Walter''s father finds him jumping on his bed and warns him not to do it: "One day it’ll crash right through the floor." Walter tries to go to sleep but hears his friend Delbert in the apartment above jumping on his bed. Walter decides to have just one more jump himself, but instead keeps jumping higher and higher until the floor starts to crack. He and his bed fall into Miss Hattie’s apartment where he lands in her plate of spaghetti and meatballs. Walter and his bed continue to fall, along with Miss Hattie and the spaghetti, into Mr. Matty''s apartment where he is watching monsters on his television set. Miss Hattie falls into Mr. Matty''s lap, while Walter lands in his fish tank. The next stop for Walter''s bed and the ever-growing crowd is Aunt Batty''s apartment where her stamp collection gets scattered all over the floor. Aunt Batty and her stamps join the group as it falls into the next apartment, knocking over a castle of toy blocks that Patty and Natty have been building. Patty, Natty, and Fatty (their cat) are added to the group as it falls down into Mr. Hanratty''s apartment where he is painting a picture at his easel. Walter, Miss Hattie, Mr. Matty, Aunt Batty, Patty and Natty, Mr. Hanratty, the cat, the paint, the spaghetti, the television, the fish, and various toys now land in Maestro Ferlingatti''s apartment where he and his string quartet are practicing. They too join the tumbling crowd who all end up safely in the dark and quiet basement of the building. Walter is back in his bed and realizes that it has all been a dream, but he promises himself that he will never jump on his bed again and hopes that Delbert will learn his lesson as well. Then Walter hears Delbert jumping on the bed again, followed shortly by Delbert falling through Walter''s ceiling.

No Jumping on the Bed!

The book has three sections, titled “Strings”, “Drums”, and “Cymbals”. These three sections document Lyson’s journey to make Islay a Deaf state. He comes across many problems along the way, and is ridiculed by some. Others accuse him of being a peddler and he is misunderstood by many. His wife, in the beginning of the novel is embarrassed by his dream and keeps Lyson behind lock and key when he is working on his project. She does not want her friends to know about what he is doing and does everything in her power to keep it a secret. In the first section, “Strings”, the book’s protagonist Lyson Sulla is in the beginning stages of his plans for a state by and for Deaf people. He is learning about the state Islay, and how it could work for what he is envisioning. He receives financial support from his in-laws so that he can move to Islay. Once there, he spends a week’s time looking over the state, seeing how it will work for him, and meeting with public officials. He is pleased with what he sees in Islay and believes that it will work for what he plans. He moves his wife, Mary out to Islay with him. Once they are moved into a large home, they throw a big party. The second section, “Drums” documents Lyson’s travels to recruit other Deaf people to move to Islay. He meets many Deaf people along the way and is able to convince many well-established Deaf people to move to Islay. He also has a few misunderstandings along the way when people misunderstand what his intentions and meanings are. In the last section, “Cymbals”, many Deaf people move their families to Islay and open businesses. Lyson still has troubles, as he is accused of real estate fraud. However, he gets out of this predicament. Those who moved to Islay register to vote, so as to help Lyson become Governor. The election is a rough experience for Lyson, but in the end he wins, becoming Governor of Islay.

