The Red Flower Society is a secret society that aims to overthrow the Manchu-led Qing Dynasty and restore Han Chinese rule in China. The society is led by a total of fifteen leaders with Chen Jialuo as chief. The fourth leader Wen Tailai is ambushed by a group of soldiers and arrested on the Qianlong Emperor''s order because he knows a secret about Qianlong''s birth and the emperor wants to silence him. The story''s development is mostly based on the society''s repeated attempts to rescue Wen Tailai. The heroes encounter some Islamic tribesmen, who are pursuing a convoy of hired escorts, who have robbed them of their holy artefact, a Quran. Chen Jialuo aids them in defeating the mercenaries and recovers the holy book. He earns the respect and admiration of Huoqingtong, the daughter of the tribe''s leader. Throughout the story, some of the heroes eventually find their rights after braving danger together. The couples Xu Tianhong and Zhou Qi, Yu Yutong and Li Yuanzhi, are married after two lengthy subplots. Chen Jialuo and the heroes follow the trail of the convoy escorting Wen Tailai and arrive in Hangzhou. There, Chen Jialuo coincidentally meets the Qianlong Emperor, who is disguised as a rich man, and they strike up a friendship. However later when they discover each others'' true identities, they become wary and suspicious. Qianlong''s best warriors are defeated by the society''s leaders in a martial arts contest and the emperor feels humiliated. He wants to summon his army to eradicate the society, but refrains from doing so as he is aware of their strong influence and connections in Hangzhou. When Chen Jialuo finally rescues Wen Tailai, he is shocked to learn that the Qianlong Emperor is not a Manchu, but in fact, a Han Chinese. Even more shockingly, Wen reveals that Qianlong is actually Chen''s older brother, who was replaced at birth with the Yongzheng Emperor''s daughter. Chen Jialuo and the heroes take Qianlong hostage and try to persuade him to acknowledge his ethnicity. They suggest that he use his authority to drive the Manchus out of the Central Plains and assure him that he will still remain as emperor after that. Qianlong reluctantly agrees and takes an oath of alliance with the heroes. At the same time, the Qing army invades northwestern China, where the Islamic tribe lives, and Chen Jialuo travels there to help his friends. He meets Huoqingtong again and her younger sister, Kasili (Princess Fragrance). Chen falls in love with Kasili and finds himself entangled in a love triangle, because Huoqingtong also has romantic feelings for him. The Islamic tribe is eventually annihilated by the Qing army and Kasili is captured and brought back to the capital Beijing. The Qianlong Emperor is attracted to Kasili''s beauty and tries to force her to become his concubine but she refuses. Chen Jialuo infiltrates the palace to meet Qianlong and remind him about their pact, whilst affirming that he will persuade Kasili to marry the emperor. Kasili later discovers that Qianlong has broken his promise and is secretly plotting to destroy the Red Flower Society, so she commits suicide to warn Chen. The society''s members are angry with the emperor for renouncing his oath and they storm the palace. Qianlong is defeated and forced to come to a truce with the heroes. Chen Jialuo and his friends then return to the western regions after paying respects at Kasili''s tomb.

