In the border shantytown of Ysleta, Texas, Mexican immigrants Pilar and Cuauhtemoc Martinez strive to teach their four children to forsake the drugs and gangs of their neighborhood. The family’s hardscrabble origins unite them to survive, but soon the children adapt to their new home, reject their traditional religion and culture, and struggle to remain together as a family. The novel spans four decades. As a young adult, daughter Julieta travels to Central America, becomes disenchanted with Catholicism, and converts to Islam. Youngest son Ismael, always the bookworm, is accepted to Harvard but feels out of place in the Northeast, where he meets and marries a Jewish woman. The other boys--Marcos and Francisco--toil in their father’s old apartment buildings, serving as cheap labor to fuel the family’s rise to the middle class. Over time, Francisco isolates himself in El Paso. Marcos eventually leaves to become a teacher, but then returns, struggling with a deep bitterness about his work and marriage. Through it all, Pilar clings to the idea of her family and tries to hold it together as her husband’s health begins to fail. This backdrop is shaken to its core by the historic events of 2001 in New York City, which send shockwaves through this newly American family. Bitter conflicts erupt between siblings, and the physical and cultural spaces between them threaten to tear them apart. Will their shared history and once-shared dreams be enough to hold together a family from Ysleta, this wicked patch of dust?

From This Wicked Patch of Dust

The story begins with the assassination of two philosophically divergent Supreme Court Justices. Liberal Justice Rosenberg is killed at his home, while the conservative Justice Jensen is killed inside a gay porn cinema. The circumstances surrounding their deaths, as well as the deaths themselves, shock and confuse a politically divided nation. While the public speculates about who may have killed them and why, the main character, Darby Shaw, a Tulane University Law School student, decides to research the two justices'' records and cases pending before the Court, suspecting the real motive might be simple greed, not politics. She writes a legal brief speculating that the assassinations were committed on behalf of Victor Mattiece, an oil tycoon wanting to drill for oil on Louisiana marshland which is a major habitat of an endangered species of pelican. A court case on appeal, filed on his behalf to gain access to the land, is expected to make its way to the Supreme Court. The two slain justices had a history of environmentalism — their only common view — and thus Darby surmises that Mattiece, who has a pre-existing business relationship with the President, hoped to turn the case in his favor by eliminating two justices, thus leaving his friend the President in a position to appoint new justices more likely to rule in his favor. Darby shows the brief, which becomes known as the ''Pelican Brief'', to her law professor/mentor/lover, Thomas Callahan, who shows it to his Washington-based friend, Gavin Verheek, a lawyer working for the FBI. Both men are killed soon after. Afraid that she will become the next target, Darby goes on the run. She tries to hide by making a few disguises and almost getting killed. Eventually, she contacts the Washington Post reporter Gray Grantham, and the two set out to prove her brief correct. The various parties quickly take sides. The President and his Chief of Staff, Fletcher Coal, try to cover up the White House''s connection to Mattiece, which would be politically damaging. The FBI wants to bring in Darby to protect her and to verify her story. Allies of Mattiece try to kill her to make sure the cover-up holds. Eventually, every piece of the story is in place. Grantham obtains videotaped testimony from a pseudonymous lawyer who calls himself "Garcia", as well as a document that points to involvement by Garcia''s law firm which worked for Mattiece. With this evidence, Grantham and Darby approach the Post chief editor. The story appears in the next edition with front page photographs of Coal, Mattiece, etc. FBI chief Denton Voyles is ecstatic and shows up at Coal''s residence early in the morning to confront him. Darby crisscrosses the country, then reaches an island in the Caribbean Sea. The story ends with Grantham joining Darby in the Caribbean and agreeing to stay for at least a month (after that one month at a time)

