Eilis Lacey is a young woman who is unable to find work in 1950s Ireland. Her older sister Rose organizes a meeting with a Catholic priest Father Flood on a visit from New York City, who tells Eilis of the wonderful opportunities awaiting her in New York with excellent employment prospects. Because of this she emigrates to Brooklyn, New York and takes up a job in a department store while undertaking night classes in bookkeeping. Her initial experiences working in a boring job and living in a repressive boardinghouse, run by the strict Mrs Madge Kehoe, make her doubt her initial decision. Letters from Rose, her mother and her brother brought about severe homesickness but soon she begins to settle into a routine. Eilis meets and falls in love with a young Italian plumber called Tony at the local Friday night dances. This leads to her first sexual encounter and some social consequences as they are overheard by Mrs Kehoe. Eilis qualifies easily from her night school course. Her relationship evolves further and Tony proposes marriage and brings Eilis to meet his family. One day while Eilis is working she receives unwelcome news from Father Flood informing her that her sister Rose has died in her sleep from a pre-existing heart condition. She has to return to Ireland to mourn, and she secretly marries Tony before she leaves. In Ireland she falls back into the town society easily. She goes to the beach with Nancy, George and their friend Jim Farrell, who is interested in her. Eilis is forced to spend time with Jim and eventually starts a brief relationship with him. He is a local pub owner, to whom she had been attracted to before emigrating to America. Eilis''s mother is desperate for her to settle back in Ireland and marry Jim, as Eilis has not confided in her or her friends about her marriage. Eilis procrastinates about a return to her new life by extending her stay. She saves Tony''s letters unopened thinking at times that she no longer loves him. Eventually a local busybody, Miss Kelly, tells Eilis she knows her secret because Madge Kehoe is her cousin and somehow the story is out in New York. This is the turning point for Eilis and she immediately books her return passage, telling her mother the whole truth and posting a farewell note to Jim as she leaves town by taxi for the docks.

Brooklyn

Near to the Wild Heart does not have a conventional narrative plot. It instead recounts flashes from the life of Joana, between her present, as a young woman, and her early childhood. These focus, like most of Lispector''s works, on interior, emotional states. The book opens with a scene of the child Joana playing in the garden, making up poems for her father. Joana''s wildness and barely suppressed violence, along with her linguistic creativity, are her most notable features. She is frequently compared to animals: over the course of the book Lispector describes her to a bird, a snake, a wildcat, a horse, and a dog. She commits transgressive acts—as a child she throws a book at an old man''s head, for example, and as a married woman she leaves her husband, Otávio, and greets the news of his adultery—he has made another woman, his old friend Lídia, pregnant—with utter indifference. She is not so much immoral as she is amoral: “Evil is not living, and that’s it. Dying is already something else. Dying is different from good and evil.” In the book, she cites long passages from Spinoza, the longest quotes that appear anywhere in her novels; it seems that she felt an affinity with the Dutch philosopher''s amoral conception of the world.

