The story is set in rural Shropshire shortly after the Napoleonic Wars. It is narrated by the central character, Prue Sarn, whose life is blighted by having a harelip. Only the weaver, Kester Woodseaves, perceives the beauty of her character, but Prue cannot believe herself worthy of him. Her brother Gideon is overridingly ambitious to attain wealth and power, regardless of who suffers while he does so. Gideon is set to wed his sweetheart Jancis, but he incurs the wrath of her father, the cruel and scheming self-proclaimed wizard Beguildy. An act of vengeance by Beguildy makes Gideon reject Jancis and tragedy overwhelms them both. Prue is wrongly accused of murder and set upon by a mob, but Kester defies them and carries Prue away to the happiness she believed she could never possess because of her harelip. The title of the story is from John Milton''s Paradise Lost: :Let none admire :That riches grow in Hell; that Soyle may best :Deserve the precious bane. It refers to the love of money, which, as Prue records, blights love and destroys life.

Precious Bane

In Capital Crimes, Will Lee finds himself in the middle of a tangled web of intrigue and danger, politics and power. Now at the pinnacle of his career, serving as president of the United States, Lee is faced with a most unusual task-that of marshaling federal law enforcement agencies to catch an assassin who is picking off some of the nation''s high-level politicos. When a prominent conservative politician with a shady reputation is expertly killed at his lakeside cabin, authorities can come up with no suspects and even less hard evidence. But then, within days, two other, seemingly isolated deaths-achieved by very different means-are feared linked to the same ruthless murderer. With the help of his CIA director wife, Kate Rule Lee, Will trails the most clever and professional of killers before he can strike again. From a quiet D.C. suburb to the corridors of power to a deserted island hideaway, Will, Kate, and maverick FBI agent Robert Kinney track their man and set a trap with extreme caution and care-and await the most dangerous kind of quarry, a killer with a cause to die for.

Capital Crimes

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

The Chronoliths

Cat and Pedro decide to earn a living as a duet of acting and playing the violin, as Cat feels uncomfortable at living with Frank, Lizzie and Johnny without working, and Pedro decides to go with her. Syd is very upset at the prospect of Cat going away from him again but puts up with it for Cat''s sake. In Jamaica, Cat and Pedro are disgusted to learn that slavery is still common and both are frightened and horrified when they discover that Pedro''s former owner, Mr Hawkins is in Jamaica. Mr Hawkins thinks that slavery is lawful and fair, and he still believes that Pedro belongs to him. He taunts Cat after her performance on stage and then finally kidnaps her. At his plantation Cat falls ill with malaria and while she is still delusional and sick Billy rescues her. He forces her to but a slave which Pedro is disgusted at, but he soon learns to forgive Cat. In the end Cat gets involved in a slave revolt but Pedro tells her to leave, while he will stay and help his fellow men gain their rights of freedom and equality. Cat is heartbroken to leave Pedro alone but she knows she must, so she and Billy leave together.

