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<|novel|>Noble House is set in 1963 . The tai pan , Ian Dunross , struggles to rescue Struan s from the precarious financial position left over from his predecessor . To do this , he seeks partnership with an American millionaire , while trying to ward off his arch rival Quillan Gornt , who seeks to destroy Struan s once and for all . Meanwhile , Chinese communists , Taiwanese nationalists , and Soviet spies illegally vie for influence in Hong Kong while the British government seeks to prevent this . And nobody , it seems , can get anything done without enlisting the aid of Hong Kong s criminal underworld . Other obstacles include water shortages , landslides , bank runs and stock market crashes . In Noble House , Dunross finds his company the target of a hostile takeover at a time when Struan s is desperately overextended . He is also embroiled in international espionage when he finds himself in possession of secret documents desperately desired by both the KGB and MI6 . The novel follows Dunross attempts to extricate himself from all this and to save Struan s , the Noble House .

<|fantasy|>The novel begins with an explanation of Leonid s few relationships within the revolutionary movement and the beginning of his relationship with Menni , a Martian in disguise . Soon after they become friends , Menni invites Leonid to go back home with him to Mars . The purpose of this visit would be to teach his own society to Martians and to understand and experience theirs . The trip is accomplished by the etheroneph , a nuclear photonic rocket . On their way there , Leonid is exposed gradually to Martians and their society . With the help of Menni and Netti , his doctor , Leonid is able to speak the Martian language by the time they arrive . At this point in the novel , Bogdanov details some of the aspects of the socialist Martian society as seen through Leonid s eyes . Children s colonies , factories , and housing are a few among the many aspects of this society that Bogdanov describes . Eventually , the unfamiliarity of Mars and the stress of his mission there exhaust Leonid to the point of being delusional . Just in time , Netti is alerted to his condition and treats him for his severe illness . While Leonid is recovering , he finds out , contrary to his original assumption , that Netti is female . His previous feelings for her are then expressed and they fall in love with one another . It is soon after this period that both Netti and Menni are called away for a mining expedition to Venus . While they are away , Leonid develops a relationship with Enno , another fellow shipmate from his arrival to the planet . While discovering many things about the nature of personal relationships on Mars , Leonid uncovers frightening information . He discovers that the council in charge of the Venus expedition was vying Earth s colonization as a possibility . The argument presented , by Sterni yet another shipmate , was that this was the only feasible solution and that it would only be made possible if Earth s population was destroyed . As Leonid s emotional state was not fully recovered from his exhaustion , this news sent him into a state of psychosis . His resolution is to murder Sterni , which he proceeds to do . After this occurrence , Leonid is sent back to Earth to recover from his extreme apathy . He does so with the aid of Dr . Werner , an old comrade . Once he is able , Leonid rejoins the revolutionary fight , but this time with a mature perspective . The novel ends with a letter from Dr . Werner to Mirsky a character assumed to be Plekhanov . In this letter , Leonid s reunion with Netti is described and they are supposed to have returned to Mars together .

<|childrens|>The novel tells the history of Hawaiian Islands from the creation of the isles to the time they became a state of the U . S . A . through viewpoints of selected people who represent their ethnic and cultural groups in the story e . g . the Kee family represents the viewpoint of Chinese Hawaiians . Most of the chapters cover the arrivals of different peoples to the islands . Describes the creation of the Hawaiian land from volcanic activity . The second chapter follows the creation of the isles which is mentioned in the preceding chapter . The chapter begins on the island of Bora Bora where many people including the King Tamatoa and his brother Terero are upset with the neighboring isles of Havaiki , Tahiti , etc . because they are trying to force the Bora Borans to give up their old gods , Tane and Ta aroa , and start worshiping Oro the fire god , who constantly demands human sacrifices . Tamatoa suggests to his brother and friends that they should migrate to some other place where the might find religious freedom . After finally agreeing to this plan , his brother secretly puts fire to Havaiki to take revenge for the human sacrifices they have been demanding from Bora Borans . Later they take the canoe Wait for the West Wind and sail to Hawaii . Later some voyage back to Bora Bora to bring back with them some women and children and an idol of the volcano goddess , Pele . Follows the journey of the first Christian missionaries to Hawaii in the 1800s and their influence over Hawaiian culture and customs . Many of the missionaries become founding families in the islands , including the Hales and Whipples . Covers the immigration of Chinese to work on the pineapple and sugar plantations . The patriarch of the Kee family contracts leprosy aka the Chinese sickness and is sent to the leper colony in Molokai . Japanese workers are brought to the islands to replace Chinese laborers who begin to start their own businesses . Also covers the bombing of Pearl Harbor . The final chapter summarizes the changes in Hawaiian culture and economics based on the intermarriages of various groups in the islands .

<|fantasy|>The fictional town of Grantville , West Virginia modeled on the real West Virginia town of Mannington and its power plant are displaced in space time , through a side effect of a mysterious alien civilization . A hemispherical section of land about three miles in radius measured from the town center is transported back in time and space from April 2000 to May 1631 , from North America to central Germany . The town is thrust into the middle of the Thirty Years War , in the German province of Thuringia in the Thuringer Wald , near the fictional German free city of Badenburg . This Assiti Shards effect occurs during a wedding reception , accounting for the presence of several people not native to the town , including a doctor and his daughter , a paramedic . Real Thuringian municipalities located close to Grantville are posited as Weimar , Jena , Saalfeld and the more remote Erfurt , Arnstadt , and Eisenach well to the south of Halle and Leipzig . Grantville , led by Mike Stearns , president of the local chapter of the United Mine Workers of America UMWA , must cope with the town s space time dislocation , the surrounding raging war , language barriers , and numerous social and political issues , including class conflict , witchcraft , feminism , the reformation and the counter reformation , among many other factors . One complication is a compounding of the food shortage when the town is flooded by refugees from the war . The 1631 locals experience a culture shock when exposed to the mores of contemporary American society , including modern dress , sexual liberation , and boisterous American style politics . Grantville struggles to survive while trying to maintain technology sundered from twenty first century resources . Throughout 1631 , Grantville manages to establish itself locally by forming the nascent New United States of Europe NUS with several local cities even as war rages around them . But once Count Tilly falls during the Battle of Breitenfeld outside of Leipzig , King Gustavus Adolphus rapidly moves the war theater to Franconia and Bavaria , just south of Grantville . This leads to the creation of the Confederated Principalities of Europe CPoE and some measure of security for Grantville s up timer and down timer populations .

<|fantasy|>New Spring describes events which take place twenty years before the events of The Eye of the World Book 1 . The story begins in the last days of the Aiel War , and the Battle of the Shining Walls around Tar Valon . It is set primarily in Tar Valon and the Borderlands , specifically Kandor . New Spring focuses mainly on Moiraine Damodred and Siuan Sanche , two Aes Sedai new to the sisterhood , and how a young Moiraine became Aes Sedai , met Lan Mandragoran and made him her Warder . The novel also explains how Moiraine and Siuan witnessed a prophecy of the Dragon s rebirth and came to begin investigating the Karaethon Cycle , the Prophecies of the Dragon , decades before discovering Rand al Thor .

<|fantasy|>George Giles is a boy raised as a goat who rises in life to be Grand Tutor spiritual leader of New Tammany College the United States . He strives for and achieves herohood , in accordance with the hero myth as theorized by Lord Raglan and Joseph Campbell . The novel abounds in mythological and Christian allegories , as well as in allusions to the Cold War , 1960s academia , and religion . The principle behind the allegorical renaming of key roles in the novel as roman à clef is that the Earth or the Universe is a University . Thus , for example , the founder of a religion or great religious leader becomes a Grand Tutor in German Grosslehrer , and Barth renames specific leaders as well Jesus Christ becomes Enos Enoch , Moses becomes Moishe , Buddha becomes the original Sakhyan . As the founder of the maieutic method , Socrates becomes Maios Plato whose Greek name Platon means broad shouldered becomes Scapulas from scapula , shoulder blade as the coiner of the term entelekheia lit . having an end within , usually translated entelechy , or glossed as the actualization of a potentiality , Aristotle becomes Entelechus . Enos Enoch in Hebrew means The man who walked with God or humanity when it walked with God . The heroes of epic poems tend to be named after the Greek for son of Odysseus becomes Laertides son of Laertes , Aeneas becomes Anchisides son of Anchises , and so on . The subtitle The Revised New Syllabus means , in the novel s Universe University allegory , a parodic rewriting of the New Testament . Satan is the Dean o Flunks , and lives in the Nether Campus hell John the Baptist is John the Bursar the Sermon on the Mount becomes the Seminar on the Hill the Last Judgment becomes the Final Examination . Among the parodic variations , a computer replaces the Holy Spirit , and an artificial insemination the Immaculate Conception . Very presciently , a hypertext encyclopedia also figures in the novel , years before the invention of hypertext and three decades before the Web became part of society at large . The character Max Spielman is a parody of Ernst Haeckel , whose insight ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny is rephrased as ontogeny recapitulates cosmogeny and proctoscopy repeats hagiography . The riddle of the universe is rephrased as the riddle of the sphincters .

<|fantasy|>The story begins with the catastrophic failure of an elevator which Watson had inspected just days before , leading to suspicion cast upon both herself and the Intuitionist school as a whole . To cope with the inspectorate , the corporate elevator establishment , and other looming elements , she must return to her intellectual roots , the texts both known and lost of the founder of the school , to try to reconstruct what is happening around her . In the course of her search , she discovers the central idea of the founder of Intuitionism that of the black box , the perfect elevator , which will deliver the people to the city of the future .

<|novel|>As an English teacher at Albert Mission College , Krishna has led a mundane and monotonous lifestyle comparable to that of a cow , but this took a turn when his wife , Susila , and their child , Leela , come to live with him . With their welfare on his hands , Krishna learns to be a proper husband and learns how to accept the responsibility of taking care of his family . He felt that his life had comparatively improved , as he understood that there s more meaning to life than to just teaching in the college . However , on the day when they went in search of a new house , Susila contracts typhoid after visiting a dirty lavatory , keeping her in bed for weeks . Throughout the entire course of her illness , Krishna constantly tries to keep an optimistic view about Susila s illness , keeping his hopes up by thinking that her illness would soon be cured . However , Susila eventually succumbs and passes away . Krishna , destroyed by her loss , has suicidal thoughts but gives them up for the sake of his daughter , Leela . He leads his life as a lost and miserable person after her death , but after he receives a letter from a stranger who indicates that Susila has been in contact with him and that she wants to communicate with Krishna , he becomes more collected and cheerful . This leads to Krishna s journey in search of enlightenment , with the stranger acting as a medium to Susila in the spiritual world . Leela , on the other hand , goes to a preschool where Krishna gets to meet the Headmaster , a profound man who cared for the students in his school and teaches them moral values through his own methods . The Headmaster puts his students as his top priority but he doesn t care for his own family and children , eventually leaving them on the day predicted by an astrologer as to be when he was going to die , which did not come true . Krishna gets to learn through the Headmaster on the journey to enlightenment eventually learning to communicate to Susila on his own , thus concluding the entire story itself , with the quote that he felt a moment of rare immutable joy .

<|childrens|>The Giving Tree is a tale about a relationship between a young boy and a tree . The tree always provides the boy with what he wants branches on which to swing , shade in which to sit and apples to eat . As the boy grows older , he requires more and more of the tree . The tree loves the boy very much and gives him anything he asks for . In an ultimate act of self sacrifice , the tree lets the boy cut it down so the boy can build a boat in which he can sail . The boy leaves the tree , now a stump . Many years later , the boy , now an old man , returns , and the tree sadly says I m sorry , boy . . . but I have nothing left to give you . But the boy replies I do not need much now , just a quiet place to sit and rest . The tree then says , Well , an old tree stump is a good place for sitting and resting . Come , boy , sit down and rest . The boy obliges and the tree is very happy .

<|novel|>The story takes place just before the 1715 Jacobite Rising , with much of Scotland in turmoil . Frank Osbaldistone , the narrator , quarrels with his father and is sent to stay with an uncle , Sir Hildebrand Osbaldistone , in Northumberland . Frank falls in love with Diana Vernon , Sir Hildebrand s niece , whose father has been forced to go into hiding because of his Jacobite sympathies . Frank s cousin , Rashleigh , steals important documents vital to the honour and economic solvency of Frank s father , William , and Frank pursues Rashleigh to Scotland . Several times his path crosses the mysterious and powerful figure Robert Roy MacGregor , known as Rob Roy , an associate of Sir Hildebrand . There is much confusion as the action shifts to the beautiful mountains and valleys around Loch Lomond . A British army detachment is ambushed and there is bloodshed . All of Sir Hildebrand s sons but Rashleigh are killed in the Jacobite Rising , and Rashleigh , too meets a bloody end . Following this , Frank inherits Sir Hildebrand s property and marries Diana . Robert Louis Stevenson loved the novel from childhood , regarding it as the best novel of the greatest of all novelists . The novel is a brutally realistic depiction of the social conditions in Highland and Lowland Scotland in the early 18th century . Some of the dialogue is in broad Scottish , and the novel includes a glossary of Scottish words .

<|childrens|>The title comes from a story in which Winnie the Pooh and Piglet build a house for Eeyore . In another story the game of Poohsticks is invented . Hints that Christopher Robin is growing up , scattered throughout the book , come to a head in the final chapter , in which the inhabitants of the Hundred Acre Wood throw him a farewell party after learning that he must leave them for good soon . It is made obvious though not stated explicitly that he is starting school . In the end , as they say good bye to Christopher Robin , they realise they will never see him again . Pooh and Christopher Robin say a long , private farewell , in which Pooh promises never to forget him .

<|fantasy|>Queen of Angels describes our world just prior to the binary millennium 2048 AD through several parallel and to some degree interlocking tales . Nanotechnology has transformed almost every aspect of American society , and its application to psychology , psychiatry , and neuroscience has resulted in new techniques for mental therapy that have created new forms of social stratification . Increasingly , individuals are therapied that is , well integrated personalities capable of productive work and constructive social interaction which does not threaten the social order . Therapied individuals have access to the best jobs . There are two other classes the high naturals , who possess such a positive mental makeup without the need for therapy , and the untherapied , who find themselves increasingly marginalized . The central unifying element involves a famous writer , Emmanuel Goldsmith , who has committed a gruesome series of murders , a crime almost unheard of in the age of therapy . One storyline involves Mary Choy , a high natural police detective assigned to the case to track down and arrest the murderer . Mary is a transform she has chosen to have her body extensively altered by nanotechnology , both to enhance her abilities as a policewoman and for aesthetic reasons . A second storyline involves Richard Fettle , a good friend of the murderer , also an untherapied writer , who must come to terms with what happened to his friend and how his life and that of artists , and all of the untherapied must change . The third plot line concerns Martin Burke , a pioneer in psychotherapy who uses a technique which allows him to directly enter and interact with a patient s psychology the Country of the Mind through a sort of virtual reality . Although in a position of disgrace at the story s opening , Dr . Burke is given the opportunity to use his technique to explore Goldsmith s mind , which turns out to be one of the most fascinating and dangerous minds imaginable . Finally , the fourth plotline considers the nature of artificial intelligence , as an AI robot space probe discovers life on a planet in the Alpha Centauri system , and simultaneously achieves its own independent self awareness , as does its twin back on Earth . The novel deals with issues of technology , identity , the nature of justice , and the existence of consciousness and the soul . Queen of Angels , set in 2047 , was written just before the creation of the first website in 1991 and describes a global network based on the exchange of text a sort of super USENET , whereas the sequel , Slant , set in 2055 and written in 1997 after the coming of the World Wide Web , describes a global network which has inexplicably changed to resemble a vast shared virtual reality .

