not like the Professor, and when he is retreating in a tree he overhears the Professor talking to Zenobia implying that they have a prior relationship. At this point, the story switches narrators when it becomes Zenobia telling a tale entitled “The Silvery Veil.” She describes the Veiled Lady and her background, though it is never revealed whether or not her version of the story is reality or fiction. After switching narration back to Coverdale, the story proceeds to Eliot's Pulpit, a place of rest and discourse for the four main characters Coverdale, Hollingsworth, Priscilla, and Zenobia. There they discuss women's rights, and Zenobia and Hollingsworth agree, against Coverdale, on a more misogynistic point of view. Their disagreements intensify the next day when Hollingsworth and Coverdale discuss their hopes for the future of Blithedale. They disagree so thoroughly that Coverdale renounces Hollingsworth and effectively ends their friendship. A turning point in the novel, the drama culminates with Coverdale's leaving the farm and returning to the city. He there shows a sort of voyeurism in peeping through hotel windows at a young man and another family. Whilst peeping, he spies Zenobia and Westervelt in another window. They notice, and, embarrassed and curious, Coverdale visits them and gets chastised by Zenobia. She also reveals that Priscilla is staying with them, then all three leave Coverdale for an unnamed appointment. Motivated once more by curiosity, he seeks out Old Moodie, who when drunk tells him the story of Fauntleroy Zenobia, and Priscilla. It turns out that Old Moodie is Fauntleroy, who was a once wealthy man and the father of Zenobia. He fell from grace, but remarried later and had another child, Priscilla, making the two women half sisters. Coverdale is extremely shocked and proceeds to a show of the Veiled Lady, where he recognizes Westervelt as the magician controlling the clairvoyant and Hollingsworth in the audience. He asks the whereabouts of Priscilla, and it is shortly revealed when Hollingsworth removes the veil that Priscilla is indeed the Veiled Lady. All of the main characters then return and meet up at Eliot's Pulpit, where Zenobia accosts Hollingsworth for his love for Priscilla, expresses her depression, and acknowledges her sisterhood with Priscilla. However, Priscilla chooses Hollingsworth over her and the three go their separate ways. When Zenobia recognizes that Coverdale witnessed this scene, she asks him to tell Hollingsworth that he has “murdered” her and tells him that when they next meet it will be behind the “black veil,” representing death. She leaves, and does not return. Hollingsworth, Coverdale, and Silas Foster form a search party and find Zenobia's body in the river. She is buried at Blithedale and given a simple funeral, at which Westervelt makes a last cryptic appearance and declares her suicide foolish. Hollingsworth is severely affected by the death, and it seems as she promised that Zenobia is haunting him. Priscilla is less affected due to her attachment solely to Hollingsworth, and the rest of the characters part and move on with their lives. The last chapter reflects on the wisdom and ideals of Coverdale, now cynical about his purpose in life. The last sentence reveals cause for his bleak, apathetic outlook—he was in love with Priscilla.

Under the Net

Iris Murdoch

Jake Donaghue has just arrived back in London from a trip to France. Finn, a distant relative who is so obliging that he is sometimes mistaken for a servant, tells Jake that they are being thrown out of Madge's house, where they have been living rent-free for eighteen months. A conversation with Madge reveals that they are being moved to make way for her new lover, the rich bookmaker Sammy Starfield. He goes with his suitcase to the cat-filled corner shop of Mrs Tinckham to check he has all his manuscripts and figure out where to live. Only one manuscript is missing: his translation of Le Rossignol de Bois, a novel by Jean-Pierre Breteuil. It is a mediocre work which he has done for money. He thinks of an old friend, a philosopher named Dave Gellman, and goes to his flat. A political meeting is being held there, and Dave is dismissive, but allows him to leave his suitcase. Finn suggests that he ask Anna Quentin, a singer he once fell in love with. Jake has not seen Anna for several years. He eventually tracks her down to the Riverside Miming Theatre, on Hammersmith Mall, and finds her in a prop room "like a vast toy shop". She is happy to see him, but somewhat uncomfortable when he asks about her new project, involving mime. She suggests that he ask her film-star sister, Sadie, for help. After she leaves he spends the night sleeping in the prop room. The next morning Jake goes to Welbeck Street to look for Sadie, and learns that she is at her Mayfair hairdresser. He spruces himself up, and goes to talk to her. She is very happy to see him there, and asks him to look after her flat while she hides from an admirer named Hugo Belfounder, a fireworks manufacturer who now owns a film studio. It so happens that Hugo was a former friend of Jake's. They had met long ago as fellow participants in a cold-cure experiment, and had had long philosophical discussions which Jake, without Hugo's knowledge, had turned into a book called The Silencer. Because Hugo believed that language was corrupt, Jake felt that creation of the book was a kind of betrayal, and had unilaterally broken off the friendship after its publication, not wishing to face Hugo's anger. Jake goes back to Madge's to fetch his radio, and finds Sammy there. Jake is prepared to fight, but the bookmaker is friendly and even offers him money to leave. This leads to a bet being placed by phone; they win £633 10s, and Sammy promises to send him a cheque. Jake goes to Sadie's flat to begin housesitting, and is surprised to see a copy of The Silencer on a bookshelf—did Hugo give it to her? His pleasure in the flat's luxury is soon destroyed: firstly by a call from Hugo, asking for Miss Quentin (he hangs up when he hears Jake), and secondly by the discovery that he has been deliberately locked in. He calls from the window to his friends, Dave and Finn, who pick the lock and rescue him. Jake resolves to find Hugo, who must love Anna, and have given her the idea for the mime theatre. The three men take a taxi to Holborn Viaduct. They find Hugo's door open, and a note left saying "Gone to the pub". This begins a pub crawl; they do not find Hugo, but get very drunk. At the Skinners' Arms, they are joined by Lefty Todd, a political activist. After Lefty subjects Jake to a kind of Socialist catechism, they go for a walk, and all but Dave have a swim in the Thames. The next morning, Dave belatedly hands Jake a letter from Anna; she wants to see him as soon as possible. He rushes to the Riverside Theatre, but everything has been packed up, and she is gone. Devastated, he takes a ride in the lorry carrying away the contents of the prop room. Jake goes back to Sadie's flat to purloin her copy of The Silencer, but on approaching her door he overhears a conversation between her and Sammy about his most recent translation. His prolonged eavesdropping attracts the puzzled attention of neighbours, but he manages to deduce that Sadie and Sammy are planning to use his translation of Le Rossignol de Bois as the basis of a film proposal, and that they are not planning to recompense him for its use. He is furious. With the help of Finn, Jake breaks into Sammy's flat in Chelsea in order to take the typescript, but they cannot find it; instead, on the spur of the moment, Jake decides to kidnap Sammy's filmstar dog, an Alsatian named Mr Mars, for the purposes of blackmail. They cannot open the dog's cage, and so with great difficulty they carry the whole cage away and file through the bars to get the dog out. A brief newspaper article reveals to Jake that Anna is travelling to Hollywood, via Paris. Accompanied by Mr Mars, Jake's search for Hugo takes him to Bounty Belfounder Studio, in South London. A huge crowd has gathered on a film set of Ancient Rome; they are listening to a political speech delivered by Lefty Todd. It is the first time in years that Jake has seen Hugo, and he drags him away in order to talk to him, but the sudden arrival of the United Nationalists causes a riot, and they have to run. Their attempts to escape the violence, which involve the improvised use of explosives, cause the collapse of the set. When the police arrive and announce that "no-one is to leave", Jake manages to evade questioning by telling Mr Mars to play dead, and carrying him out in his arms, supposedly in order to find a vet. Jake has to walk all the way back, and spends the night sleeping on a bench. On arriving back at Dave's he finds the cheque from Sammy for £600. Wondering what to do with Mr Mars, Jake asks Dave for help in drafting a blackmail letter, and after much discussion they decide to demand £100. Two telegrams arrive from Madge, bearing a job offer in Paris and an order of £30 for travel expenses. But Dave has to tell Jake that Sammy has cancelled the huge cheque. In dismay, they together decide to pool £50 for a bet on Lyrebird; then Jake leaves for France. In Paris, Jake is amazed to discover that Jean-Pierre Breteuil's latest novel, Nous les Vainqueurs, has won the Prize Goncourt, and having dismissed Breteuil's work for so long he is amazed and envious. Madge's offer turns out to be a kind of film industry sinecure, and he finds himself refusing it with distaste for reasons that he cannot explain. He realises that it is Bastille Day, and he wanders the city for hours in a daze. In the evening, he is watching fireworks when he sees Anna. He tries to follow her, but the crowd impedes him. He nearly catches up with her in a park, after she leaves her shoes in order to walk barefoot on the grass. But he briefly loses sight of her, and the woman he accosts is not her. Jake returns to London the next morning to find that Lyrebird has won at long odds, 20-1. Finn has taken his share of the money and disappeared. Several torpid days of inactivity follow, to the despair of Dave. Jake takes a job as an orderly at a hospital. When Hugo is admitted (he has been hit in the head with a brick at a political meeting), Jake sees his chance for a serious conversation with his old friend. But as an orderly he is strongly discouraged from talking to patients, and he decides to come back in the middle of the night. He leaves the window of a store-room open. With an immensity of pains, Jake succeeds in reaching Hugo's room shortly after one in the morning. The conversation is not at all what he expected: Hugo is not at all angry with Jake, and it turns out that while Anna is indeed besotted with Hugo, Hugo himself is in love with Sadie, and Sadie with Jake—not a love triangle, but a one-way love diamond. Hugo demands that Jake help him escape. Jake does so, but they are seen by the hostile porter, Stitch, and Jake knows that he has lost his job. When Jake next goes to Hugo's flat, he finds that Hugo has gone, leaving all he owns to Lefty and his political party. At Mrs Tinckham's, he reads letters from Finn and Sadie. Finn has gone back to Ireland, as he always said he would; Sadie is suggesting he buy Mr Mars for £700, and although this puts Jake back at square one financially, he decides it is the only possible course of action. With Mrs Tinckham, he listens to Anna singing on the radio, and having made his peace with Hugo and with The Silencer he realises that his literary career is just beginning.

Crystal Boys

Pai Hsien-yung

The story takes place in Taipei in the 1960s (or, in the most recent film adaptation, in 1973), and follows a short period in the life of a young man called Li-Qing (李青, nicknamed A-Qing). When A-Qing is expelled from his school because of "scandalous relations" with classmate Zhao Ying (趙英), his father kicks him out of the family home. A-Qing begins to hang out at a park called New Park, a gay cruising area and hangout for gay men, where he meets the novel's other primary characters.

The Two Noble Kinsmen

John Fletcher

A prologue informs the audience that the play is based on a story from Chaucer. Three queens come to plead with Theseus and Hippolyta, rulers of Athens, to avenge the deaths of their husbands at the hands of the tyrant Creon of Thebes. Creon has killed the three kings and refuses to allow them proper burial. Theseus agrees to wage war on Creon. In Thebes, Palamon and Arcite, cousins and close friends, are bound by duty to fight for Creon, though they are appalled by his tyranny. In a hard-fought battle Palamon and Arcite enact prodigies of courage, but the Thebans are defeated by Theseus. Palamon and Arcite are imprisoned, but philosophically resign themselves to their fate. Their stoicism is instantly destroyed when from their prison window they see the Athenian princess Emilia. Both fall in love with her, and their friendship turns to bitter rivalry. Arcite is released after a relative intercedes on his behalf. He is banished from Athens, but he disguises himself, wins a local wrestling match, and is appointed as Emilia's attendant. Meanwhile, the jailer's daughter has fallen in love with Palamon and helps him escape. She follows him, but he ignores her: still obsessed with Emilia. He lives in the forest half-starved, where he meets Arcite. The two argue, but Arcite offers to bring Palamon food, drink and armaments so that they can meet in an equal fight over Emilia. The jailer's daughter, forsaken, has gone mad. She sings and babbles in the forest. She meets a troupe of local countrymen who want to perform a Morris dance before the king and queen. Theseus and Hippolyta appear, hunting. The yokels perform a bizarre act for them with the jailer's mad daughter. The royal couple reward them. Arcite returns with the food and weapons. After a convivial dinner with reminiscences, the two fight. Theseus and his entourage arrive on the scene. He orders that Palamon and Arcite be arrested and executed. Hippolyta and Emilia intervene, and so Theseus agrees to a public tournament between the two for Emilia's hand. Each warrior will be allowed three companions to assist them. The loser and his companion knights will be executed. The jailer and his friends rescue his daughter. He tries to restore her mental health. With the advice of a doctor, he encourages her former suitor to pretend to be Palamon so that she will be gradually accustomed to see him as her true love. His devotion slowly wins her over. Before the tournament, Arcite prays to Mars that he win the battle; Palamon prays to Venus that he marry Emilia; Emilia prays to Diana that she be wed to the one who loves her best. Each prayer is granted: Arcite wins the combat, but is then thrown from his horse and dies, leaving Palamon to wed Emilia.

