In a secret meeting room of criminal organization Scorpia, Julia Rothman briefs her colleagues on their latest project, codenamed "Invisible Sword." It is a plan to murder children aged 12 - 14 in Great Britain and destroy the friendly relations between the United States and the United Kingdom. " Then Alex figures out his parents are not dead Alex Rider is on a trip with his friend Tom Harris in Venice in search of Scorpia, the name that Yassen Gregorovich gave Alex before dying in the prior novel. While investigating at a party being held in the house of Julia Rothman, Alex is captured by a Scorpia assassin called Nile and is left to die in a water room, but manages to escape, barely. Alex is tutored about BASE jumping from Tom''s brother Jerry and infiltrates the pharmaceutical company Consanto. He runs into Nile again; however, this time Nile takes Alex to see Julia Rothman. Rothman offers Alex a job at Scorpia, which he accepts after Rothman tells him that Scorpia had hired his father John Rider as an assassin. She also tells Alex that John was killed by MI6 during a prisoner exchange at Albert Bridge. Alex''s first task is to kill his former MI6 superior, Mrs Jones. Scorpia sent a letter to the Government informing them of the power of Invisible Sword. To demonstrate, they tell them that they will kill the England B national football team as they arrive at London Heathrow Airport without using any weapons. Despite increased security, the team mysteriously dies. Alex sneaks back into England amid the chaos. He then sneaks into Mrs Jones''s apartment to kill her, but is unsuccessful and is arrested. Alan Blunt, the head of MI6, takes Alex to a COBRA meeting to figure out what Invisible Sword is and how to stop it. With Alex''s help, they determine that Scorpia embedded gold-encased nanoshells into the football players'' bloodstream. The nanoshells were hidden in vaccinations and contained cyanide, which were activated by satellite dishes, and when they were activated, the gold wore away and the cyanide was released into the bloodstream, killing every single one of the players instantly. Scorpia will then kill London''s schoolchildren, including Alex (Due to Rothman''s hatred for him due to his father''s later-revealed double-cross,) as they had all recently been vaccinated. Alex agrees to help MI6 out and pretends to come back to Scorpia. Rothman takes him to an abandoned church; Scorpia planned to put a satellite in a hot air balloon. At a certain height, they will then activate the nanoshells. Alex activates a retainer in his mouth and the SAS invades the church. As the balloon begins to rise, Alex jumps on the balloon and damages the satellites, causing them to plunge to the ground. Rothman is killed by the falling satellite. In the final pages of the novel, Alex learns that his father was a double agent for MI6, and the bridge scene was staged. Scorpia learned that John Rider was still alive and took revenge by blowing up the plane that he and Alex''s mother Helen were flying in. In the final scene, as Alex exits the MI6 headquarters, a Scorpia assassin shoots him in the chest. He collapses, sees his parents, and loses consciousness.

Scorpia

Eve Dallas, and her husband Roarke''s first Christmas together is interrupted when she is called to the murder scene of Judge Harold Wainger. The Judge has been found naked, strangled, tortured, and kept alive as long as possible. Words are burned to his chest, reading Judge Not, Lest You Be Judged. A note, draped on him like a loin cloth, reads Judge Harold Wagner P.A. Stephanie Ring Public Defender Carl Neissan Justine Polinsky Dr. Charlotte Mira Lt. Eve Dallas Dallas instantly recognises this as the work of a man named David Palmer, a serial killer, who Dallas had thrown in prison. Palmer was infamous for kidnapping women, and performing "experiments" on them, before strangling them. He was eventually captured by Dallas, and all of the people on his list are people who helped put him in prison. On December the 19, Palmer escaped, and neither Dallas, nor her commander were aware. Soon, two more people are dead, and Palmer has kidnapped Dr. Mira. Dallas must find Palmer, before he tires of Mira, and decides to end his experiment.

