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<|novel|>The first William Howland did not return home to Tennessee on his way back from the War of 1812 . Instead , he settled on a hill in rural Alabama , overlooking a small river . He was later killed in an Indian raid , but since then , a descendant of William Howland , most often a male named William , lived in the house and dominated affairs in Madison City and Wade County , which sprang up around Howland s original settlement . The fifth William Howland was the last man bearing the name to live in the house . His wife died young , leaving him with a young daughter , Abigail , and an infant son , William , who died just a year after his mother . Abigail married an English professor , who abandoned her with a child , Abigail , when he went off to fight in World War II . When she died , William Howland was left to take care of his granddaughter , also Abigail . He also brought Margaret , a new African American housekeeper to the house to live with him . Throughout the county , she was known as his mistress , and the mother of his other children . What no one knew , however , was that William had secretly married Margaret to ensure that the children were legitimate . Once their children came of age , William Howland and Margaret sent them north , so that they could pursue lives as Whites . The secret of the marriage came out only after the younger Abigail was married to John Tolliver , an up and coming politician , who was running for governor . In the turbulent racist atmosphere of the South , Tolliver aligned himself with the Klan and came out with racist statements against Blacks . This enfuriated Robert Howland , the eldest son of William and Margaret , who was living in obscurity in Seattle . He releases the news to the story of his origins to the press , crippling Tolliver s campaign . Tolliver , who regards Abigail as a trophy wife , declares that their marriage is over and heads north to his family . Both William Howland and Margaret are dead , but a mob gathers to vent its anger about the mixed marriage on Abigail and the Howland house . They kill the livestock and set fire to the barn , but Abigail succeeds in driving them away from the house with her grandfather s shotguns . At the end of the book , Abigail takes her revenge on the people of Madison City . Over the past generations , her family had come to own most of the county , making her one of the richest people in the state . Over the course of a single day , she takes revenge on the locals for betraying her grandfather by shutting down the hotel and bringing most of the local economy to ruin . Once she has done that , she places a call to Robert , with the intention of informing his new family that his mother was Black .

<|fantasy|>Bass future Earth is an environment in which the sum of the biota serves as its food chain . Human science has created the four toed Nebish , a pallid , short lived and highly programmable humanoid who has had the elements that do not facilitate an underground Hive existence aggression , curiosity , etc . bred out of it . The five toed humans called buckeyes wander the biofarms that keep the trillions of Earth s Nebish population fed . All animals other than man are extinct , so meat comes from other humans and the occasional rat . The conflict between the Hives and the roving bands of five toed original Humans , who are reduced to savagery and hunted like vermin by Hive Security , forms the backdrop of this novel . Something strange is happening , as the primitive buckeyes are showing signs of a purpose whose goal is unclear and probably dangerous to the balance of the Hive . There seems to be a third party stirring the pot , campaigning in a relentlessly successful battle with the computer minds that keep this brave new world in balance . Agendas beyond the ken of their protagonists begin to come into play , and an epic battle between the Four and the Five toed is looming .

<|fantasy|>It is 1896 in the Sahara . Two officers , André de Saint Avit and Jean Morhange investigate the disappearance of their fellow officers . While doing so , they are drugged and kidnapped by a Tarqui warrior , the procurer for the monstrous Queen Antinea . Antinea , descendant of the rulers of Atlantis , has a cave wall with the 120 niches carved into it , one for each of her lovers . Only 53 have been filled when all 120 have been filled , Antinea will sit atop a throne in the center of the cave and rest forever . Saint Avit is unable to resist Antinea s charms . By her will , he murders the asexual Morhange . Ultimately , he is able to escape and get out of the desert alive .

<|novel|>Buckley was convicted on a trumped up charge of trespass in 1803 and transported to Australia , where he escapes , only to collapse from exhaustion in the outback on the grave of an Aboriginal shaman . He is discovered by aborigines , who regard him as the reincarnation of Murrangurk the shaman , an idea reinforced by Will s epilepsy . Will learns their language and ways , and fits perfectly the role of their healer and holy man . Thirty years later he intervenes to prevent the slaughter of a group of English soldiers and is granted a pardon . He returns to his native Cheshire , where in a closing sequence he dances Aborigine style across his home land , fulfilled and transformed .

<|mystery|>The beautiful Margaret Odell , famous Broadway beauty and ex Follies girl known as The Canary , is found murdered in her apartment . She has a number of men in her life , ranging from high society to gangsters , and more than one man visited her apartment on the night she dies . It is Philo Vance s characteristic erudition that leads him to a key clue that allows him to penetrate a very clever alibi and reveal the killer . The strangeness , the daring , the seeming impenetrability of the crime marked it as one of the most singular and astonishing cases in New York s police annals and had it not been for Philo Vance s participation in its solution , I firmly believe it would have remained one of the great unsolved mysteries of this country .

<|mystery|>The story involves a series of murders taking place in a wealthy neighborhood of New York . The first murder , of a Mr . Joseph Cochrane Robin who is found pierced by an arrow , is accompanied by a note signed The Bishop with an extract from the nursery rhyme Who Killed Cock Robin . This crime takes place at the home of an elderly physicist with a beautiful young ward and a private archery range . District Attorney Markham finds the circumstances so unusual that he asks his friend Philo Vance to advise upon the psychological aspects of the crime . Further murders connected with the family and neighbours of the physicist are accompanied with similar extracts from Mother Goose , such as the case of Johnny Sprigg , who was shot through the middle of his wig , wig , wig . Midway through the book , an elderly woman confesses to the crimes , but this possibility is discounted by the police for physical reasons and by Philo Vance for psychological ones . The kidnapping and confinement of a little Miss Moffatt is luckily discovered by Vance and the police before the child suffocates in the closet in which she has been locked . Vance finally realizes the significance of one character s pointed reference to The Pretenders , a play written by Henrik Ibsen . Bishop Arnesson of Oslo was a prominent character in Ibsen s play . Vance arranges a spectacular finale in which the criminal is poisoned by a glass of liqueur which that person prepared for another suspect .

<|mystery|>A member of the wealthy Kenting family is kidnapped , and Philo Vance s suspicions lead him to the victim s home , the Purple House on New York s 86th Street . A mysterious ransom note and the family collection of gems both play a part in the plot , which ends with the murderer s suicide with the connivance of Vance . To be sure , the motive for the crime , or , I should say , crimes , was the sordid one of monetary gain . . . through Vance s determination and fearlessness , through his keen insight into human nature and his amazing flair for the ramifications of human psychology , he was able to penetrate beyond the seemingly conclusive manifestations of the case .

<|novel|>Bouvard et Pécuchet details the adventures of two Parisian copy clerks , François Denys Bartholomée Bouvard and Juste Romain Cyrille Pécuchet , of the same age and nearly identical temperament . They meet one hot summer day in 1838 by the canal Saint Martin and form an instant , symbiotic friendship . When Bouvard inherits a sizable fortune , the two decide to move to the countryside . They find a property near the town of Chavignolles in Normandy , between Caen and Falaise , and west of Rouen . Their search for intellectual stimulation leads them , over the course of years , to flounder through almost every branch of knowledge . Flaubert uses their quest to expose the hidden weaknesses of the sciences and arts , as nearly every project Bouvard and Pécuchet set their minds on comes to grief . Their endeavours are interleaved with the story of their deteriorating relations with the local villagers and the Revolution of 1848 is the occasion for much despondent discussion . The manuscript breaks off near the end of the novel . According to one set of Flaubert s notes , the townsfolk , enraged by Bouvard and Pécuchet s antics , try to force them out of the area , or have them committed . Disgusted with the world in general , Bouvard and Pécuchet ultimately decide to return to copying as before copier comme autrefois , giving up their intellectual boundering . The work ends with their eager preparations to construct a two seated desk on which to write . http garethlong . net bouvardAndPecuchet bouvardAndPecuchet . html This was originally intended to be followed by a large sample of what they copy out possibly a sottisier anthology of stupid quotations , the Dictionary of Received Ideas encyclopedia of commonplace notions , or a combination of both .

<|fantasy|>Three siblings , Ben , Tom , and Lindy Potter , meet Professor Savant while visiting the zoo one rainy day . On Halloween , Lindy is the only brave one to knock on the spookiest house on the block , which happens to belong to the Professor , and the three become more acquainted with him . After a second meeting , they begin spending time at the Professor s house , where he introduces them to games of concentration and observation . He reveals that there is a magic land called Whangdoodleland that can only be reached through the imagination , and that he is training them to accompany him there . Whangdoodleland is the home of the last Whangdoodle that lived in the world . Once the Whangdoodle , and other creatures that are now considered imaginary , lived in our world . However , fearing that people were losing their imaginations in the pursuit of power and greed , the Whangdoodle created a magic and peaceful world over which he reigns . The professor and the children explore this world . Each time the children return , they venture farther and farther into Whangdoodleland , intending to reach the palace where the Last Whangdoodle resides . However , the Whangdoodle s Prime Minister , the Oily Prock , does not want them to disturb His Highness , and sets up a number of traps , both in Whangdoodleland and the real world to prevent this meeting . He enlists the marvelous and funny creatures of the land in his effort , including the High Behind Splintercat , the Sidewinders , the Oinck , the Gazooks , the Tree Squeaks , and the Swamp Gaboons . The children use their imaginations , intelligence , and the friendship of another denizen , the Whiffle Bird to outwit the traps . The kids meet the last Whangdoodle . He wants a girl Whangdoodle who is exactly like him so he won t be lonely . The story ends when the professor makes that wish come true .

<|fantasy|>This booklet about otters features trivia questions , a giant poster , profiles of many of the otter characters that are featured in the series , and the much anticipated recipe for Shrimp and Hotroot Soup . The book offers insight into the culture and history of otters , listing important otter characters and customs from the series . It was illustrated by Jonathan Walker .

<|novel|>Set in Britain in the early to mid 1980s , the story surrounds the young gay protagonist , Nick Guest , who has come down from Oxford with a first in English and is to begin graduate studies at University College London . The novel begins in the summer of 1983 , shortly after Thatcher s landslide victory in the Parliamentary election of that year . Nick moves into the luxurious London home of the wealthy Fedden family . The son of the house , Toby , is his Oxford University classmate and best friend , and Nick s stay is meant to last for a short time while Toby and his parents Rachel , the daughter of a wealthy Jewish family , and Gerald , a successful businessman and just elected Tory MP are on holiday in France . Left at home with Nick is the Feddens daughter , Cat , who is bipolar and whom the Feddens are reluctant to leave on her own . Nick helps Cat through a minor crisis , and when her parents return they suggest he stay on indefinitely , since Cat has become attached to him and Toby is getting a place of his own . As a permanent member of the Feddens household , Nick experiences for the first time the world of the British upper class , observing them from his own middle class background . Nick remains a guest in the Fedden home until he is expelled at the end of the novel . Nick has his first romance with a black council worker , Leo , but a later relationship with Wani , the son of a rich Lebanese businessman , illuminates the materialism and ruthlessness of 1980s Thatcherite Britain . The book explores the tension between Nick s intimate relationship with the Feddens , in whose parties and holidays he participates , and the realities of his sexuality and gay life , which the Feddens accept only to the extent of never mentioning it . It explores themes of hypocrisy , homosexuality , madness and wealth , with the emerging AIDS crisis forming a backdrop to the book s conclusion .

<|fantasy|>This book takes place about fifteen years after the end of the original story , when survivors of the Dalton Quinn tree , a few Carther States jungle dwellers , and two London Tree Citizens have settled on a new tree . This Citizen s Tree has become a stable community which some believe may be too small to survive in the long run . Kendy , the recorded personality of a citizen of The State who exists in the computer of the original space ship that colonized the Smoke Ring , has become impatient . He decides to re establish contact with Citizen s Tree . Kendy manipulates a group into making contact with The Admiralty , a neighboring civilization at Gold s L4 Lagrange Point which they refer to as the Clump . The group explores this more advanced civilization with a mixture of wonder and trepidation . Although much of the story is a sort of travelogue exploring the Smoke Ring and the technology used in the unique environment , The Smoke Ring does spend more time on story and character development than The Integral Trees . One of the drivers for the story follows the latest operator of the silver suit , the Citizen s Tree s working spacesuit . Few are capable of operating the suit due to its size , as most humans in the Smoke Ring have evolved to be much too tall to fit into it . The job goes to the occasionally born dwarves who are , in fact , humans of normal for Earth height and build . A major sub plot develops around the latest silver suit operator s attempts to infiltrate The Admiralty to gain information , and The Admiralty s near obsession with capturing the Citizen s Tree s spacesuit . This story gives much more notice to the story of Kendy and the original mission . The chain of events that led to the colonization of the Smoke Ring through a mutiny on the ship is explored . After retrieving the crew s own records of the events , Kendy realizes that the crew had not mutinied at all , and that he had forced them off the ship , believing this to be in keeping with his orders from Earth . This was apparently blocked from his memory , and he suffers a form of breakdown when he learns or re learns the truth .

<|fantasy|>The novel takes place in a far future in which human societies have developed divergently on some 6000 planets . Many of these worlds are shared with intelligent nonhumans , although only one alien species the mysterious Xlv also possesses faster than light travel . In an attempt to find a stable defense against the planet destroying phenomenon known as cultural fugue a state of terminal runaway of cultural and technological complexity that destroys all life on a world via a singularity , many human worlds are aligned with one of two broad factions , one generally permissive the Sygn and one generally conservative the Family by today s standards . The story opens on the planet Rhyonon . Korga , a tall , misfit youth , undergoes the RAT Radical Anxiety Termination procedure , a form of psychosurgery which makes him a passive slave , after which he is known as Rat Korga . After he has lived under a number of masters , Rat s world is destroyed by a conflagration . This is later explained to be the result of cultural fugue , though the explanation is far from conclusive , especially since Xlv spacecraft were present in the Rhyonon system when the disaster occurred . Because he is deep inside a mine shaft at the time , Rat Korga survives though badly injured , the only known being to ever survive cultural fugue . The action then moves to Velm , a Sygn aligned world that humanity shares with its native three sexed intelligent species , the evelm , and where sexual relationships take many forms mdash monogamous , promiscuous , anonymous , and interspecies . Resident Marq Dyeth , an industrial diplomat who helps manage the transfer of technology between different societies , is informed that Rat Korga is his perfect sexual match by a former connection in the powerful and mysterious WEB . Equipping him with a prosthesis the rings of Vondramach Okk that restores the initiative he lost due to the RAT procedure , the WEB sends Rat Korga to Velm under the pretext that he is a student , and he and Marq begin a romantic affair . They go on an unusual hunting expedition and return to a dinner party which becomes chaotic due to the presence of the Thants and planetwide interest in the survivor . The Thants are humans of another world who were friends of the Dyeths until deciding to align themselves with the Family , which has promised them the position of focus unit on another world , Nepiy , making them effectively rulers of that planet . Soon after , Rat Korga must leave Velm and be permanently separated from Marq their pairing having been an alien cultural experiment because their interaction was creating a threat of cultural fugue .

<|novel|>It told a story of rural life , the power of gossip , public perception which people attempted to present of the family and individual , and of an inward looking society , similar to the Keeping up with the Joneses theme . The stir created by the book caused the author s schoolmaster father , James , to be boycotted , and eventually he had to emigrate the author himself never returned to the area . The novel resulted in a high profile court case by those who thought that they had been described . Hostility against the book led to its burning . MacNamara s novel has been reprinted several times , particularly when interest in the topic re emerges . Valley of the squinting windows has become a colloquial term , particularly in Ireland , for a society obsessed with providing neighbours and peers with a good perception of one s personal matters .