Things Fall Apart

Chinua Achebe

The protagonist Okonkwo is strong, hard-working, and strives to show no weakness. Although brusque with his three wives, children, and neighbours, he is wealthy, courageous, and powerful among the people of his village. He is a leader of his village, and he has accomplished a position in his society for which he has striven all his life. Because of the great esteem in which the village holds him, Okonkwo is selected by the elders to be the guardian of Ikemefuna, a boy taken prisoner by the village as a peace settlement between two villages after Ikemefuna's father killed an Umuofian woman. The boy lives with Okonkwo's family and Okonkwo grows fond of him. The boy looks up to Okonkwo and considers him a second father. The Oracle of Umuofia eventually pronounces that the boy must be killed. Ezeudu, the oldest man in the village, warns Okonkwo that he should have nothing to do with the murder because it would be like killing his own child. Rather than seem weak and feminine to the other men of the village, Okonkwo participates in the murder of the boy despite the warning from the old man. In fact, Okonkwo himself strikes the killing blow as Ikemefuna begs his "father" for protection. Shortly after Ikemefuna's death, things begin to go wrong for Okonkwo. During a gun salute at Ezeudu's funeral, Okonkwo's gun explodes and kills Ezeudu's son. He and his family are sent into exile for seven years to appease the gods he has offended. While Okonkwo is away, white men begin to arrive in Umuofia with the intent of introducing their religion. As the number of converts increases, the foothold of the white people grows and a new government is introduced. The village is forced to respond to the imposition of the white people's nascent society—whether by appeasement or through conflict. Returning from exile, Okonkwo finds his village a changed place because of the presence of the white man. He and other tribal leaders try to reclaim their hold on their native land by destroying a local Christian church. In return, the leader of the white government takes them prisoner and holds them for ransom for a short while, further humiliating and insulting the native leaders. As a result, the people of Umuofia finally gather for what could be a great uprising. Okonkwo, a warrior by nature and adamant about following Umuofian custom and tradition, despises any form of cowardice and advocates for war against the white men. When messengers of the white government try to stop the meeting, Okonkwo kills one of them. He realizes with despair that the people of Umuofia are not going to fight to protect themselves—his society's response to such a conflict, so long predictable and dictated by tradition, is changing. When the local leader of the white government comes to Okonkwo's house to take him to court, he finds that Okonkwo has hanged himself. Among his own people, Okonkwo's action has ruined his reputation and status, as it is strictly against the teachings of the Igbo to commit suicide.

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

Michael Lewis

The central premise of Moneyball is that the collected wisdom of baseball insiders (including players, managers, coaches, scouts, and the front office) over the past century is subjective and often flawed. Statistics such as stolen bases, runs batted in, and batting average, typically used to gauge players, are relics of a 19th century view of the game and the statistics that were available at the time. The book argues that the Oakland A's' front office took advantage of more analytical gauges of player performance to field a team that could compete successfully against richer competitors in Major League Baseball (MLB). Rigorous statistical analysis had demonstrated that on-base percentage and slugging percentage are better indicators of offensive success, and the A's became convinced that these qualities were cheaper to obtain on the open market than more historically valued qualities such as speed and contact. These observations often flew in the face of conventional baseball wisdom and the beliefs of many baseball scouts and executives. By re-evaluating the strategies that produce wins on the field, the 2002 Athletics, with approximately $41 million in salary, were competitive with larger market teams such as the New York Yankees, who spent over $125 million in payroll that same season. Because of the team's smaller revenues, Oakland is forced to find players undervalued by the market, and their system for finding value in undervalued players has proven itself thus far. Several themes Lewis explored in the book include: insiders vs. outsiders (established traditionalists vs. upstart proponents of sabermetrics), the democratization of information causing a flattening of hierarchies, and "the ruthless drive for efficiency that capitalism demands." The book also touches on Oakland's underlying economic need to stay ahead of the curve; as other teams begin mirroring Beane's strategies to evaluate offensive talent, diminishing the Athletics' advantage, Oakland begins looking for other undervalued baseball skills such as defensive capabilities. Moneyball also touches on the A's methods of prospect selection. Sabermetricians argue that a college baseball player's chance of MLB success is much higher than a traditional high school draft pick. Beane maintains that high draft picks spent on high school prospects, regardless of talent or physical potential as evaluated by traditional scouting, are riskier than if they were spent on more polished college players. Lewis cites A's minor leaguer Jeremy Bonderman, drafted out of high school in 2001 over Beane's objections, as but one example of precisely the type of draft pick Beane would avoid. Bonderman had all of the traditional "tools" that scouts look for, but thousands of such players have been signed by MLB organizations out of high school over the years and failed to develop. Lewis explores the A's approach to the 2002 MLB Draft, when the team had a nearly unprecedented run of early picks. The book documents Beane's often-tense discussions with his scouting staff (who favored traditional subjective evaluation of potential rather than objective sabermetrics) in preparation for the draft to the actual draft, which defied all expectations and was considered at the time a wildly successful (if unorthodox) effort by Beane. In addition, Moneyball traces the history of the sabermetric movement back to such people as Bill James (now a member of the Boston Red Sox front office) and Craig R. Wright. Lewis explores how James' seminal Baseball Abstract, an annual publication that was published from the late 1970s through the late 1980s, influenced many of the young, up-and-coming baseball minds that are now joining the ranks of baseball management.

The Wind Done Gone

Alice Randall

The plot of Gone with the Wind revolves around a pampered Southern woman named Scarlett O'Hara, who lives through the American Civil War and Reconstruction. The Wind Done Gone is the same story, but told from the viewpoint of Cynara, a mulatto slave on Scarlett's plantation and the daughter of Scarlett's father and Mammy; the title is an African American Vernacular English sentence that might be rendered "The Wind Has Gone" in Standard American English. Cynara's name comes from the Ernest Dowson poem Non sum qualís eram bonae sub regno Cynarae, a line from which ("I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind") was the origin of Mitchell's novel's title as well. Sold from the O'Haras, Cynara eventually makes her way back to Atlanta and becomes the mistress of a white businessman. She later leaves him for a black aspiring politician, eventually moving with him to Reconstruction Washington, D.C. The book consciously avoids using the names of Mitchell's characters or locations. Cynara refers to her sister as "Other", rather than Scarlett, and to Other's husband as "R" instead of Rhett Butler. Other is in love with "Dreamy Gentleman" (Ashley Wilkes), although he is married to "Mealy Mouth" (Melanie Wilkes). The magnificence of the O'Haras' house, Tara, is reduced to "Tata" or "Cotton Farm", and Twelve Oaks is renamed for its builders, "Twelve Slaves Strong as Trees".

Billy Budd

Herman Melville

The plot follows Billy Budd, a seaman impressed into service aboard HMS Bellipotent in the year 1797, when the British Royal Navy was reeling from two major mutinies and was threatened by the Revolutionary French Republic's military ambitions. He is impressed from another ship, The Rights of Man (named after the book by Thomas Paine). As his former ship moves off, Budd shouts, "Good-by to you too, old Rights-of-Man." Billy, an illegitimate orphan, has an openness and natural charisma that makes him popular with the crew. For unexplained reasons, he arouses the antagonism of the ship's Master-at-arms, John Claggart, who falsely accuses Billy of conspiracy to mutiny. When Claggart brings his charges to the Captain, the Hon. Edward Fairfax "Starry" Vere, he summons Claggart and Billy to his cabin for a private meeting. Claggart makes his charges, and Billy is unable to respond, as he has a speech impediment. He strikes and accidentally kills Claggart. Vere convenes a drumhead court-martial. He acts as convening authority, prosecutor, defense counsel and sole witness (except for Billy). He intervenes in the deliberations of the court-martial panel to argue them into convicting Billy, despite their and his belief in Billy's innocence. (Vere says in the moments following Claggart's death, "Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!") Vere claims to be following the letter of the Mutiny Act and the Articles of War. Vere and the other officers find that their own opinion matters little. "We are not talking about justice, we are talking about the law". The law states that an enlisted man killing an officer during wartime (accidentally or not) must hang. The court-martial convicts Billy following Vere's argument that any appearance of weakness in the officers and failure to enforce discipline could stir more mutiny throughout the British fleet. Condemned to be hanged the morning after his attack on Vere, Billy before his execution says, "God bless Captain Vere!" His words were repeated by the gathered crew in a "resonant and sympathetic echo." The novel closes with three chapters that present ambiguity: *Chapter 29 describes the death of Captain Vere. In a naval action against the French ship, Athée (the Atheist), Captain Vere is mortally wounded. His last words are "Billy Budd, Billy Budd." *Chapter 30 presents an extract from an official naval gazette purporting to give the facts of the fates of John Claggart and Billy Budd aboard HMS Bellipotent — but the "facts" offered turn the facts that the reader learned from the story upside down. The gazette article described Budd as a conspiring mutineer likely of foreign birth and mysterious antecedents who, when confronted by John Claggart, the master-at-arms loyally enforcing the law, stabs Claggart and kills him. The gazette concludes that the crime and weapon used suggest a foreign birth and subversive character; it reports that the mutineer was executed and nothing is amiss aboard HMS Bellipotent. *Chapter 31 reprints a cheaply printed ballad written by one of Billy's shipmates as an elegy. The adult, experienced man represented in the poem is not the innocent youth portrayed in the preceding chapters.

Bleak House

Charles Dickens

Sir Leicester Dedlock and Honoria, Lady Dedlock (his junior by more than 20 years) live at his estate of Chesney Wold. Unknown to Sir Leicester, Lady Dedlock had a lover, Captain Hawdon, before she married Sir Leicester — and had a child by him, Esther Summerson. Lady Dedlock, believing her daughter is dead, has chosen to live out her days 'bored to death' as a fashionable lady of the world. Esther is raised by Miss Barbary, Lady Dedlock's spartan sister, who instils a sense of worthlessness in her that Esther will battle throughout the novel. Esther doesn't know that Miss Barbary is her aunt, thinking of her only as her godmother. When Miss Barbary dies, the Chancery lawyer Conversation Kenge takes charge of Esther's future on the instruction of his client, John Jarndyce. Jarndyce becomes Esther's guardian, and after attending school in Reading for six years, Esther moves in with him at Bleak House, along with his wards, Richard Carstone and Ada Clare. Esther is to be Ada's companion. Esther soon befriends both Ada and Richard, who are cousins. They are beneficiaries in one of the wills at issue in Jarndyce and Jarndyce; their guardian is a beneficiary under another will, and in some undefined way the two wills conflict. Richard and Ada soon fall in love, but though Mr. Jarndyce doesn't oppose the match, he stipulates that Richard (who is inconstant) must first choose a profession. Richard first tries the medical profession, and Esther first meets the newly-qualified Dr. Allan Woodcourt at the house of Richard's prospective tutor, Mr. Baynham Badger. When Richard mentions the prospect of gaining from the resolution of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, John Jarndyce beseeches him never to put faith in what he calls "the family curse". Meanwhile, Lady Dedlock is also a beneficiary under one of the wills in Jarndyce and Jarndyce. Early in the book, while listening to her solicitor, the close-mouthed but shrewd Mr. Tulkinghorn, read an affidavit aloud, she recognizes the handwriting on the copy. The sight affects her so much that she almost faints, which Tulkinghorn notes and thinks should be investigated. He traces the copyist who turns out to be a pauper known only as "Nemo" who has recently died. The only person to identify him is a street-sweeper, a poor homeless boy named Jo. Lady Dedlock also investigates the matter disguised as her French maid, Mademoiselle Hortense. She pays Jo to take her to Nemo's grave. Meanwhile, Tulkinghorn is convinced that Lady Dedlock's secret might threaten the interests of his client, Sir Leicester Dedlock, and watches her constantly, even enlisting the maid, who detests her. Esther meets her mother at church and talks with her later at Chesney Wold - though, at first, neither woman recognizes the tie that binds them. Later, Lady Dedlock realizes that her abandoned child is not dead and is, in fact, Esther. She waits to confront Esther with this knowledge until Esther survives an unidentified disease (possibly smallpox, as it permanently disfigures her), which she got from her maid Charley (whom she devotedly nursed back to health). Though they are happy to be reunited, Lady Dedlock tells Esther that they must never acknowledge their connection again. Esther recovers, but her beauty is supposedly ruined. She finds that Richard, having failed at several professions, has ignored his guardian and is wasting his resources in pushing Jarndyce and Jarndyce to conclusion (in his and Ada's favour). Further, he has broken with his guardian, under the influence of his lawyer, the odious and crafty Mr. Vholes. In the process of becoming an active litigant, Richard has lost all his money and is breaking his health. In further defiance of John Jarndyce, he and Ada have secretly married, and Ada is carrying Richard's child. Esther experiences her own romance when Dr. Woodcourt returns to England, having survived a shipwreck, and continues to seek her company despite her disfigurement. Unfortunately, Esther has already agreed to marry her guardian, John Jarndyce. Hortense and Tulkinghorn discover Lady Dedlock's past. After a quiet but desperate confrontation with the lawyer, Lady Dedlock flees her home, leaving a note apologizing for her conduct. Tulkinghorn dismisses Hortense, no longer any use to him. Feeling abandoned and betrayed by Lady Dedlock and Tulkinghorn, Hortense kills Tulkinghorn and seeks to frame Lady Dedlock for his murder. Sir Leicester discovers his lawyer's death and his wife's flight, and he has a catastrophic stroke but manages to communicate that he forgives his wife and wants her to return to him. Inspector Bucket, who up to now has investigated several matters on the periphery of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, accepts the commission of the stricken Sir Leicester to find Lady Dedlock. He suspects Lady Dedlock, even after he arrests George Rouncewell (the only other person known to be with Tulkinghorn on the night of the murder and to have quarrelled with him repeatedly). Bucket asks Esther to help search for Lady Dedlock. By this point, Bucket has cleared Lady Dedlock by discovering Hortense's guilt, but Lady Dedlock has no way to know this and wanders the country in cold weather before dying at the cemetery of her former lover Captain Hawdon (Nemo). Esther and Bucket find her there. Developments in Jarndyce and Jarndyce seem to take a turn for the better when a later will is found which revokes all previous wills and leaves the bulk of the estate to Richard and Ada. Meanwhile, John Jarndyce cancels his engagement with Esther, who becomes engaged to Dr. Woodcourt. They go to Chancery to find Richard and to discover what news there might be of the lawsuit's resolution. To their horror, they learn that the new will has no chance to resolve Jarndyce and Jarndyce, for the costs of litigation have consumed the estate. Richard collapses, and Dr Woodcourt determines that he is in the last stages of tuberculosis. Richard apologizes to John Jarndyce and dies, leaving Ada alone with their child, a boy she names Richard. Jarndyce takes in Ada and the child. Esther and Woodcourt marry and live in a Yorkshire house which Jarndyce gives to them. In time, they have two daughters. Many of this intricate novel's subplots deal with the minor characters and their diverse ties to the main plot. One of these subplots is the hard life and happy though difficult marriage of Caddy Jellyby and Prince Turveydrop. Another focuses on George Rouncewell's rediscovery of his family at Chesney Wold and his reunion with his mother and brother.