Midnight in Death

The Republic is decaying, even under the leadership of Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, who was elected to save the galaxy from collapsing under the forces of discontent. On the tiny but strategic planet of Ansion, a powerful faction is on the verge of joining the growing Separatist movement. The urban dwellers wish to expand into the prairies outside their cities - the ancestral territory of the fierce, independent Ansion nomads. If their demands are not met, they will secede - an act that could jump-start a chain reaction of withdrawal and rebellion by other worlds of the Republic. At the Chancellor''s request, the Jedi Council sends Kenobi and fellow Jedi Luminara Unduli to resolve the conflict and negotiate with the elusive nomads. Undaunted, Kenobi and Unduli, along with their Padawans Skywalker and Barriss Offee, set out across the wilderness. Many perils lie waiting to trap them. The Jedi will have to fulfill near-impossible tasks, befriend wary strangers, and influence two great armies to complete their quest, stalked all the while by an enemy sworn to see the negotiations collapse and the mission fail.

The Approaching Storm

Viscount Lynton comes home to find himself the heir to debts after the death of his father. With a mother and two sisters to support, plus no means of restoring his family''s wealth, he is facing disaster. When he visits his soliciter to discuss selling the family home, a marriage of convenience is suggested as an alternative. Though reluctant, Lynton meets with Mr Chawleigh, a common Cit, and with Jenny, his plain and exquisitely shy daughter, and eventually agrees to be married. It is a simple contract; Jenny gains a title and Lynton receives enough money to take care of his family obligations and save his estate. However, he remains in love with Julia Oversley, who is the exact opposite of Jenny. While Julia is ethereally beautiful and elegant, Jenny is plain and dowdy. The marriage is not a very happy one, although Jenny, who has been secretly in love with Lynton for a long time, tries to make his life as comfortable as she can. In turn, Lynton, who is an honorable gentleman, resolves to bury his feelings for Julia and protect his new wife as he launches her into society. His father-in-law, Mr Chawleigh, is well-meaning but lacks the social graces with which Lynton is familiar and thereby makes it difficult for Lynton to forget he is in his debt. The young man often wishes he were free of his obligations to him. A veteran of the Peninsular War (1808–1814), Lynton has followed the exile and return of Napoleon with keen interest. Having read about the forthcoming battle in Belgium, he decides to gamble on the stock exchange. His personal involvement with previous battles lead him to the conviction that Wellington will not lose, so rather than take his father-in-law''s advice to sell his funds he gambles on victory. And, as he had foreseen, shares plummet down, only to soar again at the news of Wellington''s victory at Waterloo (1815). Lynton has made his fortune, and no longer needs his father in law''s financial support. However, Jenny''s pregnancy and confinement have brought the two men to a greater understanding of one another. Rather than insult Chawleigh by paying him back, he suggests that the property titles held by Chawleigh be passed on directly to his newborn grandson. Lynton''s final act of including Chawleigh as one of the newborn''s names, is a mark of respect that delights the older man. In the meantime, Julia has married an older and wealthy suitor, whom she flaunts on a rather nerve-wracking visit to Lynton''s. The latter realizes with a guilty feeling that he will probably be much happier and comfortable with devoted Jenny than he would ever have been with beautiful but self-centered and demanding Julia. The novel ends with a scene intended to illustrate the contentment of married family life with a comfortable and supportive woman whom Lynton realises he genuinely loves, albeit a calmer affection than the youthful passion that characterised his feelings for Julia Oversley.

A Civil Contract

The point of divergence within the story is the loss of the Battle of the Coral Sea by the Allies. Unlike real history, the Imperial Japanese Navy manage to inflict heavy casualties upon the American naval forces. After a three-day engagement, with the loss of four capital ships and dozens of smaller craft, the Allies are forced to retreat. The invasion of Australia begins on 12 June 1942, with the Japanese landing at Darwin, Cooktown and Cairns. A major assault is conducted on the New South Wales town of Newcastle, leading to the Battle of Newcastle, where two of the story''s characters (Sawtell and Counihan) had previously seen action. The Japanese also make landings at Tweed Heads, Coffs Harbour and the Hawkesbury River. Sydney is subjected to naval bombardment and is dive-bombed by aircraft from the carrier Zuikaku. Sydney is evacuated in a rather chaotic and disorganised manner. In early July 1942, General Douglas MacArthur and the remnants of the US 41st Division sail from Melbourne and retreat to New Zealand. The Australian Federal government (presumably John Curtin and his cabinet) withdraw from Canberra and set up in Perth. It is noted that by the end of that year, members of the Volunteer Defence Corps are doing their best to implement the scorched earth policy to refuse the enemy access to any resources.

