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<|fantasy|>Chasm City is framed and largely written in the voice of Tanner Mirabel , a security expert who has come to Chasm City to avenge the death of his former client s wife at the hands of a postmortal noble named Argent Reivich . Tanner arrives to find that Yellowstone , the most advanced civilization in human history , has descended into squalor an alien nanotech virus known as the Melding Plague has wreaked havoc throughout the system . Chasm City , a dense forest of mile high shapeshifting skyscrapers , has melted into a slum . The Glitter Band , a sparkling diorama of ten thousand orbital habitats , has been reduced to a Rust Belt of a few hundred survivors , mostly primitive and pre nanotech antiques . In this chaos of plague and desolation , Tanner seeks his prey , only to discover that Reivich is more clever than he originally thought . In the midst of his hunt , he begins experiencing virus induced flashbacks from the life of Sky Haussman , the founder of his home world , Sky s Edge , who is both revered and reviled for the crimes he committed for his people . From the depths of the gas plume at the heart of Chasm City , to the aristocratic canopy spanning what remains of the skyscrapers , Mirabel begins to unravel the mystery of the Melding Plague .

<|comedy|>Diary takes the form of a coma diary telling the story of Misty Marie Wilmot as her husband lies senseless in a hospital after a suicide attempt . The story is not exactly told by Misty but through a third person perspective instead . Once she was an art student dreaming of creativity and freedom , but now , after marrying her husband Peter while they were both still at school and then giving birth to their daughter shortly after , she is eventually brought back to Waytansea Island , a place that was once quaint but is now tourist overrun . Misty has been reduced to the lowly condition of a mere waitress within a common resort hotel . Peter , before falling into his coma , was building hidden rooms within the houses he was remodeling and scrawling vile messages all over the walls this is an old habit of builders but it s been dramatically overdone in Peter s case . Angry homeowners are suing Misty left and right and her dreams of artistic greatness have been ruined . But then , as if she was possessed by the spirit of the fabled Waytansea artist Maura Kincaid , Misty begins painting again , excessively and compulsively . Misty discovers that the islanders , including her father in law previously thought to be dead are involved in a conspiracy which repeats every four generations . A young artist in this case Misty is lured to the island by an old piece of jewelry , she becomes pregnant and has her child within the community . It is implied that this old jewelry works to lure and entrap Misty because it was hers in a past life , during which these same events played out before . During middle age , her husband dies , followed by all her children , resulting in a wave of great artistic creativity , the product of which is mesmerizing to the observing audience . The islanders create an exhibition of Misty s art work at the local hotel where a fire is started by Misty s daughter , who is revealed to be alive after a previous point in the book when she was thought to have drowned , and all the hotel s occupants are burned to death due to their being mesmerized by her painting . The result is a huge insurance claim which leaves the remaining island citizens wealthy enough to support their luxuriant lifestyles for the next four generations , at which point a new young artist will be found to repeat the cycle . Peter , Misty s husband , attempted to warn her of this plot using his hidden writing and it is revealed that his suicide attempt was in fact a murder attempt . It is never revealed in the end whether Peter recovered from his coma , but from Misty s descriptions of his state of health , he more than likely died .

<|fantasy|>Twelve year old Johnny receives a pirate edition of the new video game Only You Can Save Mankind from his friend Wobbler . However , he hasn t been playing for long when the ScreeWee Empire surrenders to him . After accepting the surrender he finds himself inside the game in his dreams , where he must deal with the suspicious Gunnery Officer as well as the understanding Captain , and work out exactly what they re all supposed to do now . This might all be the result of an over active imagination except that the ScreeWee have disappeared altogether from everyone else s copy of the game . With the help of another player , Kirsty , who calls herself Sigourney as in Weaver , Johnny must try to get the ScreeWee home .

<|fantasy|>The story starts with Johnny going through the cemetery as a shortcut to reach his home . His best friend , Wobbler , thinks it s spooky . In the cemetery , Johnny meets Alderman Thomas Bowler one of the dead . Johnny then realizes that he can see , talk to , and hear the dead . Later , Johnny then meets all the dead and then Johnny and the gang including the dead are discussing the council s sale of Blackbury s neglected cemetery to a faceless conglomerate who plan to build offices on it . Various dead citizens , led by a former town counciller , ask Johnny , the only person who can see them , to help stop it . While Johnny , helped by his semi believing friends , tries to find evidence of famous interees and speaks out at community meetings , the Dead begin to take an interest in the modern day , and realise they are not , as they believed , trapped in the cemetery . By the end of the book the council is forced to back down , but the Dead no longer care because the day of judgment comes . However , the town s living residents have , thanks to the campaigning of Blackbury volunteers , rediscovered the cemetery as a link to their past . As one of the Dead puts it The living must remember , and the dead must forget .

<|novel|>Typical of many stories that deal with themes of psychological trauma , Going After Cacciato contains distinct ambiguities concerning the nature and order of events that occur , which often requires readers to look beyond superficial appearances conveyed by the narrator s language . Its chronology is nonlinear , for most of the book . The main idea of the story is , by O Brien s estimation , that being a soldier in Vietnam for the standard tour of duty entails constant walking if one were to put all the walking in a straight line , one would end up in Paris , where Cacciato is going . It is important to note that Cacciato is always portrayed as self sufficient and happy . It is Cacciato who is pursued throughout the imagined story of the book . The final pages feature the juxtaposition of two statements , by Sarkin Aung Wan and Paul Berlin , which contrast the early American view think Emerson and Thoreau of independence and happiness against the modern view of obligations placed on the individual to conform to society . The obligations lead to complicity in atrocities . Cacciato marches to the beat of a different drum , and is freer and happier in a cavalier , ignorant kind of way . His actions are sometimes portrayed as those of a man who is not particularly bright or gifted , but who is sunnily untroubled by the larger questions of the war itself . Paul Berlin , the main character , is a frustrated soldier who during the entire novel focuses on every minor detail he encounters , whether in the past or in the would be chase . In the chapter Tunneling Toward Paris , the characters escape the endless tunnels by falling out just as they fell in this allusion to Alice In Wonderland helps to reveal the story as surrealistic fiction . This surrealism in the novel also appears earlier in the novel when Cacciato flies off a mountain .

<|fantasy|>Set in Victorian times , the novel concerns business man Paul Bultitude and his son Dick . Dick is about to leave home for a boarding school which is ruled by the cane wielding headmaster Dr . Grimstone . Bultitude , seeing his son s fear of going to the school , foolishly says that schooldays are the best years of a boy s life , and how he wished that he was the one so doing . At this point , thanks to a handy magic stone brought by an uncle from India which grants the possessor one wish , they are now on even terms . Dick , now holding the stone , is ordered by his father to turn him back into his own body , but Dick refuses , and decides instead to become his father , and so the fun begins . Mr . Bultitude has to begin the new academic term at his son s boarding school , while Dick gets a chance to run his father s business in the City . In the end , they are both restored to their own bodies , with a better understanding of each other .

<|fantasy|>Blindness is the story of an unexplained mass epidemic of blindness afflicting nearly everyone in an unnamed city , and the social breakdown that swiftly follows . The novel follows the misfortunes of a handful of characters who are among the first to be stricken and centers on the doctor s wife , her husband , several of his patients , and assorted others , thrown together by chance . This group bands together in a family like unit to survive by their wits and by the unexplained good fortune that the doctor s wife has escaped the blindness . The sudden onset and unexplained origin and nature of the blindness cause widespread panic , and the social order rapidly unravels as the government attempts to contain the apparent contagion and keep order via increasingly repressive and inept measures . The first part of the novel follows the experiences of the central characters in the filthy , overcrowded asylum where they and other blind people have been quarantined . Hygiene , living conditions , and morale degrade horrifically in a very short period , mirroring the society outside . Anxiety over the availability of food , caused by delivery irregularities , acts to undermine solidarity and lack of organization prevents the internees from fairly distributing food or chores . Soldiers assigned to guard the asylum and look after the well being of the internees become increasingly antipathetic as one soldier after another becomes infected . The military refuse to allow in basic medicines , so that a simple infection becomes deadly . Fearing a break out , soldiers shoot down a crowd of internees waiting upon food delivery . Conditions degenerate further , as an armed clique gains control over food deliveries , subjugating their fellow internees and exposing them to rape and deprivation . Faced with starvation , internees do battle and burn down the asylum , only to find that the army has abandoned the asylum , after which the protagonists join the throngs of nearly helpless blind people outside who wander the devastated city and fight one another to survive . The story then follows the doctor s wife , her husband , and their impromptu family as they attempt to survive outside , cared for largely by the doctor s wife , who still sees though she must hide this fact at first . The breakdown of society is near total . Law and order , social services , government , schools , etc . , no longer function . Families have been separated and cannot find each other . People squat in abandoned buildings and scrounge for food violence , disease , and despair threaten to overwhelm human coping . The doctor and his wife and their new family eventually make a permanent home and are establishing a new order to their lives when the blindness lifts from the city en masse just as suddenly and inexplicably as it struck .

<|novel|>Monty Brewster finds that spending so much money within the course of a year is incredibly difficult , especially with the strict conditions imposed by the executor of his uncle s will . Brewster is required to demonstrate business sense by obtaining good value for the money he spends , limiting his donations to charity , his losses to gambling , and the value of his tips to waiters and cab drivers . Moreover , Brewster is sworn to secrecy , and cannot tell anyone why he is living to excess . Working against him are his well meaning friends , who try repeatedly to limit his losses and extravagance even as they share in his luxurious lifestyle . Brewster s challenge is compounded by the fact that his attempts to lose money through stock speculation and roulette prove to increase his funds rather than decrease them . Lampooned by the press as a spendthrift , he throws large parties and balls and charters a cruise lasting several months to Europe and Egypt for his large circle of friends and employees . Nonetheless , despite his loose pursestrings , Monty repeatedly demonstrates a strong moral character . At one point , he uses his funds to bail out a bank to save his landlady s account , despite risking his eligibility for the will . At another , he jumps overboard to save a drowning sailor from his cruise even as his rich friends choose not to . Monty s would be wife Barbara Drew turns down his marriage proposal early in the year , believing him to be financially irresponsible and bound to a life of poverty , and his attempts to win her back repeatedly fail as Monty s attention is entirely absorbed by the requirement to spend so much money . At the conclusion of the year , Monty succeeds in spending the last of his funds , which he has meticulously documented , and confesses his love to another woman , Peggy Gray , who has been sympathetic to his lifestyle despite knowing nothing about his challenge . Tragedy strikes the night before Monty s deadline , as his lawyers inform him that the executor of his uncle s will has vanished after liquidating all of the assets . Monty convinces himself that he is doomed to poverty , but marries Peggy Gray , who accepts him despite the lack of wealth . Shortly after the wedding , the executor of his uncle s will arrives to inform him that he has successfully met the challenge and that he had simply come to deliver the money to Monty in person .

<|fantasy|>Hawksbill Station is a penal colony in the pre Cambrian era created by the authoritarian United States government , using time travel as a means to exile rebels and political dissidents into the past . The colony houses only male exiles a female settlement supposedly exists later in the Silurian era , who are sent there as a humane alternative to execution . The machine only works one way , so the prisoners are hopelessly marooned in the past . The distant prison is in a barren coastal area prior to the colonization of land by sophisticated life , and evokes a Tsarist Siberia or a Soviet Gulag . The personal relationship of the main character , the de facto leader of the colony , and both his government torturer prosecutor and Dr . Hawksbill , each of whom had been members of the dissidence movement , as well as explication of the picayune ideological differences among the prisoners , and the confused circumstances leading to the establishment of the authoritarian government , further parallel Russian history . As the novel opens , the prisoners , all of them middle aged or elderly , are surprised by the arrival via the time machine of a much younger prisoner . Their surprise increases when they question the newcomer , ostensibly an economist , about economic theory and political ideology , and his answers reveal his essential ignorance of either . His ignorance and youth cause the prisoners to wonder if he is fact a political prisoner at all or a common criminal who would only have been exiled for a heinous crime . When the newcomer arrives via the Hawksbill time machine a second time , it is revealed that he is a police officer of a new government which overthrew the authoritarian regime but was unrelated to the dissident movements of which the Hawksbill exiles were members upon the overthrow , the new government discovered both the existence of Hawksbill Station and that means had been discovered to effect time travel from past to future , making it possible to retrieve prisoners from the colony . The newcomer has been sent to evaluate the prisoners and to recommend whether they are mentally stable for retrieval . With return now possible , the leader of the exiles realizes that he is a time traveler of a different sort the struggle against the authoritarian regime , his life s work , is over his closest friends in the movement and his bitterest enemies , who left the movement to join the authoritarian government are irretrievably dead and even those who finally did overthrow the government have little connection with or regard for his brand of dissent as demonstrated by the newcomer s ignorance of their ideologies . He is now somewhat inclined to visit the newcomer s future , but staying at Hawksbill Station is now the only existence he knows .

<|fantasy|>The Scarecrow is upset when Professor Woggle bug tells him that he has no family , so he goes back to the corn field where Dorothy Gale found him to trace his roots . Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion search for him , eventually meeting with a knight , Sir Hokus , the Doubtful Dromedary and the Comfortable Camel . In this novel the Scarecrow discovers that , in a previous incarnation , he was human . To be precise , the Scarecrow was the King of the Silver Islands , a quasi Chinese kingdom located underground beneath the Munchkin region of Oz . When Dorothy first discovered the Scarecrow in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz he was hanging from a scarecrow pole in a cornfield it now develops that this pole descended deep underground to the Silver Islands , where it penetrated the king s grave . After spending some time in his former kingdom among the Silver Islanders , the Scarecrow decides to return to Oz and continue his current existence . The Royal Book of Oz acknowledges that an Oz character can die .

<|action|>The story focuses on two women the first is the beautiful Noelle Page , who is born to a fisherman in Marseilles the second is well read but shy wit Catherine Alexander , whose father had big dreams he was never able to fulfil . Catherine is embarrassed about the fact that she is a virgin . Noelle was born as a result of an extra marital affair in Marseilles , France , but her mother never told her husband the truth . Her foster father always called her his princess and decided to exploit her beauty by taking money from dress shop owner Auguste Lanchon in exchange for letting Noelle sleep with him . Noelle falls in love with RAF pilot Larry Douglas when she escapes to Paris . He promises to marry her but disappears from Paris and does not return . Noelle , distraught , finds she is pregnant and terminates at five and a half months along in grisly fashion . Catherine is an American born to a father who always had big dreams , but could never fulfil them . Because she is an aloof virgin , the people in her university call her a lesbian . She finds a job with a man called Bill Fraser with whom she begins a relationship , but falls in love with Larry Douglas instead . Larry and Catherine marry , unaware of Noelle s plans for vengeance against the man who jilted her so carelessly . Larry s lies gradually entwine the lives of these two women in a dazzling story of passion , vengeance , power and greed . es Más allá de la medianoche fr De l autre côté de minuit he ne ja pt The Other Side of Midnight ru vi Phía bên kia n a đêm

<|fantasy|>Slans are evolved humans , named after their alleged creator , Samuel Lann . They have the psychic abilities to read minds and are super intelligent . They possess near limitless stamina , nerves of steel , and superior strength and speed . When Slans are ill or seriously injured , they go into a healing trance automatically . There are two kinds of Slans . One has tendrils and can read the minds of ordinary humans and telepathically communicate with other Slans . The tendrils are golden in colour , making it easy to spot a slan . These Slans are hunted to near extinction . The other type of Slan is tendrilless . They are still super intelligent but do not have psychic capabilities , only the ability to hide their thoughts from the first type of Slan . Kier Gray is the leader of the human society and promises to exterminate the Slans . As the novel begins , Jommy Cross a telepathic Slan of the first type is brought with his mother to the capital , Centropolis . They are both discovered , and Jommy s mother is killed . Jommy is only nine years old and manages to escape . Jommy Cross is not only the heir to the brilliant inventions of his father , but he represents the last hope of his race to save it from genocide . Because of the importance of his mission , he is opposed by various enemies . Jommy seeks to destroy Kier and in confronting him discovers an astonishing secret Kier Gray is also a Slan .