The Pelican Brief

The novel deals with the relationships of all the three characters, and how life brings them together. Adam Coopersmith, an Obstetrician and Immunologist, helps in saving the life of Thomas Hartnell, known as the "Boss" in Washington, who is one of the advisors to the President of the United States, and arguably, a man holding more personal power than the President himself. Adam''s mentor, Dr.Max Rudolph, takes a slight detour from his ethical conduct and gives an FDA unapproved life saving cancer treatment whose efficacy is proved in his laboratory, to Hartnell. Adam serves as the attending doctor and ends up falling in love with Hartnell''s daughter Antonia, who is the Assistant Attorney General in Washington. After the demise of Max Rudolph, who is more of a father figure to Adam than a professional colleague, Adam is broken and finds solace in Antonia''s arms. They get married and have a daughter, Heather. However things soon start changing as Adam and his daughter slowly start realising that Antonia is married to her career, and in her list of priorities family figures quite below her work and her father. This slowly leads to a rift between Adam and Antonia, and he is drawn to Anya Avilov, the childless and abandoned wife of a Russian émigré Dr.Dmitri Avilov. Dmitri abandons Anya when he realises she is incapable of conceiving, and Adam, the attending obstetrician, rushes to fill in the gap in both his and her life. Eventually, Adam divorces Antonia and marries Anya. Antonia wins custody of Heather, but Heather always remains more attached to Adam rather than Antonia. Adam commits suicide unable to bear the crushing burden of Alzheimers Disease, a few days after he hears that he has won the Nobel Prize. Sandy Raven is the son of Sidney Raven, a Hollywood producer. Sandy has an inferiority complex about his looks, which gets reinforced over time as he faces the conspicuous lack of a social life throughout his teenage years. He joins MIT to study Genetics. His teenage love, Rochelle Taubman, uses him to get to his father and thereby gain entry into Hollywood. She very conveniently forgets Sandy after she gains contacts in Hollywood. She ends up doing seedy bit parts, and eventually, on the centerspread of Playboy. Sandy is unable to get over this betrayal and turns into a repressed person who is desperate for female company. He falls in love with his lab director''s daughter, Judy Morgenstern. His mentor and Laboratory director Gregory Morgenstern, cheats him out the Nobel Prize by not mentioning his contribution on a project. This leads to Judy and Sandy''s divorce, but Sandy finds solace in the love of his daughter Olivia, who, in turn studies physics under Isabel later in the book. Sandy finds love in a Japanese woman, Kimiko, and becomes a reputed scientist in Genetics. Isabel Da Costa is the daughter of Raymond Da Costa, and is a genius with an IQ far above average. Raymond recognizes this early on in her childhood and begins to run her life with an iron hand, thereby causing his marriage with Isabel''s mother Muriel to go into ruins. They also have a son Peter who is very close to Isabel, and who thinks that Raymond is ruining Isabel''s youth. Muriel wants Isabel to have a normal life, and Raymond is stubbornly intent on making Isabel win a nobel prize for physics, to vindicate his own failure in having a good academic career. Isabel is denied all pleasures of a normal teenage life with a punishing schedule in academics, and becomes a post graduate student at Berkeley before she has completed eighteen years of age, owing to her extraordinary powers of comprehension. She falls in love with Jerry Pracht, the son of her Thesis advisor Karl Pracht, in spite of her father''s repeated efforts to keep them apart. Jerry is a genius himself, who has quit the pressure of academics and is an ace tennis player. Isabel also longs to rebel against the pressure of being a genius and encourages this relationship on the sly. Her father realises that his hold on her life is detrimental, and gracefully moves out of her life. Isabel goes on to win the Nobel in Physics and strengthens her relationship with Jerry to a commitment.

Prizes

Act 1:In the office of the Minister of War: The minister of war receives Salvator Waltz - " a haggard inventor, a fellow author" - who declares that he controls a new machine of immense destructive power called Telemort or Telethanasia that can blow up cities, mountains, even countries. The minister dismisses him as a nut. Shortly thereafter a mountain in the vista of his windows blows up exactly at the time predicted by Waltz. He is called back and explains to the dubious minister that this was indeed the planned experiment to showcase his weapon; the minister and his advisor are not yet convinced and do not know what to do. Trance (in Russian her name is son, meaning dream), a journalist who becomes Waltz''s assistant suggests to appoint a committee. Annabella appears and indicates that on the mountain lived once an old enchanter and a snow-white gazelle. Act 2: In the Council Hall of the Ministry: A committee of bumbling old generals is in session to decide what to do after more experimental explosion have made it clear that the power of the weapon is enormous. Trance suggests to buy it. Waltz is called and offered money but refuses to sell it. He declares that he has the weapon to create a new world order, war and military and politics become superfluous. Waltz shows his side as a poet when he extols the New Life where he will be the "keeper of the garden key". Annabella, the daughter of a general, objects to the "bad dreams" Waltz has, but Waltz prevails and is welcomed as the new ruler. Act 3: In the office of the Minister of War: Waltz is in charge but bored by the day-to-day drudgery of governing. There was an assassination attempt on him presumably by a foreign agent, and in response he blows up the city of Santa Morgana. He plans to move to the island of Palmera and from time to time check on the affairs of government which should be easy as no country will be able to resist him. He demands luxury and servitude. His dream is becoming a nightmare. A parade of women is shown to him to please him, one of them citing a poem he had written a long time ago, but he wants Annabella. He summons her father who, however, refuses to submit; he will not deliver his daughter to Waltz. Waltz threatens to blow up everything, but Trance now makes it clear: there is no Telemort machine. It all was the imagination of Waltz. Reality now sets in, the real interview of Waltz takes place. The minister rejects him in less than a minute, opens the window, the mountain is still there, and Waltz is taken to the madhouse.

