Things are going from bad to worse in the dilapidated kingdom of Ragbad; even the rag crop is failing. To top it all off (or not), King Fumbo''s head is blown away in a ferocious storm (with "ten thousand pounds of thunder"). Prince Tatters of Ragbag, and Grampa, a former soldier and the bravest man in the kingdom (population 27), set out to search for King Fumbo''s lost head, and a fortune to save the kingdom, and a princess to boot. They are joined by Bill, an iron weathercock from Chicago, who was brought to life by an electrical storm and blown to Oz. Meanwhile, in Perhaps City in the Maybe Mountains, the Princess Pretty Good has a problem: the prophet Abrog (also known as Gorba) foresees her marrying a monster if she does not marry in four days. (He suggests himself as her bridegroom.) When Pretty Good resists, Abrog kidnaps her and tries to transform her into a clod of earth; but since she is, in fact, more than just pretty good, as princesses go, Pretty Good turns into the beautiful flower fairy Urtha. Wide-ranging adventures&mdash;from Fire Island to Isa Poso to Monday Mountain &mdash; culminate in the location and restoration of King Fumbo''s head. Dorothy (with the help of Percy Vere the forgetful poet) manages to restore order. Prince Tatters ends up married to Princess Pretty Good &mdash; which is pretty good for him.

Grampa in Oz

The first volume of The Cronnex is titled Jessan in homage to Jessex, the protagonist of Jim Grimsley’s Kirith Kirin. The second volume, Niccas, is told from the point of view of Jessan’s twin. The heart of the tale is a bildungsroman in fantasy robes, a coming of age story told in stereo. The protagonists’ progress to maturity and sexual quickening provide a microcosm for a richly imagined world and skillfully rendered plot. The stories have as a starting point the fantasy archetype of a youth of humble origins whose coming of age is complicated by the revelation of a weighty destiny. Jessan and Niccas are marked as avatars of a benevolent goddess in a kingdom where her purpose has been perverted by a monomaniacal rogue Avatar and which is governed autocratically by its human apologists and collaborators. Jessan is revealed as the Nithaial Galgaliel, master of air and water; Niccas is the Nithaial Elimiel, liege of earth and fire, moon to Jessan’s sun. As soon as the mysterious mark of the Cronnex appears upon their maturing bodies, both are wrenched from childhood homes where they were barely tolerated and thrust upon quests only the staunchest Pollyanna could expect them to survive, let alone complete. As protagonists, Jessan and Niccas, are cut from the same cloth but dyed in different vats. Jessan’s story, though fraught with loss and danger, is a sunnier tale, thematically true to its fantasy roots and enlivened by a progressive sexual awakening enviable in its variety and joyfulness. Frank and earthy, Jessan’s sexual experiences are more than erotic interludes; they move the plot, develop character, and introduce one of the more innovative elements of The Cronnex: the concept of twerë. The state of twerën is widely recognized within the world of The Cronnex as a committed friendship that may or may not have a sexual component. An individual may consecrate alliances with multiple twerë of either sex. A darker and more complex tale than Jessan, Niccas extends the cosmological elements hinted at in Jessan and builds narrative tension as Niccas’s story unfolds parallel to Jessan’s. Captured and exploited by multifarious enemies, Niccas is unluckier in love and more deeply challenged as he pursues his quest. Whereas Jessan finds champions and boosters among soldiers and mages, Niccas forges uneasier, more dangerous alliances with demons and dragons and assassins, even the dead. While Jessan ends with its protagonist succeeding in his initial quest to restore the holy sites associated with his powers over water and air and evade the rogue avatar, Niccas closes with the job half done, and the silkily sinister antagonist fully engaged. The third volume of The Cronnex, Wisferon, is told in five-chapter fascicles alternately in Niccas’s and Jessan’s voices. While Niccas strives to complete his quest and vanquish the rogue avatar, Jessan struggles to locate Niccas and bring about the convergence of their powers. The unusual narrative structure throws the contrasts between the two Nithaial into sharper relief, develops secondary characters as agents of the plot, and intensifies the cosmological and cultural characteristics of Greenaway’s expressively inventive world. The author’s impressionistic style and psychological depth are stronger and stronger elements of his writing as the series progresses. Many of the set pieces of fantasy are present in The Cronnex, though readers come to expect wry treatment and sly fillips of humor. When Wisferon concludes on a dark but paradoxically satisfying note with part of the twins’ quest achieved but their own union missed by a hair’s breadth, we understand that a simple solution is impossible, and a unitary approach unsuitable. Dionis, the fourth volume of The Cronnex, unfolds in a near future in which the role of the Nithaial is ambiguous and contested. So, too, is the destiny of a child, purportedly Niccas’s son conceived without his consent. The boy, Dionis, is raised as a girl and expected to become a girl by arcane intervention at puberty. Questionable motivations abound, both among the priestesses who raised Dionis and among the strangers who proclaim their allegiance to the Nithaial and who whisk Dionis away on the eve of his transformation.