<|fantasy|>The book picks up the story nine months after the end of Rama II . The book follows the story of three astronauts from the expedition in Rama II who were trapped aboard the cylindrical alien spacecraft , Rama II , heading out towards deep space . Along the journey , five children were born . Simone Tiasso Wakefield , Catharine Colin Wakefield , Eleanor Joan Wakefield , Benjamin Ryan O Toole and Patrick Erin O Toole , were born by Nicole Des Jardins from her relationships with Richard Wakefield and Michael O Toole . These children later become major characters in Rama Revealed . After a twelve year journey , they arrive in the vicinity of the star Sirius , where all eight rendezvous with a Raman Node . At the Node they are subjected to physiological tests for a year while Rama is refurbished , and they are eventually sent back to the solar system , this time to collect two thousand more representatives of humanity . An Earth agency , known as the ISA , receives the message from Rama requesting two thousand humans . Upon its reception , the message is kept secret and , under the guise of a new Martian colony , the ISA starts acquiring its payload . The ISA selects a handful of their own representatives meanwhile , they selectively gather convicts and promise them freedom if they are chosen to be a colonist . The payload is subdivided into three ships the Nina , Pinta , Santa Maria names based on Christopher Columbus ships Niña , Pinta , and Santa María that arrive sequentially at Rama . At this point the colonists believe everything is a hoax despite the colossal size of Rama created by the ISA . With that discontent as the tone upon their arrival , Rama III heads back to deep space with its new payload . Soon an aggressive group of humans , led by a mob boss , seizes control of the human colony and begins a war of annihilation and propaganda against one of the other races occupying the massive spacecraft . The original astronauts and their children find themselves powerless to prevent the genocide . However , the aggressive behavior of the human species does not go unnoticed Another species , unknown to the humans , observe their behavior and start considering a possible counterattack . Meanwhile , Rama III determines that total escalation of the conflict is imminent and transmits an emergency signal to its ancient constructors . . . The book ends with a cliffhanger , on the eve of the execution of one of the original astronauts .

<|fantasy|>The story starts 25 nbsp years after The Day of the Triffids ended . Pilot David Masen has grown up in a community on the Isle of Wight , safe from the venomous and carnivorous triffid plants which have dominated the world since most human beings were blinded by a meteor shower as related in the original book . As the sequel begins , a mysterious darkness falls something is blotting out the sun . Masen takes to the air to determine if a high cloud is to blame but he loses contact with his home base and crash lands on a floating island populated by triffids . There , he meets an orphaned young girl , and the pair are subsequently rescued by an American ship and taken to Manhattan island in New York City . Manhattan , a secure and self contained community like the one on the Isle of Wight , appears at first glance to be a utopia but David soon realises that it is in fact a dictatorship run by an old enemy of his father s . David and his young friend are soon being used by both the dictator and a band of rebels who oppose the dictator s tyrannical rule , while the triffids now evolved into even more dangerous forms are trying to take deadly advantage of the slowly lifting darkness .

<|novel|>This epistolary novel , an early complete work that the author never submitted for publication , describes the schemes of the main character the widowed Lady Susan as she seeks a new husband for herself , and one for her daughter . Although the theme , together with the focus on character study and moral issues , is close to Austen s published work Sense and Sensibility was also originally written in the epistolary form , its outlook is very different , and the heroine has few parallels in 19th century literature . Lady Susan is a selfish , attractive woman , who tries to trap the best possible husband while maintaining a relationship with a married man . She subverts all the standards of the romantic novel she has an active role , she s not only beautiful but intelligent and witty , and her suitors are significantly younger than she is in contrast with Sense and Sensibility and Emma , which feature marriages of men who are sixteen years older than their wives . Although the ending includes a traditional reward for morality , Lady Susan herself is treated much more mildly than the adulteress in Mansfield Park , who is severely punished .

<|fantasy|>It explores the concepts of war and peace , good government and religious belief . It can be seen as a bridging novel between the all human Dune universe and the ConSentiency universe series . It is a novel expanded from four short stories You Take the High Road . Appeared in Astounding Science Fiction , May 1958 Missing link . Appeared in Astounding Science Fiction February 1959 Operation Haystack . Appeared in Astounding Science Fiction , May 1959 The Priests of Psi . Appeared in Fantastic Science Fiction Stories , February 1960 The story focuses on Lewis Orne , an agent for a government agency which develops lost planets . After correctly identifying a warlike civilization on the planet Hamal , he is drafted into Investigative Adjustment I A , which manages dangerous planets . Under the auspices of I A , he travels to various planets in order to maintain peace throughout the galaxy . At the same time , the priests of the planet Amel , who practice religious engineering , set about creating the first human god in their history . After resolving a number of dangerous situations , Lewis is injured and has a near death experience . Following this , his psychic powers develop , and after passing a series of tests he becomes a god .

<|fantasy|>In 2049 , Chris Faulkner is recruited by Shorn Associates , an investment firm in London . There he befriends Mike Bryant , a fellow junior executive in the Conflict Investment division . During a social gathering in Zones , the ghetto areas of London , Mike introduces Chris to journalist Liz Linshaw , who is also Mike s former mistress . Before they leave the Zones , Mike kills several gang members in a failed robbery . Back at work , Mike brings Chris into a project regarding propping up the ageing Colombian dictator General Hernan Echevarria by providing military resources in exchange for a portion of the country s gross domestic product . With Shorn s contract due for renewal they are challenged by competing agencies Nakamura and Acropolitic . The challenge is settled by a driving duel in which the Shorn team eliminates the two competing teams . As Chris becomes famous for his driving performance , he begins an affair with Liz Linshaw . With Echevarria s son , Francisco , who is aligned with a competing American firm , preparing to take over , Chris recruits a Colombian rebel group , led by Vincente Barranco , to overthrow Hernan before Francisco takes over . However , other Shorn executives sabotage Chris s efforts by arranging Barranco to overhear a Shorn executive negotiate with the Echevarrias . Chris reacts by spontaneously beating Hernan to death . Meanwhile , the demands of his new job stress Chris s relationship with his wife , Carla , who is uncomfortable with the brutal competition among firms and the violence they incite in other countries . With the help of her father , who lives in the London Zones , and her mother in Sweden , they secure a position at the United Nations for Chris on condition he bring insider information with him . As Chris resists and their marriage ends . In jail , Chris is offered a choice stand trial for murder or participate in the cover up by saying he had legally issued a challenge for a senior position in the firm . Knowing murder merits capital punishment , Chris agrees to the cover up but must face Mike in a driving duel for the senior position . Mike is the superior driver but Chris forces Mike to drive off a bridge and into the Zones . Chris finds the badly injured Mike and kills him just before a gang , who had watched the duel on television , finds them . The gang beats Chris but he survives . The story ends with Chris , as the new senior executive , giving the new dictator Francisco Echevarria 48 hours to flee his country in favour of installing Barranco .

<|fantasy|>Orlando tells the story of a young man named Orlando , born in England during the reign of Elizabeth I , who decides not to grow old . He is briefly a lover to the elderly queen , but after her death has a brief , intense love affair with Sasha , a princess in the entourage of the Russian embassy . This episode , of love and excitement against the background of the Great Frost , is one of the best known , and is said to represent Vita Sackville West s affair with Violet Trefusis . Following Sasha s sudden , unwarned departure and return to Russia , the desolate , heartbroken Orlando returns to writing The Oak Tree , a poem started and abandoned in his youth . He meets with a famous poet , Nicholas Greene , with whom he joyfully entertains , but who criticises Orlando s writing , later making Orlando feel betrayed when he finds himself made the foolishly depicted subject of one of Greene s subsequent works . This period of contemplating love and life leads Orlando to appreciate the value of his ancestral stately home , which he proceeds to furnish lavishly and then plays host to the populace . Ennui sets in and the harassment of a persistent suitor , the Archduchess Harriet , leads to Orlando s fleeing the country when appointed by King Charles II as British ambassador to Constantinople . Orlando performs his duties well , until a night of civil unrest and murderous riots . He falls asleep for a lengthy period of days while in Turkey , resistant to all efforts to rouse him . Upon awakening he finds , unsurprised , that he has metamorphosed into a woman the same person , with the same personality and intellect , but in a woman s body . The now Lady Orlando covertly escapes Constantinople in the company of a Gypsy clan , adopting their way of life until its essential conflict with her upbringing leads her to head home . Only on the ship back to England , with her constraining female clothes and an incident in which a flash of her ankle nearly results in a sailor s falling to his death , does she realise the magnitude of becoming a woman yet she concludes the overall advantages , declaring Praise God I m a woman ! Back in England , Orlando is hounded once again by the archduchess , who now reveals herself in fact to be a man , the Archduke Harry . Orlando evades his marriage proposals , instead living a life switching between gender roles , dressing as both man and woman . Orlando soon becomes caught up in the life of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries , holding court with the great poets notably Alexander Pope , including Nick Greene who appears to be as timeless as she , now promoting her writing and promising to help her publish The Oak Tree . Orlando wins a lawsuit over her property and marries a sea captain , Marmaduke Bonthrop Shelmerdine . In 1928 , she publishes The Oak Tree centuries after starting it , winning a prize . As her husband s ship returns , in the aftermath of her success , she rushes to greet him .

<|novel|>Newspaper columnist Mitch Albom recounts time spent with his 78 year old sociology professor , Morrie Schwartz , at Brandeis University , who was dying from Lou Gehrig s disease ALS . Albom , a former student of Schwartz , had not corresponded with him since attending his college classes 16 years earlier . The first three chapters incorporate an ambiguous introduction to the final conversation between Albom and Schwartz , a brief flashback to Albom s graduation , and an account of the events Albom experienced between graduation and the reunion with his professor . Albom is a successful sports columnist for the Detroit Free Press despite his childhood dream of being a pianist . After seeing Schwartz on Nightline , Albom called Schwartz , who remembered his former pupil despite the lapse of 16 years . Albom was prompted to travel from Michigan to Massachusetts to visit Schwartz . A newspaper strike frees Albom to commute weekly , Tuesdays , to visit with Schwartz . The resulting book is based on these fourteen Tuesdays they meet , supplemented with Schwartz s lectures and life experiences and interspersed with flashbacks and allusions to contemporary events .

<|fantasy|>A young psychic boy is taken aboard a starship at the request of the government . The boy is considered both a misfit and dangerous because he has the ability to read minds on earth . However , once aboard he travels into deep space where he comes into contact with a sentient starship . The mission of the crew is to somehow communicate with the alien craft and bring it back to earth . However , things don t go to plan when the young psychic makes contact and decides to take matters into his own hands . 1979 , USA , Doubleday ISBN 0 385 12785 5 , Pub date 1 April 1979 , Hardback 1980 , UK , Sidgwick Jackson , ISBN 0 283 98602 6 , Pub date 1980 , Hardback 1980 , UK , Readers Union The Science Fiction Book Club UK , Pub date 1980 , Hardback 1982 , USA , Ace Books , ISBN 0 441 81292 9 , Pub date , Feb 1982 , Paperback 1982 , UK , Sidgwick Jackson , ISBN 0 283 98813 4 , Pub date 1980 , Omnibus Hardback 1983 France , Les Enfants du Voyage , Opta OPTA Galaxie Bis 96 , ISBN 2 7201 0182 6 , Cover J . L . Verdier , 206pp , Pub date Dec 1983 , Paperback 1985 , USA , Ace Books , ISBN 0 441 81293 7 , Cover Walter Velez , Pub date , Dec . 1985 , Paperback The name Tin Woodman is derived from the The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Tin Woodman character . The name is used as a euphemism for the alien , the subject of the novel , who like the Woodman seeks happiness by having its heart restored .

<|fantasy|>The Warlock , whose actual name is both unknown and unpronounceable , is a powerful sorcerer in excess of 200 years of age . He observes that when he stays in one place too long , his powers dwindle and will return only when he leaves that place . Experimentation leads him to create an apparatus now known as the Warlock s Wheel consisting of a metal disc enchanted to spin perpetually . The enchantment eventually consumes all the mana in the vicinity , causing a localized failure in all magic . The Warlock realizes that magic is fueled by a non renewable resource , which would cause great concern among the magicians , as it was through their magic that nations enforced their wills both internally and abroad . The widespread diminishing of magical power in The Magic Goes Away triggered a quest on the part of the most powerful of the magicians of the time to harness a new source of magic the Moon , resulting in the events described in the book . It was eventually discovered in The Magic May Return that mana was originally carried to Earth and the other bodies of the solar system on the solar wind , replenishing mana slowly over time . However , at some point in the recent past a few thousand years ago a god created an invisible shield between Earth and Sun that intercepted the solar mana and caused the eventual decline of magic on Earth . Traditional fantasy creatures inhabit Niven s Magic universe , but devolve to normal animals when deprived of mana . For example , a unicorn becomes a simple horse . The Warlock One of the world s foremost magicians . He devised a simple experiment to explain why a magician s power would fade over time , a device called the Warlock s Wheel . Clubfoot The Warlock s apprentice . A Native American named after a deformity of his foot that he could have cured long ago but it would have cost him half his power . Wavyhill The first Necromancer . Exploiting the mana inherent in murder , he invented necromancy . His name comes from his practice of building his houses under magically supported overhangs when the local mana is depleted by a battle , the hillside collapses , trapping his foe and eliminating the evidence at the same time . Orolandes A Greek soldier , survivor of the sinking of Atlantis . Mirandee A powerful witch , formerly Warlock s lover . Aran A werewolf who assisted the Warlock in defeating the necromancer Wavyhill . Roze Kattee The God Of Love And Madness . Its power lies in the taking away of love or madness . Enemy Berzerkers are suddenly rendered sane , those who do not worship Roze Kattee never find mates , etc . The World Worm Its spine composes all the world s mountain chains , the Andes , Himalayas , Rockies , etc . It consumes its own tail , along with anything that might be living on it . Yangin Atep A fire god . Coyote , Loki , etc . A trickster god for many cultures . Zoosh Once a powerful patriarch . Left Handed Hummingbird A Mesoamerican god Huitzilopochtli .