The Bush Soldiers

Miss Stangerson is found alone and severely injured, moments after being violently attacked in a locked room at the Chateau, a room with absolutely no possible means of escape for the would-be murderer. Or so it appears. Joseph Rouletabille, journalist/detective, is immediately thrust into the investigation of the insoluble crime that would soon electrify all of France. Rouletabille, a mere eighteen years old, is very much in the tradition of Poe''s Dupin, believing rational analysis, rather than crawling on all fours around the crime scene, is the key to unraveling those cases that are genuine puzzles, as this one is. (Not that Rouletabille disdains mundane forensics when called for. And when he chooses to crawl about, he does so with a most discerning eye!) There are in fact no fewer than THREE apparently impossible vanishings by the assailant, each with a different, quite ingenious, explanation. The first, the only one which occurs in the classic locked room, turns out not to be a true disappearance at all, because, as Rouletabille deduces in a dazzling display of inexorable logic, the assailant was never in the room when it was actually locked, no matter how certain it seemed that he was. In a complicated sequence of events, the attack actually occurred many hours earlier than supposed, around 6 PM—but the audible gunshot and the cry of "Help, murder!!!", which happened after midnight in the locked room, were merely the acting out of a nightmare by Miss Stangerson, as she relived the earlier attack. Her severe injuries were inflicted not by the attacker but by Miss Stangerson herself, stumbling over furniture still overturned from the attack and violently striking her head.

The Mystery of the Yellow Room

Prologue The story opens with Rebecca and Ruby walking along the coast road from St Just to Zennor in Cornwall. This is during the time of a visit to Cornwall with Adam to visit his relative’s grave. Part One – Shoebox Story Rebecca recounts the discovery of herself as a foundling by Lucia, after she is abandoned by her young mother outside an Italian restaurant. This is at a time when she is working for Mr Damiano, a mysterious ex-circus owner who has set up a chain of boutique hotels that Rebecca helps to manage. On a flight back to England, one of the plane’s engines fails and it is forced to return to New York. It is whilst standing on the tarmac that Rebecca decides to hand in her notice, having lost all zest for her work. Rebecca’s story goes back to the time when she was sharing a flat with Joe, an intellectual who is writing a book about Nadezhda Alliluyeva, the thirty one year old wife of Stalin who committed suicide in 1932. He befriends Adam through a shared interest in chess and he and Rebecca fall in love and then marry. Joe decides to move to Moscow to further his research and lives with Olya, and Rebecca and Adam decide to visit him with Ruby. He tells them about Joseph Stalin’s character and the wave of fear that gripped Russia during his dictatorship. On their return to England, they decide to visit Adam’s grandmother’s grave at Barnoon Cemetery in Cornwall and Rebecca is happy that Ruby will have ancestors that she herself can never have. It is on their return to London on a warm August evening that tragedy strikes when Ruby is run down by a motorist. Rebecca cannot reconcile herself to her daughter’s loss and the intensity of her grief leads to their eventual separation. It is at this time that Rebecca’s shattered life is restored through her work for Mr Damiano, who tells her his life story as the son of poor trapeze artists. Joe, meanwhile, is working on his second novel – about the time of Stalin’s retreat to his dacha when Hitler invaded Russia. After talking to an Afghan war veteran, he decides to abandon the task and goes to Vancouver Island to write a novel. Rebecca leaves London and, on a visit to St Ives, starts working as a waitress in a local cafe. Here, she is visited by Joe who gives her a copy of his story. Part Two – Boomdiara This part is a narrative of Joe’s novel which describes the life of Florence, who works in Madame Blanche’s brothel to support her young daughter, Claire. It is here that she meets Will, a World War One air force pilot, with whom she falls in love. Joe writes to Rebecca that Florence’s character is based in part on her own. Part Three – Flight In this part the stories of Rebecca and Adam and Florence and Will become intertwined. Adam visits Rebecca in her boarding house and they become reunited and return to Ruby who is buried in the same grave as her great grandmother. Will’s plane is shot up in a fire fight with a German Albatros and he has to cut his engine to prevent his plane going down as a flamer.