Bridge to Terabithia

Donna Diamond

Jesse (a.k.a. Jess) Aarons, the only boy in a family of five children, lives in rural southwest Virginia. His mother favors his sisters Brenda, Ellie, May Belle, and Joyce Ann, while his father works in Washington, D.C., and therefore spends little time with his children. May Belle, the second youngest sister, adores and admires Jesse. Leslie Burke is an only child who moves from Arlington, Virginia, to the same area as Jesse. Her parents, both writers, are wealthy. Jess and Leslie soon become close friends. Jess shares his secret love of drawing with Leslie, and Leslie shares with Jess her love of fantasy stories. With this new and powerful friendship, the two children create an imaginary kingdom in the woods near their homes, accessible only by a rope swing over a creek. They name the kingdom Terabithia and declare themselves King and Queen, and they spend every day after school there. In Terabithia, they are able to face their real-world fears, such as that of the seventh grade bully Janice Avery. Leslie gives Jess a drawing pad and a set of watercolors and a tube of paint as a Christmas gift, and Jess gives Leslie a dog whom she names Prince Terrien, or "P.T." for short. They consider P.T. to be the royal protector, Prince of Terabithia and, due to his puppyish antics, court jester. Jesse has a crush on his young music teacher, Miss Edmunds. The central crisis occurs when Jesse accompanies Miss Edmunds to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and Leslie goes to Terabithia alone. The rope breaks as she is swinging over the rain-swollen creek. Though a good swimmer, Leslie falls into the creek and drowns, possibly due to head injury. Jesse can overcome his grief only with the strength and courage that his friendship with Leslie had given him. He attempts to deal with his grief by going back to Terabithia alone to make a memorial wreath for Leslie. During his ceremony, he hears a cry for help and finds May Belle caught in the midst of a fallen tree that she had been trying to use as a bridge across the creek. He helps her out of danger and rescues her. Leslie's grief-stricken parents soon decide to leave the area. As Mr. and Mrs. Burke are leaving, Jesse asks to take some of their wooden planks from their back porch. They say he may have anything left in the house; thus permitted, he goes down to Terabithia to build a bridge. After he finishes the bridge, he takes May Belle over it and decides to make her the Princess of Terabithia.

Uncle Dynamite

P. G. Wodehouse

Frederick Altamont Cornwalis Twistleton, fifth Earl of Ickenham, known to all as Uncle Fred, is on the loose once again (Lady Ickenham having decamped for a wedding in Trinidad), and Reginald ("Pongo") Twistleton, his long-suffering nephew (and Drones Club member) has every right to be petrified. Uncle Fred has just arrived at Ashenden Manor, home of Sir Aylmer Bostock, Pongo's future father-in-law. Pongo is already in residence and has committed two rank floaters: accidentally smashing a whatnot from Sir Aylmer's collection of African curios, and (in the course of demonstrating how Brazilian natives kill birds with rude slings) smashing a coveted bust of his host. Pongo's solution is to replace the busted bust with another one, abstracted from Ickenham hall. But unknown to him, the replacement bust was fashioned by his former fiancée Sally Painter, and conceals valuable jewellery that a friend of hers was planning to smuggle through New York Customs. Sally tries to replace the bust with another of Sir Aylmer she sculpted (but had had returned to her, after an unfortunate incident relating to her brother Otis' publication of Sir Aylmer's memoirs), but this comes to naught, and both busts end up in Sir Aylmer's collection room. Uncle Fred sees these not as reverses, but as opportunities to show his stuff. Having met Bill Oakshott (the nominal owner of Ashenden Manor, but under the thumb of his uncle Sir Aylmer) on the train, he contrives to get invited to the house—under the name of Major Brabazon-Plank. Unfortunately, the local Constable, Harold Potter, happens to have grown up with Major Plank (and also happens to remember arresting Uncle Fred and Pongo at the dog races under the names of Edwin Smith of Nasturtium Road, East Dulwich). Potter, intimately tied to the household through his fiancée, the housemaid Elsie Bean, becomes suspicious, and watches the house. Uncle Fred's tasks before him are to snatch the bust for Sally Painter; get Sir Aylmer to drop his suit against Otis, so Sally will not lose the money she invested in his firm; convince Pongo to turn down Hermione Bostock and marry Sally instead; restore Bill Oakshott to his place as head of his family home; and convince Constable Potter not only to not arrest him, but indeed to quit the force so he and Elsie Bean may live happily ever after. The only obstacles in his way are the real Major Brabazon-Plank and the irresistible opportunity to judge the Bonnie Babies competition at the Ashenden Oakshott Fête. Bill Oakshott finds inspiration in the dominant hero of Ethel M. Dell's 'The Way of an Eagle'. This real-life female novelist was a model for another of Wodehouse's characters, Rosie M. Banks. The story has also been adapted as a serial in six half-hour episodes for BBC Radio 4, starring Richard Briers as Uncle Fred and Hugh Grant as Pongo, with narration by Paul Eddington. Uncle Fred and Pongo would return in Cocktail Time (1958) and Service With a Smile (1961).

Tourist Season

Carl Hiaasen

Las Noches de Diciembre (Spanish, "The Nights of December") is a small terrorist cell led by renegade newspaper columnist Skip Wiley, a brilliant-but-insane Uncle Duke-like character, as El Fuego. Wiley believes that the only way to save Florida's natural beauty from destruction is to violently dissuade tourists from visiting and/or settling in the state. Recruiting three comrades with similar axes to grind against the Florida establishment, they begin a spree of flashy kidnappings, murders, and bombings to frighten off new arrivals into the Sunshine State. Fittingly, their first victim is B.D. "Sparky" Harper, the head of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce. Harper's body is found stuffed into an oversized suitcase, dressed in a garish tourist outfit and smeared with suntan oil, and with his legs amputated. Next, Wiley's gang starts kidnapping and murdering random tourists and Florida residents, many of whom are fed to a giant North American Crocodile (nicknamed "Pavlov"). Brian Keyes, a private investigator and former news reporter for the Miami Sun, is hired by the Public Defender's office to help defend the police's prime suspect in Sparky Harper's murder, a petty burglar named Ernesto Cabal, who was caught driving Harper's stolen car. Brian is inclined to believe that Harper's murder is much too bizarre to be Ernesto's work, but the Miami police, in their eagerness to close the case, dismiss him. Ernesto commits suicide when his own lawyer states that the case is a lost cause. Brian is then hired by Nell Bellamy (the wife of the first tourist victim) to find her missing husband, and by his old mentor, Sun editor Cab Mulcahy, to locate Wiley, who has disappeared. After an uncomfortable encounter with Wiley's girlfriend, Jenna (Brian's ex-girlfriend), Keyes tracks Wiley to a cabin in the Everglades, where he is abducted by Las Noches. Wiley reveals himself as the group's leader, and tells Brian that his job is to return to Miami (alive), and spread the word of Las Noches demands. But Wiley also says that he is not ready to have his own role exposed yet, and warns Brian that if he does so, then the violence will escalate, immediately and horribly. To drive home the fact that Las Noches is serious, Wiley has Keyes witness as their latest victim, retiree Ida Kimmelman, is fed to Pavlov. Keyes tries to stop the murder, and is stabbed in the back by one of the gang, a Cuban named Jesús Bernal. Keyes is returned to the city and treated in the hospital. Since it is the start of the tourist season, the police's initial reaction to Keyes's warnings is to cover up, dismissing the Las Noches communiques as a hoax. Ricky Bloodworth uncovers the letters and writes an article on the letters, but misspells the name of the group, as "Las Nachos". The terrorists retaliate by triggering several bombs in public places, forcing the authorities to take them seriously. Keyes's old friend, Detective Al Garcia is appointed head of a task force to catch the terrorists. Based on Wiley's hints, Keyes, Mulcahy, and Garcia deduce that the terrorists plan to kidnap Miami's much-touted Orange Bowl Queen, in the most spectacularly public fashion possible. Since the civic leaders flatly refuse to cancel the Orange Bowl Parade, or to allow police guards to be seen near the beauty queen, Garcia suggests hiring Keyes as her undercover bodyguard. Keyes is pleasantly surprised when the recently-crowned beauty queen, Kara Lynn Shivers (19), turns out to be an intelligent, self-possessed, and thoroughly sensible person. She actually hates the whole beauty queen "racket," and takes part only to indulge her father's fanatic dreams of making her a star. She and Keyes quickly find common ground and grow closer, eventually developing a relationship. While escorting her home from a tennis game, Keyes catches Jesús Bernal loitering in the parking lot, doing a lackluster job of surveilling the Orange Bowl Queen. Bernal is not paying enough attention, and Keyes beats him soundly, armed with nothing but a tennis racket. Furious, Wiley informs the gang that Bernal has thrown away their psychological advantage by revealing himself and their plans too soon. To regain it, Wiley announces that he's devised a new plan. Bernal, simmering with humiliation and aching for reinstatement with the anti-Castro terrorist group he was expelled from, decides to proceed with his own agenda. Abandoning Las Noches, he sends a mail bomb to Al Garcia, whom he identifies as a "traitor" to the anti-Castro movement. Farcically, the bomb is instead opened by over-eager Sun reporter Ricky Bloodworth, illegally sifting Garcia's mail for clues about the terrorists. Because of Bernal's poor construction, the bomb does not kill Bloodworth, it only injures him. Garcia never learns that the bomb was addressed to him, and the bombing is attributed to Wiley's gang. The next evening, Wiley unleashes his new plan: buzzing the deck of the pre-Orange Bowl Friendship Cruise out at sea in a helicopter, Wiley promises to give the tourists on board some "real Florida souvenirs," and drops hundreds of shopping bags from posh vendors onto the deck - which, when ripped open by the frenzied tourists, contain live snakes. Chaos envelops the deck of the cruise ship, and one foolish passenger yells "abandon ship!" causing all of them to dive off into the ocean. As the Coast Guard is rescuing them, the helicopter flies away, but unexpectedly crashes at sea before it reaches land. No bodies are recovered. Believing that Las Noches are dead, the Miami civil leaders breathe a sigh of relief. Keyes and Garcia remain skeptical, however, and insist that their security precautions remain in place until after the Orange Bowl Parade. In a last-ditch attempt at redemption, Jesús Bernal kidnaps Garcia at gunpoint and drives him out to Key Largo for a flashy execution. Garcia is wounded in the shoulder by Bernal's shotgun, but Keyes manages to track them down and kills Bernal with a pistol shot. To Keyes's surprise, the Parade comes and goes without any sign of Wiley or his gang. The next day, Cab Mulcahy writes his own front-page account of the tourist murders, revealing his own knowledge of Wiley's role in the killings and apologizing to his readers for withholding it. The evening after the Parade is the Orange Bowl game itself. In the stands, Keyes realizes, belatedly, that Kara Lynn is supposed to make a brief appearance during the game's halftime show. With all their security measures focused on the Parade, the game is a perfect opportunity for Las Noches, alive and well, to strike. In the chaos, Kara Lynn is kidnapped and carried out of the stadium on an airboat, though one of the gang, ex-football player "Viceroy" Wilson is shot to death by a Shriner friend of Theodore Bellamy, acting as Kara Lynn's unofficial escort. With the police rushing around in confusion, Keyes goes directly to Jenna's house and examines Wiley's old press clippings. Quickly deducing where Wiley has gone, Keyes drags Jenna along with him. Wiley has taken Kara Lynn to Osprey Island, a small nature preserve in the middle of Biscayne Bay. When Kara Lynn recovers from her drugged sleep, Wiley is taken aback, and sorrowful, that she is, contrary to his expectations, an intelligent and unspoiled young woman. Regretfully he reveals his final plan: the surface of the island has been mined with dynamite, to be exploded at dawn, to allow for the construction of a snazzy new condominium complex. Wiley plans to leave Kara Lynn there, with the island's other remaining wildlife, just to illustrate to the greedy developers of Florida the consequences of their rampant development - as he puts it, the island's native flora and fauna have zero value for such people, but they might stop and think if their dynamite blows up the only species on earth they actually care about: "a future customer." Before Wiley can go, however, Keyes arrives and disables Wiley with a bullet to the leg. The fisherman who dropped Keyes off refused to wait around, so Keyes demands to know where Wiley anchored his boat. At first, Wiley refuses to tell, prepared to let the dynamite claim himself, Keyes, and Kara Lynn all at once. But he is horrified to learn that Keyes has brought Jenna along, and surrenders the boat's location. To Keyes's surprise, he refuses to go along with them, preferring to stay on the island. As they speed away from the island, Keyes, Kara Lynn, and Jenna look back and see an amazing spectacle: Wiley is climbing a tree (bad leg and all), trying feverishly to scare a bald eagle nesting there into taking flight before the dynamite explodes. The novel ends just as the "all clear" signal for the detonation is sounded, with the three of them whispering the same prayer: "Please fly away."