The Cronnex

The year is 1789 and Pierre Adet, a young French peasant, is incensed at the unfair treatment of the local peasantry, who are no more better off than slaves to the local aristo. His brother-in-law is about to be hanged for poaching two pigeons from the woods belonging to the Duc de Kernogan in Nantes and this proves the final straw. After months of planning Pierre leads a mob against the Duc against the advice of his father. Before the mob have had the chance to storm the Chateau, they come across the Duc''s daughter Yvonne returning home and attack her carriage. In the ensuing scuffle, Adet assaults Yvonne ''And just to punish you, my fine lady,'' he said in a whisper which sent a shudder of horror right through her, ''to punish you for what you are, the brood of tyrants, proud, disdainful, a budding tyrant yourself, to punish you for every misery my mother and sister have had to endure, for every luxury which you have enjoyed, I will kiss you on the lips and the cheeks and just between your white throat and chin and never as long as you live if you die this night or live to be an hundred will you be able to wash off those kisses showered upon you by one who hates and loathes you --a miserable peasant whom you despise and who in your sight is lower far than your dogs. Shortly afterwards the Duc&#39;s private army arrive and dispatch the mob. Adet is seriously injured and seeks refuge from a local priest before fleeing Nantes and the death sentence which has been passed on him. Determined that someone must pay for the incident, the Duc de Kernogan ensures that Pierre&#39;s father is hanged for his son&#39;s crime. By the time Pierre finds out it is too late and he is driven to seek revenge against the Duc and his daughter. It&#39;s now 1793 and Adet is living in England under the alias of Martin-Roget. He has spent the intervening years educating himself and with the aid of an introductory letter, obtained by blackmailing the Bishop of Brest, has ingratiated himself into English society—to the extent that he has gained the favour of the Duc de Kernogan (who is now living near Bath) and is Yvonne&#39;s favoured suitor. Needless to say, both Yvonne and her father are ignorant of Martin-Roget&#39;s true identity and are unaware that he is seeking revenge. With the help of Chauvelin, he plans to marry Yvonne and lure her and the Duc back to Nantes and to their death as ci-devants on the guillotine. Adet&#39;s plans suffer a setback when he discovers that, warned by Sir Percy that she is at risk from Martin-Roget, Yvonne has eloped with Lord Antony Dewhurst. The Duc, believing that Martin-Roget is a millionaire banker whose marriage to Yvonne would have resulted in substantial funds being given to the French royalist cause, is furious that his plans have been thwarted and refuses to recognise the marriage, which would not be legal in France due to Yvonne&#39;s age. Martin-Roget convinces the Duc that he still wishes to marry Yvonne and soon persuade him to lure Yvonne away from Lord Tony. He then kidnaps her and the three set off for France. Lord Tony must seek the help of The Scarlet Pimpernel to save his wife. de:The Scarlet Pimpernel fr:Le Mouron rouge