The Book and the Sword

The book tells the story of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, a seagull who is bored with the daily squabbles over food. Seized by a passion for flight, he pushes himself, learning everything he can about flying, until finally his unwillingness to conform results in his expulsion from his flock. An outcast, he continues to learn, becoming increasingly pleased with his abilities as he leads an idyllic life. One day, Jonathan is met by two gulls who take him to a "higher plane of existence" in that there is no heaven but a better world found through perfection of knowledge, where he meets other gulls who love to fly. He discovers that his sheer tenacity and desire to learn make him "pretty well a one-in-a-million bird." In this new place, Jonathan befriends the wisest gull, Chiang, who takes him beyond his previous learning, teaching him how to move instantaneously to anywhere else in the Universe. The secret, Chiang says, is to "begin by knowing that you have already arrived." Not satisfied with his new life, Jonathan returns to Earth to find others like him, to bring them his learning and to spread his love for flight. His mission is successful, gathering around him others who have been outlawed for not conforming. Ultimately, the very first of his students, Fletcher Lynd Seagull, becomes a teacher in his own right and Jonathan leaves to teach other flocks. Part One of the book finds young Jonathan Livingston frustrated with the meaningless materialism and conformity and limitation of the seagull life. He is seized with a passion for flight of all kinds, and his soul soars as he experiments with exhilarating challenges of daring and triumphant aerial feats. Eventually, his lack of conformity to the limited seagull life leads him into conflict with his flock, and they turn their backs on him, casting him out of their society and exiling him. Not deterred by this, Jonathan continues his efforts to reach higher and higher flight goals, finding he is often successful but eventually he can fly no higher. He is then met by two radiant, loving seagulls who explain to him that he has learned much, and that they are there now to teach him more. Jonathan transcends into a society where all the gulls enjoy flying. He is only capable of this after practising hard alone for a long time (described in the first part). In this other society, real respect emerges as a contrast of the coercive force that was keeping the former "Breakfast Flock" together. The learning process, linking the highly experienced teacher and the diligent student, is raised into almost sacred levels, suggesting that this may be the true relation between human and God. Because of this, each has been described as believing that human and God, regardless of the all immense difference, are sharing something of great importance that can bind them together: "You''ve got to understand that a seagull is an unlimited idea of freedom, an image of the Great Gull." He realizes that you have to be true to yourself: "You have the freedom to be yourself, your true self, here and now, and nothing can stand in your way." In the third part of the book are the last words of Jonathan''s teacher: "Keep working on love." Through his teachings, Jonathan understands that the spirit cannot be really free without the ability to forgive, and that the way to progress leads—for him, at least—through becoming a teacher, not just through working hard as a student. Jonathan returns to the Breakfast Flock to share his newly discovered ideals and the recent tremendous experience, ready for the difficult fight against the current rules of that society. The ability to forgive seems to be a mandatory "passing condition." "Do you want to fly so much that you will forgive the Flock, and learn, and go back to them one day and work to help them know?" Jonathan asks his first student, Fletcher Lynd Seagull, before getting into any further talks. The idea that the stronger can reach more by leaving the weaker friends behind seems totally rejected. Hence, love, deserved respect, and forgiveness all seem to be equally important to the freedom from the pressure to obey the rules just because they are commonly accepted.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Major Palfrey is off to war. He warns his two daughters, Dinah and Dorinda, that while he is away they must behave themselves: "When there is wind on the moon, you must be very careful how you behave. Because if it is an ill wind and you behave badly, it will blow straight into your heart, and then you will behave badly for a long time to come." And so it proves: before long the girls are drinking a potion provided by the local witch and turning into kangaroos, getting stuck in the zoo, and staging an escape along with their new friends, a golden puma and a silver falcon. Their appetite for naughtiness and cleverness whetted, Dinah and Dorinda turn their attention to freeing their dancing master, Casimir Corvo, from jail. And then comes their greatest adventure: Count Hulagu Bloot, the tyrant of Bombardy – who loves torturing people and eating peppermint creams – has captured their father and imprisoned him in the dungeons of Bloot''s castle. The two girls, together with their puma friend and their beloved dancing teacher, smuggle themselves from England to Bombardy in a room made of furniture hidden inside a huge removal van and stage a dramatic rescue.

