On their way towards the Great Ga''Hoole Tree, "The Band" (Soren, Gylfie, Twilight and Digger) and Mrs. Plithiver are mobbed by crows. The Band managed to fend off the crows but at the cost of Digger being injured. After landing in a tree for shelter, a neighbouring family of Masked Owls came to visit. Before leaving, the female Masked Owl became skeptical when she heard that "The Band" was on the way to find the Guardians of Gahoole. Later after their departure from the spruce tree, they stayed in a sycamore with a couple of Sooty Owls named Sweetums and Swatums who supported The Band in their quest to find Ga''Hoole. In the Beaks, a barren and desolate area, "The Band" ventured into a dark cave where they were attacked by a bobcat. Together, "The Band" managed to kill the bobcat and upon further investigation they found a dying Barred Owl. When they asked if St.Aggie''s had attacked him, his last words were, "Oh! You only wish!" After hearing this disturbing news, The Band continued on their quest. However, their progress would be dangerously hindered because of the Mirror Lakes. Their gleaming surfaces hypnotized The Band and made them content to stay and put off their quest. Eventually Mrs. Plithiver recognized the danger and stirred The Band into remembrance of their quest. When they left, they were blown off course straight into the Ice Narrows in the Northern Kingdoms where they were taken in by a family of puffins: the oddest creatures "The Band" had ever seen. Despite all difficulties, "The Band" were escorted to the Island of Hoole by the Snowy Owl monarchs of the tree, Boron and Barran. Upon their arrival to the Great Ga''Hoole Tree, a stuck-up Spotted Owl named Otulissa escorted "The Band" to their new hollow. They learned from her that they could not just go into a battle but that skills must be learned by becoming members of chaws: specialized groups of owls that dedicate themselves to a certain skill. Despite finding Ga''Hoole, "The Band" sought a meeting with the parliament because they felt that their knowledge of St. Aggie''s would be valuable to the Guardians. However, Boron informed "The Band" that they needed to wait a bit longer and that nobility wasn''t garnered instantly but through unwavering resolution and stalwartness. He also informed them that their journey had not ended when they arrived at the tree but it had only just begun and that they would begin their training the next day. During the day, Soren found Twilight thinking about leaving the Guardians because "The Band" would be broken up because they would be separated into chaws. Soren reassured Twilight that no matter what happened that they would always be a band. Upon hearing these words, Twilight decided to stay. As time passed, "The Band" learned many skills and became more accustomed to life at the tree. However, Soren was still haunted by the thought of his sister Eglantine and her well-being. Eventually, The Band were placed into their respective chaws; Soren was placed into the colliering and weather chaws. This was a disaster for Soren because of the Whiskered Screech Owl Ezylryb''s intimidating missing talon and because he was double chawed with Otulissa whose talkative attitude proved to be hard to bear. However, the blacksmith of the Great Ga''Hoole Tree, Bubo (a Great Horned Owl) was confident that Soren would be all that he could be because Ezylryb had recognized Soren''s potential. Later, "The Band" discovered that the roots under the parliament chamber were prone to transmitting any sound created in the chamber. This allowed them to discover that the Guardians were addressing the topic concerning the dead Barred Owl. They found out that he was a slipgizzle: an owl spy that worked for the Guardians. Eventually Soren''s fears and problems began to subside. Ezylryb proved to be much more than every owl in his weather chaw ever thought him to be. Soren was even able to help Mrs. Plithiver get a spot in the harp guild with Madame Plonke, the tree''s beloved snowy owl singer. Soren also managed to catch a burning coal in his beak and earned Ezylryb''s rare approval. Owlets of the Tyto species were found dropped all over babbling nonsense about owl purity. Digger and Twilight, who were part of the search and rescue chaw, found Eglantine who was one of the owlets dropped in the event that came to be known as the Great Downing. Soren was shocked when he was shown Eglantine but disappointed that she wasn''t her true self. Eventually, Trader Mags came to trade goods at the Great Ga''Hoole Tree and Eglantine went into a panic when shown a piece of isinglass. This panic, however, proved to be effective because Eglantine broke out of her strange condition and became normal once again. For now, Soren felt content but only to an extent since Ezylryb, the ryb Soren had come to truly cherish, had not yet returned from his investigations of the Great Downing.