Come Back, Little Sheba

William Inge

Set in the cramped, cluttered Midwestern house of Lola and Doc Delaney, the plot centers on how their life is disrupted by the presence of a boarder named Marie, a college art student with a strong lustful appetite. Overweight and slovenly, the housebound middle-aged Lola engages in mild flirtations with the milkman and mailman, like the ingratiating coquette she once was. She sees in Marie herself at that age, and encourages her pursuit of wealthy Bruce and muscular Turk. Doc, who ekes out a living as a chiropractor, was forced to abandon a promising career in medicine when he married a pregnant Lola. She subsequently lost the baby. As a recovering alcoholic, Doc maintains a precarious sobriety by avoiding the past. For him, Marie represents the youth and opportunity he sacrificed, and his eventual realization that she is not as pure and perfect as he imagined sends him back to the bottle and a slow descent into unbridled rage. The title refers to Lola's missing dog, who remains lost at the play's end.

Tigana

Guy Gavriel Kay

The plot focuses on a group of rebels attempting to overthrow both tyrants and win back their homeland. Many of the rebels are natives of the province of Tigana, which was the province that most ably resisted Brandin: In a crucial battle, Brandin's son was killed. In retaliation for this, Brandin attacked Tigana and crushed it more savagely than any other part of the Palm; then, following this victory, he used his magic to remove the name and history of Tigana from the minds of the population. Brandin named it Lower Corte, making Corte, their traditional enemies to their north, seem superior to a land that was all but forgotten. Only those born in Tigana before the invasion can hear or speak its name, or remember it as it was; as far as everyone else is concerned, that area of the country has always been an insignificant part of a neighbouring province, hence the rebels are battling for the very soul of their country. The book puts great emphasis on the different moral shades of people. Though seen by most of the characters as a ruthless, grief-maddened tyrant, Brandin is actually a very sympathetic character, especially in his love for Dianora, one of the women of his harem, called a saishan in the book—a character who is in fact from Tigana herself and engineered her own selection into Brandin's seraglio so that she could assassinate him, only to fall in love with him before she could. Despite being likeable and sympathetic, many of the rebels are equally ruthless in their attempts to overthrow the Tyrants, setting off wars, assassinating soldiers and officials and even committing suicide to depose Brandin. All the main characters are very complex. The book is full of themes of identity, love, patriotism, revenge and magic.

The Red and the Black

Stendhal

In two volumes, The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of the 19th Century tells the story of Julien Sorel’s life in a monarchic society of fixed social class. Book I presents the ambitious son of a carpenter in the (fictional) Verrières village, in Franche-Comté, France, who would rather read and daydream about the glory days of Napoleon's long-disbanded army, than work his father’s timber business with his brothers, who beat him for his intellectual affectations. In the event, Julien Sorel becomes an acolyte of the abbé Chénal, the local Catholic prelate, who later secures him a post as the tutor for the children of Monsieur de Rênal, the mayor of Verrières. Despite appearing to be a pious, austere cleric, Julien is uninterested in the Bible beyond its literary value, and how he can use memorised passages (learnt in Latin) to impress important people. He enters a love affair with Monsieur de Rênal’s wife; it ends badly when exposed to the village, by her chambermaid, Elisa, who had romantic designs upon him. The abbé Chénal orders Julien to a seminary in Besançon, which he finds intellectually stifling and pervaded with social cliques. The initially cynical seminary director, the abbé Pirard (of the Jansenist faction more hated than the Jesuit faction in the diocese), likes Julien, and becomes his protector. Disgusted by the Church’s political machinations, the abbé Pirard leaves the seminary, yet first rescues Julien from the persecution he would have suffered as his protégé, by recommending him as private secretary to the diplomat Marquis de la Mole, a Roman Catholic legitimist. Book II chronicles the time leading to the July Revolution of 1830, and Julien Sorel’s Parisian life, as an employee of the de la Mole family. Despite moving among high society, the family and their friends, condescend to Julien for being an uncouth plebeian — his intellectual talents notwithstanding. In his boundlessly ambitious rise in the world, Julien perceives the materialism and hypocrisy important to the élite of Parisian society, and that the counter-revolutionary temper of the time renders it impossible for well-born men of superior intellect and æsthetic sensibility to progressively participate in the public affairs of the nation with any success. The Marquis de la Mole takes Julien to a secret meeting, then despatches him on a dangerous mission to communicate a political letter (that he has memorised) to the Duc d'Angouleme, who is exiled in England; however, the callow Julien is mentally distracted, by an unsatisfying love affair, thus he only learns the message by rote, but not its political significance as a legitimist plot. Unwittingly, the plebeian Julien Sorel risks his life in secret service to the right-wing monarchists he most opposes; to himself, Julien rationalises such action as merely helping the Marquis, his employer, whom he respects. Meanwhile, in the preceding months, the Marquis’s bored daughter, Mathilde de la Mole, had become emotionally torn, between her romantic attraction to Julien, for his admirable personal and intellectual qualities, and her social repugnance at becoming sexually intimate with a lower-class man. At first, he finds her unattractive, but his interest is piqued, by her attentions and the admiration she inspires in others; twice, she seduces and rejects him, leaving him in a miasma of despair, self-doubt, and happiness (he won her over aristocrat suitors). Only during his secret mission does he gain the key to winning her affections: a cynical jeu d’amour proffered to him by Prince Korasoff, a Russian man-of-the-world. At great emotional cost, Julien feigns indifference to Mathilde, provoking her jealousy with a sheaf of love-letters meant to woo Madame de Fervaques, a widow in the social circle of the de la Mole family. Consequently, Mathilde sincerely falls in love with Julien, eventually revealing to him that she carries his child; yet, whilst he was on diplomatic mission in England, she became officially engaged to Monsieur de Croisenois, an amiable, rich young man, heir to a duchy. Learning of Julien’s romantic liaison with Mathilde, the Marquis de la Mole is angered, but relents before her determination, and his affection for him, and bestows upon Julien an income-producing property attached to an aristocratic title, and a military commission in the army. Although ready to bless their marriage, he changes his mind upon receiving the reply to a character-reference-letter he wrote to the abbé Chénal, Julien’s previous employer in the village of Verrières; however, the reply letter, written by Madame de Rênal — at the urging of her confessor priest — warns the Marquis that Julien Sorel is a social-climbing cad who preys upon emotionally vulnerable women. On learning the Marquis’s disapproval of the marriage, Julien Sorel travels to his home village of Verrières and shoots Madame de Rênal during Mass in the village church; she survives. Despite the efforts of Mathilde, Madame de Rênal, and the priests devoted to him since his early life, Julien Sorel is determined to die — because the materialist society of Bourbon Restoration France will not accommodate a low-born man of superior intellect and æsthetic sensibility possessing neither money nor social connections. Meanwhile, the presumptive duke, Monsieur de Croisenois, one of the fortunate few of Bourbon France, is killed in a duel fought over a slur upon the honour of Mathilde de la Mole. Despite her undiminished love for Julien, his imperiously intellectual nature, and its component romantic exhibitionism, render Mathilde’s prison visits to him a duty. Moreover, when Julien learns he did not kill Madame de Rênal, that resurrects his intemperate love for her — lain dormant throughout his Parisian time and his passion for Mathilde, who visits him during the final days of his life. Afterwards, Mathilde de la Mole re-enacts the cherished, 16th-century French tale of Queen Margot visiting her dead lover, Joseph Boniface de La Mole, to kiss the lips of his severed head. In the 19th century, Mathilde de la Mole so treated Julien Sorel’s severed head, making a shrine of his tomb, in the Italian fashion.

Pincher Martin

William Golding

The plot of Pincher Martin surrounds the survival and psychophysical, spiritual and existential plight of one Christopher Hadley "Pincher" Martin, a temporary naval lieutenant and the sole survivor of a military torpedo destroyer which sinks in the North Atlantic Ocean. Martin is unconscious at the opening of the novel, but wakes in complete darkness, submerged, before nearly drowning after being thrown into the side of a rocky islet. After desperately calling out for help, and receiving none, he correctly deduces that his naval crew is dead; and, disoriented, he scrambles up the rock to avoid the constant battering of the surrounding waves. Once on the island, he starts his struggle for survival but, as time goes by, a series of strange and increasingly terrifying events, which he at first dismisses as hallucinations, slowly cause him to lose his grip on reality. The novel's twist ending suggests that Martin actually drowned shortly after his ship was sunk. This interpretation changes the work into an allegory of purgatory and damnation. Some believe that, instead, sometime during the narrative, Martin loses his battle to maintain his sanity while fighting to survive alone on the barren rocks.

Chocky

John Wyndham

Many children have imaginary friends but one father becomes rather concerned that his son, Matthew, is a bit old to have one. His concerns deepen as his son becomes increasingly distressed and blames it on arguments with this unseen companion. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that the friend is far from imaginary, but is an alien consciousness communicating with Matthew's mind—a fact that is of intense interest to shadowy government forces. Chocky reveals that it is a scout sent from its home planet (where there is only one sex) in search of new planets to colonise. Chocky, talking "through" Matthew, to his father, David Gore, explains that in saving Matthew from a recent accident it has violated the rules of its scout mission (interfering with events on Earth) and must end its link with him completely. Its further work on Earth will be conducted in a much more covert manner.

