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<|fantasy|>The book is about a young lad , Nils Holgersson , whose chief delight was to eat and sleep , and after that he liked best to make mischief . He takes great delight in hurting the animals in his family farm . Nils captures a tomte in a net while his family is at church and have left him home to memorize chapters from the Bible . The tomte proposes to Nils that if Nils frees him , the tomte will give him a huge gold coin . Nils rejects the offer and the tomte turns Nils into a tomte , which leaves him shrunken and able to talk with animals , who are thrilled to see the boy reduced to their size and are angry and hungry for revenge . While this is happening , wild geese are flying over the farm on one of their migrations , and a white farm goose attempts to join the wild ones . In an attempt to salvage something before his family returns , Nils holds on to the bird s neck as it successfully takes off and joins the wild birds . The wild geese , who are not pleased at all to be joined by a boy and a domestic goose , eventually take him on an adventurous trip across all the historical provinces of Sweden observing in passing their natural characteristics and economic resources . At the same time the characters and situations he encounters make him a man the domestic goose needs to prove his ability to fly like the experienced wild geese , and Nils needs to prove to the geese that he would be a useful companion , despite their initial misgivings . During the trip , Nils learns that if he proves he has changed for the better , the tomte might be disposed to change him back to his normal size . The book also includes various subplots , concerning people whose lives are touched in one way or another by Nils and the wild geese . For example , one chapter centers on a young provincial man who feels lonely and alienated in the capital Stockholm , is befriended by a nice old gentleman who tells him and the reader about the city s history and only later finds that it was none other than the King of Sweden , walking incognito in the park . The book was criticized for the fact that the goose and boy don t make any stop in the province Halland . In chapter 53 they fly over Halland on the way back to Scania , but they aren t impressed by the sight and they don t stop . However , such a chapter has been added to some translations of the book . In depictions Nils is usually wearing a red cap , although this is erroneous as he is described in the original Swedish edition as wearing a white cap .

<|crime|>The story begins on November 22 , 1963 , in Dallas , minutes after the John F . Kennedy assassination , and continues for roughly five years . Ward Littell , former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent turned high powered Mafia lawyer , arrives in Dallas with J . Edgar Hoover s blessing to manage the investigation and ensure a consensus Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone . Pete Bondurant , who Littell once arrested but is now an uneasy friend and partner , is a veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency s war against Fidel Castro and now the point man for the Mafia s Las Vegas operations . Wayne Tedrow , Jr . , a US Army veteran and Las Vegas Police Department officer , is paid six thousand dollars to fly to Dallas and murder a black pimp who has offended the casinos , and is thus thrust into the assassination s aftermath . As the tension over race relations and the Vietnam War builds and explodes throughout the decade , all three become involved in plots to kill Martin Luther King , Jr . and Robert F . Kennedy .

<|fantasy|>Ramsay s passion for hagiology and his guilty connection to Mary Dempster provide most of the impetus and background for this novel . He spends much of the book struggling with his image of Mary Dempster as a fool saint and dealing with issues of guilt that grew from a childhood accident . The entire story is told in the form of a letter written by Ramsay on his retirement from teaching at Colborne College , addressed to the school Headmaster .

<|childrens|>In the Jungle of Nool , a jungle environment populated by anthropomorphic fauna , an elephant named Horton encounters a clover inhabited by a society of tiny beings known as the Whos of microscopic size . After conversing with the mayor of Whoville , Horton decides to dedicate all of his time to tending to the needs of the Whos and guarding them from the hazards of the much larger world . However , the Sour Kangaroo , doubting Horton s stories of the Whos , encourages all of the other animals that Horton is lying , and they decide to destroy the clover out of contempt . The terrified , panicking Whos are left to despair until town s mayor stumbles upon a young boy named Jojo , whose mouth he raises a megaphone to just as the animals are about to bring devastation upon all of Whoville . Jojo screams the word YOPP ! ! , which is amplified by the megaphone in the nick of time . Realizing that her suspicions were incorrect , the Sour Kangaroo redeems herself by joining Horton in devoting all of her time to protecting the Whos .

<|fantasy|>The story concerns a world named Patra Bannk known otherwise as Freeze Bake , and a crew of explorers from another world named Two Bit because life is cheap there , seeking a treasure of metallic hydrogen . Upon arriving at the planet , the four members of the expedition arrange themselves into two shuttlecraft . Pike and Hendig , in one shuttlecraft , travel inland toward a mountain village where they hope to find the navigator , Paddelack , who was stranded there after Hendig s previous voyage . After finding him , they are captured by a group of locals known as the Gostum . Upon escaping from the Gostum stronghold of Konndjlan , Pike and Paddelack proceed to Daryephna , a fabled forbidden city where Pike hopes to find the metallic hydrogen . Stringer and Valyavar take the other shuttle north along the coast about one hundred thousand kilometers and crash land near the city of Ta tjenen . The locals consider Ta tjenen to be the center of the world . Stringer awakens after the crash landing to find Valyavar missing , and he shoots and kills one of the natives who approach him , unaware that they were trying to help . The planet s current inhabitants are human like , but with six fingers on each hand and with skin that darkens and lightens dramatically as the weather changes . They are divided into semi barbaric groups or tribes with historical enmity toward one another . There are local legends of an ancient people called the Polkraitz who lived on Patra Bannk centuries ago and had a much more advanced technology than is currently available . They left , but are prophesied to return when two of the traditional calendar systems coincide an event known as the Golun Patra that occurs once every 96 Earth years . The upcoming Golun Patra is the twelfth Golun Patra , which gives it added significance . The planet s slow rotation rate results in extreme weather , alternating between freezing cold nights Patras lasting up to six Earth months during which the sun never rises and steaming hot days Bannks during which the sun never sets for a similar number of months . Patra Bannk is at least 50 times the size of Earth , six hundred thousand kilometers across . It is a type of Dyson sphere built around a black hole . The book is set in a time in the far future when the galaxies are beginning to merge , prior to the Big Crunch .

<|fantasy|>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 .

<|comedy|>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 .

<|fantasy|>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 .

<|mystery|>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 .

<|mystery|>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 .

<|action|>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 .

<|action|>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 .

<|fantasy|>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 .

<|action|>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 .

<|crime|>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 ?

<|fantasy|>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 .

<|fantasy|>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 .

<|fantasy|>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 .

<|childrens|>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 nbsp . . . 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 nbsp . . . 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 .

<|novel|>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 .

<|novel|>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 .

<|fantasy|>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 .

<|fantasy|>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 .

<|novel|>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 .

<|fantasy|>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 .

<|fantasy|>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 .

<|novel|>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 .

<|childrens|>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 .

<|fantasy|>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 .

<|fantasy|>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 .

<|action|>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 nbsp ndash fellow new arrivals to Stepford nbsp ndash 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 nbsp ndash 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 .

<|novel|>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

<|fantasy|>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 .

<|fantasy|>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 .

<|novel|>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 .

<|childrens|>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 .

<|novel|>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 .