Black Heart of Jamaica

Shortly after returning from the Asteroid Belt, David "Lucky" Starr learns that his Science Academy roommate Lou Evans had been sent to investigate trouble on Venus, but the Council of Science office on Venus has requested that he be recalled and investigated for corruption. As Starr and John "Bigman" Jones are shuttled to Venus, their pilots suffer an episode of paralysis, and Starr is required to keep their craft from smashing itself against the surface of the Venusian ocean. Afterwards, the pilots have no memory of the event. Upon reaching the Venusian city of Aphrodite, Starr and Bigman meet Dr. Mel Morriss, head of the Council of Science on Venus, who explains that Venusian scientists are perfecting strains of yeast that can be processed into luxury foods for export; whereas for six months there has been a growing series of incidents of bizarre behavior among the human colonists, often followed by amnesia. Morriss believes they are being telepathically controlled by an unknown enemy. Evans was sent to Venus to investigate, but was found with stolen data concerning a secret strain of yeast, and is under arrest. When Starr confronts him, Evans admits to having stolen the data, but refuses to explain further. While Starr is questioning him, word reaches them that a man is threatening to open an outside airlock, which will allow the ocean to flood Aphrodite. Starr, Bigman, and Morriss go to the airlock to deal with the crisis, where they meet the city''s chief engineer, Lyman Turner, the inventor and owner of a laptop computer carried with him. While Bigman goes through the ventilation ducts to cut power to the airlock door, Starr realizes that the airlock crisis is a feint and hastens to Council headquarters, to find that Evans has escaped custody and left Aphrodite in a submarine. Starr and Bigman pursue Evans in another submarine, eventually finding him and learning that the V-frogs are the source of the telepathic incidents; Evans having tested this hypothesis by stealing the secret data on the yeast strain, and interesting the V-frogs therein with the result of an accident involving that strain. Evans further reveals that the V-frogs have trapped himself and the other protagonists beneath an enormous deep-sea orange patch, which will attack them if they attempt escape. Starr, in response, leaves the submarine and uses an electric shock to destroy the orange patch''s heart, killing it. He then returns to the submarine, and pilots this to the surface of the ocean, where he intends to communicate his findings to an orbiting space station to be relayed to the Council on Earth. On the surface, the V-frogs communicate telepathically with him, telling him they intend to take over the minds of the humans on Venus. Initially they keep him away from the radio; but he is able to distract them and transmit his message. Returning to Aphrodite, Starr explains to Morriss that the V-frogs'' telepathy is used by a human individual to attempt control over the rest of humanity, and that the means of doing so is Lyman Turner''s computer. Bigman destroys the computer and Starr captures Turner, hoping to re-create his computer in the interest of reforming Turner himself.

Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus

Ted is a publicity department executive at the Manhattan office of Above All Pictures, a movie production company in the mid-1950s. His high salary affords him a nice car and furnishes his large apartment, where he lives with his wife, Roxy, and their two children. Although Ted has experience in the specious marketing game played between publicists, actors, directors, producers, and tabloid journalists, he feels trapped in office politics after a rumor is started that he is about to be fired by his new boss, Larry. Larry takes a Machivellian approach to management, even convincing Ted to shed crocodile tears over his potentially destitute family during a business dinner with a magazine editor. Ted hopes to secure a headlining article to back up a publicity stunt for Above All''s latest movie. Without the article, Ted''s stunt will backfire, the movie may flop, and Ted is certain to be fired. Ted''s former boss, Willie — who had left Above All to be a television executive in Chicago, Illinois — had a more lenient management approach. Willie is virtually blind to incompetence and seeks unconditional loyalty. He surrounds himself with yes men and rewards those that let Willie all but run their lives for them. Ted perceives it as security through fealty. Before Ted leaves Above All for Chicago, he and Willie have a falling out. Ted now strives to prove himself to Larry and the other executives at Above All, to thwart the rumor of his imminent firing. Ted acknowledges Larry''s cutthroat methods, but prefers the stress over sucking up to Willie. Ted''s wife wants him to reconcile with Willie and take a cushy, stress-free job in Chicago. Ted contemplates leaving the industry altogether, knowing it will mean sacrificing his lavish lifestyle and his socializing with the well-to-dos in the movie industry.

The Wall-to-Wall Trap

The story centers on the eco-terrorist and head of the League of Assassins, Ra''s al Ghul aiding Batman in his quest to solve the murder of Harris Blaine, one of Gotham City''s most prominent scientists. Ra''s al Ghul and Batman turn out to be searching for the same man, the terrorist known as Qayin. Qayin is a rogue assassin who had murdered Ra''s al Ghul''s wife Melisande, mother to his favorite daughter and heir-apparent, Talia. Batman has shared a stormy, on-again, off-again romance with Talia for many years, despite his ideological conflict with Ra''s. During the course of the storyline, Batman has time to properly romance Talia. When Batman asks if there should have been a marriage ceremony of some sort, Talia replies that there already has been: her father had previously, in a bid to stop Batman from interfering with his plans, performed such a ceremony in the tradition of his own country, where only the consent of the bride was needed to constitute a marriage. Talia soon becomes pregnant, and the prospect of a family has a profound effect on Batman''s demeanor, making him more risk-adverse and softening his typically grim outlook. Batman is nearly killed protecting the recently pregnant (and still very dangerous in her own right) Talia from an attack by the assassin''s agents. Observing Batman''s dangerous and overly protective behavior, Talia resolves that she cannot allow him to continue to act in such a manner, as he will almost certainly be killed. To that end, Talia claims to have miscarried. Crushed by the news, Batman returns to his typically grim disposition, and he and Talia agree to have the marriage dissolved. Batman returns to Gotham, never knowing Talia is still carrying his child. The child, a boy, is born and left with an orphanage, and soon adopted by a western couple. The only hint of his impressive heritage is a jewel encrusted necklace, a gift Bruce gave to Talia just before Qayin attacked Ra''s HQ.