Guardians of Ga''Hoole: The Journey

Paul Abrams has just moved to New York City with his parents. He starts at tenth grade in a new high school, Don Carey High School. When he finds out that no one at his new school cares much about much of anything, he tries to shake things up by nominating Mike Otis, a reclusive man of mystery, for Student council president. Mike runs unopposed and is soon elected and soon forgotten. Sheldon then begins to care and starts to talk up Mike and attributes a wave of needed repairs to Mike. As the students begin to care, the teachers sense that something is going on. They take it to the next level by publishing a short newsletter entitled The Otis Report, which criticizes school staff and praises Mike to the heavens. They distribute it on roller skates, wearing masks. As a result, Mike is dismissed as student body president. The pair react with a campaign to restore him and the students begin to care about something. Mike''s address in his permanent file is on the eleventh floor of a ten-story building. The pair track him and locate his real address. Eavesdropping, they discover that he is about to fail a course. They seize on the chance to increase student participation even more, as a large part of the student body now idolize him. They collaborate to produce a project for him. The project is of such quality that it is entered in a science fair. It is disqualified when the judges discover that the work is not his. The students react badly, resulting in the schools banning from the event. Next they turn to sports. An announcement that Mike likes basketball results in full-on participation in the game. They play an away game and win (63-62). This results in a joyous riot and much destruction. Eventually, the staff gives in and confirms Mike as student body president. Paul and Sheldon are ecstatic at this news, feeling that the sky is now the limit. However, Mike soon announces that he is leaving. The students are surprised, but plan a party to "send Mike off in the style he deserves."

Don''t Care High

The Wonderful Visit tells how an angel spends a little more than a week in southern England. He is at first mistaken for a bird because of his dazzling polychromatic plumage, for he is "neither the Angel of religious feeling nor the Angel of popular belief," but rather "the Angel of Italian art." As a result, he is hunted and shot in the wing by an amateur ornithologist, the Rev. K. Hilyer, the vicar of Siddermoton, and then taken in and cared for at the vicarage. The creature comes from "the Land of Dreams" (also the angel''s term for our world), and while "charmingly affable," is "quite ignorant of the most elementary facts of civilisation." During his brief visit he grows increasingly dismayed by what he learns about the world in general and about life in Victorian England in particular. As he grows increasingly critical of local mores, he is eventually denounced as "a Socalist." The vicar, his host, meanwhile comes under attack by fellow clerics, neighbors, and even servants for harboring a disreputable character (no one but the vicar believes he comes from another world, and people take to calling him "Mr. Angel"). The angel''s one talent is his divine violin-playing, but he is discredited at a reception that Lady Hammergallow agrees to host when it is discovered that he cannot read music and confides to a sympathetic listener that he has taken an interest in the vicar''s serving girl, Delia. Instead of healing, his wings begin to atrophy. The local physician, Dr. Crump, threatens to have him put in a prison or a madhouse. After the angel destroys some barbed wire on a local baronet''s property, Sir John Gotch gives the vicar one week to send him away before he begins proceedings against him. The Rev. Mr. Hilyer is regretfully planning how he will take the angel to London and try to establish him there when two catastrophes abort the plan. First, the angel, who "had been breathing the poisonous air of this Struggle for Existence of ours for more than a week," beats Sir John Gotch with Gotch''s own whip in a fury after the local landowner insolently orders him off his land. Distraught to think (mistakenly) that he has killed a man, he returns to the village to find the vicar''s house in flames. Delia, the serving girl, has entered the burning building in an attempt to rescue the angel''s violin: this extraordinary act comes as a revelation to the angel. "Then in a flash he saw it all, saw this grim little world of battle and cruelty, transfigured in a splendour that outshone the Angelic Land, suffused suddenly and insupportably glorious with the wonderful light of Love and Self-Sacrifice." The angel attempts to rescue Delia, someone seems to see "two figures with wings" flash up and vanish among the flames, and a strange music that "began and ended like the opening and shutting of a door" suggests that the angel has gone back to where he came from, accompanied by Delia. An epilogue reveals that "there is nothing beneath" the two white crosses in Siddermorton cemetery that bear the names of Thomas Angel and Delia Hardy, and that the vicar, who never recovered his aplomb after the angel''s departure, died within a year of the fire.

