Following on from the events of The Banquo Legacy, the Timelords have cracked the base code the Eighth Doctor programmed into Compassion''s randomiser and intercept her at her next destination. Threatened with enslavement, Compassion activates her built in weapons system and destroys the approaching WarTARDISes, while the Doctor fights for control of her navigation systems. The resulting "hiccup" expels Fitz and the Doctor into the vortex. The Doctor is captured while escaping from the Edifice, a massive bone structure that has appeared in the skies above Gallifrey, and taken to Gallifrey where he is accused of being an agent of Faction Paradox. The Doctor is forced to aid the Time Lords in the capture of Compassion to aid in the forthcoming War. Meanwhile, Fitz appears before a group of disenchanted, young Time Lords who are holding rituals based on the occult texts of Faction Paradox and finds himself unable to escape. Getting further embroiled in the group''s activities, Fitz witnesses the creation of a copy of former President Greyjan the Sane and is then the unwitting donor of material used to pull the original Fitz Kreiner, now in the guise of Faction Agent Father Kreiner, from a Klein bottle universe into the modern day Gallifrey. During her Reaffirmation Ceremony, Lady President Romana is challenged by Greyjan and placed under house arrest, with only Fitz as company. With the aid of Compassion, they are able to escape and witness Faction Paradox corrupting Time Lord history, followed by the Doctor''s fall to the Faction. Travelling to the Edifice with Father Kreiner and a Faction Agent known as Tarra, Kreiner reveals he is not truly working for the Faction and pleads with the Doctor to undo the past so he never becomes Father Kreiner, an act the Doctor cannot agree to. The Doctor reveals that not only has he not fallen to the Faction but the Edifice is, in fact, his old TARDIS, which was not actually destroyed at Avalon. Together he and Kreiner are able to dispose of Tarra before Grandfather Paradox appears on the Edifice to confront the Doctor. The Doctor battles the Grandfather, and decides that the only way to prevent Faction Paradox from destroying Gallifrey''s past is a drastic move: he chooses to use the energy that is holding the TARDIS together to destroy Faction Paradox and Grandfather Paradox, but also destroy Gallifrey in the process. With the whole of Time Lord history seemingly being erased from existence, Compassion is able to rescue the Doctor, Fitz and the remains of the Doctor''s old TARDIS, placing them on Earth for safekeeping, until the TARDIS can regenerate itself over the course of the next century and the Doctor, now suffering from amnesia, can recover. At the end of the novel, the Doctor is stranded on Earth for a hundred years; Fitz is left to his own devices in the late 20th century, with only a time and place to meet the Doctor once the TARDIS is once again active; and Compassion is released from her bonds to both the Time Lords and the Faction, free to roam time and space as she sees fit.

The Ancestor Cell

Nwokocha Agbadi is a proud, handsome and wealthy local chief. Although he has many wives he finds a woman named Ona more attractive. Ona (a priceless jewel) is the name he has given her. Ona is the daughter of a chief. When she was young, her father took her everywhere he went, saying she was his ornament, and Nwokocha Agbadi would say jokingly, "Why don''t you wear her aroung your neck like an Ona?" (a priceless jewel). It never occurred to him that he would be one of the men to ask her when she grew up. During one rainy season chief Agbadi and his friends have gone elephant hunting and having come too near the heavy creature he is thrown with a mighty tusk into a nearby sugar-cane bush and is pinned to the floor. He aims his spear at the belly of the mighty animal and kills it but not until it has wounded him badly. Agbadi passes out and it seems to all he has died. He wakes up after several days to find Ona beside him. During this period, he has sex with her, and after eighteen days he finds out that his eldest wife Agunwa was very ill and died later. It is thought that perhaps she became ill as a result of seeing her husband pass out. The funeral festivities continue through the day. When it is time to put Agunwa in her grave, everything she will need in afterlife having been placed in her coffin, her personal slave is called. According to custom, a good slave is supposed to jump into the grave willingly to accompany her mistress but this young and beautiful slave begs for her life, much to the annoyance of the men. The hapless slave is pushed into the shallow grave but struggles out, appealing to her owner Agbadi, whose eldest son cries angrily: “So my mother does not deserve a decent burial?” So saying, he gives her a sharp blow with the head of the cutlass. Another relative gives her a final blow to the head and she falls into the grave, silenced forever. The burial is completed. Ona becomes pregnant and delivers a girl child, named Nnu Ego (20 bags of cowries). The baby is born with a mark on her head resembling that made by the cutlass used on the head of the slave woman. Ona gives birth to another son but she dies in premature labour and her son also dies a week afterwards. Nnu Ego becomes a woman but is barren. After several months with no sign of fruitfulness, she consults several herbalists and is told that the slave woman who is her Chi (goddess) will not give her a child. Her husband Amatokwu takes another wife who before long conceives. Nnu Ego returns her father’s house. She is married to new husband whom she does not like but prays that if she can have a child with him, she will love him. She does give birth to a baby boy, whom she later finds dead. Shocked, she is on the verge of jumping into the river when a villager draws her back and comforts her. She subsequently gives birth to four children. Her husband, a laundryman for a white man, is drafted into the army during wartime, but on her own Nnu Ego ensures all her children have a good life, sending two abroad to study. After she dies a lonely death, her children all come home and are sorry they were in a position to give her a better life. She is given the greatest burial in their town. When all her children are unable to have offspring the Oracle reveals that this is because Nnu Ego is angry with them. Stories say that she is a wicked woman even in death. Still, they agree that she has given all to her children and that this is the joy of being a mother.