Near to the Wild Heart

Wheelers chronicles mankind''s first contact with an alien intelligence, a meeting which takes place out of necessity when a rogue asteroid enters the solar system and is set on a collision course with Earth by an advanced and hitherto unknown Jovian species as a way of avoiding a devastating impact to their own world. The story opens with a feeling of anachronism, as two of the novel''s central characters (Charles Dunsmoore, a career archaeologist and his volatile graduate student Prudence Odingo) work in the year 2194 to interpret and preserve artefacts found in the vicinity of the Great Sphinx, which is being disassembled in order to save it from the advancing waters of a clogged and flooding Nile River after the collapse of the Aswan Dam. A lover''s quarrel between the two sends Prudence off in a blind rage, and leaves Dunsmoore the sole caretaker of an important discovery—a position which catapults his career and sets the tension for the novel''s second half. Professionally and personally embittered by the success of Dunsmoore, Prudence begins a life of semi-legal interplanetary exploration (referenced by the book but never fully explained) and makes a living selling cosmic oddities to the highest black market bidder. This dangerous and profitable lifestyle acquaints her with legal authorities as well as the Belters—a group of Zen Buddhists (known as The Order of the Cuckoo) who have populated and mined both Earth''s Moon and the asteroid belt that lies between the terrestrial planets and the Jovian worlds of the outer solar system. Her smuggling career culminates with the discovery of a trove of buried, wheeled, and presumably alien artefacts on Callisto. She takes these ''wheelers'' to earth intending to sell them, but a government investigation headed by Dunsmoore concludes them to be inauthentic. As the story progresses, another main character materializes in the form of the aptly named Moses Odingo, son of Prudence''s sister Charity and animal-handler extraordinaire. His life becomes one of the novel''s several core plots, circumstance and apparent fate conspiring to send him on a worldwide journey of hardship and tribulation. During this time, both Earth-bound scientists and the Belters notice that the innermost moons of Jupiter have mysteriously realigned, altering the trajectory of a once unimportant comet and setting in motion a direct collision with Earth. This is courtesy of the stuffily bureaucratic blimps—intelligent extraterrestrials living in the turbulence of Jupiter''s upper atmosphere whose advanced gravity technology allows them to alter the orbital plane of the planet''s moons and thereby avoid the type of cometary impact which, obliquely, precipitated their exodus from an unknown ''Firsthome'' to Jupiter itself. Left with 12 years until impact and now convinced of the wheelers'' authenticity, Earth''s governmental authorities speed a mission to the Jovian satellites in hopes of contacting the as yet unseen alien lifeforms. Dunsmoore is selected to lead the group, with the assumption that his experience with decrypting anthropological artifacts on earth will aid in establishing communiqué with the Jovians. The years tick by without consequence as Dunsmoore and his team search in vain for evidence of alien life on Jupiter''s moons, convinced by terrestrial scientists that the planet itself is entirely inhospitable to life (he is warned of the danger of this erroneous presupposition by, appropriately enough, contemporary science-fiction authors). As the tension on Earth grows unbearable, Prudence Odingo flies her personal craft out to give Dunsmoore''s team a push in what she believes to be the correct direction. Hacking into one of the probes that Dunsmoore''s been carefully bobbing around the lifeless stratosphere of Jupiter, Odingo''s team sends the RCV into the lower atmosphere, immediately encountering alien lifeforms both advanced and simplistic. Through a quirk of fate and timing, her team manages to save a blimp by the name of Bright Halfholder of the Violent Foam, part of a ''skydiving'' rebel faction known as The Instrumentality. Odingo encourages Moses, now a young man, to make a harrowing high-speed journey out to the moons, hoping to use his uncanny knack for animal communication to establish a rapport with Halfholder. The ploy works, but the Jovians—who live for millions of years and rely on an arcane and tedious system of legal councils—spend too long arguing and contemplating to successfully redirect the comet. The Instrumentality stages a successful coup, but in the end it is Dunsmoore (who has been redeemed by the threat to his home planet) who hijacks the alien gravity technology and pilots Io into a diversionary orbit around the comet itself, barely saving Earth from total annihilation—though millions die as the remnants of the comet and the sulfurous outgassing of ruined Io cascade into Earth.

Wheelers

With Her in Ourland begins where its predecessor Herland ends: Vandyck Jennings, his newlywed Herlandian wife Ellador, and the exiled Terry Nicholson proceed by airplane and motor launch away from Herland and back to the outside world. (Ourland is narrated by the Jennings character.) At an unnamed Eastern seaport, the three board a ship for the United States. Their craft is battered by a storm, however; the three travelers take alternative passage on a Swedish ship that is heading to Europe. This detour brings Van and Ellador into contact with World War I, then raging; and Ellador is devastated by the carnage and horrors of the conflict. This new dark knowledge inaugurates Ellador''s education in the nature of the male-dominated world beyond Herland. Van praises the quality of her intellect &mdash; though he regularly finds himself discomfitted as Ellador''s penetrating mind examines the logical lapses and the moral and ethical failures of human society. Ellador pursues a detailed understanding of the world, interviewing and studying with historians and other experts (while keeping the existence of her own society secret). Van and Ellador take a long journey on their way to Van''s home in the United States; they travel through the Mediterranean to Egypt, and then eastward through Persia and India, China and Japan. On the way, Ellador examines the differing customs of the cultures they visit. By the middle of the book, Van and Ellador arrive in San Francisco, and Ellador begins her study of American conditions. Van is forced to confront and recognize many of the inadequacies and contradictions of American culture through Ellador''s patient, objective, relentless scrutiny; in the process, Gilman can advocate her own feminist program of social reform. Van has to confront the fact that Ellador''s view of America rattles his previously "unshaken inner conviction of our superiority." The novel concludes with the return of Ellador and Van to Herland; they settle there, and in time Ellador gives birth to a son.

