The story begins as two strangers, Vianne Rocher, and her small daughter Anouk, move into the small French village of Lansquenet-sous-Tannes. They are brought by ''the wind'' during the last days of carnival, and they settle and open a chocolaterie, La Céleste Praline. The village priest, Francis Reynaud, is initially mystified, because Lent has just begun, but his confusion turns rapidly to anger when he understands that Vianne holds dangerous beliefs, does not obey the church, and "flouts" the unspoken rules that he feels should govern his "flock". Vianne, we learn from her personal thoughts, is a witch though she does not use the word. Her mother and she were wanderers, going from one city to another. Her mother strove to inspire the same need for freedom in her daughter, who is more social and passive. They were born with gifts, and used a kind of "domestic magic" to earn their living. Throughout her life, Vianne has been running from the "Black Man", a recurring motif in her mother''s folklore. When her mother is killed by a cab, Vianne continues on her own, trying to evade the Black Man and the mysetrious force of the wind and settle down to a normal life. The chocolaterie is an old dream of hers. She has an innate talent for cooking and a charming personality. She tries to fit in and help her customers. She starts to build a group of regular customers, and, to Reynaud''s dismay, she doesn''t go out of business. Reynaud attempts to have Vianne run out of town, and he talks about her every Sunday at church. Some people initially stay away, but not for long. His conflict with her becomes his personal crusade. Vianne, however, announces a "Grand Festival of Chocolate", to be held on Easter Sunday.

Chocolat

In Mid-17th century France, a young Louis XIV struggles for his throne, beggars and thieves haunt Paris and brigands roam the countryside. Fifth child of an impoverished country nobleman, Angélique de Sancé de Monteloup grows up in the Poitou marshlands. Her logical destiny would be to marry a poor country nobleman, have children and spend her life fighting for a meager subsistence. Destiny has other plans in store for her. At 17, on returning from her education in a convent, she finds herself betrothed to the rich count, Jeoffrey de Peyrac, (Jeoffrey Comte de Peyrac de Morens d''Irristru, Lord of Toulouse and Aquitaine), 12 years her senior - lame, scarred and reputed to be a wizard. For the sake of her family, Angélique reluctantly agrees to the match but refuses the advances of her husband. Peyrac respects her decision and does not pursue his claim to conjugal rights, wishing to seduce her rather than use force. With the passing of months, Angelique discovers the talents and virtues of her remarkable husband - scientist, musician, philosopher - and to her surprise falls passionately in love with him. But Peyrac''s unusual way of life is threatened by the ambitions of the Archbishop of Toulouse, and soon arouses the jealousy of King Louis XIV, who, in actual historical record, disliked nobles who were too powerful and independent of the monarchy. Jeoffrey is arrested and charged with sorcery. Angélique tries to single-handedly take on the might of the royal court. She survives several murder attempts and overcomes insurmountable odds in an effort to save Jeoffrey from being burned at the stake, but to no avail. Alone and desperate, Angélique plunges into the darkness of the Paris underworld, intent on revenge and fueled by her determination to survive. Angélique realizes that her underworld existence is unfair to her sons, who belong to one of the greatest noble families in France. She works to regain her family''s rightful inheritance that had been stolen from them by the monarchy. She blackmails her cousin Philippe du Plessis de Bellière, a favourite Marshal of the king, into marriage.

Angélique, the Marquise of the Angels

Aristocrat Rowland Lacy falls in love with middle class girl Rose Oatley, but both their fathers refuse to approve the match because of the class difference and Rowland''s spendthrift lifestyle. Rowland is told to redeem himself by joining the army fighting in France. To avoid going, he persuades someone else to take his place and disguises himself as a "Dutch" shoemaker, Hans. He becomes an apprentice of eccentric but hard-working tradesman Simon Eyre and uses this position to be able to find Rose again and secretly marry her. Meanwhile, another shoemaker, Ralph, is sent off to war to the great dismay of his wife, Jane. While he is away, Hammon, a gentleman, falls in love with Jane and attempts to woo her. She is not interested, but once shown a false document that says her husband is dead, she agrees that if she ever marries again, she will marry Hammon. Ralph later returns from the war, with his legs having been amputated. He is further distraught when he cannot find his wife and later suspects (based on the appearance of her shoe that he once made for her) that she has agreed to marry someone else. He locates her, and when given the choice, Jane returns to her husband. Hammon attempts to buy her from Ralph, but Ralph refuses. Later in the play, Simon Eyre is made, first, Sheriff, and then Lord Mayor of London. He decides to create a special holiday to honour apprentices. The King comes to see him. He finds his mannerisms strange, but enjoys his company. The play ends with the King defending Rose and Rowland''s marriage to their fathers, and knighting Rowland so that Rose may be a lady and their social classes may be more appropriately matched. He does this while claiming that love goes beyond social class.