The Wonderful Visit

In a parallel universe, England and Imperial Russia have fought the Crimean War for more than a century; England itself is a police state run by the Goliath Corporation (a powerful weapon-producing company with questionable morals); and Wales is a separate, socialist nation. The book''s fictional version of Jane Eyre ends with Jane accompanying her cousin, St. John Rivers, to India in order to help him with his missionary work. Literary questions (especially the question of Shakespearean authorship) are debated so hotly that they sometimes inspire gang wars and murder. Single, thirty-six, Crimean War veteran and literary detective Thursday Next lives in London with her pet dodo, Pickwick. As the story begins, Thursday is temporarily promoted to investigate the theft of the original manuscript of Charles Dickens''s Martin Chuzzlewit because she is one of the few people able to identify the thief, Acheron Hades. She comes close to capturing him during a stakeout, but is badly injured, saved by a copy of Jane Eyre that stops Hades'' bullet. A mysterious stranger aids her until the paramedics arrive, leaving behind only a monogrammed handkerchief and jacket. Next recognizes these items as those of Rochester, a character from Jane Eyre, because she entered the novel as a child and briefly became acquainted with Rochester himself while she was there. While recovering in hospital, Thursday is instructed by her future self to take the LiteraTec job in her home town of Swindon. There, she discovers that her Uncle Mycroft has created the Prose Portal, which allows people to enter works of fiction. Next also renews an acquaintance with her former fiancé Landen Parke-Laine (a reference to the British version of the board game Monopoly). Hades kidnaps Mycroft, Polly, and the Prose Portal in order to blackmail the literary world; any changes made to the plot of a novel''s original manuscript will change all other copies. When his demands are not met, Hades kills Mr Quaverley, a minor character from the original manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit. Next and a Goliath Corporation operative named Jack Schitt trace Hades to Wales and rescue Mycroft and the Prose Portal, but find that Polly is stuck in one of Wordsworth''s poems and Hades has gone into the original text of Jane Eyre. Next pursues Hades, and after much trouble, succeeds in killing him. In the process, Thornfield Hall is burned, Rochester''s mad wife Bertha falls to her death, and Rochester himself is grievously injured (in other words, she alters the ending of the book to match the actual ending to Jane Eyre). Returning to her own world, Next uses the Prose Portal to release her Aunt Polly and imprison Jack Schitt in the text of Edgar Allan Poe''s "The Raven". She shows up at the church where Parke-Laine is about to be married to another woman, but a lawyer interrupts the wedding and Next and Parke-Laine are reconciled and marry instead. Next''s father, a renegade agent from SpecOps-12, the ChronoGuard, turns up to dispense some fatherly advice to his daughter. The novel ends with Next facing an uncertain future at work: public reaction to the new ending for Jane Eyre is positive, but there are other repercussions.