Islay

Taking an early morning walk in a fierce storm, Peter Marlow is deliberately snubbed by one of his teachers from Dartmouth Naval College, Lewis Foley, who is spending the Easter holidays in the fishing village of St Anne''s Oldport. Later, he and his sister Nicola, follow an irresistible sign to a place called Mariners. Mariners turns out to be a deserted house complete with its own crow''s nest and a sign to Foley''s Folly Light. Nicola discovers from one of her fishermen friends, Robert Anquetil, that Lewis had grown up in the village and that Mariners belongs to his family. Anquetil warns her not to go near the house again. However, when she returns to the hotel where the Marlows are staying, she finds that Peter has already told the others and that they are planning a trip that afternoon. Reluctantly, Nicola agrees to go along with them. The children enter the house and go exploring. While Nicola, Peter and Lawrie go down to the cellars, Ginty agrees to keep guard. But when she hears a noise she panics and follows them down the stairs. Peter has found some microfiche which seems to show details of Naval secrets. A man enters the cellars and the girls are afraid, but Peter recognises him as Lewis Foley and starts to tell him about the secrets he has found. Foley produces a gun and forces the children to come with him on his boat, but Lawrie manages to escape. Nicola puts sugar in the boat''s engine so that Foley can''t take them further out to sea. Instead he lands at the lighthouse and signals to someone to collect him there. He is ordered to dispose of the children but ignores this command. Lawrie gets run over on her way back to the hotel and is knocked unconscious. When she recovers she tells Robert Anquetil, who turns out to be a secret agent, what happened. He is ordered not to look for the children, since capturing the traitor and his allies is more important. Peter and Nicola make a plan to signal from the lighthouse to any passing ships. Nicola and Ginty pretend that Peter has drowned, trying to escape from the lighthouse so that he can hide without Foley coming to look for him. Foley seems genuinely upset about Peter and is kind to the girls. Later that night, they signal SOS, watching the Naval fleet go past without seeing them. However, they persevere and eventually are spotted by Anquetil. Foley comes up the stairs when they are signalling but Ginty throws her lamp at him so that he is seriously injured. The next day, a submarine emerges and men come to collect Foley and the children. Peter has taken Foley''s revolver and he shoots the Admiral. But before anything else can happen, the Navy appear and the submarine is destroyed. The children are rescued and Nicola fulfils an ambition on the way home, when she is allowed onto the bridge of the destroyer. Nicola and Peter are a little disappointed that they are forbidden from telling anyone their adventures, but Ginty is glad to forget the whole thing.

The Marlows and the Traitor

The opening scene begins with Pelajia Patchnose nailing shingles on her roof on the fictional Wasaychigan Hill Indian Reserve on Manitoulin Island, Ontario. She is joined by her sister, Philomena, with whom she discusses her longing to leave the reserve, to which Philomena receives skeptically: "But you were born here. All your poop''s on this reserve". They are joined by their half sister, Annie Cook, who they treat disdainfully, and who shares the news that she is expecting a package before leaving to pick it up. Meanwhile, Marie-Adele is playing with Zhaboonigan, while Nanabush, in the form of a seagull, watches on. This is where we first learn of Marie-Adele''s (cervical?) cancer, and Veronique''s insecurity about having no blood children of her own. The various tensions between the seven sisters, such as shared lovers and stolen husbands, is slowly exposed. This is also when we first hear rumors about THE BIGGEST BINGO IN THE WORLD, a possibility which all the women are ecstatic about. Soon Annie arrives and the women march to Emily Dictionary''s store to discover the details. Once the women are gathered at the store long suffering tempers flare and the scene dissolves into the sisters tussling and exchanging verbal attacks, during which Zhabooginan wanders to the side stage and re-accounts her brutal rape by two white boys with a screwdriver to her audience, Nanabush, who is experiencing "agonizing contortions" during the retelling. However, as soon as news of THE BIGGEST BINGO IN THE WORLD is confirmed, the women promptly stop their squabbling and cooperatively plan how to fund the trip to Toronto in order to attend. A mad flurry of activities ensue as the women plan the trip and raise money in various ways. Once they have consolidated their efforts and funds, they set out on the drive in a borrowed van. They encounter several diversions, a flat tire, Marie-Adele collapsing (and having another encounter with Nanabush, this time as a nighthawk), but the most notable part of the scene is the emotional stories the women exchange: Emily re-accounts witnessing her lesbian lover die in a motorcycle accident, Marie-Adele expresses her fear of dying, etc. Finally they arrive at THE BIGGEST BINGO IN THE WORLD, where Nanabush plays the bingo master and the audience plays along. At the end of this climatic scene, Marie-Adele dies just as the other women are losing. The play jumps back to Wasaychigan Hill, and Philomena has won $600 and got a new toilet, but otherwise things remain largely unchanged.