The Joys of Motherhood

Elsa is a bright and lively young girl who has dreams to become a comedienne. When her stepfather loses his job, her family, including her baby half-brother Hank and half-sister Pippa, are forced to move into a rundown bed and breakfast hotel that is used as accommodation for poor families. She doesn''t get along with her stepfather, as he often loses his temper with her and hits her, so takes to spending time with her friend Naomi, with her little sister usually tagging along. Eventually her mother makes her attend the nearby school. Elsa has a hard time adjusting to the new circumstances and doesn''t enjoy her new school, as she is behind in lessons so has to take extra classes. She frequently plays truant from school with boys from the hotel. One night Elsa awakes to the smell of smoke, and upon investigating she discovers the hotel kitchen is on fire. Using her loud voice, she runs from to door to door, yelling to wake up all the residents. Everyone in the hotel makes it out safely, and Elsa has a chance to appear on television when a news reporter asks her how she woke up everyone up. As much of the hotel is damaged, Elsa''s family and many others are given temporary accommodation in a much nicer hotel. Elsa finally has a chance to star on television when she is invited on a programme about courageous children.

The Bed And Breakfast Star

The AI Lieserl is abandoned for five million years, leaving her to observe the sun''s interior. She discovers dark matter-based life, which she names photino birds. These birds gradually drain the energy from the core of a star, ending fusion and causing premature aging into a stable red giant&mdash;the birds'' preferred habitat, as it has no risk of going supernova and destroying them. A generation ship is sent with one end of a wormhole to explore the future and investigate the whereabouts of Michael Poole. It will be a five-million-year journey, though only a thousand years will elapse on board, due to relativistic time dilation effects. The crew is broken into three factions&mdash;the primitives, the virtuals, and a survivalist faction, Superet. Their journey is a round trip taking them to the future of our solar system through relativistic time dilation. Among the factions, the primitives are a eugenics project for Garry Uvarov who hopes to lengthen the lives of humanity without the use of Anti-Senescence (anagathic or life-extension) technology. The Superet faction relies heavily on failing technology and maintains a totalitarian government which refuses to acknowledge the existence of other decks on the ship; the virtuals remain aloof. Upon their arrival, the entire universe is full of red stars (indicating that the stars have aged far faster than expected). The Northern makes contact with Lieserl, who explains her observations of the photino birds. The photino birds do not just exist in our sun but every sun, helioforming them to an amenable habitat. The Xeelee, masters of baryonic matter, have known about the photino birds and have been striving to thwart them. The baryonic universe is doomed but the Xeelee create a ''Ring'' which is an escape hatch. A cosmic string is made into a loop and creates the phenomenon of the Great Attractor. The function of the Ring is to create a Kerr metric at its centre, which, in this fictional universe, creates a portal to other universes; the rotating Ring is somewhat similar to a Tipler Cylinder. Whenever humans have met up with the Xeelee and pursued war, this was merely an annoyance since the Xeelee were thinking on a larger scale about more potent enemies. The crew of the Northern and Lieserl discover the folly of their species. A Xeelee nightfighter is discovered in Callisto, a reference to the later story "Reality Dust", and it is rigged to piggyback the Northern to the Great Attractor. Fifty days later they discover that the Xeelees'' project has been destroyed but a recently awakened virtual of Michael Poole shows Spinner-of-Rope, a primitive, how to pilot around the fragmented cosmic strings and travel into the past using a closed time-like path; this method of time travel was first suggested by J. Richard Gott. These last humans return to the Ring, in an era in which it was not destroyed; the Xeelee allow them through, and they briefly attempt to pick universes (rejecting the high-gravity universe depicted in Raft) and find sanctuary in another younger universe, after passing through the Ring, and get to work on starting a new world. Michael Poole remains in our universe and witnesses the deaths of the last stars, and the decay of the last protons&mdash;the final victory of the dark matter lifeforms over the baryonic Xeelee and lesser races. Eventually, his consciousness disperses, and history ends.

