Alex wrote a letter in a promotional contest for a cat food company that describes the key points in his young life mainly having to do with Little League baseball. Alexwell has played in Little League for six years, his skills in the game are so subpar he refers to himself as "really stinky" when it comes to baseball. He is constantly berated by his nemesis T.J. Stoner, a player widely-known for his incredible skill. After numerous attempts to get T.J. to leave him alone fail, Alex tries beating him in a pitching contest, at which he fails miserably. A few days later, their teams are playing a game against each other and T.J. once again tries to make Alex look foolish. During the game, Alex bunts the ball and runs to first, where T.J. is set to get him out. Desperate to stop him, he jumps up and down, screaming "BOOGA BOOGA!" He makes T.J. miss the ball, allowing him to get a double. Then he is called out by the umpire immediately after for interfering with the play at first base. Though he was thrown out, he accomplished something better than getting a double to him which was making T.J. embarrassed. When he looks like he''s going to beat Alex up, he runs home and locks himself in his room. T.J. gets a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records for beating Alex''s team. Alex, in a twist of good luck, ends up winning the contest from the cat food company that he wrote the letter to at the book''s opening. By winning, he will get to appear on a national television commercial. He leaves school that day, nervous about filming it, but eager to be a big star and hoping things will go well.

Skinnybones

Violet is a dreamy girl who is often away in her own world, filled with fairies designed by her favourite author, Caspar Dream. She lives with her mother, father and her brother Will, who she loves very much despite the fact he can be controlling and sometimes frightens her. At Christmas, Violet finds out that Will was adopted. One night, Will forces Violet to play a game of ''Blind Man''s Buff''. Violet hates the game, but plays anyway because since Will discovered he was adopted he had become reclusive and rarely played with her. Consequently, she has a scary experience with bats in the attic of an empty house. Violet later makes a resolution that she will not let Will order her around. Soon, a new girl, Jasmine, comes to Violet''s school and chooses her as a friend. Violet is thrilled because Jasmine is pretty and rich, although she is not sure if Jasmine truly wants to be her friend or just wants to get closer to Will. Will and Violet play ''Truth and Dare'' and Will asks Violet that, if she could have a love affair with anyone, who would it be? Violet says Caspar Dream. Violet asks the same question to Will but before he can answer, Jasmine calls and asks for help with her homework. Much to Violet''s surprise, Will invites Jasmine over. They work for a while and then play Truth and Dare again, where Will asks Violet who she likes better, him or Jasmine. When Violet fails to come up with a reply, Will dares her to spend 10 minutes in the attic. Violet reluctantly agrees. In the attic, Violet finds out that she used to have another brother named Will but he died when he was less than one year old, so her parents tried to replace him with her adopted brother. She leaves the attic and finds Will and Jasmine kissing. Not realising she is within earshot, Jasmine and Will make fun of Violet and the fairies she has hanging from the ceiling. When they see her, Violet runs away and goes to see Caspar Dream''s old house. There she finds Caspar Dream himself and they become friends. When she returns home, Jasmine is apologetic and regretful. She forgives both Jasmine and Will. Afterwards, she confronts her parents about the first Will. They eventually tell her and Will the truth and soon things begin to become better for Violet.