The Rez Sisters

A London banker named David Musgrave dies prematurely in his mid-fifties, leaving a large fortune to his young wife and small son. The widow devotes her money, time, and energy to improving her home village in Surrey. She educates her son, Alexander Musgrave, to be generous and idealistic; when he comes into his majority and his own fortune, the younger Musgrave devotes himself to a philanthropic enterprise in a London parish. In the course of that work, he meets an impressive man named Jason Delphion, who seems to exist on a level of physical and intellectual development superior to average human beings. Delphion, an admirer of Musgrave''s philanthropic efforts, tells the young Englishman about a hidden country in the remote Himalayas where an ideal and utopian society has evolved. Delphion invites Musgrave to visit the country, and Musgrave is eager to do so. They travel to northern India, and from there they fly, via Ionian aircraft, to the secret valley. Musgrave learns that the people are largely Greek in origin, descended from a cohort of seven thousand ancient Greek mercenaries who served the Persian Empire, and who fled eastward after the victories of Alexander the Great. The Greeks established themselves in their Himalayan valley, and for many generations lived as farmers, herders, and mercenaries in the armies of Indian princes. At the time of the Mughal Empire, a local prince named Timoleon travelled to Europe and brought back knowledge and technology; he led the Ionians in their development of an advanced and deliberately isolated culture. The travelers land at Iolkos, the Ionian capital, where the buildings are "palatial halls" with "towers and domes," constructed of marble in varying shades. The government is headquartered on an Acropolis, built on an island in the valley''s main lake. (Craig''s description of the Acropolis of Iolkos, with palaces divided by canals surrounding a "central basin" in which is set a great statue, recalls the Court of Honor at the World''s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, the famous "White City.") The language of the Ionians remains Greek, and the country''s main rivers are the Pharos and the Styx. The people are well-educated (university training is common for all), and rational in their dress, manners, and customs. Musgrave finds that the Ionians have created a technology based on electricity, drawn from windmills and from the Earth''s magnetic field. Electricity powers their land vehicles and aircraft, and lights and heats their homes and cities. Their most common metal is aluminum. They irrigate their valley into a lush agricultural garden; all the land is owned by the state. Their government is a republic, under an elected archon; the state controls marriage and practices eugenics, and the people generally live to be one hundred years old. Inherited wealth is limited, and poverty is unknown. The Ionians run their commerce and manufacturing along highly rational and organized lines, with no debt or advertising; they control pollution and recycle waste. Musgrave is awed and amazed by life in Ionia, and quickly becomes a convert to its values. He leaves the country after a stay of several months, though; he is determined to bring Ionian advances to England and the rest of the world.

Ionia

The novel is set around the time of its publication and follows Lucifer Clarence Dye, freshly exposed as a US intelligence agent following a bungled operation in Singapore (where a Chinese operative Dye had been trying to recruit instead died of a freak heart attack during a routine polygraph test.) Having just been released from a three-month term in a Singaporean jail in exchange for an official US apology (and a large bribe), Dye is cashiered by the small, independent agency Section 2 and is immediately offered a job by an eccentric young man, Victor Orcutt. A self-proclaimed genius, Orcutt has decided to address the then-topical challenge of urban decay; however, his immodestly named "Orcutt''s First Law" states that "Before things get better, they must get much worse." Dye''s assignment is, therefore, to "corrupt me a city." The city in question is Swankerton, a fictional settlement on the Texas Gulf Coast where Victor Orcutt Associates has been hired to aid the election of a "Reform" slate to city offices. Swankerton hardly needs corrupting, being practically afloat on a cesspool of vice and depravity already; the "Reform" poobahs are if anything worse than the current leadership, which is knee-deep in drugs, gambling, whores, and worse, and is backed by a New Orleans mob boss, Giuseppe "Joe Lucky" Lucarelli. Nevertheless, Dye and Orcutt''s other operative, semi-disgraced ex-police chief Homer Necessary, dive right in. Alternating chapters flash back to Dye''s past: his childhood as the ward of Tante Katerine, White Russian madam of Shanghai''s best whorehouse, his adoption by Gorman Smalldane, war correspondent, and their internment by the Japanese, his marriage to the daughter of the head of Section 2 and his subsequent recruitment, and the violent rape and murder of his wife during an attempt by an enemy organization to coerce information out of his father-in-law. The rest of the main story deals with Dye''s budding romance with Orcutt''s assistant, the ex-prostitute Carol Thackerty, his meteoric ascent through the rotten power structure of Swankerton, and his conflict with Ramsey Lynch (née Mongomery Vicker,) the New Orleans mob''s representative in Swankerton and brother of Gerald Vicker, whom Dye had caused to be dismissed from Section 2 on suspicion of spying for China while Vicker was his subordinate at its Hong Kong station. After his efforts begin to draw attention, Dye is ordered out of the limelight by his former employers, a request he places himself in additional danger by refusing.