Batman: Son of the Demon

The novel''s main character and narrator is Benoite-Marie Carr (Berie). Berie, vacationing in Paris with her husband, Daniel, recalls her adolescence in Horsehearts, New York. During the summer of 1972, Berie worked with her friend, Silsby Chaussee (Sils), at Storyland, an amusement park where she sold tickets and Sils played Cinderella. The adult Berie, now a photographic curator at a local historical society, narrates the pitfalls of her marriage while searching for the close bond she shared with Sils during the summer at Storyland. In the past, Berie lived with her parents, brother Claude, and adopted sister LaRoue. Her parents hosted numerous guests, ranging from visiting academics to exchange students, that gave Berie "a tin ear for languages" and made it difficult for her to understand "foreignness, code, mood" (7). Berie and Sils made friends with their co-workers at Storyland and saved frogs from teenage boys until Sils began dating Mike, a local boy with a motorcycle. Mike dominated Sils''s time, leaving Berie out and confused by the scarcity of her friend. When Sils became pregnant, Berie stole money from the Storyland register to pay for an abortion. In between recollections of Horsehearts, Berie details her troubles with Daniel. Recently, they fought and he pushed her down the stairs of their house, resulting in a broken arm. Daniel is distant from Berie, and she seeks companionship from friends like Marguerite, a Parisian artist, but is ultimately unable to recreate the closeness of her relationship with Sils. After Sils''s abortion, Berie noticed her manager watching her at odd times. An accident on a ride in the park temporarily forestalled exposure, but she was eventually caught and fired. Baptized by Reverend Filo at a summer camp, she explored organized religion before finally getting her period late in adolescence. Sent to a boarding school, she achieved academic success and was astonished by her own physical development. Berie and Sils later met at a high school reunion but found that their relationship changed as they face middle age. Berie pays a last visit to LaRoue, who later commits suicide after being institutionalized for years, and the novel ends as Berie settles for comfortable distance from Daniel and her past.

Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?

Sriram is a high school graduate who lives with his grandmother in Malgudi, the fictional Southern Indian town in which much of Narayan''s fiction takes place. Sriram is attracted to Bharati, a girl his age who is active in Mahatma Gandhi''s Quit India movement, and he becomes an activist himself. He then gets involved with anti-British extremists, causing much grief to his grandmother. Sriram''s underground activity takes place in the countryside, an area alien to him, and the misunderstandings with the locals provide the book''s best comic moments. After spending some time in jail, Sriram is reunited with Bharati, and the story ends with their engagement amidst the tragedy of India''s partition in 1947. Waiting for the Mahatma is written in Narayan''s gentle comic style. An unusual feature of this novel is the participation of Gandhi as a character. His revolutionary ideas and practices are contrasted with the views of traditionalists such as the town''s notables and Sriram''s grandmother. The political struggle serves as a background to Sriram and Bharati''s unconventional romance which is concluded outside either''s family circle. This is one of Narayan''s most successful novels, where much happens behind the facade of the low key storytelling. hi:वेटिंग फ़ॉर महात्मा