Lord Tony''s Wife

The story opens with Thursday still in the world of fiction in her job as the Bellman, head of the literary police force Jurisfiction. She is still hunting the Minotaur that escaped in the last book; she is tiring of fiction, however, and longs to return to her own world and get back her husband Landen, who was removed from time by the evil Goliath Corporation in 1947. Despite Landen''s non-existence, Thursday still has her son (Friday Next) who is now two years old. Thursday and Friday return to her mother (Wednesday) in Swindon, with Hamlet who is accompanying them on an excursion to the "Outland" to find out what people in the real world think of him. Her mother, whose main functions appear to be to make tea and to provide Battenburg cake, has some curious house guests: Emma Hamilton, Otto von Bismarck, and a family of dodos. Both humans are apparently staying for a rest, while Thursday''s father (who has now been re-admitted to the time-travelling ChronoGuard) sorts out various parts of history for them. Despite her earlier transgressions that caused her to flee to the Bookworld in the first place, Thursday gets her job back at SpecOps-27 as a Literary Detective and catches up with her old colleagues. She learns that in her absence, Yorrick Kaine has joined forces with Goliath Corporation and plans to oust the aging English President George Formby. As Prime Minister, Kaine wields some mysterious persuasive influence over Parliament and the people, and has used it to pass some bizarre laws and to stir up hatred of Denmark. Yorrick has also taken out a hit on her: he has hired an assassin known as "The Windowmaker", who is actually Cindy Stoker, the wife of Thursday''s longtime friend, Spike. Thursday''s father warns her that Kaine''s ambitions may cause nuclear armageddon and that it is up to her to stop him. On top of this, she is visited by tearful agents from the Bookworld (Mrs Tiggy-Winkle and Emperor Zhark) who tell her that all sorts of things are going wrong without her leadership''; for starters, without its titular character, the play Hamlet has merged with The Merry Wives of Windsor creating a new play called "The Merry Wives of Elsinore", which is not nearly as good as either original play (in the words of Emperor Zhark, "it takes a long time to get funny, and, when it finally does, everyone dies"). Meanwhile, her most pressing problem is finding reliable childcare for Friday. Goliath Corporation have decided to become the new world religion to avoid a prophecy (the prophecy states that the Goliath Corporation will fall; Goliath believes that converting itself into a religion will exempt it from destruction, as the prophecy specifies a business). Thursday meets the CEO -- at their headquarters in the Isle of Man -- and gets a promise that they will un-eradicate Landen in exchange for her forgiveness. Thursday feels duped when she finds that, through some form of mind control, she has formally forgiven them, even though there is no sign of her husband. Then suddenly he is back, but takes a while to stabilize. Thursday must wait patiently for his un-eradication to "stick". In the meantime, she embarks on several seemingly impossible tasks, which include smuggling ten truckloads of banned Danish literature into Wales, tracking down an illegal clone of William Shakespeare, and teaching Friday to speak properly. On top of all of this, Thursday still has to help the Swindon Mallets win the 1988 Croquet Superhoop final in order to thwart Kaine and Goliath and avoid the impending end of the world (as foretold by the aforementioned prophecy). She succeeds but not without a near-death experience and a visit to the gateway to the Underworld (which turns out to be a planned-but-never-built service station on the M4 motorway). The final chapters contain some curious time paradoxes in which Thursday finds that she has met herself at several other stages in her own lifespan, including one character which had seemed to be an independent character.