The Fools in Town are on Our Side

"In the sands of a great desert, a once-heroic paladin has turned to evil and enlisted an army of gnolls to help retrieve a powerful relic, reputed to be kept in the vaults of the city of Fire. If they find it, the world will never again be at peace." A blackguard serving Hextor burns the city of Kalpesh, searching for a magical artifact. Some of the best soldiers of the city, led by a man named Tahlain, manage to escape the city, going out into the desert, but only a half-orc named Krusk knows of the real reason that Tahlain has led his troops out of the city. The blackguard manages to catch up with the soldiers, killing Tahlain, but not before the Captain manages to pass the artifact, a key into the city of fire, onto Krusk. The half-orc flees and for days starves and dehydrates until he is captured by a group of villagers. A party of adventurers, returning from a raid on a group of orcs, manage to stop Krusk from being hanged, and he explains his mission to them. They go out into the desert, seeking to find the city of fire. However, they must first pass a series of challenges, while at the same time running from the gnolls. Eventually they manage to find their way into the city of fire, where they use the key to gain access. An azer, who guards the abandoned city, helps them prepare for the inevitable fight, and after the gnolls are defeated Krusk helps permanently seal the portal. A wizard named Naull who had been traveling with the party is nearly killed in the process, and the blackguard manages to capture her, teleporting her away to some unknown fate.

City of Fire

After a fatal car accident on Earth, Herb Asher is placed into cryonic suspension as he waits for a spleen replacement. Clinically dead, Herb experiences lucid dreams while in suspended animation and relives the last six years of his life. In the past, Herb lived as a recluse in an isolated dome on a remote planet in the binary star system, CY30-CY30B. Yah, a local divinity of the planet in exile from Earth, appears to Herb in a vision as a burning flame, and forces him to contact his sick female neighbor, Rybys Rommey, who happens to be terminally ill with multiple sclerosis and pregnant with Yah''s child. With the help of the immortal soul of Elijah, who takes the form of a wild beggar named Elias Tate, Herb agrees to become Rybys''s legal husband and father of the unborn "savior". Together they plan to smuggle the six-month pregnant Rybys back to Earth, under the pretext of seeking help for Rybys'' medical condition at a medical research facility. After being born in human form, Yah plans to confront the fallen angel Belial, who has ruled the Earth for 2000 years since the fall of Masada in the first century CE. Yah''s powers, however, are limited by Belial''s dominion on Earth, and the four of them must take extra precautions to avoid being detected by the forces of darkness. Things do not go as planned. "Big Noodle", Earth''s A.I. system, warns the ecclesiastical authorities in the Christian-Islamic church and Scientific Legate about the divine "invasion" and countermeasures are prepared. A number of failed attempts are made to destroy the unborn child, all of them thwarted by Elijah and Yah. After successfully making the interstellar journey back to Earth and narrowly avoiding a forced abortion, Rybys and Herb escape in the nick of time, only to be involved in a fatal taxi crash, probably due to the machinations of Belial. Rybys dies from her injuries sustained in the crash, and her unborn son Emmanuel (Yah in human form) suffers brain damage from the trauma but survives. Herb is critically injured and put into cryonic suspension until a spleen replacement can be found. Baby Emmanuel is placed into a synthetic womb, but Elias Tate manages to sneak Emmanuel out of the hospital before the church is able to kill him. Six years pass. In a school for special children, Emmanuel meets Zina, a girl who also seems to have similar skills and talents, but acts as a surrogate teacher to Emmanuel. For four years, Zina helps Emmanuel regain his memory (the brain damage caused amnesia) and discover his true identity as Yah, creator of the universe. When he''s ready, Zina shows Emmanuel her own parallel universe. In this peaceful world, organized religion has little influence, Rybys Rommey is still alive and married to Herb Asher, and Belial is only a kid goat living in a petting zoo. In an act of kindness, Zina and Emmanuel liberate the goat-creature from his cage, momentarily forgetting that the animal is Belial. The goat-creature finds Herb Asher and attempts to retain control of the world by possessing him and convincing him that Yahweh''s creation is an ugly thing that should be shown for what it really is. Eventually Herb is saved by Linda Fox, a young singer whom he loves and who is his own personal Savior; she and the goat-creature meet and she kills it, defeating Belial. He finally discovers that this meeting happens over again for everyone in the world, and whether they choose Belial or their Savior decides if they find salvation.