<|mystery|>The novel deals with the murder of a former member of Boston society who has lived in Hawaii for a number of years . The main character is the victim s nephew , a straitlaced young Bostonian bond trader , who came to the islands to try to convince his aunt Minerva , whose vacation has extended many months , to return to Boston . The nephew , John Quincy Winterslip , soon falls under the spell of the islands himself , meets an attractive young woman , breaks his engagement to his straitlaced Bostonian fiancee Agatha , and decides as the murder is being solved to move to San Francisco . In the interval , he is introduced to many levels of Hawaiian society and is of some assistance to Detective Charlie Chan in solving the mystery . The novel s denouement is nearly identical to that in the final Perry Mason novel by Erle Stanley Gardner , The Case of the Postponed Murder 1970 .

<|mystery|>It is set almost exclusively in California as opposed to Chan s native Hawaii , and tells the story of the former head of Scotland Yard , a detective who is pursuing the long cold trail of a murderer . Fifteen years ago , a London solicitor was killed in circumstances in which the only clue was a pair of Chinese slippers , which he apparently donned just before his death . Sir Frederic Bruce has been following the trail of the killer ever since . He has also been interested in what appears to be a series of disappearing women around the world , which has some connection to the disappearance of a woman named Eve Durand in rural India also fifteen years ago . Just when it seems he might finally solve the murder case , at a dinner party to which a number of important and mysterious guests have been invited , Inspector Bruce is killed and was last seen wearing a pair of Chinese slippers , which have vanished . It is left to Chan to solve the case and tie up all loose ends .

<|mystery|>It tells the story of a Hollywood star Shelah Fane , who is stopping in Hawaii after she finished shooting a film on location in Tahiti . She is murdered in the pavilion of her renter house in Waikiki during her stay . The story behind her murder is linked with the three year old murder of another Hollywood actor and also connected with an enigmatic psychic named Tarneverro . Chan , in his position as a detective with the Honolulu Police Department , investigates amid public clamor demanding that the murderer be found and punished immediately . Death is a black camel that kneels unbidden at every gate . Tonight black camel has knelt here , Chan tells the suspects .

<|mystery|>Inspector Duff , a Scotland Yard detective and friend of Chan s , first introduced in Behind That Curtain , is pursuing a murderer on an around the world voyage so far , there have been murders in London , France , Italy and Japan . While his ship is docked in Honolulu , the detective is shot and wounded by his quarry though he survives , he is unable to continue with the cruise , and Chan takes his place instead . Eventually , after more murders , Chan finds the killer before the next port of call .

<|mystery|>Once again , the setting of the novel is rural California , where Chan has been invited as a houseguest . He meets a world famous soprano , Ellen Landini , who is murdered not too long after the meeting . Chan does not have far to look for suspects the host is her ex husband , as are three of the other house guests . Her servants , entourage and husbands all come under suspicion . Once again , Chan is expected to solve the murder , which he does by understanding the key clues the actions of a little dog named Trouble , two scarves , and two little boxes . When he understands how the murder is committed , he learns the role of elderly house servant Ah Sing the keeper of the keys .

<|action|>A homeless man calling himself Mister enters the offices of the Washington DC law firm Drake Sweeney and takes many of the lawyers hostage . Although he is eventually shot by a police sniper and the hostages freed , one of the hostages , an antitrust lawyer named Michael Brock , is concerned by what he has learned and feels compelled to investigate further . He finds his way to the 14th Street Legal Clinic , where he meets Mordecai Green , an advocate for the homeless , who asks him to help one night at a homeless shelter . As Brock s investigation deepens , he finds that his own employer was complicit in an illegal eviction , which eventually resulted in the death of a young homeless family . He takes a confidential file , intending to copy it , but is quickly suspected of its theft . Shocked by what he has found , Brock leaves his firm to take a poorly paid position with the 14th Street Legal Clinic , which works to protect the rights of the homeless . This leads to his wife divorcing him . He admits one of his clients , Ruby , to a therapy class for drug addicted women , and in the process meets Megan , the Brock s love interest . As Drake Sweeney comes after Brock with theft and malpractice allegations , the Clinic launches a lawsuit against the law firm and its business partners . Terrified of the certain bad publicity , the matter is settled by mediation and the clinic receives a large payout to be shared with the victims of the eviction . Drake Sweeney s head partner , deeply troubled by the events , offers to make pro bono staff available to assist the work of the Clinic in fighting for the rights of homeless people . The book ends with Brock taking a short vacation with Megan and Ruby , and them reflecting on their lives .

<|mystery|>Wendall Rohr and a legal team of successful tort lawyers have filed suit on behalf of plaintiff Celeste Wood , whose husband died of lung cancer . The trial is to be held in Biloxi , Mississippi , a state thought to have favorable tort laws and sympathetic juries . The defendant is Pynex , a tobacco company . Even before the jury has been sworn in , a stealth juror , Nicholas Easter , has begun to quietly connive behind the scenes , in concert with a mysterious woman known only as Marlee . Rankin Fitch , a shady consultant who has directed 8 successful trials for the Big Four , has placed a camera in the courtroom , feeding to his office nearby so that the trial can be observed . He has begun to plot many schemes to reach to the jury . He planned to get to Millie Dupree through blackmailing her husband through a tape that has him trying to bribe an official . He reaches to Lonnie Shaver through convincing a company to buy his employer and convince him through orientation . He also tries to reach Rikki Coleman through a blackmail of revealing her abortion to her husband . As the case continues , Fitch is approached by Marlee with a proposal to buy the verdict . However , as Fitch investigates Marlee s past , he discovers that her parents have been killed by smoking and that Marlee was actually planning against the defense . However , he has already sent the 10 million , so he lost 10 million in addition to having lost the trial . Easter becomes jury foreman after the previous one became ill an illness resulting from Nicolas and Marlee spiking his coffee and convinces them to find for the plaintiff and make a large monetary award 2 million for compensatory damages , and 400 million for punitive measures . The defense lawyers and their employers are devastated . Whilst Easter and Marlee are now rich through short selling the tobacco companies stocks and satisfied that they served justice , Fitch realizes that his reputation has been destroyed and that the tobacco companies , once undefeatable , are now vulnerable to lawsuits . The book closes with Marlee returning the initial 10 million bribe to Fitch , having used it to make several times that much , and warning Fitch that she and Nicholas will always be watching . She explains that she had no intention to steal or lie , and that she cheated only because That was all your client understood .

<|fantasy|>The novel centers on three character groups that of Hockenberry a resurrected twentieth century Homeric scholar whose duty is to compare the events of the Iliad to the reenacted events of the Trojan War , Greek and Trojan warriors , and Greek gods from the Iliad Daeman , Harman , Ada , and other humans of an Earth thousands of years after the twentieth century and the moravec robots named for scientist and futurist Hans Moravec Mahnmut the Europan and Orphu of Io , also thousands of years in the future , but originating in the Jovian system . The novel is written in first person , present tense when centered on Hockenberry s character , but features third person , past tense narrative in all other instances . Much like Simmons s Hyperion , where the actual events serve as a frame , the three groups of characters stories are told over the course of the novel and begin to converge as the climax nears .

<|fantasy|>It describes the political intrigue surrounding a mid twenty first century physics conference , at which is to be presented a unified Theory of Everything . In the background of the story is an epidemic mental illness , related in some way to the imminent discovery of the TOE . The action takes place on an artificial island called Stateless , which has earned the wrath of the world s large biotech companies for its pilfering of their intellectual property . The novel contains a great deal of satirical commentary on gender identities , multinational capitalism , and postmodern thought . It also features Egan s usual playful exploration of physical , metaphysical , and epistemological theories .

<|fantasy|>Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin is an eccentric scientist living in the city of New Crobuzon with girlfriend Lin . While Lin , an artist , is commissioned to create a sculpture of mob boss Mr . Motley , Isaac is offered a unique challenge . Yagharek is a member of a flying species , whose wings have been cut off , and who asks Isaac to restore them . Isaac is sparked by the seemingly impossible nature of the task , and gathers various flying animals to study in his lab including a multicolored , unidentifiable caterpillar . Once Isaac learns that the caterpillar only eats a hallucinogenic drug called dreamshit , he begins to feed it , unwittingly stimulating its metamorphosis into a giant and incredibly dangerous butterfly like creature which feeds off the dreams of sentient beings , leaving them as catatonic vegetables . It is revealed that dreamshit is in fact secreted by such creatures , of which four have been sold to Mr . Motley , and milked to produce the drug . When these other larvae transform and escape they plague the citizens of New Crobuzon until Isaac can find a way to stop them .

<|childrens|>The Pet Goat is the story of a girl s pet goat that eats everything in its path . The girl s parents want to get rid of the goat , but she defends it . In the end , the goat becomes a hero when it butts a car thief into submission .

<|action|>By late June 1941 , the United Kingdom alone stood against Nazi Germany on the Western Front . In the East , the Russian Army was feeling the full force of Operation Barbarossa . To show solidarity among the unlikely capitalist communist Alliance , Winston Churchill and Bomber Command planned a massive aerial bombardment of German territories . Unfortunately and inexplicably , Bomber Command s planes were getting shot down in record numbers . Meanwhile , 18 year old Danish schoolboy Harald Olufsen grows increasingly dissatisfied with his country s cooperation with the German invaders . His resentment of the Wehrmacht leads him to discover the truth about a hidden military installation , a truth known to only a select few in the Nazi organization . Running from the German authorities and an old family enemy , Copenhagen police detective Peter Flemming , Harald knows that he must get to Britain . But to do so in time to save the bombers , Harald has one option flight .

<|fantasy|>Menolly , youngest daughter of Masterfisher Yanus , Sea Holder of Half Circle Seahold , is a gifted musician who is punished for using her musical talents after Petiron , the Harper who encouraged her talent , dies . Finding life at the fishing community unbearable because her father forbids her to express her musical talents , she runs away from home . Menolly takes refuge from falling Thread in a cave and discovers hatching fire lizards , the precursors to the great dragons which are Pern s primary defense against Thread . Isolated from civilization in her cave and forced to care for nine baby fire lizards that she Impressed , Menolly quickly learns to be resourceful and independent . Freed from the restrictive role forced upon her by her family , she indulges her passion for music . Menolly is out foraging one day when she is caught in Threadfall . She is rescued by a dragonrider , T gran , and his brown dragon , Branth , who take her to Benden Weyr . As she is adjusting to the liberal lifestyle of the Weyrfolk , she is discovered by Masterharper Robinton , the Masterharper of Pern , who has been searching frantically for Petiron s mystery apprentice . He discovers that she is the writer of two songs that Petiron his father sent him and offers her a place at the Harper Hall as his apprentice .

<|fantasy|>Software designer Scott Warden is living with his family in early twenty first century Thailand after his latest contract has ended . He and his friend Hitch Paley are among the first to find an enormous monolith which appears out of nowhere in the jungle . On closer examination , it is found to be a monument made of a mysterious , indestructible substance . It bears an inscription commemorating a military victory by someone named Kuin , presumably an Asian warlord twenty years in the future . Over the next twenty years , increasingly grand monuments to Kuin continue to appear first in Asia , then in much of the rest of the world . Pro Kuin and anti Kuin political movements spring up , leading to the rise of economic problems , fatalistic cults , and open war . Scott has become entangled with his former teacher and mentor Sue Chopra , a scientist who has assembled a team of fellow researchers to investigate the chronoliths and learn to predict their appearances . With Sue s team , Scott witnesses a new chronolith that appears in Jerusalem . Kaitlin , his daughter , becomes caught up in the hysteria and joins a pro Kuin youth cult while trying to find her , Scott meets Ashlee , a single mother whose son Adam Mills joined the same cult . This leads to Scott and his companions being on hand to witness yet another chronolith appearance in Mexico . Sue Chopra comes to believe that Kuin has made the chronoliths in order to inspire fear and defeatism , making the future victories inevitable by gaining support ahead of time . In an effort to fight Kuin s growing influence , Scott , Sue Chopra and her team plan to destroy the first chronolith predicted to appear in the United States . The chronolith self destructs , apparently sabotaged by a maker who exceeded the limits of the technology . A militant faction now led by Adam Mills attacks their base of operations , takes Chopra hostage , and menaces Scott s family . Scott lives to see the collapse of the Kuinist movement and a scientific renaissance sparked by Chopra s chronolith research .

<|fantasy|>The building seems to give its well established tenants all the conveniences and commodities that modern life has to offer swimming pools , its own school , a supermarket , high speed elevators . But at the same time , the building seems to be designed to isolate the occupants from the larger world outside , allowing for the possibility to create their own closed environment . Life in the high rise begins to degenerate quickly , as minor power failures and petty annoyances over neighbours escalate into an orgy of violence . The high rise occupants divide themselves into the classic three groups of Western society the lower , middle , and upper class , but here the terms are literal , as the lower class are those living on the lowest floors of the building , the middle class in the centre , and the upper class at the most luxurious apartments on the upper floors . Soon , skirmishes are being fought throughout the building , as floors try to claim elevators and hold them for their own , groups gather to defend their rights to the swimming pools , and party goers attack enemy floors to raid and vandalize them . It does not take long for the occupants of entire building to abandon all social restraints , and give in to their most primal urges . The tenants completely shut out the outside world , content with their new life in the high rise people abandon their work and family and stay indoors permanently , losing their sense of time . Even as hunger starts to set in , many of the characters in the novel still seem to be enjoying themselves , as the building allows them a chance to break free from the social restrictions of modern society and toy with their own dark urges and desires . And as bodies begin to pile up and the commodities of the high rise break down , no one considers alerting the authorities . The tenants of the high rise abandon all notions of moral and social etiquette , as their environment gives way to a hunter gatherer culture , where humans gather together in small clans , claim food sources from where they can including the many dogs in the building , and eventually even the other tenants , and every stranger is met with extreme violence . As he did in Concrete Island and Crash , Ballard here offers a vision of how modern life in an urban landscape and the advances of technology could warp the human psyche in hitherto unexplored ways .