Something Rotten

Aging rock star Judas Coyne spends his retirement collecting morbid memorabillia such as a witch''s confession, a real snuff film and, after being sent an e-mail directly about the item online, a dead man''s suit. He is told, by the daughter(whom he does not know at the time), that the old man''s spirit is attached to this funeral suit. The ghost will go wherever it does and so buying this suit would effectively be buying a poltergeist; Judas cannot pass up this opportunity. The suit soon arrives in a heart-shaped box. Various odd occurrences alert Judas to the fact that the ghost is dangerous and is out to kill him and those around him. His assistant, Danny Wooten realizes that the ghost of the suit will try to kill everyone round Jude. He leaves Jude''s service, but not before contacting the woman who sent the suit. Jude finds out that the ghost was the father of a groupie, Florida (it is later revealed that her real name is Anna), whom he dated for a few months and who had later committed suicide. The ghost wanted revenge on Jude for causing Anna''s death, as he saw it. His current girlfriend, Georgia (whose name is actually Marybeth), refuses to leave and together they run from the house with the ghost chasing them. The ghost''s intention is to keep Jude away from his two dogs, Angus and Bon, as it turns out that dogs, as familiars, can protect their owners from the dead. But Georgia insists on taking the dogs with them. The animals save the couple several times, but the ghost eventually manages to kill both dogs. Jude and Georgia investigate and find out the true story about Florida. She did not commit suicide because of the breakup between her and Jude. Florida had many emotional problems and Jude had tried to help her but, in the end, he gave up. The reason she was so unstable was that she was being hypnotized and molested by her stepfather, the now dead and ghostly, Craddock McDermott. When Florida left Jude she had nowhere to go but back to her twisted family, but eventually she threatened to contact Jude to have him help her escape the incestuous relationship and file charges against Craddock and her elder sister, Jessica. They drove her to suicide to prevent her from doing so. At a later point, Craddock, a man knowledgeable in the dark arts, realized he was dying and planned with Jessica to get revenge on Judas. They believed that Judas had "ruined" Florida by making her reject her family and their incest. Craddock hexed the suit; once he was dead, Jessica set the plan in motion. After a series of gory battles between Judas Coyne and Craddock McDermott, Georgia finds the way to bring Florida back from the grave and help Jude fight her stepfather. In the end, the evil Craddock is vanquished, freeing Jude and Georgia from his cruel curse. The two make it through the horrendous event and happily marry.

Heart-Shaped Box: A Novel

The two main characters, Bruno Walton and Melvin “Boots” O''Neal are two small-time troublemakers who share a room at the boarding school Macdonald Hall. Across the road is a girl''s boarding school, Miss Scrimmage''s Finishing School For Young Ladies. Best friends, they play mischievous pranks on the school, faculty and other students. They are constantly under the watch of Headmaster William R. Sturgeon, nicknamed “The Fish” due to his surname but also due to the trademark stern, fishy-like stare he implores on his students whenever he disapproves of them. Following the abduction of an overweight cat mascot of a rival hockey team (in an attempt to demoralize them), Sturgeon comes up with the decision to forbid them from seeing each other and separating them completely. Bruno moves in with the school genius, Elmer Drimsdale, while Boots is placed with wealthy hypochondriac George Wexford-Smyth III. The two both realize they can''t stand their new roommates and decide to meet at a cannon at night to discuss ways of getting back into their old room together. The two prominent ideas they have, including having both Elmer and George complain to the headmaster to get them to move elsewhere, and then framing their roommates to have themselves moved away from them, only get them into more trouble. Eventually they come up with the idea to study hard to get into the Honor Roll to show they''re capable and should be able to move back in together as a reward, but the plan backfires after Sturgeon attributes the boy''s resulting high marks as the result of him separating them. In desperation they meet again, but while en route to the cannon, they spot an entangled hot air balloon stuck in a nearby tree and find a boy stuck up there. They rescue the boy (named Francisco) using a volleyball net and take him to Sturgeon, who realizes he''s the son of an important Ambassador from Ottawa who got lost in a balloon during the day. They are then interrupted by Elmer Drimsdale, who had witnessed the balloon in his telescope and had concluded it was a UFO. He goes off and causes a massive disturbance between both schools. The next morning, the Ambassador arrives at the school to retrieve his lost son and goes on to honor the people responsible for rescuing him – Bruno, Boots, and Elmer, who receive medals from the RCMP, the Ontario Provincial Police, and from the Ambassador himself, who is ironically representing the country of Malbonia, the country of which flag Bruno and Boots had used in a prank earlier on in the novel. For Macdonald Hall to honor them, Elmer receives a new telescope and Bruno and Boots get their wish – to share a room again.

