The story opens on a note of pure fantasy, showing school children from the future taking a field trip through time to see the dyspeptic poet Francis Xavier Enderby while he is asleep. Enderby, a lapsed Catholic in his mid-40''s, lives alone in Brighton as a ''professional'' poet - his income being interest from investments left to him by his stepmother. Enderby composes his poetry whilst seated on the toilet. His bathtub, which serves as a filing cabinet, is almost full of the mingled paper and food scraps that represent his efforts. Although he is recognised as a minor poet with several published works (and is even awarded a small prize, the ''Goodby Gold Medal'', which he refuses), he has yet to be anthologised. He is persuaded to leave his lonely but poetically fruitful bachelor life by the editor of a woman''s magazine, Vesta Bainbridge, after he accidentally sends her a love poem instead of a complaint about a recipe in her magazine. The marriage, which soon ends, costs Enderby dearly, alienating him from his muse and depriving him of his financial independence. Months pass, and Enderby is able to write only one more poem. After spending what remains of his capital, he attempts suicide with an overdose of aspirin, experiencing disgusting (and rather funny) visions of his stepmother as he nears death. His cries of horror bring help, and he regains consciousness in a mental institution, where the doctors persuade him to renounce his old, "immature" poetry-writing self. Rechristened "Piggy Hogg", he looks forward contentedly to a new career as a bartender.

Inside Mr. Enderby

Albert Angelo tells the story of Albert Albert, a substitute teacher who longs to be a professional architect. He has had to resort to teaching to make ends meet, as he is not an accomplished enough architect to make a living from it. Living in a flat in the Angel in London, he finds himself teaching in increasingly tougher schools, and part of the story concerns his struggle with difficult pupils in class, mirroring Albert''s struggle with life in general. Through the reproduction of some of their essays, we also learn the pupils'' opinions of Albert and their attitudes towards him, which are often hilarious. Albert devotes much thought to his ex-girlfriend Jenny, with whom he is still very much in love and who he feels betrayed him. He reminisces about her frequently. His friend Terry, whom he accompanies to late-night cafes, was also ''betrayed'' by a woman, and their friendship is built upon this common experience. The story is at times humorous and at others incredibly serious. As is usual in a Johnson novel sexuality is openly and frankly discussed. Johnson''s writing technique allows us to view Albert''s character from many angles.

Albert Angelo

While traveling to Tunis on honeymoon with his new bride, the Parisian scholar Michel is overcome by tuberculosis. As he recovers, he re-discovers the physical pleasures of living and resolves to forgo his studies of the past in order to experience the present—to let "the layers of acquired knowledge peel away from the mind like a cosmetic and reveal, in patches, the naked flesh beneath, the authentic being hidden there." This is not, however, the Michel his colleagues knew—not a Michel that will be readily accepted by traditional society—and he must hide his new values under the patina of what he now reviles. Bored by Parisian society, he moves to a family farm in Normandy. He is happy there, especially in the company of young Charles, but he must soon return to the city and academe. Michel remains restless until he gives his first lecture and runs into Ménalque, who has long outraged society, and recognizes in him a reflection of his torment. Michel returns south, deeper into the desert, until, as he confides to his friends, he is lost in the sea of sand. Gide''s story is filled by his descriptive prose, which evokes the exotic nature of Michel''s inner and outer journey: "I did not understand the forbearance of this African earth, submerged for days at a time and now awakening from winter, drunk with water, bursting with new juices; it laughed in this springtime frenzy whose echo, whose image I perceived within myself." de:Der Immoralist es:El inmoralista fr:L''Immoraliste pt:L''Immoraliste ro:Imoralistul