<|fantasy|>Meg Murry is worried about her brother Charles Wallace , a 6 year old genius who is bullied at school by the other children . The new principal of the elementary school is the former high school principal , Mr . Jenkins , who often disciplined Meg , and who Meg is sure has a grudge against her whole family . Meg tries to enlist Jenkins s help in protecting her brother , but is unsuccessful . On top of this , Meg discovers that Charles Wallace has a progressive disease which is leaving him short of breath . Their mother , a microbiologist , suspects it may have something to do with his mitochondria and the fictional farandolae that live within them . One afternoon , Charles Wallace tells Meg he saw a drive of dragons in the vegetable garden in their back yard . Meg goes out with him to investigate , but all they find is a pile of very odd feathers . Later , Meg has a frightening encounter with something that looks like Mr . Jenkins . Meg , Charles Wallace , and Calvin O Keefe discover that Charles Wallace s drive of dragons is a single creature named Proginoskes . Progo , as he is quickly nicknamed , insists on being called a cherubim instead of a cherub because he is practically plural , having a multitude of wings and eyes . The children also encounter a tall robed being named Blajeny , who informs them that he is a Teacher , and that they and Proginoskes have all been called to his class . They also encounter a snake that lives in their wall , Louise the Larger , who is also a Teacher . Meg learns that the galaxy is threatened by beings called Echthroi , who seek to erase the entire universe by un Naming things . She soon has to save Mr . Jenkins from this fate , by Naming him . Part of the task is to distinguish the real Mr . Jenkins from two Echthroi doubles , but it also means that she must look past her personal grudge , find the goodness in Mr . Jenkins , and let herself love him . The characters then learn that Echthroi are destroying Charles Wallace s farandolae . They travel inside one of his mitochondria , which is named Yadah , and turn the tide by convincing a larval farandola to take root and accept its role as a mature fara , against the urgings of an Echthros . In the process , Meg is nearly Xed , unnamed and Mr . Jenkins is invaded by his Echthros doubles . Proginoskes sacrifices himself to fill in the emptiness of the Echthroi , Charles Wallace s life is saved , and everything returns to normal .

<|romance|>When Joseph Mason of Groby Park , Yorkshire , died , he left his estate to his family . A codicil to his will , however , left Orley Farm near London to his much younger second wife and infant son . The will and the codicil were in her handwriting , and there were three witnesses , one of whom was no longer alive . A bitterly fought court case confirmed the codicil . Twenty years pass . Lady Mason lives at Orley Farm with her adult son , Lucius . Samuel Dockwrath , a tenant , is asked to leave by Lucius , who wants to try new intensive farming methods . Aggrieved , and knowing of the original case John Kenneby , one of the codicil witnesses , had been an unsuccessful suitor of his wife Miriam Usbech , Dockwrath investigates and finds a second deed signed by the same witnesses on the same date , though they can remember signing only one . He travels to Groby Park in Yorkshire , where Joseph Mason the younger lives with his comically parsimonious wife , and persuades Mason to have Lady Mason prosecuted for forgery . The prosecution fails , but Lady Mason later confesses privately that she committed the forgery , and is prompted by conscience to give up the estate . There are various subplots . The main one deals with a slowly unfolding romance between Felix Graham a young and relatively poor barrister without family and Madeline Staveley , daughter of Judge Stavely of Noningsby . Graham has a long standing engagement to the penniless Mary Snow , whom he supports and educates while she is being moulded to be his wife . Between the Staveleys at Alston and Orley Farm at Hamworth lies the Cleve , where Sir Peregrine Orme lives with his daughter in law , Mrs . Orme , and grandson , Peregrine . Sir Peregrine falls in love with Lady Mason and is briefly engaged to her , but she calls off the match when she realises the seriousness of the court case . Meanwhile , Mr . Furnival , another barrister , befriends Lady Mason , arousing the jealousy of his wife . His daughter , Sophia , has a brief relationship with Augustus Stavely and a brief engagement to Lucius Mason . Eventually Furnival and his wife are reconciled , and Sophia s engagement is dropped . Sophia is portrayed as an intelligent woman who writes comically skillful letters .

<|fantasy|>The storyline involves two factions , both capable of time travel , engaged in long term war with each other . Their method of battle involves changing the outcome of events throughout history . The two opposing groups are nicknamed the Spiders and the Snakes . Their soldiers are recruited from various places and times Cretan Amazons , Roman legionnaires , Hussars , Wehrmacht Landsers , American GIs , Space Commandos , and soldiers from the armies of Alexander the Great , Genghis Khan , Napoleon , and Stalin and may find themselves fighting side by side or on opposing sides . Likewise medical staff and entertainers are inducted into the temporal war to provide rest and relaxation for weary combatants . The soldiers do not know how the war began or if it has an end . They also do not know the true form or identity of the Spiders or the Snakes . No one knows how those nicknames were chosen , or whether they are in any way accurate . The action of the story occurs in a rest and relaxation base between the changing time lanes . The plot has the form of a locked room mystery .

<|mystery|>In 1970 , the first person narrator , a 23 year old college drop out by the name of Willie Traynor , comes to Clanton , Mississippi for an internship at the local newspaper , The Ford County Times . However the editor , Wilson Caudle , drives the newspaper into bankruptcy through years of mismanagement . Willie decides to buy the paper spontaneously for fifty thousand dollars , through money from his wealthy grandmother , and becomes the editor and owner of The Ford County Times . Shortly after this , a member of the notorious and scandalous Padgitt family brutally rapes and kills a young widow named Rhoda Kassellaw . The murderer , Danny Padgitt , is tried in front of a jury and is found guilty . Prior to being sentenced , Danny threatens to kill each of the jury members , should they convict him . Although they do find him guilty , the jury cannot decide whether to send him to life in prison or to Death Row , so Danny is sentenced to life in prison at the Mississippi State Penitentiary . After only nine years in prison , Danny Padgitt is paroled and returns to Clanton . Immediately , two jury members are killed and one is nearly killed by a bomb . Jury member and close friend of Willie , Miss Callie Ruffin , reveals that the recent victims were the jurors who were against sentencing Danny to Death Row . Callie Ruffin is black , and was the first black on a jury trying a white criminal in Ford County . With her husband , she has a family of highly accomplished adult children , who live outside of Mississippi . Convinced that Danny is exacting his revenge , as promised , the judge of Clanton issues an arrest for Danny Padgitt . At Padgitt s trial , the former lover of Rhoda Kassellaw , Hank Hooten , guns down Danny Padgitt in the courtroom by positioning himself on the balcony . Willie later discovers that the assassin is also a schizophrenic and would often hear the voices of the victim s children in his head , convincing him to murder Danny and the three jurors who voted against his conviction to Death Row . After nine years of ownership , Willie sells The Ford County Times for 1 . 5 million dollars . Soon after , Callie Ruffin dies of a heart attack , and the book ends with Willie writing her obituary .

<|fantasy|>Morgon of Hed and Raederle of An set out to discover the answers to the questions Who are the shape changers who pursue them ? , and Where is the High One , the source of the land law binding the realm together ? Along the way they are helped by the wizards of the realm , recently released from the bonds in which Ghisteslwchlohm had held them by Morgon , and by the land heirs rulers . After confronting Ghisteslwchlohm in the city of Lungold , where the wizard once had ruled , Morgon is imprisoned by the shape changers within Erlenstar Mountain , as they don t want to kill him . They , the exiled Earth Masters , need him to reach the High One , who prevents them from exercising full power . He escapes with the help of Raederle and someone who is later revealed to be the High One in disguise . Seeking refuge in the far north , he begins to learn the land law of each kingdom . Once he has partially learned all of the land law does Morgon discover that the High One had journeyed with him as Deth and the wizard Yrth the High One tells Morgon at the top of Wind Plain that he Morgon is the High One s land heir . When the High One is killed by Ghisteslwchlohm , now possessed by the shape changers , with Morgon s three starred sword , Morgon learns to shape and or bind the winds to overcome the Earth Masters and bring peace to the land he truly is the High One s heir . In the trilogy , land law resides with the land ruler of each of the kingdoms within the realm . Land rulers are ostensibly aware of all of the entities within their kingdom . They can sense , each creature , each plant , each rock . The High One , in McKillip s creation , seems to have the same relationship with the entire realm , as he started to bind all of the land law when he sensed that the Earth Master Eriel began to gather power for her own ends . When the land law passes on , the land heir suddenly becomes aware of everything in his or her kingdom , or in the entire realm .

<|fantasy|>The novel is set in a world of environmental catastrophe and extreme socio economic inequality . Outside crowded cities controlled by a police state , a class of wealthy and powerful Farmers exploit a rural prison labor population and hunt down subversive Travellers who have broken free of social controls . The novel is considered influential as both Travellers and the idea of the Earthwork have become part of public life in Britain .

<|novel|>The novel concerns the Patriot League , a fictional American baseball league , and the national Communist conspiracy to eliminate its history because it has become a fully open communist organization .

<|fantasy|>The book continues some time after the events of Heir to the Empire . Prior to the Clone Wars , the Old Republic had constructed a fleet of 200 Dreadnaughts huge forerunners to Imperial Star Destroyers that were highly automated . This reduced their crew complement from 16 , 000 to 2 , 000 without diminishing their firepower . The flagship of this fleet was the Katana and hence became known as the Katana fleet . Unfortunately , a virus infected the crews of the entire fleet and drove them insane . The madness caused the crews to slave the controls of all ships in the fleet to the Katana and send them all into hyperspace . The fleet was never seen again until veteran smuggler Talon Karrde discovers it through a lucky accident several years before the events of the first movie . Now having full access to Emperor Palpatine s private storehouse on the planet Wayland , Imperial Navy Grand Admiral Thrawn presses his advantage to marshal more forces for the battle against the New Republic . When his forces capture one of Karrde s colleagues who also knew where the fleet was , he assembles a clone army from the storehouse to take over the fleet . Han Solo and Lando Calrissian try to recruit former Republic Senator Garm bel Iblis to join the fight against the Empire . However , the two face stern opposition from him because he fell out with Mon Mothma in the early stages of the Rebellion and waged his own private war against the Empire . They also discover that Bel Iblis fleet also has Katana warships . Elsewhere , Jedi Master Joruus C baoth uses the Force to summon Luke Skywalker . Luke responds to the summons and begins instruction with C baoth on the planet Jomark . However , the presence of Mara Jade complicates things further , especially when it is revealed that she was a former agent of the Emperor . Admiral Ackbar is later exonerated of the treason charges filed against him . With Noghri captive Khabarakh in tow , Leia , R2D2 , C3PO , and Chewbacca travel to Khabarakh s home planet of Honoghr . She learns of the Empire s deception of the Noghri and convinces them to support the New Republic . After escaping C baoth , Luke rejoins Lando and Han in securing the Katana fleet against Thrawn s troops . However , over the course of the battle , they find out that Thrawn has captured all but 15 of the Dreadnaughts . Jade is also knocked out during the fight when her fighter is shot down .

<|fantasy|>The book discusses various psychological and spiritual ideas that are rooted in many ancient Eastern Traditions , such as opening to new possibilities can help an individual to establish a connection with the Divine . The main character of the novel undertakes a journey to find and understand a series of nine spiritual insights on an ancient manuscript in Peru . The book is a first person narrative of spiritual awakening . The narrator is in a transitional period of his life , and begins to notice instances of synchronicity , which is the belief that coincidences have a meaning personal to those who experience them . The story opens with the male narrator becoming reacquainted with an old female friend , who tells him about the Insights , which are contained in a manuscript dating to 600 BC , which has been only recently translated . After this encounter leaves him curious , he decides to go to Peru . On the airplane , he meets a historian who also happens to be interested in the manuscript . As well , he learns that powerful figures within the Peruvian government and the Catholic Church are opposed to the dissemination of the Insights . This is dramatically illustrated when police try to arrest and then shoot the historian soon after his arrival . The narrator then learns the Insights , one by one , often experiencing the Insight before actually reading the text , while being pursued by forces of the Church and the Peruvian government . In the end , he succeeds in learning the first nine Insights and returns to the United States , with a promise of a Tenth Insight soon to be revealed . The Insights are given only through summaries and illustrated by events in the plot . The text of no complete Insight is given , which the narrator claims is for brevity s sake he notes that the partial translation of the Ninth Insight was 20 typewritten pages in length . In the novel , the Maya civilization left ruins in Peru where the manuscript was found , whereupon the Incas took up residence in the abandoned Maya cities after the Maya had reached an energy vibration level which made them cross a barrier into a completely spiritual reality .

<|crime|>The Locked Room has two plots running simultaneously . Larsson and Kollberg are extremely reluctantly part of a special task force that needs to solve a spree of bank robberies . Martin Beck is given a pity job after recovering from being shot at the conclusion of The Abominable Man he needs to solve a classic situation of the genre the locked room mystery . The incompetence of the Swedish police force has spread to the point that all three detectives are severely hindered in their work . One criminal walks free for a heinous crime he did commit , then gets to do hard time for a crime he did not .

<|fantasy|>Carthoris is madly in love with Thuvia . This love was foreshadowed at the end of the previous novel . Unfortunately Thuvia is promised to Kulan Tith , Jeddak of Kaol . On Barsoom nothing can break an engagement between a man and woman except death , although the new suitor may not cause that death . Thus it is that Thuvia will have none of him . This situation leaves Carthoris in a predicament . As Thuvia suffers the common Burroughsian heroine s fate of being kidnapped and in need of rescue , Carthoris goal is abetted by circumstances . Thus he sets out to find the love of his life . His craft is sabotaged and he finds himself deep in the undiscovered south of Barsoom , in the ruins of ancient Aanthor . Thuvia s kidnappers , the Dusar , have taken her there as well , and Carthoris is just in time to spot Thuvia and her kidnappers under assault by a green man of the hordes of Torquas . Carthoris leaps to her rescue in the style of his father . The rescue takes Carthoris and his love to ancient Lothar , home of an ancient fair skinned human race gifted with the ability to create lifelike phantasms from pure thought . They habitually use large numbers of phantom bowmen paired with real and phantom banths Barsoomian lions to defend themselves from the hordes of Torquas . The kidnapping of Thuvia is done in such a way that Carthoris is blamed . This ignites a war between the red nations of Barsoom . Carthoris must try to be back in time with Thuvia to stop the war from breaking loose . Carthoris wonders if his love will ever be requited by the promised Thuvia .