Midnight

The book begins from the point of view of The Mysterious Stranger, also known as X, the renegade Ethical who has been contacting people in the valley and enlisting their aid. He had posed as the engineer Barry Thorne on the airship Parseval where he had murdered Milton Firebrass and several others, all of whom were fellow Ethicals. He is now posing as a Mayan named Ah Qaaq and is traveling in the company of the Chinese poet Li Po. Through his internal reverie he reveals some of his secrets. His identity had been discovered by Monat Grrautut, who was the director of the Riverworld project. Monat had recalled him to the Dark Tower to be judged. However, he used a remote command to kill all the inhabitants of the tower and stopped the resurrections so that agents in the valley could not return to the tower. Stuck in the valley like the others he began to make his way upriver, hoping to catch a ride on one of the riverboats. His reverie ends on one of the most traumatic days on the Riverworld. On that day the left bank grailstones fail to fire. They had done so once before, when the meteorite which Sam Clemens discovered, broke the circuit which powered them. That time the damage had been repaired by the Ethicals. But this time they are all either dead or stuck in the valley. One day after the grailstones fail the inhabitants of the left bank invade the right en masse, half of humanity dies in the conflict. At the same time Richard Burton and his friends have joined the crew of King John''s ship the Rex Grandissimus. They participate in the defense of the boat after the grailstones fail and Burton, masquerading as a Dark Age British warrior, eventually becomes King John''s security chief. One day Tom Mix, Jack London, and Peter Jairus Frigate apply to join the crew. Burton, recognizing Frigate, attacks him. Realizing his mistake Burton eventually becomes friendly with Frigate and becomes an ally of Mix and London. The false Frigate has disappeared, but his travelling companion, Monat Grrautut, has boarded Sam Clemens'' ship. Shortly after boarding, Monat is murdered by the renegade Ethical. Eventually the two riverboats reach Virolando, a wide lake which is the last inhabited stretch before the headwaters. It is also home to the pacifist Church of the Second Chance, where Hermann Göring has become a priest. King John and Clemens finally get to square off. Initially they begin with an aerial dog fight. When the planes are destroyed the two great riverboats attack each other. In the ensuing conflict both riverboats are sunk, most of the crews die, and the two captains are killed. King John is killed by Clemens and Clemens dies of a heart attack after being pulled from the water by his mortal enemy Erik Bloodaxe. Clemens dies before he notices that Bloodaxe has become an adherent of the Church of the Second Chance, and seeks no revenge against Clemens. Among the survivors are Burton, Frigate, Alice, Kaz, Joe Miller, Li Po, Ah Qaaq, and Nur ed Din. They are joined by the American piano player Tom Turpin, the English novelist Aphra Behn, a man claiming to be Gilgamesh, and the French soldier Jean Marcelin, Baron de Marbot. They take one of the ship''s launches, the only craft to survive the fight, and proceed upriver. They scale the waterfall at the end of the river and make their way, after much difficulty, to the polar sea. When they arrive at the tower they unmask Ah Qaaq as the renegade Ethical and take him prisoner. He explains his identity as Loga, son of King Priam of Troy. Like all children who died before age five, he was resurrected centuries ago and raised by the alien Ethicals to be one of their agents. He reveals also the purpose of the Riverworld. It is meant as a grand moral test, to allow humanity to progress to the point where they can achieve enlightenment. When the project is brought to a close the souls of those who have not achieved enlightenment will be set loose to wander the universe aimlessly. Loga became obsessed with sparing his earthly family this fate and worked to sabotage the project. He was the one who awakened Burton prematurely, recruited Clemens and the others, and he used satellites to direct the meteorite to land near Clemens. While this is all being revealed they discover that there is a problem with the computer which runs the tower. A part malfunctioned, and since no one was around to repair it the problem has reached a critical point. If nothing is done the computer will die, releasing all the stored wathans, or souls, of the people who died on the Riverworld. Without the wathans these people can never be brought back to life. In addition, Monat has locked out other users from accessing the computer. Göring, who had followed the group to the tower, attempts to fix the computer, but is killed by security measures put in place by Monat. Alice then devises a way to get around this programming, and deactivate the security. Loga then is able to repair the computer.

The Magic Labyrinth

The story centers on a river trip organized when trading ships with Christmas items inexplicably fail to arrive. Unknown to the heroes, their route downriver to a seaside trading center will take them through areas under siege from evil forces including crazed goblins, malevolent witches, and the sinister dwarf Selznak. Professor Wurzle provides somewhat misguided explanations and histories for events as they arise. The youngest character, Dooly, is given to wild fantasies and stories. This frequently leaves the inexperienced adventurer, cheesemaker Jonathan Bing, with competing and implausible explanations as to what is actually going on. (As the story progresses, it becomes evident that many of Dooly’s apparently wilder statements are true.) Downstream, they encounter Miles the Magician, the carefree link men, and the elves at Seaside running the mysterious elfin ship, which is seen at rare, inexplicable moments. These friends are needed to thwart Selznak’s plans, which are entwined in their own in ways that only slowly become evident. Dooly’s piratical grandfather is hunted down at his fantastic submarine, and forced to reveal his role in assisting Selznak. They decide how to deal with the various threats, Bing, Wurzle, Dooly and Dooly’s grandfather heading back upriver to confront Selznak in his castle lair.