The Eyre Affair

Joseph''s latest role is that of Sky Coyote, the trickster, the foolish one, the animal god of many Native American traditions. He will play it for the Chumash, a tribe in California in the late 17th century. His job is to persuade the village of Humashup to give up their entire lifestyle, which the Company will take and "preserve," while the Chumash are shipped out to work in a Company facility. The Spanish are coming soon, and the Chumash culture will be wiped out along with all the others. Of course, Joseph can''t do this alone. He assembles a small army of his kind, including the erratic and moody botanist Mendoza, whom he occasionally regrets recruiting in 16th century Spain; the anthropologist and former Babylonian Imarte; who is not averse to bedding her subjects to get more data; and many other specialists. Joseph is the Master of Ceremonies, however. He''s also wearing a lot of non-standard equipment to turn him into a cavorting, fast talking (and priapic) god. The Chumash turn out to be, well, ordinary. Superb craftsmen, their lives revolve around work, festivals, religion, festivals, getting ahead, and festivals. They may not have churches and boys clubs, but the kantap fills the same needs. The guilds make sure that everybody gets what they need and pays handsomely for it. Oily salesmen try to make their percentage any way they can. Joseph is a little surprised to learn that they are so worldly, and they are quite surprised that he, well, exists. However Joseph spins his tale with his usual skill and pulls off the job. There are snags, but not the usual kind. For a start, actual 24th century Company operatives have come back to supervise. They are disgusted that the cyborgs eat meat, drink alcohol and consume other stimulants banned in their era. The cyborgs are not too impressed with the childish, phobia-ridden operatives either, but a job is a job. Mendoza starts her feud with Imarte, which continues in the next installment. There is a messianic religion encroaching on Chumash territory. This gets Joseph''s hackles up. Nature throws in an earthquake or two. The Chumash go to their reward, the Company gets all the valuable information and samples it needs to sell to the rich and not-so-smart in the 24th century, and Joseph is left with a nagging doubt. For one thing, why does nobody know what happens after 2355, even though all history is available to the cyborgs up to that point? And why do cyborgs who talk too much about this tend to get suddenly re-assigned? Why do the 24th century people seem so cowardly and stupid? Didn''t they go all the way back to 30,000 BC to start the ball rolling? Or was it 40,000? Nobody is quite sure. However, Joseph is mostly satisfied, but unfulfilled and, at his core, unhappy. Mendoza has been released to wander the redwood forest, a dream task for the botanist. Joseph believes that in 1923 he saw her with a mortal she fell for in Tudor England, but that story is not completed in this volume. Joseph has more or less adopted Mendoza as his daughter, though he cannot admit it. By the end of the book he has become a 20th century Hollywood studio executive, hiding artifacts of the era for the Company.

Sky Coyote

Two migrant field workers in California on their plantation during the Great Depression—George Milton, an intelligent but uneducated man, and Lennie Small, a man of large stature and great strength but limited mental abilities—are on their way to another part of California in Soledad. They hope to one day attain their shared dream of settling down on their own piece of land. Lennie''s part of the dream is merely to tend to (and touch) soft rabbits on the farm. This dream is one of Lennie''s favorite stories, which George constantly retells. They are fleeing from their previous employment in Weed, California, where they were run out of town after Lennie''s love of stroking soft things resulted in an accusation of attempted rape when he touched a young woman''s dress, and would not let go. It soon becomes clear that the two are close friends and George is Lennie''s protector. The theme of friendship is constant throughout the story. At the ranch, the situation appears to be menacing and dangerous, especially when the pair are confronted by Curley—the boss''s small-statured aggressive son with an inferiority complex who dislikes larger men—leaving the gentle giant Lennie potentially vulnerable. Curley''s flirtatious and provocative wife, to whom Lennie is instantly attracted, poses a problem as well. In sharp contrast to these two characters, the pair also meets Slim, the kind, intelligent and intuitive jerkline skinner whose dog has recently had a litter of puppies. Slim gives a puppy to Lennie. In spite of the potential problems on the ranch, their dream leaps towards reality when Candy, the aged, one-handed ranch hand, offers to pitch in with George and Lennie so that they can buy a farm at the end of the month in return for permission to live with them on it. The trio are ecstatic, but their joy is overshadowed when Curley attacks Lennie. In response, Lennie, urged on by George, catches Curley''s fist and crushes it, reminding the group there are still obstacles to overcome before their goal is reached. Nevertheless, George feels more relaxed, since the dream seems just within their grasp, to the extent that he even leaves Lennie behind on the ranch while he goes into town with the other ranch hands. Lennie wanders into the stable, and chats with Crooks, the bitter, yet educated stable buck, who is isolated from the other workers because he is black. Candy finds them and they discuss their plans for the farm with Crooks, who cannot resist asking them if he can hoe a garden patch on the farm, despite scorning the possibility of achieving the dream. Curley''s wife makes another appearance and flirts with the men, especially Lennie. However, her spiteful side is shown when she belittles them and is especially harsh towards Crooks because of his race, threatening to have him lynched. Lennie accidentally kills his puppy while stroking it. Curley''s wife enters the barn and tries to speak to Lennie, admitting that she is lonely and how her dreams of becoming a movie star are crushed, revealing the reason she flirts with the ranch hands. After finding out that Lennie loves stroking soft things, she offers to let him stroke her hair, but panics and begins to scream when she feels his strength. Lennie becomes frightened, and in the scuffle, unintentionally breaks her neck. When the other ranch hands find the corpse, George unhappily realizes that their dream is at an end. George hurries away to find Lennie, hoping he will be at the meeting place they designated at the start of the novel in case Lennie got into trouble, knowing that there is only one thing he can do to save Lennie from the painful death that Curley''s lynch mob intends to deliver. George meets Lennie at the designated place, the same spot they camped in the night before they came to the ranch. The two sit together and George retells the beloved story of the bright future together that they will never share. He then shoots Lennie in the back of the head, so that his death will be painless and happy. Curley, Slim, and Carlson find George seconds after the shooting. Only Slim realizes that George killed Lennie out of love, and gently and consolingly leads him away, while Curley and Carlson look on, unable to comprehend the subdued mood of the two men.