<|fantasy|>Nepenthe is a sixteen year old orphan who was found and raised by the Royal Librarians of Raine . During the new queen s coronation , visitors and ambassadors from the Twelve Crowns domains that comprise Raine gauge Queen Tessera s strength . Bourne of Seale , a junior mage from the Floating School , meets Nepenthe in the library with a book inscribed with an unknown language , which seems to be written in configurations of plant thorns . Instead of delivering it to the Master Librarians , Nepenthe decides to transcribe it herself she soon becomes obsessed with learning the book s outcome . On the surface , it appears to be an epic poem documenting the conquests of Axis and Kane , an emperor and the Hooded One , three thousand years early . As Nepenthe continues reading , the ruler of Seale prepares to usurp the throne from Tessera , whom he views as weak . She is only fourteen years old . Reading further as Seale s army marches and Bourne is imprisoned for treason , Nepenthe learns that Axis and Kane traveled through time to expand the reach and strength of Axis empire . Popular histories in Raine list the man Kane as Axis court mage Kane was , but the woman Kane was also his lover who opened the Gates of Time for him . Kane became pregnant with his child , and she traveled with the infant through time to a cliff side near Raine . She wrote a book about her life in the language of thorns and because of her enchantments , no one but her daughter could read it by the book s climax , she has . The final words of the book open the Gates of Time that admit Axis and Kane , Nepenthe s parents , and their uncountable legions of followers near Raine , three thousand years in their future . When Queen Tessera learns of the planned invasion , with the help of Vevay , her own mage , and the magicians of the Floating School , she uses magic to make Raine seem a dilapidated ruin and thereby protect it from Axis . Nepenthe meets her mother and refuses Kane s offer to rule Raine , because it would require Nepenthe to turn her back on the only world she s ever known . Kane chooses to remain in Raine , where she can be with her daughter and won t have to hide her identity . This effectively stops Axis conquests because without her he can t travel through the Gates of Time . The forces of Seale see Axis s army retreat in fear , which strengthens Tessera s claim on the throne . Kane stays with her daughter , and Nepenthe remains in the Royal Library , the only life she ever wants to know .

<|crime|>And the Ass Saw the Angel tells the story of Euchrid Eucrow , a mute born to an abusive drunken mother and a father obsessed with cruel traps and animal torture . His father s dangerous traps could maim or kill an unwary person . An outcast , scorned even among outsiders , in a valley of fanatically religious Ukulites , Euchrid bears his mother s beatings , his father s inturned indifference , and the hatred and loathing of an entire town . Euchrid s increasingly fractured mind teems with words and horrible angelic visions , narrated by his silent Southern drawl . To wit , Cave phonetically renders the boy narrator s I as Ah . Raised to inevitable madness in this world of inbreeding , moonshine , and fanaticism , Euchrid will exact his terrible vengeance on the people who have made his life one of nearly unrelenting pain .

<|fantasy|>In the hills above Cannes , a European elite has gathered in the business park Eden Olympia , a closed society that offers its privileged residents luxury homes , private doctors , private security forces , their own psychiatrists , and other conveniences required by the modern businessman . The book s protagonist , Paul , quits his job as an editor and moves to Eden Olympia with his wife Jane when she is offered a job there as a pediatrician . At first glance , Eden Olympia seems the ideal workers paradise , but beneath its glittering , glass wall surface , all is not well . For if things are running smoothly , then why are all the residents mdash these well established businessmen , doctors , architects , and producers mdash all suffering heavily from stress and insomnia ? And why did Jane s predecessor , the well liked and apparently quite sane David Greenwood , go to work one day with an assault rifle strapped over his shoulders , murdering several of his friends and co workers , before he put the rifle to his own head ? Quickly bored with life in Eden Olympia the kind of adolescent society where you define yourself by the kind of trainers you wear , Paul decides to investigate the events that led to Greenwood s death , and begins walking in his footsteps . He soon discovers that just beneath the calm , well mannered surface of his new home lies an underworld of crime , deviant sex , and drugs that seems to be prospering and growing . And all the residents at Eden Olympia seem not only to be aware of this , but to encourage and welcome this underworld , as it provides them with a means to relate to something other than their jobs , and mdash by entering that world mdash to let go of the social restraints and etiquette that define their lives . Paul discovers that Eden Olympia s resident psychiatrist , Wilder Penrose , is eagerly encouraging his patients and there are many of them to indulge themselves in activities involving sex and violence , as a successful cure for their symptoms of stress . Says Penrose Psychopathy is its own most potent cure , and always has been . At times , it grasps entire nations in its grip and sends them through vast therapeutic spasms . No drug in the world is that powerful . ru

<|fantasy|>Almost 100 years after A . which we find out stands for Albert Square s adventures that were related in Flatland , his great great granddaughter , Victoria Line Vikki , finds a copy of his book in her basement . This prompts her to invite a sphere from Spaceland to visit her , but instead she is visited by the Space Hopper a character looking somewhat like the Space Hopper children s toy with a gigantic grin , horns and a spherical body . The Space Hopper , more than being able to move between Flatland and Spaceland , can travel to any space in the Mathiverse , a set of all imaginable worlds . After showing Vikki higher dimensions , he begins showing her more modern theories , such as fractional dimensions and dimensions with isolated points . Topology and hyperbolic geometry are also discussed , as well as the Projective Plain complete with intersecting lions and the quantum level . Hopper and Victoria also visit the Domain of the Hawk King to discuss time travel and the Theory of Relativity .

<|mystery|>The body of a young woman is found on the grounds of the Temple . The woman had been strangled and evidence points to Rabbi Small her purse is found in his car , which had been left in the Temple parking lot the night before .

<|mystery|>The book begins with a mysterious letter that is delivered to three unknown recipients , two women and one man . The letter tells them they are of great need to the sender , but begs them not to tell the police . Sixth graders Calder Pillay , who enjoys puzzles and pentominoes , and Petra Andalee , who aspires to be a writer , are classmates at the University School in Hyde Park , Chicago . Their young teacher , Ms . Hussey , is very interested in art and teaches them in a creative way . Through her pressing questions , they discover the artist Johannes Vermeer and his paintings , especially A Lady Writing and The Geographer . Petra also finds a used book called Lo ! , written by Charles Fort , at the local Powell s Books , owned by a man named Mr . Watch . They also meet an elderly neighbor , Mrs . Sharpe , who is also a fan of Vermeer and Fort . Calder receives letters from his best friend Tommy Segovia , who is currently living in New York City with a new stepfather . The children learn that A Lady Writing was traveling from The National Gallery of Art in Washington D . C . to Hyde Park . The next day there is a story in the paper of how the painting mysteriously disappeared . A letter from the thief appears in the newspaper , telling the public that he will not give back A Lady Writing until they prove which Vermeer paintings were truly painted by him . This sparks worldwide uproar . Calder and Petra investigate as their friendship grows . Mrs . Sharpe requests police protection and it is revealed that she and Mrs . Hussey were two of the three recipients of the thief s letter . Calder and Petra eventually conclude that the painting is hidden in the local Delia Dell Hall , and they sneak out and find it . They barely escape from the thief , who is later found dead from a heart attack by the police . They learn that the man is Xavier Glitts , who was posing as Tommy s stepfather under the name Fred Steadman . A known art thief , he was asked to steal the painting and sell it for sixty million dollars . The other recipient of the letter is revealed to be Mr . Watch . As stated in the preface , there is a code hidden in the illustrations throughout the book . This was an idea of Brett Helquist and Balliett s editor , Tracy Mack . The code involves images of pentominoes and a frog , which is a recurring theme in the book . To decode the code , one must count the number of frogs in every other illustration , as well as find the hidden pentomino . Once these facts are collected , the same code presented in the story that Calder and Tommy use in their letters in the book can be used to decode the message . When decoded , the message reads The Lady Lives .

<|fantasy|>Abarat focuses on Candy Quackenbush , a teenage girl frustrated with her life in Chickentown , Minnesota . After an argument with her teacher over a school project , Candy leaves the school and goes to the edge of town , where she sees the remains of a lighthouse . She then encounters a master thief named John Mischief , whose brothers live on his horns . Because he is pursued by a sinister creature named Mendelson Shape , Mischief sends Candy to light the lamp in the lighthouse , which summons an ocean known as the Sea of Izabella from a parallel world . After giving her a key to protect and extingushing the light , Mischief and Candy ride the seas to Abarat . A group of creatures carry them to a nearby island where Candy is separated from him . On the island , Candy learns that the Abarat consists of twenty five islands , each occupying a different hour of the day , and was formerly connected to Candy s world before the harbor s destruction by Abaratian authorities . Thereafter the story follows her adventures as she discovers the crises affecting the Abarat , and gains intimations that she may be destined to conclude these . The story also introduces her chief antagonists the sorcerer known as Christopher Carrion , his grandmother Mater Motley , and the industrialist Rojo Pixler , all of whom seek to dominate the Abarat .

<|novel|>Will has surprisingly come into a large amount of money , around 80 , 000 . His photograph screwing in a lightbulb has been made a silhouette and is being used as a picture for the company s lightbulb boxes . He is uncomfortable having this money , as he feels he did nothing to earn it , and is left with a sense of guilt and purposelessness . Shortly after receiving the sum , Will and Hand s mutual childhood friend , Jack , was involved in a car accident . The pair had delusional ambitions to use the money to save his life , but to no avail . After Jack s death , Will and Hand are asked to help go through Jack s possessions in a storage facility , where Hand decides to wander around and leaves Will . During Hand s absence , Will is brutally beaten by three men . Will and Hand agree that it is best not to go to the hospital , in case the attackers attempt to track them . As a result of his confusion due to a conglomerate of issues such as the large sum of money , Jack s death , and the beating , and other personal issues , Will and Hand plan to travel around the world visiting obscure countries and giving away all the money , bit by bit , to people who they arbitrarily decide are most deserving . According to Hand , they gave to people for the benefit of both parties , as a sacrament with the purpose of restoring a faith in humanity . The two come up with many creative ways of distributing the unwanted money . One plan involves taping money to a donkey in a graph paper pouch that reads HERE I AM ROCK YOU LIKE A HURRICANE , and another creating a treasure map for Estonian children . While on the journey the two friends do many wild and spontaneous things including practicing rolling over cars and jumping from tree to tree while twenty feet in the air . However without a solid set of criteria , or a definitive direction in their plan , this proves surprisingly difficult , and they experience much awkward confusion and moral uncertainty . They often fear being robbed and killed . Will becomes unstable and begins to lose his composure . The plot is both a log of the journey , but more so a look into the mind of the narrator , Will . A pseudo sequel entitled The Only Meaning of the Oil Wet Water follows Hand and the minor character Pilar in Central America . This short story is featured in the collection How We Are Hungry Stories .

<|fantasy|>Set in Elm Haven , Illinois , in 1960 , Summer of Night recounts its five pre teen protagonists discovery that eerie , terrifying events are unfolding in the Old Central School . Operatives , including a dead soldier giant worms with rows of sharp , serrated teeth the animated corpse of a deceased teacher schoolyard bullies the driver of a rendering truck their school teacher , and the principal of the school , serve a centuries old evil that seeks to be reborn in their time and in their town . It is only by banding together that the pre teens can hope to defeat the monstrosity before it destroys them , their friends , their families and , possibly , the world . The sequel to Summer of Night is called A Winter Haunting , in which Dale Stewart , now grown , returns to Elm Haven . Another sequel is Children of the Night , which features Mike O Rourke , now a Roman Catholic priest , who is sent on a mission to investigate bizarre events in a European city . Another Summer of Night character , Dale s younger brother , Lawrence Stewart , appears as a minor character in Simmons thriller Darwin s Blade while the adult Cordie Cooke appears in Fires of Eden .

<|comedy|>A nuclear device explodes in Washington including the White House . The Royalist Party and the National Rifle Association are nominally those responsible but Condon s target is Reaganism and its legacy , embodied in the character of an Army colonel , Caesare Appleton , who becomes Emperor Caesare I .

<|mystery|>In the rodent populated city of Pinchester lives Hermux Tantamoq , a watchmaker . When the beautiful adventuress and aviatrix Linka Perflinger drops into his shop to have him fix her watch , Hermux instantly falls in love . Then a shady looking rat comes to pick up the watch instead . . . and with a little investigating , Hermux is head over heels into a mystery involving curious kidnappings , murders , and the formula of Eternal Youth , while Dr . Mennus tries to stop Hermux to get the bottle of eternal youth .

<|fantasy|>The vast lake , Lake Agassiz , covered much of North Dakota , Manitoba and Minnesota during prehistoric times . The story begins when farmer Tom Lasker and his son , Will , uncover a seemingly brand new yacht . Found on a landlocked farm , it draws tourists to the area . Max Collingswood , a friend of Tom s , tries to help discover the origins of the boat . Collingswood enlists April Cannon , a worker at a chemical lab who discovers that the yacht is made of an unknown material . In fact , it is a fiberglass like material with an impossible atomic number 161 . Collingswood and Cannon discover something else on a nearby ridge which is part of a Sioux reservation . The Sioux assist in its excavation and examination . It turns out to a green glassy roundhouse like structure , made from the same material . Eventually , they gain access to it , revealing a dock for the sailboat , but no entrance for it . The discovery that the structure contains the means to access other sites not on Earth sets off a struggle between the Government and the Reservation for control of it .

<|fantasy|>The book starts with Jeff in need of a teaching robot . He buys Norby only to discover that it has the only mini anti gravity device in existence . They go to the park where the evil villain Ing s henchmen are after Fargo Wells , Jeff s brother . Norby and Jeff stop the henchmen who are captured by the police . Ing manages to take over Manhattan Island , but Norby and Jeff start a revolt against him . They go to the planet Jamya using a hyperdrive , never before done and creating a subplot for the second book in the series Norby s Other Secret . After enlisting Admiral Yobo in their quest to stop Ing , the three take Admiral Yobo s ship and , via hyperspace , literally park it above Ing s head , forcing him to a humiliating surrender . The book ends with Jeff saying Norby is his Mixed Up Robot .

<|novel|>Beginning with the famous section about Longstreet s spy Harrison gathering information about the movements and positions of the Federals , each day is told primarily from the perspectives of commanders of the two armies , including Robert E . Lee and James Longstreet for the Confederacy , and Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and John Buford for the Union . Most chapters describe the emotion laden decisions of these officers as they went into battle . Maps depicting the positioning of the troops as they went to battle , as they advanced , add to the sense of authenticity as decisions are made to advance and retreat with the armies . The author also uses the story of Gettysburg , one of the largest battles in the history of North America , to relate the causes of the Civil War and the motivations that led old friends to face each other on the battlefield . The novel is sometimes compared to Stephen Crane s The Red Badge of Courage for its depiction of the war , but Shaara emphasizes the decisions , motivations , and actions of generals and colonels in the battle more than the common soldiers . Shaara explained that he was aiming to produce an epic military study modeled after William Shakespeare s Henry V . His choice for a specific subject was inspired by a family vacation that Shaara took to the site of the battle in 1966 . Shaara s son Jeffrey Shaara expanded the story by adding a prequel , Gods and Generals and a sequel , The Last Full Measure .