<|fantasy|>In the prologue , which takes place in 1985 , Rose Daniels s husband , Norman , beats her while she is four months pregnant , causing her to suffer a miscarriage . Rose briefly considers leaving Norman but dismisses the idea Norman is a policeman , and is excellent at finding people . Norman also has a violent temper and was recently accused of assaulting an African American woman named Wendy Yarrow . The subsequent lawsuit and Internal Affairs investigation has made him even more volatile . Nine years later , when Rose is making the bed , she notices a drop of blood on the sheet from her nose the night before Norman had punched her in the face for spilling iced tea on him . Rose realizes that she has passively suffered through Norman s abuse for fourteen years and that if she continues to put up with it , he may well eventually kill her . Rose reluctantly decides to leave Norman , departing from her unidentified city on a bus , with their bank card . Once Norman realizes Rose s flight , he resolves to hunt her down . Rose arrives in Midwestern city , disoriented and afraid . When she arrives at the bus station , she meets a man named Peter Slowik , who guides her to a women s shelter . There , she quickly makes several friends and , with the help of the shelter s director , gets an apartment and a job as a hotel housekeeper . Rose decides to pawn her engagement ring , only to learn that it is absolutely worthless . However , she notices a painting of a woman in a rose madder gown and immediately falls in love with it . She trades her ring for the painting , which has no artist s signature . Outside , a stranger asks her to read a passage from a novel , and is so impressed that he offers her a job recording audio books . Then , Bill Steiner , the nice gentleman who owns the pawnshop , asks her for a date the two begin a relationship . Rose discovers that that the painting seems to periodically change , and is eventually able to travel through it . On the other side , she encounters a woman called Dorcas , who resembles Wendy Yarrow , as well as the woman in the rose madder gown . Rose refers to her as Rose Madder because of her gown and her evident insanity . Rose Madder asks Rosie to rescue her baby from an underground labyrinth inhabited by a one eyed bull called Erinyes . Rose does so , and Rose Madder promises to repay her . Rose returns to her world and puts the strange incident at the back of her mind . bg de Das Bild Roman es El retrato de Rose Madder fr Rose Madder it Rose Madder he hu A két Rose ja pl Rose Madder pt Rose Madder ro Rose Madder roman ru fi Naisen raivo sv Rasande Rose tr Çılgınlığın Ötesi

<|romance|>The story is set within a framing narrative told by a supporting character from The Prisoner of Zenda . The frame implies that the events related in both books took place in the late 1870s and early 1880s . This story commences three years after the conclusion of Zenda , and deals with the same fictional country somewhere in Germanic Middle Europe , the kingdom of Ruritania . Most of the same characters recur Rudolf Elphberg , the dissolute absolute monarch of Ruritania Rudolf Rassendyll , the English gentleman who had acted as his political decoy , being his distant cousin and look alike Flavia , the princess , now queen Rupert of Hentzau , the dashing well born villain Fritz von Tarlenheim , the loyal courtier . Queen Flavia , dutifully but unhappily married to her cousin Rudolf V , writes to her true love Rudolf Rassendyll . The letter is carried by von Tarlenheim to be delivered by hand , but it is stolen by the exiled Rupert of Hentzau , who sees in it a chance to return to favour by informing the pathologically jealous and paranoid King . Rassendyll returns to Ruritania to aid the Queen , but is once more forced to impersonate the King after Rupert shoots Rudolf V . In turn , Rassendyll kills Rupert , but is assassinated in the hour of triumph by one of Rupert s henchmen and thus is spared the crisis of conscience over whether or not to continue the royal deception for years . He is buried as the King in a state funeral , and Flavia reigns on alone , the last of the Elphberg dynasty .

<|fantasy|>Tono Bungay is narrated by George Ponderevo , who is persuaded by his uncle to help develop the business of selling Tono Bungay , a patent medicine created by his ambitious uncle Edward . George devotes seven years to organizing the production and manufacture of a product which he believes to be a damned swindle . He then quits day to day involvement with the enterprise in favor of aeronautics , but remains associated with his uncle Edward and his affairs . His uncle becomes a financier of the first order and is on the verge of achieving social as well as economic dominance when his business empire collapses . George tries to rescue his uncle s failing finances by stealing quantities of a radioactive compound called quap from an island on the coast of West Africa , but the expedition is unsuccessful . His nephew engineers his uncle s escape from England in an experimental aircraft he has built , but the ruined entrepreneur turned financier catches pneumonia on the flight and dies in a French village near Bordeaux , despite George s efforts to save him . The novel ends with George finding a new occupation designing destroyers for the highest bidder .

<|fantasy|>The novel is set in the 10th century . The Caliph of Baghdad Al Muqtadir Arabic sends his ambassador , Ahmad ibn Fadlan Arabic , to the king of the Volga Bulgars . He never arrives but is instead captured by a group of Vikings . This group is sent on a hero s quest to the north . Ahmad ibn Fadlan is taken along , as the thirteenth member of their group , to bring good luck . There they battle with the mist monsters , or wendol , a relict group of Neanderthals who go to battle wearing bear skins like the berserkers found in the original Beowulf story . Eaters of the Dead is narrated as a scientific commentary on an old manuscript . The narrator describes how the story told is a composite of extant commentaries and translations of the works of the original story teller . There are several references during the narration to a possible change or mistranslation of the original story by later copiers . The story is told by several different voices the editor narrator , the translators of the script and the original author , ibn Fadlan , as well as his descriptions of stories told by others . A sense of authenticity is supported by occasional explanatory footnotes with references to a mixture of factual and fictitious sources .

<|fantasy|>A five year old Cro Magnon girl is orphaned and left homeless by an earthquake that destroys her family s camp . She wanders aimlessly , naked and unable to feed herself , for several days . Having been attacked and nearly killed by a cave lion and suffering from starvation , exhaustion , and infection of her wounds , she collapses , on the verge of death . The narrative switches to a group of Neanderthal people , the Clan , whose cave was destroyed in the earthquake and who are searching for a new home . The medicine woman of the group , Iza , discovers the girl and asks permission from Brun , the head of the Clan , to help the ailing child , despite the child being clearly a member of the Others , the distrusted antagonists of the Clan . The child is adopted by Iza and her brother Creb . Creb is this group s Mog ur or shaman , despite being deformed as a result of the difficult birth resulting from his abnormally large head and the later loss of an arm and leg after being attacked by a cave bear . The clan call her Ayla , because they can t pronounce her name . Immediately after Iza begins to help her , the clan discovers a huge , beautiful cave many of the people begin to regard Ayla as lucky , especially since good fortune continues to come their way as she lives among them . In Auel s books , the Neanderthal possess only limited vocal apparatus and rarely speak , but have a highly developed sign language . They do not laugh or even smile , and they do not cry when Ayla weeps , Iza thinks she has an eye disease . Ayla s different thought processes lead her to break important Clan customs , particularly the taboo against females handling weapons . She is self willed and spirited , but tries hard to fit in with the Neanderthals , although she has to learn everything first hand she does not possess the ancestral memories of the Clan which enable them to do certain tasks after being shown only once . Her main antagonist is Broud , son of the leader , an egomaniac who feels that she takes credit and attention away from him . As the two mature , the hatred between them festers . When they are young adults , Broud rapes Ayla , but she becomes pregnant , and rejoices in the birth of a son . The book ends with Creb s death , Broud s succession to the leadership , and his banishment of Ayla , who sets off to find other people of her own kind . She is not allowed to take her son with her . The separation haunts her with guilt and grief for the rest of the series .

<|fantasy|>Oswald discovers the world s most powerful aphrodisiac and with the aid of a female accomplice they place the aphrodisiac inside chocolate truffles made by Prestat of London . By this means , the accomplice seduces the world s most famous men , with the intent of selling their semen to women wishing to be impregnated by them . The semen is collected via condoms .

<|mystery|>The book deals with 12 year old Cory Mackenson , who grows up in the town of Zephyr , Alabama . The story begins as Cory s father , Tom , watches a car drive straight into a deep lake and sink to the bottom with a passenger inside . Tom jumps in and tries to save the driver of the car , only to discover that the man is actually a murder victim . This vision , and the realization that there is evil in the small town of Zephyr , is enough to haunt Cory s father . Meanwhile , Cory has several adventures with his friends Johnny , Davy Ray , and Ben , such as flying with their dogs on the last day of school .

<|fantasy|>The main plot involved a virus that breaks out and leaves the humans residing on Earth doomed . However , in a desperate attempt before the end , all humanity s resources are dedicated to a crash program to produce a deep space ark , capable of seeding humanity on a new world . The ship is crewed by six clones teenage versions of people who achieved great works during the ark project and equipped with the memories of their donors . Prior to its arrival , however , the crew is awoken prematurely to face a threat to the ship , before their memories are complete . They must come to terms with the workings of the ship , the dangers faced by their ship , the realization that they are clones , and their ultimate destiny to save their race .

<|novel|>Set just after World War I , The Death Ship describes the predicament of merchant seamen who lack documentation of citizenship and cannot find legal residence or employment in any nation . The narrator is Gerard Gales , an US sailor who claims to be from New Orleans , and who is stranded in Antwerp without passport or working papers . Unable to prove his identity or his eligibility for employment , Gales is repeatedly arrested and deported from one country to the next , by government officials who do not want to be bothered with either assisting or prosecuting him . When he finally manages to find work , it is on the Yorikke , the dangerous and decrepit ship of the title , where undocumented workers from around the world are treated as expendable slaves . The term death ship refers to any boat so decrepit that it is worth more to its owners overinsured and sunk than it would be worth afloat . The title of the book is translated directly from the German Das Totenschiff in English , they are called coffin ships .

<|fantasy|>The story is about the Gregg family that hunts ducks for fun and is narrated by an unnamed eight year old girl who lives next door to them . The girl possesses a power to punish people who make her cross called the magic finger but she has no control over what it does or when it happens . This gets her into big trouble , she wishes she did not have this finger because it is taking over her life her dislike of her power stems from an incident at school , where she gave her teacher whiskers and a tail when she was punished for doing badly in a spelling test . Although they are her friends , the girl becomes annoyed at the Greggs shooting and killing ducks and thus she points the magic finger at them . The next day the Greggs wake up as tiny people with wings instead of arms and their house is taken over by four human size ducks with arms instead of wings . The Greggs are forced to leave and build a nest in one of the trees in their garden where they spend the night . The next morning they wake up to find the large ducks with the Greggs guns standing under their tree , threatening to shoot in the same way that they have shot ducks . The Greggs promise never to hunt again and are changed back into normal humans . The next day , the girl goes to their house and finds the family smashing up their guns and setting up graves for the birds that they killed . They have even changed their name to Egg ! The girl feels that things may have gotten a little out of hand but then hears a gun fired by another neighbouring family , the Coopers . She thus sets off , telling the Greggs that the Coopers will be nesting in the trees that night . ISBN 0 04 833080 4 hardcover , 1968 ISBN 0 06 031382 5 library binding , 1966 ISBN 0 06 222222 7 hardcover , 1966 bg es El dedo mágico it Il dito magico he nl De tovervinger

<|fantasy|>A hideous , vindictive , spiteful couple known as the Twits live together in a brick house without windows as they believe that they are less likely to be spied on that way with their abused , mistreated family of pet monkeys , the Muggle Wumps , and they continuously play practical jokes on each other out of hatred for one another Mrs . Twit drops her glass eye into her husband s beer mug and fills his dinner plate with worms claiming that it is a new brand of spaghetti , Mr . Twit constantly lengthens his wife s cane and chair and convinces her that she is shrinking and needs to be stretched out using helium balloons in hopes of ridding himself of her once and for all , only for her to figure out how to land and learn about Mr . Twit s charade in the end . However , the book also chronicles the Twits mistreatment of those around them Mr . Twit apparently coats tree limbs with glue in hopes of catching birds for pie , but when a group of little boys wind up sticking to the tree he very nearly winds up forcing them to endure the same fate until they figure out how to free themselves . Fortunately the Roly Poly Bird , a character also featured in several other works by Dahl , with the assistance of the Muggle Wumps , manages to caution unsuspecting birds of the fate that awaits them if they perch on the tree on the Twits property . However , the Muggle Wumps , tired of being forced to stand on their heads by their owners who believe that they can start a circus of monkeys that way , with the help of the Roly Poly Bird , use Mr . Twit s powerful glue to attach the couple s furniture to their ceiling while they are away to trick them into thinking that they are upside down and that their ceiling is actually their floor , and the glue permanently affixes them to the ceiling so that they catch the Terrible Shrinks the disease that Mr . Twit had convinced Mrs . Twit that she had earlier in the book , resulting in them shrinking away into nothing , leaving the Muggle Wumps free to escape .

<|fantasy|>George is an 8 year old boy who lives in a farm with his mother , father and grandmother . He is fed up with his Grandma s selfishness , grumpiness and her attitude towards him , especially after he becomes frightened by her dark secrets . George seeks to cure it by brewing a very special medicine for her . He makes the product by collecting many harmful products throughout the house along with some animal pills , then he puts them in a giant saucepan , boils them and gives a spoonful to Grandma , only to end up making her taller than a house . George tries out the medicine on a brown hen in the yard , and it causes her to grow several times bigger . Moments later , George s mother and father , Mr . and Mrs . Kranky , return home , and they are both astounded by these events . Mr . Kranky is excited by the sight of the giant hen , and exclaims that he had been wanting to make giant animals for giant food . Together , George and his father enjoy sampling the medicine to most of the farm animals pigs , cows , sheep , George s pony Jack Frost and Alma the nanny goat , which makes them giant animals . However , Mrs . Kranky starts worrying about Grandma , and eventually , the Crane Company hoists her down . Once back on the ground , Grandma excitedly hops around the farm , but is forced to sleep in the barn that night since she is too tall to go back inside the house . However , she enjoys it a lot . The next day , Mr . Kranky announces that they will continue making the medicine so it can be sold to other farms in the hopes of ending world hunger . Unfortunately , George cannot remember the exact ingredients he had used the day before . After several failed attempts resulting in a potion that extends a chicken s legs , a potion that extends a chicken s neck , and a potion that makes the chicken shrink , Grandma strolls over to the family and demands for her cup of tea . Then she notices the cup of medicine in George s hand , and , mistaking it for tea , snatches it from him . She drinks it down , and the resulting overdose causes her to shrink into nothing . Mrs . Kranky is devastated at first , but soon agrees with her husband about her absence removing a nuisance from their lives . George then discovers that for two long days he had touched with his fingertips the edge of a magical world .

<|fantasy|>The story itself is loosely based around Billy , a young boy who has always dreamed of owning a sweet shop , especially since there is an abandoned one named The Grubber an old English word for sweet shop near where he lives . One day , he finds that the old building has been renovated and has become the head office for the Ladderless Window Cleaning Company . Billy then meets its workers , a Giraffe with an extendable neck , a Pelican or Pelly as he is called by the others who can retract his upper beak , and a Monkey , whom he then befriends . They all band together when they receive a letter from the Duke of Hampshire asking them to clean the windows of Hampshire House . When they get there , things go smoothly until the Giraffe and the Monkey , while cleaning the windows of the Duchess s bedroom , spot a burglar who attempts to steal the Duchess s diamond jewellery . The Pelican then flies in and catches the burglar in his beak , holding him there while the others panic . Eventually , the police arrive to arrest the burglar , whom the Chief of Police identifies as The Cobra , one of the world s most dangerous cat burglars . As a reward for retrieving the Duchess s diamonds , the Duke invites the L . W . C . C . to live on his estate as his personal helper . Billy s dreams come true because the Giraffe , Pelican and Monkey will no longer be needing the Grubber building with a little help from the Duke , the Grubber is reopened into the most fantastic sweet shop in the whole town even selling sweets from the Willy Wonka company . And they live happily ever after .