The Shoemaker''s Holiday

Erin Swift is a seventh grader with big feet who keeps a private website, on which she writes all her feelings and what''s happening in her life. Erin and her best friend, Jilly, were about to attend an Intermediate School by the name of Molly Brown. Unfortunately, they are separated by tracks. Erin is on A track, while Jilly is on C track. At first, Erin wants to be with Jilly more than anything, but when she met "Cute Boy", a.k.a. Mark Sacks, she changes her mind. On her first day, she receives three days of detention because she punches a childhood enemy, Serena, on the nose for calling Jilly her master puppeteer. Her elder brother, Chris, becomes annoyed over the incident, because he loves Serena''s older sister. After the "puppet incident", Jilly signs herself and Erin up for the Thanksgiving Day play. Jilly gets the role of Goody Stanton, the main character, while Erin receives the part of an Ear of Corn, a moment of great ire for her. Erin also signed up for the school Intranet Club (the school''s Internet) without Jilly, which is very significant because it''s the first time she breaks away from her friend''s hold and does anything on her own. There, she meets Tyler, whom her new friend Rosie said had been crushing on Erin. Meanwhile, Erin tries not to let Mark meet Jilly and vice-versa, because she knows if they meet each other, they''ll fall in teenage love, effectively ruining Erin''s chances at Mark. Eventually, though, they bump into each other, and Jilly becomes Mark''s girlfriend. Erin is (teenage) heartbroken, and thinks lowly of Mark and his actions. Later on, Jilly wants to break up with Mark because she thinks he is "losing interest" in her, and asks Erin to choose between Mark''s friendship or hers. Erin chooses "not to choose", instigating a dispute. Erin writes mean things about Jilly in her private blog. Through this time, Erin has written about how she practices kissing on a pillow for Mark, made a Hate-O-Rama page for Serena, and has talked about her suspicion of Tyler leaving notes in her locker - notes that smell like his hair gel. She also comments that he is a bit geeky. Life goes on, and it comes time for the Thanksgiving Play. Once the play ended, Tyler and Erin went to her locker to retrieve the disc for the school Intranet, but unfortunately, Serena accidentally rams into Erin, while she (Erin) is still in her Corn Suit. Because of the immobility the costume causes, her arm is pinned under her body, resulting in a fractured arm and a trip to the hospital. Tyler holds onto the disc while Erin is being checked by the doctor. Because of the broken arm, she misses the Intranet launch. Little did she know, the disc that she brought was, in fact, not the school Intranet disc. Instead, her private blog is put on the Intranet, and is revealed to the entire school. Erin receives many messages after the intranet is launched. Some are nice, agreeing that what she wrote was correct, but much more common were the mean notes. Rosie still supports her, her family along with her. Unfortunately, many other people do not, Jilly especially. Erin agrees that she did write some pretty horrible things about her, including Jilly''s bruises from her bedframe that result from her fear of monsters in the night. Jilly thinks Erin released the blog to get even with her, and is embarrassed, enraged, and hurt. In the end, Erin does a public apology through "walking spam", with more personal apologies to those most deeply affected by her blog - Jilly, Serena, Tyler, and Mark. Erin and Jilly gain a better understanding of each other, while Serena becomes more friendly. Tyler eventually does forgive her, although Erin suspects he likes another girl now. Mark decides to forgive her as well, giving her a pillow and kissing her. They decide to be just friends, with Erin deciding that a good friend was better than a boyfriend.

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The novel concerns Noel Holcroft, New York architect—and secretly the son of Heinrich Clausen, chief economic advisor to the Third Reich. At some point in the 1970s, Holcroft is contacted by the Grande Banque de Geneve, concerning his father''s will and testament. The testament says that in the last half of the war, Clausen found out about the Holocaust. Horrified and desperate to make amends, he and his two friends stole vast amounts of money from thousands of individual sources throughout the Reich and funneled them into a secure account in Zurich, Switzerland. Now, if Holcroft will contact the children of the two friends, they can form a group to distribute the funds and alleviate some of the pain of the Holocaust. Ranged against him in this noble endeavor is the last trace of the Third Reich: the children of Projekt Sonnenkinder. In the dying days of the war, a vast search went out throughout Germany. The children of Germany''s finest, screened for physical and psychological frailties, were sent to isolated hamlets and right-wing communities all over the world by airplane and U-boat. They were raised, provided for, and indoctrinated. Those who showed promise were inducted into the conspiracy by their elders; those that weren''t were "removed." They have waited thirty years for the funds so as to finally take over the world. Their leader, the Tinamou, is the world''s deadliest assassin. As Holcroft attempts to carry out what he believes to be the noble, secret mission of his biological father, he is continuously blindsided as good guys turn out to be bad guys, bad guys turn out to be good guys, and Holcroft, who has no training whatsoever in intelligence, is forced to learn on the job.