<|novel|>Joseph then marries a school teacher from Monterey named Elizabeth . Upon returning to the farm from the wedding , they find that the youngest brother , Benjy , an alcoholic , had been stabbed and killed by Juanito when he discovered him seducing his wife . When they meet later that night at the sacred rock , Juanito asks Joseph to kill him in revenge for his brother , but Joseph refuses . Joseph wants to pass it off as an accident , and for him to stay , but Juanito flees the farm , promising to return once the guilt has passed . For a time , the farm prospers , and Elizabeth bears a child . Joseph s brother , Burton , a devout Christian , becomes increasingly concerned with Joseph s late night talks with the tree . The farm is then the site of a New Year s fiesta , and Burton decides to leave the farm after seeing the pagan activities . After he leaves , the remaining brothers discover that Burton had girdled the tree to kill it . In the following rainless winter everything begins to die as a severe drought sets in . One day , Joseph and Elizabeth visit the glade . Elizabeth decides to climb on the mossy rock , when she falls and breaks her neck , dying instantly . Soon thereafter , Joseph and Thomas decide to drive the cattle out to San Joaquin to find green pastures . At the last minute , Joseph decides to stay , then lives by the rock and watches the stream dry up . Juanito returns and convinces Joseph to visit the town s priest to enlist his help in breaking the drought . The priest refuses to pray for rain , saying that his concern is the salvation of human souls . Joseph returns to the rock to find the stream dry . When trying to saddle his horse , he frightens the animal and receives a cut on the arm from a saddle buckle . Joseph then climbs to the top of the rock and slits his wrists , watching the blood run into the moss . As he sacrifices himself to some mysterious higher power , he feels the rain begin to fall down .

<|mystery|>The novel revolves around three boys who grow up as friends in Boston Dave Boyle , Sean Devine , and Jimmy Marcus . When the story opens , we see Dave abducted by child molesters while he , Sean , and Jimmy are horsing around on a neighborhood street . Dave escapes and returns home days later , emotionally shattered by his experience . The book then moves forward 25 years Sean has become a homicide detective , Jimmy is an ex convict who currently owns a convenience store , and Dave is a shell of a man . Jimmy s daughter disappears and is found brutally murdered in a city park , and that same night , Dave comes home to his wife , covered in blood . Sean is assigned to investigate the murder , and the three childhood friends are caught up in each other s lives again .

<|fantasy|>The book s four main characters are ecologically minded misfits nbsp mdash Seldom Seen Smith , a Jack Mormon river guide Doc Sarvis , an odd but wealthy and wise surgeon Bonnie Abbzug , his young sexualized female assistant and a rather eccentric Green Beret Vietnam veteran , George Hayduke . Together , though not always working as a tightly knit team , they form the titular group dedicated to the destruction of what they see as the system that pollutes and destroys their environments , the American West . As their attacks on deserted bulldozers and trains continue , the law closes in . The book was praised for its erudition , flair , down home wit , and the accuracy of its descriptions of life away from civilization . Abbey made the West his home and was a skilled outdoorsman . From a 21st century viewpoint , the Gang in some ways bears little resemblance to the modern media s portrayal of environmentalists nbsp mdash the book s characters eat a lot of red meat , own firearms , litter the roadside with empty beer cans and drive big cars . Abbey s habits were reportedly similar . Abbey s politics are not bleeding heart , and most of the characters dismiss liberalism they attack American Indians as well as whites for their consumerism , and hold little regard for the Sierra Club . Despite occasional contradictory evidence , Edward Abbey considered himself a liberal I m a liberal , and proud of it , he wrote in Abbeys Road . For the Gang , the enemy is those who would develop the US Southwest nbsp mdash despoiling the land , befouling the air , and destroying Nature and the sacred purity of Abbey s desert world . Their greatest hatred is focused on the Glen Canyon Dam , a monolithic edifice of concrete that dams a beautiful , wild river , and which the monkeywrenchers seek to destroy . One of the book s most memorable passages describes Abbey s character Seldom Seen Smith , as he kneels atop the dam praying for a pre cision earthquake to remove the temporary plug of the Colorado River . The book may have been the inspiration for Dave Foreman s and Mike Roselle s creation of Earth First ! , a direct action environmental organization that often advocates much of the minor vandalism depicted in the book . Many scenes of vandalism and ecologically motivated mayhem , including a billboard burning at the beginning of the book and the use of caltrops to elude pursuing police , are presented in sufficient detail as to form a skeletal how to for would be saboteurs . This has influenced the Earth Liberation Front .

<|mystery|>As the story opens , free lance writer Ross Harte is writing a magazine article on the modern detective story , and most of this article to be is included in the first chapter . When a magician is found dead inside his locked and thoroughly sealed apartment , the police call in Merlini to help explain the impossible , perhaps on the theory that it takes a magician to catch one . All the suspects , however , are accustomed to producing the impossible . They include a professional medium , an escape artist , a couple of magicians , a ventriloquist , and two people who claim to exhibit mental telepathy in their nightclub act . The first murder victim is found spread eagled inside a pentagram , surrounded by the trappings of black magic . The second victim , also spread eagled , seems to have been in two places at once during the first murder . After a number of breakneck chases from one scene to the next , Merlini and his assistant are a couple of steps ahead of the police and provide a far fetched but logical solution to the impossible crimes . In between , Merlini and other characters deliver great chunks of informative conversation mixed with paragraphs of information about entirely unrelated but fascinating topics , like yogic bilocation , making the keys of a typewriter move without touching them , and even posing a tricky problem in geometry . The action also stops for a while when Merlini quotes a well known passage from John Dickson Carr s The Three Coffins about the nature of locked room mystery novels , and adds some flourishes of his own in relation to the problems at hand . The penultimate scene in which the murderer is revealed is enlivened by one of the suspects attempting on stage to catch a bullet in his teeth , and all is explained in the final chapter when everyone gathers at Merlini s Magic Shop in the best whodunnit tradition .

<|novel|>The book is written in long paragraphs with extended sentences . The general s thoughts are relayed to the reader through winding sentences which convey his desperation and loneliness alongside the atrocities and ruthless behavior that keep him in power . One of the book s most striking aspects is its focus on the God like status held by the protagonist and the unfathomable awe and respect with which his people regard him . Dictators and strongmen such as Franco , Somoza , and Trujillo managed to hold sway over the populations of their nations despite internal political division . García Márquez symbolizes this with the discovery of the dictator s corpse in the presidential palace .

<|novel|>In I Am a Cat , a supercilious , feline narrator describes the lives of an assortment of middle class Japanese people Mr . Sneaze literally translated from Chinno Kushami , , in the original Japanese and family the cat s owners , Sneaze s garrulous and irritating friend Waverhouse Meitei , , and the young scholar Avalon Coldmoon Mizushima Kangetsu , with his will he won t he courtship of the businessman s spoilt daughter , Opula Goldfield Kaneda Tomiko , .

<|mystery|>Frank Ryan is an almost honest used car salesman , who after deliberately not testifying against car thief Ernest Stick Stickley , Jr . , thinks of a foolproof plan for them to perform armed robberies . The plan is about simple everyday armed robbery . Supermarkets , bars , liquor stores , gas stations , etc . Because the statistics prove that this armed robbery pays the most for the least amount of risk , they start their business and earn three to five thousand dollars a week . To prevent getting caught Frank introduces 10 golden rules for successful armed robbery Always be polite on the job and say please and thank you . Never say more than necessary . Less is more . Never call your partner by name unless you use a made up name . Never look suspicious or like a bum and dress well . Never use your own car . Never count the take in the car . Never flash money in a bar or with women . Never go back to an old bar or hangout once you have moved up . Never tell anyone your business and never tell a junkie even your name . Never associate with people known to be in crime . For awhile , Frank and Stick are able to follow the rules and the plan and they are extremely successful . They even rob the robber who just robbed the bar they were in . But , inevitably , the rules start falling by the wayside and when they see a chance for a big score , the rules go out the window , with predictably disastrous results .