<|novel|>Copying his father s approach of focusing on the most important officers of the two armies General Robert E . Lee , Major General Winfield Scott Hancock , Lt . Gen . Thomas J . Stonewall Jackson , and Lieutenant Colonel Joshua Chamberlain , Shaara depicted the emotional drama of soldiers fighting old friends while accurately detailing historical details including troop movements , strategies , and tactical combat situations . General Hancock , for instance , spends much of the novel dreading the day he will have to fire on his friend in the Confederate Army , Lewis Lo Armistead . The novel also deals with General Lee s disillusionment with the Confederate bureaucracy and General Jackson s religious fervor . In addition to covering events leading up to the war , the book details the events of First Bull Run , Antietam , Fredericksburg , and Chancellorsville . The film version provides only cursory coverage of immediate pre war events , focusing primarily on Lee and the secession of Virginia , and omits the Battle of Antietam .

<|action|>In London , Jack Ryan saves the Prince and Princess of Wales , along with their infant firstborn son , from an Irish terrorist group called Ulster Liberation Army ULA during a kidnapping attempt on the Mall . Sean Miller , a ULA terrorist captured by Ryan , is sentenced to life imprisonment for killing the royal driver . However , he is freed by ULA members while being transported to prison . The ULA later goes after Ryan and his family , partially as an act of revenge , but primarily because they seek to reduce American support for the rival Provisional Irish Republican Army . The assassin sent to kill Ryan is intercepted before he manages to complete his task , but his expectant wife , Cathy , and daughter , Sally , are injured when Miller causes their car to crash on a freeway . They are flown by helicopter to the University of Maryland Medical Center . After the attack on his family , Jack accepts an offer from the Central Intelligence Agency CIA to start working as an analyst at the agency s headquarters . Later , the Prince and Princess of Wales come to visit Ryan in America . This gives the ULA another opportunity to conduct another operation they plan to kill Ryan and his family and kidnap the Royal Family . The attack ultimately fails after a firefight and a flight , Ryan , his friend Robby Jackson , and the Prince , with the help of Marines and sailors from the U . S . Naval Academy and local police , manage to apprehend and subdue the terrorists . The ultimate fate of the terrorists is not stated in the book . Ryan arrives at Bethesda after the final arrest to be with Cathy for the birth of their son , who will be godparented by Robby Jackson and his wife , as well as the Prince and Princess of Wales . In Clancy s later novel The Sum of All Fears , it is mentioned in passing that Miller and his colleagues were sentenced to death and executed for their crimes . Jack Ryan , Jr . , the son born at the novel s close , follows his father into the CIA , and becomes a central character in Clancy s first post President Ryan novel , The Teeth of the Tiger .

<|fantasy|>Changing Places is a comic novel with serious undercurrents . It tells the story of the six month academic exchange between fictional universities located in Rummidge modelled on Birmingham in England and Plotinus , in the state of Euphoria modeled on Berkeley in California . The two academics taking part in the exchange are both aged 40 , but appear at first to otherwise have little in common , mainly because of the differing academic systems of their native countries . The English participant , Philip Swallow , is a very conventional and conformist British academic , and somewhat in awe of the American way of life . By contrast the American , Morris Zapp , is a top ranking American professor who only agrees to go to Rummidge because his wife agrees to postpone long threatened divorce proceedings on condition that he move out of the marital home for six months . Zapp is at first both contemptuous of , and amused by , what he perceives as the amateurism of British academia . As the exchange progresses , however , both Swallow and Zapp find that they begin to fit in surprisingly well to their new environments . In the course of the story , each man has an affair with the other s wife . Before that , Swallow sleeps with Zapp s daughter Melanie , without realizing who she is . She , however , takes up with a former undergraduate student of his , Charles Boon . Swallow and Zapp even consider remaining permanently . The book ends with the two couples convened in a New York hotel room to decide their fates . The novel ends without a clear cut decision , though the sequel Small World An Academic Romance , reveals that Swallow and Zapp returned to their respective countries and domestic situations .

<|novel|>Beneath the Wheel is the story of Hans Giebenrath , a talented boy sent to a seminary in Maulbronn . However his education is focused on increasing his knowledge and neglects his development as a person . His close friendship with Hermann Heilner , who is less hard working and more liberal than he , is a source of comfort for Hans . In the end , Heilner is expelled from the seminary and Giebenrath is sent home after his performance decreases when he shows symptoms of mental illness . Back home , he finds coping with his situation difficult , as he has lost most of his childhood to scholastic study and thus never had time to form lasting personal relationships with anyone in his village . He is apprenticed as a blacksmith and seems to enjoy the work it is visceral and concrete , as opposed to the intellectual abstraction of scholarly work . However , he never fully adjusts to his new situation . On a pub crawl in a neighbouring village , he and his colleagues get drunk . Giebenrath leaves the group to walk home early . Later , he is found to have drowned in a river . Beneath the Wheel is one of Hesse s first novels and severely criticises education that focuses only on students academic performance . In that respect the novel is typical of Hesse . There are also autobiographical elements in the story , as he attended and was expelled from the seminary described .

<|romance|>The novel is written in the third person , but is mostly written from the perspective of Niel Herbert , a young man who grows up in Sweet Water and witnesses the decline of Mrs . Forrester , for whom he feels very deeply , and also of the West itself from the idealized age of noble pioneers to the age of capitalist exploitation .

<|novel|>The novel , written between 1956 1957 and first published in 1961 , is the story of an impoverished , retired colonel , a veteran of the Thousand Days War , who still hopes to receive the pension he was promised some fifteen years earlier . The colonel lives with his asthmatic wife in a small village under martial law . The action opens with the colonel preparing to go to the funeral of a town musician whose death is notable because he was the first to die from natural causes in many years . The novel is set during the years of La Violencia in Colombia , when martial law and censorship prevail .

<|fantasy|>When Clyde Banks , an Iowan Deputy with a newborn baby and a wife in the first Gulf War , starts looking into odd events in his town , he discovers a plot involving a new Triangle Trade of terrorists , chemical warfare , and training . Mixing the events staged in Washington , D . C . and those happening in the Gulf , a strange thread of deceit appears to be winding its way back to Iowa . Although fictional in its narrative , the story includes appearances by Tariq Aziz and George H . W . Bush .

<|action|>The novel opens with the governor of Illinois , William Cozzano , suffering a stroke , and in a separate subplot , a trailer park inhabitant , unemployed African American , Eleanor Richmond , discovering her husband dead after having committed suicide in their repossessed former home . As events progress , an underground business coalition , the Network , is arranging for Cozzano to have a biochip implanted and for him to run for President of the United States . The Network is made up of a number of large fictional companies , with parallels in real business entities . Eleanor Richmond , after publicly attacking a local cable TV Public access television talk show personality who was running for Senate , has since found herself working in the offices of a Republican Colorado senator , and after an event where she accused the citizens of Colorado of being welfare queens , finds herself in the public eye as one of the candidates for Cozzano s running mate . The Network s ability to perceive public opinion , skewed on the night of the vice presidential debate by a twist of fate , makes them select Richmond as vice presidential candidate , and a canny act of public relations work rescues Cozzano s campaign , getting him elected as President . However , Cozzano gets shot at his inauguration by a psychotic former factory worker who has somehow figured out the Network s plans almost entirely , killing him almost instantly . Richmond ends up as the first black and first female President of the United States .

<|fantasy|>Darkover Landfall concerns the crew and colonists of a spaceship that is forced to crash land on Cottman IV , an inhospitable planet in orbit around a red giant . The crew become accidental colonists when the ship loses contact with Earth and they realize rescue is impossible . The book introduces surnames , religious and cultural themes that echo throughout the Darkover series of books . This series spans millennia , as the ship s descendants populate the world and develop unique cultures and psi abilities . Though Darkover Landfall is not the first book written in the series , in the Darkover timeline its events are the beginning for all that follows .

<|fantasy|>The novel is set in Darkover s Ages of Chaos where feuding families , the Elhalyn and the Ridenow , are engaged in a breeding scheme to develop children with frightening psychic powers , called laran . The main protagonist is Dorilys Aldaran , the heir to the Rockraven line who develops a fearsome power to alter the planet s weather patterns .

<|fantasy|>Roy Tappen works for the Robinson Heath Nuclear Utilisation Technology Centre , a nuclear weapons facility in Britain . He fights bureaucracy while trying to use it for his purpose , which is to undo the potentially disastrous results of a practical joke gone wrong . Smuggling plutonium out of a nuclear research centre turns out to be surprisingly easy . The difficult part is smuggling it back in again without getting caught .

<|novel|>The book s eponymous protagonist , Timofey Pavlovich Pnin , is a Russian born professor living in the United States . Pnin , a refugee in his 50s from both Communist Russia and what he calls the Hitler war , is an assistant professor of Russian at fictional Waindell College , possibly modeled on Wellesley College or Cornell University , at both of which Nabokov himself taught . At Waindell , Pnin has settled down to an uncertain , untenured , but semi respectable academic life , full of various tragicomic mishaps , misfortunes , and difficulties adjusting to American life and language . Characters in the book include his departmental supervisor , various professors and university staff , his landlord , his ex wife , and her son . The book s seemingly unreliable narrator identifies himself as one Vladimir Vladimirovich N and bears similarities to Nabokov himself , such as his interest in lepidoptery and his landed gentry Russian émigré past . Pnin is last glimpsed fleeing Waindell College , jobless , for an unknown destination .

<|fantasy|>Lore Van de Oest was born in one of the mightiest families on earth . However , she suddenly loses everything .

<|novel|>Precipitated by separate personal tragedies , two families flee their rural livings to share a great continent of a house , Cloudstreet , in the Perth suburb of West Leederville . The two families are contrasts to each other the Lambs find meaning in industry and in God s grace the Pickles , in luck . The Lambs God is a maker of miracles the Pickles God is the Shifty Shadow of fate . Though initially resistant to each other , their search and journey for meaning in life concludes with the uniting of the two families with many characters citing this as the most important aspect of their lives . As a novel , Cloudstreet is tightly structured , opening and ending with a shared celebratory family picnic a joyous occasion which , ironically , is also the scene of Fish s long sought after death or return to the water . The novel is narrated effectively by flashback in the seconds it takes to die by Fish Lamb , or the spiritual omniscient Fish Lamb , free of his restricting retarded state . As such the novel gives a voice to social minorities , the Australian working class and the disabled . However , its treatment of Fish Lamb as somebody incomplete in his physical existence may also be interpreted as demeaning towards the intellectually disabled , depending on the reading position adopted .

<|fantasy|>The Blieder drive , a faster than light drive system , has permitted the population of Earth to colonize the galaxy . Each planet has become the home for a particular social group . Four hundred years after the diaspora , a spaceship from Earth visits three of the planets , the first steps to unifying the galaxy under a new Empire . Things do not go entirely as hoped , as the incompetent military authoritarians of the ship encounter three very different societies . The first planet was a penal colony it is now many independent kleptocratic despotisms preying on each other . The second planet , Hygeia , is populated by health and fitness fanatic nudists . The third planet , Kassim , was colonized by a religious group , but when the ship arrives , they can t find any human life , only empty villages overgrown by jungle . They decide not to land on the planet , because the captain fears that the colonists could have been killed by a disease and he doesn t want to endanger the crew . The final planet , K22g , has developed an unusual social system . The population call themselves Gands after Gandhi and practise a form of classless , philosophically anarchic libertarianism , based on passive resistance Freedom I won t ! and Myob ! and a moneyless gift economy based on barter and favor exchange , using obs obligations . To perform a service for somebody lays an ob on them they can then kill the ob by returning the favor .

<|fantasy|>Dune The Machine Crusade moves forward into the center of the Butlerian Jihad , described in the first book of the trilogy , Dune The Butlerian Jihad . Leading the movement is the ex slave and ex machine trustee Grand Patriarch Iblis Ginjo . However , Iblis appears more interested in politics and his own personal legacy than in the Jihad . Vorian Atreides , despite the long life given to him by his father , the Titan Agamemnon , begins to show the vestiges of wanting to settle down after visiting the planet Caladan , and meeting Leronica Tergiet , who is to become his long term concubine . Xavier Harkonnen manages to free Ix from the thinking machines and must eventually make the ultimate sacrifice that will tarnish his name . The robot Erasmus continues with his enlightening human experimentation , and makes a curious bet with the Omnius entity on Corrin , where he claims he can raise a human being to be orderly and civilized like a machine . This child is Gilbertus Albans , the first true Mentat . Omnius himself suffers badly from a computer virus created by Vorian and spread unwittingly by his old companion Seurat . On Ginaz , the aging Zon Noret is killed in a training accident by a mek called Chirox , a captured and reprogrammed fighting machine . Though Noret did not live to pass on his skills to the other Ginaz mercenaries , Chirox remained to train them into the greatest of all mercenaries , the Swordmasters , who will be the ultimate fighting force against the thinking machines . On the planet of Poritrin , Norma Cenva leaves the world just in time to avoid a slave uprising during which a slave , unaware of the consequences , fires a lasgun into a Holtzman personal shield . The resulting explosion wipes out Tio Holtzman s labs the slave revolt is eventually brutally crushed . Meanwhile Norma , due to her heritage as daughter of the main Sorceress of Rossak Zufa Cenva , finally taps into her latent powers under great pressure precipitated by her capture and subsequent torture by the Titan Xerxes to become the spearhead of humanity . She envisions a future in which massive ships transport goods and humans instantaneously across the universe , using the Holtzman effect to fold space . Norma s ships are the first of what will later be known as heighliners , and her family uses their monopoly on such travel to found the Spacing Guild . As for the slaves on Poritrin , a small band of Zensunnis steal the first space folding ship and flee to a lonely desert planet called Arrakis , where they will join the followers of Selim , and become the Free Men of Arrakis . Finally , the remaining Titans take their chance becoming independent from their machine master Omnius on the planet of Bela Tegeuse .

<|comedy|>The book opens with reminiscences of the late 20s early 30s , concerning Nick s first meetings with Mr Deacon , Maclintick , Gossage , Carolo , Moreland and others , culminating at the point of Nick and Isobel s marriage , of which little is revealed . 1936 sees Nick lunching with various of the Tollands at Lady Warminster s . Erridge leaves for the Spanish Civil War . Nick visits Isobel in hospital where he meets Moreland attending his wife Matilda , who is about to give birth , and also encounters Widmerpool . Moreland and Nick visit the Maclinticks . In late 1936 Matilda loses her baby . Mrs Foxe gives a party for the first performance of Moreland s new symphony Moreland has fallen for Priscilla Tolland the Maclinticks row , and Stringham , now a recovering alcoholic , puts in an unexpected appearance . In Spring 1937 the death is announced of St John Clarke Erridge is back from Spain Maclintick is abandoned by his wife and commits suicide Priscilla becomes engaged to Chips Lovell .

<|fantasy|>Edmund Gunderson was the Terran administrator of the colony world of Belzagor , and he returns to it after it has gained independence , feeling a sense of guilt for the way he has treated its dominant species , the elephant like nildoror , whose animalistic appearance had kept Gunderson from taking them seriously as sentient beings . On his return , he feels a new sense of kinship with the natives , perhaps more than for the Terran tourists . The nildoror undergo a process of rebirth , and Gunderson s greatest guilt comes from having denied rebirth to seven nildoror to make them help him repair flood damage . He encounters his old colleague Jeff Kurtz , who had undergone the rebirth ceremony only to be turned into something monstrous . Nevertheless , Gunderson dares to subject himself to the rebirth ceremony , which brings him a new understanding of the native creatures and new powers by which he can heal Kurtz and bring new understanding to others .