<|childrens|>Wishing Moon follows the tale of Aminah Barnes , a beggar orphan who is thrown Aladdin s magical lamp by an unwitting princess , Badr Al Budur , after Aladdin has married her . As Aminah works out problems with the lamp and its demon , she eventually begins her own journey of emotions while trying to avoid the notice of the spoiled and ambitious princess who seeks to regain the lost lamp . After settling into a moderately prosperous life , Aminah decides to help other people in need , but selectively , only helping those who help others . Soon , however , her good deeds draw the unwanted eye of Badr Al Budur .

<|novel|>Professor Wilson arrives at the Alexanders house in Boston , after Mr Alexander has talked him into attending a Congress of Psychologists there . He is greeted by Mrs Alexander later her husband comes home and they have a talk his wife plays the piano for them . The next day , she tells him how she met her husband through her aunt . In London , Bartley Alexander meets with Maurice Mainhall to see a play starring Hilda Burgoyne , an erstwhile lover of his . Back in his hotel room , he thinks back to how he broke up with her in a letter after he met Winifred in Canada . Later , he walks to her house to see where she lives and reminisces about his youth . At a party at Lady Warford s , he talks to her after many years apart and she says she has been reading in the newspapers about his success with bridges in Japan and Canada . Later , he goes to another party also held by Lady Warford . The following Thursday , he takes Hilda to dinner and they reminisce about Madame Anger and Angel , and a beggar they had seen in the street once . He asks her to sing for him and she asks if he will let her love him . On Christmas Eve , the Alexanders are getting ready for the Christmas dinner , and Bartley tells Wilson he is in trouble with the bridge in Canada . Later , he gives his wife pearl earrings . On New Year s Day , Alexander is getting ready to leave for London again . Later , on the ship , he battles with sharp gales and goes into a bar , where he gambles at bridge . Once in London , Bartley visits Hilda and tells her he cannot go on having two relationships she must forget about him and leave him alone . She is distressed . The day before he is due to return to America however , he takes her out to dinner . Later , Hugh MacConnell walks Hilda back to her house on a foggy day , and she says she isn t attracted to him because they are just close friends . Back in her house , she receives a letter from Bartley , saying he is going mad away from her . This prompts her to visit him in America to tell him she will marry another man and thence be bound to someone else he doesn t like the idea . They spend one last evening together . Soon after , Bartley is called to Canada by Philip Horton to inspect the bridge . Bartley discovers that one of the lower chords of the bridge was failing , compromising the structural integrity of the entire bridge . Horton was afraid to halt construction , but had first attempted to contact Bartley even earlier the very day Bartley was with Hilda . As Bartley is on the bridge stopping the work crews , the bridge collapses , killing many of the workers . Bartley s body is recovered the next day and taken to Horton s house . Winifred comes back to look after the dead body . Finally , Wilson visits Hilda . The latter expresses her jealousy over Winifred , but Wilson reminds her that she will not live again , she will be haunted by her husband s death . Hilda concludes that she will be too .

<|novel|>The novel ends with a surprise twist , when Nikolai s worst fears are realized . The Mongol hordes that the Tsar kept at bay for hundreds of years are finally unleashed on the weakened empire of Russia via a complex labyrinth of tunnels . The inhabitants of Petersburg , unable to defend themselves from the ravaging horde of Tartars , quickly capitulate to the rule of the Khan . Appolon Appolonovich is beheaded by the tyrannical Khan and his son Nikolai assumes his rightful place as guardian of the Russian people . This was intended to be the first in an epic trilogy detailing the resistance movement of the intelligentsia against the alien invaders . However , with the onset of post revolutionary censorship , the series was deemed to be too monarchist and was therefore abandoned . Bely presents the idea of the entire world being connected by a series of tunnels . As a symbolist he saw tunnels as a gateway to the soul . By having the Mongols use these tunnels to breach Russia s defenses , he expresses the widely held fear of Orientalism defiling the Russian soul .

<|mystery|>Ruth is an abnormally tall and ugly housewife whose loveless husband , Bobbo , considers their relationship an open marriage based on convenience alone . Bobbo only truly loves his mistress , a famous , wealthy romance novelist named Mary Fisher . When Ruth at last passionately indicates her disapproval for Bobbo s extramarital affair , he calls her a she devil , causing her to reassess her life . She resolves to behave in accordance with the label he has given her . Bobbo promptly leaves Ruth and their two children he goes to live with Mary Fisher , to whom he soon proposes . Ruth plots her revenge on them , beginning by burning down her own house , therefore forcing the children to live with their father at Mary Fisher s mansion . Ruth proceeds to engage in a string of meaningless sexual relationships in order to emotionally detach herself from sex . In the meantime , she works at the retirement home that houses Mary s mother , Pearl , her actions there causing Pearl to be expelled from the home thus she inconveniences Mary and Bobbo who must now care for her . At the same time , Bobbo believes that Ruth has inexplicably disappeared and may be dead , as she has completely abandoned him and their children . Ruth now finds work at a psychiatric hospital while taking classes in accounting and bookkeeping . She uses this knowledge to discreetly steal money from Bobbo s corporate clientele in a way that will incriminate Bobbo later on . Ruth then begins her own employment agency for female secretaries , under the alias of Vista Rose . Through her agency , she sends a secretary to Bobbo s office who begins another affair with him . When the police arrive to arrest Bobbo , Ruth has made it appear as though he and the secretary were going to take the stolen finances and leave the country , though Ruth is in possession of the money herself , becoming rich as a result . Under a new alias , Ruth works as a nanny for the children of the judge who presides over Bobbo s trial , sleeping with him and successfully persuading him to extend Bobbo s prison sentence if he is convicted . Bobbo is found guilty and imprisoned . While a desperate Mary Fisher turns toward religion for guidance , Ruth manipulates the entire situation and continues to recreate herself with a variety of aliases and love affairs . Ruth uses her money to change her lifestyle and appearance , particularly undergoing a series of surgeries to completely restructure her body . Mary continues to love Bobbo and wastes away , developing cancer and ultimately dying , with her house purchased quickly by Ruth . Ruth now lives a life of wealth , extravagance , and control , claiming that she will sexually dominate Bobbo once she secures his release from prison , causing him the misery that he once caused her .

<|mystery|>Clay Carter is a poorly paid lawyer at the Office of the Public Defender . He dreams of one day joining a big law firm . Reluctantly , he takes on the case of Tequila Watson , a man accused of a random street killing . Clay assumes that it is just another D . C . murder . But Clay soon learns of a pharmaceutical conspiracy , with the help of the mysterious Max Pace . The pharmaceutical company was illegally using recovering drug addicts for medical trials without their consent . The drug , Tarvan , works for 90 of their patients , but in some cases including Tequila Watson , it leads to random violent killings . The drug company employs Pace and his shadowy associates to solicit Clay s help in paying off the victims with large settlements . Clay has reservations , but soon profits from the legal retainer offered by Pace . He leaves the OPD and raids some of their staff to establish his own law firm . Pace offers Clay insider information on the dangers of another drug Dyloft and Maxatil . Clay uses this information to launch a new career in Tort Law . Soon he finds himself being one of the legal profession s biggest tort lawyers and conniving with other high powered tort lawyers . But this sudden fame isn t without a price and soon he s under investigation for various misdemeanors , including insider trading . In the end , Clay is beaten up by some men from Reedsburgh , sending him to the hospital . Then he loses a huge case against Goffman and slides downhill as previous , disgruntled clients sue him . In the end he runs away with Rebecca to London .

<|novel|>Michael Marcus the father of Ben Marcus , the character opens Notable American Women with several warnings most notably , that his own offspring , Ben , may very well be mentally handicapped and ponders reflectively , How can one word from Ben Marcus s rotten , filthy heart be trusted ? With that , Ben Marcus the author launches into a lengthy first person narration with Ben Marcus as guide , allowing the reader to decide if , and how , any of the words can be trusted . Playing with the English language in such a manner that his work has drawn comparison s to Anthony Burgess s A Clockwork Orange , among other novels , Marcus describes the cultish , recondite practises of his mother , her enigmatic mentor Jane Dark , and their legion of disciples as they attempt to create perfect stillness in the world by eliminating the wind violence of speech and , ultimately , physical movement . Dark , witty , and depressing in its ironic hilarity , Notable American Women allows the reader to delve into the mind of a well meaning but obtuse young man , to glimpse into his turbulent upbringing full of radical experimentation and forced breeding among other things and , possibly , to become attached . In the end , the feminist Silentist group , to which Ben s mother Jane Marcus belongs , is facing issues of endangerment due to the largely unsuccessful breeding procedures involving Ben and the growing number of its member that are reaching a stillness level , which makes them obsolete . Jane Marcus , too , is nearing complete and utter emotional obliteration , using a complex system of body contortions , and takes the opportunity to address the reader . Like her estranged husband before her whom she purportedly assisted in relegating to a hole in her backyard , Jane takes a turn at narration , providing for the novel s conclusion addressing her husband with ultimatums and effrontery , the reader sees life from the last member of the core Marcus family trinity , at which point the reader is left to draw her or his own conclusions .

<|novel|>Kate Croy and Merton Densher are two betrothed Londoners who desperately want to marry but have very little money . Kate is constantly put upon by family troubles , and is now living with her domineering aunt , Maud Lowder . Into their world comes Milly Theale , an enormously rich young American woman who had previously met and fallen in love with Densher , though she didn t reveal her feelings . Her travelling companion and confidante , Mrs . Stringham , is an old friend of Maud s . Kate and Aunt Maud welcome Milly to London , and the American heiress enjoys great social success . With Kate as a companion , Milly goes to see an eminent physician , Sir Luke Strett , because she s afraid that she is suffering from an incurable disease . The doctor is noncommittal but Milly fears the worst . Kate suspects that Milly is deathly ill . After the trip to America where he had met Milly , Densher returns to find the heiress in London . Kate wants Densher to pay as much attention as possible to Milly , though at first he doesn t quite know why . Kate has been careful to conceal from Milly and everybody else that she and Densher are engaged . With the threat of serious illness hanging over her , Milly decides to travel to Venice with Mrs . Stringham . Aunt Maud , Kate and Densher follow her . At a party Milly gives in her Venice palazzo the older Palazzo Barbaro , called Palazzo Leporelli in the novel , Kate finally reveals her complete plan to Densher he is to marry Milly so that , after her presumably soon to occur death , Densher will inherit the money they can marry on . Densher had suspected this was Kate s idea , and he demands that she consummate their affair before he ll go along with her plan . Aunt Maud and Kate return to London while Densher remains with Milly . Unfortunately , the dying girl learns from a former suitor of Kate s about the plot to get her money . She turns her face to the wall and grows very ill . Densher sees her one last time before he leaves for London , where he eventually receives news of Milly s death . Milly does leave him a large amount of money despite everything . But Densher won t touch the money , and he won t marry Kate unless she also refuses the bequest . Conversely , if Kate chooses the money instead of him , Densher offers to make the bequest over to her in full . The lovers part on the novel s final page with a cryptic exclamation from Kate We shall never be again as we were !

<|novel|>Lambert Strether , a middle aged , yet not broadly experienced , man from Woollett , Massachusetts , agrees to assume a mission for his wealthy fiancée go to Paris and rescue her son , Chad Newsome , from the clutches of a presumably wicked woman . On his journey , Strether stops in England , and there meets Maria Gostrey , an American woman who has lived in Paris for years . Her cynical wit and worldly opinions start to rattle Strether s preconceived view of the situation . In Paris , Strether meets Chad , and is impressed by the much greater sophistication Chad seems to have gained during his years in Europe . Chad takes him to a garden party , where Strether meets Marie de Vionnet , a lovely woman of impeccable manners , separated from her reportedly unpleasant husband , and Jeanne , her exquisite daughter . Strether is confused as to whether Chad is more attracted to the mother or the daughter . At the same time , Strether , himself , feels an overwhelming attraction to Marie de Vionnet , which he suspects she might requite , and so begins questioning his commitment to return to Woollett and marry Chad s mother , despite his admiration for her . All of these impressions of Parisian culture lead Strether to confide in Little Bilham , a friend of Chad s , that he might have missed the best life has to offer he starts to delight in the loveliness of Paris , and stops Chad from returning to America . Strether s American traveling companion , Waymarsh , provides thematic counterpoint , by refusing to be seduced by the charms of Europe . Meanwhile , Mrs . Newsome , Strether s fiancée and Chad s mother , impatiently waiting in America , enlists new ambassadors to return forthwith with Chad . The most important of the new ambassadors , Sarah Pocock , Chad s sister , harshly dismisses Strether s impression that Chad has improved , condemns Marie as an indecent woman , and demands that Chad immediately return to the family business in America . To escape his troubles , Strether takes a brief tour of the French countryside , and accidentally encounters Chad and Marie at a rural inn he then comprehends the full extent of their romance . After returning to Paris , he counsels Chad not to leave Marie but Strether finds he is now uncomfortable in Europe . In the event , he declines Maria Gostrey s virtual marriage proposal and returns to America .

<|novel|>Dick and Nicole Diver are a glamorous couple who take a villa in the South of France and surround themselves with a circle of friends , mainly Americans . Also staying at the resort are Rosemary Hoyt , a young actress , and her mother . Rosemary gets sucked into the circle of the Divers she falls in love with Dick and is also adopted as a close friend by Nicole . Dick first toys with the idea of an affair with Rosemary at this point , which he finally acts upon years later . However , Rosemary senses something is wrong with the couple , which is brought to light when one of the guests at a party reports having seen something strange in the bathroom . Tommy Barban , another guest , comes loyally to the defense of the Divers . The action involves various other friends , including the Norths , where a frequent occurrence is the drunken behavior of Abe North . The story becomes complicated when Jules Peterson , a black man , is murdered and ends up in Rosemary s bed , in a situation which could destroy Rosemary s career . Dick moves the blood soaked body to cover up any implied relationship between Rosemary and Peterson . Once into the book , the history of the Divers emerges . Dick Diver was a doctor and psychoanalyst and had taken on a complicated case of neuroses . This was Nicole , whose complicated , incestuous relationship with her father is suggested as the cause of breakdown . As she becomes infatuated with Dick , Dick is almost driven to marry her as part of the cure . Strong objections are raised Nicole is an heiress and her sister thinks Dick is marrying her for her money . They do marry , and Nicole s money pays for Dick s partnership in a Swiss clinic and for their extravagant lifestyle . However , Dick gradually develops a drinking problem . He gets into fights and trouble with the police in various incidents and is bought out of the clinic by his partner . The opening episode almost marks the crossover point whereby Dick becomes the weaker partner , progressively failing in what he attempts while Nicole becomes stronger . Dick s behaviour becomes embarrassing as he mishandles situations with the children and friends . Eventually Nicole has an affair with Tommy Barban , and divorces Dick to marry Barban . Nicole survives , while Dick drifts into ever diminishing circumstances . The underlying theme is then how one person has become strong by destroying another a point emphasized cynically by Nicole s sister , who having seen Dick originally as the parasite , finally remarks that That was what he was educated for .

