The narrative follows the early life of Temujin, the second son of Yesugei, the khan of the Mongol "Wolf" is father soon dies from his injuries. Yesugei''s first bondsman, Eeluk assumes control of the tribe. Fearing the sons of the former khan may contest his leadership when they reach adulthood, Eeluk banishes Temujin''s family from the tribe, leaving them to fend for themselves on the harsh Steppes. The expectation was that Temujin''s family would perish in the unforgiving winter, but Temujin, along with his mother Hoelun, his four brothers Behter, Hasar, Hachiun, Temüge, and his baby sister Temulen, survived against all the odds, albeit in poverty. In an argument over food, Temujin kills his older brother Bekter, much to his mother''s anguish. After a few years of trading with other wandering families, the family establish a small home. But the Wolf tribe return to the area, and advanced riders, sent by Eeluk to ensure the family had perished, capture Temujin. He is taken back to the tribe where he is tortured, and kept in a pit, in preparation for a ritual murder. He is freed by Arslan and Jelme, father and son wanderers who joined the Wolves after looking for Yesugei, whom Arslan owed a debt. They join Temujin and his family and begin a new tribe, accepting other wandering families into their protection. Temujin assumes the role of khan. Temujin returns to the Olkhunut to claim his wife Borte. Shortly after, Borte is captured by a Tartar raiding party. Temujin and his brothers chase down the captors and murder them, recovering Borte. The small army retailiates with repeated raids on Tartar camps. The Tartars respond by sending armies to crush the new menace. It is then that a Chin emissary approaches Temujin with an offer from Toghrul, Khan of the Kerait. Temujin joins his small fledgling tribe with Toghrul''s, and leads a joint army to advance on the Tartars. It is in the following battle that Temujin begins to show outstanding tactical abilities, as the Mongols ease to victory. Upon interrogating a Tartar prisoner, Temujin learns that the leader of the Olkhunut conspired with the Chin to lead the Tartar assassins to his father. He also learns that a massive Tartar army is advancing into Mongol lands. Temujin returns to the Kerait, then travels to the Olkhunut tribe, where he murders the khan in his ger and assumes leadership of the tribe, and takes them back to join the Kerait. The Mongol alliance prepares for battle, when they are joined by the Wolves. Temujin and Eeluk agree to settle their feud upon victory over the Tartars. Under Temujin''s faultless leadership and strategy, the Tartar army is crushed. As the battle ends, Temujin and Eeluk fight, with Temujin emerging victorious. He claims leadership of the Wolves and takes the warriors back to the Kerait. Fearing an inevitable challenge to his leadership, Toghrul sends assassins to Temujin''s ger. The attempt is unsuccessful, and Toghrul is banished out of the unified tribe. Temujin proclaims himself khan of all Mongol tribes and bestows the name Genghis upon himself.