Ring

Max Jones works the family farm in the Ozark Mountains. With his father dead and his stepmother remarrying a man he detests, Max runs away from home, taking his uncle''s astrogation manuals. Most occupations are tightly controlled by guilds, most with hereditary memberships. One such is the Astrogators Guild. Since his uncle had been a member and had no children, Max hopes that before he died, his uncle had named him his heir. He begins hitchhiking towards Earthport to find out. Along the way, he finds a friendly face in hobo Sam Anderson, who later alludes to being a deserter from the Imperial Marines. Sam feeds Max and offers advice, though he later departs with Max''s valuable manuals. At the guild''s headquarters, Max is disappointed to find that he had not been named as an heir, but he is returned his uncle''s substantial security deposit for his manuals. Max learns that Sam had tried to claim the deposit for himself. By chance, he runs into an apologetic Sam. With Max''s money, Sam is able to finagle them a one way job/trip aboard a starship using forged papers. Max signs on as a steward''s mate third class, and then he absorbs the contents of the Stewards'' Guild manual using his eidetic memory. Among his duties is caring for several animals, including passengers'' pets—work with which he is comfortable. When passenger Eldreth "Ellie" Coburn visits her pet, an alien, semi-intelligent "spider puppy" that Max has befriended, she learns that he can play three-dimensional chess, and she challenges him to a game. A champion player, she diplomatically lets him win. Meanwhile, Sam manages to rise to the position of master-at-arms. When, through Ellie''s machinations, the ship''s officers discover that Max had learned astrogation from his uncle, Max is promoted to the command deck. Under the tutelage of Chief Astrogator Hendrix and Chief Computerman Kelly, he becomes a probationary apprentice chartsman, then a probationary astrogator. In a meeting with Hendrix, Max reluctantly admits to faking his record to get into space. Hendrix defers the matter until their return to Earth. The Asgard then departs for Halcyon, a human colony planet orbiting Nu Pegasi. When Hendrix dies, the astrogation department is left dangerously shorthanded. The aging captain tries to take his place, but is not up to the task. When Max detects an error in his real-time calculations leading up to a "transition", neither the captain nor Assistant Astrogator Simes believe him, and the ship winds up lost. They locate a habitable world, and the passengers become colonists. Meanwhile, the crew continues to try to figure out where they are, and if they can get back to the Earth. Unfortunately, it turns out the planet is already inhabited by intelligent centaurs. Max and Ellie are captured, but Ellie''s pet is able to guide Sam and a rescue party to them. They escape, though Sam is killed covering their retreat. Upon his return, Max is informed that the captain has died. Simes tried to illegally take command and was killed by Sam, leaving Max as the only remaining astrogator. To make matters worse, Simes hid or destroyed the astrogation manuals. Vastly outnumbered by the hostile natives, the humans are forced to attempt a perilous return to known space by reversing the erroneous transition. Max must not only pilot the ship, he must supply the missing astrogation tables from his eidetic memory. To add to his burdens, the remaining officers inform Max that he must take charge, as only an astrogator can be the captain. The pressure is immense, but Max succeeds and the ship returns to known space. Max pays heavy fines for breaking guild regulations, but he becomes a member of the Astrogators Guild. However, he loses any chance for a relationship with Eldreth: she returns home to marry her boyfriend. Max accepts this with mixed feelings, but looks forward to his new career.