With Her in Ourland: Sequel to Herland

The novel Graceling by Kristin Cashore follows the life of the 18-year-old Katsa. She is a Graceling, a person with a greatly advanced skill. (People with Graces are noted to have two different colored eyes.) Katsa has one green eye, and one blue eye, which are described to be very beautiful. Because Katsa''s Grace is thought to be killing, her cruel uncle, King Randa, uses her as a weapon to punish those who displease him. The king''s cruelty causes her to be feared by many in the seven kingdoms; almost everybody believes Katsa to be a savage monster who thirsts for blood. Katsa, disgusted with herself for allowing herself to be controlled by a terrible king, retaliates by making a secret organization called the Council to help all who are being wronged by corrupt kings all over the seven kingdoms. While on a mission with her friends Giddon and Oll for the Council - to rescue the kidnapped father of the king of Lienid - Katsa meets another Graceling. To her surprise, he is able to match her as they fight, but she knocks him out after he says that he trusts her. Not long afterwards, he visits Randa''s court and is introduced to Katsa as a Lienid prince, named Greening Grandemalion. He tells her to call him Po, after a tree in Lienid, and they strike up a friendship. Po remains at Randa''s court to spar and train with Katsa, while also secretly researching reasons as to why anyone would kidnap the father of the King of Lienid, or Po''s grandfather. After a refused marriage proposal from Giddon and some odd words, Katsa realizes that Po''s Grace is not fighting, but mind reading. She confronts him, and he tells her that his Grace is sensing things, and he can only hear thoughts if they are about him. Katsa is furious and storms off, scared of how he can get into her head. Po later comes to apologize and she forgives him. During their talk, she realizes that she is in control of herself, and she doesn''t have to follow Randa''s orders. She stands up to Randa and refuses to do his bidding anymore. Katsa then leaves court. Katsa and Po attempt to find who kidnapped Po''s grandfather. She is uncomfortable with him now that she knows he can sense any thoughts she thinks about him. They begin to gather information about the kidnapping, and Po starts to suspect that the King of Monsea, Leck, is the one to blame from kidnapping Po''s grandfather. There are very strange stories, but yet nobody suspects him. He has the reputation of a very benevolent king. Po thinks that he might be Graced, although it is impossible to tell because Leck is missing one eye. Along the journey, Katsa realizes she is in love with Po, but she refuses to acknowledge her feelings because she has sworn never to marry. As their feelings grow stronger, they come up with a compromise for Katsa''s sake, and become passionate lovers. Katsa and Po continue on their journey to Monsea. While traveling through the forest they see King Leck murder his wife. Despite her promises to believe Po, Katsa still falters when Leck bursts into tears and mourns his wife''s accidental death. When she refuses to shoot the supposedly innocent Leck, Po urges them to retreat, knowing that he is the only one who is able to see through his Grace. Katsa and Po search for and find Princess Bitterblue, who escaped from her father, King Leck and earn her trust in order to protect her. Po later tries to assassinate Leck, who is protected by only graced guards, but is chased off after he kills one of the guards. Po is injured by a fall into an icy lake as well as shot with an arrow, making him unable to ride a horse and therefore unable to escape from Leck. After Po''s urging, Katsa takes the princess Bitterblue - Leck''s daughter, and Po''s cousin - to Po''s castle in Lienid. While traveling, Katsa realizes that the only way to go is through Grella''s pass. Grella''s pass is named after Grella, who died while making the journey. The only thing wrong with that is this, no one has ever gotten through the pass alive. Leck arrives at Po''s castle before Katsa and Bitterblue, where he has charmed the entire Lienid royal family. Although initially confused, Katsa realizes that Leck is about to tell Po''s secret. She then pulls her dagger out of it''s hilt and throws it straight through Leck''s mouth and drives it through his neck and into his chair. The fog from Leck''s Grace still remains, but Katsa eventually goes back for Po, and discovers that the fall has blinded him. However, his Grace allows him to sense the world around him, letting him see where his eyes cannot. The two return to Monsea for Bitterblue''s coronation.