<|fantasy|>The novel is set in a distant future . Following the accidental discovery of intersteller travel via warp points , humanity has expanded throughout space , evolving into a Terran Federation consisting of Core Worlds like Earth and Alpha Centauri , Corporate Worlds like Galloway s Star , and Fringe Worlds colonized by small groups of like minded people seeking to preserve ethnic or cultural identities from getting lost in a cosmopolitan sameness . Tensions exist between the three groups of worlds , and are further explored in Insurrection , another novel also written by Weber and White . Following a series of three interstellar wars ISWs 1 3 with different species warlike felinoid Orions and their centauroid Gorm associates , birdlike Ophiuchi , the genocidal Rigelians , and the Thebans explored in a prequel novel Crusade , humanity has experienced a seventy year vacation from history , i . e . seven decades of peace . A survey squadron travels through a previously uncharted warp point and encounters a hive like species referred to derisively as the Bugs inspired by the Arachnids in Robert A . Heinlein s Starship Troopers . All attempts at communication fail , and the Bugs ambush the survey squadron , with a great loss of material and human life . Pursuing the survivors , the Bugs mount a massive invasion of Terran and Orion space . Satellites left behind monitor the conquered planets and reveal that Bugs regard other sentient life forms as food sources indeed the Bugs prefer to consume their prey alive . It is later revealed that the Bugs raise ranches of conquered species . The alternative being equal opportunity genocide , Terrans , Orions , Gorm , and Ophiuchi form a Grand Alliance , with Terrans and Orions as the senior members . The novel features long and very detailed space and ground battle sequences , detailed discussions of tactical doctrine , the ongoing arms race between the Alliance and the Bugs , and the development of interpersonal relations between military people of different background and species . The universe and novels are based on the Starfire wargame series , which David Weber helped to develop , and which has existed in various editions since 1976 .

<|comedy|>At the beginning of the story , Stanley , a teenage boy who is supposedly affected by a family curse , has been wrongly accused of stealing the shoes of the baseball player from a charity auction . As punishment for this crime he was given a choice to either go to jail or Camp Green Lake , a juvenile detention and correctional facility where convicts of similar age are forced to dig holes to build their character . Warden Walker , real granddaughter of Trout Walker , is actually looking for a buried treasure that outlaw Katherine Kissin Kate Barlow stole from Stanley s great grandfather . Years ago , Stanley s family got cursed by Madame Zeroni , a fortune teller and ancestor , due to a promise not fulfilled by Elya Yelnats , Stanley s great great grandfather , more popularly known in the novel as a no good dirty rotten pig stealing great great grandfather . Later in the story , Zero had been living on jars of very old spiced peaches that he had found in the boat , which he called Sploosh . Upon seeing a mountain resembling a human fist giving the thumbs up sign , Stanley recalls the story of his ancestor Stanley Yelnats I , who finds refuge on God s thumb , which Zero and Stanley climb in search of water . Atop the river , Stanley discovers a field of onions , which the boys eat , and a pool of groundwater , which they drink , and during their contentment Stanley sings to Zero that they should return to Camp Green Lake to find the buried treasure . Upon returning , Zero steals some water and food from the kitchens while Stanley looks for the buried treasure . At this they succeed , but are apprehended by the Warden and the camp staff , and become surrounded by a group of lethal yellow spotted lizards . Because the boys have consumed onions , the lizards do not bite them . Unable to leave the hole they occupy , they remain in place until the next morning , during which an attorney arrives requesting Stanley s release . When the warden demands the suitcase , Zero indicates the name Stanley Yelnats written on it , its contents being the jewels , deeds , stocks and promissory notes stolen from Stanley Yelnats the first . Protagonist Stanley IV then uses the bonds to buy a new house for his family , and Zero hires a team of investigators to find his missing mother meanwhile , the drought at Green Lake is replaced by rainfall , as if in response to Stanley s fulfilment of his ancestor s promise a suggestion left purposely ambiguous by the narration . In a final scene , Clyde Livingston , along with the Yelnats and Zeroni families , celebrates the success of Stanley s father s antidote to foot odor , composed of preserved and fermented spiced peaches and named Sploosh by Zero . The warden is forced to sell Camp Green Lake to the state government , who turns it into a Girl Scout camp , a coincidence since Mr . Sir , a head of the camp , told the campers that this isn t a Girl Scout camp , referring to the backbreaking digging .

<|fantasy|>After an attempted assassination by the Empire trying to blow up Luke s X wing fighter , he has a vision of Obi Wan Kenobi . Obi Wan tells Luke of the secret Lost City of the Jedi hidden beneath the rainforests of Yavin IV . Unknown to Luke at the time , the city is home to a twelve year old boy named Ken , who is called the Jedi Prince . In the city , with the vast databanks on the computers , Ken learns the history of the Jedi and the Rebellion from his only companions , his caretaker droids . As Luke is searching the forests he meets a mysterious healer , Baji . With Baji he searched the forests , eventually encountering Ken , who had run away from the droids . Before he is questioned further , his caretaker droid finds him and they both vanish in a puff of smoke from Dee Jay . Luke , more determined to find this city , returned to get help from the rest of the Rebels . Meanwhile , Trioculus , the new Emperor has a meeting with Supreme Prophet Kadann . Kadann tells him that he is not the true son of Palpatine , but still gives him the blessing of the Prophets . He also tells him of the Lost City of the Jedi , where the Jedi Prince lives , saying that this prince could end Trioculus reign . Able to infiltrate the Rebel s meeting with an explosive device , he demanded that they reveal to him the location of the city . When they refused , he readied the device s explosion , while still taking in the beauty of Princess Leia . As Luke stopped the explosion Trioculus started his second plan to raze the forests in order to find the entrance . During this implementation , he suddenly goes blind and orders the capture of the healer , Baji . Baji tells him that when he uses the power of the Glove of Darth Vader he is injuring his nerve endings , causing blindness and his body to rot . Baji tells him of a cure , but it can only be found in his hut , which is about to be destroyed by the fires . Unable to stop his troops , Trioculus rushes into the hut , and saves the cure , but is badly burned and scarred . As the Rebels attempted to stop the troops , Luke finally found the City . With the help of the droids at the weather controlling center , he created a rainstorm which put an end to the fires . Ken decided to leave with Luke and join the Rebels in their fight leaving the City and his caretakers . Without finding the city , Trioculus left the planet , vowing to destroy all of the Rebels except Leia , who he would make his queen .

<|fantasy|>Will Godwin , a young boy , is forced to work for the evil apothecary Dr . Elias Theophrastus Spittle after Spittle frames him for a murder . Following a close call , he finds a family of cats in a graveyard and brings them back to Spittle s home . The mother cat , as it seems , is named Imelza . But the father is nowhere in sight . Soon after , Will persuades Spittle , who is searching for a way to become immortal , to take one of them as a familiar . The kittens are thereafter named Jupiter , Dab and Leech . Jupiter is trained in the magic arts , while his brother Leech is despised by Spittle . Envious , Leech begins to plot the downfall of his brother , Jupiter . The plague spreads through London , and many people die . Imelza and Dab escape from Spittle , but Imelza is beaten to death by a mob and Dab almost dies but is saved by Molly , a plague doctor and friend of Will s . Dab returns home and is soon killed by Spittle for his experiments , leaving Jupiter and Leech alone to battle over who is heir to the black arts . Spittle , after creating a potion that dyes things orange , manages to formulate the Philosopher s Stone , but contracts the Plague and dies , forcing Jupiter to use the potion on him to resurrect him . Jupiter , upon discovering Dab s body , drinks the potion himself and turns on his master and kills him by starting a fire . Leech betrays Jupiter and leaves him to burn , inheriting his brother s magic powers in the process , but falls into the fire himself . Will manages to recover one cat , burnt unrecognizably but later revealed to be Leech . Leech , having drunk both the immortality potion and orange dye , convinces a rat that Spittle had kept to take him into the sewers and takes his brother s name and title as his own , Jupiter , Lord of All . The book gradually weaves both storylines together . The Great Plague and the Great Fire of London occur during the course of the story .

<|fantasy|>Set in the distant future , Memoirs Found in a Bathtub is the horrifying first hand account of a bureaucratic agent trapped deep within the subterranean bowels of a vast underground military complex . In a Kafkaesque maelstrom of terrifying confusion and utter insanity , this man must attempt to follow his mission directives of conducting an on the spot investigation . Verify . Search . Destroy . Incite . Inform . Over and out . On the nth day nth hour sector n subsector n rendezvous with N . The narrator inhabits a paranoid dystopia where nothing is as it seems , chaos seems to rule all events , and everyone is deeply suspicious of everyone else . In danger of losing his mind , the protagonist starts keeping a diary , and it is this diary which details only a few days in his life that is ultimately found by a future society and given the title Notes from the Neogene . Memoirs Found in a Bathtub is this distant voice from the past , this Notes from the Neogene .

<|fantasy|>After the House Boat was hijacked by Captain Kidd at the end of A House Boat on the Styx , the various members of its club decided that in order to track it down , a detective would have to be called in . So they hired Sherlock Holmes , who , at the time of the book s publication , had indeed been declared dead by his creator .

<|childrens|>The title character is named Pollyanna Whittier , a young orphan who goes to live in Beldingsville , Vermont , with her wealthy but stern Aunt Polly . Pollyanna s philosophy of life centers on what she calls The Glad Game , an optimistic attitude she learned from her father . The game consists of finding something to be glad about in every situation . It originated in an incident one Christmas when Pollyanna , who was hoping for a doll in the missionary barrel , found only a pair of crutches inside . Making the game up on the spot , Pollyanna s father taught her to look at the good side of things mdash in this case , to be glad about the crutches because we didn t need to use them ! With this philosophy , and her own sunny personality and sincere , sympathetic soul , Pollyanna brings so much gladness to her aunt s dispirited New England town that she transforms it into a pleasant place to live . The Glad Game shields her from her aunt s stern attitude when Aunt Polly puts her in a stuffy attic room without carpets or pictures , she exults at the beautiful view from the high window when she tries to punish her niece for being late to dinner by sentencing her to a meal of bread and milk in the kitchen with the servant Nancy , Pollyanna thanks her rapturously because she likes bread and milk , and she likes Nancy . Soon , Pollyanna teaches some of Beldingsville s most troubled inhabitants to play the game as well , from a querulous invalid named Mrs . Snow to a miserly bachelor , Mr . Pendleton , who lives all alone in a cluttered mansion . Aunt Polly , too mdash finding herself helpless before Pollyanna s buoyant refusal to be downcast mdash gradually begins to thaw , although she resists the glad game longer than anyone else . Eventually , however , even Pollyanna s robust optimism is put to the test when she is hit by a car and loses the use of her legs . In the movie adaptation , she falls off a tree after sneaking out of the house . At first she doesn t realize the seriousness of her situation , but her spirits plummet when she was told what happened to her . After that , she lies in bed , unable to find anything to be glad about . Then the townspeople begin calling at Aunt Polly s house , eager to let Pollyanna know how much her encouragement has improved their lives and Pollyanna decides she can still be glad that she at least has her legs . The novel ends with Aunt Polly marrying her former lover Dr . Chilton and Pollyanna being sent to a hospital where she learns to walk again and is able to appreciate the use of her legs far more as a result of being temporarily disabled .

<|novel|>The action commences in 1939 . Lieutenant Commander George Ericson , after service in the Merchant Navy , is recalled to the Royal Navy and given command of the fictitious Flower class corvette HMS Compass Rose , newly built to escort convoys . His officers are mostly new to the Navy , especially the two new Sub Lieutenants , Lockhart and Ferraby . Only Ericson , and some of the Petty Officers are in any way experienced . Despite these initial disadvantages , the ship and crew work up a routine and gain experience . Bennett , the First Lieutenant , a mean and shirking disciplinarian with a penchant for bullying and canned sausages , snorkers , leaves the ship ostensibly for health reasons , and the junior officers are able to mature , with Lockhart gaining promotion to First Lieutenant . The crew cross the Atlantic many times on escort duty in all kinds of weather , often encountering fierce storms in one of the smallest ships to provide escort services to the Allied convoys . The men endure the ship s constant rolling and pitching in the huge waves , freezing cold , the strain of maintaining station on the convoy on pitch black nights and the fear that at any second a torpedo from a German U boat could blow them to oblivion . Somehow the tradition of the Royal Navy and the knowledge of the importance of their work carries them through . They continue the monotonous and dangerous but vital duty of convoy escort and after one particularly difficult convoy they use all their hard won knowledge to sink a German submarine . They are nearly sunk several times until in 1943 they are finally torpedoed and forced to abandon ship . Most of the crew die in the freezing waters , but Ericson , Lockhart , and a few others are rescued the next day . Ericson , now promoted to Commander , and Lockhart , now a Lieutenant Commander , take command of a new ship , the fictitious River class frigate HMS Saltash . In the film The Cruel Sea , the ship is called Saltash Castle and is portrayed by a Castle class corvette HMS Portchester Castle , as no River class vessels were available . The Royal Navy is now finally gaining the upper hand over the U boats and Saltash adds to the growing number of kills due to Ericson s determination and patience . When the war ends , the ship returns to port as a guard to several German submarines that have surrendered . A secondary plotline concerns Lockhart s poignant romance with a beautiful Women s Royal Naval Service officer .

<|fantasy|>The story follows the journey of a tribe called the Munrungs , across a world known as the Carpet . Its resemblance to carpets does not end there instead of trees , the landscape is a forest of hairs , and is littered with large grains of dust and vegetation . The sky is only referred to as above and below the surface is underlay , riddled with caves , and ultimately the Floor . The Munrungs cross the carpet to find a new home after their village is destroyed by the powerful and mysterious natural force Fray . The origins of Fray are never explained in the book , but it is described in a way to suggest sweeping or vacuuming some reviewers have suggested it represents human footfalls , and is referred to as sweeping on the back cover of the current UK edition . The tribe is led by Glurk , who is advised by Pismire , a philosopher and the tribal Shaman . Glurk s younger brother Snibril , however , is the book s protagonist , and is described by Pismire as having the kind of enquiring mind which is dangerous . Snibril also has the unique ability to detect Fray a few minutes before it strikes this ability manifests itself as an extremely painful migraine . The only source of metal on the carpet is mined from a dropped penny wood is taken from discarded matchsticks , while the clairvoyant Wights obtain varnish by scraping it from a chair leg the chair leg is known to the Carpet People as Achairleg . The story ends following an epic battle against the Mouls a race of Fray worshipping creatures . At this point Snibril makes the decision to leave the tribe and to explore the furthest reaches of the carpet .