The Immoralist

Five children, Claudia, Colin, Pixie, Ralph and Robbo arrive at an old mansion known as Harwick Hall on a school trip. Upon reaching the hall, they discover a secret room. Claudia notices a diary on the desk belonging to previous owner Richard Harwick. The children read his story; apparently Richard had run away from home after the death of his father and his mother''s subsequent remarriage to the strict Reverend Coldstone. While reading the story, the children all react in some way. They then realise that the reason they were grouped together was because they had both written two addresses on their forms. All of their parents are separated. After Richard ran away from home, he returned to an empty house. His mother had died of grief while his sister had also passed away from childbirth fever. This sparks a discussion of Richard''s actions between the children. The discussion leads to each of them divulging their own family problems. Claudia reveals that her parents had divorced after several fights. The ''scarlet woman'', a pleasant woman named Stella, tries but fails to win Claudia''s approval.However, after a dinner party with her father''s friends who too ignore Stella, Claudia realises her mistake and attempts to make nice by wearing beautiful pyjamas bought by Stella in front of the guests, shocking them into politeness. Colin reveals that his ''Dad'' (who was his mother''s partner but not his biological father) was left behind by his mother after they had absconded one day. While his mother was frustrated with Jack (Dad)''s unemployed state, Colin, who loved him very much, attempted to keep in contact with Jack. Failing to do so, he plans to find him in the future. Pixie recounts her parents'' separation and her father''s second marriage. She dislikes both her stepsisters. In a quarrel with her stepmother Lucy, Pixie unburdened herself of her grievances. Lucy aired her frustrations as well, and they made up. Ralph entertains the children with a comical description of his extended stepfamily, spanning two previous stepmothers and their children, one stepfather and one future stepmother, whom he is infatuated with. Robbo''s story is about his stepfather, The Beard, and his sister Callie, who cannot get along. This had caused much trouble for the family especially after the birth of stepbrother Dumpa. Callie finally moved in with her father instead. Before going to bed, the other children secretly place a broken wooden cow made by Richard Harwick into Colin''s bag, as a reminder to him to make the best of what he faces.

Step by Wicked Step

The story is about Eliza Wharton, the daughter of a clergyman. At the beginning of the novel she has just been released from an unwanted marriage by the death of her betrothed, the Rev. Haly, also a clergyman, whom Eliza nursed during his final days in her own home. After this experience, she decides she wants friendship and independence. After a short period of time living with friends, she is courted by two men. One, Boyer, is a respected but rather boring clergyman, whom all of her friends and her mother recommend she accept in marriage. The other, Sanford, is an aristocratic libertine, who has no intention to marry but determines not to let another man have Eliza. Because of her indecision and her apparent preference for the libertine Sanford, Boyer eventually gives up on her, deciding that she will not make a suitable wife. Sanford also disappears from her life and marries another woman, Nancy, for her fortune. Eliza eventually decides that she really loved Boyer and wants him back. Unfortunately for Eliza, Boyer has already decided to marry Maria Selby, a relation of Boyer''s friend. Sanford later reappears married, but is able to seduce the depressed Eliza. They have a hidden affair for some time until, overcome by guilt and unwilling to face her family and friends, Eliza arranges to escape from her home. Like the real-life Elizabeth Whitman, she dies due to childbirth complications and is buried by strangers. Mrs. Wharton (Eliza''s mother) and all of Eliza''s friends are deeply saddened by her death. Sanford, too, is devastated by her death. In a letter to his friend, Charles Deighton, he expresses his regret at his wretched behavior.

Coquette

Jack Havig, born in the American midwest in 1933, has a genetic mutation that allows him to travel effortlessly through time. He learns that an apocalypse will arrive around the turn of the 21st century, due to over-pollution and nuclear warfare. Farther still in the future, a New Zealand/Micronesian culture known as "the Maurai Federation" will come to dominate the world and impose their vision of a less industrialized, more ecologically balanced world. Jack reasons that there must be other people with the same ability to travel through time; to find them, he visits Jerusalem at the time of the crucifixion, walking through the street singing the Greek mass. He is identified by agents of a time-traveling organization, the "Eyrie," who take him to their headquarters in the far future. At first Jack joins their group, but eventually he rebels against the group''s leader, a 19th-century racist whose goal is to stop the Maurai ascendancy. To defeat him, Jack must return to the 20th century, where he locates an independent group of time-travelers, eventually returning to the future to overthrow the Eyrie. Much of the story takes place in times past, including an interlude in the Byzantine empire, where Jack saves the life of a Byzantine girl during the carnage of the Fourth Crusade and falls in love with her.