The Holcroft Covenant

The novel Zorachus is chock full of sex and violence. It depicts several gory scenes of death, murder, war, and torture. It depicts in equally explicit fashion many scenes of sex. Very little of the sex is of the standard variety. The novel features as its protagonist the eponymous Mancdaman Zorachus, a powerful sorcerer who at the beginning of the novel was in his early 30s and had become a Seventh Level Adept of the Sharajnaghi Order. He was acknowledged by teachers and peers alike to be the most puissant sorcerer in the world. After his elevation to Seventh Level Adept, Zorachus learned from his teachers that he was the son of Mancdaman Zancharthus, former ruler of the city of Khymir, in the north. Khymir was, and always has been, the most evil city in the world, a bottomless pit of vice and temptation. Emissaries had come from Khymir to ask Zorachus to come back to his father''s city and help the current regime rule the place. Zorachus was asked by his Sharajnaghi teachers to go to Khymir and, under the guise of doing the will of the ruling order and enjoying the pleasures of Khymir, prevent Khymir''s evil from spilling out and making victims of nearby peoples. Zorachus was a very moral man, having been raised by the Sharajnaghi. He was afraid that he would not be able to resist the temptations to lust and violence Khymir and its people, and Tchernobog, offered. However, he was eventually convinced by his friends and teachers to go. From the very start, even on the voyage by water to Khymir, the Khymirians tempted Zorachus, performing sexually in front of him and inviting him to join in. Zorachus resisted these blatantly sexual advances fairly easily. He had a more difficult time not killing his Khymirian hosts to wipe out their evil. For instance, when the Khymirian ship was attacked by Kragehul pirates, Zorachus helped fight the pirates using his natural fighting ability and his battle magic. The victorious Khymirian sailors and soldiers, however, began to rape the captured Kragehul. Zorachus nearly gave into the urge to blast the rapists with the same magic he had used to blast the pirates. The magnitude and variety of the temptations only increased after Zorachus arrived in Khymir. Slavery was widespread in Khymir, and no one saw anything wrong in mistreating, torturing, raping, or killing slave and freeman alike, so long as the victim was of lower class than the victimizer. Zorachus was very strong-willed, but even he began to despair under the constant onslaught of horrible experiences he was forced to witness, all the while pretending he saw nothing wrong. In the end, Zorachus'' bloodlust; his repressed desire for the Asa, wife of his Kragehul friend Halfdan; his loathing for Asa''s lesbian, unfaithful relationship with the female slave Leahkalah; and his self-hatred; all combined to convince him that every human was evil. Zorachus led a coup d''etat, using baleful, evil, forbidden magic to seize absolute power in Khymir. He personally killed dozens of people in horrifying ways, completely abandoning all his former moral precepts. This was just as Tchernobog had planned, turning a good and moral magician-warrior to evil.

Zorachus

The book begins when the recently orphaned Lewis Barnavelt moves to the (fictional) town of New Zebedee, Michigan, to live with his mysterious uncle Jonathan Barnavelt. Jonathan turns out to be a mediocre, though well-intentioned, wizard, while his next-door neighbor and good friend, Florence Zimmermann, is a far more powerful good witch. Jonathan''s house was previously owned by Isaac and Selenna Izard, a sinister couple who had dedicated their lives to evil magic, and plotted to bring about the end of the world. Before dying, Isaac constructed the titular clock that he hid somewhere inside the walls of the house, where it eternally ticks, still attempting to pull the world into the magical alignment, which would permit him to destroy it. Lewis manages to befriend a local boy named Tarby, who is everything he is not—popular, athletic, thin, and so on—but the two soon begin to drift apart. Lewis tries to win Tarby back by demonstrating how to raise the dead in the local cemetery on Halloween but only succeeds in releasing Selenna from her tomb. An escalating series of encounters with the sorceress'' ghost builds to a final confrontation in the basement of Jonathan''s house, where Lewis must summon up his courage and prevent her from finishing her husband''s work and bringing on Doomsday. As the story ends, Lewis announces that he has found a new friend, a girl named Rose Rita Pottinger.