Wolf of the Plains

Into the Gauntlet begins as Amy and Dan Cahill enter a London hotel tired and with no lead whatsoever. They receive another lead, but this is stolen by Isabel Kabra via a pet monkey, who leaves them a coin with a fancy script K on it. However, Dan, who has already memorized it, rewrites it. Amy looks all over the Internet to find out what it means, and she is about to shout out when Nellie realizes that the Kabra coin is a bug. She destroys it, along with three other bugs from each of the other three branches. Amy then tells them that the clue leads to William Shakespeare, so they go to a performance of Romeo and Juliet in The Globe Theatre. Once there, they confront the Starlings, who are back in the clue hunt after being sent to the hospital in an explosion back in The Maze of Bones, and steal their lead, but they are trapped by Jonah Wizard, who was forced back into the clue hunt by Cora Wizard, the Holts, Alistair Oh, and the Kabras. Hamilton Holt steals the piece of paper with the lead, but Dan rips off the top and bottom, and he and Amy run away while everyone else is fighting over the rest of the lead. Their section of the lead says: "For this great man we sing was b here". The rest of the word that goes with the letter "b" was torn off, so they assume that it was supposed to be "born". At Shakespeare''s birthplace, Amy and Dan realize that the word was supposed to be "buried" and are the last to arrive at Shakespeare''s grave site besides Isabel Kabra, Eisenhower Holt, and Cora Wizard. However, they are surprised to find that no one is fighting with each other and are instead making unsuccessful exchanges of clues and information. The teams eventually leave the Cahills in the grave site with video cameras, but they are aware of this and communicate by writing on a sheet of paper while pretending to draw a picture of Shakespeare. They then go outside to Shakespeare''s grave, and Dan does a rubbing of it. However, just as Dan finds a secret line that does not show on the tombstone, the other teams arrive. Dan pretends to mess up and tears the paper apart, careful to rub just the first four lines when someone from each team asks for a rubbing. Once everyone leaves, he makes a rubbing for them but includes the last four lines, in which Shakespeare asks them to dig up his grave. Inside Shakespeare''s grave, Amy and Dan find a metal pole with the words, "Madrigal Stronghold * Cahill Ancestral Home" encircling it. They also find a ribbon with seemingly random letters on it but are forced to unravel it as the other teams appear and chase them. Meanwhile, Sinead Starling steals a digitized version of the ribbon from the grave''s guardian while everyone else plants a homing device on Amy and Dan, who have recreated the ribbon out of the bottom of Amy''s old t-shirt and wrapped it around the metal pole to find the coordinates to the house of the original Cahills- a house on an island off the coast of Ireland. The other teams follow them there, but they are forced to work together as they make their way through the gauntlet, a series of doors with questions about the clue hunt. However, every door except the last is opened, and when they reach the vial that supposedly has the master serum, they find that Isabel Kabra beat them to it. She reveals that the serum is fake and forces them to give her all their clues to save the people they love. However, when Isabel is about to drink it, Ned Starling bursts into the room, and she turns towards him, about to shoot him with her gun. Everyone unites and charges her, knocking the gun and the serum out of her hands. But then only Amy and Dan are holding her down while everyone else chases after the serum, and she reaches the gun, knocking Dan in the stomach with it. She is about to shoot him when Amy, out of options, grabs the vial with the serum and slams it down on Isabel''s head. It shatters, destroying the serum, but everyone gives Amy and Dan their clues because they were the only ones that held down Isabel while they all chased after the serum. After finding their way out of the gauntlet, the teams separate on amiable terms, and Amy and Dan stay behind with Fiske Cahill and Mr. McIntyre, who give them a letter from Grace. They then reveal that the entire Clue Hunt was just a preparation for the battle with another family. Amy and Dan are left in the legal custody of both their Great-Uncle Fiske and Nellie, but the letter makes it clear that their adventures aren''t over yet. The pictures under the page are secret code that means ''The Cahills aren''t the only ones looking for the clue. The Vesper is rising.''

Into the Gauntlet

The novel unfolds in alternating chapters from the points of view of the four main characters. Andrew Compton, a convicted serial killer (based on real life serial killer Dennis Nilsen), leaves his prison cell as a dead man in a self-induced cataleptic trance and rises again to build a new life. His journey takes him to New Orleans'' French Quarter-- to the decadent bars and frivolous boys that haunt the luscious dark corners of a town brought up on Voodoo and the dark arts. Anticipating a willing victim, he finds an equal in Jay Byrne, a decadent artist (based on real life serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer), who shares the same dangerous desires--torture, murder and cannibalism. They fixate on Tran, a young Vietnamese runaway, as their perfect victim. As Tran''s long-standing attraction to Jay threatens to lead him straight to his demise, Tran''s estranged older gay lover, Lucas Ransom (pirate talk radio personality "Lush Rimbaud"), seeks to find and reunite with him. The four collide in a horrific climax.