<|novel|>The novel is written largely from the point of view of the narrator , who is first introduced to the character of Strickland through his Strickland s wife and strikes him the narrator as unremarkable . Certain chapters are entirely composed of the stories or narrations of others which the narrator himself is recalling from memory selectively editing or elaborating on certain aspects of dialogue , particularly Strickland s , as Strickland is said by the narrator to be limited in his use of verbiage and tended to use gestures in his expression . Strickland is a well off , middle class stockbroker in London sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century . Early in the novel , he leaves his wife and children and goes to Paris , living a destitute but defiantly content life there as an artist specifically a painter , lodging in run down hotels and falling prey to both illness and hunger . Strickland , in his drive to express through his art what appears to continually possess and compel him inside , cares nothing for physical comfort and is generally indifferent to his surroundings , but is generously supported while in Paris by a commercially successful but hackneyed Dutch painter , Dirk Stroeve , a friend of the narrator s , who immediately recognizes Strickland s genius . After helping Strickland recover from a life threatening condition , Stroeve is repaid by having his wife , Blanche , abandon him for Strickland . Strickland later discards the wife all he really sought from Blanche was a model to paint , not serious companionship , and it is hinted in the novel s dialogue that he indicated this to her and she took the risk anyway , who then commits suicide yet another human casualty the first ones being his own established life and those of his wife and children in Strickland s single minded pursuit of Art and Beauty . After the Paris episode , the story continues in Tahiti . Strickland has already died , and the narrator attempts to piece together his life there from the recollections of others . He finds that Strickland had taken up with a native woman , had two children by her one of whom dies and started painting profusely . We learn that Strickland had settled for a short while in the French port of Marseilles before traveling to Tahiti , where he lived for a few years before finally dying of leprosy . Strickland left behind numerous paintings , but his magnum opus , which he painted on the walls of his hut before losing his sight to leprosy , was burnt down after his death by his wife in accordance with his dying orders .

<|mystery|>Eve Owens , a British film star who is now in her mid forties and who has settled down in the small village of Bamford , invites her cousin Meredith Mitchell to her daughter Sara s wedding , which is to take place in a couple of weeks time in the old village church . But shortly after Mitchell s arrival one of Eve Owens s neighbours , a young artist called Philip Lorrimer , is found dead in his cottage poisoned . The autopsy reveals that it has been a slow death , that Lorrimer has been poisoned over a longer period of time . At first there are no suspects , especially as no one seems to have had a motive for killing Lorrimer . But when one night Lorrimer s 80 year old neighbour Bert Yewell is slain in his pyjamas next to his garden shed it becomes clear that Yewell must have known a secret which he was about to give away . In the end it turns out that Eve Owens , her daughter but also one of the guests staying at Owens s house are not as innocent as they seemed at the beginning .

<|fantasy|>Poet , lapsed Catholic and conscientious objector Louis Sacchetti is sent to a secret military installation called Camp Archimedes , where military prisoners are injected with a form of syphilis intended to make them geniuses hence the punning reference to concentration in the novel s title . By breaking down rigid categories in the mind according to a definition of genius put forward by Arthur Koestler , the disease makes the thought process both faster and more flexible it also causes physical breakdown and , within nine months , death . The book is told in the form of Sacchetti s diary , and includes literary references to the story of Faust at one point the prisoners stage Christopher Marlowe s Doctor Faustus and Sacchetti s friendship with ringleader Mordecai Washington parallels Faust s with Mephistopheles . It only becomes clear that Sacchetti himself has syphilis as his diary entries refer to his increasingly poor health , and become progressively more florid , until almost descending into insanity . After a test run on the prisoners , a megalomaniac nuclear physicist has himself injected with the disease , joins Camp Archimedes with his team of student helpers , and sets about trying to end the human race . The prisoners in the book appear to be fascinated by alchemy , which they used as an elaborate cover for their escape plans . Sacchetti , who is obese , has a number of ironic visions involving other obese historical and intellectual figures , such as Thomas Aquinas . The novel s ending may owe something to the episode Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling from the television series The Prisoner , for which Disch wrote a spinoff novel .

<|fantasy|>After a riot in a near future England where telepathy has been discovered , the authorities discover Gerald Howson , a physically deformed youth with greater telepathic power than has ever been seen before . The novel details Howson s struggles to come to grips with his power and his deformity .

<|fantasy|>The novel expresses Brunner in a lighter mode than other novels of the period such as Stand on Zanzibar and The Sheep Look Up . The original cover copy said , He summoned the monsters of the past to help him rule the world . Actually , protagonist Harold Freitas III is merely looking for a publicity triumph , and the monsters are duplicates of his own ancestors , brought forward to 2066 by a newly invented time machine . The ancestors have some difficulties , amusingly described , in adjusting to 21st century mores . Freitas and his sentient computer SPARCI save the day .

<|fantasy|>While on a sea voyage , a ship named Naglfar founders . One anhedonic passenger , A . Clarence Shandon M . B . A . , Wisconsin is washed ashore in a fictional land known as The Commonwealth of Letters . He is befriended by Golias , who nicknames him Silverlock and who becomes his guide . Silverlock and Golias encounter figures from history , literature and mythology .

<|childrens|>A young girl named Matilda Wormwood is gifted with precocity but her wealthy , dimwitted parents are oblivious to their daughter s prodigous skills and view her as foolish and idiotic . Aggravated by the rude behavior of her mother and father , Matilda constantly pulls pranks on her family as discipline for their misdeeds , such as pouring Superglue into her father s hat or hiding a parrot in the chimney , tricking the family into thinking there is a ghost in the house . Eventually , Matilda begins schooling and encounters a loving , sweet schoolteacher named Miss Jennifer Jenny Honey , who is astonished by her unbelievable intellectual abilities and wants to move her into a higher class , but the school s hostile headmistress , Miss Trunchbull , who disciplines the pupils with abusive physical punishment , refuses . Miss Honey also tries to talk to Mr . and Mrs . Wormwood about Matilda s supreme intelligence , but they don t believe her . Matilda quickly develops a particularly strong bond with Miss Honey over time after a classmate s practical joke on the headmistress leads Matilda to discover her secret telekinetic powers by using her mind to tip over a glass of water containing a salamander on Miss Trunchbull . They gather frequently at the teacher s tiny cottage in the forest and converse , where Miss Honey recounts her traumatic childhood experiences with Matilda that had been wreaked by her maliciously abusive aunt , whose guardianship she was forced to live under after the mysterious passing of her father Magnus . Stunned to learn that Miss Trunchbull actually was the aunt in question , Matilda devises a scheme in order to help Miss Honey earn her proper inheritance , which the aunt had seemingly stripped her of , and develops her telekinetic gift through practice at home . During a lesson that Miss Truchbull is teaching Matilda telekinetically raises a stick of chalk against the black board and poses as Magnus s spirit , demanding that Miss Trunchbull provide his daughter with the wages that she needs by name . Petrified by this , Miss Trunchbull flees from her house , which is later discovered to rightfully belong to Miss Honey by her father s will , and her niece moves into it from her cottage . Matilda is re positioned by the new headmaster to the sixth grade level of schooling , where she discovers that she is no longer capable of accessing her powers of telekinesis , and Miss Honey theorizes that it is probably because Matilda must mandatorily use more of her knowledge at school after skipping several grades . Matilda continues to meet with Miss Honey at her home regularly , but one day arrives home to discover her parents hastily packing to go on the run from the police who have discover her father s deceptive practices in the automotive industry . Matilda asks permission to live with Miss Honey , to which her parents agree , thus providing her with a more loving home .