Civilization and its Discontents

Sigmund Freud

Freud begins this work by taking up a possible source of religious feeling that his previous book, The Future of an Illusion, overlooked: the oceanic feeling of wholeness, limitlessness, and eternity. Freud himself cannot experience this feeling of dissolution, but notes that there do indeed exist different pathological and healthy states (e.g. love) where the boundary between ego and object is lost, blurred, or distorted. Freud categorizes the oceanic feeling as being a regression into an earlier state of consciousness before the ego had differentiated itself from the world of objects. Freud sticks to his earlier conviction that the need that the religious feeling arises out of is 'the infant's helplessness and the longing for the father', and “imagine[s] that the oceanic feeling became connected with religion later on”, that is, that it is not a genuine religious experience, though certainly people experiencing it have felt that way. The second chapter delves into how religion is one of many modes of being that arise out of the need for the individual to distance and soothe itself in the face of the suffering that exists within the world. The ego of the child forms over the oceanic feeling when it grasps that there are negative aspects of reality that it wishes to separate itself from. But at the same time as the ego is hoping to avoid displeasure, it is also building itself so that it may be better able to act towards securing happiness, and these are the twin aims of the pleasure principle when the ego realizes that ‘reality’ must also be dealt with. Freud claims that the 'purpose of life is simply the programme of the pleasure principle' and the rest of the chapter is an exploration of various styles of human adaptation used to secure happiness from the world while also trying to avoid or limit suffering. Freud points out three main sources of displeasure we attempt to master: our own painful and mortal existence, the cruel and destructive aspects of the natural world, and the suffering endemic to the reality that we must live with other human beings in a society. Freud regards this last source as “perhaps more painful to us than any other”, and the remainder of this book will extrapolate on the conflict between individual instinctual gratification-seeking and the reality of societal life. The third section of the book addresses a fundamental paradox of civilization: it is a tool we have created to protect ourselves from unhappiness, and yet it is our largest source of unhappiness. People become neurotic because they cannot tolerate the frustration which society imposes in the service of its cultural ideals. Freud points out that the contemporary technological advances of science have been, at best, a mixed blessing for human happiness. He asks what society is for if not to satisfy the pleasure principle, but concedes that civilization has to make compromises of happiness in order to fulfill its primary goal of bringing people into peaceful relationship with each other, which it does by making them subject to a higher, communal authority. Civilization is built out of wish-fulfillments of the human ideals of control, beauty, hygiene, order, and especially for the exercise of humanity's highest intellectual functions. Freud draws a key analogy between the development of civilization and the libidinal development of the individual, which allows Freud to speak of civilization in his own terms: there is anal eroticism that develops into a need for order and cleanliness, a sublimation of instincts into useful actions, alongside a more repressive renunciation of instinct. This final point Freud sees as the most important character of civilization, and if it’s not compensated for, then “one can be certain that serious disorders will ensue.". Thus civilization creates discontent and mental pathology within its members through repression of instinct. In the fourth chapter Freud attempts a conjecture as to the developmental history of civilization, which he supposed coincided with man learning to stand upright. This stage is followed by Freud’s hypothesis from Totem and Taboo that human culture is bound up in an ancient Oedipal drama of brothers banding together to kill their father, and then creating a culture of rules to mediate ambivalent instinctual desires. Gradually love of a single sexual object becomes diffused and distributed towards all of one’s culture and humanity in the form of a diluted ‘aim-inhibited affection’. Freud discounts the idea that this passive and non-judgemental affection for all is the pinnacle of human love and purpose. Freud notes that while love is essential for bringing people together in a civilization, at the same time society creates laws, restrictions, and taboos to try and suppress this same instinct, and Freud wonders if there may not be more than sexual desire within the term ‘libido’. “Psycho-analytic work has shown us that it is precisely these frustrations of sexual life which people known as neurotics cannot tolerate”. So Freud begins the fifth section of this work, which explores the reasons why love cannot be the answer, and concludes that there exists a genuine and irreducible aggressive drive within all human beings. And while the love instinct (eros) can be commandeered by society to bind its members together, the aggressive instinct runs counter to this tendency and must be either repressed or directed against a rival culture. Thus Freud acknowledges that there is irrevocable ill-will within the hearts of man, and that civilization primarily exists to curb and restrain these impulses. In the sixth chapter, Freud reviews the development of his concept of libido to explain why it must now be separated into two distinct instincts: the object-instinct of eros and the ego-instinct of thanatos. This ‘new’ concept of the death drive actually has a long developmental history in Freud’s writings, including his investigations into narcissism and sadomasochism. Freud admits that it may be difficult to accept his view of human nature as being predisposed towards death and destruction, but he reasons that the suppression of this instinct is the true cause behind civilization’s need for restrictions. Life and civilization, then, are born and develop out of an eternal struggle between these two interpersonal forces of love and hate. Freud begins the seventh chapter by clearly explaining how the repression of the death instinct works to instill neurosis in individuals: the natural aggressiveness of the human child is suppressed by society (and its local representative, the father-figure) and turned inward, introjected, directed back against the ego. These aggressive energies develop into the super-ego as conscience, which punishes the ego both for transgressions committed (remorse) but also sins it has only fantasized about (guilt). All individuals must submit themselves to forming these feelings of guilt, for their aggressive instincts must be repressed if they hope to share in the love civilized society has appropriated for its members. Guilt and neurotic repression of instinct are simply the price we pay in order to live together in families and communities. The guilty conscience is the price paid by the individual to belong to civilized society, but often this guilt is left unconscious and is experienced as anxiety or ‘discontent’. Freud also considers that in addition to the individual super-ego, that there may also be a ‘cultural super-ego’ in existence that sets itself up as a conscience for society, and that his recommendation for it is the same as his recommendation for many of his neurotic patients: that it must lower its demands on the frail ego. Freud concludes this book by expanding on his distinction between eros and thanatos: “When an instinctual trend undergoes repression, its libidinal elements are turned into symptoms, and its aggressive components into a sense of guilt”, and he ponders on how the eternal battle between these heavenly powers will play out in mankind.

Hay Fever

Noël Coward

The action is set in the Hall of David Bliss' house at Cookham, Berkshire, by the River Thames. ;A Saturday afternoon in June Sorel and Simon Bliss, a brother and sister, exchange artistic and bohemian dialogue. Judith, their mother, displays the absent-minded theatricality of a retired star actress, and David, their father, a novelist, is concentrating on finishing his latest book. Each of the four members of the Bliss family, without consulting the others, has invited a guest for the weekend. Judith announces that she has decided to return to the stage in one of her old hits, Love's Whirlwind. She and Sorel and Simon amuse themselves acting out a melodramatic passage from the play beginning, "Is this a game?" "Yes, and a game that must be played to the finish!" They are interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell. Clara, Judith's former dresser and now her housekeeper, opens the door to the first of the four guests, Sandy Tyrell, a sporty fan of Judith's. The next arrival is the vampish Myra Arundel, whom Simon has invited. The other two guests arrive together: Richard Greatham, a diplomat, and Jackie Coryton, a brainless but good-hearted young flapper. Tea is served. Conversation is stilted and eventually grinds to a halt. The scene ends in total and awkward silence. ;After dinner that night The family insists that everyone should join in a parlour game, a variety of charades in which one person must guess the adverb being acted out by the others. The Blisses are in their element, but the guests flounder and the game breaks up. Simon and Jackie exit to the garden, Sorel drags Sandy into the library, and David takes Myra outside. Left alone with Richard, Judith flirts with him, and when he chastely kisses her she theatrically overreacts as though they were conducting a serious affair. She nonplusses Richard by talking of breaking the news to David. She in turn is nonplussed to discover Sandy and Sorel kissing in the library. That too has been mere flirtation, but both Judith and Sorel enjoy themselves by exaggerating it. Judith gives a performance nobly renouncing her claim on Sandy, and exits. Sorel explains to Sandy that she was just playing the theatrical game for Judith's benefit, as "one always plays up to Mother in this house; it's a sort of unwritten law." They leave. David and Myra enter. They too indulge in a little light flirtation, at the height of which Judith enters and finds them kissing. She makes a theatrical scene, with which David dutifully plays along. Simon rushes in violently, announcing that he and Jackie are engaged. Sorel and Sandy enter from the library, Judith goes into yet another bout of over-theatrical emoting. In the ensuing uproar, Richard asks "Is this a game?" Judith, Sorel and Simon seize on this cue from Love's Whirlwind and trot out the melodramatic dialogue as they had in Act I. David is overcome with laughter and the uncomprehending guests are dazed and aghast as Judith ends the scene by falling to the floor as if in a faint. ;The next morning A breakfast table has been laid in the hall. Sandy enters and begins eating nervously. At the sound of someone approaching he escapes into the library. Jackie enters, helps herself to some breakfast and bursts into tears. Sandy comes out and they discuss how uncomfortable they were the night before and how mad the Bliss family are. When they hear people approaching, they both retreat to the library. Myra and Richard now enter and begin breakfast. Their conversation mirrors that of Sandy and Jackie, who emerge from the library to join them. All four decide that they are going to return to London without delay. Sandy agrees to drive them in his motor car. They go upstairs to collect their things. Judith comes down, asks Clara for the Sunday papers and begins reading aloud what the gossip columns say about her. The rest of her family enter. David proposes to read them the final chapter of his novel. Immediately, a minor detail about the geography of Paris is blown into a full-scale family row, with everyone talking at once about whether the Rue Saint-Honoré does or does not connect with the Place de la Concorde and hurling insults at each other. They are so wrapped up in their private row that they do not notice when the four visitors tiptoe down the stairs and out of the house. The Blisses are only momentarily distracted when the slam of the door alerts them to the flight of their guests. Judith comments, "How very rude!" and David adds, "People really do behave in the most extraordinary manner these days." Then, with no further thought of their four tormented guests, they happily return to David's manuscript and to what passes for their normal family life.

Private Lives

Noël Coward

;Act 1 Following a brief courtship, Elyot and Sybil are honeymooning at a hotel in Deauville, although her curiosity about his first marriage is not helping his romantic mood. In the adjoining suite, Amanda and Victor are starting their new life together, although he cannot stop thinking of the cruelty Amanda's ex-husband displayed towards her. Elyot and Amanda, following a volatile three-year-long marriage, have been divorced for the past five years, but they now discover that they are sharing a terrace while on their honeymoons with their new and younger spouses. Elyot and Amanda separately beg their new mates to leave the hotel with them immediately, but both new spouses refuse to cooperate and each storms off to dine alone. Realising they still love each other and regret having divorced, Elyot and Amanda abandon their mates and run off together to her flat in Paris. ;Act 2 After dinner at the Paris flat several days later, Elyot and Amanda use their code word "Sollocks" to stop their arguments from getting out of hand. They kiss passionately, but the harmony cannot last: while Elyot and Amanda cannot live without each other, neither can they live with each other. They argue violently and try to outwit each other, just as they had done during their stormy marriage. Their ongoing argument escalates to the point of physical abuse, as Amanda breaks a record over Elyot's head, and he retaliates by slapping her face. They seem to be trapped in a repeating cycle of love and hate as their private passions and jealousies consume them. At the height of their biggest fight, Sybil and Victor walk in. ;Act 3 The next morning, Amanda tries to sneak away early, but is surprised to find Sybil and Victor there. As they talk, Elyot comes in, and he and Amanda start bickering again. It has been decided that neither of the new spouses will grant a divorce for a year, to give Amanda and Elyot time to confirm if this is really what they want. As tempers rise, Sybil and Victor begin to bicker with each other, defending their respective spouses. Amanda and Elyot realise that Sybil and Victor are as suited to each other as they are, forgive one another and sneak out, leaving the younger two together. As Elyot and Amanda tiptoe out, Victor and Sybil have reached the point of mutual violence.

Blithe Spirit

Noël Coward

Charles Condomine, a successful novelist, wishes to learn about the occult for a novel he is writing, and he arranges for an eccentric medium, Madame Arcati, to hold a séance at his house. At the séance, she inadvertently summons Charles's first wife, Elvira, who has been dead for seven years. Madame Arcati leaves after the séance, unaware that she has summoned Elvira. Only Charles can see or hear Elvira, and his second wife, Ruth, does not believe that Elvira exists until a floating vase is handed to her out of thin air. The ghostly Elvira makes continued, and increasingly desperate, efforts to disrupt Charles's current marriage. She finally sabotages his car in the hope of killing him so that he will join her in the spirit world, but it is Ruth rather than Charles who drives off and is killed. Ruth's ghost immediately comes back for revenge on Elvira, and though Charles cannot at first see Ruth, he can see that Elvira is being chased and tormented, and his house is in uproar. He calls Madame Arcati back to exorcise both of the spirits, but instead of banishing them, she materialises Ruth. With both his dead wives now fully visible, and neither of them in the best of tempers, Charles, together with Madame Arcati, goes through séance after séance and spell after spell to try to exorcise them, and at last Madame Arcati succeeds. Charles is left seemingly in peace, but Madame Arcati, hinting that the ghosts may still be around unseen, warns him that he should go far away as soon as possible. Charles leaves at once, and the unseen ghosts throw things and destroy the room as soon as he has gone. (In the David Lean film version, the ghosts thwart Charles's attempt to escape, and his car is again sabotaged; he crashes and joins them as a ghost, with Elvira at one arm and Ruth at the other.)