Exquisite Corpse

The book begins with a chapter introducing Joa, a 14-year-old girl fighting an illness against death in hospital in present-day Paris, and is held only by a dream in life... Joa''s name begins with the first letters of Jade, Opal, and Amber''s name In a kingdom that is ruled by the Council of Twelve, which aims to deprive people from Fairytale the freedom to live, three girls named Jade, Opal and Amber celebrate their 14th birthdays. Unknown to them, their names fit their birthstones. On their birthday, each is sent away from their home to meet the other two. Together, they should make their way to revive the good in the world, as it is written in a prophecy. This prophecy was many centuries ago by a Clohryun called Néophileus who could see into the future. Jade, Opal, and Amber decided to explore together the secret of their stones, and they take it as simultaneously in the hand. When they do, the stones show a strange symbol in front of their eyes. To learn the meaning of this symbol, they travel to Nathyrnn, a city that is beneficial to the Council of the Twelve as a prison for all advocates of freedom. There they meet Jean Losserand, who can interpret the symbol. It stands for Oonagh, an oracle that lives in a land called Fairytale. In Fairytale, people live peacefully with magical beings, because it is the only country that remains the Council of the Twelve spared. It is surrounded by a magnetic field that can be traversed only with the belief in the impossible. With the help of Adrien de Rivebel, Jade, Opal, and Amber liberate the inhabitants of the city and get to the border of Thaar, where they must fight against the Knights of the Council. They defeat them, but Opal is stabbed by a knight. The people of Nathyrrn refuge in Fairytale, and Adrien, who is in love with Opal, carries her corpse through the magnetic field. They stay a few days at Owen d''Yrdahl''s house, from which they will learn that Death is on a strike, and that Opal will survive if her wound is treated. The Army of Light is organized to fight against the Army of Darkness. When Opal is well again, they ride toward the mountains, where Oonagh lives. Along the way, they help the residents of a city sealed by darkness, and the residents thank them by giving a potion that will save them from the birds of prey they will meet when they reach Oonagh''s home. By underground passages, they eventually reach Oonagh in the form a small, lively girl, and the oracle sings them a part of the prophecy. Oonagh tells them that on the day of the summer solstice, there will be a battle between the Army of Darkness and the Army of Light, and that they need to persuade Death to end her strike. Jade, Opal, and Amber decide to go into the realm of Death, which can only be reached by crossing the Lake of the Past. They overcome their illusions of the past and go as the first mortals to the realm of death. They manage to convince Death that she is loved, and so Death ends her strike. As the prophecy predicted, Amber recognizes the Chosen One when she sees him (and falls in love with him), who previously served the Army of Darkness, and Opals realizes what the Gift is: Hope. They travel to Thaar and enter a tower in which they meet the Thirteenth Councillor of the Council of Twelve. He is not a man, but the spirit of all the other twelve councillors. He shows the girls a window overlooking Fairytale, and they see the assembled armies on the battlefield. The Chosen One at the head of the Army of Light, but the Army of Darkness seems to be winning. The Thirteenth Councillor tries to make them understand that the battle is already hopelessly lost, because Hope is in the girls'' stones, and Hope cannot be freed unless the girls die. Jade finally understands the meaning of the prophecy, and although her friends do not want to die, she persuades them to jump out the window in order to defeat evil and to help the Army of Light to win. They leap out of the window, and their stones dissolve. Golden rain pours over Fairytale, and gives everyone hope. Before Jade, Opal, and Amber hit the ground, they are caught by the birds of prey and carried to the battlefield. There they encounter Oonagh, Adrien, the Chosen One, the defeated Army of Darkness and the victorious Army of Light. A golden nugget falls from the sky, Oonagh tells Adrien to bury in the ground. He does so, and a tree with a golden trunk and silver leaves grows from it. Oonagh tells them that as long as the tree lives, good will reign in the world. The next chapter switches back to present-day Paris. In the hospital, Joa wakes up and demands that the nurse gives her a phone. She contacts a friend of hers, a young man named Eli Ador, and leaves a strange message for him. When he arrives at the hospital, Joa tells him her dream, and the book ends with her dying words: "My dreams gave life back to me. Now I must give dreams back to life."