The Divine Invasion

After successfully initiating a drug bust, Nate and Sarah Springfield and their teenage children, Elijah and Elisha, are handpicked to investigate a outbreak of strange occurrences in an otherwise typical high school. Elijah and Elisha become students at the school and quickly make names for themselves when they debate their teachers on the lesson plans regarding humanism and evolution while their father confronts the tolerated bullying in the school. After several of the football players are injected, Elijah and Elisha quickly learn that a group of gothic cult members have been blamed for the plague; they were bullied as Abel was, and it is believed that the curse is their means of revenge. The assumed leader of the group, Ian Snyder, takes credit at first, but his followers turn on him when he "loses control" of the ghost of Abel; his friend, and a few classmate each die after having hallucinations. Ian drops out of the cult and turns to Elijah for spiritual help. Later, Sarah discovers straws filled with a sugar-like substance in the lockers of the stricken students, their dog, Max, recognizes the scent all over the school. An eccentric scientist named Algernon Wheeling is called into the investigation, and determines that the sugar is actually to keep a male poisonous cross-breed of the African Spotted wolf spider and brown recluse in the straw till he smells the female pheromone on the victim because of the dollar bill, he eats his way out and bites the victim after being agitated at not finding the female. The spiders were trapped in the straws, and the pheromone was spread through dollar bills, that circulated around the school to attract the spiders to the intended victims, who hallucinated and were later hospitalized after being bitten. However, as the dollars were spread around the school, unintended sympathizers of the cult were bitten and suffered from the poison. The mastermind of the entire project, a boy named Norman Bloom, led the cult and allowed them to believe that witches were responsible (Ian Snyder and some others). Due to unbelievably fast reproduction, the school is overrun by the deadly spiders, and, as the school is evacuated, Elisha finds herself trapped under the school and bitten repeatedly, but is saved by Algernon Wheeling''s antidote AT490. The hospitalized students recover, and the case is declared closed.