<|fantasy|>Mr . Hoppy is a shy old man who lives alone in an apartment . For many years , he has been secretly in love with Mrs . Silver , a woman who lives below him . Mr . Hoppy frequently leans over his balcony and exchanges a polite conversation with Mrs . Silver , but he is too shy to disclose how he feels . Mrs . Silver has a small pet tortoise , Alfie , whom she loves very much . One morning , Mrs . Silver mentions to Mr . Hoppy that even though she has had Alfie for many years , he weighs only thirteen ounces , and she desires that he become a more attractive weight . This inspires Mr . Hoppy to claim that he can make tortoises grow bigger with a magic spell , which he tells Mrs . Silver will make Alfie grow if it is whispered into his ear three times a day . The title of the book comes from this spell , a simple invocation for a tortoise to grow , but with each word written backwards and some spaced unusually , such as Esio Trot tortoise . Mrs . Silver is doubtful , but agrees to try . Mr . Hoppy then buys many tortoises of various sizes from various pet shops , none that weigh less than thirteen ounces . He houses them in a corral within the living room of his apartment , and with the help of a special long claw , can grab one tortoise from Mrs . Silver s balcony and replace it with a slightly larger one while she is away at work . All of the tortoises are similar enough in appearance to Alfie that Mrs . Silver never notices that an exchange has been made . Due to the gradual nature of the change , Mrs . Silver does not notice that her pet tortoise is growing until he can no longer fit into his house . She exclaims to Mr . Hoppy that his spell has been effective , and verifies that Alfie now weighs twenty seven ounces . He asks to see and runs down the stairs to do so . Mrs . Silver embraces him in admiration of his spell and , emboldened by this gesture , Mr . Hoppy proposes to her , which she accepts , having been expecting that he would for some time . Mr . Hoppy secretly returns all the tortoises in his living room back to their respective pet shops , and Mr . Hoppy and Mrs . Silver are married a few weeks later . It is then revealed that the real Alfie was among those returned to the pet stores . A short time later , he was bought by a young girl who kept him in her backyard where , twenty years later , by the time she has children of her own , Alfie has finally grown to twenty seven ounces .

<|fantasy|>The Reverend Robert Lee , the new vicar of Nibbleswicke , is suffering from a rare and acutely embarrassing condition Back to Front Dyslexia , a fictional type of dyslexia that causes the sufferer to say the most important word often being the verb in a sentence backwards , creating comedic situations . For example , instead of saying knits , he will say stink god would be dog etc . It affects only his speech , and he doesn t realize he s doing it , but the parishioners of Nibbleswicke are shocked and confused by his seemingly outrageous comments . However , a cure is found walking backwards everywhere for the rest of his life , and the mild mannered vicar can resume normal service .

<|novel|>The plot concerns the marriage of Michael Anton and Pauline Barclay , who meet when he tends to her bloodied brow in his family s grocery store , located in a primarily Eastern European conclave in Baltimore , in December 1941 . They marry after Michael is discharged from the Army with a permanent injury caused by a deliberate shot from someone he assaulted . Michael and Pauline settle in a small apartment above the store , but their widely different temperaments and expectations quickly create dissension in the relationship . He is repressed , controlling , and quiet she is loud , emotional , and romantic . At Pauline s insistence , they move to the suburbs , where they raise three children Lindy , George and Karen . Lindy runs away to San Francisco in 1960 and becomes involved in the growing drug culture . Eight years later , her parents retrieve Pagan , their three year old grandchild , while Lindy detoxes in a rehab community . The slowly crumbling marriage finally dissolves when Michael leaves Pauline on their 30th anniversary . For Michael , convinced that he and Pauline didn t have the faintest idea what they were doing when they married or how to conduct a marriage that they were amateurs , divorce is a salvation . For Pauline , it s a tragedy that leaves her in despair .

<|novel|>The narrator of the novella is the journalist Paul Pokriefke , who was born on 30 January 1945 on the day that the Strength Through Joy ship , the Wilhelm Gustloff , was sunk . His young mother to be , Tulla Pokriefke born in Danzig , and already known to readers from two parts of the Danzig Trilogy , Cat and Mouse and Dog Years , found herself among the more than 10 , 000 passengers on the ship and was among those saved when it went down . According to Tulla , Paul was born at the moment the ship sank , on board the torpedo boat which had rescued them . His life is heavily influenced by these circumstances , above all because his mother Tulla continually urges him to fulfill his duty and to commemorate the event in writing . In the course of his research , the narrator discovers by chance that his estranged son Konny has also developed an interest in the ship as a result of Tulla s influence . On his website blutzeuge . de he explores the murder of Gustloff and the sinking of the ship , in part through a dialogue in which he adopts the role of Gustloff , and that of David Frankfurter is taken by another young man , Wolfgang Stremplin . The two eventually meet in Schwerin , Konny s and Gustloff s hometown . Wolfgang , though not Jewish , projects a Jewish persona . He spits three times on the former memorial to Gustloff , thus desecrating it in Konny s eyes . Konny shoots him dead , mirroring the shooting of Gustloff by Frankfurter after the deed he hands himself in to the police and state that , I shot because I am a German Frankfurter had said , I shot because I am a Jew . The narrator is eventually forced to realise that his imprisoned son has himself become a new martyr , and is celebrated as such by neo Nazis on the Internet .

<|childrens|>The story begins in the Mossflower Wood , where a community of animals suffers under the tyranny of a ruling wildcat named Verdauga . When a mouse from the north , Martin the Warrior , comes to Mossflower Woods , he is captured and brought to the castle Kotir , where his sword is broken by Verdauga s daughter , Tsarmina , and he is imprisoned within the Kotir dungeons . Meanwhile Tsarmina poisons Verdauga with the help of the vixen Fortunata and blames it on her brother Gingivere . She places her brother in prison and takes the throne for herself . While in the dungeons , Martin eventually meets Gonff the Mousethief , who was imprisoned for stealing food from the Kotir storages . Meanwhile , Abbess Germaine and the surviving members of Loamhedge , an abbey stricken with the Great Sickness , arrive and join the woodlanders . Martin and Gonff escape with help from the Corim Council Of Resistance In Mossflower and join with Dinny the mole and Log a Log Bigclub of the Guosim , on a quest to find Boar the Fighter , Badger Lord of Salamandastron . Bella , Boar s daughter , believed only her father could defeat Tsarmina and put an end to her cruel reign . After a journey through Bat Mountpit and the Toadlands , the companions reach Salamandastron and meet with Boar the Fighter . Boar then reforges Martin s broken sword with metal from a meteorite , but is killed while fighting his mortal enemy Ripfang the searat who had attacked Salamandastron several times before . Ripfang s former oarslaves including Martin s childhood friend Timballisto and several members of Log a Log s former tribe take over the searat ship , Bloodwake , with help from Martin and his allies . They return to Mossflower Woods , where Martin kills Tsarmina and destroys Kotir by both flooding it and knocking over its walls with a ballista . In the final battle with Tsarmina , Martin is left near death . With the help of the woodlanders , he eventually recovers , but his memory is never the same thereafter , as evidenced in The Legend of Luke . From the ruins of Kotir would eventually rise what would later become Redwall Abbey , with the flooded area becoming the Abbey Pond . The book ends with Bella s son , Sunflash , finding Salamandastron and becoming its ruler .

<|childrens|>This book revolves around the badger Lord Brocktree , father of Boar the Fighter , grandfather of Bella of Brockhall , and great grandfather of Sunflash the Mace . He sets out to find the ancient badger mountain stronghold of Salamandastron , aided by the quick talking haremaid Dorothea Duckfontein Dillworthy and otter Ruffgar Brookback . Meanwhile , in Salamandastron , trouble comes for Brocktree s father , Lord Stonepaw . Years of peace have left the mountain stronghold with few fighters , and those that remain are long past their prime , including Stonepaw himself . The wildcat Ungatt Trunn , son of Mortspear , Highland King of the North , lays siege to the fortress with his Blue Hordes . Eventually the mountain is overrun , leading to the deaths of many hares and even of Stonepaw himself , who dies valiantly defending his hares , taking many vermin with him as he does . The wildcat takes at least sixty hares as prisoners , but through the efforts of warrior Stiffener Medick and his otter friend Brogalaw , they escape . Lord Brocktree gets an army from Bucko Bigbones , after Dotti defeats him in a contest . Thanks to the Bark Crew , the group of guerrillas formed by Stiffener and Brogalaw to harass Trunn , the Blue Hordes are slowly starved , their supplies cut off . Ungatt Trunn tricks the Bark Crew into putting up a last stand in battle , but Lord Brocktree joins forces with the hares and saves the day . The book culminates in a massive final battle , with many memorable characters killed , such as Jukka the Sling , a female squirrel chieftain , and Fleetscut the hare . Eventually , when the battle ends up a near stalemate , Trunn and Brocktree face off in a duel . After a failed assassination attempt on Brocktree by the searat Doomeye and the corsair fleet captain Karangool Trunn s second in command the badger eventually wins , snapping Trunn s spine and leaving him on the sand to die . Trunn is thrown into the water but survives , only to be drowned by Groddil , one of his former advisors .

<|childrens|>Martin the Warrior tells the story of a young mouse named Martin , a slave in Marshank under the cruel stoat Badrang the Tyrant . When Badrang leaves Martin to be tortured by the weather and the birds , a young mousemaid named Laterose , or Rose whom Martin falls in love with and a mole named Grumm hear his cry of defiance . They become instrumental in helping Martin , along with a squirrel named Felldoh , and Rose s brother Brome , escape Marshank . When that is accomplished , they decided to travel to Noonvale to rouse an army to attack Marshank . However , in the ocean , Felldoh and Brome are separated from Rose , Martin , and Grumm . Felldoh and Brome meet up with the Rambling Rosehip Players , a traveling band of creatures , and join forces with them , eventually freeing the slaves as Brome bluffs his way into and out of Marshank , disguised as a rat from Badrang s horde . Meanwhile , Martin , Rose and Grumm meet a hedgehog named Pallum after being imprisoned by pigmy shrews . They are eventually freed by saving the life of the Pygmy Queen s son , Dinjer , along with Pallum , who in turn joins up with them . After a long series of adventures , the four adventurers reach Noonvale , Rose and Grumm s home . They gather an army there , but it is not large enough . But all is not lost . Boldred , a scholarly owl who they met on the way to Noonvale , helps gather a huge army , including the pigmy shrews and the Gawtrybe a group of savage squirrels . The entire army then sails to Marshank and reach it in good timing , since the Rambling Rosehip Players are in a predicament . Badrang and all of the vermin under his command , with the exception of mad Cap n Tramun Clogg , are slain . Sadly , Rose is murdered in the final battle by the very tyrant she had gone with Martin to defeat . After the battle , Martin , along with Ballaw , Rowanoak , Brome , and Keyla all stay in Polleekin s treehouse for the short rest of the season . Martin is devastated , his one love gone and with nowhere to go . He denies going back to Noonvale with the rest , the memory of Laterose lingering too strong , not to mention he ll have to tell Urran Voh what had happened to his daughter . He makes a vow not to tell anyone about his friends or Noonvale , in order to protect them from enemies . . . He decides simply to relate a tale of living by the sword in the caves until the time came to move on southward . The story of Martin and Rose is later brought to Redwall during the time of Abbot Saxtus by Aubrieta , a descendant of Brome , and Bultip , a descendant of Pallum , who accompanies it with a sprig of climbing rose culled from that which grew on Rose of Noonvale s grave . This becomes the Laterose of Redwall . In the passing of Spring to Summer , it blooms year round a bit later than the rest , and that is why it is called , the Laterose .

<|action|>The villain is a middle class small businessman named John Wright who decides to assassinate the President of the United States . He spends his life savings to carry out the theft of a U . S . Army shipment of the two precursor chemicals that form a deadly nerve gas codenamed VZ when combined . The ingredients for the nerve gas VZ were intended to be detonated in downtown San Diego , corresponding with the arrival of the President to attend a Republican party conference taking place there . This nerve gas had no safe antidote , and it kills in two to three minutes after being inhaled or touched . This nerve gas is contained inside two Alacran a combustible plastic tanks , and plastic explosives are wrapped around the containers , so that when after the nerve gas is released , the containers explode , rendering the scene of the crime untraceable . This plan is thwarted by John Graves , a State Department agent who has been tailing Wright , who deduced the neferious plan , and the stopped it just two minutes before the timers set to release the nerve gas hit zero .

<|novel|>The novel focuses on the life of Anthony Beavis , with flashbacks into different moments of his life , as he discovers pacifism and then mysticism .

<|comedy|>Álex de la Iglesia signs only two pages of this novel . In this introduction he states he s found a laptop computer lost by poet Juan Carlos Satrústegui . On it , he s read a file called Payasos en la lavadora . Since Satrústegui has entered a mental sanatorium , De La Iglesia talks with the writer s mother and decides to publish the text after correcting it . It s a parody of the old literary technique of the false document found by chance , probably influenced by the fact that , in real life , Álex de la Iglesia writes his film scripts on a laptop computer , which he s lost at least twice . According to this introduction , the restin fifteen chapters are Juan Carlos Satrústegui s autobiographic tale . Satrústegui considers himself a genius , superior over all those he comes across . But we soon realise his psychic problems obsessions , deliria , paranoia , lack of empathy . . . which get worse due to the drugs he uses in fiestas , the want of slept and the beatings he earns when dealing with the lumpen .

<|novel|>The book deals with the intersecting lives of a group of English Catholics from their years as students at University College London in the early 1950s up to the late 1970s . The characters are confronted with a wide range of issues and experiences including marriage , contraception , adultery , illness , grief and , most important of all , the changes in the Catholic Church brought about by the Second Vatican Council and the papal encyclical against contraception , Humanae Vitae 1968 . The title s meaning is twofold it is on the one hand a reference to how far you ought to go with a member of the other sex before marriage , but also to the question of disorientation in the face of abrupt changes in the Church within only a few years .

<|fantasy|>Moonseed is an exploration of what could possibly happen when rock returned from the Apollo 18 mission which was actually cancelled in 1970 . In the book , the rock contain a mysterious substance called moonseed a form of grey goo , whether nanobots , an alien virus or something else that starts to change all inorganic matter on Earth into more moonseed . It also gets transferred by a NASA probe to Venus , and the explosion of Venus is the first clue as to what has been happening . Stephen Baxter combines a host of disciplines space travel , geology and disaster theory to tell a tale where the rocks are literally swept from under the feet of humanity . During the course of the novel , in which Edinburgh is the focus for much of the action , Venus is destroyed by an unknown cosmic event that showers the Earth with radiation that somehow stirs the moonseed on Earth . When moon dust containing the moonseed accidentally falls onto the streets of Edinburgh , Earth s fate is sealed . The moonseed begins to disintegrate the planet from the inside out as the core heats up exponentially , while on the surface , nuclear power stations catastrophically fail , earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are abundant , and billions of people die as cities and continents vanish . Over the course of the cataclysmic erosion of Earth , a collective of scientists and engineers in space agencies from around the world desperately try to terraform the Moon for colonization , to provide a safe haven for some surviving humans before Earth eventually disintegrates into nothingness along with human civilization . This novel also presents numerous theories and ideas about the space faring future of humanity , albeit in an alternate dimension where we are forced into space by an eroding Earth . It is also , in many stages , critical of NASA s performance over the last thirty years , as well as the United Kingdom s disaster programs .