Graceling

As Holly points out, the story is told from She’s perspective, and since She claims to have lived for over two thousand years, since Ancient Egypt, there is no way to compare her story with any other sources, or witnesses. She Who Must Be Obeyed says that she was Arabian, by birth; and, given the name Ayesha. Although, in the introduction, Sir H. Rider Haggard, links the name Ayesha to Mohammed''s wives, and Arabic or Arabic names, (Arabic: عائشة‎, Āʾisha), stating that it should be pronounced "Ash/ -ha"; A·ye·sha/ äˈ(y)ēSHə/, is perhaps more common. She claims that her natural beauty and wisdom was so great, it caused wars between the princes, who wanted to marry her. She says that while this was at first a great source of pride among her Father’s people, they soon began to resent her, and spread vicious rumours that she was cursed. Ayesha leads her Father’s people into victory, and revels in the battle; but, the women envy her, and the men lust after her. So, she decides to go into hiding, with her tutor, an Egyptian priest; rather than be turned over to the approaching armies of Pharaoh. She tells about travelling through the ancient world, encountering all the major artists, who want her to model for them; as well as philosophers, and religions of the time, from Ancient Greece and fledgling Ancient Rome to Palestine and Jerusalem. Finally, they return to Egypt, where once again, her beauty and wisdom become a source of contention. She swears an oath of celibacy, to serve Isis the Goddess of the Spirit of Nature, and turn away from Aphrodite the Goddess of Love. But, soon a Greek soldier of fortune, Kallikrates, formerly employed by the Pharaoh comes to her, for sanctuary. He takes an oath to serve Isis; but, the Pharaoh’s daughter pursues him; and, seeing the way Ayesha looks at him, she determines to destroy her, as a rival. The Princess mocks Ayesha’s prophecies as mere parlor tricks. She goads her Father into giving Ayesha away, as a sex slave, to one of his allies. Repeatedly, Ayesha is in danger; but, even in the midst of fire and battle, Isis and her followers save her from ruin and rape. Ayesha’s fame grows so great, that she is called “Isis Come To Earth” and “Wisdom’s Daughter”. Finally, the King of Kings, of the Persian Empire, comes to see her. He laughs that anyone would be afraid of what must be an old hag, as Isis’s Priestess. He spits on Isis’s statues, and burns the old gods. However, again her beauty, which the King glimpses beneath her veil; betrays her; and, he determines to rape her, with the rest of the country. Isis saves her; and, they escape, to reunite with her old Captain, Kallikrates, and the Princess. Ayesha is inspired that Isis wants to rebuild her cult and usher in a new Golden Age, in the world, through herself. She is led to the hidden kingdom of Kor, in Africa, to begin. Once there, Ayesha meets her former tutor, who has been guarding The Flame of Eternal Life, which will make a person young and powerful, for as long as the world endures. He passes this one last mystery onto Ayesha, warning her of its temptation to her vanity. The Princess mocks Ayesha’s fading youth; and feeling ashamed, in front of Kallikrates, Ayesha determines to break her oaths, and make herself and him both immortal, to rule the world, like Gods, by stepping into The Flame. This way she feels she will be as "Isis Come To Earth", indeed. But, "Wisdom''s Daughter" is Fortune''s Fool, and falls by Love''s Folly. Kallikrates is afraid when he sees Ayesha, in her preternatural beauty, after she has bathed in The Flame; and, dies. The others either flee in terror or are killed, overwhelmed by her beauty. Aphrodite laughs at her, and Isis. Now, Ayesha cannot die, or her will be opposed. She is as terrible, beautiful, and deadly as lightning. After Kallikrates'' death, the Princess flees, urging Leo’s ancestors to revenge themselves on She, through the artifacts, she passes down, which Holly and Leo find, in the first book, She: A History of Adventure. Ayesha is doomed to wait, in Kor, for his return, through the centuries, becoming weary of the world. She has learned everything the world and Nature has to offer; but, still she must wait, for love and redemption.