<|fantasy|>In the twenty first century the creation of the positronic brain leads to the development of robot laborers and revolutionizes life on Earth . Yet to the Martin family , their household robot NDR 113 is more than a mechanical servant . Andrew has become a trusted friend , a confidant , and a member of the Martin family . The story is told from the perspective of Andrew later known as Andrew Martin , an NDR series robot owned by the Martin family , a departure from the usual practice by U . S . Robots and Mechanical Men of leasing robots . Andrew s initial experiences with the Martin family are replete with awkward moments which demonstrate his lack of socialization . However , he is much better with inanimate objects and animals and begins to display sentient characteristics such as creativity emotion self awareness traditionally the province of humans . He is taken off his mundane household duties , for which he was intended , and allowed to pursue his creativity , making a fortune by selling his creations . Andrew seeks legal protection stemming from his initial creative output and eventual full recognition as a human , by gradually replacing his robotic components with organic ones , and citing the process as a transformation from robot to human . Succeeding generations of the Martin family assist him in his quest for humanity , but each is limited to what degree they are prepared to acknowledge Andrew s humanity . In The Positronic Man , the trends of fictional robotics in Asimov s Robot series as outlined in the book I , Robot are detailed as background events , with an indication that they are influenced by Andrew s story . No more robots in Andrew s line are developed . There is also a movement towards centralized processing , including centralized control of robots , which would avoid any more self reflecting robots such as Andrew . Only when Andrew allows his positronic brain to decay , thereby willfully abandoning his immortality , is he declared a human being . This event takes place on the two hundredth anniversary of his creation , hence the title of the novella and film .

<|fantasy|>Emperor Cleon I wants to appoint Hari Seldon as the First Minister of the Galactic Empire . Powerful Trantor High Council member Betan Lamurk opposes the independent Seldon s appointment . Seldon himself is reluctant to accept the position because of its time constraints pulling him away from the psychohistory project . The project is led by Seldon , Yugo Amaryl , and Seldon s advanced humaniform robot spouse Dors Venabili . Seldon needs to curry favor with the emperor , however , and advises Cleon I informally . For example , Seldon suggests a decree that erases terrorists names from records , denying them immortality , discouraging chaotic actions . Besides the psychohistorians , much of the novel s action revolves around advanced sentient simulations sims of Joan of Arc and Voltaire . The sims have been recreated by Artifice Associates , a research company located in Trantor s Dahl Sector . Artifice Associates programmers Marq and Sybil plan to use the Joan Voltaire sims for two money making projects . First , Hari Seldon s psychohistory project . Second , Trantor s Junin Sector Preservers vs Skeptics Society debate whether mechanical beings endowed with artificial intelligence should be built . And if so , whether they should receive full citizenship . The Preservers champion will be Joan , the Skeptics champion Voltaire . Hari Seldon and Dors Venabili flee Trantor , escaping High Council member Betan Lamurk s forces . During their galactic odyssey , Hari and Dors experience virtual reality as chimpanzees on planet Panucopia . They also visit helter skelter New Renaissance world Sark . Meanwhile , back on Trantor , sims Joan and Voltaire escape into Trantor s Mesh Internet . Joan and Voltaire interact with ancient aliens on the Mesh . These aliens fled Trantor s physical space when terraforming robots arrived on Trantor more than 20 , 000 years ago . Via Joan and Voltaire , Hari allies with the mesh aliens . The aliens aid Seldon s return to Trantor , and his defeat of High Council member Lamurk through tik toks . The novel ends with Seldon accepting his position as Emperor Cleon s First Minister .

<|fantasy|>The novel is the second part of The Second Foundation Trilogy and takes place almost entirely in the same time frame as The Psychohistorians , which is the first part of the novel Foundation . In addition to telling a more expanded version of Hari Seldon s confrontation with the Commission of Public Safety it also interweaves R . Daneel Olivaw s struggle against a sect of robots who oppose his plans for humanity . While covering the same period as in Asimov s The Psychohistorians , Foundation and Chaos focuses more on paternal superrobot R Daneel Olivaw than on Hari Seldon . Olivaw s 20 millennia of machinations and contrivances are questioned by Calvinian robots who do not observe Olivaw s Zeroth Law No robot may harm humanity or , through inaction , allow humanity to come to harm developed in Asimov s Robots and Empire . Olivaw s actions dampen human intellectual growth and variation until the human species matures . The novel s primary issue is whether Olivaw s ends justify his means . Does the ancient Auroran robot really serve humanity s greater good ? Should Olivaw decide this for himself ? Seldon seems unaware of Olivaw s role in perpetuating brain fever and other dampeners . But Seldon would probably approve , considering his quarantining of the New Renaissance worlds when Seldon served as Imperial 1st Minister . Foundation and Chaos portrays the rise of mentallics telepaths who can influence other s thoughts such as Wanda Seldon and Stettin Palver , who will form the Second Foundation . Twisted rogue mentallic Vara Liso even foreshadows the mutant Magnifico s spectacular rise 310 years later . Powerful Public Safety Commissioner Linge Chen again plays a prominent role as the true Imperial power behind fatuous playboy Emperor Klayus . Reconstructed superrobot Dors Venabili reappears as well .

<|fantasy|>Foundation s Triumph starts with Hari Seldon who reviews his life and has to accept the fact that his purpose is completed . One day he meets a bureaucrat , Horis Antic , who explains his theory about the correlation of certain soils on planets and psychohistory . Seldon agrees to take a trip to some of the planets which fit Antic s theory . Hari and Horis travel to Demarchia , where they rent a yacht . Parallel to Seldon s story , Dors Venabili starts out on the planet Panucopia to meet Lodovik Trema , a robot whose Three Laws of Robotics have been erased . Lodovic gives her the head of R . Giskard Reventlov , an important robot who founded the Zeroth Law with R . Daneel Olivaw . She finds out that Giskard and Daneel never consulted a human while founding the Zeroth Law . Later Trema meets a faction of cyborgs and joins them . After Dors has become a rebel , she fights for the cyborgs as well . The third plot of the novel is on Eos . Daneel talks to his possible successor Zun Lurrin . An interesting point is that all chapters with Olivaw as the main character are written in a different typeface . In Seldon s story , during the flight to the first planet the yacht is taken over by rebels , who are from the renaissance or chaos planet Ktlina . They show Seldon ancient spaceships with many data capsules from the human past . Robots take over the yacht and destroy the data capsules and the ancient ships with the permission of Seldon . During the flight back to Trantor a rebel , Gornon Vlimt , turns out to be another robot from a faction of Calvinians , who want to send Hari into the future . At last all factions meet on Earth . The Calvinians are stopped by Daneel and Wanda Seldon . Old friends Seldon and Daneel meet one final time , to discuss philosophy . Despite the apparent eventual dominance of Galaxia , Seldon confides his belief that the second Galactic Empire will include both the two Foundations , following the Seldon Plan , and Galaxia . Will there be an Encyclopedia Galactica a thousand years from now , asks Seldon , betting that if his belief is correct , there will be regularly updated editions of it . Since most Foundation novels use the Encyclopedia as a framing device for its chapters , it seems that Seldon has correctly predicted the successful synthesis of the two Foundations and Galaxia .