The prophecy of the stones

Rex Bunch, Gabriel''s father, is a musician who, for a short time back in the 1970s, played in pop icon Lester Jones''s band. However, while (the fictitious) Lester Jones is still going strong almost thirty years later, Rex has been leading a quiet and modest life without a regular income together with his live-in partner, Christine, Gabriel''s mother, who back in the good old days designed trendy clothes for various rock stars. Gabriel''s twin brother Archie died while still little, and in many ways the family of three still live and think according to the unwritten laws of the late 1960s and 1970s, despising anything remotely connected with middle class mentality, advocating universal freedom, and smoking the occasional joint. When Christine has had enough of Rex and his lazy, good-for-nothing ways, she throws him out of the house, and for the first time in decades Rex has to fend for himself. While Christine herself gets a job as a waitress in a bar and hires an au pair from some Eastern European country to look after Gabriel, Rex, left to his own devices, ends up in a shabby bedsit a few blocks away from his former home but even there has difficulty paying the rent. A meeting with Lester Jones renews Rex''s hopes of becoming a sought-after musician again, but when Rex and Gabriel visit him at his hotel it soon turns out that all he wants is listen to Rex''s reminiscences of their days together for his intended memoir. To Rex''s dismay, he does not even pay him for it; however, on parting he presents Gabriel with one of his drawings. A talented creative artist himself, Gabriel is impressed by this gift, but it soon becomes clear to him that both his parents are after the picture: Christine because, for the time being, she wants to keep it in a safe place; and Rex because he wants to sell it immediately. In order to prevent yet another argument between his mum and dad, Gabriel secretly makes two copies of the drawing&mdash;in doing so he has to forge Lester Jones''s signature twice&mdash; and hands one copy to each of his parents while keeping the original for himself. Unfortunately, each parent independently has the same idea of presenting the drawing to Speedy, an old friend of theirs who runs a hamburger restaurant full of 1970s memorabilia&mdash;a place occasionally even visited by Lester Jones himself&mdash;so that the picture can be exhibited there: ''[...] It''s me, me, me, with you lot. People don''t know, or won''t say, how much they hate their children.'' He was hardly listening. She [Christine] wanted him to be a lawyer. He was, he reckoned, already sufficiently engaged with the Law. In the next few days his mother would have her forged copy of Lester''s picture framed and presented to Speedy, who would have been presented with two forged copies of the same picture by two members of the same family. Gabriel''s prison sentence, already long enough, would surely be increased. [...] (Chapter 10) At Speedy&#39;s hamburger joint, a chance meeting with film producer Jake Ambler (also fictitious) sets off Rex&#39;s teaching career. Looking for someone to give his spoiled teenage son private guitar lessons, Jake offers the job to Rex who, encouraged by Gabriel to do something useful and earn some money at the same time, reluctantly agrees (&#34;We&#39;re not so desperate that we&#39;re going to start working for a living&#34;) and eventually, after word of mouth has spread and he is teaching not just one but several kids, quite enjoys being seen as an authority on music by his pupils. Before the truth about Lester Jones&#39;s drawing is found out, Gabriel strikes a deal with Speedy, regains possession of the picture in exchange for a painting of Speedy he has to paint himself, and destroys the two copies. Seeing her ex-partner&#39;s reformation, Christine reconsiders her decision to spend the rest of her life without him and does not mind the end of her affair with George, a young artist and a regular at the bar where she is waitressing. At the end of the novel Rex and Christine get married, and in the following summer, under Jake Ambler&#39;s supervision, Gabriel starts shooting his first film. As opposed to other protagonists created by Kureishi, Rex, Christine and Gabriel are white.