Starman Jones

The novel, which is intensely autobiographical as Rihani himself immigrated as a child, tells the story of two boys, named Khalid and Shakib, from Baalbek in Lebanon (at the time, the Syrian province of the Ottoman Empire) who migrate together to the United States, coming by ship through Ellis Island and enduring the classic "Via Dolorosa" of an immigrant. They move into a wet cellar in the Little Syria community of Lower Manhattan near Battery Park and begin to peddle counterfeit Holy Land trinkets and religious items throughout the city, a typical Arab endeavor in America. While Shakid, although himself a poet, is focused and accumulates savings through peddling, Khalid becomes distracted and turns away from commercial activity toward frantically consuming Western literature and participating in the New York City intellectual and bohemian scene. At one point, he burns his peddling box, decrying the dishonesty of their sales. After exhaustion from reckless "bohemian" pursuits, Khalid shifts towards party politics when he is offered the position of a functionary and ward for the Arab community in the machine politics of the city. However, Khalid insists on moral purity in his political work, causing conflict with his "Boss." As a result, he is jailed for a brief time of ten days (Shakid helps secure his release) under the charge of misapplying public funds. The two decide to return to Lebanon before long, and Khalid then shifts back to intense peddling for a time, paying off his accumulated debts and earning funds for return passage. Describing the result of their return, Christoph Schumann has stated that "the subsequent course of events mirrors the progress of his American experience: spiritual retreat, political activism, and persecution." Khalid soon engages in a series of actions that anger Maronite clerics in his home city. He refuses to attend church services and spreads pamphlets and ideas seen as heretical. Moreover, he presses his wish to marry Najma, a young cousin, but Church leaders refuse to grant consent. As result of the growing conflict, Khalid is excommunicated, Najma is forced to marry another, and Khalid moves to the mountain forests and starts to live as a hermit. During this period of exile, he contemplates nature and integrates lessons learned in America with his views on the cultural and political dilemmas of the Arab world. He evolves into a self-identified "voice" for the Arabs, and chooses to return to spread his views on liberation from the Ottoman empire and on the importance of religious unity and scientific progress. Khalid travels to different cities engaging in political and spiritual speech, periodically writing letters to Shakib. During his travels, Khalid meets an American Baha''i woman named Mrs. Gotfry with whom he discursively engages on questions of love and religion. He travels to Damascus where he speaks in the Great Mosque about his views of the West and of religious tradition, producing a riot and prompting the Ottoman authorities to pursue his arrest. He flees with Mrs. Gotfry to Baalbek, where he meets Shakib and learns that Najma, along with her young son, is abandoned and now ill. All together (Khalid, Mrs. Gotfry, Najma, her son, and Shakib), they flee to the Egyptian desert to escape the Ottoman authorities. After an idyllic period in the desert of several months, Mrs. Gotfry and Shakib leave. Najma''s son, Najid, dies suddenly of an unexpected illness, and Najma relapses and follows him in death in her grief. Khalid disappears and does not contact Shakib; his whereabouts are unknown.

The Book of Khalid

The Man from Barbarossa begins with a prelude that includes some background information on the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union codenamed Operation Barbarossa, the massacre at Babi Yar that occurred not long after, and information on Josif Voronstov, a fictional character said to be a deputy of real-life Paul Blobel who was primarily responsible for the massacre. When the story begins, an elderly American living in New Jersey is kidnapped by a Russian terrorist group called the "Scales of Justice". The man, Joel Penderek, was captured under the belief that he is Josif Voronstov, the war criminal partially responsible for the massacre at Babi Yar. The group demands the Soviet government put the man on trial for his crimes, and begins murdering government officials when leaders refuse and are slow to react. The situation is slightly more complicated as the CIA and the Mossad believe Voronstov to be a man located in Florida who they had under surveillance. Captain James Bond is partnered with an Israeli Mossad agent, Pete Natkowitz, and two agents from the French Secret Service, Henri Rampart and Stephanie Adoré. They are assigned to work with Bory Stepakov and his assistant Nina Bibikova from the KGB to infiltrate the Scales of Justice posing as a TV crew so as to discover their real motive. Accomplishing this, they learn that the group plans to sabotage perestroika and supply Iraq with nuclear weapons before the United Nations-led coalition invades. The man behind the Scales of Justice, General Yevgeny Yuskovich, is a cousin of Josif Voronstov who is identified as Joel Penderek. The trial was staged in order to shift focus away from Yuskovich''s other plans.