Hangman''s Curse

On a cold day the fictional 304th New York Regiment awaits battle beside a river. Eighteen-year-old Private Henry Fleming, remembering his romantic reasons for enlisting as well as his mother''s resulting protests, wonders whether he will remain brave in the face of fear, or turn and run. He is comforted by one of his friends from home, Jim Conklin, who admits that he would run from battle if his fellow soldiers also fled. During the regiment''s first battle, Confederate soldiers charge, but are repelled. The enemy quickly regroups and attacks again, this time forcing some of the unprepared Union soldiers to flee. Fearing the battle is a lost cause, Henry deserts his regiment. Only after he reaches the rear of the army does he overhear a general announcing the Union''s victory. {| class="toccolours" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 2em; font-size: 85%; background:#c6dbf7; color:black; width:32em; max-width: 35%;" cellspacing="5" | style="text-align: left;" | In despair, he declared that he was not like those others. He now conceded it to be impossible that he should ever become a hero. He was a craven loon. Those pictures of glory were piteous things. He groaned from his heart and went staggering off. |- | style="text-align: left;" | — The Red Badge of Courage, Chapter eleven |} Ashamed, Henry escapes into a nearby forest, where he discovers a decaying body in a peaceful clearing. In his distress, he hurriedly leaves the clearing and stumbles upon a group of injured men returning from battle. One member of the group, a "tattered soldier", asks Henry where he is wounded, but the youth dodges the question. Amongst the group is Jim Conklin, who has been shot in the side and is suffering delirium from blood-loss. Jim eventually dies of his injury, defiantly resisting aid from his friend, and an enraged and helpless Henry runs from the wounded soldiers. He next joins a retreating column that is in disarray. In the ensuing panic, a man hits Henry on the head with his rifle, wounding him. Exhausted, hungry, thirsty, and now wounded, Henry decides to return to his regiment regardless of his shame. When he arrives at camp, the other soldiers believe his injury resulted from a grazing bullet during battle. The other men care for the youth, dressing his wound. The next morning Henry goes into battle for the third time. His regiment encounters a small group of Confederates, and in the ensuing fight Henry proves to be a capable soldier, comforted by the belief that his previous cowardice had not been noticed, as he "had performed his mistakes in the dark, so he was still a man". Afterward, while looking for a stream from which to obtain water with a friend, he discovers from the commanding officer that his regiment has a lackluster reputation. The officer speaks casually about sacrificing the 304th because they are nothing more than "mule drivers" and "mud diggers". With no other regiments to spare, the general orders his men forward. In the final battle, Henry acts as the flag-bearer after the color sergeant falls. A line of Confederates hidden behind a fence beyond a clearing shoot with impunity at Henry''s regiment, which is ill-covered in the tree-line. Facing withering fire if they stay, and disgrace if they retreat, the officers order a charge. Unarmed, Henry leads the men while entirely escaping injury. Most of the Confederates run before the regiment arrives, and four of the remaining men are taken prisoner. The novel closes with the following passage: It rained. The procession of weary soldiers became a bedraggled train, despondent and muttering, marching with churning effort in a trough of liquid brown mud under a low, wretched sky. Yet the youth smiled, for he saw that the world was a world for him, though many discovered it to be made of oaths and walking sticks. He had rid himself of the red sickness of battle. The sultry nightmare was in the past. He had been an animal blistered and sweating in the heat and pain of war. He turned now with a lover''s thirst to images of tranquil skies, fresh meadows, cool brooks—an existence of soft and eternal peace. Over the river a golden ray of sun came through the hosts of leaden rain clouds.

The Red Badge of Courage

It starts as a normal day on a subway, but the normality is interrupted by the hijacking of a subway train, on the number 6 train. Four men armed with submachine guns detach the lead car of the train and take it and 17 hostages into a tunnel. The hijackers are lead by Ryder, a former mercenary; Longman, a disgruntled former motorman; Welcome, a violent former Mafia thug; and Steever, a powerful, laconic brute. They threaten to execute the hostages unless the city pays one million dollars in ransom. While the city rushes to comply, transit police try to puzzle out the hijackers'' plan. They don''t realize that Longman has figured out how to bypass the "dead-man''s switch", allowing the car to speed along the track by itself (with the police chasing it while driving on surface streets) while the hijackers escape through an emergency exit. As they prepare to leave, however, Ryder and Welcome begin to argue, ending with Ryder fatally shooting Welcome. The delay allows one of the passengers, an undercover police officer who jumped off the train as it started to speed away, to shoot Steever. Longman escapes while Ryder shoots the passenger. As Ryder is about to administer a fatal head shot, he is himself shot dead by DCI Daniels of Special Operations Division. The novel ends with Longman''s arrest.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