The Waltz Invention

Delisle arrives in Pyongyang, bringing, in addition to the items that he was authorized to bring into the country, a copy of George Orwell''s Nineteen Eighty-Four, that he judged appropriate for a totalitarian state, CDs of Aphex Twin and reggae, and presents like Gitanes cigarettes and Hennessy cognac. Delisle encounters former colleagues working at SEK Studio on an adaptation of Corto Maltese comics. He also meets foreign diplomats, NGO workers in the World Food Programme, and businessmen, such as French engineers installing an HDTV transmitter. During his two month visit, he stays at the Yanggakdo Hotel, and visits other foreigners in the Koryo Hotel. Accompanied by his guide, he visits the massive statue of Kim Il-sung, the Pyongyang Metro, the legation quarter, the Diplomatic Club (former Romanian embassy), the Arch of Triumph, the Juche Tower, the International Friendship Exhibition, the USS Pueblo, the enormous Ryugyong Hotel, the Taekwondo Hall, the Children''s Palace, and the Museum of Imperialist Occupation. Delisle is surprised by things such as reverse walking, the absence of disabled and elderly people, North Korean music propaganda, the cult of personality for past leader Kim Il-Sung and his son Kim Jong-Il, the required presence of his translator and guide, nearly-expired water from the South, Coca-Cola and kimjongilias. He also notes the extreme level of apparent brainwashing in the citizens of Pyongyang. When questioned regarding the lack of disabled people in Pyongyang, his guide asserts, and seems to genuinely believe, that North Korea has no disabled, and that the children of the "Korean race" are all born healthy, strong and intelligent.

Pyongyang

Nemesis explores the effect of a 1944 polio epidemic on a closely knit, family-oriented Newark Jewish community. The children are threatened with maiming, paralysis, lifelong disability, and death. At the center of Nemesis is a vigorous, dutiful, 23-year-old teacher and playground director Bucky Cantor, a javelin thrower and weightlifter, who is devoted to his charges. Bucky feels guilty because his weak eyes have excluded him from serving in the war alongside his close friends and contemporaries. Focusing on Cantor''s dilemmas as polio begins to ravage his playground, Roth examines some of the central themes of pestilence: fear, panic, anger, guilt, bewilderment, suffering, and pain. Cantor also faces a spiritual crisis, asking himself why God would allow innocent children to die of polio. Finally, Cantor faces a romantic crisis, becoming engaged to his beloved girlfriend (a fellow teacher who is working as a counselor at a Jewish summer camp). Fearing that Cantor will get polio if he remains in Newark during the summer, she implores him to quit his job in Newark and to join her at her polio-free summer camp. He wants to be with his fiancee, but leaving the children of Newark adds to his feelings of guilt. With the inevitability of a Greek drama, polio eventually reaches the summer camp. One camper dies, several become ill, and Cantor himself is stricken. Cantor blames himself for having brought polio to the camp. The novel ends in 1971, when Cantor encounters one of the Newark playground children who contracted polio and survived. They catch up on the events in their lives since 1944. Cantor reveals that, after being crippled by polio, he insisted that his fiancee leave him and find a non-crippled husband. He never marries. The novel is written as the narrative of the playground child, based on what Cantor told him in 1971.