Agnes Grey

Anne Brontë

Agnes Grey is the daughter of a minister, whose family comes to financial ruin. Desperate to earn money to care for herself, she takes one of the few jobs allowed to respectable women in the early Victorian era, as a governess to the children of the wealthy. In working with two different families, the Bloomfields and the Murrays, she comes to learn about the troubles that face a young woman who must try to rein in unruly, spoiled children for a living, and about the ability of wealth and status to destroy social values. After her father's death Agnes opens a small school with her mother and finds happiness with a man who loves her for herself. By the end of the novel they have three children, Edward, Agnes and Mary.

The Stepford Wives

Ira Levin

The premise involves the married men of the fictional town of Stepford, Connecticut, and their fawning, submissive, impossibly beautiful wives. The protagonist is Joanna Eberhart, a talented photographer newly arrived from New York City with her husband and children, eager to start a new life. As time goes on, she becomes increasingly disturbed by the zombie-like, submissive Stepford wives, especially when she sees her once independent-minded friends – fellow new arrivals to Stepford – turn into mindless, docile housewives overnight. Her husband, who seems to be spending more and more time at meetings of the local men's association, mocks her fears. As the story progresses, Joanna becomes convinced that the wives of Stepford are being poisoned or brainwashed into submission by the men's club. She visits the library and reads up on the pasts of Stepford's wives, finding out that some of the women were once feminist activists and very successful professionals, while the leader of the men's club is a former Disney engineer and others are artists and scientists, capable of creating lifelike robots. Her friend Bobbie helps her investigate, going so far as to write to the EPA to inquire about possible environmental toxins in Stepford. However, eventually, Bobbie is also transformed into a docile housewife and has no interest in her previous activities. At the end of the novel, Joanna decides to flee Stepford, but when she gets home she finds that her children have been taken. She asks her husband to let her leave, but he takes her car keys. She manages to escape from the house on foot, and several of the men's club members track her down. They corner her in the woods and she accuses them of creating robots out of the town's women. The men deny the accusation, and ask Joanna if she would believe them if she saw one of the other women bleed. Joanna agrees to this, and they take her to Bobbie's house. Bobbie's husband and son are upstairs, with loud rock music playing – as if to cover screams. The scene ends as Bobbie brandishes a knife at her former friend. In the story's epilogue, Joanna has become another Stepford wife gliding through the local supermarket, and has given up her career as a photographer, while Ruthanne (a new resident in Stepford) appears poised to become the conspiracy's next victim.

The Fifth Child

Doris Lessing

When David Lovatt meets Harriet at a work function, they both immediately fall in love. They both share the same conservative outlooks, a rarity in the immoral London of the 1960s. The two marry and purchase a large estate in a small village outside of London. The couple both intend on having many children, a wish frowned upon by the rest of the family. The two have four children, two boys and two girls, and their house becomes a center of joy for not only them but for all their relatives and friends who come and visit. That is, until Harriet becomes pregnant with their fifth child. Her pregnancy marks the beginning of the misery and suffering that this child brings to the family. de:Das fünfte Kind pt:The Fifth Child sr:Пето дете

Anti-Ice

Stephen Baxter

The novel begins with the text of a letter dated July, 1855 from the Crimean War front of Sevastopol. The writer, Hedley Vicars, tells from his perspective as a soldier in the 90 Light Infantry about the visit to his commanders of one Josiah Traveller, an inventor and millionaire industrialist whose discovery in the South Pole of anti-ice, a substance which releases incredible energies when warmed, is being considered for military use. Soon after that meeting, a mushroom cloud erupts in the midst of Sevastopol and, with its attendant human and structural devastation, quickly ends the war. This substance originally fell to Earth as the residue of a comet that impacted the Moon centuries ago. Fifteen years after the war, under the reign of Edward VII (who assumed the throne after Queen Victoria abdicated due to her husband Prince Albert's death) and the prime ministership of Gladstone, the United Kingdom maintains through Traveller's discovery a monopoly on the use of anti-ice. But the energy it generates, analogous to nuclear power, is now used to power vehicles and accelerate the country's Industrial Revolution -- much to the chagrin of perennial rivals France and a yet-to-be-united Germany. Junior diplomat Ned Vicars, journalist George Holden, and Traveller arrive at Ostend, and inspect Traveller's experimental rocket Phaeton. Upon docking, a saboteur fires the anti-ice rockets, destroying the liner and launching them upward into the air. Breaking free of Earth's gravity, the Phaeton and its reluctant passengers (along with Traveller's manservant Pocket) approach Earth's two moons—as there is now the "Little Moon", broken off when the comet hit Earth's Moon in the eighteenth century. Using the latest in 1870 technology, Vicars actually mines ice from the surface of the Moon, while encountering simple, massive creatures on its dark side. Converting the water into enough power to take off, the explorers—along with the saboteur, a Frenchman named Bourne—return to Britain as the Franco-Prussian War breaks out on the continent. Gladstone meets Traveller personally and orders him forthwith to prepare anti-ice weapons for use to end the war. At first he does so, but Vicars persuades him that such a course of action is unconscionable. Too late, the two arrive in the Phaeton to see the destruction of Orléans by an anti-ice rocket. Peace is immediately declared, and the United Kingdom sets up its hegemony over Europe—a development not without price, which Vicars notes in a 1910 letter to his son. And the supply of anti-ice, which Traveller thought was confined to the South Pole, is virtually limitless due to the "Little Moon", which is composed entirely of anti-ice. The possibilities of an early 20th century cold war are dwelt on by the narrator (Vicars) throughout the book.

Shadow of the Giant

Orson Scott Card

A belief is spreading in conquered China that the government has lost the Mandate of Heaven. Han Tzu meets up with Mazer Rackham, who passes him a blow dart pen, calling it the "Mandate of Heaven". Shortly afterwards, Han Tzu kills the emperor, Snow Tiger, overthrows the Chinese government, and installs himself as the new emperor. Meanwhile, Peter Wiggin, Hegemon of Earth, along with Petra Arkanian, goes to visit Alai, Caliph of the Muslim League. The two help Alai realize that he is little more than a glorified prisoner, and that others have been ruling Islam in his stead. After uncovering a conspiracy against him, Alai resolves to take firmer control of his nation and guarantee the human rights of his subjugated peoples. The rest of the book deals with Peter Wiggin working to create a world government free of war through his Free People of Earth (FPE) alliance. Caliph Alai of the Muslim League and Virlomi, now the virtual goddess of India, oppose his efforts. Against this backdrop of world political machinations by the former Battle School children is the extremely personal story of Bean. Anton's Key is making him grow at an astounding rate and he has only a short time before his body will become too large for his heart to support. He searches frantically for his and Petra's missing children. Graff assists them in locating the surrogate mothers of their children. While Bean and Petra wait for news, Graff extends invitations to the other members of Ender's Jeesh to leave Earth and rule colonies, where they can conquer to their heart's content without causing needless wars between themselves, and instructs Bean to support Peter in forming the FPE. The FPE alliance begins with only twenty-two countries, among them Brazil, Rwanda, and the Netherlands. The first test of the FPE comes when they recognize the sovereignty and nationhood of the Nubian, Quechua, and Aymara peoples, ethnic minorities that are politically part of other nations. Peru and Sudan send troops against these "rebel" strongholds, but Peter defends them using Bean and Suriyawong, leading Rwandan and Thai troops, to show that war against one FPE member is war against all of them. The FPE's victories, and especially their militarily brilliant commanders, bolster support for the FPE, and nations begin to freely vote on whether to join it. Meanwhile, Bean suspects that Peter is embezzling Ender's military pension to fund the FPE, so he requests that Ender's funds be placed under the control of an autonomous computer. Colonel Graff has the Mind Game reprogrammed to accurately predict financial markets and turns it loose over the ansible network; it continues to invest Ender's pension and eventually evolves into the artificial intelligence known as Jane. The Mind Game also speeds the search for Bean's missing children, allowing the International Fleet to find eight of them; two of whom have Anton's Key turned, as does the baby Petra is carrying. The ninth remains undetected, as Achilles had it implanted into a woman named Randi, brainwashed to think that it is the baby of Achilles, whom she worships as a hero assassinated by foul enemies. To avoid persecution, Randi determines to leave Earth and live in a colony, where she can raise her child (who appears to have Anton's Key turned, as the baby is born prematurely) to follow in Achilles' footsteps. Her story, and that of her child Randall Firth, is concluded in Card's later novel Ender in Exile. Virlomi attempts to guarantee India's freedom via dynastic marriage, turning down an offer from Han Tzu to instead attempt to seduce Peter Wiggin. When Peter turns her down, she turns to Alai whom she finds easier to outmaneuver. Their new "Hindu-Muslim... thing," to quote the Prime Minister of Armenia ("I call it a riot with scripture," quips Jeesh member Vlad) is fraught with tension and Alai discovers that, despite his wife's status as an infidel and a woman, the more hotheaded members of his empire actually prefer her aggressive and expansionist policies. Virlomi then declares war on China, setting off all manner of plots: Muslim hardliners attempt to assassinate Alai; Russia invades China and eastern Europe using "contingency" plans drawn up by a horrified Vlad; and Fly Molo of the Philippines is instructed to invade Taiwan, his nation suicidally confident in their Jeesh member. In this way, all the Battle School grads are convinced to take up Graff's offer to travel the stars, realizing that their presence on Earth guarantees continued and wasteful war. Even Virlomi agrees, after Suri manages to snap her out of her growing megalomania. With the secret help of Mazer Rackham, Bean divorces Petra for her own sake, takes the three found children with Anton's Key, and flies away on a starship provided by the Fleet to achieve relativistic speeds and thereby stay alive long enough for medical researchers to find a cure. Bean's departure breaks Petra's heart, but she becomes Peter's military commander, eventually marrying and having five children with him, though she never stops loving Bean. By the end of the novel, all of the world's nations, except the United States, have joined the FPE. Peter reconciles with Ender via ansible, giving the "Speaker for the Dead" all he needs to write The Hegemon, a deeply felt and truthful biography of his brother. Petra reads his biography at his grave, thinking of him as the man who truly changed her life. Still, Bean remains the one who she loves and has changed her life the most.

Design for Living

Noël Coward

;Otto's "rather shabby" studio in Paris, 1932 Gilda is an interior designer who lives with the painter Otto, who was previously attached to Leo, an author. She is visited by Ernest Friedman, an art dealer and friend of all three. He is excited about his newly acquired Matisse and wants to show it to Otto. Gilda says that Otto is in bed, ill, and cannot be disturbed. Ernest tells her that Leo is back in Paris after making a success in New York. Otto enters from the street, carrying luggage, and very clearly not bedridden as Gilda has told Ernest. Ernest prudently takes his leave. After he and Otto have gone out to find Leo, supposedly at the George V Hotel, Leo enters from Gilda's bedroom where he has spent the night with her. They discuss what they should say to Otto, whom they both love. On his return they tell him that they have slept together in his absence, and after a furious row he renounces both of them and slams out of the room. ;Leo's flat in London eighteen months later ;Scene 1 Leo and Gilda are now living together. His plays are now immensely successful. A journalist and press photographer call to do a feature on him. During the interview Leo makes several remarks that show how shallow he finds success. ;Scene 2 A few days later, Leo is away, and Otto turns up. He too has now become successful. Otto and Gilda dine together and their old love is rekindled. They embrace passionately. Scene 3 The next morning, Otto is still asleep when Ernest calls on Gilda. She tells him she is leaving Leo, and they exit together. Leo returns to discover Otto, who at once acknowledges that he has spent the night with Gilda. Before the ensuing row develops too far they spot the notes Gilda has left for them both. They are both horrified that she has gone, and they drown their sorrows in brandy and then sherry. They embrace, sobbing helplessly. ;Ernest's penthouse in New York, two years later. ;Scene 1 Gilda has married Ernest and become a commercially successful designer. Ernest is away, and Gilda is giving a reception for some important clients. It is gatecrashed by Otto and Leo, in impeccable evening dress, determined to reclaim her. They frighten her guests into leaving, and Gilda pretends to bid them goodnight along with her other guests, but secretly gives them a key and tells them to return later. ;Scene 2 Ernest returns the next morning to find Otto and Leo in his apartment, wearing his pyjamas. Gilda, however, has not been there. She has been to a hotel overnight to allow herself time to think. When she returns Otto and Leo explain to an incredulous and incandescent Ernest that Gilda's formal status as his wife is irrelevant. She slowly realises that the attraction the two exert for her is irresistible. As Ernest rushes out denouncing their "disgusting three-sided erotic hotch-potch," Gilda, Otto and Leo fall together on a sofa in gales of laughter.