The Elfin Ship

Benjamin Reilly, a high school English-teacher in Staten Island, N.Y., witnesses a fight between two students. This brings him back to childhood years of bullying by Terrence O''Connell, a popular jock he had a crush on at the time. Reilly decides to quit his job, track down his bully and wreak revenge on him. He visits his parents in Indiana, where he also engages in unsafe sex with a Hispanic man. In Manhattan, he meets with Terrence and they become friends. While on holiday in Vail, Colorado, he takes an HIV test - by the end of the novel, he learns he doesn''t have AIDS. Terrence breaks up with his girlfriend and slowly admits to being gay, though he won''t let Benjamin kiss him. Out of anger, Benjamin pushes Terrence down a mountaintop, sending him off to hospital for several weeks. Terrence proves to be understanding, and they both decide they are now even. Benjamin learns about the circumstances surrounding his sister''s death and his brother''s runaway streak as a teenager. Finally, Benjamin is invited to Terrence''s same-sex marriage with an investment banker in Massachusetts.

A Push and a Shove: A Novel

The story is allegedly a copy of the diary entries (in vernacular Chinese) of a madman who, according to the foreword written in classical Chinese, has now been cured of his delusive paranoia. After extensively studying Chinese history as outlined in the Four books and five classics of his culture, the diary writer, the supposed "madman", began to see the words "Eat People!" written between the lines of the texts (Lu Xun implies this figuratively, although in the story''s context, this could be read literally). Seeing the people in his village as potential man-eaters, he is gripped by the fear that everyone, including his brother, his venerable doctor and his neighbors, who are crowding about to watch him, are harboring cannibalistic thoughts on him. It is anti-traditional in the sense that the other characters are portrayed as heartless, bound to tradition, and cannibalistic, yet the madman''s fears are depicted as genuine. Despite the brother''s apparent genuine concern, the narrator still regards him as big a threat as any stranger. The insanity of the narrator is never proven, however. Towards the end the narrator turns his concern to the younger generation, especially his late sister (who died when she was five) as he is afraid they will be cannibalized. By then he is convinced that his late sister had been eaten up by his brother, and that the narrator might have unwittingly tasted her flesh. The story ends with a famous line: "Save the children..."

A Madman''s Diary

Six forces: Love, Growth, Knowledge, Power, Strength, and Art. This world (actually, the whole action takes place in Russia and the Ukraine) lacks love; but the love this Envoy would bring the Kindness of fervent religion - leading to witch hunts and crusades. The Original for this Envoy is a female doctor, who has seen the consequences of love, kindness and compassion neglected in her patients dying without access to medicines and treatments. She believes her Envoy to be God, or a divine messenger, but appears rather blind to her other aspects. The force of Knowledge would create a better, more reasonable world, but is hampered by physical fraility, and always ends up subjugated by power. The Envoy of knowledge would change that, but his Original is an old scientist suffering from terminal cancer, who is intelligent and wise, but physically impotent. Knowledge remembers his past incarnations with clarity, unlike the other Envoys and can extrapolate the actions of the others much better. The force of Art is rarely able to take action, hampered by its own imagination of the consequences. When it does, however, the actions are impassioned, and the result is rarely savoury, like the actions of a certain painter Schicklgruber. Art is represented by a ''hack'' writer, cranking out several fantasy and sci-fi novels a year for money. The novel implies that some of Lukyanenko''s other books are actually written by the Original of this Envoy. Specifically, he makes numerous references to having written The Boy and the Darkness. Strength is the force that guarantees peace and security. A country with a strong army, without crime; a place to which warriors can prouodly come home. Strength''s Envoy is a copy of an Army Colonel who fought in Afghanistan. He is Ukrainian, and is in the Ukrainian army, but seems to regard the countries as close kin, almost as one. This Envoy and his Original don''t see eye-to-eye on their vision of the future, because the Original has lost faith in his cause, while the copy retains his belief. Power represents a strong state, claiming people''s loyalty, guiding their lives, and focusing their strength on a single purpose, but also punishing individual action, turning people into a herd being driven by a stren and beloved shepherd. This force is represented by an ambitious and corrupt politician, seeking to ascend to presidency. The Envoy murders and supplants his Original as soon as he arrives, because "power can''t be shared". The novel implies that the current state of the world is in part the result of Power winning the last contest; Joseph Stalin and Napoleon Bonaparte are both implied to have been an Envoys of Power. The forth of Growth represents progress and development, potential limited only by motivation. Unfortunately, Growth lacks direction, and has potential for both good and evil. Growth is, appropriately, represented by a teenager - a somewhat dour and cynical boy, who is implied to have lost his faith in the world. This Envoy and his Original begin to grow apart as the novel progresses, diverging, and even spending a lot of time away from each other, unlike most other Envoy/Original pairs. Unlike the other Envoys, Growth does not remember his past incarnations, as experience would defeat the purpose of growing. Although not mentioned as part of the six Forces, Darkness intervenes in the contest. Darkness is presented as ultimate freedom, even from the consequences of one''s own actions. Darkness doesn''t have an Envoy, but it still has a champion - a determined and driven professional hitman, whom Darkness empowers and directs to kill all the Envoys and their Originals. Although not part of this contest, the force of Light has intervened in past contests, and has won at least one. Jesus Christ is implied to have been a champion of Light. His death was a short-term loss but a long-term victory.