The Wind on the Moon

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

In Philadelphia, Frank Cowperwood, whose father is a banker, makes his first money by buying cheap soaps on the market and selling them back with profit to a grocer. Later, he gets a job in Henry Waterman & Company, and leaves it for Tighe & Company. He also marries an affluent widow, in spite of his young age. Over the years, he starts misusing municipal funds with the aid of the City Treasurer. In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire redounds to a stock market crash, prompting him to be bankrupt and exposed. Although he attempts to browbeat his way out of being sentenced to jail by intimidating Mr Stener, politicians from the Republican Party use their influence to use him as a scapegoat for their own corrupt practices. Meanwhile, he has an affair with Aileen Butler, a young girl, subsequent to losing faith in his wife. She vows to wait for him after his jail sentence. Her father, Mr Butler dies; she grows apart from her family. Frank divorces his wife. Sometime after being released, he invests in stocks subsequent to the Panic of 1873, and becomes a millionaire again. He decides to move out of Philadelphia and start a new life in the West.

The Financier

The Art of Keeping Cool deals with the difficulties of childhood during WWII. in 1942, making sense of his family is especially difficult for thirteen-year-old Robert, whose father has been deployed in Europe with the Royal Canadian Air Force for more than six months. After Pearl Harbor, Robert and his family moved from their farm in Ohio to live with his father''s parents in Rhode Island. This living situation is strange to Robert, who has never met his grandparents or his cousin Elliot who also lives in Rhode Island. He finds it even more odd that neither his mother or his extended family ever discuss his father. Robert must search to find reason for the unexplainable family dynamic. With the help of Elliot and an exiled German painter named Abel Hoffman, Robert uncovers with the dark history of his father''s family. After a little time elliot starts going to abel hoffman''s house to sketch.One day when elliot didn''t go to abel''s Robert asks why.Elliot said abel was beat up by some people just because he was German. *Scott O''Dell Award for Historical Fiction, winner, 2001 *Riverbank Review Book of Distinction, winner, 2001 *ALA Notable Children''s Book *Horn Book Fanfare *Junior Library Guild Selection *Scholastic Book Club Selection

The Art of Keeping Cool

In Dragons of Ice, after leaving Thorbardin, the player characters head south into the polar regions, journeying along the glaciers in search of Icewall Castle. The characters encounter Ice Folk, ice-skate boats, and the Walrus-Men. Characters begin play at the ancient port city of Tarsis in the world of Krynn. After an attack by the Dragonarmies on Tarsis, the party is driven south to Icewall Castle, which is home to a white dragon and one of the legendary Dragon Orbs. After the Cataclysm, the seas receded from the port city Tarsis, so instead of finding a port the characters have found a land locked city 40 miles inland. The adventure series version of Dragons of Winter Night, book two of the Dragonlance saga, will follow part of the party from the first book, Dragons of Autumn Twilight. Returning playable characters available are Sturm Brightblade, Flint Fireforge and Tasslehoff Burrfoot and Gilthanas. Laurana and Elistan, previously appearing NPC''s, are now also playable as characters. Additionally two Knights of Solamnia, Aaron Tallbow and Derek Crownguard, are available for players if required. Aaron will appear as an NPC with the party if he is not used by a player. The other characters from the first book leave from Tarsis in a different direction at the beginning of DL10 Dragons of Dreams. Chapter 1: The Fall of Tarsis Chapter 2: The Ice Reaches Chapter 3: The Ice Folk Chapter 4: Icewall Castle Chapter 5: Icemountain Bay Epilogue