<|fantasy|>The novel takes place in a dismal future America , the Communal North American Citizen s Republic . The United States government has become extremely intrusive and repressive , monitoring the actions , speech and even thoughts of its citizens . The protagonist , Joe Fernwright , is a pot healer , one who can perfectly restore pottery to brand new condition . Joe finds himself constantly depressed and idle at the opening of the novel . He is unemployed and on a war veteran s social security benefit , given that ceramic pottery has been replaced by plastics , and his profession is not in great demand . He longs for purpose and meaning in life . His one entertainment is to call various friends on the worldwide telephone network and swap puzzles . These puzzles are based on imperfect translations of sayings and book titles obtained by using language translation computers available to anyone . The object of the game is to guess the original from the translation . Joe finds meaning when he is summoned to Plowman s Planet Sirius Five by a mysterious highly evolved alien , Glimmung , with seemingly godlike powers . Along with other similarly talented but depressed and alienated people and creatures from all over the galaxy they are employed by Glimmung , in a grand endeavor to raise an ancient sunken cathedral from the ocean floor . Glimmung is also in a struggle with the Kalends , a species gifted with precognition who are constantly writing a book that supposedly foretells the future , one which inevitably is proven right . Glimmung is determined to continue with his struggle , even when the book predicts certain failure . At the conclusion of the book , Fernwright and his companions are offered the opportunity to join a gestalt or hive mind that also encompasses Glimmung . Fernwright and an unnamed octopoid companion alone refuse the offer . Fernwright is then given various options , such as going back to earth , going with the octopoid to its planet , going to Mali s planet a young humanoid female he had become romantically involved with and who chose to become a part of the collective conscious or stay back on Sirius Five . The gastropod also suggests to him that he should start creating pots with the tools Glimmung has given him instead of just healing them . The story ends by saying the first pot he created was awful .

<|comedy|>Hack , a low level employee at Nike , is contracted by one of his higher ups , John Nike , Vice President of Guerrilla Marketing , for an ambitious marketing campaign . The company is planning to release the new Nike Mercurys which sell for thousands of dollars but cost pennies to manufacture and in order to drum up interest in the items , John Nike plans to increase street cred in the worst way possible by having Hack kill people who try to buy them . Hack , bound by his contract but unable to contemplate murder on his own , subcontracts to the Police , now a mercenary organization , beginning a chain of business transactions which could land Nike in hot water should word of the plot leak . After several children are murdered at various Nike chains on opening day , agent Jennifer Government takes it upon herself to track down the perpetrators , even if she can t get the funding for it . Along the way , readers are also introduced to Billy NRA , an athletic man who gets in over his head , and Buy Mitsui , a former French stockbroker . Also involved is Hack s unemployed girlfriend , Violet , who engineers a dangerous computer virus to sell to the highest bidder . Billy NRA is caught up in the illegal business of the NRA . He is forced to tag along on NRA operations involving murder and even attempt and fail to assassinate the President of the United States . Throughout the novel Billy teeters between helping the NRA and helping the government . Buy Mitsui starts the novel as a successful stockbroker who just made a big break . Feeling good about it , he gives a girl some money in the mall only to find out that the girl is killed after she uses the money to buy Nike Mercurys . Feeling personally responsible for the girl s death , Buy s life begins to go downhill . He contemplates suicide until he gets help from Jennifer Government , who he then begins dating . He becomes a part of both Jennifer and her daughter s life . Violet eventually sells her software to ExxonMobil who take her all over the world to exploit the software s power . This sudden disappearance leads Hack to turn to Claire , Violet s sister , which in turn destroys Violet and Hack s relationship . After the company uses Violet s virus , they never pay Violet the sums due . Angered , Violet joins ranks with John Nike who could help her get revenge . John Nike tells her to kidnap Jennifer Government s daughter to keep the government off his back . She is able to kidnap Kate , Jennifer Government s daughter , but in the end , Jennifer Government and Hack are able to retrieve her and ultimately , bring John Nike to justice .

<|novel|>Seymour Levov is born and raised in the Weequahic section of Newark as the son of a successful Jewish American glove manufacturer . Called the Swede because of his anomalous blond hair , blue eyes and Nordic good looks , he is a star athlete in three sports and narrator Nathan Zuckerman s idol and hero . The Swede eventually takes over his father s glove factory , Newark Maid , and marries Dawn Dwyer , an Irish American Miss New Jersey 1949 winner the actual winner that year was Betty Jane Crowley . Levov establishes what he believes to be a perfect American life with a beloved family , a satisfying business life , and a beautiful old home in rural Old Rimrock , New Jersey . Yet as the Vietnam War and racial unrest wrack the country and destroy inner city Newark , Seymour s teenage daughter Merry , born with an emotionally debilitating stutter , and outraged at the United States conduct in Vietnam , becomes more radical in her beliefs and in 1968 commits an act of political terrorism . In protest against the Vietnam War and the system , she plants a bomb in a local post office and the resulting explosion kills a bystander . In this singular act , Levov is cast out of the seemingly perfect life he has built and thrown instead into a world of chaos and dysfunction . Like a number of real life members of the Weather Underground , Seymour s daughter goes permanently into hiding . In Zuckerman s narration , a reunion of father and daughter takes place in 1973 in Newark s ruined inner city , where Merry is living in abysmal conditions . During this reunion , she claims that since the first bombing she has set off several other bombs resulting in more deaths and that she has been repeatedly raped while living in hiding . Though informed by Merry that she acted consciously and willingly in the murders , Seymour decides to keep their meeting a secret , unwilling to give up his notion of her as essentially an innocent who has been manipulated by stronger influences in the form of an unknown political group . Zuckerman concludes his version with a dinner party with Seymour s parents and several friends , during which Seymour discovers that his wife has been having an affair with a mutual friend and attendee of the party . The narrator also reveals that Seymour himself has had an affair with Merry s speech therapist who is also attending the party , and had been responsible for hiding Merry in their home after the first bombing . Seymour concludes that all the members of the party have a veneer of respectability , yet each participates in subversive behavior , and that he is unable to understand the truth about anyone based on the actions they reveal outwardly . In this final scene , the narrator reveals Seymour to have concluded that his daughter s actions have made him to see the truth about the chaos beneath the pastoral surface of things , something he can no longer ignore .

<|mystery|>Miss Stangerson is found alone and severely injured , moments after being violently attacked in a locked room at the Chateau , a room with absolutely no possible means of escape for the would be murderer . Or so it appears . Joseph Rouletabille , journalist detective , is immediately thrust into the investigation of the insoluble crime that would soon electrify all of France . Rouletabille , a mere eighteen years old , is very much in the tradition of Poe s Dupin , believing rational analysis , rather than crawling on all fours around the crime scene , is the key to unraveling those cases that are genuine puzzles , as this one is . Not that Rouletabille disdains mundane forensics when called for . And when he chooses to crawl about , he does so with a most discerning eye ! There are in fact no fewer than THREE apparently impossible vanishings by the assailant , each with a different , quite ingenious , explanation . The first , the only one which occurs in the classic locked room , turns out not to be a true disappearance at all , because , as Rouletabille deduces in a dazzling display of inexorable logic , the assailant was never in the room when it was actually locked , no matter how certain it seemed that he was . In a complicated sequence of events , the attack actually occurred many hours earlier than supposed , around 6 PM but the audible gunshot and the cry of Help , murder ! ! ! , which happened after midnight in the locked room , were merely the acting out of a nightmare by Miss Stangerson , as she relived the earlier attack . Her severe injuries were inflicted not by the attacker but by Miss Stangerson herself , stumbling over furniture still overturned from the attack and violently striking her head .

<|mystery|>Members of a large and widespread Scottish family are brought together at a highland castle in order to resolve various pieces of family business following a death . Suspicious events soon begin to occur , the body count rises , and a verdict of suicide is not necessarily to be trusted . Enter the gargantuan Doctor Gideon Fell , who applies his substantial powers of deduction to the problem of how men can be indirectly murdered while they re inside locked , sealed and inaccessible rooms .