Gabriel''s Gift

Orion continues on his adventures and finds himself a thetes on board a Greek ship headed to the city of Troy and makes friends with a talkative old man called Poletes. The Golden One then appears to him revealing himself as Apollo the Greek god and that his plans are for the Trojans to be victorious in that era so as to create a Euro-Asian Empire. Little by little he remembers he was meant to be on a mission to the stars when his ship exploded. He ends up blaming the Golden One for the destruction of the ship. He then decides to thwart whatever plans Apollo might have for the era and ends up saving the Greek camp from being overrun by the Trojans on a counter attack. His courageous acts earn the attention of Odysseus who then adopts him as a member of his household. As a favor Orion requests that Poletes becomes his servant thereby elevating the man''s station. Odysseus'' first duty for Orion is to accompany him with Ajax and Nestor to Achilles'' tent to persuade him to return into the fray. Achilles had earlier withdrawn from the battle because Agamemnon had taken from Bris whom he captured. Achilles however insists on only re-entering battle when High King Agamemnon apologizes to him. Seeing this is an impossibility, Odysseus and his team withdraw and he then asks Orion to go as a herald to the Trojans with an offer of peace. Orion, sensing this will enable the Trojans to win changes the demand to the previous insulting demands brought by earlier heralds. This offer is of course rejected and while there he notices a weak point in the walls of Troy via the Western section built by men. The Trojans then send Orion back to the Greek camp with their refusal and a warning that the Hatti are coming to their defense. This news upsets the Greeks who had earlier been assured by the Hattis of their intention not to interfere in the Trojan War. Orion is then sent to the Hattis with a copy of the agreement with the Hattis only to discover that the mighty empire of the Hattis had disintegrated and the soldiers were nothing more than bandits. He then encounters a band of Hatti soldiers led by Lukka who agree to follow him back to his camp. Upon return he discovers Achilles'' partner Patrocles is dead and this has prompted Achilles to enter the battle again. He faces off with Hector and defeats him cutting off his head. However, Achilles is wounded by a stray arrow piercing his heel. He later commits suicide. Lukka and his group then help in building a ramp over then Western section of the wall and by this the Greeks enter into Troy and raze the city to the ground, thus defeating Apollo''s plans. While the spoils are being shared the High King takes half of all the goods which leads to dissatisfaction. Poletes uses this to make fun of him but Agamemnon decides to blind him. This upsets Orion and he decides to leave, taking Helen with him who decided against going back to Sparta because of the barbaric way of life there. She suggests going to Egypt where she believes she would be treated civilly. On their way he meets Apollo who instructs him to assist the Israelites in their toppling of Jericho''s wall before arriving in Egypt. On arrival, he is involved in palace intrigues again as Pharaoh''s Chief priest has been poisoning him and usurping his power. Also, Menelaus has arrived in Egypt having been told by Nekoptah that his wife is in Egypt. Nekoptah tries to set up Orion to be killed in addition to killing his twin brother, Hetepamon. He is however, able to turn the tables against Nekoptah with the help of the crown prince and Hetepamon. He also assists the other Creators to capture Apollo who has actually gone mad and was trying to kill the others so as to be the only one and be worshiped as god. Nekoptah still tries one last time to set Orion up with Menelaus but he loses and is killed when he kidnapped Helen. However, Orion is stabbed through the heart with a spear by Nekoptah, who then dies. Orion wakes up later in the Neolithic and sees Anya, who then wakes up after he kisses her. The novel then ends with an epilogue which is the beginning of the succeeding book.

Vengeance of Orion

The following is the summary provided by Bertrand Russell in the preface of the book: "This book contains essays on such aspects of social questions as tend to be ignored in the clash of politics. It emphasizes the dangers of too much organization in the realm of thought and too much strenuousness in action. It explains why I cannot agree with either Communism or Fascism, and wherein I dissent from what both have in common. It maintains that the importance of knowledge consists not only in its direct practical utility but also in the fact that it promotes a widely contemplative habit of mind; on this ground, utility is to be found in much of the knowledge that is nowadays labelled ''useless.'' There is a discussion of the connection of architecture with various social questions, more particularly the welfare of young children and the position of women. "Passing further away from politics, the volume, after discussing the characteristics of Western civilization and the chances of the human race being vanquished by insects, concludes with a discussion of the nature of the soul. The general thesis which binds the essays together is that the world is suffering from intolerance and bigotry, and from the belief that vigorous action is admirable even when misguided; whereas what is needed in our very complex modern society is calm consideration, with readiness to call dogmas in question and freedom of mind to do justice to the most diverse points of view."