Wisdom''s Daughter

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

Virtual Light

Armstrong Space Station known as the Silver Tower is the first military station built by the United States to defend against ballistic missiles. With its arsenal of Thor Anti-ballistic missiles and a Tactical High Energy Laser weapon called Skybolt, it is a fearsome military weapon in space. Along with its highly specialised crew of scientists and engineers, led by General Jason St. Michael it forms a vital "eye in the sky", to assist the US military on the battlefield. The Soviets have decided to invade Iran in order to gain control of the Persian Gulf. They mount a surprising lightning air attack on Iran and place their Aircraft Carrier flotilla near the Persian Gulf. The Americans send the USS Nimitz and her carrier battle group in response. They also have Silver Tower, the ace up their sleeve to watch over the carrier and provide real time view from space. The Soviets who are aware of Silver Tower use a powerful ground laser in an attempt to destroy or cripple the space station. But to the Soviet''s surprise, the tower and its crew survive and continue to assist the Nimitz. Furious on their previous failed attempt, the Soviets send Elektron Spaceplanes to destroy the space station. This time, the station is massively crippled, but some of the crew members sacrifice their lives by manually launching the Thor missiles at one of the space planes, destroying it. The crippled space station is then evacuated to the Space Shuttle Enterprise. Meanwhile, the situation back on the ground gets tense, with F-14s and F-15s engaging in dogfights with Tu-22M bombers and Su-33s launched from the aircraft carriers and missile ships exchanging fire. Both sides suffer heavy casualties. However, the Americans succeed in keeping the Soviet carrier group out of the Persian Gulf. The survivors Jason St. Michael and Anne Page return to Silver Tower hoping to restart its systems, only to be met with another attack from the Elektron spaceplanes. However, they restore the Skybolt laser module and fire on the spaceplanes, vaporizing them. They then fire the laser on Soviet cruise missiles heading for the Nimitz group. In the end, even though the battle is not over, the Red Fleet is kept out of the Persian Gulf and Silver Tower is to be repaired and returned to operation.

Silver Tower

Fallion returns to Castle Coorm in Mystarria, following his defeat of Shadoath. There he finds The One True Tree reborn, but it is surrounded by a twisted Seal of the Inferno. Fallion tries to heal the rune, only to discover that it was a trap left by the Queen of the Loci, in the form of Shadoath. The only thing he can do to save himself is to combine his world with the other linked to the Seal of the Inferno. The two worlds crash together with some unexpected results. Some people who happen to be standing in the wrong place recover from the melding of the two worlds to discover that they have a vine growing through their hand. Some combine with the version of themselves from the other world to produce a hybrid, but those whose other self has died or was never born are weakened. In this new world men, who are several feet taller than the men from Fallion''s world, are locked in a mortal struggle with a race called wyrmlings. The wyrmlings are light-sensitive, and are approximate to the Inkharrans from Fallion''s world and they carry parasitic wyrms inside them (like the loci of Fallion''s world). They are led by Death Lords and Knights Eternal, undead creatures that perform the will of the Queen of the Loci. The battle between wyrmlings and men is at an uneasy truce because each holds a captive of the other race&mdash;the wyrmlings hold the prince Areth (the equivalent of Fallion''s father, Gaborn, the Earth King) and the men hold the princess of the wyrmlings, Kan-hazur. Even though the Knights Eternal are rumored to be impossible to slay except in daylight, Fallion and Jaz manage to kill one before they are taken captive by one named Vulgnash. This earns them the respect of the warrior men of that world. Those men, led by High King Urstone (who is the equivalent of Fallion''s grandfather on this world), mount a rescue of Fallion and his companions. The legendary Daylan Hammer is present on this new world and he convinces the King to try to exchange hostages with the wyrmlings because it is immoral to keep the princess hostage. The wyrmlings pretend to make the exchange and then ambush the men. This is followed by an all-out attack on the main fortress of the men, Caer Luciare. During this battle the High King is slain, as well as Jaz, and Fallion is again taken by the Knight Eternal, Vulgnash. The wyrmlings make a deal with Prince Areth to spare his people if he''ll accept a wyrm. The Queen of the Loci accepts him as her host and then uses his power as Earth King to Choose all of the wyrmling horde for the Earth.