This Can''t Be Happening at Macdonald Hall

Driven to mental anguish as the result of total isolation by the National Socialists, Dr.&nbsp;B, a monarchist hiding valuable assets of the nobility from the new regime, maintains his sanity only through the theft of a book of past masters'' chess games which he plays endlessly, voraciously learning each one until they overwhelm his imagination to such an extent that he becomes consumed by chess. After absorbing every single move of any variation in the book, and having nothing more to explore, Dr.&nbsp;B begins to play the game against himself, developing the ability to separate his psyche into two personas: I&nbsp;(White) and I&nbsp;(Black). This psychological conflict causes him to ultimately suffer a breakdown, after which he eventually awakens in a sanatorium. Being saved by a sympathetic physician, who attests his insanity to keep him from being imprisoned again by the Nazis, he is finally set free. After happening to be on the same cruise liner as a group of chess enthusiasts and the world chess champion Czentovic, he incidentally stumbles across their game against the champion. Mirko Czentovic was a peasant prodigy possessing no obvious redeeming qualities besides his gift for chess. Dr.&nbsp;B helps the chess enthusiasts in managing to draw their game in an almost hopeless position. After this effort, they persuade him to play alone against Czentovic. In a stunning demonstration of his imaginative and combinational powers, Dr.&nbsp;B sensationally beats the world champion. Czentovic immediately demands a return game to restore his honour. But this time, having sensed that Dr.&nbsp;B played quite fast and hardly took time to think, he tries to irritate his opponent by taking a lot of time before making a move, thereby putting psychological pressure on Dr.&nbsp;B, who gets more and more impatient as the game proceeds. His greatest power turns out to be his greatest weakness: he reenacts the match in his mind repeatedly with all imaginable possibilities so rapidly that Czentovic''s deliberation and placidness drive him to distraction and ultimately insanity, culminating in an incorrect move after which Dr.&nbsp;B awakens from his frenzy.

The Royal Game

While on a visit to the (fictional) Belmont Bevatron, eight people become stuck in a series of subtly unreal worlds, caused by the malfunction of the particle accelerator. These are later revealed to be solipsistic manifestations, bringing the story in line with Dick''s penchant for subjective realities. As well as his future discussions of theology and fears about McCarthy-era authoritarianism, the novel skewers several human foibles. Jack Hamilton, the central protagonist, is dismissed from his job at the California Maintenance Labs due to McCarthy-era paranoia about his wife Marsha''s left-wing political sympathies. Other affected members of the injured touring party include Bill Laws, a Physics PhD who happens to be a Negro, who happens to be employed as a tour guide within the plant. The above-mentioned Arthur Silvester is an elderly believer in the obsolete geocentric cosmology. Joan Reiss is a pathologically paranoid woman. Edith Pritchet is a maternal but censorious elderly woman. In succession, the group moves through solpsistic personalized alternate realms related to the beliefs and opinions of Arthur Silvester, Pritchet, Reiss and a hardline Marxist caricature of contemporary US society. Marsha Hamilton''s subconscious perceptions, however, did not produce this alternate reality, as originally thought. It originates instead from an unexpected source, revealed as Charles McFeyffe, a Communist sympathizer who works as chief security officer in the California Maintenance Labs plant. At story''s end Jack Hamilton and Bill Laws form a small business that seeks advances in stereophonic technology. The disclosure of McFeyffe''s Marxist allegiances is dismissed as completely unprovable.