Mourning Ruby

Joe Hardy''s girlfriend, Iola Morton, is caught in a car bomb and dies. Joe is unable to believe it. The brothers begin their investigation. They meet a person who calls himself the "Gray Man," from a government agency called "The Network." Frank and Joe take his help to get to the person who planted the bomb. Soon they learn that it is not a person, but a group of terrorists who call themselves "Assassins." Joe vows to kill them. As the story progresses, some Assassins are killed in encounters while others escape. They come to know that the person who killed Iola is a member of The Assassins named Al-Rousasa. When the book is about to end, Frank, Joe, Chet (who is Iola''s brother) and their other friends begin searching a shopping mall when they learn that the Assassins plan to kill a presidential candidate giving a speech in Bayport. Soon, Joe and Frank have a fight with Al-Rousasa at the top floor. The fight ends with Al-Rousasa falling to his death, and Joe remembers what he had been told - "Nobody takes an Assassin alive."

Dead On Target

The main protagonist of the novel is Dane Thorson, Cargo-master-apprentice on the Free Trader rocket ship the Solar Queen. Free Traders take on trading contracts on remote and recently discovered planets, which can be dangerous and unpredictable. The Solar Queen has recently obtained a valuable trading contract on the planet Sargol and are building a relationship with one of the races on the planet, the cat-like Salariki. The process goes slowly till the Slariki discover that the Solar Queen is carrying catnip and other plants from Terra that are unknown on Sargol. The traders exchange what little of the plants they have for the rare and valuable Koros stones and collect a native red-colored wood to exchange at home. At the last minute the storm priests of the Slarariki demand that the Solar Queen take a pre-paid contract to return within 6 months with more plants. A few days after leaving the planet, several members of the crew suffer from attacks, which start with severe headaches and end in a semi-coma state. Only 4 of the younger members of the crew are unaffected, including Dane Thorson. Upon exiting hyperspace on return to the vicinity of Terra, the crew discovers that they are pariah and have been declared a plague ship. On the short hop to earth, the crew discovers that pests have invaded the ship and are the cause of the illness. In a final bid to prove their case they kidnap a medic and present his evidence by video to a solar-system-wide audience, which is successful. In the meantime the rest of the crew have recovered, and after a final effort of negotiation the Solar Queen preserves its reputation by selling the contract with the Salariki to a large intergalactic trading company in exchange for credits and a quiet inter-solar mail route, which should lead to no more trouble.

Plague Ship

The play takes place in three bedrooms during one night and the following morning. The cast consists of four married couples. At the beginning of the play, the oldest couple, Delia and Ernest, are getting ready to go out for a meal to celebrate their wedding anniversary; Malcolm and Kate, the youngest, are about to host a housewarming party, to which the other two couples, Jan and Nick and Susannah and Trevor (the only ones whose bedroom is not seen), have been invited. At the last minute Nick has hurt his back and is unable to go. The complicating factor is that Jan used to be Trevor''s girlfriend, and after Susannah and Trevor have a blazing row, Susannah finds Trevor kissing Jan. As a result Susannah leaves the party and goes to visit Delia and Ernest, whose connection with the rest of the plot is that they are Trevor''s parents; she ends up sharing Delia''s bed, while Ernest is forced to sleep in the spare room. Meanwhile Trevor himself, feeling unable to go home, is also offered a bed in a spare room by Kate, but decides to go and "straighten things out" with Nick and Jan, leaving Kate waiting up for him. Eventually Trevor and Susannah seem to be reconciled, but at the end of the play the audience might doubt whether this state of affairs will last.