The House with a Clock in Its Walls

Patrik (police officer) and Erica (writer) have reconnected, had a child and are moving headlong into matrimony. Problems sidelined when a chaotic alcohol-fuelled party ends with the death of an unpopular contestant on a reality TV show. A woman is found dead, apparently the victim of a car crash: the first in a spate of seemingly inexplicable accidents in Tanumshede. The car reeks of alcohol and the assumption is that it is a drink drive accident. It becomes clear there''s a serial assassin in the vicinity. As cameras shadow the stars'' every move, relations with the locals are strained to breaking point. A piece of evidence reveals that a pair of seemingly disparate homicides are linked, a pattern emerges of similar homicides spread over many years- in different regions of Sweden; slowly Patrick realises that these cases are more closely linked than he realises.Patrick also has his own ephemera to contend with: a wedding to arrange, and Erica′s sister Anna -- he′s experiencing stress.

The Gallows Bird

Maisie becomes a maid at the Belgravia Mansion of Lady Rowan Compton in 1910 at fourteen years old after her mother dies and she must help her father make ends meet. Soon after getting caught in Lady Compton''s library fulfilling her joy of reading and learning, Maisie is introduced to Maurice Blanche, close friend of the Comptons, and becomes his pupil. Blanche, a discreet investigator, teaches Maisie as much as he can about psychology, science, and anything else Maisie is willing to learn. When Maisie becomes old enough she attends Girton College at Cambridge University, but threats of war soon intervene. World War I intensifies and the pressures of war can be felt in Maisie''s England. Deciding that the war efforts are extremely important to her and her country, Maisie volunteers as a nurse at the front, where she meets a young man, with whom she falls in love. Part of the mystery surrounding Maisie is what happens to the young man. After the war, Maisie apprentices with Blanche in his investigative work. In 1929, after Blanche has retired, Maisie opens her own investigation business. Her first seemingly open-and-shut case involves her in a mystery surrounding something known as The Retreat, a suspicious home for veterans of the war. Maisie must act fast when she learns that Lady Compton''s own son has signed over his fortune to The Retreat and has taken asylum there. With the help of Billy Beale, a caretaker at her office and veteran of the Great War himself, she is able to infiltrate The Retreat. As Maisie uncovers the mystery of The Retreat she is also confronted with her own ghosts from the war after ten years of holding the memories at bay.

Maisie Dobbs

The book begins roughly 5 months after the events of Evil Genius. Cadel is now living with foster parents,in a state of legal limbo. Not knowing where he was born, his true father or where he was born. His life is made even worse due to his foster brother "Mace" (real name: Thomas) constantly bullying him. With no school to go to due to his questionable legal status, Cadel spends his time either on the computer, idling or visiting Sonja. The police,and FBI also occasionally turn up to question him on what he knows about Dr Darkkon, Prosper English and the Axis Institute. During these questionings Cadel meets Saul Greniaus, a detective who is now in charge of his case. His style puts him in conflict with Cadels social worker Fiona Currey. On his second visit to Sonja he is confronted by Trader and Judith.Trader and Judith attempt to convince Sonja and Cadel to join Genius Squad. An organisation formed to take down GENOME [a corporation founded by Darkkon] and which is funded by Rex Austin, an American millionaire who suspects the company murdered his son. Despite Cadels initial suspicions they may be working for Prosper, Cadel and Sonja agree to join Genius Squad. They learn that Genius squad is disguised as a youth home and they have other kids also working for the squad. While Saul and Fiona initially object, but they relent after a particularly heated confrontation with "Mace". Cadel arrives at the youth home, Saul and Fiona help him move his belongings. Cadel is introduced to Devin and Lexi[the Twins],Hamish Primose, Dot[the sister of Com from Evil Genius] and the rest of the adult staff. While genius squad works away, trying to avoid notice by Cadel''s various body guards,they uncover a web of deceit, crimes and cerebral implants. During this time, "Mace" finds the address of the Genius Squad foster house and attempts to frame Cadel for theft by planting a stolen watch on him (a plan which ultimately fails and leads to Mace''s arrest). Cadel also finds that Gazo Kovacs has made contact with GENOME, unaware of their sinister intentions. Unfortunately, GenoME manages to spring Prosper from jail and he immediately moves to kidnap Cadel. Cadel is taken to the house of Judith, one of the other members of Genius squad. From here, Prosper flees to a private air strip to leave the country after Cadel attempts to contact Saul for help. Saul gets a group of police officers down to the airport in time to save Cadel, but Prosper manages to get away. At this point, paternity tests show that Prosper English isn''t really Cadel''s father, even though he thought he was. Cadel''s real father is Chester Cramp who runs Fountain Pharmeceuticals, another Darkkon corporation. However, with Chester sitting in an American Jail. Cadel agrees to being adopted by Saul and Fiona, who happened to be getting married. Saul finally finds out about Genius Squad, and though he is very upset that Cadel lied to him for so long, he agrees to let Genius Squad live on. His reasoning for this, is that he believes that Genius Squad might just be their best chance of finding Prosper and bringing him down once and for all.