<|novel|>Prince Amerigo , an impoverished but charismatic Italian nobleman , is in London for his marriage to Maggie Verver , only child of the widower Adam Verver , the fabulously wealthy American financier and art collector . While there , he re encounters Charlotte Stant , another young American and a former mistress from his days in Rome they met in Mrs . Assingham s drawing room . She is not wealthy , which is one reason they did not marry . Maggie and Charlotte have been dear friends since childhood , although Maggie doesn t know of Charlotte and Amerigo s past relationship . Charlotte and Amerigo go shopping together for a wedding present for Maggie . They find a curiosity shop where the shopkeeper offers them an antique gilded crystal bowl . The Prince declines to purchase it , as he suspects it contains a hidden flaw . After Maggie s marriage , she is afraid that her father has become lonely , as they had been close for years . She persuades him to propose to Charlotte , who accepts Adam s proposal . Soon after their wedding , Charlotte and Amerigo are thrown together because their respective spouses seem more interested in their father daughter relationship than in their marriages . Amerigo and Charlotte finally consummate an adulterous affair . Maggie begins to suspect the pair . She happens to go to the same shop and buys the golden bowl they had rejected . Regretting the high price he charged her , the shopkeeper visits Maggie and confesses to overcharging . At her home , he sees photographs of Amerigo and Charlotte . He tells Maggie of the pair s shopping trip on the eve of her marriage and their intimate conversation in his shop . They had spoken Italian , but he understands the language . Maggie confronts Amerigo . She begins a secret campaign to separate him and Charlotte while never revealing their affair to her father . Also concealing her knowledge from Charlotte and denying any change to their friendship , she gradually persuades her father to return to America with his wife . After previously regarding as a rather naive American and immature , Amerigo appears impressed by Maggie s delicate diplomacy . The novel ends with Adam and Charlotte Verver about to depart for the United States . Amerigo says he can see nothing but Maggie and embraces her .

<|novel|>A Voids plot follows a group of individuals looking for a missing companion , Anton Vowl . It is in part a parody of noir and horror fiction , with many stylistic tricks , gags , plot twists , and a grim conclusion . On many occasions it implicitly talks about its own lipogrammatic limitation , highlighting its unusual orthography . Protagonists within A Void by and by do work out which symbol is missing , but find it a hazardous topic to discuss , as any who try to bypass this story s constraint risk fatal injury . Philip Howard , writing a lipogrammatic appraisal of A Void in his column , said This is a story chock full of plots and sub plots , of loops within loops , of trails in pursuit of trails , all of which allow its author an opportunity to display his customary virtuosity as an avant gardist magician , acrobat and clown .

<|fantasy|>The title character is an intelligent robot named after the mechanical man in the Oz books who originally works as a domestic servant and house painter . Unlike other robots , whose behavior is constrained by asimov circuits mdash a reference to Isaac Asimov s fictional Three Laws of Robotics , which require robots to protect and serve humans mdash Tik Tok finds that he can do as he pleases , and he secretly commits various hideous crimes for his amusement . After manipulating both robots and humans to cause chaos and bloodshed , Tik Tok becomes wealthy partly through health care privatization and is finally elected Vice President of the United States . The novel gleefully satirizes Asimov s relatively benign view of how robots would serve humanity , suggesting that the reality would be exactly akin to slavery robots are worked until they drop and are made the victims of humans worst appetites , including rape . It also , like Sladek s earlier novel Roderick , mocks the notion of the Three Laws of Robotics and suggests that there is no way such complex moral principles could be hard wired into any intelligent being Tik Tok decides that the asimov circuits are in fact a collective delusion , or a form of religion , which robots have been tricked into believing . This liberation from tradition , while it makes him a cruel sociopath and nihilist , also provides him with intellectual insight and artistic talent thus Tik Tok is an extreme type of Romantic anti hero . Sladek s love of word play is apparent the book contains 26 chapters , and the first word of each chapter begins with a consecutive letter of the alphabet . Also , the first three words of the book are As I move , a reference to Asimov . The notion of using the faithful robot servant in the Oz books to analyze Asimov s principles , and to question the social status of robots , was first proposed in the 1978 essay Tik Tok and the Three Laws of Robotics by Paul A . Abrahm and Stuart Kenter in the academic journal Science Fiction Studies , which Sladek may have read .

<|fantasy|>The title character is an intelligent robot , the first to be invented . The opening chapters describe the creation of Roderick and show his mind at first consisting of a bodiless computer program developing through several stages of awareness . Finally , Roderick is given a rudimentary body and , through a series of misadventures , finds himself alone in the world . Due to his sketchy understanding of human customs , and intrigues surrounding the project that created him , he unwittingly becomes the center of various criminal schemes and other unfortunate events .

<|novel|>The book features a mad scientist , De Selby , who tries to destroy the world by removing all the oxygen from the air . He has also many strange inventions . He exploits the theory of relativity and invents a kind of time travelling machine , which he uses to age his whiskey , creating brews that have been aged for many decades in just a few hours . Saint Augustine and James Joyce both have speaking parts in the novel . James Joyce , after forging his own obituary to escape being drafted to fight in the Second World War , was serving pints in a small pub . Saint Augustine , on the other hand , appeared in a magical underwater cave and held a conversation with De Selby . The mad scientist De Selby leads the two main characters , Hackett and Mick , to the cave , to witness this conversation . Many prominent elements of the book , particularly De Selby himself , the eccentric policemen , and the atomic theory of the bicycle , were taken from O Brien s much earlier novel The Third Policeman , because he had not been able to find a publisher for it . The latter novel was published posthumously . fr L Archiviste de Dublin

<|novel|>Pittsburgh professor and author Grady Tripp is working on an unwieldy 2 , 611 page manuscript that is meant to be the follow up to his successful , award winning novel The Land Downstairs , which was published seven years earlier . On the eve of a college sponsored writers and publishers weekend called WordFest , two monumental things happen to Tripp his wife walks out on him , and he learns that his mistress , who is also the chancellor of the college , Sara Gaskell , is pregnant with his child . To top it all off , Tripp finds himself involved in a bizarre crime committed by one of his students , an alienated young writer named James Leer . During a party , Leer shoots and kills the chancellor s dog and steals her husband s prized Marilyn Monroe collectible the jacket worn by the actress on the day of her marriage to Joe DiMaggio .

<|comedy|>Before the main story of the novel begins , U . S . President Timothy Kegan is shot in Philadelphia at Hunt Plaza . The ensuing presidential commission condemns a lone gunman as the killer . The book starts years later , when Kegan s half brother , Nick , witnesses the death bed confession of a man claiming to have been part of the hit squad . As the protagonist attempts to find the plotter s , he encounters numerous groups and persons that could have led or been part of the conspiracy . One person is Lola Camonte , a hostess , lobbyist and fixer . She recounts the story of President Kegan asking her about appointing a member of organized crime to the Court of St . James . The character Joe Diamond is the fictional representation of Jack Ruby . Condon s book describes the numerous intertwined threads of the conspiracy , from the Mafia , Cuba , even possible domestic police connections . Only in the final act , in which Nick meets with his vicious and perverse Joseph P . Kennedy like father figure , is the truth revealed with a twist ending .

<|fantasy|>Dilvish is the descendant of both elves and humans , a scion of a prominent Elven house and the Human House that hath been stricken which lost its peerage for mixing Elven and Human blood . Hundreds of years before the main story , he comes across a dark ritual being performed by the sorcerer Jelerak who is sacrificing a human girl . He attempts to stop the ritual but is turned into stone , with his soul banished to Hell . His body became a statue , and for many decades it resided within the square of a nearby town that he had formerly saved from enemy conquerors . When this town is again in need of a hero , their citizens plight allows Dilvish the passage he needed to escape from Hell . He returns to the world of the living with his steed , the metal demon horse Black , and a burning desire for revenge against Jelerak , but must first repulse the assault against the endangered town . Dilvish then goes to call upon the Shoredan a cursed people bound to his family . He searches for Jelerak in the Tower of Ice and finds the sorcerer s apprentice and his sister trapped there . The two of them believe him to be a servant of Jelerak sent to kill them .

<|novel|>The book starts with a 4 37 a . m . phone call from Mike Daniels to Kathryn Kate Telman . He has been drugged , and about half of his teeth randomly and expertly extracted , just before an important meeting in Japan . The Business is a powerful yet democratic multinational commercial organisation , secretive but not too sinisterly so , and very long lived . It predates the Roman Catholic Church , and descends from a consortium of merchants in the Roman Empire which it even owned for sixty six days it hired a man to become emperor , but he lasted less than a month before being assassinated . It is now considering taking over a country in order to gain a seat at the United Nations . The story follows the heroine , Kate Telman , who is 38 and lusts after Stephen Buzetski , who is married . Starting from poverty , she has risen through the Business under the tutelage of her mentor , who adopted her at an early age , and her uncle Freddy , the man who invented the portable milk container named the chilp . She is investigating a possible case of someone stealing from the company , starting with strange happenings at a silicon chip manufacturing plant . In Business speak , they suspect they are being Couffabled , a term explained in chapter four . Although she discovers evidence of wrongdoing at a high level in the Business , she continues to believe in what they are doing as an organisation We re not a cover for the CIA . They re the Company , not the Business . She travels the world , at one point being summoned by a weapon collecting higher up in Nebraska to talk his nephew out of writing an incendiary anti Islamic screenplay . A scene of the book takes place on a ship on its way to be broken up at a shipyard in Sonmiani Bay . She has several telephone conversations with her therapy damaged friend Luce in California , who provides a cynical , suspicious , foul mouthed counterpoint to Kate s goodheartedness . She is given a DVD of Stephen s wife having extramarital sex in an attempt to influence her . She also becomes involved in the acquisition of the small Himalayan country of Thulahn . Small and underdeveloped , bleak and vulnerable , the football pitch doubles as the airport , the royal palace is heated by yak dung and the national sport is emigration . It resembles an exaggerated version of Bhutan . Under the Business s plan , Thulahn would be utterly changed , if not destroyed , and its people thrust into the modern world . Kate is given the job of negotiating with Thulahn s Crown Prince Suvinder Dzung , who falls in love with her .

<|novel|>Set in France primarily Paris during the late 1920s and early 1930s , Tropic of Cancer centers around Miller s life as a struggling writer . Late in the novel , Miller explains his artistic approach to writing the book itself , stating Up to the present , my idea of collaborating with myself has been to get off the gold standard of literature . My idea briefly has been to present a resurrection of the emotions , to depict the conduct of a human being in the stratosphere of ideas , that is , in the grip of delirium . Combining autobiography and fiction , some chapters follow a narrative of some kind and refer to Miller 39 s actual friends , colleagues , and workplaces others are written as stream of consciousness reflections that are occasionally epiphanic . The novel is written in the first person , as are many of Miller 39 s other novels , and does not have a linear organization , but rather fluctuates frequently between the past and present .

<|fantasy|>The Moviegoer tells the story of Binx Bolling , a young stock broker in postwar New Orleans . The decline of southern U . S . tradition , the problems of his family and his traumatic experiences in the Korean War have left him alienated from his own life . He day dreams constantly , has trouble engaging in lasting relationships and finds more meaning and immediacy in movies and books than in his own routine life . The loose plot of the novel follows Binx as he embarks on an undefined search , wandering around New Orleans , Chicago and the Gulf Coast reflecting philosophically on small episodes and interactions . He is constantly challenged to define himself in relation to friends , family , sweet hearts and career despite his urge to remain vague and open to possibility . What is the nature of the search ? you ask . Really it is very simple at least for a fellow like me . So simple that it is easily overlooked . The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life . The novel is heavily influenced by the existentialist themes of authors like Søren Kierkegaard , whom Percy read extensively . Unlike many dark didactic existentialist novels including Percy s later work , The Moviegoer has a light poetic tone . It was Percy s first , most famous , and most widely praised novel .

<|novel|>The primary character is a bishop , Jean Marie Latour , who travels with his friend and vicar Joseph Vaillant from Sandusky , Ohio to New Mexico to take charge of the newly established diocese of New Mexico , which has only just become a territory of the United States . The names given to the main proponents reflect their characters . Vaillant , valiant , is fearless in his promulgation of the faith , whereas Latour , the tower , is more intellectual and reserved than his comrade . At the time of his departure , Cincinnati is the end of the railway line west , so Latour must travel by riverboat to the Gulf of Mexico , and thence overland to New Mexico , a journey which takes an entire year . He spends the rest of his life establishing the Roman Catholic church in New Mexico , where he dies in old age . The novel portrays two well meaning and devout French priests who will encounter a well entrenched Spanish Mexican clergy that they are sent to supplant after the United States acquired New Mexico and the dioceses of the new state were remapped by the Vatican . Several of these entrenched priests are depicted in classic manner as examples of greed , avarice and gluttony , while others live simple , abstemious lives among the Native Americans . Cather portrays the Hopi and Navajo sympathetically , and her characters express the near futility of overlaying their religion on a millennia old native culture . Cather s vivid landscape descriptions are also memorable . A scene where a priest and his Native American guide take cover in an ancient cave during a blizzard is especially memorable for its superb portrayal of the combined forces of nature and culture .

<|childrens|>William Boot , a young man who lives in genteel poverty far from the iniquities of London , is contributor of nature notes to Lord Copper s Daily Beast , a national newspaper . He is dragooned into becoming a foreign correspondent when the editors mistake him for a novelist who shares his surname , John Courtney Boot . He is sent to the fictional African state of Ishmaelia where a civil war threatens to break out . There , despite his total ineptitude , he accidentally manages to get the scoop of the title . When he returns , however , credit is diverted to the other Boot , and he is left to return to his bucolic pursuits , much to his relief .