In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays

At the start of the play, Ingenuity, a scholar, pays court to the Lady Riches, but the two quarrel. The Lady''s other suitors, Gettings and Clod (Clod represents country gentlemen, while Gettings represents the London merchant class), also quarrel &mdash; not with their Lady but with each other. The outcome of their dispute is that Clod challenges Gettings to a duel. Lady Honor also has her suitors &mdash; in her case, the Courtier and Soldier ply their suits to her while Ingenuity watches. After Honor and Ingenuity have left them alone, the Courtier and Soldier also argue, and are about to fight, when their nemeses Honesty and No-Pay enter and scare them off. Next, Gettings and Clod are shown on the "field of honor," about to start their duel. But they too are interrupted: Long Vacation and Foul-Weather-in-Harvest enter, and the two suitor/duellists reconcile because of their fear of these figures. (Long Vacation refers to the period at the end of the legal year in August and September, when business in the City of London is slack.) Lady Riches shows up, and accepts Gettings as her intended husband &mdash; but grants a reversion of the office of husband to Clod. The Soldier and Courtier also turn up, searching for Honor &mdash; but they are distracted by the presence of Riches. Finally Honor and Inegnuity arrive to complete the cast: everyone else is surprised to learn that Inegnuity and Honor are now married &mdash; though the news prompts a general reconciliation among all the members of the group.

A Contention for Honor and Riches

Artemis Fowl II, the 13-year-old criminal mastermind, has created a supercomputer which he calls the "C Cube", from stolen fairy technology. It far surpasses any human technology made so far. When Fowl meets Chicago businessman Jon Spiro to show him the Cube, Spiro ambushes Artemis and steals it. In the process, Butler, his bodyguard is killed by one of Spiro''s staff. However, Artemis manages to revive him with the aid of cryogenics and fairy healing magic, courtesy of Captain Holly Short of the LEPrecon squad. After Butler is revived, Artemis convinces the LEP to track down the Cube. They agree on one condition: that Artemis'' mind is to be wiped later. They head to The Spiro Needle, where Jon Spiro has held the Cube. The Cube is recovered with the aid of Butler''s sister and Mulch Diggums, who is later incarcerated. Nearing the end of the book, Mulch discovers that Artemis has cleared him of all charges and tasked him with restoring Artemis'' memory, which is wiped at the end. In the epilogue, it is revealed that the LEP questioned him to reveal any plans he had to retain his memory, but he managed to fool them, and his plans remained secret from the LEP.

Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code

Such Is My Beloved takes place in a city experiencing the economic hardships of the Great Depression. The main character is Father Stephen Dowling, a young, exuberant priest searching for the meaning of God’s love. Dowling decides to try to help two young prostitutes, Ronnie and Midge, turn their lives around. The priest goes to great lengths to try to help them, such as giving them money and clothes, while trying to find them jobs. As the story progresses, Dowling becomes increasingly involved in the girls’ lives. He exhibits agape for the prostitutes and does everything he can to help them redeem their lives. His relationship with the prostitutes is condemned by his rich, self-righteous parishioners and his bishop. In the end, the girls are arrested for prostitution and sent away. Dowling feels that he has failed the girls and becomes grief-stricken. His anguish over the girls’ fate causes him to lose his sanity and subsequently he is removed from the church and sent away to an insane asylum. In the end, Dowling has a beautiful moment of clarity in which he sacrifices his own sanity to God to spare the girls’ souls. The novel closes on his realization of the purely Christian love he bears for Ronnie, Midge and for all of humanity.