There Will Be Time

Action (in both the novel and the zarzuela) takes place in colonial Cuba about 1830. The young and beautiful light skinned mulatta, Cecilia Valdés, is the illegitimate daughter of powerful land magnate and slave trader, Candido de Gamboa. Leonardo de Gamboa is his legitimate son. Leonardo falls in love with Cecilia not realizing that she is his own half-sister, and they become lovers. At the same time, hopelessly in love with Cecilia is also another man, the poor black musician, José Dolores Pimienta. His advances Cecilia rejects; and she conceives Leonardo''s son. Love between Leonardo and Cecilia does not last, however. He abandons her and becomes betrothed to a white upper class woman, a certain Isabel Ilincheta. Cecilia turns to the faithful Pimienta to plan revenge. On the day of his wedding he is assassinated on the steps of the cathedral by Pimienta who acts on the instigation of Cecilia. He is executed, and she is thrown in prison. Cecilia Valdés reveals the intricate problems of race relations in Cuba. There are the elite social circles of Spanish-born and creole whites; the growing number of mulattos, of which Cecilia is one, and the blacks, some slaves, some freed men. The blacks are also divided between those who were born in Africa and those who were born in Cuba, those who worked on the sugar plantation and those who worked in the households of the wealthy in Havana. Cecilia Valdés is a canvas displaying the sexual, social, and racial interaction of the Cubans of the day.

Cecilia Valdés

A woman arrives in Guernsey, with her son Gilliat, and buys a house said to be haunted. The boy grows up, the woman dies. Gilliat becomes a good fisherman and sailor. People believe him to be a wizard. In Guernsey also lives a former sailor, Mess Lethierry, the owner of the first steam ship of the island -Durande- and his niece Deruchette. One day, near Christmas, when going to church, she sees Gilliat on the road behind her and writes his name in the snow. He sees this and becomes obsessed with her gesture. In time he falls in love with her and goes to play the bagpipes near her house. Sieur Clubin, the trusted captain of Durande, sets up a plan to sink the ship in the Hanois cilffs and flee with a ship of Spanish smugglers, Tamaulipas. He gets in touch with Rantaine, a swindler who had stolen a large sum of money from Mess Lethierry many years ago. Clubin takes the money from Rantaine at gunpoint. In thick fog, Clubin sails for the Hanois cliffs from where he can easily swim to the shore, meet the smugglers and disappear, leaving the appearance of having drowned. Instead, he loses his way and sails to the Douvres cliffs which are much further from the shore. Left alone on the ship, he is terrified but he sees a cutter and leaps into the water to catch it. In that moment he feels grabbed by the leg and pulled down to the bottom. Everybody in Guernsey finds out about the shipwreck. Mess Lethierry is desperate to get the Durande''s engine back. His niece declares she will marry the rescuer of the engine, and Mess Lethierry swears she will marry no other. Gilliat immediately takes up the mission, enduring hunger, thirst and cold trying to free the engine from the wreck. In a battle with an octopus, he finds the skeleton of Clubin and the stolen money on the bottom of the sea. Eventually he succeeds in returning the engine to Lethierry, who is very pleased and ready to honour his promise. Gilliat appears in front of the people as the rescuer but he declines to marry Deruchette because he had seen her accepting a marriage proposal made by Ebenezer Caudry, the young priest recently arrived on the island. He arranges their hurried wedding and helps them to run away on the sailing ship Cashmere. In the end, with all his dreams shattered, he decides to wait for the tide sitting on the Gild Holm''Ur chair (a rock in the sea) and drowns as he watches the Cashmere disappear on the horizon.

Toilers of the Sea

It is the story of thirty-five-year-old Michiel (Michael) Steyn who returns to the family farm in South Africa for his mother''s funeral. This is Steyn''s first return to South Africa in fifteen years after leaving in 1987 to escape from a scandal he was involved in while he was an officer in the South African navy. Steyn is from both Afrikaans and English extraction and is now a US citizen. He lives with his partner Kamil Cassis (who is half Palestinian, half Jewish) on the boundary of San Francisco''s Castro district. The book engages specifically South African questions of racism, guilt, responsibility and the tentativeness of forgiveness but the novel''s ending asks for an international reading, in particular through its foreshadowing of US foreign and domestic policy in the era of George W Bush. Kings of the Water also offers a glimpse at an older version of a marginal character from Embrace as well as allusion to the extended fishing scene from The Smell of Apples, in this way seeming to insist that all three these novels be read and understood in relation to one another.