<|romance|>The opening of the novel is set a short while after the 1833 emancipation of the slaves in British owned Jamaica . The protagonist Antoinette conveys the story of her life from childhood to her arranged marriage to an unnamed Englishman implied as Mr Rochester from Jane Eyre . As the novel and their relationship progress , Antoinette , whom he renames Bertha , descends into madness . The novel is split into three parts . Part One takes place in Coulibri , Jamaica and is narrated by Antoinette . Describing her childhood experience , she includes several facets of her life , such as her mother s mental instability and her mentally disabled brother s tragic death . Part Two alternates between the points of view of her husband and of Antoinette following their marriage and is set in Granbois , Dominica . One of the likely catalysts for Antoinette s downfall is the suspicion with which they both begin to view each other , fuelled by the machinations of a supposed relative of Antoinette s , Daniel Cosway Boyd . Antoinette s old nurse Christophine s constant mistrust of the husband and Rochester s unwavering belief in Daniel Cosway further aggravates the situation , added in when he becomes unfaithful to her . This increased sense of paranoia tinged with the disappointment of their failing marriage unbalances Antoinette s already precarious mental state . The shortest part , Part Three , is once again from the perspective of Antoinette , now known as Bertha , as she lives in the Rochester mansion , which she calls the Great House . It traces her relationship with Grace , the servant who is tasked with guarding her in England . It also traces her even more disintegrating relationship with Rochester as he hides her from the world . Making her empty promises to come see her more , which only become less as he adventures off with relationships with other women , eventually with Jane Eyre . Narrating in a stream of consciousness , Bertha decides to take her own life as she believes it to be her destiny .

<|fantasy|>The story is written from the perspective of young Oxford graduate and aspiring poet Nicholas Urfe , who takes up with Alison Kelly , an Australian girl he meets at a party in London . To get away from an increasingly serious relationship with her , Nicholas accepts a post teaching English at the Lord Byron School in the Greek island of Phraxos . Bored , depressed , disillusioned , and overwhelmed by the Mediterranean island , Nicholas struggles with loneliness and contemplates suicide . Finding himself habitually walking the isle , he stumbles upon the estate , and soon the person of , wealthy Greek recluse Maurice Conchis , who may or may not have collaborated with the Nazis during World War II . Nicholas is gradually drawn into Conchis psychological games , his paradoxical views on life , his mysterious persona , and his eccentric masques . At first , these various aspects of what the novel terms the godgame seem to Nicholas to be a joke but , as they grow more elaborate and intense , Nicholas s ability to determine what is real and what is artifice vanishes . Against his will and knowledge , he becomes a performer in the godgame and realizes that the reenactments of the Nazi occupation , the absurd playlets after de Sade , and the obscene parodies of Greek myths are not about Conchis life , but his own .

<|fantasy|>The novel centers on a wealthy white family group living in New Rochelle , New York , simply called Father , Mother , Mother s Younger Brother , and Grandfather . Their young son is not named at all . The family business is the manufacture of flags and fireworks , evidently an easy source of wealth due to the national enthusiasm for patriotic displays . Father joins the first expedition to the North Pole , and his return sees a change in the sexual politics of his relationship with his wife . Younger Brother is an insecure , unhappy character who chases after love and excitement . Into this secure setup comes first an abandoned black child , then her severely depressed mother Sarah . Coalhouse Walker , apparently the child s father , visits regularly until he wins back Sarah s affections . A professional musician , well dressed and well spoken , gains the family s respect and overcomes their racial prejudice initially by his skill playing ragtime music on their badly tuned piano . Things go well until he is humiliated by a racist fire chief , and his inflexible pride brings him to seek restitution , violent revenge eventually , rather than pursue the course of love and happiness . Mother unofficially adopts the neglected child after Sarah dies as result of police brutality . Younger Brother becomes drawn into the escalating conflict , as a protagonist , and so does Father as a mediator . In the slums of New York city , unhappy Jewish single father Tateh struggles to support himself and his daughter , Little Girl . The girl s beauty attracts the attention of rich socialite Evelyn Nesbit , who provides support but ultimately drives him to take his daughter away from the city . He appears later in the story , having progressed from the unprofitable business of cutting paper silhouettes on the street , becoming a wealthy pioneer of the moving picture industry . By the end of the novel , surviving members of the three family groups have merged into one in an allegorical representation of the American melting pot , leaving Father financially successful but abandoned and unhappy .

<|fantasy|>Jim his surname is never disclosed , a young British seaman , becomes first mate on the Patna , a ship full of pilgrims travelling to Mecca for the hajj . Jim joins his captain and other crew members in abandoning the ship and its passengers . A few days later , they are picked up by a British ship . However , the Patna and its passengers are later also saved , and the reprehensible actions of the crew are exposed . The other participants evade the judicial court of inquiry , leaving Jim to the court alone . The court strips him of his navigation command certificate for his dereliction of duty . Jim is angry with himself , both for his moment of weakness , and for missing an opportunity to be a hero . At the trial , he meets Charles Marlow , a sea captain , who in spite of his initial misgivings over what he sees as Jim s moral unsoundness , comes to befriend him , for he is one of us . Marlow later finds Jim work as a ship chandler s clerk . Jim tries to remain incognito , but whenever the opprobrium of the Patna incident catches up with him , he abandons his place and moves further east . At length , Marlow s friend Stein suggests placing Jim as his factor in Patusan , a remote inland settlement with a mixed Malay and Bugis population , where Jim s past can remain hidden . While living on the island he acquires the title Tuan Lord . Here , Jim wins the respect of the people and becomes their leader by relieving them from the predations of the bandit Sherif Ali and protecting them from the corrupt local Malay chief , Rajah Tunku Allang . Jim wins the love of Jewel , a woman of mixed race , and is satisfied . . . nearly . The end comes a few years later , when the town is attacked by the marauder Gentleman Brown . Although Brown and his gang are driven off , Dain Waris , the son of the leader of the Bugis community , is slain . Jim returns to Doramin , the Bugis leader , and willingly takes a fatal bullet in the chest from him as retribution for the death of his son . Marlow is also the narrator of three of Conrad s other works Heart of Darkness , Youth , and Chance .

<|fantasy|>The novel centers on a young , independently wealthy traveler the narrator , who accidentally finds his way into a subterranean world occupied by beings who seem to resemble angels and call themselves Vril ya . The hero soon discovers that the Vril ya are descendants of an antediluvian civilization who live in networks of subterranean caverns linked by tunnels . It is a technologically supported Utopia , chief among their tools being the all permeating fluid called Vril , a latent source of energy which its spiritually elevated hosts are able to master through training of their will , to a degree which depends upon their hereditary constitution , giving them access to an extraordinary force that can be controlled at will . The powers of the will include the ability to heal , change , and destroy beings and things the destructive powers in particular are awesomely powerful , allowing a few young Vril ya children to wipe out entire cities if necessary . It is also suggested that the Vril ya are fully telepathic . The narrator states that in time , the Vril ya will run out of habitable spaces underground and start claiming the surface of the Earth , destroying mankind in the process if necessary . The uses of Vril in the novel amongst the Vril ya vary from an agent of destruction to a healing substance . According to Zee , the daughter of the narrator s host , Vril can be changed into the mightiest agency over all types of matter , both animate and inanimate . It can destroy like lightning or replenish life , heal , or cure . It is used to rend ways through solid matter . Its light is said to be steadier , softer and healthier than that from any flammable material . It can also be used as a power source for animating mechanisms . Vril can be harnessed by use of the Vril staff or mental concentration . A Vril staff is an object in the shape of a wand or a staff which is used as a channel for Vril . The narrator describes it as hollow with stops , keys , or springs in which Vril can be altered , modified or directed to either destroy or heal . The staff is about the size of a walking stick but can be lengthened or shortened according to the user s preferences . The appearance and function of the Vril staff differs according to gender , age , etc . Some staves are more potent for destruction , others for healing . The staves of children are said to be much simpler than those of sages in those of wives and mothers the destructive part is removed while the healing aspects are emphasized .

<|mystery|>In 1912 , Dr . Watson visits the retired Sherlock Holmes , who is happily cultivating bees on the Sussex Downs . Holmes seems mostly concerned about interesting Watson in his new hobby , but Watson prefers to interrogate Holmes and fill some of the gaps in previous Sherlockian history . For example , Watson says , Holmes s account of how he spent the Lost Years 1891 to 1895 was laden with contradictions . Finally , he persuades Holmes to retell one episode of his adventures . The narration switches to Holmes . He describes how , following the events of The Seven Percent Solution , he traveled Europe and slowly realized that the entire world believed him dead . Wandering aimlessly , he finds himself in Paris , where after a short lived stint as a violin instructor , he obtains a position at the Paris Opéra . From the very beginning , his job has ominous undertones . For example , the vacancy only appeared because the previous violinist ran into the street , swearing that he would never work in the place again . This does not daunt Holmes , who interviews with and favourably impresses the conductor , Maître Gaston Leroux . Holmes gradually becomes accustomed to the Opera s distinctive culture . He learns that all minor mishaps are attributed to the Ghost , a spectral personage who haunts the Opera s labyrinthine passageways , sometimes appearing to ballet dancers wearing an evening suit but without a head . All goes well until the prima donna soprano , La Sorelli , falls ill and is replaced by Irene Adler , a past adversary known for her ability to outwit Holmes . His admiration for her provokes uncertain emotions , largely foreign to his calculating nature mdash but he soon realizes that torment is secondary , when the opera rehearsals subject him to her incomparably beautiful singing . He suffers in silence until Adler sees his profile in a Degas painting , whereupon she realizes that he is alive , and enlists his help . She has taken the young coloratura Christine Daaé under her wing , and is fearful that the innocent singer may fall prey to intrigue once Adler has left . Irene Adler blackmails Holmes into assisting her , promising that she will remain silent about his survival . While investigating the intrigues that surround Christine , Holmes appears to run afoul of the Opera Ghost .

<|childrens|>The story focuses on a family of anthropomorphic rabbits , the widowed mother rabbit cautioning her young against entering a vegetable garden grown by a man named Mr . McGregor , who had baked her deceased husband into a pie . Whereas her three daughters obediently refrain from entering the garden , her rebellious son Peter defies his mother by trespassing into the garden to snack on some vegetables , losing his clothes along the way . While there , Peter is caught by Mr . McGregor and finds difficulties in wriggling beneath the opening in the fence through which he d managed to slide past earlier to invade the garden , and later finds that his abandoned clothing articles were used to dress Mr . McGregor s scarecrow . After returning home , a sickened Peter is bedridden by his mother whereas his well behaved sisters receive a sumptuous dinner of milk and berries as opposed to Peter s supper of chamomile tea .

<|fantasy|>The story s protagonist , Charles Prentice , ventures to Estrella de Mar in order to rescue his jailed brother , Frank . Upon arriving and talking with his sibling , Charles finds to his horror that his brother has confessed to everything , and has no interest in trying to escape his plea . In a matter of days , Charles becomes immersed in the strange world of Estrella de Mar , learning more of her dark secrets , and spending less time worrying about his brother . Constantly being manipulated while he thinks he s finding the truth , Charles soon finds himself out of control and at the nexus of certain disaster , at which point he finally begins to understand just what happened to his brother .

<|fantasy|>The main character is Edward Sanders , an English medical doctor , who arrives to the river port of Port Matarre , in Gabon . From here he tries to reach a leprosy treatment facility where his friends , Max and Suzanne Clair , live . Soon , however , he starts to recognize that a mysterious phenomenon is crystallizing the jungle along with its living creatures . The same phenomenon is reported to be present also in the Florida everglades and in the Pripyat Marshes Soviet Union as well . Scientific explanations of the phenomenon are provided within the book however , Ballard offers mostly an interior and psychological perspective about it , directly through Sanders experiences . Several facts , furthermore , remains unexplained for example , the ability of jewels to liquefy the crystals . The crystals also have the property to keep objects and beings in a suspended state of existence . Many passages deal with this characteristic , pointing out its capability to stop time and life . In his route towards the deep of the forest , Sanders gets involved in a personal feud between Ventress , a Belgian architect , and Thorensen , the director of a diamond mine . In one of the most striking episodes of the novel , Sanders discovers the reason of the deadly rivalry to be Ventress former wife , Serena , who is terminally ill with tuberculosis . After a final confrontation , Thorensen decides to remain in his house within the jungle , in spite of the encroaching crystallization process . Two of the other characters met by Sanders in his voyage spontaneously make the same decision Balthus , an apostate priest , and Suzanne . The latter , nearly gone mad and sporting the first symptoms of leprosy , is portrayed towards the end of the novel as the leader of a band of lepers who set for the interior of the crystallizing forest , clearly to never come back . After having barely escaped from the now quickly spreading crystallization , Sanders reaches Port Matarre . Here , however , he makes the same decision as Balthus and Suzanne . In the final pages , Sanders goes back to river to face the same fate as Suzanne .

<|fantasy|>A twisted adaptation of Robinson Crusoe , the story s protagonist , Robert Maitland , a wealthy architect , finds himself stranded in a manmade island a section of fenced off wasteland in the middle of a motorway intersection between the Westway and an imagined spur of the M4 Motorway in west London , and is forced to survive on only what is in his crashed Jaguar and what he is able to find .

<|fantasy|>One year after the War of Assassins , Duke Leto Atreides sponsors an assault on Ix to reclaim the planet for House Vernius , while his concubine Jessica is pregnant with his son . Emperor Shaddam IV commences his Great Spice War to create a dependency on his soon to be released synthetic melange , ajidamal . The Bene Gesserit eagerly await the birth of the Kwisatz Haderach s mother by Jessica little do they know that things are not going to turn out exactly how they intend .

<|mystery|>The main character , Ray Atlee , is a law professor with a good salary at the University of Virginia . He has a brother , Forrest , and a father , known to many as Judge Reuben V . Atlee . Ray is sent to his father s house in Clanton , Mississippi , to discuss issues regarding the old man s will and estate . To do this , Ray has to go to fictional Ford County Mississippi , the setting for two of John Grisham s other books including A Time To Kill . When he finds his father dead in the study , Ray discovers a sum of over three million dollars in the house , money which is not part of Judge Atlee s will . Ray immediately thinks the money is dirty because his father could not possibly have made so much money in his career . Assuming that he is the only one who knows about the money , Ray decides to take it without making it officially part of the estate , and does not tell anyone about it he knows that if he made it a part of the estate , taxes would take most of the money . But later reality proves otherwise . Ray is being followed someone else knows about the money . After his own investigations into the roots of the money and the identity of his shadow including trips to casinos and shady meetings with prominent southern lawyers he eventually discovers that Forrest has the money . He finds Forrest in a drug rehab compound and confronts him . At the end both part , with Forrest telling Ray that he will contact him in a year . de Der Richter Roman it La convocazione pl Wezwanie powieść

<|fantasy|>A new shop named Needful Things opens in the town of Castle Rock , Maine , sparking the curiosity of its citizens . The proprietor , Leland Gaunt , is a charming elderly gentleman who always seems to have an item in stock that is perfectly suited to any customer who comes through his door . The prices are surprisingly low , considering the merchandise such as a rare Sandy Koufax baseball card , a carnival glass lampshade , and a fragment of wood believed to be from Noah s Ark but he expects each customer to also play a little prank on someone else in Castle Rock . Gaunt knows about the long standing private grudges , arguments , and feuds between the various townspeople , and the pranks are his means of forcing them to escalate until the whole town is eventually caught up in madness and violence . The novel ends as it begins , with a first person narrative indicating that a new and mysterious shop is about to open in a small Iowa town an implication that Gaunt is ready to begin his business cycle all over again .