<|action|>In the beginning of the book , Odd Thomas is silently approached by the ghost of a young girl brutally raped and murdered , and through his unique ability to understand the dead , is psychically led to her killer , a former schoolmate named Harlo Landerson . With this opening , we are introduced to Odd s world . Koontz soon discloses how Odd was named and begins , layer by layer , to show how Odd s dysfunctional upbringing has shaped his life , and as those details are uncovered , his supernatural abilities begin to make more sense . We see Odd at work as a short order cook in a California desert town , and in a fateful 24 hour period , he meets a suspicious looking man in the diner followed by bodachs , shadowy spirit creatures who appear only during times of death and disaster . This man , who Odd nicknames Fungus Man due to his waxy complexion and blonde hair that resembles mold , has an unusually large swarm of bodachs following him , and Odd is convinced that this man is connected to some terrible catastrophe that is about to occur . To gather more information about him , Odd uses his gift of supernatural intuition , which his soulmate Bronwen a . k . a . Stormy Llewellyn calls psychic magnetism , to track him down . Odd s sixth sense leads him to Fungus Man s home , and Odd begins to uncover more details about the man and a mysterious other worldly link to the dark forces about to be unleashed on the town of Pico Mundo . Accompanied sometimes by the ghost of Elvis Presley and encountering other memorable spirits , including a murdered prostitute , Odd is soon deeply involved in an attempt to prevent the disastrous bloodshed he knows will happen the next day .

<|fantasy|>The premise of the book is that everyone who has ever died up to the time in which the book is set , which seems to be about the time of its publication has gone to Styx , the river that circles the underworld . The book begins with Charon , ferryman of the Styx being startled mdash and annoyed mdash by the arrival of a houseboat on the Styx . At first afraid that the boat will put him out of business , he later finds out that he is actually to be appointed the boat s janitor . What follows are eleven more stories for a total of twelve which are set on the house boat . There is no central theme , and the purpose of the book appears to be as a literary thought experiment to see what would happen if various famous dead people were put in the same room with each other . Each chapter is a short story featuring various souls from history and mythology . In the twelfth chapter the house boat disappears , leading into the sequel , Pursuit of the House Boat .

<|action|>Lecter is eight years old at the beginning of the novel 1941 , living in Lecter Castle in Lithuania , when Operation Barbarossa , Hitler s invasion of the Soviet Union , turns the Baltic region into a part of the bloodiest front line of World War II . Lecter , his sister Mischa , and his parents escape to the family s hunting lodge in the woods to elude the advancing German troops . After three years , the Nazis are finally driven out of the countries now occupied by the Soviet Union . During their retreat , however , a German Stuka destroys a Soviet tank that had stopped at the Lecter family s lodge looking for water . The explosion kills everyone but Lecter and Mischa . They survive in the cottage until six former Lithuanian militiamen , led by a Nazi collaborator named Vladis Grutas , storm and loot it . Finding no other food , they kill and cannibalize Mischa , while Lecter watches helplessly . He blacks out and is later found wandering and mute by a Soviet tank crew that takes him back to Lecter Castle , which is now a Soviet orphanage . Lecter is irreparably traumatized by the ordeal , and develops a savage obsession with avenging his sister s death . Lecter is removed from the orphanage by his uncle , a noted painter , and he goes to live with him in France . The happiness of their lives together is cut short with his uncle s sudden death . Most of the estate is taken for death duties . Lecter goes to live in reduced circumstances with his Japanese aunt , Lady Murasaki , and they develop a special , quasi romantic relationship . While in France , Lecter flourishes as a medical student . He commits his first murder as a teenager , killing a local butcher who insulted Murasaki . He is suspected of the butcher s murder by Inspector Popil , a French detective who also lost his family during the war . Thanks in part to Murasaki s intervention , however , Lecter escapes responsibility for the crime . Lecter divides his time between medical school in France and hunting those who killed and cannibalized his sister . One by one , he crosses paths with Grutas men , killing them all in the most inventively gruesome ways possible . Eventually , Popil arrests Lecter , but Lecter is freed when popular support for his dispatch of war criminals combines with a lack of hard evidence . While Lecter avoids prison , he loses his relationship with Murasaki , who tells him that there is nothing human left in him . The novel ends with Lecter going to America to begin his residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore , Maryland .

<|fantasy|>An angel named Raziel previously in Moore s novel Lamb is sent to Earth to grant the wish of a child he decides to help a boy who has witnessed the death of a man dressed as Santa Claus . Meanwhile , the town is preparing to have a community dinner gathering at the local church , where the cemetery is located . In his inept attempt to bring the Santa back to life , the angel causes the townspeople to be put under siege by brain hungry zombies who arise from their burial spots .

<|fantasy|>The story takes place in the mid to late 21st century , but in a world where the Cold War has ended , yet the Soviet regime remains strong and proud . Americans and Soviets enjoy peace , but without fully accepting each other s ways , and with each always struggling for technological superiority . Under conditions of absolute secrecy , the Soviets have developed a miniaturization technology that can reduce a man to the dimensions of a molecule , or smaller . Although successful , the process requires an enormous input of energy to accomplish the task . So , although miniaturization has been shown to be scientifically possible , it also appears to be economically impracticable a hollow triumph . One Soviet scientist , Pyotor Leonovich Shapirov , a pioneer of the miniaturization process , had spoken vaguely of a way to make it affordable . Unfortunately , he now lies in a coma , with his secrets apparently locked away forever . But Shapirov had been acquainted with an American scientist , Albert Jonas Morrison , who has his own peculiar theories regarding the brain s processing and storage of creative thought . Shapirov had been greatly intrigued by Morrison s ideas , and it s this interest that led the Soviets to turn to Morrison for help . After a great deal of coercion , Morrison agrees to be miniaturized along with four Soviet scientists , enter Shapirov s dying brain , and attempt to use his computer program to retrieve the thoughts contained therein . Later , having returned safely to normal size , but without any usable information from Shapirov , Morrison has made a new , startling discovery , which may help the Americans beat the Soviets at their own game .

<|novel|>During a train ride , Pozdnyshev overhears a conversation concerning marriage , divorce and love . When a woman argues that marriage should not be arranged but based on true love , he asks what is love ? and points out that , if understood as an exclusive preference for one person , it often passes quickly . Convention dictates that two married people stay together , and initial love can quickly turn into hatred . He then relates how he used to visit prostitutes when he was young , and complains that women s dresses are designed to arouse men s desires . He further states that women will never enjoy equal rights to men as long as men view them as objects of desire , but yet describes their situation as a form of power over men , mentioning how much of society is geared towards their pleasure and well being and how much sway they have over men s actions . After he meets and marries his wife , periods of passionate love and vicious fights alternate . She bears several children , and then receives contraceptives The last excuse for our swinish life children was then taken away , and life became viler than ever . His wife takes a liking to a violinist , and the two perform Beethoven s Kreutzer Sonata Sonata No . 9 in A Major for piano and violin , Op . 47 together . Pozdnyshev complains that some music is powerful enough to change one s internal state to a foreign one . He hides his raging jealousy and goes on a trip , returns early , finds the two together and kills his wife with a dagger . The violinist escapes I wanted to run after him , but remembered that it is ridiculous to run after one s wife s lover in one s socks and I did not wish to be ridiculous but terrible . Later acquitted of murder in light of his wife s apparent adultery , Pozdnyshev rides the trains seeking forgiveness from fellow passengers .

<|mystery|>The novel , a direct sequel to its predecessor , The Last Hero sees Templar and his organization taking revenge on an arms dealer named Rayt Marius , following the death of one of Templar s friends . The book starts approximately three months after the events of The Last Hero . Simon Templar and his associate , Roger Conway , have been spending much of that time chasing Marius and his superior , Prince Rudolf Crown Prince of an unidentified country across Europe . Templar suspects that Marius and Rudolf are planning to follow through with their scheme to spark a new World War continuing from The Last Hero , and in any event , Templar has sworn to kill whichever of the two men murdered his friend Norman Kent at the close of the previous adventure . Although Templar had been forced to flee England at the end of the previous novel , he has since found himself back in Britain and again on the trail of Marius . While executing a scheme to root Marius out from hiding by infiltrating a bogus nursing home , Templar and Conway rescue who they initially think is an elderly man held prisoner by one of Marius compatriots Templar soon discovers that they ve actually rescued the beautiful daughter of a millionaire upon whose safety relies world peace . The woman , Sonia Delmar , subsequently joins Templar s fight against Marius who Templar learns is the man who killed Norman and Prince Rudolf , even going so far as to allowing herself to be kidnapped by the villains . Templar is said to be 29 years old in this tale . In this book , Sonia Delmar becomes the romantic female lead , replacing Templar s girlfriend of the previous books , Patricia Holm , who is referenced only briefly in the story as being on a cruise in the Mediterranean this same excuse was used by Charteris to remove the character from much of the action in Enter the Saint as well . This was the first book to indicate the open nature of Templar and Holm s relationship , although in this case Templar makes clear that his heart remains with Holm . The final chapter of the book contains a somewhat metafictional reference in that Templar indicates his intent to give his notes regarding the Marius affair to a writer friend with the idea of his turning them into a novel a reference to Leslie Charteris himself . This same literary device has also been employed by the likes of Arthur Conan Doyle in his Sherlock Holmes books and Ian Fleming in his James Bond novel You Only Live Twice . And finally , perhaps in a nod to the developing continuity of the series , Charteris brings Detective Inspector Carn MEET THE TIGER back for a brief reunion with Templar at the climax . A later Saint novel , Getaway , completed the trilogy begun by The Last Hero and Knight Templar . The ultimate fate of Rayt Marius would be revealed in the novella The Simon Templar Foundation in The Misfortunes of Mr . Teal .

<|fantasy|>Prior to the events The Phantom Menace , Palpatine politically manipulates his colleagues in the Galactic Senate , especially supreme Chancellor Finis Valorum . As the Sith Lord Darth Sidious , he begins to slowly put the Neimoidians and the Trade Federation in position for his blockade of Naboo . A terrorist group named the Nebula Front threatens the activities of the Trade Federation . They are protesting the actions of the Federation and will resort to any means necessary to disrupt the Trade Federation . They hire Captain Cohl to carry out terrorist acts against their business . However , Jedi Qui Gon Jinn and Obi Wan Kenobi are hot on the trail of the terrorists and thwart their plans . The Trade Federation petitions the Senate to allow them to increase their number of droid fighters , battle droids , and other defenses . Valorum considers this , but on advice from Palpatine he demands that in exchange the Republic be allowed to tax some of the trade routes they hold . This sparks a debate and a summit is scheduled to be held on the matter . Taking extreme measures , the Nebula Front sets plans in motion to assassinate Valorum at the summit to prevent the taxation . The Jedi Council , along with Qui Gon and Obi Wan , step in to track down Captain Cohl and the would be assassins . While writing the novel , James Luceno was granted access to parts of the screenplay drafts and concept art of Star Wars Episode II Attack of the Clones . As such , Cloak of Deception was the first real life appearance of almost all of the new characters and organizations from Attack of the Clones , including the Techno Union , Passel Argente , and other Separatists . At the end of chapter 29 the word thought is missing the t at the end . In chapter 33 , the word a is incorrectly written as an . Opening crawl After a thousand generations of peace , the Galactic Republic is crumbling . On Coruscant , at the center of civilized space , greed and corruption riddle the Senate , beyond even the abilities of Supreme Chancellor Valorum to remedy . And in the outlying systems , the Trade Federation dominates the hyperlanes with its gargantuan vessels . But now even the Trade Federation finds itself assailed from all quarters , preyed upon by pirates and raiders , and victimized by terrorists , who demand an end to the Federation s tyrannical practices . It is a time that tests the mettle of all those who strive to hold the Republic together none more than the Jedi Knights , who have long been the Republic s best hope for preserving peace and justice

<|action|>A series of murders has begun to plague the town of French Landing , Wisconsin . The murderer is dubbed The Fisherman , due to a conscious effort by the killer to emulate the methods of serial killer Albert Fish . Like Fish , French Landing s killer targets children and indulges in cannibalism of the bodies . Two victims have already been discovered as the story opens , with a third awaiting discovery . The nature of the crimes , and the local police s inability to capture the killer , have led people all over the region to become more anxious with each passing day , and certain elements of the local media exacerbate the situation with inflammatory and provocative coverage . After the events of The Talisman , Jack Sawyer has repressed the memories of his adventures in The Territories and his hunt for the Talisman as a twelve year old boy , though the residue of these events has served to subtly affect his life even after he has forgotten them . Jack grew up to become a lieutenant in the Los Angeles Police Department , where his professionalism and uncanny talent have helped him establish a nearly legendary reputation . When a series of murders in Los Angeles are traced to a farm insurance salesman from French Landing , Wisconsin , Jack cooperates with the French Landing Police to capture the killer . While in Wisconsin , Jack is irresistibly enraptured by the natural beauty of the Coulee Country , echoing his reaction to The Territories as a child . When he later intrudes upon a homicide investigation in Santa Monica , certain aspects of the crime scene threaten to revive his repressed memories . He subsequently resigns from the LAPD , and he moves to French Landing to enjoy his early retirement . When the Fisherman begins to terrorize French Landing , the police all but beg Hollywood Jack Sawyer for his assistance and are surprised when he flatly refuses . Memories of the Santa Monica event threaten to overwhelm Jack , and he fears that involving himself in the investigation may break his sanity . When a fourth child is taken by the Fisherman , events no longer allow Jack to remain aloof . It quickly becomes apparent to him that the Fisherman is much more than a simple pedophile killer . In fact , he is an agent of the Crimson King , and his task is to find children with the potential to serve as Breakers . The fourth victim , Tyler Marshall , is one of the most powerful Breakers there has ever been , and he may be all the Crimson King needs to break the remaining beams of the Dark Tower and bring an end to all worlds . As the Fisherman also proves capable of flipping into The Territories , Jack Sawyer is the only hope of not just French Landing , but all existence .

<|novel|>Father Quixote , a parish priest in the little town of El Toboso in Spain s La Mancha region , regards himself as a descendant of Cervantes character of the same name , even if people point out to him that Don Quixote was a fictitious character . One day , he helps and gives food to a mysterious Italian bishop whose car has broken down . Shortly afterwards , he is given the title of monsignor by the Pope , much to the surprise of his bishop who looks upon Father Quixote s activities rather with suspicion . He urges the priest to take a holiday , and so Quixote embarks upon a voyage through Spain with his old Seat 600 called Rocinante and in the company of the Communist ex mayor of El Toboso who , of course , is nicknamed Sancho . In the subsequent course of events , Quixote and his companion have all sorts of funny and moving adventures along the lines of his ancestor s on their way through post Franco Spain . They encounter the contemporary equivalents of the windmills , are confronted with holy and not so holy places and with sinners of all sorts . In their dialogues about Catholicism and Communism , the two men are brought closer , start to appreciate each other better but also to question their own beliefs . Quixote is briefly taken back to El Toboso , confronted by the bishop about his doings and suspended from service as a priest , but he escapes and sets out again with Sancho . In his last adventure , Father Quixote is struck down and wounded while attempting to save a statue of the Virgin Mary from hypocrites who are desecrating her by offering her up for money . Here may be a parallel between Dulcinea in Cervantes novel and Monsignor Quixote s Lady whom he would lay down his life for . Quixote and Sancho are brought to a Trappist monastery where , sleepwalking and in delirium , Father Quixote rises from his bed at night , goes to the church , celebrates the old Tridentine Mass mdash all the time imagining he holds bread and wine in his hands mdash and then , in a last effort , administers communion to the Communist ex mayor before sinking dead into his friend s arms .