Genius Squad

The story is about four friends—Mel, Teresa (Terri), Laura, and Nick. The setting is Mel''s house, around a table with a bucket of ice in the middle. A bottle of gin is inside it. They soon start to talk about love (as the title suggests). Terri has had an abusive relationship, the abuse, she says, deriving from love. Ed, Terri''s former abusive boyfriend, "loved her so much he tried to kill her." Ed would beat Terri, he dragged her around the living room by her ankles knocking her into things along the way. Terri believed that Ed loved her and his abuse was his way of showing it. No matter what Terri said, Mel refused to believe that was "love." Ed would stalk Mel and Terri. He would call Mel at work with threatening messages. At one point Mel was so scared he bought a gun, and made out a will. Mel even wrote to his brother in California saying that "if something happened to him" to look for Ed. Her abusive boyfriend eventually committed suicide after two attempts (as Terri sees it, another act of love). Ed''s first attempt at suicide was when Terri had left him. Ed had drank rat poison, but was rushed to the hospital where he was saved. Ed''s second attempt and success was shooting himself in the mouth. A person heard the shot from Ed''s room and called the manager. Terri and Mel argued about whether she could be in the room with him when he died. Terri won and was with Ed as he died, as Terri put it, "he never came up out of it." Soon afterward Mel begins a story about an older couple and a drunk driver. The drunken driver was a teenager and pronounced dead at the scene. The elderly couple survived the car accident because they were wearing seat belts. Mel was called into the hospital one night just as he sat down to dinner. Once he got there he saw how badly the elderly couple had been injured. He said that they had "multiple fractures, internal injuries, hemorrhaging, contusions, and lacerations." The couple were in casts and bandages from head to toe. Mel''s point in telling the story was that when the elderly couple were moved into ICU, intensive care unit, the husband was very upset. Mel would visit the couple every day and when he put his ear to the husband''s mouth hole he told him that he was upset, because he could not see his wife through his eye-holes. Mel would stray from the topic with more talk about Ed, his own personal thoughts on love, hatred toward his ex wife, and life as a knight. Mel felt that even though you love a person, if something was to happen to them, the person still living will grieve but love again. After finishing the second bottle of gin, they talk about going to dinner, but no one makes any moves to proceed with their plans.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

The story follows the lives of childhood friends who''ve been negatively affected in different ways from their years growing up in Las Vegas off the strip. When we meet the main characters – Chase, Michele and Bailey – they are now in their twenties and the story focuses on their lifestyle, illegal professions and their caustic influence on the generation right behind. The story is told from the perspective of Chase, an aspiring painter just out of college, who had left Las Vegas to study art in New York where he met Julia, an MBA student who represents the promise of a life outside of Las Vegas. After returning to Las Vegas to finish school and finding work as a high school art teacher, Chase struggles to break free of his old life and his old friends, who are entrenched in the Las Vegas life of excess. Plot summary from the Willamette Week in Portland, OR, "A sympathetic look at the life of drug-using, self-destructing hookers and hustlers sounds like an uphill battle, but the simple truth about these characters is that they aren’t hookers or hustlers. They are aspiring painters, film directors and grad students. Although they inevitably prostitute themselves, they seldom talk about it, because they are ashamed or because they don’t understand what’s happening in their lives. All they want is comfort, to live in the Sun King suite on the 22nd floor of the Palace and order room service. But before they know it, prostitution isn’t even paying the bills; one by one, they go into debt with their own bodies."

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Chocolat

By Joanne Harris

Angélique, the Marquise of the Angels

By Anne Golon

The Shoemaker's Holiday

By Thomas Dekker

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By Denise Vega

The Holcroft Covenant

By Robert Ludlum

Zorachus

By Mark E. Rogers

The House with a Clock in Its Walls

By John Bellairs

The Gallows Bird

By Camilla Läckberg

Maisie Dobbs

By Jacqueline Winspear

Genius Squad

By Catherine Jinks

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

By Raymond Carver

The Delivery Man

By Joe McGinniss Jr.