The Man from Barbarossa

After a devastating nuclear war, the surviving people of earth have been forced to live in underground caverns, ruled by harsh dictatorships. In Britain an unseen leader inspires a large section of the populace to escape the caverns and forms a new dictatorship above ground. This new society is based on a collective sense of guilt at the events of the nuclear war. All subjects are named after famous murderers from history, and are obliged to wear sackcloth so as not to provoke envy with their appearance. The Dictator is never seen, but his voice is broadcast to his subjects regularly, instructing them on the laws and morals of his society. His rule is enforced by Inspectors, who have the power to fine people for minor infringements or report them to the higher ministries for further punishment. A young woman named Jael 97, who has been reported to the Ministry of Facial Justice for being "facially over privileged" and causing discontent among other women, approaches the Equalisation (Faces) Centre to have a synthetic "Beta" face fitted so that she will blend in with the community. At the urging of a friend, however, she decides to put this off. Her resultant guilt, along with subsequent events—her forbidden delight at the idea of "height" during an excursion to the ruined tower of Ely Cathedral; her injury in a planned motor-coach accident during her return from the excursion; her rescue by the Inspector Michael, with whom she falls in love; and her involuntary "Betafication" at the hospital to which she is taken—provokes her rebellious spirit, and she forms a resistance group whose aim is to undermine the regime and show it up as ridiculous. She also writes articles in magazines and papers, in which she deliberately stretches the rules of society to ridiculous proportions—suggesting, for instance, that spelling and grammatical errors in writing should not be criticised, as this can lead to envy and bitterness between people. From the doctor who Betafied her (and who desires her), Jael manages to find out that he has also treated the Dictator and that the Dictator''s chest bears a heart-shaped birthmark. In her desire to find and kill the Dictator, she writes an article urging that anyone should be able to challenge another person on the street to bare their chest and prove they have no birthmarks. This is, she claims, to ensure that everyone is as alike as possible. The idea proves divisive amongst the public and begins to cause a great deal of public disorder. Rioting breaks out on the streets, and in the absence of any advice from the Dictator, the public turn on him and denounce him. The Dictator finally responds by announcing that he can see that the public no longer appreciate his leadership and protection and, therefore, he will be leaving. The country descends into chaos after the Dictator''s departure. Further rioting ensues, and food supplies are exhausted as the means of production are abandoned or destroyed. The remaining government officials realise they will have to ask the underground dictatorships for food supplies. The leaders of the underground society agree to help, but demand that in return six people be sent to them, presumably to be executed. Jael, out of a sense of guilt at her role in the collapse of society, decides to volunteer to be one of the people sent underground. On the night before she intends to so offer herself, she remains awake to savour her last few hours above ground. Then, amidst sounds of a rainstorm outside, there is a knock at her door, which she opens to reveal an old lady who had been kind to her when she was hospitalised, clearly weak with hunger and soaked from heavy rain. Jael lets her into her home and offers her some clothes to change into. To Jael''s astonishment, she finds that the lady bears the Dictator''s birthmark and is, in fact, the Dictator. Clearly on the verge of death, the lady reveals that Michael (who has also arrived on the scene) has acted as her "voice" in the Dictator''s announcements. She also begs Jael to take on the role of Dictator and restore order and hope to the people. The novel ends with Jael, seemingly having accepted the offer from the Dictator, starting to address the public, through Michael''s voice, for the first time.