<|fantasy|>Nathan Zuckerman is a promising young writer who spends a night in the home of E . I . Lonoff , an established author whom Zuckerman idolizes and who , it has been argued , is a portrait of Bernard Malamud or Henry Roth or a composite of both . Also staying in the Lonoff home is Amy Bellette , a young woman with a vague past whom the narrator apparently comes to suspect as being Anne Frank , living in the United States anonymously , having survived the Holocaust . It only becomes apparent at the end of this section that this conjecture is part of a fiction composed by Zuckerman .

<|novel|>Nana , an attractive young non talker in her mid twenties mdash tall , thin , pale , blonde , breasty mdash who is working on her M . A . thesis , lives with her Papa , the benevolent angel of the story , in Edgware , a suburb of London . She gets to know Moshe , a young Jewish actor from Finsbury , and they start a relationship . As time goes by , Anjali , a friend of Moshe s , joins them more and more in their sparetime activities until Nana , for whom sex is not necessarily a top priority , suggests a threesome because she wants Moshe to be happy . Accordingly , due to Nana s altruism , for some months Nana and Moshe are joined in their lovemaking by Anjali , who is bisexual . The narrator , who defines a threesome as the socialist utopia of sex , describes not only the sociology , psychology and ethics of their ménage à trois for example by comparing it to the love triangle depicted in the film Cabaret but also , in some detail , the technicalities and what he calls sexual etiquette . However , he also frequently ponders philosophical questions and occasionally redefines old concepts such as that of infidelity the selfish desire to be helpful to more than one person . In the summer Nana goes on holiday with her Papa , leaving behind two thirds of the ménage à trois . In Venice , Italy , Papa complains of a splitting headache , and shortly after their return to England he suffers a stroke mdash a good excuse for Nana to break up with both Moshe and Anjali , although her father is saddened by the thought of his daughter giving up her boyfriend on his account .

<|action|>Doctor Glas is told in the form of a journal . The main character is Dr . Glas , a physician . The antagonist is Reverend Gregorius , a morally corrupt clergyman . Gregorius beautiful young wife confides in Dr . Glas that her sex life is making her miserable and asks for his help . Glas , in love with her , agrees to help even though she already has another adulterous lover . He attempts to intervene , but the Reverend refuses to give up his marital rights she must have sex with him whether she likes it or not at the time , a wife was legally the property of her husband , and subsequently had no right to say no . So , in order to make his love happy , he begins to plot her husband s murder . The novel also deals with issues such as abortion , women s rights , suicide , euthanasia , and eugenics . Not surprisingly , the book triggered a violent campaign against its author who thereafter was vilified in Swedish literary circles .

<|fantasy|>The Man Who Japed is set in the year 2114 . After a devastating twentieth century limited nuclear war , a South African Afrikaans Empire military survivor named General Streiter launched a global revolution in 1985 that ushered in a totalitarian government . In providing one example of the carnage Dick has his protagonist Allen Purcell visit Japan s northern island , Hokkaidō . The location is still a desolate wasteland that has not recovered from nuclear bombardment in 1972 , the last year of the global war referred to within this book . This regime Moral Reclamation Morec rules a post apocalyptic world under its strict ideology . One of Streiter s lineal descendants , Ida Pease Hoyt , is in charge . Morec has created an ultra conservative and puritanical society that is oppressive and judgmental of its fellow citizens . Four examples of the innumerable punishable offenses include mild public cursing , kissing a non spouse , absenteeism from community meetings and , of all things , the commercial display of neon signs . A thriving black market exists , however , where one can purchase the Decameron , James Joyce s Ulysses , chablis wine and pulp fiction detective novels from the twentieth century , albeit at vastly inflated prices . Earth people also occupy several alien planetary systems . There are human colonies on Belletrix Gamma Orionis , Sirius 8 and 9 , and Orionus . On these worlds , intensive labour is required to provide agricultural and industrial products for survival . One of the planets is used as a Refuge for the rehabilitation of social misfits or nooses . The japery alluded to in the title is Allen Purcell s wanton destruction of a statue of General Streiter . But Purcell has only vague , distorted and disjointed memories of the act and can t even understand his own motivation for doing it . The real irony lies in the fact that he is up for an appointment to a high level position as a guardian of public ethics . But Purcell s act of social treachery is insignificant in comparison to what comes next . And he does it in full consciousness with deliberation and complicity . He concocts a false history of General Streiter for a live televised broadcast that is matter of factly and even approvingly discussed by a small panel of co conspirators . This bogus aspect of the military hero s life is his alleged policy of having all of his enemies butchered and served up to him and his family as delectable gourmet meals . Ida Pease Hoyt is also included among those living descendants who practice the same brand of cannibalism as the opportunity arises . Purcell and his wife are just about to escape Morec justice when he has a change of heart and decides to remain on Earth and face the consequences of this unspeakably ghastly accusation . He promises his wife a trip to friend Myron Mavis s planet when they both make it through to the other side of their punishment .

<|fantasy|>Jocelin , the dean of the cathedral , directs the construction of a towering spire funded by his aunt , Lady Alison , a former mistress of the King . The project is carried on against the advice of many , and in particular the warnings of the master builder , Roger Mason . The cathedral has insufficient foundations to support a spire of the magnificence demanded by Jocelin , but he believes he has been chosen by God to erect a great spire to exalt the town and to bring its people closer to God . As the novel progresses , Golding explores Jocelin s growing obsession with the completion of the spire , during which he is increasingly afflicted by pain in his spine as a result of tuberculosis . Jocelin interprets the burning heat in his back as an angel , alternately comforting or punishing him depending on the warmth or pain he feels . Jocelin s obsession blinds him to reality , as he neglects his duties as a dean , fails to pray and ignores the people who need him the most . Jocelin also struggles with his attraction to Goody Pangall , the wife of the crippled and impotent cathedral servant , Pangall . Jocelin seems at first to see Goody as his daughter in God . However , as the novel progresses , and Goody s husband is tormented and ridiculed by the bullying workmen , Jocelin becomes tormented by sexual attraction , usually triggered by the sight of Goody s red hair . Comparisons between Goody and Rachel , Roger Mason s wife , are made throughout the novel . Jocelin believes Goody sets an example to Rachel , whom he dislikes for her garrulousness . However , Jocelin overestimates Goody s purity , and is horrified when he discovers Goody is embarking upon an affair with Roger Mason . Tortured by envy and guilt , Jocelin finds himself unable to pray . He is repulsed by his sexual thoughts , referred to as the devil during his dreams . The lives of the people around Jocelin are disrupted because of the intractable problems arising from the construction of the spire , but Jocelin continues to drive his dream to its conclusion . His visions and hallucinations mark his descent into irrationality . As the true costs , financial and spiritual , of the endeavour become apparent , the story moves to its tragic conclusion . Pangall disappears , although his fate is never made clear as events are seen from Jocelin s increasingly irrational point of view . Goody Pangall dies in childbirth , bearing Roger Mason s child . Roger becomes a drunkard and Jocelin dies of his illness after receiving the humiliating information from his aunt that his appointment was due only to her influence , not to his merits . The spire is incomplete at the end of the story , and there is a growing sense of impending disaster due to the instability of the over ambitious structure . Jocelin has lost his faith at the time of his death but begins to appreciate the suffering he has caused to others by his pride and grandiosity .

<|fantasy|>The story involves Adam Pennyman and his obsession with and attempts to catalog video games into a book called The Catalogue of Obsolete Entertainments . He is particularly obsessed with the fictional Japanese arcade game Lucky Wander Boy . While the Lucky Wander Boy game is fictional , many actual classic arcade and home video games are mentioned in the book .

<|fantasy|>An alien is sent to live among Earthlings . He describes his adventures in journal form . At first he looks like a young human but as he begins to experience more of life on Earth he begins to age and develop characteristics like Earthlings . He falls in love with an Earthling woman and decides not to go back to his home planet . Events proceed and he and his mate end up on a Sykaosian ship while Earth is destroyed . The alien and his mate bear a male child named Adam . The novel switches from first person perspective to an account by authorities on Sykaos . Adam , possessing more characteristics of Earthlings than Sykaosians begins to get into trouble and eventually leaves Sykaos with his mate Eve .

<|novel|>Snow Country is a stark tale of a love affair between a Tokyo dilettante and a provincial geisha that takes place in the remote hot spring onsen town of Yuzawa Kawabata himself did not mention the name of the town in his novel . The hot springs in that region were home to inns , visited by men traveling alone and in groups , where paid female companionship had become a staple of the economy . The geisha of the hot springs enjoyed nothing like the social status of their more artistically trained sisters in Kyoto and Tokyo and were usually little more than prostitutes whose brief careers inevitably ended in a downward spiral . The liaison between the geisha , Komako , and the male protagonist , a wealthy loner who is a self appointed expert on Western ballet , is thus doomed to failure . The nature of that failure and the parts played by others form the theme of the book . As his most potent symbol of this counter Western modernity , the rural geisha , Komako , of his novel Snow Country embodies Kawabata s conception of traditional Japanese beauty by taking Western influence and subverting it to traditional Japanese forms . Having no teacher available , she hones her technique on the traditional samisen instrument by untraditionally relying on sheet music and radio broadcasts . Her lover , Shimamura , comments that , the publishing gentleman would be happy if he knew he had a real geisha not just an ordinary amateur practicing from his scores way off here in the mountains . But on his way to the town , Shimamura is fascinated with a girl he sees on the train , a young girl named Yoko who is caring to a sick man traveling with her . He wants to see more of her , even though he is with Komako during his stay . Already a married man , it doesn t faze him that he is thinking about Yoko while being public with Komako .

<|crime|>When Adam Bishop , a middle aged self made man in the building trade , is cruelly murdered at his London home Detective Inspector Ed Newson has a hunch that the crime has been committed by a psychopath who has killed before . He links up the new case with a number of older , unsolved ones , and a certain pattern emerges It turns out that each victim was a bully many years ago when they went to school , and that they have now been killed in exactly the same way as they used to torture their peers . However , when Newson and Sergeant Natasha Wilkie talk to the former victims they soon find out that none of them could be the serial killer . Although successful in his job , when it comes to his private life Edward Newson is a lonely , sex starved man secretly in love with his assistant , Natasha . Now in his mid thirties , he nostalgically looks back at his school days and the two girls with whom he was romantically involved when they were all 14 mdash Helen Smart , the leftist intellectual , and Christine Copperfield , the golden girl . Newson cannot resist the temptation and logs on to Friends Reunited . To his surprise , more of his former classmates than he would have thought are also online , and soon a class reunion is being organised mdash by Christine Copperfield , of all people . This is the point where Newson s private life collides with his murder investigation . It is obvious that the serial killer uses the same web site mdash Friends Reunited mdash as the source of his knowledge about instances of bullying that happened decades ago . When Helen Smart posts a long account of how back at school she was forced by Christine Copperfield to stuff a tampon down her throat the murderer is supplied with one more story on which he or she might act . Christine Copperfield dies with a tampon stuffed down her throat . In the tradition of the whodunnit , while new murders are committed , the identity of the killer remains unknown to the final pages of the novel .

<|novel|>The novel deals with the life of the Cossacks living in the Don River valley during the early 20th century , probably around 1912 , just prior to World War I . The plot revolves around the Melekhov family of Tatarsk , who are descendants of a cossack who , to the horror of many , took a Turkish captive as a wife during the Crimean War . Accused of witchcraft by Melekhov s superstitious neighbours , they attempt to kill her but are fought off by her husband . Their descendants , the son and grandsons , who are the protagonists of the story , are therefore often nicknamed Turks . Nevertheless , they command a high amount of respect among people in Tatarsk . The second eldest son , Grigori Panteleevich Melekhov , is a promising young soldier who falls in love with Aksinia , the wife of Stepan Astakhov , a family friend . There is no love between them and Stepan regularly beats her . Grigori and Aksinia s romance and elopement raises a feud between her husband and his family . The outcome of this romance is the focus of the plot as well as the impending World and Civil Wars which draw up the best young Cossack men for what will be two of Russia s bloodiest wars . The action moves to the Austro Hungarian front , where Grigory ends up saving Stepan s life , but that doesn t end the feud . Grigory , at his father s insistence , takes a wife , Natalya , but still loves Aksinia . The book deals not only with the struggles and suffering of the Cossacks , but the landscape itself is vividly brought to life . There are also many folk songs referenced throughout the novel . And Quiet Flows the Don grew out of an earlier , unpublished work , the Donshina I began the novel by describing the event of the Kornilov putsch in 1917 . Then it became clear that this putsch , and more importantly , the role of the Cossacks in these events , would not be understood without a Cossack prehistory , and so I began with the description of the life of the Don Cossacks just before the beginning of World War I . quote from M . A . Sholokhov Seminarii , 1962 by F . A . Abramovic and V . V . Gura , quoted in Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov , by L . L . Litus . Grigori Melekhov is reportedly based on two Cossacks from Veshenskaya , Pavel Nazarovich Kudinov and Kharlampii Vasilyevich Yermakov , who were key figures in the anti Bolshevist struggle of the upper Don .

<|action|>Ronald Malcolm is a CIA employee who works in a clandestine office in Washington , D . C . responsible for analyzing the plots of mystery and spy novels . One day , when he should be in the office , Malcolm slips out a basement entrance for lunch . In his absence a group of armed men gain entrance to the office and kill everyone there . Malcolm returns , realizes he is in grave danger , and telephones a phone number at CIA headquarters he has been given for emergencies . When he phones in and remembers to give his code name Condor , he is told to meet an agent named Weatherby who will bring him in for protection . Alas , Weatherby is part of a rogue group within the CIA , the same group responsible for the original assassinations . Weatherby tries to kill Malcolm , who escapes with his life . Malcolm uses his wits to elude both the rogue CIA group and the proper CIA authorities , each of which would very much like to find him first . Seeking shelter , Malcolm kidnaps a paralegal named Wendy Ross whom he overhears intends to spend her coming vacation days holed up in her apartment hence he knows that nobody will notice her absence . He quickly wins her trust , and she assists him in his quest to stay alive and to find out more about the forces after him . But she is shot and seriously wounded while trying to do this . Malcom believes her to be dead , but learns later that she has survived . It turns out that the rogue group was using the section where Malcolm works to import illegal drugs from Laos . A supervisor stumbles on a discrepancy in the records resulting from clandestine drug importation , necessitating the elimination of the section .

<|fantasy|>Gavallan , based in Scotland , runs S G Helicopter company operating in Iran during the Shah s reign . When Khomeini comes to power , Gavallan must get his pilots and their families , and his valuable helicopters , and the spare parts for the helicopters of equal or greater value of the aircraft out of the riot torn country . Complicating matters is his power struggle with his company s secret owner , the Noble House of Hong Kong . The pilots escape efforts form the basic story and the action sweeps across many lives lovers , spies , fanatics , revolutionaries , friends and betrayers . British , Finnish , American , and Iranian are all caught up in a deadly religious and political upheaval , portraying the chilling and bewildering encounters when Westernized lifestyle clashes with harsh ancient traditions . Aircraft used by S G Helicopters throughout the story include Bell 212 , Bell 206 , Aérospatiale Alouette III and British Aerospace BAe 125 . The settings for the story are the western and southwestern parts of Iran , as well as neighboring Persian Gulf states , Turkey to Lake Van , and the environs of Aberdeen , Scotland . Actual locations within Iran include Teheran including Qasr Prison , Evin Prison , Galeg Morghi , and Doshan Tappeh Air Base , Tabriz , Qazvin , Mount Sabalan , the Zagros Mountains , Lengeh , Bandar Delam , Siri , the Dez Dam and Kharg island . Fictional locations include the city of Kowiss , Yazdek village and the safe haven emirate of Al Shargaz , meaning protector .