Autumn Visits

On the morning of the 30th anniversary of the Glorious Revolution of the Twenty-Fifth of May (and as such the anniversary of the death of John Keel, Vimes'' hero and former mentor), Sam Vimes is caught in a magical storm while pursuing Carcer Dun, a notorious criminal. He awakens to find that he has been rescued by Miss Palm (whom Vimes knows in the future as Mrs Palm, Head of the Guild of Seamstresses – seamstresses referring to prostitutes). He determines that he has somehow been sent back in time. Vimes''s first idea is to ask the wizards at the Unseen University to send him home, but before he can act on this, he is arrested for breaking curfew by a younger version of himself. Incarcerated in a cell next to his is Carcer, who after being released joins the Unmentionables, the secret police carrying out the paranoid whims of the Patrician of the time, Lord Winder. When he is taken to be interrogated by the captain, time is frozen by Lu-Tze, who tells Vimes what has happened and that he must assume the identity of Sergeant-At-Arms John Keel, who was to have arrived that day but was murdered by Carcer. It is stated that the event which caused Vimes and Carcer to be sent into the past was a major temporal shattering. Vimes then returns to the office, time restarts and he convinces the captain that he is Keel. Young Vimes believes Vimes to be Keel, allowing Vimes to teach Young Vimes the lessons for which Vimes idolized Keel. The novel climaxes in the Revolution. Vimes, taking command of the watchmen, successfully avoids the major bloodshed erupting all over the city and manages to keep his part of it relatively peaceful. After dealing with the Unmentionables'' headquarters he has his haphazard forces barricade a few streets to keep people safe from the fighting between rebels and soldiers. However, the barricades are gradually pushed forward during the night (by Fred Colon and several other simple-minded watchmen) to encompass the surrounding streets until Vimes finds himself in control of a quarter of the city, dubbed "The Glorious People''s Republic of Treacle Mine Road", with a still alive Reg Shoe as one of the leading figures. The ruler, Lord Winder, is effectively assassinated by the young Assassin''s Guild student Havelock Vetinari, and the new Patrician Lord Snapcase calls for a complete amnesty. However, he sees Keel as a threat and sends Carcer to lead a death squard of Unmentionables, watchmen and the palace guard to murder Keel. Several policemen (the ones who died when the barricade fell in the original timeline) are killed in the battle as is Reg Shoe; Vimes manages to fight off the attack until he can grab Carcer, at which point they are returned to the future and Keel''s body is placed in the timeline Vimes has just left, to tie things up, as in the "real" history, Keel died in that fight. Vimes'' son is born, with the help of Doctor "Mossy" Lawn, whom Vimes met while in the past, and Vimes finally arrests Carcer, promising him a fair trial before he is hanged. A subsequent conversation with Lord Vetinari reveals that the Patrician alone knows Vimes took Keel''s place, also that he fought with Keel''s men against Carcer''s death squad. He proposes that the old Watch House at Treacle Mine Road (where Keel was sergeant, and which was destroyed by the dragon in Guards! Guards!) be rebuilt.