Facial Justice

"The Man Who Falls" consists of a series of concentrated retellings of previously published Batman stories, including Detective Comics #33, which includes Gardner Fox and Bob Kane''s first version of Batman''s origin. O''Neil''s story begins with a young Bruce Wayne falling down a hole on the grounds of Wayne Manor. Bats begin to swarm towards him and out the hole. Bruce''s father, Dr. Thomas Wayne, rescues Bruce but chastises him for his carelessness, while Bruce''s mother, Martha Wayne, comforts him. When Bruce asks if he was in Hell, she reassures him it "was just some old cave." The story then cuts to the murder of Bruce''s parents and him kneeling at their dead bodies. The layouts of this version of the Waynes'' murder is designed to resemble Frank Miller''s Batman: Year One. At the age of 14, Bruce leaves Gotham City to explore and obtain skills in martial arts and forensics. Scenes of his early training as a teenager are depicted, including failed attempts at college, and a disillusioning experience in working with the FBI upon turning 20. He realizes that to achieve justice the way he sees fit, he cannot work "within a system." The story next turns to Bruce''s foreign travels, one extended scene depicts Bruce''s time training at a monastery, hidden in a mountainous region of Korea. After nearly a year of training, Master Kirigi tells Bruce he has exceptional intelligence and physique, but his traumatic past has made him self-destructive. Bruce Wayne leaves Korea and heads to France, where O''Neil summarizes events from Sam Hamm''s Batman: Blind Justice. Bruce trains with a bounty hunter named Henri Ducard, who shows him "the uses of brutality, deception [and] cunning." When Ducard kills a fugitive he had been tracking one night, Bruce abandons his training, disgusted. The narration explains that Bruce meets and learns from every great detective in the world, when he approaches Willie Doggett. Summarizing events from O''Neil''s own Legends of the Dark Knight story, "Shaman," Bruce (now 23) and Doggett track down a man named Tom Woodley to a mountain ledge, where Woodley shoots and kills Doggett. Woodley himself falls from a precipice. Bruce, without food or warmth, wanders the snowy mountains. After falling unconscious, he is rescued by a Native American shaman. When Bruce awakens, the old man tells Bruce he has the mark of the bat, an animal sacred in his tribe. Bruce returns to Gotham to begin his crime-fighting career. O''Neil again recounts events from Year One: Bruce''s first night out, fighting street thugs while still uncostumed, is deemed a failure. While brooding in the library of Wayne Manor that night, a bat crashes through the study window. Modeling himself after the recurring images of bats, Bruce creates his costumed identity: the Batman.

Batman: The Man Who Falls

As the story begins in 1866, a mysterious sea monster, theorized by some to be a giant narwhal, is sighted by ships of several nations; an ocean liner is also damaged by the creature. The United States government finally assembles an expedition in New York City to track down and destroy the menace. Professor Pierre Aronnax, a noted French marine biologist and narrator of the story, who happens to be in New York at the time and is a recognized expert in his field, is issued a last-minute invitation to join the expedition, and he accepts. Canadian master harpoonist Ned Land and Aronnax''s faithful assistant Conseil are also brought on board. The expedition sets sail from Brooklyn aboard a naval ship called the Abraham Lincoln, which travels down around the tip of South America and into the Pacific Ocean. After much fruitless searching, the monster is found, and the ship charges into battle. During the fight, the ship''s steering is damaged, and the three protagonists are thrown overboard. They find themselves stranded on the "hide" of the creature, only to discover to their surprise that it is a large metal construct. They are quickly captured and brought inside the vessel, where they meet its enigmatic creator and commander, Captain Nemo. The rest of the story follows the adventures of the protagonists aboard the submarine, the Nautilus, which was built in secrecy and now roams the seas free of any land-based government. Captain Nemo''s motivation is implied to be both a scientific thirst for knowledge and a desire for revenge on (and self-imposed exile from) civilization. Captain Nemo explains that the submarine is electrically powered, and equipped to carry out cutting-edge marine biology research; he also tells his new passengers that while he appreciates having an expert such as Aronnax with whom to converse, they can never leave because he is afraid they will betray his existence to the world. Aronnax is enthralled by the undersea vistas he is seeing, but Land constantly plots to escape. Their travels take them to numerous points in the world''s oceans, some of which were known to Jules Verne from real travelers'' descriptions and guesses, while others are completely fictional. Thus, the travelers witness the real corals of the Red Sea, the wrecks of the battle of Vigo Bay, the Antarctic ice shelves, and the fictional submerged Atlantis. The travelers also don diving suits to go on undersea expeditions away from the ship, where they hunt sharks and other marine life with specially designed guns and have a funeral for a crew member who died when an accident occurred inside the Nautilus. When the Nautilus returns to the Atlantic Ocean, a "poulpe" (usually translated as a giant squid, although the French "poulpe" means "octopus") attacks the vessel and devours a crew member. Throughout the story it is suggested that Captain Nemo exiled himself from the world after an encounter with his oppressive country somehow affected his family. Near the end of the book, the Nautilus is tracked and attacked by a mysterious ship from that nation. Nemo ignores Aronnax''s pleas for amnesty for the boat and attacks. Nemo attacks the ship under the waterline, sending it to the bottom of the ocean with all crew aboard as Aronnax watches from the salon. Nemo bows before the pictures of his wife and children and is plunged into deep depression after this encounter, and "voluntarily or involuntarily" allows the submarine to wander into an encounter with the Moskenstraumen, more commonly known as the "Maelstrom", a whirlpool off the coast of Norway. This gives the three prisoners an opportunity to escape; they make it back to land alive, but the fate of Captain Nemo and his crew is not revealed.