<|fantasy|>The story begins with the suffering of a boy oracle , or medium , about to be sealed alive into a pyramid chamber for three days so that he may astral travel to the realms of the gods and plead for the waters of the Nile to rise , bringing life giving silt to the farmlands . The story follows him through his lonely despair until he becomes the honoured companion of a king and an important figure in an extraordinary revolution . At this time the high priests of the god Amun , brought to prominence by the female pharaoh Hatshepsut about a century before , are rich and powerful enough to challenge a king . . .

<|novel|>First Love is an example of a frame story . The beginning starts with the protagonist , Vladimir Petrovich , in a party . The party guests are taking turns recounting the stories of their first loves . When Vladimir s turn comes to tell his story , he suggests that he write down the story in a notebook because it is a rather long , unusual tale . The story within the story then continues from his notebook , which recounts the memory of his first love . Vladimir Petrovich , a 16 year old , is staying in the country with his family and meets Zinaida Alexandrovna Zasyekina , a beautiful 21 year old woman , staying with her mother , Princess Zasyekina , next door . This family , as with many of the Russian minor nobility with royal ties of that time , were only afforded a degree of respectability because of their titles the Zasyekins , in the case of this story , are a very poor family . The young Vladimir falls in love with Zinaida , who has a set of several other socially more eligible suitors whom he joins in their difficult and often fruitless efforts for the young lady s favour . Zinaida , as is revealed throughout the story , is a thoroughly capricious and somewhat playful mistress to these rather love struck suitors . She fails to reciprocate Vladimir s love , often misleading him , mocking his comparative youth in contrast to her early adulthood . But eventually the true object of her affections and a rather tragic conclusion to the story is revealed . Vladimir discovers that the true object of Zinaida s affection is his own father , Pyotr Vasilyevich . In the tragic and devastatingly succinct closing two chapters , Vladimir secretly observes a final meeting between Pyotr and Zinaida at the window of her house in which his father strikes her arm with a riding crop . Zinaida kisses the welt on her arm and Pyotr bounds into the house . Eight months later , Vladimir s father receives a distressing letter from Moscow and tearfully begs his wife for a favor . Pyotr dies of a stroke several days later , after which his wife sends a considerable sum of money to Moscow . Three or four years later , Vladimir learns of Zinaida s marriage to a Monsieur Dolsky and subsequent death during childbirth .

<|novel|>Ancient Egypt 3500 years ago a land ruled by the all powerful female king , Hatshepsut . Ambitious , ruthless and worldly a woman who established Amun as the chief god of Egypt , bestowing his Priesthood with unprecedented riches and power . Hatshepsut Daughter of Amun is part of Moyra Caldecott s Egyptian sequence , which also includes Akhenaten Son of the Sun and Tutankhamun and the Daughter of Ra . Chronologically , Hatshepsut Daughter of Amun takes place first .

<|comedy|>When the school district of Whittaker Magnet School expands to cover Kate and George s duplex , they are forced to go to the frightening school , which is suspected to house a demon . But when the First Lady comes to visit the school , the vengeful demon causes more deaths and accidents . It s up to Kate and George to stop them . The cast of characters includes the spoiled Swiss milkmaid incarnation Heidi , her doting mother Cornelia , her brother Whit , Kate s not so secret unwanted admirer , and Pogo , a librarian who can only speak in nursery rhymes .

<|novel|>The novel is narrated by 29 year old Barnaby , whose life has gone off the rails since he was caught robbing neighborhood homes as an adolescent . To the despair of his distant father , his social climbing mother , his chilly ex wife and his prematurely patriarchal brother , Barnaby now works for a company called Rent a Back , doing odd jobs for elderly clients . He also waits , without much hope , for a visitation from the Gaitlin angel , who first suggested to Barnaby s great grandfather the invention of the wooden dress form that made the Gaitlins rich . He finds his angel but perhaps not where he expects . He believes his angel was 36 year old Sophia Mayard . Barnaby first sees Sophia on the train , while he is going to see his 9 year old daughter in Philadelphia , and Sophia is going to visit her mother . While he is in Philadelphia , his ex wife told him he was not allowed to see their daughter anymore . The next week , he went back . Sophia was on the train again , and he is able to tell her about his job at Rent a Back , and she tells him about her job at the bank . They also discuss Opal , Barnaby s daughter , and Sophia agrees he should see her , and that Opal would want to continue to see her daddy . Later , Sophia contacts Barnaby s employer . She claims her aunt needs help working , and she needs Barnaby to help . Although , Barnaby s friend who is working with him , claims that Sophia hangs around while they are working , hoping Barnaby will ask her out . He finally does and she accepts . After a few months , Barnaby introduces Sophia to his family , and later Sophia introduces Barnaby to her mother . That summer , Barnaby introduces Sophia to his daughter , who has come to visit for a week . Opal says she likes Sophia , but by fall , when Opal sees Sophia s name on her Birthday card , she realizes that they are dating . While Barnaby and Opal are going to eat lunch , and they spot Opal s mother . Opal takes her stuffed Hedgehog from her father , and asks her mother to take her home . More Coming Soon

<|fantasy|>Blood of the Fold resumes from the preceding novel , Stone of Tears , when Richard Rahl has just reunited with his future wife , Kahlan Amnell , the Mother Confessor , in a place between worlds . Upon returning to Aydindril in the real world he realizes that seizing power for himself is the only way to halt the continuous advance of the Imperial Order through the Midlands . Richard ends the Midlands alliance and the rule of the Confessors , taking control of Aydindril and issuing a demand for unconditional surrender of Midlands nations to D haran rule . Meanwhile , in the Old World , trouble courses through the Palace of the Prophets . Sister Verna , the newly named Prelate , discovers the former Prelate , Annalina , isn t really dead , but has fled with Nathan Rahl . The lands of the Midlands must decide whether to surrender to D Hara or the Imperial Order . In his neverending search for banelings , what the Blood call those with some form of the gift , Tobias Brogan , the Lord General of the Blood of the Fold , captures Kahlan Amnell and Adie and takes them , following the instructions of the Creator , to the Palace of the Prophets . Richard , who finds out his wife to be is in the Old World , uses an ancient means of transportation , the Sliph , to travel to her almost immediately . There , fooled by the ability to become invisible , Richard releases the Mriswith Queen , who then flees to Aydindril back through the Sliph . Brought back to his senses , Richard then destroys the Palace of the Prophets to prevent Jagang from receiving the treasures inside , saves Kahlan , and hurries back to Aydindril in the New World , where He discovers the mriswith queen nesting in the Wizard s keep preparing to hatch a new batch of mriswith in the new world . After smashing her eggs and a difficult battle with her , Richard and Kahlan defeat the Mriswith Queen . They then discover a battle in the City is being lost by Richard s D haran army but with his arrival he leads his soldiers to a victory over the Blood of the Fold and the mriswith .

<|fantasy|>The book is the story of a young man , William Crimsworth , and is a first person narrative from his perspective . It describes his maturation , his loves and his eventual career as a professor at an all girls school . The story starts off with a letter William has sent to his friend Charles , detailing his refusal to his uncle s proposals to become a clergyman , as well as his first meeting with his rich brother Edward . Seeking work as a tradesman , William is offered the position of a clerk by Edward . However , Edward is jealous of William s education and intelligence and treats him terribly . By the actions of the sympathetic Mr . Hunsden , William is relieved of his position and gains a new job at an all boys boarding school in Belgium . The school is run by the friendly M . Pelet , who treats William kindly and politely . Soon , William s merits as a professor reach the ears of the headmistress of the neighboring girls school . Mlle . Reuter offers him a position at her school , which he accepts . Initially captivated by Mlle . Reuter , William begins to entertain ideas of falling in love with her , only to have them crushed when he overhears her and M . Pelet talk about their upcoming marriage . Slightly heartbroken , he now treats Mlle . Reuter with a cold civility and begins to see the underlying nature of her character . Mlle . Reuter , however , continues to try to draw William back in , pretending to be benevolent and concerned . She goes so far as to plead him to teach one of her young teachers , Frances , who hopes to improve her skill in languages . William sees in this pupil promising intelligence and slowly begins to fall in love with her as he tutors her English . Jealous of the attention Francis is receiving from William , Mlle . Reuter takes it upon herself to casually dismiss Frances from her school and hide her address from William . It is revealed that as she was trying to make herself amiable in William s eyes , Mlle . Reuter accidentally fell in love with him herself . Not wanting to cause a conflict with M . Pelet , Crimsworth leaves his establishment and moves out , in hopes of finding Frances . Eventually bumping into his beloved pupil in a graveyard , the two reconcile . William gets a new position as a professor at a college , with an exceedingly high wage . The two eventually open a school together and have a child . After obtaining financial security , the family travels all around England and settle in the countryside next to Mr . Hunsden .

<|childrens|>Mirette lives in a boardinghouse in France . One day her life is changed by a man named Bellini , a famous tightrope walker , who teaches Mirette how to walk on a tightrope .

<|novel|>Brought up on the stories of his elderly female relatives including his Grandmother Cynthia , whose father was emancipated from slavery in 1865 Alex Haley claimed to have traced his family history back to the African , Kunta Kinte , captured by members of a contentious tribe and sold to slave traders in 1767 . In the fictional novel , each of Kunta s enslaved descendants passed down an oral history of Kunta s experiences as a free man in Gambia , along with the African words he taught them . Haley researched African village customs , slave trading and the history of African Americans in America including a visit to the griot oral historian of his ancestor s African village . He created a colorful and fictional history of his family from the mid eighteenth century through the mid twentieth century , which led him back to his heartland of Africa .

<|fantasy|>The novel begins with adventurer Sir Richard Francis Burton waking up after his death on a strange new world made up of one ongoing river . He discovers that he is but one of billions of previously dead personalities from throughout Earth s history stretching from the Neolithic age through 2008 AD also resurrected . At first the resurrectees are primarily focused on survival , though their basic needs for food are mysteriously taken care of but eventually Burton decides to make it his mission to find the headwaters of the River and discover the purpose and intention of humanity s resurrection . Along the way he is enslaved and then , after being partnered with Nazi war criminal Hermann Göring , discovers the existence of a mysterious organization responsible for the resurrection of humanity , and is recruited by a rogue member of this group to take down their carefully laid plans .

<|action|>A converted fishing trawler , Morning Rose carries a movie making crew across the Barents Sea to isolated Bear Island , well above the Arctic Circle , for some on location filming , but the script is a secret known only to the producer and screenwriter . En route , members of the movie crew and ship s company begin to die under mysterious circumstances . The crew s doctor , Marlowe , finds himself enmeshed in a violent , multi layered plot in which very few of the persons aboard are whom they claim to be . Marlowe s efforts to unravel the plot become even more complicated once the movie crew is deposited ashore on Bear Island , beyond the reach of the law or outside help . The murders continue ashore , and Marlowe , who is not what he seems to be either , discovers they may be related to some forgotten events of the Second World War .

<|fantasy|>Last Son of Krypton is Elliot S . Maggin s first Superman novel . It tells the life story of Superman from his birth on the planet Krypton , to his childhood in Smallville and his career as Superboy , to his arrival in Metropolis and his career as Superman . The main antagonist in this story is a mysterious alien ruler with ties to Superman s past . Superman and his greatest enemy Lex Luthor must join forces to retrieve a document written by Albert Einstein and stop the alien ruler .

<|fantasy|>The protagonist and narrator is Ivan Smetski , a young Ukrainian American linguist who specializes in Old Church Slavonic , a language from 10th century Russia . In 1992 , Ivan returns to his native town of Kiev to pursue additional graduate studies . While there he discovers the body of a woman , apparently sleeping in the woods . He awakens her with a kiss , and she tells him , in Old Church Slavonic , that she is Katerina , a princess of the kingdom of Taina . Transported back to the 10th century , Ivan follows Katerina back to Taina where he finds the Christian kingdom terrorized by the traditional Russian arch villainess Baba Yaga . Ivan and Katerina marry and escape back to the 20th century to avoid the machinations of Baba Yaga , who has enslaved a god and laid claim to Taina s throne , and the druzhinnik Dimitri who covets the throne . Baba Yaga s magical powers , however , allow for her to follow Ivan and Katerina to modern times . Back in the Ukraine , Ivan discovers that his cousin is in reality the immortal god Mikola Mozhaiski . Returning to the United States , Ivan further discovers that his mother is a magic user , with the same powers as Katerina . After Katerina discovers Dimitri s plot through scrying , Ivan and Katerina return to Taina , deftly avoiding Baba Yaga who magically skyjacks their intended 747 back to the 10th century . Returning to Taina , Ivan and Katerina confront Dimitri , the enslaved god , and Baba Yaga . Though the Castle of Taina is destroyed , the two emerge victorious , and return to the modern world to live .

<|fantasy|>The novel starts with a man on the street news interview in August 1972 , in which an unnamed man later revealed to be Dawes gives his angry opinion of the highway extension project . The narrative then jumps forward to November 1973 , with Dawes , seemingly unaware of the underlying motivations of his actions , visiting a gun shop and purchasing a heavy caliber pistol and rifle . As the story progresses , it is revealed that Dawes son Charlie had died from brain cancer several years earlier , and that Dawes is unable or unwilling to sever his emotional ties to his workplace and the house that his son grew up in . Dawes loses his middle management job at an industrial laundry after sabotaging the purchase of their new facility , and after learning of his actions , his wife Mary leaves him . Dawes then approaches Sal Magliore , the owner of a local used car dealership with ties to the Mob , in an attempt to obtain explosives . Magliore initially dismisses him as a crackpot , so Dawes assembles a load of Molotov cocktails and uses them to damage the highway construction equipment , causing a brief delay in the project . Later , Magliore agrees to sell Dawes a load of explosives , paid for with money from the sale of Dawes house to the city under its eminent domain statute , and has Dawes house checked for phone taps planted by the city . Dawes gives most of the rest of his money to Magliore to invest on behalf of Olivia Brenner , a young hitchhiker on whom he took pity during a brief meeting and sexual encounter . In January 1974 , during the final hours before the morning when he must leave the property , Dawes wires the whole house with the explosives and barricades himself inside . When the police arrive to forcibly evict him , he shoots at them , forcing them to take cover and attracting the attention of the media . Dawes coerces the police into letting a reporter the same one who interviewed him in 1972 , though neither recognizes the other come in and speak to him . Once the reporter has left , Dawes tosses his guns out the window and sets off his explosives , destroying the house with himself inside . A short epilogue reveals that there was no real reason for the extension project the city simply had extra money in its road construction budget , and had to spend it for fear of having the next year s budget reduced .