A Personal Matter

Kenzaburō Ōe

Bird's son, like Ōe's, was born with a brain hernia, however at the end of the novel this is revealed to be a false diagnosis of a benign tumor. Bird tries to escape his responsibility for the child and his crumbling relationship with his wife – turning to alcohol and an old girlfriend. Bird is fired from his job teaching at a cram school in the process. He half attempts to kill the child, albeit indirectly, and is forced to make a decision as to whether or not he wants to keep the child.

Encounter With Tiber

Buzz Aldrin

9,000 years ago an alien society in the Alpha Centauri system was under threat of cosmic bombardment. Their only hope to survive was to explore and colonise nearby space. On 21st century Earth, astronauts find artifacts left by this civilisation and wonder who they were. The narrator is a historian who is part of a mission to the Alpha Centauri system, the home system of the aliens. As all crew members were required to bring several projects to work on, due to the decades long nature of the mission, she spends her time writing biographies of several family members who were closely involved in the acquisition of a repository of the alien's knowledge. As another project she translates two autobiographies by the aliens who had visited the Sol system some 9,000 years before.

Night of the Aurochs

Dalton Trumbo

In his narration, Grieban tries to link the ethical nature of the Nazi movement to the American Civil War by saying the comparisons are undeniable: Fighting to keep the races pure and separated. Grieban may be looked at as the epitome of one fighting for the cause, but he himself fails to live up to his own high ideals of racial purity when he falls in 'love' with a Jewish woman during his years as a Nazi concentration camp commandant.

The Stars, Like Dust

Isaac Asimov

Biron Farrill, about to complete studies at the University of Earth, is told by Sander Jonti that his father, a rich planetary leader known as Lord Rancher of Widemos, has been arrested and killed by the Tyranni and his own life may be in danger. On Jonti's advice, he travels to Rhodia, the strongest of the conquered planets. There he hears rumours of a world where rebellion against the Tyranni is secretly being plotted. Escaping with Artemisia oth Hinriad, the daughter of the Director of Rhodia and his brother Gillbret in a Tyranni spaceship, they travel to the planet Lingane. It is not a part of the Tyranni conquests, but maintains "peaceful" relations with them. There, they meet the Autarch of Lingane (who is revealed to be Sander Jonti, the man who sent Farrill to Rhodia from Earth), who seems to possess knowledge of a rebellion world. With him and his followers, the group travel to the heart of the Horsehead Nebula — they believe that for any rebellion world to exist and not be known to the Tyranni, it must be located in a place like the Horsehead Nebula. The Tyranni spaceship stolen by Farrill is being tracked by a fleet of Tyranni vessels led by Simok Aratap, the Tyrannian Commissioner. With him is the Director, who is shown to be nervous about his daughter's and brother's well-being. They keep themselves at a distance for fear of Farrill discovering them until Farrill lands on one planet in the heart of the nebula. The Autarch believes that the planet is the rebellion world. However, there is no sign of life anywhere. When the Autarch and Farrill leave the spaceship to apparently set up a radio transmitter, Farrill faces the Autarch and accuses him of getting his father killed at the hands of the Tyranni. The Autarch affirms the accusation, to which Farrill adds that the Autarch feared his father's growing reputation. That is why he arranged Farrill's father's death. In a fight, Farrill subdues the Autarch with help from the Autarch's closest secretary, who reveals that he is ashamed of the Autarch for killing a great man like Farrill's father. Later, as Farrill and the Autarch's secretary try to explain everything to the rest of the crew they picked up from Lingane, the Tyranni fleet arrives and takes them prisoner. Aratap interrogates Farrill, Artemisia, Gillbret and the Autarch's secretary in order to ascertain the coordinates of the rebellion world but they do not know where it is. However, the Autarch reveals the coordinates to Aratap. The Autarch's secretary kills the Autarch with a blaster in anger. While Aratap interrogates Farrill, Gillbret manages to escape to the engine room of the spaceship and short the hyperatomics. Farrill, realising the danger, manages to contact Aratap. The engines are repaired, but Gillbret is injured and later dies. The space jump is made with the coordinates given to them by the late Autarch. However, they find a planetless system consisting only of a white-dwarf star. Aratap lets Farrill and the others go, believing that there is no rebellion world. Aratap makes it clear that he will never to be chosen as Director. Biron and Artemisia are allowed to marry. It is eventually revealed that there is indeed a rebellion in the making, located on Rhodia itself. The Director is its leader; he deliberately took on the persona of a nervous and timid old man to throw off suspicion from himself and his planet. It is further revealed that the Director, who possesses a collection of ancient documents, has searched for, and found, a document that will help a future empire-yet-to-be (likely Trantor) govern the galaxy. This document is ultimately revealed to be the United States Constitution.

The Swiss Family Robinson

Johann David Wyss

The novel opens with the family in the hold of a sailing ship, weathering a great storm. The ship runs aground on a reef, and the family learns the ship's crew has taken to a lifeboat and abandoned them. Subsequent searches for the crew yield no trace. The ship survives the night as the storm abates, and the family finds themselves within sight of a tropical island. The ship's cargo of livestock, dogs, guns & powder, carpentry tools, books, a disassembled pinnace, and provisions have survived. The family builds a raft, lashes livestock and the most valuable supplies to it, and paddles to the island, where they set up a temporary shelter. Over the next few weeks they make several expeditions back to the ship, to empty its hold, and harvest rigging, planks, and sails. They construct a small homestead on the island, and the ship's hull eventually breaks up in a storm and founders. The middle of the book is a series of vignettes, covering several years. The father and older boys explore various environments about the island, discover various (improbable) plants and animals, and build a large tree house, complete with a library. They also use the carpentry tools and local resources to build mechanical contraptions. Eventually, sailing the pinnace around the island's coast, they discover a European family hiding from local pirates. They adopt their daughter (who at first masquerades as a boy), and her father returns on a rescue mission, restoring the family's contact to the outside world.

The Makioka Sisters

;Title The novel's title, , means lightly falling snow and is also used in classical Japanese poetry. The image suggests falling cherry blossoms in early spring—a number of poets confess to confusing falling cherry blossoms with snow. Falling cherry blossoms are a common symbol of impermanence, a prevalent theme of the novel. Additionally, the in Sasameyuki is the same as the yuki in Yukiko's name, suggesting that she is the central character of the novel. These nuances do not translate well into English. The translator, Edward Seidensticker, struggled over the title. Translations like “Fine Snow” and “Snow Flurries” do not convey the elegance or layers of meaning in the Japanese title. ;Characters *, the eldest Makioka sister and mistress of the main house *, the second-oldest Makioka sister and mistress of the Ashiya branch house *, the third Makioka sister; thirty and unmarried, shy and retiring *, the youngest Makioka sister; unable to marry Okubata until a husband has been found for Yukiko *, Tsuruko’s husband and head of the family, a cautious bank employee who has taken the Makioka name *, Sachiko’s husband, an accountant who has also taken the Makioka name *, young daughter of Sachiko and Teinosuke *, a maid at the Ashiya house *, son of a prominent Osaka merchant family, has tried to elope with Taeko *, a photographer and former clerk at the Okubatas’ jewelry store *, owner of the beauty parlor the Makioka sisters patronize, enjoys acting as a go-between in marriage negotiations ;Plot ;Book One The Makiokas are an upper-middle-class family from Osaka, Japan. At the time of their father’s prime, they were one of the wealthiest families in the region, but over the last generation their fortunes have fallen into decline. The main branch lives in Osaka, at the family home, and consists of the eldest sister, Tsuruko, her husband, Tatsuo, who has taken the Makioka name, and their six children. The branch house is located in Ashiya, an affluent suburb between Osaka and Kobe, and consists of the second-oldest sister, Sachiko, her husband, Teinosuke (also an adopted Makioka), and their young daughter, Etsuko. Tsuruko and Sachiko have two younger sisters, Yukiko and Taeko, who are unmarried and move between the main house and the branch house. As the novel opens, the Makiokas' pride has led them to dismiss the numerous marriage proposals they have received for Yukiko in the past, but, now that their fortunes have declined, the rate of proposals has slowed, and Yukiko, now thirty, remains without a husband. To make matters worse, her name was mistakenly printed in place of Taeko’s in a local newspaper story: Taeko had run away with Okubata. Tatsuo demanded a retraction, but instead, the newspaper ran a correction, replacing Yukiko's name with Taeko's. The article embarrassed the Makioka family and stained both Yukiko’s and Taeko's names; unhappy with the way Tatsuo handled the affair and generally dissatisfied with his cautious nature, Yukiko and Taeko have begun spending most of their time at the Ashiya house. In the wake of the newspaper incident, Taeko finds refuge in doll making—she is quite skilled, and her dolls are sold in department stores. She convinces Sachiko to find her a studio, where she spends a great deal of time working on her dolls. Itani brings Sachiko a marriage prospect, a man named Segoshi. Hurried by Itani, the family agrees to an informal before they can thoroughly check Segoshi’s background. The Makiokas become optimistic about their chances of making the match, but are eventually forced to decline when they discover that Segoshi's mother is afflicted with a kind of dementia which was considered hereditary. A few months later, Sachiko receives word of another marriage prospect, this time from an old classmate, Mrs. Jimba. The prospective groom is a middle-aged widower named Nomura. Sachiko is not particularly excited about him, because of his aged appearance, but decides to have him investigated all the same. She asks Mrs. Jimba to give them one or two months to make a decision. In the meantime, the bank Tatsuo works for has decided to send him to Tokyo to manage a branch office. He and his family will move to Tokyo, and it is decided that Yukiko and Taeko should go with them. Taeko is allowed to stay in Ashiya for a short while to tend to her business, but Yukiko is to leave immediately. Yukiko is unhappy in Tokyo, and Tsuruko suggests they send her back to Osaka for a while. A follow-up letter regarding Nomura arrives from Mrs. Jimba, just as Sachiko is searching for an excuse to send for Yukiko. Though not enthusiastic about the match, the Makiokas agree to a miai as a pretense for bringing Yukiko back to Ashiya. Shortly before the miai, Sachiko has a miscarriage, and the Makiokas are forced to postpone meeting Nomura. When Sachiko, Teinosuke, and Yukiko finally meet him, a week later, Sachiko is surprised at how old he looks. After dinner, they are taken back to Nomura's house, where he shows them the Buddhist altar where he prays for his dead wife and children. Yukiko, put off by his insensitivity, declares that she cannot marry him. The family refuses Nomura’s marriage proposal, and Yukiko is sent back to Tokyo. ;Book Two Taeko’s interest in dolls wanes and she begins to devote time to Western-style sewing and traditional Osaka dance. A dance recital is held at the Ashiya house with Taeko as one of the performers. A personable young photographer named Itakura takes pictures at the request of Okubata. Itakura and Taeko are already acquainted; he photographs her dolls. A month later, a disastrous flood strikes the Kansai region. Taeko is attending a sewing school in the area hardest hit. Itakura rescues her. Impressed by his heroism, Taeko begins to fall for him. Eventually Taeko’s and Itakura’s relationship becomes known to Sachiko, who disapproves because of Itakura’s low social standing. Nevertheless, Taeko is determined to marry him. Taeko wants to study fashion design in France with her sewing teacher and asks Sachiko to convince the main house to support her. When Taeko’s sewing teacher abandons her plans to go to France, Taeko decides to open a Western-style dress shop. She goes to Tokyo to ask the main house for money, but is immediately called back to Osaka because Itakura has fallen ill. Itakura is hospitalized for an inner-ear infection and dies of gangrene resulting from complications of surgery. Itakura’s death alleviates Sachiko’s concern that Taeko will marry below their class. ;Book Three In June, Tatsuo's eldest sister alerts Sachiko of a marriage prospect, a Mr. Sawazaki from a prominent Nagoya family. Sachiko, Yukiko, Taeko, and Etsuko visit Tatsuo’s sister in Ōgaki so that Yukiko can attend the miai. The miai does not go well: Sachiko is left with a negative impression, and Sawazaki rejects the marriage. This is the first time the Makiokas have been refused by a marriage prospect. Upon her return, Sachiko hears that Taeko has taken up again with Okubata. As the relationship grows increasingly open, Teinosuke informs Tsuruko. Tsuruko demands that Taeko be sent to Tokyo; Taeko refuses and is disinherited. Later, Itani presents another marriage prospect for Yukiko. The potential suitor, Hashidera, is an attractive candidate, but he is uncertain if he wants to remarry. Teinosuke takes Yukiko to meet him and goes to great lengths to see the match through, but Yukiko's shyness causes Hashidera to call off the negotiations. Just after this, Sachiko is informed that Taeko has fallen severely ill at Okubata's house. At first, it is assumed that she has dysentery, but the diagnosis is later changed to anthrax. Taeko’s condition grows progressively worse, and the sisters are torn between finding better care and allowing Taeko to be seen at Okubata's house. Eventually she is moved to the hospital of a family friend, where she slowly recovers. Meanwhile, Sachiko is told that Taeko has been living off of Okubata since being disinherited. Sachiko also hears that Taeko may be involved with a bar tender named Miyoshi. Sachiko is aghast, but now sees a marriage between Taeko and Okubata as a necessity. After Taeko has recovered, Sachiko learns that Okubata is being pressured by his family to go to Manchuria; Sachiko and Yukiko think that Taeko should go with him. Taeko objects, but Yukiko pushes her, saying that she is indebted to Okubata for everything he has given her. Taeko leaves the house in tears and stays away for two days. Okubata eventually decides against going to Manchuria. The Makiokas also learn that Itani is planning to sell her shop and travel to America, but before her departure, Itani informs Sachiko that she has another suitor for Yukiko. His name is Mimaki, an illegitimate son of a viscount. The sisters travel to Tokyo to meet him, and he quickly charms them. While in Tokyo, Taeko tells Sachiko that she is four months pregnant with Miyoshi’s child. Sachiko and Teinosuke arrange for Taeko to have the baby secretly at Arima. To protect the Makiokas’ reputation, Teinosuke asks Okubata to remain silent about Taeko’s behavior. Okubata agrees, on condition that Teinosuke compensate him for the money he has spent on Taeko. Teinosuke agrees to pay him two-thousand yen. Taeko's baby dies at birth, and Taeko moves in with Miyoshi. The Makiokas are pressed to answer Mimaki’s marriage proposal. Yukiko accepts, whereupon Teinosuke sends a letter to the main house asking for their consent. The wedding date and location are set, and a house is secured for the new couple. Yukiko is not excited when her wedding kimonos arrive and suffers from diarrhea, which persists on the train ride to Tokyo.