Waiting for the Mahatma

In Witz, Joshua Cohen calls all religious Jews "Affiliated". After the sabbath meal a week before Christmas, Benjamin is born to Israel and Hanna Israelien in Joysey, the first son after 12 girls. This winter is particularly hard and in fact persists year round. Benjamin is born full grown (by a method explored by Flann O''Brien in At Swim-Two-Birds), with a beard and glasses. His foreskin continually sheds itself and grows back. Already too big for his father''s shirts, he takes to his mother''s maternity robes. On Christmas Eve, all of the Affiliated die except first-born sons. The Israelien''s maid, Wanda, drives Benjamin down to Florida to live with his grandfather, Isaac, who is Unaffiliated. Meanwhile, a cabal of government operatives are quarantining all of the first-borns on Ellis Island, now called "The Garden" (incorporated), capitalized with the property of the dead. A week later, they come for Benjamin. Isaac dies from a heart attack. Benjamin escapes at a rest stop but is eventually caught and taken to The Garden, where they have moved the entire Israelien house, complete with Sabbath guest still on one of the toilets. The Garden markets Benjamin as the messiah, complete with travelling road show and merchandising. A team of unaffiliated women are trained to act as his mother and sisters and see to his needs. Then the first-borns start dying, and by Passover Benjamin is the only one remaining. It is arranged that he marry the President''s daughter in Las Vegas, but Benjamin escapes again, to wander the country in his mother''s robe. Back in New York, his "sisters" catch up with him, and during cunnilingus with "Hanna", his tongue gets stuck and is torn off when the sisters try to separate them. The scandal destroys The Garden, and Benjamin is shunned by all (he and the operators of The Garden are Disaffiliated). Without real Jews around to complicate things, America, and soon, the world, has become Affiliated. The President becomes chief of the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem. Those who refuse to Affiliate are sent to their "homeland", Polandland, where they are kept in ghettos, experimented upon, worked and starved to death, killed. Benjamin finds his way there, too, visiting the towns of his mother''s and his father''s ancestors. In his wanderings, he sprouts the horns of a cow and ultimately he turns into a woman. The Affiliated, however, revive the cult of his tongue, now displayed as a relic. And Wanda, now Affiliated, with a son of her own, remembers the visitor who came down the chimney to sit with Benjamin every night for the week after his birth: Isaiah? dressed as Santa Claus. 25 years later, we hear from a 108-year-old Jewish man who was in Auschwitz ... He has listed the punch line of a joke, who needs the setup any more, for every year that he has lived. Because what should you do only laugh.

Witz

The book, based in an unknown country and at a point in the unspecified past, opens with the end of death. Mysteriously, at the stroke of midnight of January 1st, no one in the country can die any more. Initially, the people of this country celebrate their apparent victory over mankind''s longtime foe. Though the traditional sources for guidance on things like life and death endeavor to discover why people have stopped dying, religious authorities, philosophers and scholars alike can find no answers. The Catholic Church, in fact, feels quite threatened by this new turn of events, as the end of death would call into question one of the fundamental foundations of their dogma: the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The common citizens, however, generally enjoy their newfound immortality. This joy is short-lived, though. It soon becomes apparent that the end of death presents unique demographic and financial challenges. The complete cessation of dying leads to a growing fear among healthcare workers that the system will collapse under its own weight: generations of incapacitated, but still living, people will populate care homes and hospitals for, presumably, all eternity. Funeral workers, on the other hand, fear the opposite problem: they will have no business, and will be forced to move to preparing animals for the afterlife. A means of finally killing people, and relieving families of the burden of their catatonic kin, is devised and implemented by an underground group known only as the Maphia (the ''ph'' is chosen as to avoid any confusion with the more sinister Mafia) The incapacitated are brought over the borders of the country, where they instantly die, as death has not ceased working elsewhere. The industry develops so quickly that the government itself becomes beholden to the maphioso, even bringing it to the brink of war with its neighbors. Death reemerges not long thereafter, this time as a woman named death (the lowercase name is used to signify the difference between the one who ends the life of people, and the one will end all of the universe). She announces, through a missive sent to the media, that her experiment has ended, and people will begin dying again. However, in an effort to kill more kindly, death will now send a letter to those about to perish, giving them a week to prepare for their end. Naturally, the violet envelope encased letters create a frenzy in the country, as people are not just returned to dying, but also must face the spectre of receiving one of these letters, and having their fate sealed with it. From here, the story largely moves on to focus to death''s relationship with an otherwise unextraordinary cellist who, amazingly, will not die. Every time death sends him his letter, it returns. Death discovers that, without reason, this man has mistakenly not been killed. Although originally intending merely to analyze this man, and discover why he is so unique, death eventually becomes infatuated with him , enough so that she takes human form to meet him. Upon visiting him, she plans to personally give him the letter; instead, she falls in love with him, and by doing so she takes on a human form, and, as the book originally started, there is no dying the next day.