<|novel|>The book is set in 1771 during famine in Bengal see Famine in India , for more information about famine in India under the British regime . Kalyani , a housewife , is fleeing through the forest with her infant , trying to escape from man hunters who will sell her for food . After a long chase , she loses consciousness at the bank of a river . A Hindu monk , stumbles upon her and the baby , but before he can help her , he is arrested by the British soldiers , because other priests were fueling revolt against the British rule . While being dragged away he spots another priest who is not wearing his distinctive robes and sings , The other priest deciphers the song , rescues Kalyani and the baby , taking them to a rebel priest hideout . Concurrently , Kalyani s husband , Mahendra , is also given shelter by the priests , and they are reunited . The leader of the rebels shows Mahendra the three faces of Bharat Mata Mother India as three goddess idols being worshipped in three consecutive rooms What Mother Was An idol of Goddess Jagaddhatri What Mother Has Become An idol of Goddess Kali What Mother Will Be An idol of Goddess Durga Gradually , the rebel influence grows and their ranks swell . Emboldened , they shift their headquarter to a small brick fort . The British attack the fort with a large force . The rebels blockade the bridge over the nearby river , but they lack any artillery or military training . In the fighting , the British make a tactical retreat over the bridge . The Sannyasis undisciplined army , lacking military experience , chases the British into the trap . Once the bridge is full of rebels , British artillery opens fire , inflicting severe casualties . However , some rebels manage to capture some of the cannons , and turn the fire back on to the British lines . The British are forced to fall back , the rebels winning their first battle . The story ends with Mahendra and Kalyani building a home again , with Mahendra continuing to support the rebels .

<|novel|>Every sentence has two meanings one in the novel and one that tells something about Communism . For example , the Pharaoh Cheops desires to build a pyramid so large that it will drain the prosperity out of Egypt , and an unprosperous people will not rebel .

<|novel|>Written from the viewpoint of Nathan the Thirteenth Disciple , the heavily footnoted book presents an adventure and romance storyline against the backdrop of the 1st century Roman Empire . Nathan s travels lead him to Rome to fight as a retiarius , and on his return to Palestine to become involved with the Apostles , the Zealots and the Essenes . He loves Shelomith the disciple Salome , depicted in the novel as a prostitute , who does not return his affections due to her unrequited love for Yeshua Jesus .

<|mystery|>Pilot Frank Towns and navigator Lew Moran are ferrying a mixed bag of passengers out of the Jebel oil town of the Libyan desert , among them oil workers , a couple of British soldiers , and a German who was visiting his brother . An unexpected sandstorm forces the aircraft down , damaging the plane , killing two of the men , and severely injuring the German . In the book , the action takes place in the Libyan part of the Sahara . The survivors wait for rescue but begin to worry , as the storm has blown them far off course , away from where searchers would look for them . After several days , Captain Harris marches toward a distant oasis together with another passenger . His aide Sergeant Watson feigns a sprained ankle and does not join Harris . A third man follows after them . Days later , Harris barely manages to return to the crash site . The others are lost . As the water begins to run out Stringer , a precise , arrogant English aeronautical engineer , proposes a radical solution . He claims they can rebuild a new aircraft from the wreckage of the old twin boom aircraft , using the undamaged boom and adding skids to take off . They set to work . At one point they spot a party of nomadic tribesmen . Captain Harris decides to ask them for help , but Sergeant Watson refuses to accompany him . Instead another survivor , a Texan named Loomis , goes with him . The next day , Towns finds their looted bodies , throats cut , and the nomads gone . Later , Towns finds out that Stringer s job is designing model aircraft , not real , full scale ones . Afraid of the effect on morale , he and Moran keep their discovery secret , though they now believe Stringer s plan is doomed . However , they turn out to be wrong . The aircraft is reborn , like the mythical Phoenix . It flies the passengers , strapped to the outside of the fuselage , to an oasis and civilization .

<|childrens|>Brian Robeson is a 13 year old boy , whose parents are divorced , who travels on a Cessna 406 bush plane to visit his father in the oil fields in northern Canada for the summer . During the flight , the pilot suffers a heart attack and dies Brian tries to land the plane , but ends up crash landing into a lake in the forest , saving nothing but his hatchet and his own life . Throughout the summer , Brian attempts to survive in the endless wilderness with only his hatchet , which was a gift his mother gave him shortly before his plane departed . He figures out how to make fire with the hatchet and makes himself eat whatever food he can find , such as snapping turtle eggs , fish , berries , fruit , rabbits , and birds . He deals with threats from animals such as a porcupine , bear , skunk , moose , wolves and eventually becomes a fine woodsman , crafting a bow , arrows , and a fishing spear . He also fashions a shelter out of the underside of a rock overhang . During his time alone , Brian struggles with memories of home , and the bittersweet memory of his mother , whom Brian had caught cheating on his father with somebody else . When a sudden tornado hits the area , it draws the tail of the plane toward the shore of the lake . Brian makes a raft from a few broken off tree tops to get to the plane . When Brian is cutting his way into the tail of the plane , he drops his hatchet in the lake and dives in to get it . Once inside the plane , Brian finds a survival pack with an emergency transmitter , many packs of food , a first aid kit , some cooking utensils , and a . 22 rifle . Back on shore , Brian activates the transmitter , but he does not know how to use it , he thinks it is broken and throws it aside . Later , when Brian is cooking the food packs , a fur buyer arrives in a float plane some time after because he caught the transmitter s signal . He rescues Brian , who returns home after 54 days in the wilderness a different person . Brian later finds himself marveling at all the food , quantities and variety , at the grocery store . He finally reaches his father at the oil fields , yet he is still unable to discuss his mother s affair with another man to his father .

<|action|>Three former judges known as The Brethren incarcerated at Trumble , a fictional , federal minimum security prison located in northern Florida , develop a scam to blackmail wealthy closeted gay men . With the help of their lawyer , Trevor Carson , they transfer their ill gotten money to a secret Bahamian bank account . Meanwhile , Teddy Maynard , the ruthless and soon to retire director of the CIA , is orchestrating a scheme to control the United States presidential election . Aaron Lake , a strongly pro defense expenditure candidate has been identified and Maynard is determined to control him and then get him elected . Unknowingly , the Brethren hook Teddy s candidate for President . The CIA scrambles to stop them from finding out what they ve done . But , a leak has sprung . It takes all of Teddy s experience with illegal maneuvering to save his candidate from being exposed . The Brethren lose their trust in Trevor and fire him he is later killed by CIA agents in the Caribbean . The CIA plant a man inside Trumble , who tells the judges that he knows they have been involved in the scam . A deal is worked out , money changes hands and the judges are pardoned by the out going President at Maynard s insistence . The judges leave the country and travel in Europe . Later , they re start the scam .

<|childrens|>A young boy named Max , after dressing in his wolf costume , wreaks havoc through his household and is disciplined by being sent to his bedroom . As he feels agitation with his mother , Max s bedroom undergoes a mysterious transformation into a jungle environment , and he winds up sailing to an island inhabited by malicious beasts known as the Wild Things . After successfully intimidating the creatures , Max is hailed as the king of the Wild Things and enjoys a playful romp with his subjects however , he decides to return home , to the Wild Things dismay . After arriving in his bedroom , Max discovers a hot supper waiting for him .

<|fantasy|>Martin Springfield and Rachel Mansour return to Earth to recuperate following the events of Singularity Sky , however Rachel is quickly called upon to explain the administrative expenses she incurred during her previous assignment . Shortly thereafter she finds herself negotiating with a lunatic believing himself to be a reincarnation of Idi Amin and in possession of an armed nuclear device which , in the black humor typical of the series , he has threatened to detonate after receiving an eviction notice from his apartment . Meanwhile , a young and hopeful planetary civilization is murdered by the apparent use of a causality violation device which causes their sun to explode without warning the iron sunrise of the title , and their defense systems to deploy automatically against the homeworld of the suspected perpetrators of the atrocity . Rachel and Martin set off to investigate these events and prevent the assassination of the remaining members of the murdered civilization s leaders , who can abort the retaliation strike . In the background the Eschaton continues to play its own game .

<|fantasy|>It is 1944 . A message from Paris warns Allied Intelligence of something big in the works which might have serious implications for Operation Overlord . The only way to get more information from the agent in Paris now closely watched by the Gestapo is to send in a personal courier . Russian émigré Michael Gallatin is picked for the job . In retirement as a secret agent since a grisly episode in North Africa , Gallatin is parachuted into occupied France , on a mission which will take him to the festering heart of the Third Reich on the scent of doomsday . As a master spy , Gallatin has proved he can take on formidable foes and kill them . As a passionate lover , he attracts beautiful women . But there is one extra factor which makes Michael Gallatin a unique special agent he is a werewolf , able to change form at will , able to assume the body of a wolf and its capacity to kill with savage , snarling fury . In the madness of war , Gallatin hunts his prey ready to outthink his opponents with his finely tuned brain . Or tear their throats out with his finely honed teeth . The novel flashes back to when his parents and sister were brutally murdered and before and after Michael is bitten by a Werewolf . Once bitten , he becomes a werewolf and lives in isolation with a wolf clan in Russian forests . Michael Gallatin is a British emigrant that is a top spy for Britain during World War II . In 1942 , he overtakes Rommel in North Africa and foils the Nazis plan to control the Suez Canal . This vital waterway would ensure that Nazi Germany could choke off Allied shipping and continue their march east into Russia . In 1944 , the war still rages on and the Nazis are forced toward Berlin by the Soviets , but Western Europe is still in Hitler s grip . Gallatin , in seclusion since 1942 , is called back for a vital mission The first part of the mission has him parachuting into Nazi occupied France to retrieve vital information from an informant named Adam . Adam is in Paris under tight Gestapo security the Nazi s official secret police . Gallatin contacts Adam through a Nazi deserter called Mouse . He slips a note in Adams pocket that informs Adam to go to an opera at the third act , so Gallatin can receive the information . Unfortunately , the Gestapo had followed Adam and shoot him in the head just after the information was disclosed to Michael . Michael escapes by faking suicide using cyanide he doesn t swallow the pill . This fake out allots him time to turn into a werewolf and he kills the fleeing Gestapo . Gallatin and Mouse must make their way east to Berlin , the heart of the Nazis lair , in an attempt to foil a top secret Nazi plan , Iron Fist .

<|fantasy|>Following the return of the occupied states of Kentucky and Houston to the Confederacy in early 1941 , President Jake Featherston breaks his solemn vow and re militarizes them , essentially declaring war against the United States in act if not in word . US President Al Smith hurries to prepare for war , but his country is sent reeling by the Confederate attack into Ohio on June 22 , 1941 . The Yankees under General Abner Dowling and Colonel Irving Morrell fight desperately , but by 1942 the Confederate Army has reached the shores of Lake Erie and cut the country in two . Meanwhile , the Mormons in Utah have once again revolted , prompting a swift response from the U . S . Army . A US counterattack in Virginia bogs down , and the Confederates are preparing a second offensive for the summer of 1942 when Al Smith is killed in a bombing raid on the capital city of Philadelphia . A shaken Charlie La Follette is sworn in as President of a nation fighting for its survival . Meanwhile , in the Confederacy , the murderous persecution of Blacks is escalating towards a full scale genocide , similar to our timeline s Holocaust . Another hint of things to come is provided when Featherston makes a strategic blunder in rejecting the offer of a physics professor to start research towards producing nuclear weapons , believing that the professor just wants government money to finance an abstruse scientific project while it is hinted that the US does start a version of the Manhattan Project , located in this case in the state of Washington and overseen by Franklin Roosevelt in this world an Assistant Secretary of War harboring no presidential ambitions .

<|fantasy|>The Weapon Shops of Isher and its sequel The Weapon Makers detail the workings of Isher civilization and the adventures of Robert Hedrock , The One Immortal Man , as he keeps it in balance in the face of attempts by the Weapon Makers , who have forgotten their purpose as a permanent opposition , and the strong government of the Empress , Innelda Isher , with its intimate connections to a network of financial institutions , to undermine each other . The Weapon Shops provide the populace with defensive weapons and an alternative legal system . The Isher Weapon Shops novels are one of the very few examples of Golden Age science fiction that explicitly discusses the right to keep and bear arms , specifically guns . Indeed , the motto of the Weapon Shops , repeated several times , is The right to buy weapons is the right to be free . Van Vogt s guns have virtually magical properties , and can only be used in self defense . The political philosophy of the Weapon Shops is minimalist . They will not interfere with the corrupt imperial monarchy of the Isher government , on the grounds that men always have a government of the type they deserve no government , however bad , exists without at least the tacit consent of the governed . The mission of the Weapon Shops therefore is merely to offer single individuals the right to protect themselves with a firearm , or , in cases of fraud , access to a Robin Hood alternative court system that judges and awards compensation from large , imperial merchant combines to cheated individuals . Because the population has access to this alternative system of justice , the Isher government cannot take the final step toward totalitarianism . The novel was published by Greenberg in New York in 1951 . It was also published as a paperback by Ace Books and in 1969 by New English Library in the U . K .

<|novel|>The story takes place on the rapidly advancing frontier of New York State and features an elderly Leatherstocking Natty Bumpo , Judge Marmaduke Temple of Templeton , whose life parallels that of the author s father Judge William Cooper , and Elizabeth Temple based on the author s sister , Hannah Cooper , of the fictional Templeton , New York . The story begins with an argument between the Judge and Leatherstocking over who killed a buck , and as Cooper reviews many of the changes to New York s Lake Otsego , questions of environmental stewardship , conservation , and use prevail . Leatherstocking and his closest friend , the Mohican Indian Chingachgook , begin to compete with the Temples for the loyalties of a mysterious young visitor , a young hunter known as Oliver Edwards , who eventually marries Elizabeth . Chingachgook dies , exemplifying the vexed figure of the dying Indian , and Natty vanishes into the sunset .

<|fantasy|>Eugene is fired from his job as a college professor after having several of his witticisms surreptitiously recorded by the daughter of a popular conservative commentator . Eugene then becomes a teacher at a nearby overcrowded prison run by a Japanese corporation . His employer , and occasional acquaintance , is the prison s warden , Hiroshi Matsumoto . After a massive prison break , Eugene s former college is occupied by escapees from the prison , who take the staff hostage . Eventually the college is turned into a prison , since the old prison was destroyed in the breakout . Ironically , Eugene is ordered to be the warden of the prison , but then becomes an inmate , presumably via the same type of hocus pocus that led to his dismissal from his professorship .

<|fantasy|>The novel s main character , Rudy Waltz , nicknamed Deadeye Dick , commits accidental manslaughter as a child he kills a pregnant woman who was vacuuming and lives his whole life feeling guilty and seeking forgiveness for it . He was so traumatized by the events directly after the woman s death that he lives life as an asexual neuter , neither homosexual nor heterosexual . He tells the story of his life as a middle aged man expatriate in Haiti , which symbolizes New York City , until the end , when the stream of time of the story catches up with him . At this point , he confronts an event that has been suggested and referred to throughout the novel . The generic Midwestern town of Midland City , Ohio also the setting of Breakfast of Champions in which Rudy was raised is virtually destroyed by a neutron bomb . At the ending of the book , it appears that Rudy , while he may not have fully come to terms with his actions , has at least come to live with them . In addition , the ending is where Vonnegut provides his most direct commentary on society , although there are hints here and there throughout the novel . Another key theme throughout the book is the relationship between Waltz and his parents . Vonnegut focuses on connecting the actions and attitudes of parents to the ensuing actions and attitudes of the offspring , in this case , Rudy Waltz . Rudy writes a play , based on events in the life of his father s former best friend . In the latter half of the book some scenes are described as theater scripts .