Worldbinder

Duke Rodgaud—cousin of Bertold, castle in Forojuli (contemporary name, Cividale, Italy), starts a rebellion against King Carolus, that is quickly put down. He is executed by the Franks in Papia, summer, 776. Angilperta (“Angila”), the daughter of Rodgaud and Giseverga, is loved by the three Lupigi boys. She cannot be found during the rebellion, but becomes post-rebellion the wife of the Lord of East Burgundy, Gunderic, her name becoming Landoalda. She has Radbert as a lover, has two children, Landoald and Gisertruda, who die young, and a third child, Radaberta is given away. Gunderic imprisons her in the castle tower for seven years, after which Perto comes with an order from King Carolus to let her return to Forojuli. She dies on that trip back to her childhood home. Bertold Lupigi, cousin of Duke Rodgaud. The family name, Lupigi comes from wolf, loup. He disappears in the rebellion and is found in a dungeon. He is freed from prison, post-rebellion, in 793, but is killed by an avalanche. Perto, son of Liuta and Bertold, is 16 years old at the novel’s beginning, the youngest of three brothers. He loves Angila. He is also named Johannes Lupigis, more so as the novel progresses. During the rebellion, he manages to escape the Franks who kill his friend Sinauld. He visits Angilperta with Agibert in the autumn of 783, and sleeps with Angilperta. Late autumn 783 he arrives in Aquisgranum, where there is a royal college. He meets King Carolus and decides he is “indeed great.” Perto goes to Totonisvilla where his brother Warnefrit is in prison, but is seized by guards as he leaves the prison. In prison for three and a half years, in total darkess of the prison cell, he creates a vision of a flowering bush. Then he dines with the Devil, who tempts him. He is released from jail at the age of 31 and goes to Aquisgranum where his Uncle Anselm explains the reasons for his imprisonment. He becomes part of King Carolus’s Court again, and eventually gets an order allowing Angilperta to return to her childhood home. Warnefrit, the son of Liuta and Bertold, the oldest of three brothers, likes relations with slave women. He becomes engaged to Angila. All of chapter 16 is his angry and frustrated monologue as heir to his father. He disappears in the rebellion and is found in a dungeon, where he remains for over ten years post-rebellion. His brother Perto comes to get him from prison, though he does not recognize Perto. Eranbald brings Warnefrit to Gudneric, where Angilperta is, and they all dine together though Warnefrit does not seem to recognize Angilperta. Healthy again, he defends the kingdom against Huns.

The Days of his Grace

Miss Marple receives a post card from the recently deceased Mr Jason Rafiel, a millionaire whom she had met during a holiday on which she had encountered a murder, which asks her to look into an unspecified crime; if she succeeds in solving the crime, she will inherit £20,000. Rafiel, however, has left her few clues, not even when or where the crime was committed and who was involved. Miss Marple''s first clue is a tour of famous houses and gardens of Great Britain, arranged for her by Mr. Rafiel prior to his death. She is accompanied on the trip by fourteen other people, at least one of whom she suspects to be related to her enquiries. She learns that one of her companions, Elizabeth Temple, is the retired headmistress of the school which a girl who was engaged to Rafiel''s ne''er-do-well son, Michael, attended. Another member of the tour group, Miss Cooke, is a woman she had previously met and discussed gardening with. Her next clue comes in the form of a woman named Lavinia Glynne; Rafiel had written to Mrs. Glynne and her two sisters before his death, suggesting that Miss Marple spend the most physically challenging few days of the tour with them. Miss Marple accepts Lavinia''s invitation, assuming it to be the next part of Mr Rafiel''s instructions. She then meets Lavinia''s sisters, Clotilde and Anthea Bradbury-Scott and immediately feels there is something odd about Anthea. On talking to the servant, Miss Marple learns that the girl engaged to Michael Rafiel had been adopted by Clotilde after the death of her parents. On the morning of her return to her party, Miss Marple is told by another member of the tour group that Miss Temple had been knocked unconscious by a rockslide during their hike of the previous day, and was lying in a coma in hospital. The group stays over an extra night to wait for news from the tour guide about Miss Temple''s health. It turns out that Professor Wanstead, a pathologist and psychologist interested in the different types of criminal brains, had been instructed by Mr Rafiel to go on the tour. He had examined Michael Rafiel at the request of the head of the prison where Michael was incarcerated; he came to the same conclusion as his friend: Michael was not capable of murder. He also tells her how uninterested Michael''s father seemed. Professor Wanstead then takes Miss Marple to see Miss Temple; in a moment of consciousness, Miss Temple had asked for Miss Marple. Miss Temple wakes only long enough to tell Miss Marple "search for Verity Hunt", and dies that night without reviving again. The three sisters extend their invitation to Miss Marple when she returns to the tour, and she promptly accepts. That night, she discovers that Verity was the girl Clotilde had adopted. After the inquiry into Miss Temple''s death, Miss Marple is visited by Archdeacon Brabazon, who was a friend of Miss Temple''s. He then tells Miss Marple that he was going to marry Verity Hunt and Michael Rafiel, but had been sworn to secrecy by Verity. While he disapproved of the secrecy and of Verity marrying Michael, he agreed to marry them because he could see that they were in love. He was most surprised when neither turned up for the wedding. Miss Marple decides to stay another few nights with the three sisters when the tour moves on. Professor Wanstead travels to London by train on an errand for Miss Marple. Miss Barrow and Miss Cooke decide they would like to visit a nearby church. Later that evening, Miss Marple talks with the sisters about what she thinks may have happened and, while they are doing so, Miss Barrow and Miss Cooke appear, to talk to Miss Marple. They stay for a time and are then invited back for coffee that evening. As they talk about Miss Temple, Miss Marple suggests that Joanna Crawford and Emlyn Price pushed the boulder, and their alibis are mere fabrication. As they get ready to leave, Miss Cooke suggests that the coffee wouldn''t suit Miss Marple, as it will keep her up all night and Miss Marple instead asks for some warm milk. The two ladies soon depart, though each forgets an item and has to return for it. At three o''clock the next morning, Clotilde enters Miss Marple''s room. Miss Marple reveals that she knows that Clotilde murdered Verity and hid her in the now-destroyed greenhouse, because she could not stand to see Verity love someone else. She also reveals that she knows that Clotilde killed another girl, Nora Broad, merely in order to (mis)identify the body as Verity''s and thus throw suspicion on Michael Rafiel. Just as Clotilde advances toward her, Miss Marple blows on a whistle, which brings Miss Cooke and Miss Barrow—they are bodyguards employed by Mr. Rafiel to protect Miss Marple. Michael Rafiel is set free. Miss Marple collects her ''fee''.