<|fantasy|>War , starvation , crime and birth control have been eliminated . Life is now totally fulfilled and sustained within Urban Monads Urbmons , mammoth thousand floor skyscrapers arranged in constellations , where the shadow of one building does not fall upon another . An Urbmon is divided into 25 self contained cities of 40 floors each , in ascending order of status , with administrators occupying the highest level . Each building can hold approximately 800 , 000 people , with excess population totalling three billion a year transferred to new Urbmons , which are continually under construction . The Urbmon population is supported by the conversion of all of the Earth s habitable land area not taken up by Urbmons to agriculture . The theoretical limit of the population supported by this arrangement is estimated to be 200 billion . The farmers live a very different lifestyle , with strict birth control . Farmers trade their produce for technology and the two societies rarely have direct contact even their languages are mutually unintelligible . The Urbmons are a world of total sexual license where men are expected to engage in night walking it is considered a capital crime to refuse an invitation for sex . In this world it is a blessing to have children most people are married at 12 and parents at 14 . Just thinking of controlling families is considered a faux pas . Privacy has been dispensed with due to the limited area . Because the need to be outdoors and to travel has been eliminated , thoughts of wanderlust are considered perverse . The dwellers of the Urban Monad share scant resources and believe that sharing of everything is required in order for people to peacefully co exist in close quarters . The sharing extends to wives and husbands , a sentiment likely springing from the free love movement of the mid to late Twentieth century . Although great effort is spent to maintain a stable society , the Urban Monad lifestyle causes mental illness in a small percentage of people , and this fate befalls two of the book s main characters . Social engineers reprogram those who are approaching an unacceptable level of behavior . Given the extremes of life in the Urban Monads , law enforcement and the concept of justice employ a zero tolerance policy . There are usually no trials , and punishment is swift anyone who threatens the stability of the Urbmon society a flippo is erased by being thrown into a shaft that terminates in the building s power generator . This gives one of the book s characters the idea that humanity has been selectively bred for life within the Urbmons .

<|novel|>The story recreates the tied history of the three monotheistic Abrahamic religions Judaism , Christianity , and Islam , allegorised against the setting of an imaginary 19th century Cairene neighborhood . Gabalawi being an allegory for religion in general , the first four sections retell , in succession , the stories of Adam Adham and how he was favored by Gabalawi over the latter s other sons , including Satan Iblis Idris Moses Gabal Jesus Rifa a and Muhammad Qasim . Families of each son settle in different parts of the alley , symbolising Judaism , Christianity and Islam . The protagonist of the book s fifth section is Arafa , who symbolises modern science and , significantly , comes after all prophets , while all of their followers claim Arafa as one of their own .

<|fantasy|>The plot follows a nonlinear course through time and space . It imagines an alternate history in which Captain James Mission s Libertatia lives on . His way of life is based on The Articles , a general freedom to live as one chooses , without prejudice . The novel is narrated from two different standpoints one set in the 18th century which follows a group of pirate boys led by Noah Blake , who land in Panama to liberate it . The other is set in the late 20th century , and follows a detective tracing the disappearance of an adolescent boy .

<|fantasy|>The title character from the first book of the trilogy , Sassinak teams up the main character from the second , her great grandmother Lunzie , to end the threat of the planet pirates . Granddaughter and grandmother are the same age because of relativity stasis induced by cold sleep .

<|childrens|>As the story starts off , a young boy , who used to adore Christmas , hears a train whistle roar . To his astonishment , he finds the train is waiting for him . He sees a conductor who then proceeds to look up at his window . He runs downstairs . He opens the door . The conductor asks him Well ? Are you coming ? . He asks , Where ? and the conductor replies Why , to the North Pole , of course ! The boy then boards the train , which is filled with chocolate and candy , as well as many other children in their pajamas . As the train reaches the North Pole , the boy and the other children see thousands of Christmas elves gathered at the center of town waiting to send Santa Claus on his way . The boy is handpicked by Santa to receive the first gift of Christmas . Realizing that he could choose anything in the world , the boy asks for one bell from one of the reindeer s harnesses . The boy places the bell in the pocket of his robe and all the children watch as Santa takes off into the night for his annual deliveries . Later , on the train ride home , the boy discovers that the bell has fallen through a hole in his pocket . The boy arrives home and goes to his bedroom as the train pulls away . On Christmas morning , his sister finds a small package for the boy under the tree , behind all of the other gifts . The boy opens the box and discovers that it is the bell , delivered by Santa who found it on the seat of his sleigh . When the boy rings the bell , both he and his sister marvel at the beautiful sound . His parents , however , are unable to hear the bell and remark that it must be broken . The book ends with a famous quote , also promoted to the film based on it

<|novel|>Mixing history and legend , it presents a situation in which pagan and Christianized Basques unite under the first king of Navarre and ally with Pelayo , the first king of Asturias to defend Catholic Iberia against the invading hordes of Islam . Amaya is a Christian noblewoman , daughter of a Basque woman and Ranimiro , the ruthless Visigoth general . She is a niece to pagan leader Amagoya , who prefers her other pagan niece as heiress to the secrets of Aitor , the Basque ancestral patriarch . Pacomio is a machinating Jew conspirating in disguise among Muslims , Visigoths and Basques . Eudes , duke of Cantabria , is Pacomio s son , but , by hiding his Jewish origin , has reached a high post in the Visigoth kingdom and aspires to power beyond what his allies and his father would allow . At the end , the secret of Aitor is revealed , to recommend Christianity , the pagan Basques except for Amagoya convert , and Amaya marries the Basque resistance leader , García , becoming the first monarchs of Navarre . The legends of Teodosio de Goñi and San Miguel de Aralar , the Caba Rumía , the Table of Solomon in Toledo , and others are also mentioned in the plot .

<|novel|>In Desperate Remedies a young woman , Cytherea Graye , is forced by poverty to accept a post as lady s maid to the eccentric Miss Aldclyffe , the woman whom her father had loved but had been unable to marry . Cytherea loves a young architect , Edward Springrove , but Miss Adclyffe s machinations , the discovery that Edward is already engaged to a woman whom he does not love , and the urgent need to support a sick brother drive Cytherea to accept the hand of Aeneas Manston , Miss Adclyffe s illegitimate son , whose first wife is believed to have perished in a fire however , their marriage is almost immediately nullified when it emerges that his first wife had left the inn before it caught fire . Manston s wife , apparently , returns to live with him , but Cytherea , her brother , the local rector , and Edward come to suspect that the woman claiming to be Mrs . Manston is an imposter . It emerges that Manston killed his wife in an argument after she left the inn , and had brought in the imposter to prevent his being prosecuted for murder , as the argument had been heard but not seen by a poacher , who suspected Manston of murder and had planned to go to the police if his wife did not turn up alive . In the novel s climax , Manston attempts to kidnap Cytherea and flee , but is stopped by Edward he later commits suicide in his cell , and Cytherea and Edward marry .

<|novel|>The book describes the love triangle of a young woman , Elfride Swancourt , and her two suitors from very different backgrounds . Stephen Smith is a socially inferior but ambitious young man who adores her and with whom she shares a country background . Henry Knight is the respectable , established , older man who represents London society . Elfride finds herself caught in a battle between her heart , her mind and the expectations of those around her her parents and society . When Elfride s father finds that his guest and candidate for his daughter s hand , architect s assistant Stephen Smith , is the son of a mason , he immediately orders him to leave . Elfride , out of desperation , marries a third man , Lord Luxellian . The conclusion finds both suitors travelling together to Elfride , both intent on claiming her hand , and neither knowing either that she is already married or that they are accompanying her corpse and coffin as they travel .

<|novel|>At the beginning of the book , we are told that Ethelberta was raised in humble circumstances but , through her work as a governess , married well at the age of eighteen . Her husband died two weeks after the wedding and , now twenty one , Ethelberta lives with her mother in law , Lady Petherwin . In the three years that have elapsed since the deaths of both her husband and father in law , Ethelberta has been treated to foreign travel and further privilege by her benefactress , but restricted from seeing her poor family . The events of the story concern Ethelberta s career as a famous poetess and storyteller as she struggles to support her family and conceal her secret that her father is a butler . Beautiful , clever , and rational , she easily attracts four very persistent suitors Mr Julian , Mr Neigh , Mr Ladywell , and Lord Mountclere , but is reluctant to give her much coveted hand .

<|novel|>Robert Lomax is a young Englishman who , after completing his National Service , decides to go and work on a plantation in British Malaya . During his time in Malaya Lomax decides as an experiment to pursue a new career as an artist for a year . Lomax visits Hong Kong in search of inspiration for his paintings . He checks into the Nam Kok Hotel , not realizing , at first , that it is an unofficial brothel catering mainly to British and American sailors . However , this only makes the hotel more charming in Lomax s opinion and a better source of subject matter for his paintings . Lomax quickly befriends most of the hotel s bargirls but is most fascinated by the archetypal hooker with a heart of gold , Suzie Wong . Wong previously introduced herself to him as Wong Mee ling , a rich virgin whose father had five houses and more cars than she could count , and initially pretended not to recognize him at the hotel . Lomax had originally decided that he would not sleep with any of the bargirls at the hotel because he would be living with them for a long time and did not want to put a strain on their relationships . However , it soon emerges that Suzie Wong is interested in him , not as a customer but as a serious boyfriend . Although Suzie Wong becomes the kept woman of two other men and Robert Lomax briefly becomes attracted to a young British nurse , Lomax and Wong are eventually reunited and the novel ends happily .

<|fantasy|>Dragondrums is the coming of age story of Piemur , a small , quick , clever apprentice at Harper Hall . When Piemur s clear treble voice changes at puberty , his place among the Harpers is no longer certain . He is sent to the drum towers to learn drumming , the primary method of long distance communication on Pern for non dragonriders , while his voice settles . There he has to deal with the jealousy and bullying of the other drumming apprentices . When Masterharper Robinton secretly asks Piemur to be his apprentice , Piemur begins journeying through Pern , gathering information and running discreet errands for the Masterharper . In his adventures throughout Pern , Piemur has only his knowledge and wits to deal with a cruel Lord Holder and rogue dragonriders . He Impresses one of the coveted fire lizards nbsp a gold he names Farli nbsp as a companion , discovers his place in the world , and earns journeyman status among the Harpers . The events in Dragondrums take place after Dragonsinger and are contiguous with some events in The White Dragon , which discusses characters and events elsewhere on Pern .

<|fantasy|>The plot centers around Chevette Washington , a young bicycle messenger who lives in the ad hoc , off the grid community that has grown on the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake . Chevette , on a whim , steals a pair of dark rimmed glasses from a man at a party because she is offended by his demeanor . Soon after , she realizes that the glasses have unlikely importance , as security company henchmen begin tracking and following her . Among the pursuers are Svobodov and Orlovsky , two Russian immigrants who reside in San Francisco and are employed as cops , as well as Loveless , a ruthless corporate hitman with gold incisors . The glasses contain plans by a powerful corporation to rebuild San Francisco entirely using nanotechnology , and for that reason , they are highly coveted and present a danger to the person who possesses them . Meanwhile , Berry Rydell , a former cop turned private security agent , is contracted to recover the pair of glasses for Lucius Warbaby , an intimidating and presumably successful skip tracer , a sort of bondsman bounty hunter . When Rydell is given the mission , he is not informed of the significance of the glasses and the information they contain . Eventually , the plot climaxes when Rydell , Loveless , Warbaby , Orlovsky , and Svobodov all catch up with Chevette . The cops want the glasses , as does Rydell . Realizing the inherent danger of the situation , Rydell is forced to decide whom to side with . He decides to fight off Orlovsky and Svobodov and shirk his agreement with Warbaby . Instead , Rydell runs off with Chevette , and they embark upon a wild and treacherous journey in which they must remain one step ahead of their enemies , who have all the advantages of wealth and technology on their side . A subplot also focuses on a romantic relationship between Chevette and Rydell , which is initially restricted because of the nature of their circumstances , but is eventually allowed to flourish . Another subplot focuses on a Japanese sociologist named Shinya Yamazaki , who is currently studying the bridge dwellers and the history of their settlement . The subplot largely focuses on his interactions with Skinner , an old man who lives in a shack high atop one of the bridge s support pylons , who happens to share his home with Chevette .

<|fantasy|>The main character is Tarquin Quinn Blackwood , a child of the Blackwood clan , which is a powerful and old family in New Orleans . Tarquin is haunted by a mysterious spirit named Goblin , who is attached to him spiritually . He realizes that he is unable to defeat this creature alone . Risking his life , Quinn embarks upon a quest to enlist the aid of the vampire Lestat de Lioncourt . Lestat , after a fashion , agrees to help Quinn . The novel develops as Tarquin recounts tales of his growing up , his youth , his family , and even his forced conversion and acceptance of the Dark Gift by the hermaphrodite Petronia . His stories allow Lestat to better understand the reach and power of Goblin , who continues to haunt Tarquin . Lestat also discovers that Tarquin is connected to the Mayfair clan of witches , which also makes New Orleans its home . This information , combined with his failure to defeat Goblin , forces Lestat to request aid from Merrick . Merrick , a powerful Mayfair witch turned vampire , agrees to help . It is revealed that the now bloodthirsty Goblin , who looks exactly like Tarquin , is in fact a baby boy s spirit mdash the spirit of Tarquin s twin brother , who died only days after being born . The child did not leave this world he is bound to Tarquin and is relentlessly jealous to experience what Tarquin does . Merrick fashions a ritual , using the corpse of the dead twin , to exorcise Goblin . During the ceremony , Merrick joins herself with the flame and the corpse . She carries her spirit and that of the child to the Light and perishes . Lestat is bereft of Merrick , whom he adored but he now has Quinn , a new vampire to cherish . de Blackwood Farm es El santuario fr Le Domaine Blackwood it Il vampiro di Blackwood pl Posiadłość Blackwood pt A Fazenda Blackwood ru

<|crime|>A quiet holiday at a secluded hotel in Devon is all that Hercule Poirot wants , but amongst his fellow guests is a beautiful and vain woman who , seemingly oblivious to her own husband , revels in the attention of another woman s husband . When she is found strangled by powerful hands , were those hands male ?

<|fantasy|>The plot features three main characters Sumire , Miu , and K . The novel s protagonist , Sumire , is an aspiring writer who survives on a family stipend and the creative input of her only friend , the novel s male narrator , K . K is an elementary school teacher , 25 years old , and in love with Sumire , though she does not quite share his feelings . At a wedding , Sumire meets an Ethnic Korean woman , Miu . The two strike up a conversation and Sumire starts to work for the older , married woman . Over time , she realises that she is attracted to her , and thus , that she might be a lesbian . Miu proposes that Sumire accompany her on a business trip to France . Sumire obliges her . In France , they meet a gifted British writer who suggests the two women make use of his vacant house on a Greek Island . Miu takes Sumire to Greece , and as they spend their days together , Sumire s attraction to Miu grows stronger . One morning , Miu discovers that Sumire is missing . She telephones K and asks him to fly out to Greece , to help find his friend . K obliges but their extensive efforts to locate Sumire are unsuccessful . With the end of summer approaching , K and Miu return to Japan separately . K goes about returning to his old life . He never hears from Miu again , despite her promising to keep in touch . As with other Murakami works , Sputnik Sweetheart lacks a clear , concise ending . If the plot is to be taken literally , devoid of subjective interpretation , then one night , out of the blue , Sumire calls K and tells him that she is back in Japan . She conveys that she is ready to reciprocate his feelings , and asks him to pick her up at the same phone booth she always called him from .