Eye in the Sky

Detective Inspector John Rebus finds the body of an overdosed drug addict in an Edinburgh squat, laid out cross-like on the floor, between two burned-down candles, with a five-pointed star painted on the wall above. Some of his colleagues are inclined to categorise it as the routine death of a "junkie", but Rebus is perturbed by some unusual facts of the case: a full package of heroin in the dead man''s room, and some mysterious bruises on his face and body. Rebus takes seriously a death which looks more like a murder every day, and he begins to investigate the true circumstances of the death. As part of his investigation, Rebus finds the young woman named Tracy who knew the dead man and heard his terrifying last words: "Hide! Hide!" It emerges that the dead man was a photographer who took and hid some sensitive photos in a specialist private members'' club - Hyde''s - where highly-connected people in society watch illegal boxing. Rebus is able to arrest Hyde''s owner and several high profile members, but to his outrage and disgust all the prisoners die suspicious deaths: the powers-that-be are covering it up to prevent scandal. Shortly after Rankin moved to London, there was a real-life case of male prostitutes bribing lawyers and judges, similar to some parts of the book: "questions were asked in parliament" and two lawyers began to investigate the police investigation. "To everyone''s surprise, this inquiry found that the allegations were false. Police officers involved in the case found themselves demoted..."

Hide and Seek

The tale is set in a forest and begins with "once upon a time". Timmy Tiptoes is "a little fat comfortable grey squirrel" living in a nest thatched with leaves in the top of a tall tree with his little wife, Goody. Over the course of several days, the two collect nuts in their little sacks for the coming winter and spring, and store the nuts in hollow tree stumps near their home. Timmy wears a red jacket he removes while working, and his wife wears a pink dress and apron. When the stumps are full, the couple make use of a tree-hole that once belonged to a woodpecker. The nuts rattle "down &ndash; down &ndash; down inside", and Goody wonders how they will ever retrieve them. Timmy reminds her he will be much thinner by springtime and will be able to pass through the little hole. In an aside, the narrator tells the reader that the couple had great quantities of nuts because they never lost them, noting that most squirrels lose half their nuts because they cannot remember where they buried them. Silvertail is the most forgetful of squirrels in the wood, and, while trying to find his nuts, digs up another squirrel''s hoard. A commotion erupts among the nutting squirrels, and, as ill luck would have it, a flock of birds fly by singing "Who''s bin digging-up my nuts?" and "Little bit-a-bread and-no-cheese!" One bird finds a perch in the bush where Timmy is working and continues to sing about digging up nuts. The other squirrels take notice, suspect Timmy of robbing others of their hoards, rush upon him, scratch and cuff him, chase him up a tree, and stuff him with great difficulty through the woodpecker''s hole. Silvertail suggests they leave him there until he confesses. Timmy lays "stunned and still" on the peck of nuts he has stored in the hollow tree while Goody searches fruitlessly for him. Eventually, Timmy stirs and discovers himself in a mossy little bed surrounded by ample provisions. Chippy Hackee, a small striped chipmunk, tends him with kindness, mentioning that it has been raining nuts through the top of tree and he has also "found a few buried". The chipmunk coaxes Timmy to eat the nuts and Timmy grows "fatter and fatter!" Goody is very concerned about her husband''s disappearance, but has gone back to work collecting nuts and hiding them under a tree root. Mrs. Hackee, Chippy''s wife, emerges from beneath the root to demand an explanation regarding the shower of nuts into her home. Eventually, the two ladies complain about their runaway husbands, but the chipmunk knows where her husband is camping-out because a little bird has told her. Together, they hurry to the woodpecker''s hole and hear their husbands deep within the tree singing: :"My little old man and I fell out, :How shall we bring this matter about? :Bring it about as well as you can, :And get you gone, you little old man!" Mrs. Hackee refuses to enter the tree because her husband bites, but Goody calls to her husband and he comes to the hole with a kiss for her. He is too fat to squeeze through the hole, but Chippy Hackee (who is not too fat) refuses to leave and remains below chuckling. A fortnight later, a big wind blows off the top of the tree, and Timmy makes his escape. He hurries home through the rain, huddling under an umbrella with his wife. Chippy Hackee continues to camp-out in the tree stump for another week, but a bear-looking creature comes lumbering through the neighbourhood (looking for nuts perhaps?) and Chippy decides it''s time to hurry home. He suffers a cold in his head and is quite uncomfortable. Timmy now keeps the family nuts "fastened up with a little padlock", and Goody is seen in the accompanying illustration sitting outside the nest tending three tiny babies. "And whenever that little bird sees the Chipmunks, he sings &ndash; ''Who''s-been-digging-up my-nuts? Who''s been digging-up my-nuts?'' But nobody ever answers!" Chippy Hackee and his wife are seen in the last illustration trying to drive the little bird away with their tree-leaf umbrella. Potter''s idea to make the squirrel grow so fat he cannot escape the tree was imitated by A. A. Milne in Winnie the Pooh.