<|crime|>Sales of The Stingray Shuffle , a good novel by good novelist Ralph Krunkleton , have soared recently . The book s publishers , not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth , mount a publicity blitz culminating in a train journey with the author from New York to Miami . What they do not realize is that no one is reading the book dealers are using a bookstore as a front , hollowing out copies of Shuffle to hide drugs . Meanwhile , Serge A . Storms and pothead pal Lenny Lipowicz resume their pursuit of 5 million worth of insurance fraud payout . Thrown into the mix are Johnny Vegas the accidental virgin , Paul the passive aggressive private eye , Ernest Hemingway lookalike Jethro Maddox , and the world s least competent drug cartel . Most of these characters find their way onto the Stingray Shuffle , the temporarily rechristened train to Miami . The Stingray Shuffle ties up a three book plot arc that began with Florida Roadkill , continued with Hammerhead Ranch Motel , and was then shelved for two years while Dorsey wrote the only slightly relative Triggerfish Twist and Orange Crush . It is ultimately revealed that Serge s plan for the money is to buy a trip into space and a monogrammed spacesuit from the Russians .

<|novel|>The book begins in Cordoba where the sexually precocious Aldonza lives with her mother . After her mother s death , she moves to her aunt s house from where she escapes with Diomedes , a sea merchant . After travelling to many cities of the Mediterranean Sea and the Middle East and changing her name to Lozana , they come to Marseille to meet the father of Diomedes , who , disgusted with his son , sends him to prison and pays a sailor to make Lozana disappear . However , the sailor disobeys the order given and takes Lozana to Livorno , where she continues her journey up to Rome . Without money , Lozana goes to the Spanish downtown in Rome to request help there , the women see her abilities in cooking , medicine and her beauty although her face is a little bit disfigured by syphilis . After a Neapolitan woman gives her a servant called Rampin , Lozana makes an agreement with him so that he becomes , for a time , her servant and lover . Following the advice of a post man , and with the aid of a Jew called Trigos who installs her in a house he owns , she begins her new life as a prostitute . After few years , she becomes the madame of a brothel , then Lozana and Rampin move to Lipari the book ends with a little narration about the sack of Rome .

<|novel|>Upon meeting Melibea , Calisto falls madly in love with her . Melibea rejects Calisto immediately at his open pledge of his love for her , as is the custom in courtly love . Calisto becomes depressed and lovesick , so his servant , Sempronio , tells Calisto about Celestina , a procuress who owns a brothel with prostitutes , two of whom are Elicia and Areusa . Calisto accepts and asks Celestina for help , and Celestina and Sempronio plot to get as much money out of Calisto as possible . Another servant , Pármeno attempts to warn Calisto of Celestina s dishonorable reputation , but Calisto rejects him . Celestina convinces Pármeno not to warn him any longer , using Areusa , and to instead join with her and Sempronio in taking advantage of Calisto . Celestina meets with Melibea and gives her a magic thread while telling her of the suffering of a man she knows whose only cure is the word and girdle of Melibea . They talk but when Celestina names Calisto , Melibea gets angry and tells Celestina to leave . Celestina is crafty though , and she finally manages to get Melibea to give up her girdle for Calisto . Melibea changes her mind and asks Celestina to come back and meet her secretly . Melibea suddenly finds herself madly in love with Calisto , and begs Celestina to arrange a meeting between her and her lover . Once this is done , Celestina informs Calisto and Calisto gives Celestina a gold chain . Celestina doesn t say anything to Sempronio and Pármeno , her partners in crime . When they go to Celestina s brothel and find out that Celestina has no intention of sharing her payment , they kill her . Afraid of being caught , they jump out the window , but one of the prostitutes , Sempronio s lover Elicia , sees them killing Celestina , and their broken bodies are executed . Calisto gets to the gate in Melibea s house with his other two servants Sosia and Tristan . Elicia and Areusa , who were lovers of Sempronio and Pármeno , send two thugs while Calisto is getting to Melibea s balcony with a ladder he hears Sosia and Tristan shouting . He runs to help them , but falls off the ladder and dies . Melibea sees Calisto dead , runs to the highest tower of her house and throws herself off after confessing her affair to her father .

<|fantasy|>The plot partially revolves around the missing master copy of a film cartridge , titled Infinite Jest and referred to in the novel as the Entertainment or the samizdat . The film is so entertaining to its viewers that they become lifeless , losing all interest in anything other than viewing the film . The video cartridge was the final work of film by James O . Incandenza before his microwave suicide , completed during a stint of sobriety that was requested by the lead actress , Joelle . Quebec separatists are interested in acquiring a master , redistributable copy of the work to aid in acts of terrorism against the United States . The United States Office of Unspecified Services USOUS is seeking to intercept the master copy of the film in order to prevent mass dissemination and the destabilization of the Organization of North American Nations . Joelle and later Hal seek treatment for substance abuse problems at The Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House , and Marathe visits the rehabilitation center to pursue a lead on the master copy of the Entertainment , tying the characters and plots together .

<|fantasy|>Artemis Fowl II is the thirteen year old son of an Irish crime lord , Artemis Fowl I , and the fairy underworld considers him dangerous . After being falsely accused of supplying contraband to a goblin smuggling ring , Artemis and his bodyguard , Butler , defeat the culprit . In return , the fairies Captain Holly Short and Commander Julius Root of the Lower Elements Police assist the pair in rescuing Artemis father , whom the Russian Mafia has held hostage . A goblin hit squad ambushes the rescue group , and the group shelters underneath an overhang . Realising that it is a trap , Butler pushes Holly and Artemis out as the overhang collapses . The rubble knocks Butler unconscious and traps him and Commander Root . Holly and Artemis free Root and Butler . Holly questions Artemis about his father and how he came to be so ruthless in the events of the previous book , and , in a rare moment of sincerity , Artemis admits he made a mistake , a sign of his moral development that continues through the series . Meanwhile , Briar Cudgeon ambushes and locks Foaly in the Operations Booth and disables LEP weapons , framing him as the mastermind behind the rebellion against the LEP and leaving the rescue group powerless to stop the goblins as they begin their attack . Foaly sends a text message to the rescue group , revealing that all weapons and communications are controlled by Opal Koboi . Artemis decides to take over Koboi Laboratories and return all weapons to the LEP , interrupting the rescue mission . Holly reveals that Foaly had a hunch that Mulch Diggums , the criminal and kleptomaniac dwarf who had been presumed dead after the Fowl Manor siege , was still alive and in Los Angeles . Knowing that he had broken into Koboi Laboratories before , they go to apprehend him once again . They then break into Koboi Laboratories through a hollow titanium foundation rod . Artemis manages to turn both the goblins and Koboi against Cudgeon . Cudgeon is killed when he is thrown into the open DNA cannon plasma feed which simultaneously blacks out Opal Koboi . The restored power activates DNA cannons in Police Plaza , neutralising all goblins there . However , Foaly is still trapped in the Operations Booth , as the LEP outside , commanded by Captain Trouble Kelp , still thinks he is to blame for the revolt . The rescuers then go to Murmansk and rescue Artemis Fowl I .

<|fantasy|>Hayduke Lives ! picks up after the literal cliffhanger at the end of the previous book and chronicles George Washington Hayduke s escape from Federal agents and his return to the deserts of southern Utah and northern Arizona . It also reunites Hayduke with the outlaw heroes from The Monkey Wrench Gang as they battle the world s biggest walking dragline and a Mormon preacher in another attempt to save the American Southwest . Both books have been reprinted numerous times due to their popularity .

<|fantasy|>Sven Bronson , a South African astronomer , discovers that a pair of rogue planets , Bronson Alpha and Bronson Beta , will soon enter the solar system . The larger one , Alpha , will pass close enough to cause catastrophic damage . Eight months later , after swinging around the Sun , Alpha will return to pulverize the Earth and leave . It is believed that Bronson Beta will remain and assume a stable orbit . Scientists led by Cole Hendron work desperately to build ships to transport enough people , animals and equipment to Bronson Beta in an attempt to save the human race . Governments are skeptical , but the scientists persist and develop the technology necessary for the spacecraft , which are built in various countries . Nations including the United States evacuate their coastal regions in preparation for the Bronson bodies first pass . Tidal waves reach heights of hundreds of meters , volcanic eruptions and earthquakes take their deadly toll , and the weather runs wild for more than two days . As a token of things to come , Bronson Alpha s first pass takes out the Moon . The isolated Hendron camp manages to build two ships which take off together with all of the survivors of the camp after beating off an attack from refugees desperate to escape . One ship makes a successful landing , but without radio contact with any other ships , the crew members assume that only they made it across . They find that Beta is habitable and that there are traces of a native civilization wiped out when , millions of years before , the planet was torn away from its sun . The sequel , After Worlds Collide , follows the fate of the survivors on Bronson Beta .

<|novel|>Orleanna Price narrates the introductory chapter in five of the novel s seven sections . The narrative then alternates among the four daughters , with a slight preference for the voice of the most outspoken one , Leah . The four girls increasingly mature , as each adapts differently to African village life , to the misogyny of their father Nathan , and the political turmoil that overtakes The Congo in the 1960s . Since the Congolese villagers are seen through the eyes of the growing daughters , the view changes . At first , they appear as ridiculous savages . But as the girls mature , the villagers become fully fleshed out human beings , immersed in a complex and sophisticated culture . Nathan s lack of responsiveness to this culture wears out his family s welcome , but he refuses to leave . Only after a series of misfortunes mdash culminating in the death of one of the daughters mdash do the women leave Nathan Price to his folly . The survivors take different paths into their futures , the novel ending at the time of Mobutu Sese Seko s death in the 1990s . Rachel , the eldest , marries Axelroot at seventeen , and after two more marriages is the owner of a luxury hotel close to what is now Brazzaville . Leah marries Anatole , has a large family of four boys , and remains in the impoverished Congo . Adah returns to the United States with their mother Orleanna , attending college and later , medical school . She undergoes a lengthy experimental treatment that restores full use of her legs and she begins to speak . Orleanna herself returns to spending life on the Georgian coast , enjoying Adah s occasional visits .

<|novel|>Lyman Ward narrates a century after the fact . Lyman interprets the story at times and leaves gaps that he points out at other times . Some of the disappointments of his life , including his divorce , color his interpretation of his grandparents story . Toward the end of the novel , he gives up on his original ambition of writing a complete biography of his grandmother . Stegner s use of Mary Hallock Foote s historical letters gives the novel s locations Leadville , New Almaden , Idaho , and Mexico an authentic feel the letters also add vividness to the Wards struggles with the environment , shady businessmen , and politicians . Lyman s position in the contemporary culture of the late sixties provides another historical dimension to the story . Foils for this plot line include Lyman s adult son , a Berkeley trained sociologist who sees little value in history , and a neighbor s daughter who helps transcribe Lyman s tape recorded notes while she is home on summer break from UC Berkeley , where she has been active in the hippie counterculture movement .

<|novel|>The House of Mirth tells the story of Lily Bart , a woman who is torn between her desire for luxurious living and a relationship based on mutual respect and love . She sabotages all her possible chances for a wealthy marriage , loses the esteem of her social circle , and dies young , poor , and alone . Lily is initially of good social standing and rejects several offers of advantageous marriage . Lily s social standing erodes when her friend Judy Trenor s husband Gus gives Lily a large sum of money . Lily innocently accepts the money , believing that it is the return on investments he supposedly made for her . The rumors of this transaction , and of her mysterious visit to Gus in his city residence crack her social standing further . To escape the rumors and gossip , she accepts an invitation from Bertha Dorset to join her and her husband , George , on a cruise of Europe aboard their yacht the Sabrina . Unfortunately , while aboard the yacht , Bertha accuses Lily of adultery with George in order to shift societal attention from Bertha s own infidelity with poet Ned Silverton . The ensuing scandal ruins Lily , leading her friends to abandon her and Aunt Peniston to disinherit her . Lily descends the social strata , working as a personal secretary until Bertha sabotages her position by turning her employers against her . Lily then takes a job as social secretary for a disreputable woman , but resigns after a friend of hers , Lawrence Selden , comes to rescue her from complete infamy . She then works in a millinery , but produces poorly and is let go at the end of the season . Simon Rosedale , the Jewish suitor who had proposed marriage to her when she was higher on the social scale tries to rescue her , but she is unwilling to meet his terms to use love letters she bought which prove the affair Bertha Dorset and Selden had years earlier . Lily refrains for sake of Selden s reputation , and secretly burns the letters when she visits Selden for one last time . Eventually Lily receives her 10 , 000 inheritance , which she uses to pay her debt to Trenor . Lily dies from an overdose , possibly accidental , of the sleeping draught to which she had become addicted . Hours later Selden comes to propose to her , but finds she has died . Only then is he able to be close to her in a way he never was able to when she was living and admit his true love for her .