<|childrens|>Ken McLaughlin is a ten year old boy who lives on a remote Wyoming ranch , the Goose Bar , with his father , Rob his mother , Nell and his older brother , Howard . Rob is often unsatisfied with Ken because the boy daydreams when he should be attending to practical matters Nell , however , shares her son s sensitive nature and is more sympathetic . Howard , the older son , was allowed to choose and train a colt from among the Goose Bar herd but , although Ken loves horses , Rob doesn t think his wool gathering son deserves such a privilege yet . At the beginning of the novel , Ken has again angered his father by returning home from boarding school with failing grades , and will therefore have to repeat fifth grade , an expense Rob can ill afford . Nell persuades Rob to let Ken choose a colt of his own . Ken is unable to decide which of that year s yearlings he wants until one day he sees a beautiful sorrel filly running swiftly away from him , and makes his choice . Rob , once again , is annoyed with his son this particular filly has a strain of mustang blood that makes her very wild ndash loco , in ranch idiom . All the Goose Bar horses with this same strain have been fast , beautiful , but utterly untameable , and after many years of trying to break just one of them , Rob has decided to get rid of them all . Ken persists , however , and Rob reluctantly agrees to let him have the filly . When Rob and Ken go out to capture her , she lives up to her family reputation she tries to escape by attempting to jump an impossibly high barbed wire fence and injures herself severely . Ken spends the rest of the summer nursing the filly . He names her Flicka ndash Swedish for girl ndash and spends hours every day tending to her needs and keeping her company . Flicka comes to love and trust the boy , but her wounds from the barbed wire fence fester and cause a dangerous blood infection . She begins to waste away and grows so thin and weak that Rob decides that she must be shot to put her out of her misery . The night before the order is to be carried out , Flicka wades into a shallow brook , stumbles , falls , and is unable to rise . Ken finds her there and spends the rest of the night sitting in the water , holding her head in his arms so she doesn t drown . Although Ken nearly dies from exposure , the cold running water cures Flicka s fever , and all ends well .

<|fantasy|>The premise of this novel is the banishment to the seemingly metal poor planet Treason of a group of people who attempted to create rule by an intellectual elite . The novel centers on the descendants of these anti democratic thinkers who remain imprisoned on the planet . Through the ages , these descendants have formed nations which warred and allied with one another to gain advantages over their rivals in the race to build a starship . Due to the metal deficiency on Treason , nations are forced to obtain it through a system of barter using teleportation devices known as Ambassadors . The protagonist of the book is Lanik Mueller , heir apparent to the Mueller family kingdom . The Muellers , through generations of eugenics , have the ability to heal at an accelerated speed and regrow body parts naturally . The dark side to the Mueller nation is that , in order to obtain iron and other metals , they trade organs and body parts , which are harvested from radical regeneratives rads . Radical regeneratives are people whose bodies can t distinguish between health and injury , and so grow extra appendages as well as organs of the opposite sex although this is a normal phase for most Muellers at the age of puberty , the bodies of radical regeneratives never outgrow it . After it is discovered that Lanik is a radical regenerative , Lanik s father must essentially banish him from the kingdom , so as to avoid sending him to the pens , a place where radical regeneratives are kept in order to harvest their body parts exile also functions to get Lanik out of the eye of the Mueller public , as well as to prevent harm from coming to Lanik s supposed younger brother Dinte . The banishment comes in the form of sending Lanik as an emissary and spy to the Nkumai , a rival nation . Due to his radical regenerative body , Lanik has grown breasts , which makes him appear to be a woman . Using this subterfuge , he poses as an ambassador from the matriarchal nation of Bird in order to discover what the Nkumai are trading in exchange for their abundant metals , which have allowed them to dominate their region militarily . This mission is only the beginning of the adventure for Lanik , who discovers the secrets of the most powerful nations and at the same time gains additional abilities to save his people and determine the fate of his planet .

<|novel|>The plot of The Last Hurrah focuses on a mayoral election in an unnamed East Coast city . Veteran Irish , Democratic Party politician Frank Skeffington is running for yet another term as Mayor . As a former governor , he is usually called by the honorific title Governor . While the city is never named , it is frequently assumed to be Boston . Skeffington is assumed to represent Boston mayor and Massachusetts governor James Michael Curley . The story is told in the third person , either by a narrator or by Adam Caulfield , the Mayor s nephew . Skeffington is a veteran and adept machine politician , and probably corrupt as well . The novel portrays him as a flawed great man with many achievements to his credit . At the beginning of the book , Skeffington is 72 and has been giving signs that he might consider retiring from public life at the end of his current term . He surprises many by announcing what he had always intended to do run for another term as Mayor . The main body of the novel gives a detailed and insightful view of urban politics , tracking Skeffington and his nephew through rounds of campaign appearances and events , thereby showcasing a dying brand of politics and painting a broad picture of political life in general . His opponent , Kevin McCluskey , is a neophyte candidate with a handsome face and good manners , a good World War II record but no political experience , and no real abilities for politics or governing . But McCluskey gets support from a new campaign medium television advertising . Surprisingly . McClusky defeats Skeffington on election day . One of Adam s friends explains that the election was a last hurrah for the kind of old style machine politics that Skeffington had mastered . Developments in American public life , including the consequences of the New Deal , have so changed the face of city politics that Skeffington no longer can survive in the new age with younger voters . And prophetically , for the first time , television ads win the day . Immediately after his defeat , Skeffington suffers a massive heart attack with another soon afterward . When he dies , he leaves behind a city in mourning for a pivotal figure in its history , but a city that no longer has room for him or his kind .

<|childrens|>On Guy Fawkes Night , Mary Poppins arrives in the wake of the last fireworks display by the Banks family . The Banks children Michael , Jane , the twins , and Annabel plead with her to stay . She reluctantly agrees to do so till the door opens . Mrs . Banks has Mary and the children find a piano tuner , who happens to be Mary s cousin , Mr . Twigley . When Mary and the children visit , Mr . Twigley tries to unburden himself from seven wishes given to him when he was born . Besides pianos , Mr . Twigley also specializes in songbirds such as nightingales , one of which he releases when he s finished . He also provides music boxes for Mary and the Banks children to dance to . When they return home later , the drawing room piano is playing perfectly , and when the Banks children ask Mary what happened , she sharply rebukes them . Other adventures in the book include Mary telling the story of a king who was outsmarted by a cat , the park statue of Neleus that comes to life for a time during one of their outings , their visit to confectioner Miss Calico and her flying peppermint sticks , an undersea High Tide party where Mary Poppins is the guest of honor , and a party between fairy tale rivals in the Crack between the Old Year and the New . When the children ask why Mary Poppins , a real person , is there , they are told that she is a fairy tale come true . Finally , the citizens of the town as well as many other characters from the previous two books turn out to say good bye to Mary . The children realize they re not leaving , but Mary is , and they rush to the nursery window and see her entering a house just like theirs , opening the door , and walking in . Later that evening , Mr . Banks sees a shooting star , and they all wish upon it , the children faintly make out Mary Poppins . They wave and she waves back to them . Mary Poppins herself had flown away , but the gifts she had brought would remain for always .

<|fantasy|>The novel s plot is largely concerned with the so called Fringe War . All the intelligent species of Known Space are interested in the Ringworld . In the novel actually begun in the previous novel , The Ringworld Throne , they engage in a Cold War of sorts on the fringe of the Ringworld star system . The novel also explores the interactions of multiple elements invented or described in previous Niven short stories or novels . For instance , two stories in the Crashlander short story anthology consider separately the implications of a super fast hyperdrive At the Core and medical nanotechnology Procrustes . Although these super technologies are seemingly unrelated , their combination is a key element of the plotline of Ringworld s Children . In another example , the ARM ships of the Fringe War are powered by antimatter and have antimatter weapons . When asked where they most likely got it from , the Hindmost remarks that it is probably from an antimatter solar system . This is a reference to a third short story Flatlander in the Crashlander anthology that describes the discovery of the antimatter planet Cannonball Express . Another , more obscure reference to a Beowulf Shaeffer story , The Borderland of Sol , concerns creatures that live in hyperspace and eat spaceships in hyperspace around gravity wells , thus explaining why ships cannot safely engage their hyperdrive close to a large mass which was previously described as a singularity before this revelation . This reference , dismissed as a myth in the earlier story , is casually confirmed as fact in this installment and is surpassed by the creation of a hyperdrive that moves the entire Ringworld to destination unknown . As in the previous two novels , the interactions of various hominid Pak protectors play an important role , including one who claims to be one of the original builders of the ring . A number of previously revealed facts turn out to have been lies told by characters in the books , which is another common feature of Niven s Ringworld and other Known Space stories , especially those involving Protectors and Puppeteers . es Hijos de Mundo Anillo it I figli di Ringworld ja

<|fantasy|>The story begins in Romania during the 1920s , where poverty and disease run rampant . American talent agent Willem Zeffer and the Romanian born actress he represents , Katya Lupi , have travelled there in order to visit Katya s relatives . Zeffer visits an old medieval castle which has been turned into a monastery and decides to buy a unique work of art , a series of sculpted and painted tiles depicting , in a grotesque and obscene manner , the local legend of a Count who was cursed to haunt the nearby wilderness for all eternity . The second part of the story begins in the year 2000 , with failing movie star Todd Pickett deciding to undergo plastic surgery in order to make himself look younger and engineer a comeback . Something goes wrong during the surgery , and Todd , now disfigured , is forced to go into hiding during his recovery . His agent selects Katya Lupi s former home , an abandoned house in Coldheart Canyon , a secluded area outside Hollywood , where Todd soon discovers that Katya and her subjects still hold court .

<|fantasy|>The novel tells the story of John Clayton , born in the western coastal jungles of equatorial Africa to a marooned couple from England , John and Alice Rutherford Clayton , Lord and Lady Greystoke . Adopted as an infant by the she ape Kala after his parents died his father is killed by the savage king ape Kerchak , Clayton is named Tarzan White Skin in the ape language and raised in ignorance of his human heritage . Feeling alienated from his peers due to their physical differences , he discovers his true parents cabin , where he first learns of others like himself in their books , with which he eventually teaches himself to read . On his return from one visit to the cabin , he is attacked by a huge gorilla which he manages to kill with his father s knife , although he is terribly wounded in the struggle . As he grows up , Tarzan becomes a skilled hunter , gradually arousing the jealousy of Kerchak , the ape leader . Later , a tribe of black Africans settles in the area , and Kala is killed by one of its hunters . Avenging himself on the killer , Tarzan begins an antagonistic relationship with the tribe , raiding its village for weapons and practicing cruel pranks on them . They , in turn , regard him as an evil spirit and attempt to placate him . The twelve short stories Burroughs wrote later and collected as Jungle Tales of Tarzan occur in the period immediately following the arrival of the natives , the killing of Kala , and Tarzan s vengeance . Finally Tarzan has amassed so much credit among the apes of the tribe that the envious Kerchak at last attacks him . In the ensuing battle Tarzan kills Kerchak and takes his place as king of the apes . Subsequently , a new party of whites is marooned on the coast , including Jane Porter , the first white woman Tarzan has ever seen . Tarzan s cousin , William Cecil Clayton , unwitting usurper of the ape man s ancestral English estate , is also among the party . Tarzan spies on the newcomers , aids them , and saves Jane from the perils of the jungle . Absent when they are rescued , he is introduced further into the mysteries of civilization by French Naval Officer Paul D Arnot , whom he saves from the natives . D Arnot teaches Tarzan French and how to behave among white men , as well as serving as his guide to the nearest colonial outposts . Ultimately , Tarzan travels to Jane s native Baltimore , Maryland only to find that she is now in the woods of Wisconsin . Tarzan finally meets Jane in Wisconsin where they renew their acquaintance and he learns the bitter news that she has become engaged to William Clayton . Meanwhile , clues from his parents cabin have enabled D Arnot to prove Tarzan s true identity . Instead of claiming his inheritance , Tarzan chooses to conceal his identity and renounce his heritage for the sake of Jane s happiness .

<|fantasy|>The story takes place before and leading up to the events in The Invasion . It is narrated by Elfangor Sirinial Shamtul , or , as he is later known , Prince Elfangor . It begins with him uploading his memory into the computer before facing Visser Three at the abandoned construction site . The rest of the book is then a flashback of Elfangor s personal history , beginning with him as an aristh , a warrior in training , and ending with him at the construction site . In 1976 , Elfangor and his fellow aristh Arbron who are aboard the dome ship StarSword rescue two humans from the Skrit Na Loren and Hedrick Chapman . They are assigned to return them to Earth under the leadership of a disgraced War Prince , Alloran Semitur Corrass . However , upon realizing the Skrit Na are in possession of the mythical Time Matrix , they are forced to go after it . They find out that the Skrit Na are taking the Time Matrix to the Taxxon home world . Arbron becomes trapped as a Taxxon , and Elfangor becomes responsible for Alloran s infestation when Sub Visser 7 tricked him . Eventually , Elfangor , Alloran and the Yeerk controlling him , and the humans fall into a black hole . They are forced to use the Time Matrix to escape , which takes them to a fragmented universe created from Elfangor , Loren , and the Yeerk now Visser Thirty Two s memories . Elfangor and Loren are able to escape to Earth in Loren s own time although she has aged by several years due to the effect of the Time Matrix where he permanently morphs a human and stays in that form . He marries Loren some time later , but just before she gives birth to Tobias , the Ellimist repairs Elfangor s timeline . Elfangor finds himself in the middle of a battle between his old ship and the Yeerks . The Yeerk ship is being commanded by Visser Thirty Two now Visser Three . Elfangor rams the Yeerk ship , almost killing himself , and saves his fellow Andalites . After this he is considered a hero .

<|novel|>The main characters of the novel are Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza . She becomes enamoured with him during their youth but is forced to stop meeting him by her father . Eventually she weds Juvenal Urbino at the age of 21 the deadline she had set for herself because he seemed to offer her security and love . Urbino is a medical doctor devoted to science , modernity , and order and progress . He is committed to the eradication of cholera and to the promotion of public works . He is a rational man whose life is organized precisely and who values his importance and reputation in society to the utmost . He is a herald of progress and modernization . Urbino s function in the novel is to provide the counterpoint to Florentino Ariza s archaic , boldly romantic love . Urbino proves in the end not to have been an entirely faithful husband , confessing one affair to Fermina many years into their marriage . Though the novel seems to suggest that Urbino s love for Fermina was never as spiritually chaste as Florentino Ariza s was , it also complicates Florentino s devotion by cataloging his many trysts and apparently a few , possibly genuine , loves . By the end of the book , Fermina comes to recognize Ariza s wisdom and maturity and their love is allowed to blossom during their old age . For most of their adult lives , however , their communication is limited to occasional public niceties . Lorenzo Daza Fermina Daza s father , a mule driver he despised Florentino and forced them to stop meeting each other . Jeremiah de Saint Amour The man whose suicide is introduced as the opening to the novel a photographer and chess player . Aunt Escolástica The woman who attempts to aid Fermina in her early romance with Florentino by delivering their letters for them . She is ultimately sent away by Lorenzo Daza for this . Tránsito Ariza Florentino s mother . Hildebranda Sánchez Fermina s cousin . Miss Barbara Lynch The woman with whom Urbino confesses having an affair . Diego Samaritano The captain of the riverboat on which Fermina and Florentino ride at the end of the novel . Leona Cassiani She starts out as the personal assistant to Uncle Leo XII at the R . C . C . , the company which Florentino eventually controls . At one point , it is revealed that the two share a deep respect , possibly even love , for each other , but will never actually be together . She has a maternal love for him as a result of his charity in rescuing her from the streets and giving her a job . América Vicuña The fourteen year old girl who towards the end of the novel is sent to live with Florentino he is her guardian while she is in school . They have a sexual relationship , and upon failing her exams and after her rejection by Florentino , she kills herself . Her suicide illustrates the selfish nature of Florentino s love for Fermina .