Dragons of Ice

Little House in the Big Woods describes the homesteading skills Laura observed and began to practice during her fifth year (see comment on Laura’s age, above). This first volume does not contain the more mature (yet real) themes addressed in later books of the series (danger from Indians and wild animals, serious illness, death, drought, crop destruction). Hard work is the rule, though fun is often made in the midst of it. Laura gathers woodchips, and helps Ma and Pa when they butcher animals. Laura also helps Ma preserve the meat. This is all in preparation for the upcoming winter. Fall is a very busy time, because the harvest from the garden and fields must be brought in as well. The cousins come for Christmas that year, and Laura receives a doll, which she names Charlotte. Later that winter, the family goes to Grandma Ingalls’ and has a “sugaring off,” when they harvest sap and make maple syrup. They return home with buckets of syrup, enough to last the year. Laura remembered that sugaring off, and the dance that followed, for the rest of her life. Each season has its work, which the author makes attractive by the good things that result. In the spring, the cow has a calf, so there are milk, butter and cheese. Everyday housework is also described in detail. That summer and fall, the Ingalls again plant a garden and fields, and store food for the winter. Laura’s Pa trades labor with other farmers so that his own crops will be harvested faster when it is time. Not all work was farming. Hunting and gathering were important parts of providing for the family as well. When Pa went into the woods to hunt, he usually came home with a deer then smoked the meat for the coming winter. One day he noticed a bee tree and returned from hunting early to get the wash tub and milk pail to collect the honey. When Pa returned in the winter evenings, Laura and Mary always begged him to play his fiddle; he was too tired from farm work to play during the summertime. In the winter, they enjoyed the comforts of their home and danced to Pa’s fiddle playing.

Little House in the Big Woods

The novel tells about ideal civilisation of powerful mages which have invited paranormal skills like telepathy, levitation and mediumism. The Brahmins value anarchy, freedom, peace, free love and anti-work. Their country is organized by Ministry of Love, Ministry of Power and Ministry of Wisdom, and they use a strange substance classified as Nivridium in order to their self-perfect idea. The main plot is the history of love of Polish emigrant Jan Podobłoczny (Lange''s own porte-parole) to the materialization of an ideal woman named Damayanti. A tragic end of their romance comes from clash between physical and spiritual sides of human existence. In the last chapter of the novel, Damayanti sacrifices her body in order to let her spirit fly to higher stage of consciousness. Miranda is a Scottish spiritual medium, who lives in Warsaw. She can contact the soul of Damayanti and materialize the mysterious person of Lenore, who meets Jan Podobłoczny when he is close his death. In the moment when Damayanti dies, Miranda disappears.

Miranda

The story concerns an Indian cavalry regiment which is sent to the France at the outbreak of the First World War. The Ravi Lancers is unusual in that it is part of the army of a semi-independent Hindu state (a Princely state) attached to British India. It accordingly follows different traditions than the regular regiments of the British Indian Army. These include a semi-feudal relationship between the Indian ''sowars'' (cavalrymen) and their ruler. It also means that all officers except for the British regiment commander are Indians, which would not have been the case in a regular regiment at the time. The book centers on the relationship between the regiment''s British commander (a member of the Savage family, though with a different family name) and his Indian second-in-command Krishna Ram - heir to the throne of the state of Ravi. The young Indian prince, originally a naive admirer of the British Empire, increasingly discovers its shortcomings and develops his own awareness of being Indian. The British commanding officer Colonel Bateman, originally liberal minded, becomes a harsh and demanding martinet under the stress of trench warfare. The situation is further complicated by Krishna Ram''s secret affair with Bateman''s sister. Finally the two divergent characters and their respective sets of values come to a shattering head-on clash in the midst of a devastating attack on the German trenches. The climax involves what is effectively a mutiny while trapped by the German counter-attack, a daring escape with the Indian soldiers relying on stealth to get back to the British lines, and the suicide of the broken Bateman at his estate in England, leaving the Indian protagonists with a strong feeling of guilt. At the end Krishna Ram decides that he and his men will remain on active service in France, rather than returning to Ravi, because "we gave our word to serve" and out of a form of loyalty to the dead Bateman.