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

Helen tells the story of a young orphan, Helen Stanley, whose guardian, Dean Stanley, has squandered his fortune and left Helen without means of support. She is forced to take up residence with the local vicar, whose wife is astonished that none of the Stanleys'' aristocratic friends have offered a refuge to her. Eventually, however, the Davenant family returns from abroad and invite Helen to their daughter''s new home, Clarendon Park. (Cecilia Davenant has just married General Clarendon.) Helen journeys to join her dear friend Cecilia, and the first half of the novel describes Helen''s experiences among the most fortunate of Britain''s elite under the tutelage of Lady Davenant, who in some ways favors Helen over her own daughter Cecilia. In the second and more dramatic half of the novel, Lady Davenant departs with her husband, who has been named ambassador at the Court of St. Petersburg, Russia. Helen is left to the care of General Clarendon and Cecilia. By this time she is engaged to Granville Beauclerc, a young and handsome man who is another of Lady Davenant''s favorites. All does not run smoothly for Helen, however. Before her marriage, Cecilia has carried on an amorous correspondence with Colonel d''Aubigny, a worthless roué who has since died. These letters reappear in a packet addressed to Cecilia''s husband. Cecilia implores Helen to act as if the letters were addressed to her rather than to Cecilia. Helen, from misguided devotion to her friend and gratitude for Cecilia''s kind hospitality, agrees to the deception. This first step leads to more and more serious consequences, until finally Helen''s reputation is in tatters. Beauclerc is forced to fight a duel in defense of his fiancée, after which he must flee from England. Cecilia still refuses to recognize the letters as hers, out of fear of losing her own husband if she admits to the correspondence. The General is convinced that Helen is faithless. She refuses to stay where she is not respected and chooses exile in Wales with the General''s sister, where she becomes dangerously ill. Even the birth of Cecilia''s first child, a son, does not encourage her to confess to her husband, and Helen gives up all hope of exoneration. The dénouement comes when Lady Davenant, also dangerously ill, returns to London at the same time as the General finally discovers his wife''s deception and vows to separate from Cecilia for life. Helen''s character is redeemed, Beauclerc returns to England when his adversary recovers from his wounds, and the novel ends happily for all the protagonists with Lady Davenant saying that she is "now, and not till now, happy--perfectly happy in Love and Truth!"

Helen

The novel begins with questioning the mere physicality of the man-woman relationship but then transports the reader into the higher planes of platonic love. The central character of the novel is Kuki, a Hindu woman from India who falls (and then rises) in love with a Muslim artist from Pakistan . The unusualness of the socio-cultural background of these two characters is delicately portrayed by Sahoo in a sensitive and convincing manner. Readers become familiar with the two sets of roles that Kuki plays; that of a lover and that of a wife. Sahoo subtly balances these two roles and at the same time, highlights the superiority of a wife in a pragmatic world. But the novel is not merely a love story. Though love is a part of the novel, it deals with a much broader topic: the providence of a woman in India. At the same time, it also portrays a story of how a perverted man, over time, becomes a perfect man. It also delves into the relationship between the ‘state’ and the ‘individual’ and comes to the conclusion that ‘the state’ represents the moods and wishes of a ruler and hence, ‘the state’ actually becomes a form of ‘an individual.’ Additionally, it takes a broader look at terrorism and state-sponsored anarchism.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

The Ancestor Cell

By Stephen Cole

The Joys of Motherhood

By Buchi Emecheta

The Bed And Breakfast Star

By Jacqueline Wilson

Ring

By Stephen Baxter

Starman Jones

By Robert A. Heinlein

The Book of Khalid

By Amin al-Rihani

The Man from Barbarossa

By John Gardner

Facial Justice

No Author Listed

Batman: The Man Who Falls

By Dennis O''Neil

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

By Emanuel J Mickel

Helen

No Author Listed

The Dark Abode

By Dr.Sarojini Sahoo