<|novel|>The story opens with a fictional rendition of the Namamugi Incident . On September 14 , 1862 . Phillip Tyrer , John Canterbury , Angelique Richaud , and Malcolm Struan are riding on the Tōkaidō , when they are attacked by Shorin Anato and Ori Ryoma , both Satsuma samurai and ronin shishi in the sonnō jōi movement , cells of revolutionary xenophobic idealists . Canterbury is killed , Malcolm seriously wounded , and Tyrer receives a minor arm injury only Angelique escapes unharmed to get help back to Yokohama . Tyrer and Malcolm make their to Kanagawa Kanagawa ku later that day , where Dr . Babcott operates on Malcolm . Meanwhile , at a village inn in Hodogaya the daimyo Sanjiro of Satsuma , meets with Katsumata , one of his advisors , and receives Ori and Shorin , with whom he plots an overthrow of the current Shogunate . Two days later Malcolm is moved to the merchant s settlement in Yokohama . He is not expected to last long and while he is in bed sick , he shows his emotions for Angelique , who will eventually become his wife .

<|fantasy|>Ammonite is the story of Marghe Taishan , an employee of the sinister , monolithic Company , sent to the planet GP pronounced Jeep as an anthropologist . The distinctive feature of Jeep is an endemic disease which kills all men and some women who contract it . While testing a vaccine made to protect unexposed people form the virus , Marghe makes a journey across Jeep , living with many of its indigenous cultures . She is enslaved by the nomadic Echraide , and then reaches the quieter village of Ollfoss , where she joins a family , learns the mystic discipline of linking , and eventually becomes a viajera , or traveling wise woman , giving up the vaccine in favor of accepting the virus into her body and truly learning what it is like to be a native . Afterward , she is forced to the center of a conflict between her former people , the Mirrors , with their native allies and the Echraide , who follow a member of their tribe whom they believe to be the Death God . Marghe wins peace for all as the Mirror s guard ship is blown out of the sky by the Company , who believe the vaccine has failed . Adaptation to life on Jeep appears to be a greater theme of Griffith s novel , as not only Marghe , but other Company personnel , also eventually are forced to settle on Jeep and adapt to the cultures that its prior colonists have created , in order to adjust to the planetary environment .

<|fantasy|>Halberstam s book offers a great deal of detail on how the decisions were made in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations that led to the war , focusing on a period from 1960 to 1965 but also covering earlier and later years up to the publication year of the book . Many influential factors are examined in the book The Democratic party was still haunted by claims that it had lost China to Communists , and it did not want to be said to have lost Vietnam also The McCarthy era had rid the government of experts in Vietnam and surrounding Far East countries Early studies called for close to a million U . S . troops to completely defeat the Viet Cong , but it would be impossible to convince Congress or the U . S . public to deploy that many soldiers Declarations of war and excessive shows of force , including bombing too close to China or too many U . S . troops , might have triggered the entry of Chinese ground forces into the war , as well as greater Soviet involvement , which might repair the growing Sino Soviet rift . The American military and generals were not prepared for protracted guerilla warfare . Some war games showed that a gradual escalation by the United States could be evenly matched by North Vietnam Every year , 200 , 000 North Vietnamese came of draft age and potentially could be sent down the Ho Chi Minh Trail to replace any losses against the U . S . the U . S . would be fighting the birthrate Any show of force by the U . S . in the form of bombing or ground forces would signal the U . S . interest in defending South Vietnam and therefore cause the U . S . greater shame if they were to withdraw President Johnson s belief that too much attention given to the war effort would jeopardize his Great Society domestic programs The effects of strategic bombing Most people wrongly believed that North Vietnam prized its industrial base so much it would not risk its destruction by U . S . air power and would negotiate peace after experiencing some limited bombing . Others saw that , even in World War II , strategic bombing united the victim population against the aggressor and did little to hinder industrial output . The Domino Theory rationales are mentioned as simplistic . After placing a few thousand Americans in harm s way , it became politically easier to send hundreds of thousands over with the promise that , with enough numbers , they could protect themselves and that to abandon Vietnam now would mean the earlier investment in money and blood would be thrown away . The book shows that the gradual escalation initially allowed the Johnson Administration to avoid negative publicity and criticism from Congress and avoid a direct war against the Chinese , but it also lessened the likelihood of either victory or withdrawal .

<|childrens|>The book follows a typical day for Fungus the Bogeyman , starting when he wakes up and ending just before he falls asleep . As his day progresses , he undergoes a mild existential crisis , pondering what his seemingly pointless job of scaring surface people is really for . He is a member of the Bogey society , which is very similar to British society , but Bogeymen enjoy things which humans called Drycleaners because of their contrasting environmental preferences would not be comfortable around for example darkness , damp , cold and over ripe food . The book depicts the mundane details of Bogey life in loving detail , with definitions of Bogey slang and numerous annotations concerning the myths , pets , hobbies , literature , clothing and food of the Bogeys . Much of the humour derives from word play . For example , Bogeymen are shown to enjoy eating and sharing flies in a similar way to human cigarettes one brand of fly is the strong French Gallwasp , a pun on the cigarette Gauloises .

<|novel|>The plot revolves around Sylvia Barrett , an idealistic English teacher at an inner city high school who hopes to nurture her students interest in classic literature especially Chaucer and writing . She quickly becomes discouraged during her first year teaching , frustrated by dumb bureaucracy the name of the novel refers to an infraction one of her students is punished for , the indifference of her students , and the incompetence of many of her colleagues . She decides to leave public school to work in a smaller private setting . Her mind is changed , however , by the realization that she has indeed touched the lives of her students . The novel is epistolary in form aside from opening and closing chapters consisting entirely of dialog , the story is told through documents , such as memos from the office , fragments of notes dropped in the trash can , essays that are handed in to be graded , lesson plans , suggestions dropped in the class suggestion box , and letters written by Barrett to a friend from college who chose to get married and start a family rather than pursue a career . The letters serve as a recap and summary of key events in the book , and offer a portrait of women s roles and responsibilities in American society in the mid 1960s as well . The book s title comes from a memo to teachers , instructing them to make sure that students do not walk up the down staircase . The novel is set at the time just after the banning of School prayer and during early integration and busing .

<|novel|>As the story unfolds , Phillip reflects on the major incidents in the life of his once well to do family , which was forced to leave Nashville during the time of the Great Depression after the older Mr . Carver , a distinguished lawyer , lost a great deal of money in failed investments with his then friend and business associate Lewis Shackleford . Though this happened when the four Carver children were still in their teens , they recall the event as a great betrayal , and the resulting move had a major impact on them and continues to affect their abilities to build stable relationships and function as adults . Their lives were further dominated by their father as he ended romantic relationships for his children if he disapproved of them for any reason . Ultimately , the oldest Carver son would join the army and die in World War II . Neither Phillip nor his sisters ever marry . His sisters maintain an odd continued adolescence well into their fifties , dressing as though they were still attractive teenagers . Phillip moves to New York and lives with a younger woman whom he will never marry . The summons to Memphis in the book s title refers to several events , but chiefly a call by Phillip s sisters to return and help them block their then octogenarian father from remarrying after the death of their mother . The book is a rumination on the responsibilities of parents , friendships between men , the relationship between the old and new south , the nature of revenge and the possibility of forgiveness .

<|childrens|>In this book , Grover is horrified to learn that there is a monster at the end of the book , and begs the reader not to finish the book , so as to avoid the monster . Fearful of reaching the end of the book , Grover constructs a series of obstacles , such as attempting to tie pages together and laying brick walls , to prevent the reader from advancing . Increasingly frightened and also in awe of the reader s strength at overcoming the obstacles , Grover pleads with the reader to stop reading as the book nears its conclusion . However , the monster turns out to be Grover himself , making the story self referential . Grover jokes that he tried to convince the reader that the monster would not be scary but we see at the end that he is embarrassed .

<|action|>Susan Wheeler is the protagonist of the novel . She is an attractive 23 year old third year medical student working as a trainee at Boston Memorial Hospital . Susan , along with four other students George , Harvey , Geoffrey , and Paul takes rounds in surgery rooms and ICUs for making post treatment notations on the health of patients . Mark Bellows , a surgery resident in the hospital , is the instructor and supervisor of this group . The book is a journey into the inner workings of a hospital . As these students complete their three month surgical rotation , the dilemmas and problems faced by a woman in a so called man s profession are also highlighted . There are two patients , Nancy Greenly and Sean Berman , who mysteriously went into comas immediately after their operations . These incidents were attributed to complications within their surgeries due to anesthesia . Nancy Greenly became comatose when her brain did not receive sufficient oxygen during surgery . Similarly , Sean Berman , a young man in his 30s in good physical condition , underwent a scheduled knee operation . Despite the operation s success , Sean failed to regain consciousness . Medically , the odds for such occurrences are one in 100 , 000 however , such odds seemed resolutely higher at the Boston Memorial Hospital . Baffled by the comas of these two patients , Susan decides to investigate the mystery behind these peculiar events and of other recent coma victims . Susan discovers the oxygen line to Operating Room 8 has been tampered with to cause the patients carbon monoxide poisoning during surgery and , hence , brain death . At the same time Susan develops a brief , but intimate , relationship with Bellows and discusses her findings with him . After unraveling further details , and evading pursuit by a man hired to kill her , Susan is led to the Jefferson Institute . The institute is hailed as an intensive care facility designed to cut down on heavy medical costs . All patients who are declared brain dead or vegetables are referred to the institute . Here , she finds that patients are suspended from the ceiling by wires in rooms walled by glass and are moved from room to room with little human involvement . The samples are kept alive and healthy until a call for an organ comes in . The organ of choice is removed surgically and without consent and then sold on the black market . At the end of the story Howard Stark , chief of the Department of Surgery at Boston Memorial , is revealed as the main antagonist . Stark confronts Susan over her findings and then drugs her , intending to put Susan in a coma under the pretext of an appendix operation . However , Bellows manages to disable to the oxygen line during the operation , thereby preventing a full dose of carbon monoxide poisoning . Stark is arrested but Susan s fate is left in doubt .

<|fantasy|>John Carter , a Confederate veteran of the American Civil War , goes prospecting in Arizona immediately after the war s end . Having struck a rich vein of gold , he runs afoul of the Apaches . While attempting to evade pursuit by hiding in a sacred cave , he is mysteriously transported to Mars , called Barsoom by its inhabitants . Carter finds that he has great strength and superhuman agility in this new environment as a result of its lesser gravity . He soon falls in with a nomadic tribe of Green Martians , or Tharks , as the planet s warlike , six limbed , green skinned inhabitants are known . Thanks to his strength and martial prowess , Carter rises to a high position in the tribe and earns the respect and eventually the friendship of Tars Tarkas , one of the Thark chiefs . The Tharks subsequently capture Dejah Thoris , Princess of Helium , a member of the humanoid red Martian race . The red Martians inhabit a loose network of city states and control the desert planet s canals , along which its agriculture is concentrated . Carter rescues Dejah Thoris from the green men in a bid to return her to her people . Subsequently Carter becomes embroiled in the political affairs of both the red and green Martians in his efforts to safeguard Dejah Thoris , eventually leading a horde of Tharks against the city state of Zodanga , the historic enemy of Helium . Winning Dejah Thoris hand , he becomes Prince of Helium , and the two live happily together for nine years . However , the sudden breakdown of the Atmosphere Plant that sustains the planet s waning air supply endangers all life on Barsoom . In a desperate attempt to save the planet s inhabitants , Carter uses a secret telepathic code to enter the factory , bringing an engineer along who can restore its functionality . Carter then succumbs to asphyxiation , only to awaken back on Earth , left to wonder what has become of Barsoom and his beloved .

<|crime|>Inside an almost isolated Skåne farmhouse in Lunnarp , an old man , Johannes Lövgren is tortured to death and his wife Maria savagely beaten and left for dead with a noose around her neck . Inspector Kurt Wallander , a forty two year old Ystad police detective , and his team ndash Rydberg , an aging detective with a rheumatism Martinsson , a 29 year old rookie Naslund , a thirty year veteran Svedberg , a balding , forty something year old detective Hansson and Peters ndash are put on the case . Maria Lovgren is taken to a hospital , but dies anyway . Her last word foreign . Rydberg has been examining the noose around Mrs Lovgren s neck and has never seen one like it before . He thinks that Mrs Lovgren s last word is accurate , and that the murderers are foreign . But his conclusion leads to several racially motivated attacks after the information is leaked to the press . The story focuses on Sweden s liberal attitude regarding immigration , and explores themes of racism and national identity .

<|mystery|>A few months after the end of World War II , Miles Hammond is invited to the first meeting of the Murder Club in five years . When he arrives , no one else is there except Barbara Morell and Professor Rigaud . When no one else shows up , Rigaud tells the story of Fay Seton . Seton was a young girl , working for the Brookes family . She fell in love with Harry Brookes , and the two became engaged . But Harry s father , Howard , did not approve . One day , he agreed to meet Fay in a tower all that remained of a burned out chateau . It was a secure location on a lonely waterfront , and was the perfect place for such a meeting . Harry and Professor Rigaud left Howard alone at ten minutes before four . When they returned , fifteen minutes later , Howard had been stabbed , and the sword cane that did it was found in two pieces beside his body . At first it seemed an open and shut case , but a family that was picnicking a few feet from the entrance of the tower swore that no one entered the tower in those fifteen minutes , that no boat came near the tower , and no one could have climbed up , because the nearest window was fifteen feet off the ground . The only one with any motive was Fay Seton , who was believed to be able to bring a vampire to life and terrorize people . Miles quickly becomes involved in the affair because the new librarian he just hired is Fay Seton .

<|mystery|>In his ninth outing , Dr . Fell spends July 1937 at a small village in Kent . John Farnleigh is a wealthy young man married to his childhood love , and a survivor of the Titanic disaster . When another man comes along claiming to be the real John Farnleigh , an inquest is scheduled to determine which individual is the real Farnleigh . Then the first Farnleigh is killed his throat is slashed in full view of three people , all of whom claim that they saw no one there . Later , a mysterious automaton reaches out to touch a housemaid , who nearly dies of fright , and a thumbograph an early toy associated with the taking of fingerprints disappears from a locked library . Dr . Gideon Fell investigates and reveals the surprising solution to all these questions .