Of Mice and Men

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

Holes

The novel delivers the story of Herbert Atheron in a first-person narrative. In 1892 he is a successful businessman, married, the father of a son and daughter. Though not yet 50 years old, he has contracted a fatal illness; at the start of the book, he is dying. He re-evaluates his life, to reach a grim conclusion: he feels that he has wasted his life by concentrating on business and neglecting the personal and familial matters that count most. He especially regrets the loss of his first love, a woman named Theresa, who died young after he abandoned her. On his deathbed, he feels himself "alone in the vast vacuity of space, a naked, shivering soul. A deep darkness of horror engulfed me. I could endure no more." When he regains consciousness, he finds himself in the body of a 27-year-old man named Harold Amesbury. He discovers that it is now a hundred years later; Amesbury has been ill and delirious for three months. His fiancée, Helen Newcome, is overjoyed at his recovery &mdash; but stunned when he reveals his identity as Atherton. Helen determines to nurse Herbert/Harold back to mental health. She leads him out into the world, where he confronts the vast changes of the intervening century, and beholds the "bewildering magnificence and beauty" &mdash; of Brooklyn in 1992. Helen Newcome brings the protagonist to her inventor father; together, the two Newcomes guide the confused time traveller in the realities of 1992. Society has enjoyed vast improvement in the intervening century: the city of Columbia, formerly New York, is cleaner, better organized, more peaceful, healthier, and generally better than before. Electrification and mechanization have brought widespread prosperity, and the extremes of wealth and poverty have been levelled. Government has assumed more responsibility: all land is owned by the state, and people lease the sites of their palatial houses. Newcome the inventor concentrates on improving food production; he receives a stipend from the state, and his inventions go to benefit society as a whole. Brooks does not dwell on the larger political organization of society, though he indicates the world is dominated by the United States of America and a "United States of Europe." War is a thing of the past. Brooks blends the technical and the spiritual: when Newcome shows the protagonist the new "harmonic telegraph," Atherton/Amesbury speculates about the possibilities of both radio and telepathy. The second half of the book is dominated by spiritual matters. The protagonist has a rough adjustment to his strange situation, and obsesses over his lost Theresa. Helen Newcome grows distressed at her limited ability to help her fiancé, and leaves for a trip abroad. Atherton/Amesbury boards with a widow and her children. The daughter of the house, Irene, was used as an experimental subject in hypnotism by her late physician father; she is a spontaneous medium and clairvoyant. Irene leads the protagonist on an aerial journey to the now-lush Sahara, where he is re-united with Helen. Through psychic visions, the two come to understand that Helen is the lost Theresa reincarnated. They are happily married in the end.