The Tale of Timmy Tiptoes

1633 continues where 1632 left off. Most of the novel details various political machinations of the new "United States" and the attempts of Cardinal Richelieu to nullify the threat posed by the technological advantage the up-timers have given to Gustavus Adolphus and his "Confederated Principalities of Europe". Richelieu completely changes France''s foreign policy and forms an alliance aimed squarely at the NUS and Gustavus called the League of Ostend. Mike Stearns sends emissaries looking for allies, some of whom end up behind enemy lines as they already belong to the secret League of Ostend, which announces its presence in the Battle of Four Fleets. The Dutch Republic nearly falls and Stearns'' emissary voluntarily stays behind, becoming trapped in the Siege of Amsterdam. At this point, the newly created timeline start to diverge greatly from the actual history of the 17th Century, in no small part because the news of a town from the future brought spies and emissaries, and a fair number of encyclopedias and history textbooks found their way into European courts. One theme of the series is of down-timer leaders trying to change, hasten or head off their histories while the acts of ordinary citizens going about their day to day affairs and of the leaders of Grantville effect more fundamental societal and political changes.

1633

The plot is conveyed from the points of view of the main characters in the novel. Jacob Hunt is eighteen years old and has Asperger''s syndrome, which is a form of high-functioning autism. He lives with his mother and brother, Emma and Theo Hunt, and lives by a structured schedule, feeling comfortable only when all of his daily activities are planned. Any lack of structure or unexpected events cause him to feel anxious. He is obsessed with forensic analysis; the hobby consumes his life. The novel opens with Jacob setting up a crime scene (in which he is the victim) for his mother to solve. Jacob''s need to engage in such activities, as well as his obsession with detail, often frustrates his mother and infuriates his brother Theo. When Jess Ogilvy, Jacob''s social skills counselor, is killed, Jacob soon becomes a suspect. After arresting and releasing the first suspect, Mark Maguire, Detective Rich Matson asks Emma if he may talk to Jacob. After Jacob admits that he moved Jess''s dead body, Jacob is arrested and charged with murder. The case goes to trial. In court, the prosecutor, Helen Sharp, raises the issues that all of Jacob''s symptoms of Asperger''s Syndrome are almost identical to the characteristics of those who are guilty. Also, the prosecution argues that most of the evidence proves that Jacob is the murderer (e.g. Jacob''s fingerprints on the scene of the crime, an unlabeled crime scene evaluation identical to Jess''s found in his notebook, and her backpack he retrieved from her home). At the end of the trial, Jacob testifies that he found Jess, dead in her bathroom and lying in a pool of her own blood. He admits to cleaning her, dressing her and placing her outside, then cleaning the original scene up and creating a new one that will lead investigators in a different direction. This is because he realized that, while an accident, Jess''s death was the fault of his brother, Theo, after he was in the house and saw Jess naked. Jess slipped while getting out of the shower, and Theo fled the scene. In the end, Jess''s death was in fact an accident.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

Grampa in Oz

By Ruth Plumly Thompson

The Cronnex

No Author Listed

Lord Tony's Wife

By Baroness Emma Orczy

Something Rotten

By Jasper Fforde

Heart-Shaped Box: A Novel

By Joe Hill

This Can't Be Happening at Macdonald Hall

By Gordon Korman

The Royal Game

By Stefan Zweig

Eye in the Sky

By Philip K. Dick

Hide and Seek

By Ian Rankin

The Tale of Timmy Tiptoes

By Beatrix Potter

1633

By Eric Flint

House Rules

By Jodi Picoult