<|novel|>The story explores the transition of an adolescent mind into adulthood . It revolves around a young man named Chandran , who resembles an Indian upper middle class youth of the pre independence era . First , Chandran s college life in late colonial times is described . After graduation , he falls in love with a girl , but will be rejected by the bride s parents , since his horoscope describes him as a manglik , a condition in which a manglik can only marry another manglik and if not , the non manglik will die . Frustrated and desperate , he embarks on a journey as Sanyasi . On his journey he meets many people and he is also misunderstood as a great sage by some villagers . Due to the compunctions and the realizations , he decides to return home . He takes up a job as a newsagent and decides to marry , in order to please his parents , thinking of the discomfort he had caused them earlier . The story portrays the heartbreak which a youth faces . After Malti , the girl with whom Chandran falls in love with after graduating from college , is married to someone else , Chandran is absolutely heartbroken to the extent that he goes to Madras and starts living on streets . Famished , delusioned and full of self pittance , he ends up wandering from one place to another like a sanyasi . After 8 months , he thinks of what mess he has become and thinks about his parents and decides to go back home . Even after returning home , he is still unable to take Malti out of his head completely and though he tries hard , the pictures and memories of her keep on haunting him for a long time . After a long time , his father comes to him with a proposal for marrying another girl Sushila . Chandran is still skeptical about love , marriage and initially refuses but later decides to see the girl . When he goes on to see the girl , he ends up falling in love with her . The novel is great because it explores how we human beings are delusioned by love . And it also teaches us that till the time you do not meet someone else , letting go of the memories is a very difficulty task . Once you meet someone new , those haunting memories start fading and you start seeing that how foolish you have been in the past to cling to one person and waste your life by doing that . hi pa

<|fantasy|>Mr . Vane , the protagonist of Lilith , owns a library that seems to be haunted by the former librarian , who looks much like a raven from the brief glimpses he catches of the wraith . After finally encountering the supposed ghost , the mysterious Mr . Raven , Vane learns that Raven had known his father indeed , Vane s father had visited the strange parallel universe from which Raven comes and goes and now resides therein . Vane follows Raven into the world through a mirror this symbolistic realm is described as the region of the seven dimensions , a term taken from Jacob Boehme . Inside the world , Vane learns of a house of beds where the dreamers sleep until the end of the world in death a good death , in which life is found . Vane s grandfather refused to sleep there and is , instead , forced to do battle with skeletons in a haunted wood . After a treacherous journey through a valley where the moon is the only thing to keep him safe , Mr . Vane meets the Little Ones , children who never grow up , only get bigger and dumber , turning into bags or bad giants . After conversing with Lona , the eldest of the children , Mr . Vane decides to help them , and sets off to gather more information , although the Raven who is also Adam has warned Mr . Vane that he needs to sleep along with the dreamers before he can really help them . While on his journey , he meets Lilith , the princess of Bulika . Vane , although nearly blinded by Lilith s beauty and charms , eventually leads the Little Ones in a battle against Bulika . Lona , Vane s love , turns out to be Lilith s daughter , and is killed by her own mother . Lilith , however , is captured and brought to Adam and Eve at the house of death , where they struggle to make her open her hand , fused shut , in which she holds the water the Little Ones need to grow . Only when she gives it up can Lilith join the sleepers in blissful dreams , free of sin . After a long struggle Lilith bids Adam cut her hand from her body it is done , Lilith sleeps , and Vane is sent to bury the hand water flows from the hole and washes the land over . Vane is then allowed to join the Little Ones , already asleep , in their dreaming . He takes his bed , next to Lona s , and finds true life in death .

<|fantasy|>The book tells the story of the quest for Captain Grant of the Britannia . After finding a bottle cast into the ocean by the captain himself after the Britannia is shipwrecked , Lord and Lady Glenarvan of Scotland contact Mary and Robert , the young daughter and son of Captain Grant , through an announcement in a newspaper . Moved by the children s condition , Lord and Lady Glenarvan decide to launch a rescue expedition . The main difficulty is that the coordinates of the wreckage are mostly erased , and only the latitude 37 degrees is known thus , the expedition would have to circumnavigate the 37th parallel south . Remaining clues consist of a few words in three languages . They are re interpreted several times throughout the novel to make various destinations seem likely . Lord Glenarvan makes it his quest to find Grant together with his wife , Grant s children and the crew of his yacht , the Duncan , they set off for South America . An unexpected passenger in the form of French geographer Jacques Paganel he missed his steamer to India by accidentally boarding on the Duncan joins the search . They explore Patagonia , Tristan da Cunha Island , Amsterdam Island , and Australia a pretext to describe the flora , fauna , and geography of numerous places to the targeted audience . There , they find a former quarter master of the Britannia , Ayrton , who proposes to lead them to the site of the wreckage . However , Ayrton is a traitor , who was not present during the loss of the Britannia , but was abandoned in Australia after a failed attempt to seize control of the ship to practice piracy . He tries to take control of the Duncan , but out of sheer luck , this attempt also fails . However the Glenarvans , the Grant children , Paganel and some sailors are left in Australia , and mistakenly believing that the Duncan is lost , they sail to Auckland , New Zealand , from where they want to come back to Europe . When their ship is wrecked south of Auckland on the New Zealand coast , they are captured by a Māori tribe , but luckily manage to escape and board a ship that they discover , with their greatest surprise , to be the Duncan . Ayrton , made a prisoner , offers to trade his knowledge of Captain Grant in exchange for being abandoned on a desert island instead of being surrendered to the British authorities . The Duncan sets sail for the Tabor Island , which , out of sheer luck , turns out to be Captain Grant s shelter . They leave Ayrton in his place to live among the beasts and regain his humanity . Ayrton reappears in Verne s later novel , L Île mystérieuse The Mysterious Island , 1874 .

<|crime|>Jim Davenport is transferred to his company s branch in Tampa , Florida . Though initially excited by the move , the job quickly proves to be disappointing , Jim s neighbors are a strange bunch of eccentrics and crime is much worse than he had thought . Serge Storms , Sharon Rhodes and Coleman move in down the street . Serge seems pleasant enough , but there is definitely something odd about him . Sharon is a spiteful coke headed hooker . Coleman is a brain dead stoner who is constantly under the influence of something , from alcohol to illegal drugs . The story becomes surreal from that point onward .

<|crime|>Roadkill is set in 1997 , against the backdrop of that year s World Series in which the Florida Marlins won a stunning upset in Miami . Intelligent but sociopathic criminal Serge Storms meets up with heartless stripper Sharon Rhodes and brainless drug addict Seymore Coleman Bunsen , who become his travelling companions and partners in crime . Serge hatches a plan to steal an enormous fraudulent insurance settlement from an oversexed dentist , but the money proves surprisingly elusive . Storms and company pursue the metal briefcase containing the cash until the two companions meet untimely ends Serge suffocates Sharon by spraying Fix A Flat into her lungs , and Coleman is later shot to death . The book has two meandering subplots which eventually tie in with the main plot . The first involves a pair of longtime buddies who are participating in their annual unsuccessful fishing trip . They spend a great deal of time reminiscing , and their stories lend an odd thoughtfulness to Dorsey s trigger happy writing style a thoughtfulness which would later apparently be shelved until Orange Crush . Without their knowledge , the briefcase of money is hidden in the trunk of their car . The second , slightly more comic , subplot deals with three bikeless bikers Stinky , Ringworm and Cheese Dick who have been rejected from every biker group they have encountered and are on the down and out . They find an odd sort of niche as hired muscle in a retirement community , but are ultimately forced out by the community staff who want the seniors as miserable as possible . They spend the rest of the time yachting in a boat on loan from the retirement community s manager until they meet up with a deranged pervert who kills two of them Cheese Dick having died when accidentally shot with a flare gun . A number of minor characters such as Bradley Xeno , the boat captain , and McJagger , the retirement community operator make minor appearances in the following book , Hammerhead Ranch Motel .

<|fantasy|>The novel is narrated by Jock McLeish , a supervisor of the installation of alarm systems . Divorced , alcoholic and approaching fifty , his problems coalesce in a long night of the soul in a hotel room in Greenock . McLeish attempts to spend the night assembling an intricate pornographic fantasy . His cast of characters includes Janine , based on a childhood memory of Jane Russell in The Outlaw Superb short for Superbitch and Big Momma , an obese lesbian . All of these are submitted to sadomasochistic practices , parts of which are described at some length . However , McLeish constantly returns to reminiscences of his previous life and lovers . These prompt his attempted suicide . Chapter 11 of the novel is a typographical explosion , with the text splitting into several parallel voices on each page including that of God . The crisis concludes with McLeish vomiting up the pills which he had hoped would kill him , and facing the truth of his actions as morning dawns .

<|crime|>A series of bizarre incidents sweep across Sweden a man dies in front of an ATM , two young women slaughter an elderly taxi driver , a murder is committed aboard a Baltic Sea ferry , and a sub station engineer makes a gruesome discovery while investigating the cause of a nationwide power cut . As Wallander investigates , he uncovers a sinister plan to bring the Western world to its knees . The major background theme around which the action takes place is the dilemma of the Western economic system versus poverty . The criminal mastermind is a persuasive and talented IT specialist who plans to right the wrongs of the world by deleting vast quantities of money from multinational banks accounts system , so bringing on a credit and financial panic . The criminals believe their intended cybercrime is justified for them the big picture involves the sacrifice of the banking system in order to wipe out third world debt . At a crucial moment Wallander unwittingly manages to persuade a key accomplice that , ethically , there is in fact no big picture , that instead we just have lives that are fragile but also miraculous . That this major issue of our times should feature in a detective novel shows that it is not merely about detection , yet Wallander s answer just repeats the very old idea of caring for one s proximate neighbours in the here and now .

<|childrens|>At birth , Ella of Frell is given the gift of obedience by the well meaning but misguided fairy Lucinda . As a result , she cannot disobey a direct order given to her , though her mother Lady Eleanor and the family s cook Mandy protect Ella throughout her childhood . Ella is close to her mother and they share the same free spirited nature , but when Ella is nearly fifteen , Eleanor dies . At Eleanor s funeral , Ella meets and befriends Charmont Char , the Prince of Kyrria . Not long afterward , Ella s father Sir Peter sends Ella off to finishing school with Hattie and Olive , the daughters of the wealthy Dame Olga . However , Hattie soon discovers that Ella is unable to disobey direct orders and she takes advantage of Ella . At school , Ella becomes friends with Areida , a girl from the neighboring country Ayortha . When Hattie orders Ella to stop being friends with Areida , Ella runs away and learns that her father is attending a giant s wedding . After various misadventures , she finds Lucinda at the wedding and tries to presuade her to take back her gift . Instead , Lucinda misunderstands and orders Ella to be happy with her gift . Upon returning home , Mandy reverses the order upon Ella . After failing to find a rich husband for Ella , Sir Peter decides to marry Dame Olga in order to pay off his debts . Ella renews her friendship with Char at the wedding and they begin writing to each other frequently after Char leaves on a diplomatic mission to Ayortha . When Sir Peter leaves to continue his business , Dame Olga and her daughters quickly reduce Ella to being an obedient servant their home . Ella and Char fall in love through their letters , but Ella rejects him when she realizes her gift of obedience could be used to harm him . She tricks Char into thinking she has eloped with another man , leaving Char heartbroken . When Char returns to Kyrria , a three night homecoming ball is held in his honor . Ella , who still loves him , goes to the ball in disguise with help from Mandy and Lucinda , who now realizes the terrible nature of her gifts . On the third night of the ball , when she is dancing with Char , a jealous Hattie unmasks Ella , forcing her to flee . Returning to the manor , she and Mandy attempt to run away , but are thwarted by Char s arrival . Char unwittingly orders Ella to marry him , causing Ella to will herself to defy the order out of her desire to protect him and the kingdom from her curse . Her unselfish desire allows her to succeed and refuse his proposal . Free from the spell , she accepts Char s hand in marriage because she wants to , and they live happily ever after .

<|novel|>The Duke of Auge dreams that he is Cidrolin , living on a barge alone with his daughter , while Cidrolin dreams that he is the Duke of Auge , travelling through the history of France . They will meet in 1964 . Carl Reinecke , a critic writing for the London Times , has argued that this novel is an example of the archetypal prodigal son storyline . de Die blauen Blumen fr Les Fleurs bleues it I fiori blu ka

<|fantasy|>Atlantis is ruled by the beautiful and intelligent Empress Salustra . The fate of the Empire will be decided by an arranged marriage with the ruler of a less advanced , semi barbarian northern kingdom , as the advanced technology of Atlantis is powerless against strange environmental and ecological disasters .

<|novel|>Ray Smith s story is driven by Japhy , whose penchant for the simple life and Zen Buddhism greatly influenced Kerouac on the eve of the sudden and unpredicted success of On the Road . The action shifts between the events of Smith and Ryder s city life , such as three day parties and enactments of the Buddhist Yab Yum rituals , to the sublime and peaceful imagery where Kerouac seeks a type of transcendence . The novel concludes with a change in narrative style , with Kerouac working alone as a fire lookout on Desolation Peak adjacent to Hozomeen Mountain , in what would soon be declared North Cascades National Park see also Desolation Angels . These elements place The Dharma Bums at a critical junction foreshadowing the consciousness probing works of several authors in the 1960s such as Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey . One episode in the book features Smith , Ryder and Henry Morley based on real life friend John Montgomery climbing Matterhorn Peak in California . It tells the story of Kerouac s first introduction to this type of mountaineering and would serve as inspiration for him to spend the following summer as a fire lookout for the United States Forest Service on Desolation Peak in Washington . The novel also gives an account of the legendary 1955 Six Gallery reading , where Allen Ginsberg gave a debut presentation of his poem Howl changed to Wail in the book , and other authors such as Snyder , Kenneth Rexroth , Michael McClure , and Philip Whalen performed .

<|fantasy|>Sissy Hankshaw , the novel s protagonist , is a woman born with enormously large thumbs who considers her mutation a gift . The novel covers various topics , including free love , drug use , political rebellion , animal rights , body odor , religion , and yams . Sissy capitalizes on the size of her thumbs by becoming a hitchhiker and subsequently travels to New York , United States US . The character becomes a model for The Countess , a male homosexual tycoon of feminine hygiene products . The Tycoon introduces Sissy to a staid Mohawk named Julian Gitche , whom she later marries . In her later travels , she encounters , among many others , a sexually open cowgirl named Bonanza Jellybean and an itinerant escapee from a Japanese internment camp happily mislabeled The Chink . The Chink is presented as a hermetic mystic and at one point states I believe in everything nothing is sacred . I believe in nothing everything is sacred . Ha Ha Ho Ho Hee Hee . A flock of whooping cranes also makes frequent appearances throughout the novel which includes details of their physical characteristics and migratory patterns . Robbins also inserts himself into the novel as a character as well .

<|crime|>Den Haag is the faction fact fiction which is based on the historical fact of the Korean Empire s credential three secret delegates at the Second Peace Conference at The Hague Den Haag in Dutch in 1907 . This story mingles three different incidents crossing time and space . In 1907 , at The Hague , Yi Jun , one of the three delegates died a mysterious death . In 2007 , in Seoul , a 10 year old child died from an ill defined brain disease . These two stories are linked together through the letter to the Vatican sent by a veiled priest called Q and his activities . This novel call our of today to account what is the historical meaning of Japan Korea Forced Annexation a hundred years ago Who am I , what left behind a time of Japanese forced occupation to me of the present time , and in confronting such historical problems , how to eliminate the legacy of Japan s colonial rule of Korea which have been restricting liberty and pride of Korean even now .

<|fantasy|>The novel examines how Triton s freedoms and customs are perceived by the main characters , particularly Bron Helstrom , a young man who has previously worked on Mars as a male prostitute . The society of Mars is far harsher than that of Triton , and it has evidently influenced Bron s personality . He is self absorbed , often lacks insight about himself and others , and has great difficulty with personal relationships . Though the civilization of Triton offers everything that he could reasonably want , he is unhappy with his life , out of harmony with those around him , and continually looking for others to blame whenever things go wrong . As the novel continues , political tensions between Triton and Earth lead to a destructive interplanetary war . This is mainly used as the backdrop for Bron s ultimately disastrous relationship with a brilliant young woman known as the Spike , but Delany speculates interestingly on how an interplanetary war might actually unfold .