Kings of the Water

The novel is written in picaresque style, and opens with the middle aged, discontented Jess Oakroyd in the fictional Yorkshire town of Bruddersford. He opts to leave his family and seek adventure "on t''road" (throughout the novel Priestley uses dialect for all non-RP speakers of English). He heads south down the Great North Road. Intertwined with the story of Oakroyd''s travels are those of Elizabeth Trant and Inigo Jollifant, two similarly malcontented individuals. Miss Trant is an upper-middle class spinster and Jollifant is a teacher at a down-at-heel private school. All three ultimately encounter each other when a failing concert troupe (''The Dinky Doos'') are disbanding as a result of their manager running off with the takings. The independently wealthy Miss Trant, against the advice of her relatives, decides to refloat the troupe, now known as ''The Good Companions''. Inigo plays piano, Oakroyd is the odd-job man, and other assorted characters including members of the original troupe: including Jimmy Nunn, Jerry Jerningham and Susie Dean, along with Mr Morton Mitcham (a travelling banjo player whom Inigo met earlier on his own odyssey) have various adventures round the shires of middle England. After a sabotaged performance, the troupe disband: Jerry marries Lady Partlit, a fan; Susie and Inigo become successful and famous in London; Miss Trant gets married to a long lost sweetheart; Jess Oakroyd emigrates to Canada and the other performers carry on with their life on the road.

The Good Companions

Leo Proudhammer, an African American actor who grew up in Harlem and later moved into Greenwich Village, has a heart attack while on stage. This event creates the present tense setting for the novel, which is mostly narrated in retrospect, explaining each relationship with a story from the actor''s life. Barbara, a white woman, and Leo, a black man, are artistic partners for life&mdash;sometimes sexual partners, sometimes not. Jerry, their white friend, was Barbara''s partner for a while, before Barbara revealed her love for Leo. Their life stories are intertwined, but not joined, due both to the racial pressures of society and Leo''s bisexuality. One of Leo''s lovers, "Black Christopher," is a significant political and emotional figure in the novel. Christopher''s friends are all African-American, and his life centers around the struggle for racial justice. Barbara and Christopher have one sexual encounter, but, like much of the sex in the book, it is exploratory, and only significant for what it reveals to each of them. Barbara, Leo, and Christopher remain friends throughout the novel. Caleb, Leo''s brother, a WWII vet, was falsely imprisoned when he is a young man, and eventually conquers his anger at white society through his conversion to fundamentalist Christianity. He judges Leo harshly for choosing "the world" over "the kingdom of God." Caleb''s religion painfully isolates him from Leo. Black Christopher, the foil for Caleb, advocates violent revolution as the means for creating a just society. Leo recovers from his heart attack and returns to the stage at the end of the novel.

Tell Me How Long the Train''s Been Gone

For twenty years, Atrix Wolfe has turned his back on his magic to live with the wolves in the mountains. Once a powerful mage, Atrix Wolfe nearly caused the destruction of the kingdom of Pelucir when one of his creations, meant to force an invading army threatening his homeland to retreat, massacred not only the invaders, but the Pelucir forces defending their homeland as well. The daughter of the Queen of the Wood was another victim of Atrix''s Hunter; during the creation of the Hunter, Saro disappeared when the fairyworld was torn asunder by Atrix Wolfe''s magic. Talis, the prince of Pelucir, calls Atrix back to the human world to explain a spellbook written by a mysterious mage shortly after the massacre of Hunter''s Field that the aspiring mage was studying. In the kitchens of the castle, a mysterious scullery maid named Sorrow works silently, interacting more with the pots and pans than other people. The three characters are connected by the Queen of the Woods''s desire to find her daughter, but it is only when they uncover the truth of what happened twenty years earlier that they are able to find her as well as solve the mysteries of the spell book. Atrix Wolfe eventually discovers that the terrible Hunter was made, in part, from Ilyos, the consort of the Queen of the Wood and Saro''s father. Talis delivers Saro back to her mother, thinking that he will never see her again, as the Wood is a magical realm, which humans cannot reach by normal means. Saro regains the power of speech after being returned to the fairy world. Atrix Wolfe un-makes the Hunter. Ilyos, however, has been through so much that he cannot return to his life as the Queen''s consort. In order to protect the Queen''s world, he turns himself into one of the trees of the Wood. Talis is surprised when Saro returns to Pelucir, and they begin to become acquainted. She says that he was the only person she knew, for twenty years, who was kind to her.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

Inside Mr. Enderby

By Anthony Burgess

Albert Angelo

By B.S. Johnson

The Immoralist

By André Gide

Step by Wicked Step

By Anne Fine

Coquette

By Hannah Webster Foster

There Will Be Time

By Poul Anderson

Cecilia Valdés

By Cirilo Villaverde

Toilers of the Sea

By Victor Hugo

Kings of the Water

No Author Listed

The Good Companions

By John Boynton Priestley

Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone

By James Baldwin

The Book of Atrix Wolfe

By Patricia A. McKillip