<|fantasy|>The first dynasty , the Gearys , are a glamorous and rich family , similar to the Kennedys , who have been a power in America since the Reconstruction . The book examines them through the eyes of the young woman who marries Mitchell Geary , the scion of the clan . It also examines the beginnings of the family s power and its links to the Barbarossa clan . The Barbarossas are a family of godlike beings . The two parents , Cesaria and Nicodemus , came into existence during the Bronze Age , somewhere between Canaan and the city of Samarkand . They have since had four children , though both have been in active relationships with others in the same time . Of the four children , one is a lesbian , one is overweight , one has spent time in a mental institution , and the eldest , Galilee , is held to the Geary family by an oath going back to the American Civil War . Nicodemus also fathered a child , the narrator , with a human woman . Eventually , the link between the families is revealed , with several deaths . Although several plot threads spin out of the book , and Barker has promised at least one sequel , none have been written , and it is left to the imagination of the reader to work out what happens next . ISBN 0 00 617805 7rm

<|novel|>The novel is essentially the story of Gervaise Macquart , who was featured briefly in the first novel in the series , La Fortune des Rougon , running away to Paris with her shiftless lover Lantier to work as a washerwoman in a hot , busy laundry in one of the seedier areas of the city . L Assommoir begins with Gervaise and her two young sons being abandoned by Lantier , who takes off for parts unknown she later takes up with Coupeau , a teetotal roofing engineer , and they are married in one of the great set pieces of Zola s fiction the account of the wedding party s chaotic trip to the Louvre is perhaps the novelist s most famous passage . Through a combination of happy circumstances Gervaise is able to raise enough money to open her own laundry , and the couple s happiness appears to be complete with the birth of a daughter , Anna , nicknamed Nana the protagonist of Zola s later novel of the same title . The second half of the novel deals with the downward trajectory of Gervaise s life from this happy high point . Coupeau is injured in a fall from the roof of a new hospital he is working on , and during his lengthy and painful convalescence he takes to drink . Only a few chapters pass before Coupeau is a vindictive alcoholic , with no intention of trying to find more work Gervaise struggles to keep her home together , but her excessive pride leads her to a number of embarrassing failures and before long everything is going downhill . The home is further disrupted by the return of Lantier , warmly welcomed by Coupeau by this point losing interest in both Gervaise and life itself , and becoming seriously ill and the ensuing chaos and financial strain is too much for Gervaise , who loses her laundry shop and is sucked into debt . She decides to join Coupeau in the drinking and soon slides into heavy alcoholism too , prompting Nana already suffering from the chaotic life at home and getting into trouble on a daily basis to run away to Paris for good . The novel continues in this unhappy vein until the end .

<|horror|>Trilby is tone deaf Svengali would test her ear , as he called it , and strike the C in the middle and then the F just above , and ask which was higher and she would declare they were both exactly the same . Svengali hypnotizes her and transforms her into a diva , la Svengali . Under his spell , Trilby becomes a talented singer , performing always in an amnesiac trance . At a performance in London , Svengali is stricken with a heart attack and is unable to induce the trance . Trilby is unable to sing in tune and is subjected to laughter , hoots , hisses , cat calls , cock crows . Not having been hypnotized , she is baffled and though she can remember living and traveling with Svengali , she cannot remember anything of her singing career .

<|fantasy|>The novel s protagonist , Aiah , is a minor functionary for the Plasm Authority in the metropolis of Jaspeer the Authority is the public utility company that taps plasm wells and sells the plasm at very high rates to those who would use it . Aiah is one of the Barkazi , an ethnic group whose metropolis , Barkazil , was engulfed by civil war several generations ago , its territory partitioned and occupied by the adjacent metropolises and its population dispersed as refugees . Barkazi religion centers around a trickster god , Karlo , who is constantly running scams on others , and the tradition of the scam , or chonah , is central to their culture . Aiah briefly studied plasm use at university , but ended her studies because of the high cost of the plasm required to continue them . Working for an emergency response team investigating a huge flaming apparition of a woman that damages several city blocks , she discovers a previously unknown plasm well of tremendous power the apparition being caused by a woman who blundered into the well and tapped the plasm directly , killing herself in the process . Instead of disclosing its location , she leads the Authority on a wild goose chase while trying to decide on how best to use it to her advantage . She decides to reveal it to Constantine , a resident of a luxury apartment complex near her own . Constantine is a skilled mage and visionary political theorist with dreams of moving the world beyond its stagnant situation . He became Metropolitan of his home metropolis and attempted to implement many reforms , but was betrayed , forced from power , and exiled by those closest to him . Aiah , an admirer of his political thought , discloses the plasm source to him so that he might make another attempt at realizing his plans for the New City , asking only that she be made a part of whatever he carries out . Aiah then effectively runs a chonah of enormous scale , misleading the Authority , dealing with her Barkazi extended family who want a piece of whatever action she is in on and the local organized crime group , keeping her Jaspeeri husband working in a distant metropolis in the dark , and avoiding the potentially lethal attentions of Constantine s right hand woman , Sorya . Through all of this she has a love affair with Constantine and receives training in magery from him , for which she has a great deal of natural talent . At the novel s climax , Aiah s plasm source , and her own magical assistance , is a crucial element when Constantine orchestrates a revolution in the metropolis of Caraqui and installs himself in its post revolutionary power structure , from which position he hopes to enact his New City reforms . Realizing that she has no hope of using her full potential as a bureaucrat in Jaspeer , Aiah leaves her job , family , and marriage behind and travels to Caraqui to help Constantine achieve his dream . fr Plasma roman pl Metropolita powieść

<|fantasy|>A white male is picked up by the New York Police after being found bending over the victim of a mugging at Grand Central Terminal in midtown Manhattan . After having responded to the police questions with somewhat strange answers , he is transferred to Bellevue Hospital for evaluation . Although not physically ill , he is found to harbour a strange delusion That he is from a planet called K PAX in the constellation of Lyra . The patient , who calls himself prot intentionally lower case to reflect the insignificance of an individual life form in the universe , is eventually transferred to the Manhattan Psychiatric Institute MPI , where he becomes the patient of Dr . Gene Brewer . Dr . Brewer , with the help of a journalist named Giselle , discovers that prot may simply be an alter ego the result of Multiple Personality Disorder of Robert Porter , whose life has been devastated by the murder of his wife and child and his subsequent killing of the perpetrator . When prot returns to his own planet , Robert Porter is left in a catatonic state . However , Bess another patient prot had promised to take with him disappears along with a box of souvenirs prot has been collecting . Prot promises to return in about five of your years .

<|fantasy|>The book picks up the story immediately after the end of The Garden of Rama . The book follows the story of Nicole Wakefield and her escape from imprisonment left at the cliffhanger of the previous book . As the human colony continues to degenerate with respect to living conditions and human rights , the members of Nicole s family escape to the region nicknamed New York , where they used to live in Rama II and already then came into contact with the alien species known as Octospiders . The Octospiders were a simple species until a space faring species made contact with them and forever changed their society . Undergoing genetic enhancements , the Octospiders became biological wizards and were eventually able to form a utopia of sorts . Eventually , the human colony police come after Nicole s family in New York and they flee to the octospider city . After the human colony leader starts bombing the octospider city under a made up pretext and the octospiders retaliate , the situation becomes dire enough that Rama s controlling intelligence intervenes to end the conflict caused by the Humans aboard , by sending everybody into hibernation until the end of the journey . The Rama spacecraft rendezvous with another Node , an enormous tetrahedron near the star Tau Ceti , designed to research any intelligent life capable of spaceflight . The humans are divided into two groups based mainly on the degree of xenophobia they had exhibited during the journey . Both groups will stay at the Node for the rest of their lives to be studied the xenophobes are segregated and never allowed to see another alien again . To the more adaptable group , the purpose of the universe is revealed by the Nodal intelligence .