The novel begins when "Edward Henry Machin first saw the smoke on the 27th May 1867"—the very day of Bennett''s own birth. At age 12, Denry begins his career by altering his marks in a test sufficiently to earn him a scholarship to grammar school. At 16, he leaves school to work for Mr. Duncalf, the town clerk and a solicitor. Duncalf is responsible for organizing an exclusive ball; Denry "invites" himself, then also a few others in exchange for things he will need, such as lessons from dance instructor Ruth Earp. On a bet, he audaciously asks the energetic, beautiful Countess of Chell (of whom everyone, including Machin, is in awe) to dance, thus earning himself the reputation of a "card" (a "character", someone able to set tongues wagging) - a reputation he is determined to cement. Later, when Duncalf treats a disgruntled client brusquely, Denry leaves his employ after persuading the client to hire him as a rent collector. When some of the tenants fall behind, he begins loaning them money (at a highly profitable interest rate). Ruth herself is several months in arrears and tries to sneak away in the middle of the night. Denry catches her by accident, but rather than being angry, he admires her audacity and starts courting her. While on holiday at the seaside resort town of Llandudno with Ruth and her friend Nellie Cotterill, he witnesses a shipwreck and the rescue of the sailors. Noting the interest generated, he buys a lifeboat, hires some of the stranded mariners as rowers, and conducts tours of the picturesque wreck. However, Ruth''s spendthrift nature becomes alarmingly apparent during the trip and they break up. By the end of the summer, Denry has made a substantial profit from the sightseers, which he uses to finance his boldest venture. He starts up the Five Towns Universal Thrift Club. Members deposit money little by little; once they have accumulated half the sum they need to purchase whatever it is they want, the club allows them to buy on credit, but only from stores associated with the club. Denry makes money by getting a discount from the vendors in return for access to his large customer base. When his capital starts to run out, he arranges an "accident" for the Countess''s coach. He drives conveniently by and gives her a lift to an urgent appointment. On the way there, he talks her into becoming the club''s sponsor, ensuring easy financing. This proves to be the making of Denry''s fortune. With his great success, he is appointed a town councillor. He also backs a new daily newspaper (to be bought out at a profit by its established rival anxious to keep its monopoly) and tricks his obstinate mother into moving into a luxurious new house. At this point, Ruth reappears in Denry''s life, now the widow of a rich older man. He considers renewing their relationship, but at the last moment, realizes that Nellie is the one for him and marries her. The crowning achievement comes when Denry decides to become the youngest mayor in the history of Bursley. To sway the voters, he purchases the rights to footballer and native son Callear, the "greatest centre forward in England", for the failing Bursley football club. "It will probably be news to him that Aston Villa have offered £700 to York for the transfer of Callear, and Blackburn Rovers have offered £750, and they''re fighting it out between ''em. Any gentleman willing to put down £800 to buy Callear for Bursley?" he sneered. "I don''t mind telling you that steam-engines and the King himself couldn''t get Callear into our club." "Quite finished?" Denry inquired, still standing. Laughter, overtopped by Councillor Barlow''s snort as he sat down. Denry lifted his voice. "Mr Callear, will you be good enough to step forward and let us all have a look at you?" His antics are regarded with affection and admiration by most others, as shown by the book&#39;s final exchange: "What a card!" said one, laughing joyously. "He''s a rare ''un, no mistake." "Of course, this''ll make him more popular than ever," said another. "We''ve never had a man to touch him for that." "And yet," demanded Councillor Barlow, "what''s he done? Has he ever done a day''s work in his life? What great cause is he identified with?" "He''s identified," said the speaker, "with the great cause of cheering us all up."

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

No Jumping on the Bed!

By Tedd Arnold

Islay

No Author Listed

The Marlows and the Traitor

By Antonia Forest

The Rez Sisters

By Tomson Highway

Ionia

No Author Listed

The Fools in Town are on Our Side

By Ross Thomas

City of Fire

No Author Listed

The Divine Invasion

By Philip K. Dick

Hangman's Curse

By Frank E. Peretti

The Red Badge of Courage

By Stephen Crane

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

By John Godey

The Card

By Arnold Bennett