The Ravi Lancers

The plot concerns the efforts of an astronaut and geologist/anthropologist, known to the natives as "Purple", to escape from a primitive world on which he is stranded and return to his people. The events are seen from the perspective of Lant, one of the natives, who becomes, in the course of the novel, Speaker (chieftain) of his people. The natives, a fur covered people, believe in magic and the book shows how sufficiently advanced technology would be perceived by a primitive society. Purple lands in an egg-shaped vehicle. He casually disrupts the lives of Lant''s people, and thoughtlessly demeans Shoogar, the village magician. Shoogar gets revenge by destroying Purple''s vehicle, which results in an atomic explosion. Many of the villagers are dead or injured, the rest, including Lant and Shoogar, are forced to flee. Purple is presumed dead. The villagers eventually wind up on a fertile peninsula, which, as the summer approaches, is rapidly becoming an island (thanks to the influence of the two suns, the shorelines on this world are somewhat variable). To the annoyance of the existing inhabitants of the area, the villagers contrive to be trapped in the verdant area by the rising seas. The villagers are less happy when they learn that Purple is here, serving ineffectively as local magician, having succeeded the incumbent, Dorthi, by killing him by landing on him in a fall from the sky in an impact suit. Lant''s people wish to flee, but have nowhere to go. Lant, who becomes Speaker of the villagers more or less by default, and the local Speaker persuade the two magicians to swear to a peace treaty. Purple can call his mother ship to get him, but must return to the distant area of the old village to do so. Everyone is stranded on the island for a considerable length of time. Purple conceives the idea of fabricating a flying machine to return him to the area. He persuades his villagers (who are actually anxious to get rid of him) and Lant''s, to join in the scheme. The ship will have balloons, sails, and pedal-driven steering. A good part of the book deals with the tribulations of Purple in trying to create this work, beyond the technology of the local people. He creates ''aircloth'' (a thin, airtight cloth), a rubber-equivalent, and splits water into hydrogen and oxygen. He is successful in building the ship. But in so doing, he has changed the lives of the villagers forever. Not only do they have these new technologies, but he has created problems with crime, intoxication, the ecology, and has altered the relationship between the sexes. In addition, he has introduced money into the culture. Purple, Shoogar, Lant, and Lant''s adult two sons take off for the old village. They get there, and Purple is able to summon the mother ship and depart. There is a brief epilogue---after the return home, Lant notes that a new flying machine, much larger than the first, is to be built, thus continuing the industrial revolution started by Purple.

The Flying Sorcerers

On 25 October 1946, Popper (then at the London School of Economics), was invited to present a paper entitled "Are There Philosophical Problems?" at a meeting of the Moral Sciences Club, which was chaired by Wittgenstein. The two started arguing vehemently over whether there existed substantial problems in philosophy, or merely linguistic puzzles—the position taken by Wittgenstein. In Popper''s, and the popular account, Wittgenstein used a fireplace poker to emphasize his points, gesturing with it as the argument grew more heated. When challenged by Wittgenstein to state an example of a moral rule, Popper (later) claimed to have replied "Not to threaten visiting lecturers with pokers", upon which (according to Popper) Wittgenstein threw down the poker and stormed out. Wittgenstein''s Poker collects and characterizes the accounts of the argument, as well as establishing the context of the careers of Popper, Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell, also present at the meeting. The book follows three narrative threads, each pivoting off the 1946 confrontation at Cambridge; the first is a documentary investigation into what precisely took place and the controversy over the differing accounts from observers; the second, a comparative personal history of the philosophers, contrasting their origins in Vienna and their differing ascents to philosophical prominence; and thirdly an exploration of the philosophical significance of the disagreement between the two and its relevance for the great debates in the early 20th century concerning the philosophy of language.

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Read - Listen - Learn

The Book and the Sword

By Louis Cha

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

By Richard Bach

The Wind on the Moon

By Eric Linklater

Bedroom Farce

By Alan Ayckbourn

The Financier

By Theodore Dreiser

The Art of Keeping Cool

By Janet Taylor Lisle

Dragons of Ice

No Author Listed

Little House in the Big Woods

By Laura Ingalls Wilder

Miranda

By Antoni Lange

The Ravi Lancers

No Author Listed

The Flying Sorcerers

By David Gerrold

Wittgenstein's Poker: The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers

No Author Listed