Nemesis

In 1944, Virginia Watson and Roger Lindahl meet in Washington DC. They marry after Roger divorces his first wife Teddy and abandons his daughter by her as well. Their subsequent move to Los Angeles to work in a munitions factory proves extremely profitable. But Roger spends the money far faster than it took them to earn it. By 1953, Roger has opened a television sales and repair shop, while Virginia is trying enroll their 7-year-old son Gregg in an expensive boarding school in Ojai against Roger''s wishes. Liz Bonner, another parent, persuades Roger to agree to Gregg''s enrollment by offering to share the perilous and exhausting driving duties involved in transporting their children over the nearby mountains to and from Ojai. There is a particular private exchange between Roger Lindahl and Marion Watson, Virginia''s mother, that very graphically depicts Roger''s highly immature, volatile and unpredictable nature. The trigger for his outburst, ironically enough, is the realization that his hostile mother-in-law (as a favor only to her daughter) plans on providing substantial financial backing for his business. But there is yet another financial interloper afoot. "Chic" or Charles Bonner, Liz''s husband, wants to buy into Roger''s shop as a partner, but Lindahl declines his offer and promptly begins an affair with a very accommodating Liz. Virginia finds out, though Chic remains unaware, and she hectors Roger into letting her assume legal ownership of the shop with Chic. Unfortunately, however, both marriages have been irreparably damaged. Chic and Liz end up getting divorced. Roger and Virginia remain tenuously married, and a philandering Roger remains in contact with Liz through the private school. The final chapter closes with ever-impulsive Roger dumping Gregg off at home, pilfering a carload of expensive T.V. sets from the store and hightailing it to Chicago.

Puttering About in a Small Land

As the book begins, Rachel and her adopted sister Hilary are living with Rachel''s mother. Rachel''s father was a budding film star, but died just as his career was taking off, when the children were seven. As a result, the family is not well off; they must take in boarders in order to make ends meet. Hilary''s mother was a dancer, and so Rachel and her mother are determined that Hilary will also become a ballet dancer. Hilary does have a talent for ballet, but is not at all interested in it. Their mother dies when the girls are ten, just before Hilary''s audition for the Royal Ballet School, and the girls go to live with their Uncle Tom (their father''s brother), his wife Cora and their child, Dulcie. Aunt Cora runs a dancing school to teach girls how to perform in troupes for pantomimes, musicals and reviews; the troupes are referred to as "Mrs Wintle''s Little Wonders". Dulcie, who is almost a year older than Rachel and Hilary, is very attractive and a talented dancer, but also very spoiled by her mother. Mrs Wintle intended to take only Rachel, as she is a blood relative, but she decides to keep Hilary also, when she realizes how talented a dancer Hilary is. Rachel is horrified by the type of dancing taught at Mrs Wintle''s school, which ranges from tap to acrobatics, and remains determined that Hilary will continue with her ballet. Rachel must also train as a Little Wonder, and though she works hard, she has no talent for the dancing required of the "Wonders". She only excels at elocution and acting lessons, which puts her in competition with her cousin Dulcie for theatrical roles. Mrs Storm, their tutor, decides to teach Rachel extra elocution, because it makes her happy. Hilary continues dancing and through the book enjoys acrobatics and musical theatre. Although Rachel tries to bribe her with money to finish ballet, Hilary continues to excel at acrobatics. This makes Rachel upset.

Wintle''s Wonders

In the first part of the book, Jakob Beer is a 13 year old child of a Jewish family living in Poland. His house is stormed by Nazis; he escapes the fate of his parents and his sister, Bella, by hiding behind the wallpaper in a cabinet. He hides in the forest, burying himself up to the neck in soil. After some time, he runs into an archaeologist, Athos, working on Biskupin. Athos secretly takes him to Zakynthos in Greece. Athos is also a geologist, and is fascinated with ancient wood and stones. Jakob learns Greek and English, but finds that learning new languages erases his memory of the past. After the war, Athos and Jakob move to Toronto, where after several years Jakob meets Alexandra in a music library. Alex is a fast-paced, outspokenly philosophical master of wordplay. Jakob and Alex fall in love and marry, but the relationship fails because Alex expects Jakob to change too fast and abandon his past. Jakob dwells constantly on his memories of Bella, especially her piano-playing, and they end up divorcing. Jakob meets and marries Michaela, a much younger woman but one who seems to understand him, and with Michaela''s help he is able to let go of Bella. Together they move to Greece into the former home of several generations of the Roussos family. The second part of the book is told from the perspective of Ben, a Canadian professor of Jewish descent who was born in Canada to survivors of the Holocaust. In 1954 the family home in Weston, Ontario is destroyed by Hurricane Hazel. Ben becomes an expert on the history of weather, and marries a girl named Naomi. He is a big admirer of Jakob''s poetry and respects the way he deals with the Holocaust, when Ben himself has trouble coping with the horrors his parents must have endured. At the end of the novel, Ben is sent to retrieve Jakob''s journals from his home in Greece, where Ben spends hours swimming in Jakob''s past.