Slow Learner

Thomas Pynchon

This was Pynchon's first published story. It centers around Nathan Levine, a lazy Specialist 3/C in the Army stationed at New Orleans who, along with several of his companions in the battalion are assigned to help with the cleanup at a small island named Creole, which has just been hit by a hurricane. He picks up dead bodies back at the island and after the horrific day of work, he heads back thinking about how to go forward with his life, if at all. Dennis Flange, a lawyer at Wasp and Winsome, Attorneys at Law, calls into the office, telling them he's not coming in. What he's going to do instead is sit at home and drink wine with the neighborhood garbage man, Rocco Squarcione. As they sit and talk, Dennis's wife, Cindy, comes home and is noticeably frustrated by Dennis's afternoon activities. To make matters worse, an old rowdy college "friend" of the Flanges, named Pig Bodine, shows up in a stolen MG to see his old friend. At this, Cindy orders the three men off the premises. They all get in Rocco's garbage truck, and head down to the dump, patrolled by an old man named Bolingbroke. There, Dennis waxes philosophical about the dump, thinking of it as an allegory for his life up to that point, and possibly his life in the future. Rocco leaves for home, and Bolingbroke, Bodine, and Dennis turn in for the night, swapping sea stories as they doze off. Then, in the middle of the night, Dennis hears a woman's voice calling "Anglo! Anglo with the golden hair!". Realizing this is him, Dennis runs off into the dump looking for the woman. Remembering that Bolingbroke said that gypsies were in the area, Dennis wonders if the woman he's looking for is a gypsy. Then he sees her. She is the most beautiful woman he's ever seen... and is also three feet tall. She takes him to her home, tunneling deep into the dump, where she asks him to marry her. He declines, saying he's already married. To this, she starts crying, thinking Dennis won't take her. He then thinks she looks like a child, and that he always wanted children, but Cindy was too busy. He then tells her he'll stay... for a while. A weekend-long lease-breaking party devolves into disarray as Meatball Mulligan entertains a revolving door of cronies, servicemen, and jazz musicians while, in a hothouse room, Callisto and his lover Aubade ponder the everpresent condition of enclosed systems creating disorder while trying to nurse a baby bird back to health in a constantly 37° Fahrenheit room. Callisto pontificates on the discoveries of the Laws of Thermodynamics, Clausius' theorem, and Gibbs and Boltzmann, finally deciding that entropy is an adequate metaphor to apply to American consumerist society, "a similar tendency from the least to the most probable, from differentiation to sameness, from ordered individuality to a kind of chaos." Meanwhile Meatball juggles his attention between conversations about communication theory and personal relationships, keeping the musicians from smoking marijuana in his place, and the unexpected entrances of three coed philosophy majors lugging gallons of Chianti and, later, five sailors searching for a whorehouse. As the musicians discuss music theory, the girls and sailors chant drunken songs together, and childish chicanery break out all over, Meatball debates whether to hide in a closet until the party subsides its second wind or try to calm everyone down, one by one. He decides on the latter, patching up each out-of-control situation until the party tapers down to a din. Callisto's bird fails to improve under the unchanging conditions, which causes Aubade to smash out a window of the hothouse with her bare hands, displacing the constant temperature of inside and outside and leaving the story in a state of hovering uncertainty of where the next moment will lead. Two English spies, named Porpentine and Goodfellow, are sitting in a cafe in Upper Egypt. Their mission is to find out what their nemesis, Moldweorp, is up to in the area. Porpentine theorizes his plan is to assassinate the Consul-General, and so they travel to Cairo to intercept him, along with Goodfellow's new girlfriend, named Victoria Wren, her family, and a man named Bongo-Shaftsbury. During the trip, Bongo-Shaftsbury attempts to attack Victoria's younger sister Mildred, but Porpentine stops him. He then realizes that the man is a spy working for Moldweorp, and Bongo-Shaftsbury is put under guard. Upon reaching Cairo, the two men check into their hotels. The next morning, they head to the opera house where the Consul-General is a guest. Upon reaching their destination, they realize their hunch was correct, and Moldweorp and his spies are swarming the place. After Porpentine foils the assassination attempt, a chase across the streets of Cairo ensues. They reach the Sphinx, and exit their cabs, running across the desert. Porpentine and Goodfellow catch Moldweorp, and they talk a moment. Porpentine tells Goodfellow to return to the cab. He does, and a shot rings out. Turning around, he sees his companion face-down in the hot desert sand, as Moldweorp walks away. Sixteen years later, Goodfellow surveys a motorcade containing Archduke Franz Ferdinand, upon hearing rumors of a possible assassination. He's joined by his new girlfriend, a barmaid this time, who thinks of him as just a simple-minded Englishman, no good in bed but liberal with his money. Grover Snodd and his friends Tim Santora, Carl Barrington, Etienne Cherdlu, and Hogan Slothrop, neighborhood kids from Mingeborough, New York, meet up at Grover's house one Saturday afternoon to discuss activities for the weekend. Their "Inner Junta" talk about planning elaborate practical jokes, collecting milk money from schoolkids. The meeting adjourns and the five of them depart, through a lush section of forest they dub King Yjro's Woods, then down a stream aboard a refurbished flat-bottomed boat they christened the S.S. Leak, to an abandoned manor known as "The Big House". Here they solidify plans to infiltrate and disrupt a PTA meeting with smoke bombs and sodium/water explosions when Hogan, an 8-year-old AA member, gets a call to sit with another member who is alone and afraid. He and Tim abandon the group and go to the hotel where Mr. Carl McAfee, a Negro musician from Mississippi, was staying. Mr. McAfee eyes the situation with the kids and, chalking it up to a bad joke, sends them away and calls room service for a fifth of whiskey. Hogan steadfastly claims his seriousness and the kids stay to keep him company. After failing to shoo them away, Grover calls the hotel and asks to show up with Etienne. McAfee can't afford to pay for the bottle of whiskey, much less the room he's staying in, and breaks down into screaming and crying in his bed, passing out in-between fits. The police are called in to escort Mr. McAfee out as a vagrant, despite protests from the kids and Hogan's insistence that the man is sick, not a criminal. The timeline gets flipped here and, after the Junta had successfully completed a few of their practical jokes, talk about Carl Barrington's family moving into the neighborhood had taken over the parents. In response to the word "integration" being thrown around, Grover, the boy genius, offers the calculus definition. Later it is realized that the parents were discussing the other meaning for "integration", white and black kids in the same schools, was what was really meant. Carl's family, who is Negro, is a sort of trigger for the gentrification of the area, an easy target, an explanation for the racist remarks made by Tim's mother and reflected around the neighborhood, and gives light to the mockery of Hogan's dispatch to Mr. McAfee's aid. Carl, although accepted by the boys as a legitimate member of the Junta, could only be related to by grownups as an "imaginary playmate", someone who is talked about and reflected through safe White suburban eyes, then left to harmlessly evaporate at day's end.

The Sky So Big and Black

Batūl Khuḍayrī

This story alternates between the point of view of Terpsichore Melpomene Murray ("Teri"), an ecoprospector who's approaching adulthood on Mars and seeks to follow in her father's footsteps, and the unnamed psychiatrist who is listening to her story. Several decades earlier, refugees from Earth fled to join a pre-existing human colony on Mars to escape the domination of One True, a massively parallel/cellular automata program that runs on the interconnected brains of most of the human beings on Earth; the program in the individual human brain is called Resuna, probably a contraction from the Latin for One Thing. If a human mind has a copy of Resuna, it may remain dormant until a human speaks the trigger phrase let overwrite, let override. The first half of the novel is mostly backstory in Teri's voice, leading up to the day when she passed her test for "full adulthood", a legal status that can apparently be reached at any age by passing an educational and psychiatric exam, which gives her the right to marry, hold property, vote, and so forth. Teri hopes to be an ecospector (eco-prospector) like Telemachus, living on the surface in a pressure suit most of the time; but because in the last generation the colonists decided to forgo terraforming Mars to suit human life and instead adapt humans to suit the Martian environment, the future of ecospecting doesn't look good to Telemachus; he thinks the future of Mars is with the "Nations" of Mars-formed humans. It's estimated that modifying people can be done in just two to three generations, whereas terraforming Mars might take thousands of years. Thus he wants her to get an advanced degree and go into some always-needed occupation like science or medicine. When they strike a "scorehole", a very large deposit of methane and water, their fortune seems assured, and Teri expects to marry the boy she has been courting; when it turns out he has married someone else, she grumpily agrees to one more year of school at least, and she and Telemachus take on the job of shepherding a group of younger children to the school at Red Sands City. While the party are in the roundings (the frontier, bush, or outback—possibly from "surroundings" or "roundabouts"?) a major solar flare occurs, and because Mars' thin atmosphere and weak magnetic field provide less protection against high-energy particles than on Earth, this event overloads many electronics systems on Mars, as well as damaging the "exosuit" (space suit) systems of many people who are outdoors and otherwise unprotected, so that several members of the party are killed, including Telemachus. Furthermore, the GPS-like navigation system Teri has used all her life is permanently down. Teri and Alik, a boy in the party, re-invent celestial navigation and reach the nearest railhead, where there is a working phone, only to find that the disaster is planetwide and help will not be coming soon. Worse yet, a group of Marsform humans are stranded farther up the track and in danger of starving due to their ultrafast metabolisms. Despite her bigotry against the Nations, Teri tries to take food to them in a backpack, but collapses and breaks her leg. A mysterious voice on her suit radio soothes and comforts her, takes over her body, and causes her to wreck her body getting food to the Marsforms; she has been taken over by Resuna. We now learn why the psychiatrist himself has been listening to her story; they are recording it so she can have some idea of what happened in the big gaps he is going to create in her memory while erasing Resuna. He himself has had this process twice. Further, we learn that this is all information from the past, that in fact he has been re-infected with Resuna, and so has Teri, and that they will both lose all memory of each other and of the many events, including much of her last memories of her father. So although they have been close friends, in the last chapter they are re-introduced to each other for the first time. The novel ends with their working as ecospecting partners, as Mars rebuilds.

The Master of Go

Yasunari Kawabata

It is a semi-fictional chronicle of the lengthy 1938 "retirement game" of Go by the respected master Honinbo Shūsai, against the up-and-coming player Minoru Kitani (although the latter's name is changed to Otaké in the book). It was the last game of the master Shūsai's career, a lengthy struggle which took almost six months to complete; he narrowly lost to his younger challenger, to die a little over a year thereafter.