Night Watch

Growing up among the Ilyassai, a fierce tribe of warrior-herdsmen who despise his origin, the young Imaro struggles for acceptance after the breaking of a taboo forces his mother to leave him behind. The boy becomes a man, unlike any other the Ilyassai has ever seen. His quest acceptance and identity continues. Yet he learns he has powerful enemies, human and inhuman. Prevailing over foes who desire nothing more than to see him dead, Imaro finds that in victory, there can be loss. Departing from the Ilyassai, Imaro roams afar, wandering across the vast continent of Nyumbani, pitting his prodigious strength and courage against men, beasts and demons. Hunted by relentless foes, Imaro becomes the hunter. Eventually, he finds friendship and love among people who are like him, exiles and outlaws. Yet forces beyond Imaro’s comprehension are aligned against him. As he rises to prominence, events preordained before Imaro’s birth begin to unfold. Powers are stirring in Nyumbani, the Africa of a world that is beyond the one we know. And Imaro learns that some of the powers are aligned against him. As he struggles to hold on to his hard won acceptance, the warrior seeks the answer to the question that has haunted him all his life:

Imaro

Seven of the original eight Lazy Guns were destroyed before the events of Against a Dark Background. One disappeared with its user when he tried to fire it at the local sun, one suffered a lucky strike during an air raid, two self destructed when investigators tried to take them apart and another was destroyed by an assassin. A sixth was destroyed when investigators fired it with its lenses looking through an electron microscope. The seventh, found before the events of the book by the Lady Sharrow and her team, was destroyed by the university it was sold to when they tampered with it. The resulting explosion devastated the city the university was located in. The hunt for the eighth and final Lazy Gun is the main plot theme of Against a Dark Background. Much of the novel concerns Sharrow''s adventures in searching for and acquiring it. Her motivation is that the Huhsz religious cult regard it as a sacred object, and that if she can find it and give it to them, their vendetta against her will lapse. Sharrow encounters various political systems on her travels across Golter. She also meets the Solipsists, a gang of pirate mercenaries on a hovercraft, who hold very unusual philosophical beliefs. When the last Lazy Gun is eventually discovered, it is guarded by an elaborate defense system incorporating a genetic key which Sharrow has to deactivate.

Against a Dark Background

When Licence Renewed begins, M reminds Bond that the 00 section has in fact been abolished; however, M retains Bond as a troubleshooter (pun intended), telling him "You''ll always be 007 to me". Bond is assigned to investigate one Dr. Anton Murik, a brilliant nuclear physicist who is thought to have been having meetings with a terrorist named Franco. Franco is identified and tracked by MI5 to a village in Scotland called Murcaldy. Since Murcaldy is outside of MI5''s jurisdiction, the Director-General of MI5, Richard Duggan requests that M send Bond to survey Murik. Relying on information that MI5 did not have, M changes Bond''s assignment to instead infiltrate Murik''s Scottish castle and gain Murik''s confidence. Bond makes contact with Murik at Ascot Racecourse where he feigns a coincidental meeting, mentioning to Murik that he is a mercenary looking for work. Later, Bond joins Murik in Scotland at Murik''s behest and is hired to kill Franco, for reasoning at the time unknown. Franco in turn has been tasked by Murik to kill his young ward, Lavender Peacock because she was the true heir to the Murik fortune, which could only be proved by secret documents Anton kept in a hidden safe within his castle. Murik''s plan is to hijack six nuclear power plants around the world simultaneously with the aid of bands of terrorists supplied by Franco. To ensure that Murik can never be associated to this deal, he attempts to use Bond to assassinate Franco. Ultimately terrorists do take over six nuclear power plants, but are prevented from starting a meltdown when they are given an abort code by Bond, believing him to be Murik. Murik is eventually defeated by Bond and Lavender before his demands were met.

Licence Renewed

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.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

Skinnybones

By Barbara Park

Midnight

By Jacqueline Wilson

The Magic Labyrinth

By Philip José Farmer

The Elfin Ship

No Author Listed

A Push and a Shove: A Novel

By Christopher Kelly

A Madman's Diary

By Lu Xun

Autumn Visits

By Sergey Lukyanenko

Night Watch

By Terry Pratchett

Imaro

By Charles R. Saunders

Against a Dark Background

By Iain Banks

Licence Renewed

By John Gardner

The Holcroft Covenant

By Robert Ludlum