Fugitive Pieces

A Small Town in Germany occurs in the late 1960s, in Bonn, the capital of West Germany. From London, Alan Turner, of the British Foreign Office, arrives to investigate the disappearance of Leo Harting, a minor British Embassy officer; moreover, secret files have disappeared with him. The embassy''s security chief, Rawley Bradfield, is hostile to Turner''s investigation. Despite that, he is dinner party host to Turner and Ludwig Siebkron, head of the German Interior Ministry; the latter is close to industrialist Klaus Karfeld, who is successfully building his new political party. Initially, Turner suspects Leo Harting is a spy, but comes to grasp that Harting was secretly investigating Karfeld''s Nazi career — as the war-time administrator of a laboratory that poisoned 31 half-Jews. In fact, Harting is hiding from Siebkron, and might assassinate Karfeld. To Turner''s chagrin, Bradfield is unsympathetic to Harting''s circumstance and uninterested in protecting him, because he considers him a criminal and a political embarrassment.

A Small Town in Germany

"Charlie" is the alias of the adolescent narrator of the novel, who is about to begin his first year of high school. The novel is presented through letters that Charlie writes to an anonymous friend, whom he hears girls at school talk about fondly. Charlie begins his freshman year apprehensive due to the death of his only good friend Michael, who committed suicide several months before. He does not feel that he can lean on his parents or older siblings for support, because they never truly understood him. He also explains that the only relative that he ever felt close to was his Aunt Helen, but she was killed in a car accident on his seventh birthday. Charlie soon befriends two seniors, Sam and her step-brother Patrick. Throughout the story, Sam, Patrick, and Charlie''s English teacher Bill introduce him to many new experiences and the letters he writes show his growth. In the end, he learns that he can go on life without being scared because he is a wallflower. Charlie writes about situations he gets into with his new friends including going to parties, seeing and performing in Rocky Horror Picture Show and going on his first date. Charlie also falls in love with Sam during the novel. He writes to his anonymous friend a lot about love. Besides his feelings for Sam, he also briefly dates Mary Elizabeth, another girl in their group of friends. In addition, Charlie writes about Patrick''s relationship with Brad, the quarterback of the football team, who is gay but still "in the closet". Another relationship discussed is his sister''s, who is dating a boy who Charlie witnessed hitting her, which Charlie is especially sensitive to as his Aunt Helen was abused. Charlie grows a lot during the story and learns how to participate in life. At the end of the summer, Patrick and Sam take Charlie through the tunnel again, this time, with Charlie standing in the truck bed.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

The story takes place on a (fictitious) tropical island called Zenkali. The island seems to be populated by the most eccentric people who came there from all around the world, along with the two indigenous tribes, the Fangoua and the Ginka. The Ginkas used to worship a dolphin god, while the Fangouas worshipped a strange avian, the Mockery Bird, which was hunted to extinction by the former French colonizers. Zenkali is ruled by King Tamalawala III, usually referred to as "Kingy" by his people. Peter Foxglove arrives to Zenkali to be the assistant of Hannibal Oliphant, Kingy''s Political Advisor. Zenkali, once a British colony, is about to get self-government. They are also planning to construct a military base, an airport and a power station, and this will mean the flooding of a large, unexplored valley, owned by the villainous businessman, Looja. Peter, along with the beautiful Audrey Damien, visits the valley before it is totally destroyed, and makes a fantastic discovery: a small population of Mockery Birds still live in the valley! Peter''s discovery attracts the attention of the world press, environmentalists, politicians and businessmen from all around the world, and this leads to a couple of adventures. Finally, Professor Droom, a biologist, discovers that the main and only agricultural product of Zenkali, the Amela tree is ecologically linked to the Mockery Birds (explained below), so the flooding of the valley will make the island''s economy collapse. Consequently, the construction of the airport is cancelled.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

From This Wicked Patch of Dust

By Sergio Troncoso

The Pelican Brief

By John Grisham

Prizes

By Erich Segal

The Waltz Invention

By Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

Pyongyang

By Guy Delisle

Nemesis

By Philip Roth

Puttering About in a Small Land

By Philip K. Dick

Wintle's Wonders

By Noel Streatfeild

Fugitive Pieces

By Anne Michaels

A Small Town in Germany

By John le Carré

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

By Stephen Chbosky

The Mockery Bird

No Author Listed