Such Is My Beloved

As a boy, Achak is separated from his family during the Second Sudanese Civil War when the Arab militia, referred to as murahaleen (which is Arabic for traveller), wipes out his Dinka village, Marial Bai. During the assault, he loses sight of his father and his childhood friends, Moses and William K. William K escapes, but Moses is believed to be dead after the assault. Achak seeks shelter in the house of his aunt with his mother, who is frequently identified throughout the book with a yellow dress. Before they are hidden, they hear the screaming of Achak''s aunt, and his mother goes to investigate. Achak never sees her again afterward. He evades detection by hiding in a bag of grain, and credits God for helping him stay quiet. He flees on foot with a group of other young boys (the "Lost Boys"), encountering great danger and terrible hardship along the way to a refugee camp in Ethiopia . Their inflated expectations are shattered by the conditions at the camp, and eventually they are forced to flee to another refugee camp in Kakuma, after Ethiopian president Mengistu is overthrown and soldiers open fire on them. They make it to Kenya and finally, years later, he moves to the United States. The story is told in parallel to subsequent hardships in the United States.

What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng

Nicholas Marlow, an English engineer engaged to a young doctor, one day, out of the blue, loses his well-paid job. After several months of sheer desperation, he responds to an advert by an English engineering company, the Spartacus Machine Tool Company of Wolverhamption. He is offered the post of the firm''s representative in Italy. Although the firm does not itself make weapons, its main sales are of the "Spartacus Type S2 automatic" boring machine, which is used for shell production. Able to speak some Italian, Marlow gladly accepts, secretly deciding that he will quit the job again as soon as possible to go back to England and get married. On arrival in Milan, he realizes that there is a huge backlog at his office, and that both Bellinetti, his personal assistant (male), and his secretary (female) are highly inefficient co-workers. What is more, a lot of his time is diverted by the Italian authorities, to whom he has to report on a regular basis and who eventually inform him that they have misplaced his passport so that he is temporarily unable to leave the country. There is growing uneasiness on Marlow''s part when he happens to notice that his private correspondence with his fiancée has been steamed open. When he makes friends with Andreas Zaleshoff, an American businessman of Russian descent whose office is in the same building, he learns from the latter that Bellinetti is an agent for the OVRA and watching each and every step Marlow takes, and that his predecessor''s accident&mdash;he was run over by a car in a dark and foggy street of Milan&mdash;was in fact cold-blooded politically motivated murder. On top of all that, Marlow is contacted by a General Vagas who informs him that he has no choice but to work as a Yugoslav spy. There is no way Marlow could legally leave Italy, especially after an arrest warrant has been issued for him by the authorities. Assisted by Zaleshoff, he succeeds in making his escape from Milan. Together, the two men embark on a several day long odyssey through the North of Italy&mdash;by train and on foot&mdash;until they finally, in the midst of a snowbound forest, reach the Yugoslav border. (Their flight takes up more than one third of the novel.) From Zagreb, Marlow can safely travel home to England. The final episode before the escape is a particularly excoriating attack on the repressive behaviour of the Mussolini State. This novel, together with Uncommon Danger/Background to Danger and The Mask of Dimitrios/A Coffin for Dimitrios comes from Ambler''s ''Popular front'' period when he was plainly sympathetic to the Left and the USSR. One of Marlow''s English work colleagues, an obviously decent and intelligent sort, is sympathetically identified as a ''socialist''. Marlow escapes capture on one occasion thanks to the selfless intervention of a former Communist railwayman, who has been cunningly identified as a one-time Comrade by Andreas Zaleshoff.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

Wolf of the Plains

By Conn Iggulden

Into the Gauntlet

By Margaret Haddix

Exquisite Corpse

By Poppy Z. Brite

The prophecy of the stones

By Flavia Bujor

Gabriel's Gift

No Author Listed

Vengeance of Orion

By Ben Bova

In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays

By Bertrand Russell

A Contention for Honor and Riches

No Author Listed

Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code

By Eoin Colfer

Such Is My Beloved

By Morley Callaghan

What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng

By Dave Eggers

Cause for Alarm

By Eric Ambler