<|fantasy|>The story begins with Agnes Nitt leaving Lancre to seek a career at the Opera House in Ankh Morpork . When Granny Weatherwax realizes Nanny Ogg has written an immensely popular cookbook but has not been paid by the publisher , the witches also leave for Ankh Morpork to collect the money , as well as to attempt to recruit Agnes into their coven , to replace Magrat Garlick who left the coven when she became Queen of Lancre in Lords and Ladies . Agnes Nitt is chosen as a member of the chorus , where she meets Christine , a more popular but less talented girl . The Opera House Ghost , who has long haunted the opera house without much incident , begins to commit seemingly random murders staged as accidents , and also requests that Christine be given lead roles in several upcoming productions . Due to her incredibly powerful and versatile voice , Agnes is asked to sing the parts from the background , unbeknownst to Christine or the audience . Having discovered the problems at the opera house and also having coerced the publisher to pay Nanny richly for her book , the witches investigate the mystery , with Granny posing as a rich patron , and Nanny insinuating herself into the opera house staff . Agnes unmasks Walter Plinge , the janitor , as the ghost , though as he is seemingly harmless , the others are unconvinced . Another employee is suspected , but turns out to be a member of the Cable Street Particulars . The witches determine that the finances of the Opera House , which are a complete mess , have been made so intentionally in order to hide the fact that money is being stolen , with the murders being used either as a distraction or to cover evidence . It is finally revealed that two people had been masquerading as the ghost . The original and harmless ghost , Walter Plinge , was being psychologically manipulated by the second ghost , who assumed the identity to commit the murders and theft . With the witches help , Walter is able to overcome his fears and help defeat the murderer .

<|fantasy|>Osic is a morphogenic pharmacologist who tended in a booth in a feria in Gatun city , Panama . He is approached by a stranger , the woman Tamara Marian de la Garza , who requires him to regrow her right hand . The bloody stump on the end of her arm , signifying a traumatic amputation . It transpires that she is on the run from powerful political forces , the assassins of which attempt to kill her and Osic . He flees from the Earth with Tamara who is in an incapacitated state . On board the orbital shuttle , he attempts to get employment with a Japanese company , Motoki Corporation , as a Pharmacologist , but his application is rejected . Instead he is offered to fight as a mercenary for Motoki , who are attempting to gain control of the planet Baker , a satellite of the Delta Pavonis system . The story describes Osic s reaction to the intense battle training that takes place on board the starship Chaeron and his interaction with the mostly South American refugiados , and chimeras , genetically upgraded humans , who are also escaping their uncertain future on Earth . Their arrival on Baker highlights the vast cultural differences between the mercenary s and their Japanese employers , who have trained them to fight a rival Japanese company of settlers , the Yabajin . These differences culminate in rebellion , with the mercenaries now self described as Conquistadors seizing the Motoki city , after a bloody battle and then setting out to attack the Yabajin settlement which lay 3000 kilometers away . across forbidding deserts , encountering the wildlife of Baker .

<|fantasy|>Inferno is based upon the hell described in Dante s Inferno . However , it adds a modern twist to the story . The story is told in the first person by Allen Carpentier né Carpenter , an agnostic science fiction writer who died in a failed attempt to entertain his fans at a Science fiction convention party . He is only released , after many decades , from a Djinn bottle in the Vestibule on the outer edge to Hell when he finally calls upon God for mercy . Upon release he is met by Benito , a Virgil like figure whose full identity is not immediately apparent . Benito offers to take him out of Hell by bringing him to the center . At first , as Allen and Benito travel through Hell , Allen tries to scientifically rationalize everything he sees , renaming his surroundings as Infernoland , a high tech amusement park some thousand years in the future . It isn t until he sees a man recover from incineration and his own leg heal from a compound fracture that he starts to actually believe that he is in Hell . From this point on , as Allen travels through the inner circles of Hell , he sees how he is guilty of each of the sins in some fashion , commenting to himself that he is in no danger from ditch 3 of circle 8 simony only because he has never had any holy offices to sell . At first Allen views the punishments for these sins as far surpassing the crime , repeatedly thinking , We re in the hands of infinite power and infinite sadism , although he comes to more and more to accept the justice of the situation as he realizes that it is their continuing denial of their sins that keeps many of the condemned in hell . Eventually Allen takes over Benito s role in helping reformed souls proceed onto Paradise via Purgatory , allowing Benito to move on towards Purgatory himself . It is revealed that Benito is actually Benito Mussolini , prime minister of Italy during World War II . Along the way Allen meets a number of his Californian acquaintances and notable people from history e . g . Epictetus , Billy the Kid , Jesse James , Bob Ford , L Ron Hubbard , Henry VIII of England , Vlad Tepes , Aimee Semple McPherson , William M . Tweed , Al Capone and from classical mythology e . g . Hector , Aeneas , Charon , Minos , Phlegyas , Geryon . Due to the long time he spent bottled up in the outer vestibule he also meets some people from the future of 1976 , such as a space shuttle pilot .

<|childrens|>Bonsels original book contains fewer than 200 pages . The storyline is centered on the relation of Maya and her many adventures . Maya is a bee born in a bee hive during internal unrest the hive is dividing itself into two new colonies . Maya is raised by her teacher , Mrs . Cassandra . Despite Mrs . Cassandra s warnings , Maya wants to explore the wide world and commits the unforgivable crime of leaving the hive . During her adventures , Maya , now in exile , befriends other insects and braves dangers with them . In the climax of the book , Maya is taken prisoner by hornets , the bees sworn enemies . Prisoner of the hornets , Maya learns of a hornet plan to attack her native hive . Maya is faced with the decision to either return to hive and suffer her due punishment , saving the hive , or leaving the plan unannounced , saving herself but destroying the hive . As may be expected , Maya , after severe pondering , makes the decision to return . In the hive , she announces the coming attack and is , totally unexpectedly , pardoned . The forewarned bees triumph over the hornet attack force . Maya , now a heroine of the hive , becomes a teacher , like Mrs . Cassandra and shares her experiences and wisdom with the future generation . The original book from 1912 was a fable with a political message , analogously to Jean de La Fontaine s or Ivan Krylov s work . Maya represents the ideal citizen , and the beehive represents a well organized militarist society . It has also elements of nationalism and racism . Maya gets angry in two instances . First , a grasshopper fails to distinguish between bees and wasps . Maya s vicious verbal attack includes calling the wasps a useless gang of bandits Räubergeschlecht that have no home or faith Heimat und Glauben . Second , a fly calls Maya an idiot , which prompts Maya to shout that she s going to teach respect for bees and to threaten the fly with her stinger . This is analyzed such that respect is based on the threat of violence . Collectivism versus individualism is also a theme . Maya s independence and departure from the beehive is seen as reproachable , but it is atoned by her warning of the hornets attack . This show of loyalty restores her position in the society . In the hornet attack part of the story , the bees will to defend and the heroic deaths of bee officers are glorified , often in overtly militarist tones . In the post WWII adaptions , the militarist element was naturally toned down considerably , the hornets role reduced , and the character of Willy , a lazy and quite un warlike drone bee , was introduced he does not appear in the novel . In the cartoon series , the briskly marching , but ridiculously incompetent ant armies provide a parody of militarism .