Nemesis

The story takes place after the events of Second Contact, which involved the TNG crew being transported to the Marvel Universe, where they aid the X-Men against Kang the Conqueror. However, a mysterious force (later revealed, to the reader, to be the entity Q) causes the X-Men to be dragged into the Star Trek universe (depicted both in the novel and on the final page of Second Contact); though this happens to the X-Men immediately (from their point of view) after parting with the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise-E, a noticeable period of time has passed for the crew since returning to their own timeline. The X-Men and Enterprise crew face a problem all too familiar to the Marvel mutants: a planet where some of the population have been spontaneously developing destructive, and often uncontrollable, super-powers, causing them to be quarantined and shunned by their fellow citizens—until, that is, one of the "Transformed" with the power to cause earthquakes escapes and leads his fellow super-powered outcasts in a revolution. Matters worsen when it is discovered that these beings had been genetically engineered by an aggressive alien race as living weapons, and now their creators were coming to collect them by force. When the Enterprise is dispatched by the Federation to assist in investigating the Transformed crisis, they are attacked by a ship belonging to this other race, its weapons proving powerful enough to deplete the Enterprises shields in just two hits. Working with the X-Men, the Enterprise crew manage to disable the ship, Nightcrawler teleporting himself and Data over to the enemy ship through its shields- Data being selected due to his knowledge of alien technology and his inability to get tired ensuring that he would not be negatively affected by Nightcrawler''s abilities- and allowing them to shut down the ship''s defenses long enough for a team including Worf, Banshee and Archangel to transport over and do further damage. With the ship disabled, the X-Men join the away teams down on the planet, with Storm soon defeating the rogue leader of the Transformed, even as Data and Nightcrawler manage to convince the other Transformed to listen to them by demonstrating how they also differ from those around them but are still willing to trust others. The crisis resolved, Dr. Crusher- aided by a hologram of Professor X created based on information acquired from the mansion''s computers during the Enterprises visit to the X-Men''s universe- manages to develop a cure for the Transformed before the X-Men are sent back to their reality. It is revealed at the end that this situation had been at least partly caused by Q and Uatu the Watcher, Q having manipulated events to send the X-Men through to the ''Trekverse'' to help the Enterprise deal with the Transformed crisis.

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