Death with Interruptions

The book begins with a lengthy history of war crimes beginning with the “knightly chivalry” of the medieval period. These rules were put into place in order to minimize unnecessary cruelties during the course of warfare. The rules protected civilian populations from massacre and the needless spread of disease. Thus, the blanket of immunity that protects soldiers from being held criminally responsible for murder committed during the course of warfare had to be carefully balanced so as to discourage wartime atrocities. The laws of war remained largely unwritten until U.S. President Abraham Lincoln approved the “Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field”, in 1863. Concerning spies, prisoners of war, and the punishment of war crimes, this document comprising 159 articles facilitated the formation of military tribunals and later led to a demand for the formalization of international laws of warfare. Thus, international laws of warfare were codified by means of a series of treaties known as the Hague and Geneva conventions. The most important consequence of these treaties is that all nations, whether signatory or otherwise, were bound by international laws of war. The Nuremberg Trials, for which Taylor served as a leading figure, gave rise to several developments in regard to international law as applied to warfare. First, it gave international jurisdiction to the prosecution of war crimes; and second, it obligated individuals engaged in warfare to adhere to international laws of conduct over and above those of their respective armies. Of greatest importance with respect to this book however is that the United States as a result of its participation emerged as legally, morally, and politically bound to the principles that resulted from the Nuremberg trials. Thus, Taylor is concerned by how the principles of the Nuremberg trials would apply to the United States’ conduct of the Vietnam War. When Nuremberg and Vietnam: An American Tragedy was published, those in favor and opposition to the United States involvement in Vietnam frequently cited the Nuremberg trials in support of their positions. Those in favor of United States involvement argued that North Vietnam attacked South Vietnam in violation of Article 2 of the United Nations Charter; South Vietnam was justified in using force to repel such an attack; and this in turn allowed the United States to join with South Vietnam as provided by Article 51. Those opposed to the United States involvement in the Vietnam War asserted that both South Vietnam and the United States violated the Geneva Declaration of 1954 by attacking North Vietnam, rearming illegally, preventing the 1956 national elections which were provided for in the Declaration, and subsequently bombing North Vietnam. Such actions would constitute “aggressive warfare” by the standards of Nuremberg. Taylor points out that the definition of “aggressive warfare” is ambiguous, thus severely hindering any attempt to determine which of the belligerent powers involved in the Vietnam War could be deemed the “aggressor.” What’s more, such ambiguities lead to several related questions, such as the legality of refusing to serve in Vietnam. At the time, many conscientious objectors refused to serve in Vietnam on the grounds that their complicity in an illegal war made them, by implication, guilty of crimes against humanity. Taylor cites possible war crimes in regard to the Son My incident, which is more commonly known as the My Lai Massacre of 1968 (). It is in this portion of the book that Taylor makes the most convincing comparison of Nuremberg to the Vietnam War. In this section, Taylor quotes two eyewitness accounts, each from a different war. One account, written by a German construction engineer, describes the killing of Jews during the Holocaust by German SS officers in 1942. This account is juxtaposed on the adjacent page by an eyewitness account of the My Lai Massacre. The accounts are eerily similar, yet Taylor explains all of the differences, and in characteristically unbiased fashion shows the difficulty in determining whether or not crimes were committed by the United States. Taylor also raises domestic problems with regard to the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War. According to Taylor, it remains to be seen whether the United States Congress or the Executive branch of government held responsibility for officially declaring military action in Vietnam. It is the opinion of Taylor that both the President and the Congress bear responsibility, and that the Vietnam War could only be ended by an act of national will, rather than by judicial means.

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Precious Bane

No Author Listed

Capital Crimes

By Stuart Woods

The Chronoliths

By Robert Charles Wilson

Black Heart of Jamaica

By Julia Golding

Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus

By Isaac Asimov

The Wall-to-Wall Trap

No Author Listed

Batman: Son of the Demon

No Author Listed

Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?

By Lorrie Moore

Waiting for the Mahatma

By R. K. Narayan

Witz

By Joshua Cohen

Death with Interruptions

By José Saramago

Nuremberg and Vietnam: An American Tragedy

By Telford Taylor