Earth Revisited

A boy receives a Velveteen Rabbit for Christmas. The Velveteen Rabbit is snubbed by other more expensive or mechanical toys, the latter of which fancy themselves real. One day while talking with the Skin Horse, the Rabbit learns that a toy becomes real if its owner really and truly loves it. The Skin Horse makes the Velveteen Rabbit aware that "...once you are Real you can''t become unreal again. It lasts for always." When the boy''s china dog is misplaced, the Velveteen Rabbit is given to the boy as a quick replacement by the Nana. The Velveteen Rabbit soon takes his place as the boy''s constant companion. The Rabbit becomes shabbier, but the boy loves him no matter what. In the woods near the boy''s home, the Velveteen Rabbit meets actual rabbits, and learns about the differences between himself and the real rabbits when the real rabbits prove he is not real by his inability to hop and jump. The Velveteen Rabbit''s companionship with the boy lasts until the boy falls ill with scarlet fever. The boy becomes too ill to play for a very long time; upon his recovery, he is sent to the seaside on doctor''s orders. The doctor orders all the toys the boy has played with, including the Rabbit, be burned in order to disinfect the nursery. The boy is given a new plush rabbit and is so excited about the trip to the seaside that he forgets his old Velveteen Rabbit. While awaiting the bonfire, in which the Velveteen Rabbit will be burned, the Rabbit cries a real tear. This tear brings forth the Nursery Magic Fairy. She tells the Rabbit that he was only real to the boy, and then brings him to the woods and kisses him, making him real to everybody. He soon discovers that he is a real rabbit at last and runs to join the other rabbits in the wild. The following spring, the boy sees the Rabbit hopping in the wild and thinks he looks like his old Velveteen Rabbit, but he never knows that it actually was.

The Velveteen Rabbit

In The Pirates of Silence, Fantasio gets an assignment from Le Moustique to write a story about Incognito City, a highly modernized city inhabited by wealthy celebrities and where security is tight and photography strictly forbidden. Fantasio gets around this by hiding miniature cameras in everyday items such as his pipe. But before he and Spirou leave, the Marsupilami surprisingly appears at their home, having somehow traveled alone from the Count''s mansion in Champignac. Unable to reach the Count by phone, they drive to Incognito City and have an unpleasant traffic encounter with Juan Corto Dos Orejas, leaving them with a bad impression and a small object found on the ground. Further encounters with thugs and suspicious events slowly expose a fiendish plot, involving the kidnapping of the Count of Champignac. In The Quick Super, Fantasio sets out to test-drive a "Quick" (a large car manufactured by Genial Motors) for the week-end, in order to write a review for Spirou Méchanique. There are mysterious elements however, as all previously test-driven Quicks have ended up stolen, and this one is no exception. As the events unfold, old acquaintances from Circus Zabaglione (from Les voleurs du Marsupilami) reappear.