<|fantasy|>In the year of 1204 , Baudolino of Alessandria enters Constantinople , unaware of the Fourth Crusade that has thrown the city into chaos . In the confusion , he meets Niketas Choniates and saves his life . Niketas is amazed by his language genius , speaking many languages he has never heard , and on the question if he is not part of the crusade , who is he ? Baudolino begins to recount his life story to Niketas . His story begins in 1155 , when Baudolino is sold to and adopted by the emperor Frederick I . At court and on the battlefield , he is educated in reading and writing Latin and learns about the power struggles and battles of northern Italy at the time . He is sent to Paris to become a scholar . In Paris , he gains friends such as the Archpoet , Abdul , Robert de Boron and Kyot , the purported source of Wolfram von Eschenbach s Parzival and learns about the legendary kingdom of Prester John . From this event onward , Baudolino dreams of reaching this fabled land . After the death of Frederick , Baudolino and his friends set off on a long journey , encompassing 15 years , to find the Kingdom of Prester John . Baudolino meets eunuchs , unicorns , Blemmyes , skiapods and pygmies . At one point , he falls in love with a female satyr like creature who recounts to him the full Gnostic creation myth Gnosticism is a pervasive presence in another of Eco s novels , Foucault s Pendulum . Philosophical debates are mixed with comedy , epic adventure and creatures drawn from the strangest medieval bestiaries . class wikitable align right width 250 colspan 2 Various strange characters figuring in the novel as rendered in the Nuremberg Chronicles . These creatures and many others were all described and named by Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historiæ from 77 AD A monopod and a satyr top a blemmyae and a panotti above . Invented by Eco Baudolino young man of Alessandria , protagonist , apparently a reference to the patron saint . The monopod Gavagai , a reference to Quine s example of indeterminacy of translation . The putative successors of Hypatia of Alexandria Deacon John , leprous sub ruler of Pndapetzim Other fictional or legendary beings Kyot Gagliaudo Aulari , legendary saviour of Alessandria , and his wife , who are Baudolino s biological parents Prester John Satyrs Blemmyes Panotti Historical Frederick Barbarossa Niketas Choniates Robert de Boron Rainald of Dassel The Old Man of the Mountain Pope Alexander III Beatrice I , Countess of Burgundy The Archpoet unknown except through his poetry Otto of Freising A member of the ancient Artsruni noble clan Andronicus I Comnenus Stephen Hagiochristophorites The Venerable Bede

<|fantasy|>A Neanderthal child is brought to the present day as a result of time travel experiments by a research organization , Stasis Inc . He cannot be removed from his immediate area because of the vast energy loss and time paradoxes that would result . To take care of him , Edith Fellowes , a children s nurse , is engaged . She is initially repelled by his appearance , but soon begins to regard him as her own child , learns to love him and realizes that he is far more intelligent than she at first imagined . She names him Timmie and attempts to ensure that he has the best possible childhood despite his circumstance . She is enraged when the newspapers refer to him as an ape boy . Edith s love for Timmie brings her into conflict with her employer , for whom he is more of an experimental animal than a human being . Eventually , her employer comes to the conclusion that his organization has exacted all the knowledge and publicity which could be gotten from Timmie , and that the time has come to move on to the next project . This involves bringing a Medieval peasant into the present , which necessitates the return of Timmie to his own time . Miss Fellowes fights the decision , knowing that he could not now survive , having acquired modern dependencies and speech . She decides to smuggle the boy out of the facilities , but when that plan fails , she returns to the ancient past with Timmie .

<|fantasy|>The story is told in first person by Julius , whose old college buddy Dan used to be one of the most popular people in the country as measured by Whuffie . Julius and girlfriend Lil are working with the committee called an ad hoc that oversees the Magic Kingdom s Liberty Square . Dan , who has hit rock bottom and lost all his Whuffie , doesn t believe in rejuvenation and wishes to die , but not while he s at rock bottom . He moves in with Julius and Lil in order to rebuild his life . At the park , Julius is murdered and soon refreshed . By the time he wakes up , Debra s ad hoc group has taken control of the Hall of Presidents , and is planning to replace its old fashioned animatronic robots with the synthetic memory imprinting of the experience of being the president for a moment . Julius believes that this rival committee had him killed as a distraction while they seize the Hall in the interim . Fearing that they will next try to revamp his favorite ride , the Haunted Mansion , he resolves to take a stand against the virtualization of the park , endangering his relationship with both Lil and Dan eventually Lil leaves Julius for Dan . Julius finally cracks when he sees his dreams turned to dust and he bashes up the attractions in the Hall of Presidents , in the process also damaging his own cranial interface to the point that he can no longer back himself up . This pushes his Whuffie to ground level when he is caught and gives Debra and her colleagues enough sympathy Whuffie to take over the Haunted Mansion , by invitation of the same fans that Julius had recruited to work in the Mansion . Dan leaves Lil , Julius is kicked out of the ad hoc and his Whuffie hits rock bottom low enough that others take his possessions with impunity and elevators don t stop for him . Then comes the revelation a few days before Dan s planned suicide by lethal injection , Dan reveals that it was in fact he who had arranged to kill Julius , in collusion with Debra , in exchange for the Whuffie that her team could give him . Dan had asked one of his converts from his missionary days , a young girl , to do the dirty work . Debra then had herself restored from a backup made before this plan , so that she would honestly believe that she wasn t involved . He makes this public Debra is thrown out , Julius gets sympathy Whuffie and , ironically enough , develops a friendly affection for his sweet young murderer . He never restores himself , because doing so would erase his memories of that entire year , his last with Dan , but lives with his damaged interface . The book is his attempt to manually document the happenings of the previous year so that , when this incarnation is eventually killed by age or accident , his restored backup will have a partial record of the transpiring events . Dan decides not to take a lethal injection , but to deadhead putting oneself into a voluntary coma till the heat death of the Universe .

<|novel|>I Never Promised You a Rose Garden is a semi autobiographical account of a teenage girl s three year battle with schizophrenia . Deborah Blau , bright and artistically talented , has created a make believe world , the Kingdom of Yr , as a form of defense from a confusing , frightening reality . When Deborah was five , she underwent surgery to remove a tumor in her urethra , a traumatic experience that involved a great deal of physical pain and shame . During her childhood , Deborah suffered frequent abuse from her anti Semitic peers and neighbors . When Deborah first created Yr , it was a beautiful , comforting haven , but over time the gods of Yr became tyrannical dictators who controlled Deborah s every word and action . The novel presents the issue of mental illness from multiple viewpoints . Deborah s three years in the hospital portray mental illness as it is experienced by the patient . Deborah s parents , Esther and Jacob , are torn between their love for their daughter and their shame at the stigma of her illness . Nevertheless , they find the courage to allow Deborah to continue treatment even when there are few signs of recovery for a long while . Deborah struggles with guilt and resentment at her parents disappointment in her , while her younger sister Suzy copes with her frustration at having to arrange her life around Deborah s illness . Deborah s therapist , Dr . Fried , slowly wins her trust and , over the course of three years , helps Deborah gain the courage to fight her illness . Her goal is to give Deborah the ability to choose between the reality of Earth , despite all its faults and problems , over the phantoms of Yr . Meanwhile , Deborah develops friendships of a kind with the other patients in the hospital despite their fear of emotional investment in other people . Although she fears the reality of Earth , Deborah eventually earns a GED and resolves to win her struggle against her illness .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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