Bedroom Farce

The lives of several friends are thrown into disarray by the machinations of Julius King. Julius makes a bet with his ex-girlfriend Morgan that he can break up the homosexual couple Axel and Simon; meanwhile, Morgan and her brother-in-law Rupert are conned into embarking on an affair, and Morgan''s nephew Peter is falling in love with her. Julius King, returning from a university job in America, seeks out his old school friends, Rupert Foster and Axel Nillson. His former lover, Morgan Browne, Foster’s sister-in-law, has arrived in England at the same time. Foster’s attempts to keep them apart are thwarted by Morgan Browne, still in love with King and determined to confront him. At the same time, she is avoiding her husband, Tallis Browne, who still loves her. The plot is complicated further when, almost immediately and by accident, Julius King meets Tallis Browne. King is intrigued by his old lover’s husband, a rather nondescript fellow with not much personal presence but considerable moral integrity. King himself is a man of formidable intellect, and he does not suffer anyone gladly. He is irritated by what he sees as self-satisfied and patronizing conduct in his friends, and he sets out, without much concern for the consequences, to put them in compromising situations. Morgan, his love from the past, will not leave him alone, and though he has a quick way of chastening her for her importunities, he determines to include her in his plans. Rupert Foster, rather full of himself since he has just finished his book on the power of good and love in life, is ripe and ready to be fooled, and Morgan, full of the hot air of spurned love and dramatizing her problems for all to see, appears to be just the mate for Rupert, if King can somehow get them together. To make the game more interesting, he takes on the extra task of breaking up the homosexual relationship between Axel Nillson and Simon, Rupert’s brother. Using a mixture of high cunning, sheer criminality, and pinches of blackmail, King tempts his friends into situations which they would never have contemplated and which ultimately result not only in revealing flaws in their characters but also in causing serious harm to Rupert, for which King, a cool, nerveless fellow, takes no responsibility. Everyone learns how ridiculously vulnerable they are, but Axel and Simon escape from King’s labyrinth of “now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t,” strengthened in their love and less inclined to be shamefaced about being homosexual. Whether Morgan Browne learns anything is unclear, and the damage done to the Fosters is gratuitously cruel.

A Fairly Honourable Defeat

The setting is the fictional Missouri frontier town of Dawson''s Landing on the banks of the Mississippi River in the first half of the 19th century. David Wilson, a young lawyer, moves to town and a clever remark of his is misunderstood, which causes locals to brand him a "pudd''nhead"a nitwit. His hobby of collecting fingerprints does not raise his standing in the townsfolk''s eyes, who see him as an eccentric and do not frequent his law practice. Puddn''head Wilson moves into the background as the focus shifts to the slave Roxy, her son, and the family they serve. Roxy is only one-sixteenth black, and her son Valet de Chambre (referred to as "Chambers") is only 1/32 black. Roxy is principally charged with caring for her inattentive master''s infant son Tom Driscoll, who is the same age as her own son. After fellow slaves are caught stealing and are nearly sold "down the river", to a master further south, Roxy fears for her life and the life of her son. First she decides to kill herself and Chambers to avoid being sold down the river, but then decides instead to switch Chambers and Tom in their cribs so that her son will live a life of privilege. The narrative moves forward two decades, and Tom Driscoll (formerly Valet de Chambre), believing himself to be wholly white and raised as a spoiled aristocrat, has grown to be a selfish and dissolute young man. Tom''s father has died and granted Roxy her freedom. Roxy worked for a time on river boats, and saved money for her retirement. When she finally is able to retire, she discovers that her bank has failed and all of her savings are gone. She returns to Dawson''s Landing to ask for money from Tom. Tom meets Roxy with derision and Roxy tells him that he is her son, and uses this fact to blackmail him into financially supporting her. Twin Italian noblemen visit the town to some fanfare, a murder is committed, and the story takes on the form of a crime novel. "The reader knows from the beginning who committed the murder, and the story foreshadows how the crime will be solved. The circumstances of the denouement, however, possessed in its time great novelty, for fingerprinting had not then come into official use in crime detection in the United States. Even a man who fooled around with it as a hobby was thought to be a simpleton, a ''pudd''nhead''." (From Langston Hughes'' introduction to the novel) The story describes the racism of the antebellum south, even as to seemingly white people with minute traces of African ancestry, and the acceptance of that state of affairs by all involved, including the black population.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

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Scorpia

By Anthony Horowitz

Midnight in Death

By Nora Roberts

The Approaching Storm

By Alan Dean Foster

A Civil Contract

By Georgette Heyer

The Bush Soldiers

No Author Listed

The Mystery of the Yellow Room

By Gaston Leroux

Mourning Ruby

By Helen Dunmore

Dead On Target

By Franklin W. Dixon

Plague Ship

By Andre Norton

Bedroom Farce

By Alan Ayckbourn

A Fairly Honourable Defeat

By Iris Murdoch

Pudd'nhead Wilson

By Mark Twain