<|fantasy|>Centered in New Orleans , Blood Canticle is narrated by Lestat . The protagonist is a young Mayfair witch named Mona . At the beginning of the novel Mona is wasting away , victim to a mysterious disease brought on by the birth of her daughter , a so called Walking Baby . As the novel plays out , Mona and her guardian , Rowan Mayfair , the current designee of the Mayfair legacy , reveal more and more about the powerful genetic plague that has haunted the Mayfairs for generations the Taltos . In what she believes to be her dying hour , Mona highly romantic in nature buys quantities of roses and takes them to the house of her lover , Tarquin Quinn Blackwood , who is a vampire and a dear companion to Lestat . She lays the roses on his bed , intending to spend her final moments here . So that she does not die from the massive decline that her body has undergone , Lestat makes her into a vampire . He does this largely to satisfy Quinn , who could never again hear the thoughts of Mona if he were to do it himself . When trying to prevent Mona s family from discovering her transformation , Lestat falls in love with Rowan Mayfair . Secretly , she pines for him as well . Lestat s blood is powerful Mona learns this quickly and discovers that she can easily dispatch inferior vampires with the powerful gifts that Lestat s potent blood has bestowed upon her . Now her renewed vigor and her anger about her situation with Rowan and their shared secret of the Taltos causes her to lash out verbally at Rowan and Rowan s husband Michael . As she struggles with herself , Lestat and Quinn , she learns her place in her new world . As she learns , Lestat pledges to find her Taltos child if it still lives . For this , Lestat enlists the help of Maharet . In a very short time , Maharet provides critical information for their search . The story comes to a dramatic conclusion as Mona , journeying with Quinn and Lestat , comes to the remote island where the Taltos live . But instead of finding a secluded paradise , the three vampires learn about years of intrigue and civil war among this isolated race of beings . In the end , the remaining Taltos join the Mayfair clan at the medical center in New Orleans , where they can be safe , learn , and be together as a family . Mona and Quinn are taken by Khayman to go and live with Maharet and Mekare to go and be instructed properly in the ways of vampirism , leaving Lestat alone . Rowan Mayfair seeks out Lestat , half in love with him but still in love with Michael and exhausted by her life , requesting that he gives her the Dark Gift . Lestat declines , pained as he is , because she is a guiding force for the Mayfair family and he cannot take her away from it .

<|fantasy|>The delivery boy from the first book , who is now the Avatar , must stop an epic clash of civilizations between the Western world , led by Christian extremist General Horatio Cruz , and the Middle East , led by Muslim extremist Al Zee . To accomplish this task , the avatar decides to find the Prime Influencer , a person who , he feels , can indirectly influence all the decisions people make by virtue of responsibility , from fashion to the election of the President . He attempts to do so by enlisting a talented and arrogant programmer at Global Information Corporation GIC an all encompassing , worldwide future sort of TIA created out of fear of terrorism to analyze GIC s massive databases using software . Also , people s phones are , in the name of preventing terrorist communications , restricted to only calling certain contacts a person has that have been approved by the Department of Communications this fact ultimately comes back in the book s climax . The Avatar applies his unparalleled ability to identify developing patterns and accurately determine the most probable outcomes of a situation to accurately predict the war plans of both Cruz and Al Zee . He subsequently uses his ability to recognize even the vaguest patterns which makes him seem to know more than he actually does to bypass guards , escape interrogations , and ultimately win an audience with the warring leaders . Ultimately , the Avatar fails to stop the onset of the war . However , at the conclusion of the book , the Prime Influencer , who turns out to be an opinionated café owner that the Avatar had met previously by chance , launches a simple , yet catchy , phrase If God is so smart , why do you fart ? that spreads throughout the world like a virus thanks to an advanced computer worm , named Giver of Data GoD , launched by the GIC programmer shortly before his death , which unlocked everyone s phones , linked them up to automatic translation systems , and disabled call billing . According to the story , Once you heard it , you could never forget it . It was this phrase that finally captured the collective imaginations of ordinary people , causing them to reevaluate their assumptions about the nature of God . This ultimately led to the elimination of fundamentalist religious practices throughout the world , which , in turn , resulted in the end of the Religion War .

<|fantasy|>In the spirit of Edwin Abbott Abbott s Flatland , Dewdney and his computer science students designed a vertical 2D world i . e . East West and Up Down , no N S and considered the issues of biology and society for the inhabitants . To their surprise , they find their artificial 2D universe has somehow accidentally become a means of communication with an actual 2D world nbsp Arde . They make a sort of telepathic contact with YNDRD , referred to by the students as Yendred , a highly philosophical Ardean or Nsana , as they call themselves , as he begins a journey across the single continent Ajem Kollosh to learn more about a mysterious philosophy the inhabitants of his destination have . The students and narrator communicate with Yendred by typing on the keyboard , and Yendred describes how he feels their thoughts in his head . For Yendred s replies , he thinks an answer , and it appears on the computer s printout . Yendred s name is actually Dewdney reversed , or Yendwed , as spoken by one of the students with a speech impediment . Written as a travelogue , Yendred crosses the world to reveal its features , explaining to the students diverse topics such as the politics , geography , construction all houses are underground , for example , so as not to impede movement , tools nails are useless for attaching two objects , tape and glue are used instead , biology there is no digestive tract in most Ardean creatures , because of the danger of splitting into two , but evolution devised a solution , astronomy , and even games such as one dimensional Alak , all designed for fit in 2D . An appendix explains some fundamentals of Ardean two dimensional physics and chemistry .

<|fantasy|>On his eighty first birthday , Kenneth Toomey is asked by the Archbishop of Malta to assist in the process of canonization of Carlo Campanati , the late Pope Gregory XVII . Toomey subsequently works on his memoirs , which span the major part of the 20th century .

<|fantasy|>The story is set on Mars in the late 21st Century . It follows the exploits of the 400 year old vampire John Shade , whose comfortable life in the Hellas crater on Mars is disrupted when he is forced to become part of a complex conspiracy to protect the Janglers , a sub species of humans who have replaced parts of their brains with technology . Shade eventually becomes the leader of a collection of loners , losers , drop outs and rebels , holding them together through unwitting charisma and a sense of personal vengeance against the government of Mars . As a vampire , Shade sometimes feels a lust for blood , though this only occurs once or twice a year though the Need , as it is called , strikes several times during the course of the novel for reasons that are not fully explained . Shade also possesses increased strength and reflexes , a photographic memory , excellent mathematical knowledge , the ability to change his own shape and the power to shift into high temporal , which tremendously enhances his speed . Shade has read Bram Stoker s Dracula and believes it to be foolish in many details .

<|novel|>As with Wolfe s other novels , A Man In Full features a number of point of view characters . These include Charles Cap m Charlie Croker , a real estate mogul and member of Atlanta s high society who is suddenly facing bankruptcy Martha Croker , his first wife , trying to maintain her social standing without her husband Ray Peepgass , who is trying to illegally capitalize on Croker s fall Roger Too White White II , a prominent black lawyer and Conrad Hensley , a young man in prison who discovers Stoic philosophy . The novel begins with the characters learning of the rumored rape of a young white heiress by a black superstar athlete , Fareek The Canon Fanon . Though the incident itself is unimportant to the lives of the characters , the potential for the rumor to incite race riots in metropolitan Atlanta has a profound effect on all of their lives . Local politics and business interests become involved , including the president of the bank to which Croker is indebted , Roger Too White s former fraternity brother now Mayor of Atlanta , and the entirety of respectable Atlanta society . A Man In Full is written much in the style of Wolfe s other fictions , such as Bonfire of the Vanities and I Am Charlotte Simmons .

<|novel|>The story is described from the viewpoint of Helen , a successful school principal living with her husband and two children in Ireland . She learns one day , that her brother Declan , who is homosexual , has been a sufferer of AIDS for years , and refused to tell her until then . He asks her to deliver their mother and grandmother the news . This presents a challenge to Helen as she has had minimal contact with either woman due to deeply buried conflicts relating to Helen s past and her father s sudden death when she was a child . As the three women meet again they are forced to overcome these struggles for Declan s sake . The novel follows the painful journey they must take in order to correct the misunderstanding that exists between them .

<|mystery|>The last plan of Don Domenico Clericuzio , an aging mafia boss , is to eventually make his family enter the legitimate world and melt into American society . Twenty five years later , his grandson Dante and his grandnephew Cross Croccifixio make their way through life , and the eighty year old Don is half retired . Cross , who holds a majority share in a Las Vegas casino , is supposed to become the strong arm of the family . However , when he refuses to take part in the murder of an old friend , Dante is left to be the sole tough guy . Dante s greed for power and blood lead him to plan the elimination of his relatives , who are an obstacle to the desire to become as powerful as the old Don himself . Cross , who is aware of being on the black list , precedes Dante and catches him in a trap . Having acted against the family , he waits for the Don s vendetta , but , to his own surprise , his life is spared and he s only condemned to exile . The story concludes with the revelation that the Don had planned this outcome all along for the long term survival of the family .

<|mystery|>Protagonist Adam Farmer is biking from his home in the fictional town of Monument , Massachusetts based on Cormier s home town of Leominster , Massachusetts . Interspersed with the story of his journey are memories of Adam s previous life with his parents , his love for prankster Amy Hertz , and the discovery that he is not who he seems to be . In the end we find out that Adam is just riding around his mental home and the characters on his trip are the people who work in the mental home .

<|fantasy|>The protagonist of these stories was involved in the creation of a global computer network designed to give ultimate economic control by keeping track of all human activity . Just before the system went live , the hero expressed his concerns about the possible misuse of such power to his superior , who gave the hero the chance to destroy his personal data before it was to be entered into the system . In taking this step the hero becomes non existent as far as the system is concerned . Using backdoors in the central network , the hero is able to create identities for himself as needed . With this freedom he sets himself up as a freelance investigator and problem solver .

<|fantasy|>In the village of Werst in the Carpathian mountains of Transylvania then part of Austria Hungary , some mysterious things are occurring and the villagers believe that Chort the devil occupies the castle . A visitor of the region , Count Franz de Télek , is intrigued by the stories and decides to go to the castle and investigate and finds that the owner of the castle is Baron Rodolphe de Gortz , one of his acquaintances , as years ago , they were rivals for the affections of the celebrated Italian prima donna La Stilla . The Count thought that La Stilla was dead , but he sees her image and voice coming from the castle , but we later on find that it was only a holographic image .

<|fantasy|>The novel is set in the fictional Swiss village of Karlstein in 1816 . The evil Count Karlstein made a deal with Zamiel , the Demon Huntsman , in order to obtain his current wealth . The condition of the deal was that in ten years time the huntsman will be presented with a human sacrifice on All Souls Eve . The count has decided to offer his two young nieces , Lucy and Charlotte . His plan does not go as smoothly as he would have preferred . Hildi Kelmar , a castle maidservant , overhears his plan to sacrifice Lucy and Charlotte and tries to save them . The narrative shifts between the perspectives of a panoply of characters , including Hildi , Lucy , Charlotte , the girls former teacher Miss Augusta Davenport , the inept coachman Max Grindoff , and a police report . Other characters that come to the aid of the girls , willingly or not , are Meister Haifisch , the Count s lawyer Doctor Cadaverezzi , a fraudulent magician employing Max as an assistant , who takes Lucy in as a part of his act Eliza , Miss Davenport s helper and Max s lover Hildi s mother , a tavern owner and Hildi s brother , Peter , a huntsman hiding from the law . After hiding the girls , avoiding the Count and his cronies Arturo Snivelwurst , his cowardly manservant , and Frau Muller , the castle s head servant , and helping several other people , Hildi has no choice but to send her fugitive brother , armed with a single silver bullet , to rescue the girls from the distant hunting cabin . He uses the bullet before encountering Zamiel , but the Demon Huntsman spares the hunter and those he protects , taking the life of Karlstein instead . The following day , Peter wins a shooting contest and the title of Chief Ranger of the Forest , securing his freedom . Meister Haifisch arrives and announces that the true Count Karlstein is in fact the orphaned Max , who weds Eliza and raises Lucy and Charlotte . Finally , Miss Augusta and Doctor Cadaverezzi whom she knows as Signor Rolipolio , old lovers , reunite and marry .

<|novel|>Two On A Tower is a tale of star crossed love in which Hardy sets the emotional lives of his two lovers against the background of the stellar universe . The unhappily married Lady Constantine breaks all the rules of social decorum when she falls in love with Swithin St . Cleeve , an astronomer who is ten years her junior . Her husband s death leaves the lovers free to marry , but the discovery of a legacy forces them apart . This is Hardy s most complete treatment of the theme of love across the class and age divide and the fullest expression of his fascination with science and astronomy .

<|fantasy|>The story revolves around the eventual discovery of the American continents by the Yilané , who are searching for new resources and territories for colonization . Being reptiloid and cold blooded , they target tropical and sub tropical zones . Eventually , of course , they encounter the humanoids , whom they regard as barely sentient animals . Humans , in their turn , are xenophobically terrified of the Yilané . It is not long before a state of conflict exists between the two species . The central characters are Vaintè , an ambitious Yilané Stallan , her vicious and obedient adjutant and Kerrick , a ustouzou the Yilané word for mammal who is captured by the reptiloids as a boy , and raised as a Yilané . Kerrick eventually escapes to rejoin his own people , ultimately becoming a leader . Another notable Yilanè character is Enge , the leader of a faction of pacifist Yilané who reject the militaristic and violent attitudes of their culture . This group is violently opposed by most other Yilané , especially Vaintè . Enge befriends Kerrick , and acts as his teacher , while he lives with the Yilané .

<|action|>The novel tells the story of Lara Cameron , a successful real estate developer who came from a broken family in Nova Scotia . Lara s mother dies in childbirth and her Scottish father doesn t want her . Early in life , she learns to fend for herself and how to get her own way in a male dominated world . After her father s death , Lara makes a deal with the owner of the boarding house to secure her first building in exchange for her body . Thrilled at her success , she moves to Chicago to start her real estate empire . Even though she encounters many problems , she is able to overcome them all and become one of America s most successful businesswomen , and receives the nickname , Iron Butterfly . She falls in love with a talented pianist , Philip Alder , and marries him . She is on the verge of losing everything she has achieved as well as the one man she loves , but the Iron Butterfly miraculously recovers from all her shattered dreams and gains back all her hopes and the only man whom she ever truly loved . bg es Escrito en las estrellas ne pt The Stars Shine Down

<|novel|>The novel s setting is the border of Herefordshire , in England , and either Brecknockshire , or Radnorshire , in Wales there are Black Hills near both . In the early pages we are told the border runs through the very farmhouse One of the windows looked out over the green fields of England the other looked back into Wales . . . Culturally the central characters are Welshmen , with the surname Jones . The story is told through the technique of flashback , and portrays the lives of twin brothers , Lewis and Benjamin Jones , on their isolated upland farm called The Vision . The twins develop a bond that is shown throughout the novel as very special . Lewis is portrayed as the stronger or dominant twin , whereas Benjamin is the more intuitive one , both in appearance and in the tasks which he does around the house . He seems to be constantly drawn to his mother 39 s side while she is alive . Lewis is the one who wants to break free but Benjamin is forced into the army at the time of the Great War . His efforts are frustrated by his family ties and the indefinable , unbreakable tie to the land . Chatwin also tells the reader of the brutality involved in farming at the time in this area . Amos , the father of the two twins , shows how his day to day job has brutalised his once caring and loving attitude , and we see this later in the novel when he hits his wife Mary on the temple with the book she is reading Wuthering Heights . A jealous man , Amos attacks his wife with the very material that shows her intelligence he feels threatened by this , feeling that the man is supposed to be the head of the family in all things , and he feels anger because of his limited education . On the Black Hill is a novel which portrays themes such as unrequited love , sexual repression and confusion , social , religious and cultural repression , hate and the historic social values of that era , as is shown when Amos finds out that his daughter Rebecca has become pregnant by an Irishman . His religious fanaticism , social pressure , economic forces and an inability to express love results in him throwing her out of the household , and she is not mentioned in the novel again until the latter part .