Les pirates du silence

The book opens with Major Malich, a Captain at the time, leading a Special Forces team in a town of some unknown country, presumably somewhere in Iran or Afghanistan, because of the use of Persian. They are attacked and return fire, saving a village with only one civilian casualty and earning Captain Malich a promotion to Major. Major Malich works at the Pentagon, where he writes the plans to find holes in American security, having no idea that they will fall into the wrong hands. The plans call for a stealthy underwater entrance into Washington, D.C., followed by a rocket launcher attack on the White House, relying on an inside informant to give the location of the President. Malich and Coleman come upon the attack in progress, and, after acquiring rifles, attempt to prevent the attack. Although they succeed in killing one of the men holding the launchers, the second fires and hits the south wall of the West Wing, killing the President, Secretary of Defense, and several others. It is later revealed the Vice President had been assassinated by a dump truck backing up into his limousine. Suspicion then turns to Malich, as he had written the plans and was present at the attack. While Malich is being debriefed at the Pentagon, Coleman is asked to participate in a right wing coup to correct the existing government. Coleman recounts the meeting on live television and retreats to Malich''s side in New Jersey. The next morning they both decide to take a borrowed SUV to Ground Zero. They are caught in an uprising led by high tech mechs that fire on anyone wearing uniforms. After rescuing a squad of New York Police officers, they escape on foot via the Holland Tunnel to New Jersey where they collaborate with the National Guard to repel a horde of the mechanized warriors. Two Air Force F-16 jets are shot down into New York Harbor, one hitting the gown of the Statue of Liberty. Once back in New Jersey, Malich and Coleman join Malich''s wife who used to work for an Idaho congressman who is now, due to the order of succession, President of the United States. Malich''s wife is summoned by the new President. He asks for Malich, Coleman and Malich''s former Special Forces buddies to help save the United States. Malich is ordered to retrieve his operations report created at the Pentagon. While there, his trusted secretary, DeeNee, betrays him, shooting him in the eye and killing him before his Secret Service escorts could react. Coleman escapes only to be pursued by more mechanized warriors and hover-bikes. They are eventually repelled by Apache gunships dispatched by the President. The new National Security Advisor, Averell Torrent, is one of Malich''s former professors. He sends a team including Malich''s Special Forces buddies and Coleman out to discover information about the Restoration group responsible for Malich''s death and the subversion of the United States of America. Upon finding the Progressive Restoration''s lair, the team, led by Coleman, reconnoiter the Washington mountain hideout. They invade and take its leader prisoner. After the defeat of the Progressive Restoration, Torrent is elected in a landslide victory as he was the presidential nominee for both the Democratic and Republican parties. Rather than wait until the next year''s inauguration, the current president immediately steps down to let Torrent start his term. Towards the end of the novel, Reuben''s wife Cecily begins to suspect Torrent''s involvement in instigating the entire conflict in order to ascend to power. She discovers many of the key rebel leaders were taught at some point by him. From the notes Reuben left from his classes with him, she uncovers Torrent''s obsession with the transition between the Roman Republic and the Empire, and Torrent''s belief that the United States is in the same stage. The book ends with Cecily and Coleman, to whom she reveals her suspicions, wondering whether this is truly the case. No indication is given as to how Torrent will use his power, setting the novel up for a sequel.

Empire

The book is divided into two parts. The first attempts a complete diagnosis of the totality of modern capitalist civilization, moving through what the Invisible Committee identify as the "seven circles" of alienation: "self, social relations, work, the economy, urbanity, the environment, and to close civilization". The latter part of the book begins to offer a prescription for revolutionary struggle based on the formation of communes, or affinity group-style units, in an underground network that will build its forces outside of mainstream politics, and attack in moments of crisis – political, social, environmental – to push towards anti-capitalist revolution. The insurrection envisioned by the Invisible Committee will revolve around "the local appropriation of power by the people, of the physical blocking of the economy and of the annihilation of police forces". The book points to the late 2000s financial crisis, and environmental degradation as symptoms of capitalism''s decline. Also discussed are the Argentine economic crisis (1999-2002) and the piquetero movement which emerged from it, the 2005 riots and 2006 student protests in France, the 2006 Oaxaca protests and the grassroots relief work in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina as examples of breakdown in the modern social order which can give rise to partial insurrectionary situations.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

Guardians of Ga'Hoole: The Journey

By Kathryn Lasky

Don't Care High

No Author Listed

The Wonderful Visit

By H. G. Wells

The Eyre Affair

By Jasper Fforde

Sky Coyote

By Kage Baker

Of Mice and Men

By John Steinbeck

Holes

By Louis Sachar

Earth Revisited

No Author Listed

The Velveteen Rabbit

By Margery Williams

Les pirates du silence

By André Franquin

Empire

By Orson Scott Card

The Coming Insurrection

No Author Listed