Belthandros, a Roman (Byzantine) prince and youngest son of king Rhodophilos, quarrels with his father and leaves his home to seek his fortune. After wandering in the hostile lands of Anatolia and dealing with Turkish bandits, he reaches Tarsus in Armenian Cilicia. There he sees a fiery star in the depths of a river (a metaphor for love) and follows it to the north. In this way he finds a castle built of precious gems, which belongs to King Eros (, Erotokastron), and is full of various miracles and magnificent statues and automatons. Belthandros leaves his escorts outside and enters the castle alone. There he sees an inscription that tells of his predestined love between him and Chrysantza, the daughter of the king of Great Antioch. He is then summoned by the lord of the castle, Eros, who announces to him a beauty contest at which Belthandros must give a wand to the most beautiful among forty princesses. The contest takes place and Belthandros gives the wand to the most beautiful princess, whereupon all that surrounds him suddenly disappears "like a dream", leaving him alone in the castle. At this point he resolves to go out and seek the princess. After a short journey he arrives in Antioch where he meets the king of the city, is accepted as his liegeman, and soon becomes an intimate of the royal household. There he meets his daughter Chrysantza, whom he recognizes as the princess he chose at the Castle of Eros. Although Chrysantza has never seen him before, she too recognizes him, and the two fall in love. Two years and two months however pass before their first love meeting, which takes place secretly at night in the royal garden. The meeting ends suddenly when a jealous courtier discovers them and Belthandros is put in jail. In order to save her lover''s life, Chrysantza convinces her faithful chambermaid, Phaidrokaza, to take the blame by declaring that the prince had visited her instead. The king believes the story and a forced marriage between Belthandros and Phaidrokaza takes place. The following days the couple continues to meet secretly, but soon the situation becomes unsatisfactory, and they decide to flee, together with the chambermaid and two retainers. On the way, they cross a flooded river, where Phaidrokaza and the two retainers are drowned, while the two lovers are separated and thrown up on the far bank. Chrysantza comes upon the corpse of one of the retainers, made unrecognizable from the river. Thinking it is Belthandros, she is about to fall on the dead man''s sword, when Belthandros himself appears to forestall her. The lovers reach the seacoast where they find a ship sent by king Rhodophilos in search for his son. The romance ends with their return to Constantinople, where a wedding ceremony is performed and Belthandros is proclaimed heir to his father''s kingdom.

Belthandros and Chrysantza

A professionally trained cook turned anxious stay-at-home mom, Amy Finley’s marriage was already in fragile shape when she sent in an audition tape for the third season of The Next Food Network Star. When she was cast on the show in 2007, her husband, who feared for their privacy and hated the idea of reality shows and what celebrity could do to their marriage, forbade her to participate, but Finley did anyway, hoping to jumpstart her career and self-esteem. But while she was filming the show in New York, her husband retaliated by threatening to divorce her. Finley was the last contestant eliminated from Season 3 before the two person finale and returned home defeated to put her marriage back in order, but was recalled into the competition when one of the finalists had to withdraw, and ultimately was voted the winner and starred in her own cooking show, The Gourmet Next Door. But she gave up the show when she realized her family was so shaky, the stress would probably cause her marriage to fail. To get away from a life that had gotten too complicated, they moved to France and took a road trip Finley had dreamed about since she was living in Paris, falling in love with her husband, and going to culinary school. They drive all over France, and while they are learning about and enjoying regional dishes, Finley tries to figure out how her marriage became so delicate, and how to make it, and herself, strong again.

How to Eat a Small Country

Nicholaï Hel is an assassin, born in Shanghai in the 1930s and raised in a cosmopolitan fashion by his mother, a deposed member of the Russian aristocracy, and a general in the Japanese Imperial Army who has been billeted in Nicholaï''s mansion. Under the general, Hel is introduced to the concept of shibumi and the game Go, eventually being sent to Japan, where he trains under a famous master of the game and becomes ''culturally Japanese''. The master of this school discovers Nicholai''s ability to mentally escape from reality and come back rested and refreshed. When Japan surrenders in 1945, Hel, after long months of hunger, finds (thanks to his knowledge of many languages) a job as an interpreter in the US Occupation Army and becomes a decoder agent in United States Intelligence. Hel learns that the general who raised him is being held as a prisoner of war by the Russians and faces an ignominious show-trial for war crimes, and decides that the only way he can show his gratitude for the man''s raising him in Shanghai is to kill him and help him avoid the embarrassment of the trial. He achieves this through his skills at the art of "Naked/Kill", a martial discipline that trains in the use of ordinary items as instruments of death. Hel is then tortured by the Americans and held in solitary confinement without trial, Hel being a citizen of no country. In prison, his physical and mental discipline, along with studying the Basque language from some old books abandoned by a missionary, help him to retain his sanity, although, due to the torture and drugs used in his interrogation, he is no longer able to fully escape mentally and reach his state of peaceful ecstasy. He even develops, in his solitude, a "proximity sense" through which he is aware of any being drawing near (along with its amicable or hostile intentions), and which also allows him to find his way in complete darkness. After three years, Hel is recruited out of his cell by the US Intelligence Service. It is in desperate need of an agent able to cause severe discord between Russia and China. It needs someone who has nothing to lose, who has European features, and who can speak fluent Chinese and Russian. Hel succeeds in his mission, taking for payment the names and locations of those who tortured him, and goes on to become one of the highest-paid and most skillful assassins in the world. The novel begins with Hel, retired in his late fifties in a small castle overlooking a village of the Haute-Soule, in the mountainous Northern Basque Country. He is an honorary member of the local Basque population, and his best friend among them is Beñat Le Cagot, a truculent Basque nationalist and bard, with whom he shares an immense love for freedom and an addiction to spelunking. Hel thinks he is now allowed to enjoy life in a shibui way (mingling discreet epicureanism with fatalism and detachment) and he slowly improves his Japanese garden, enjoys restrictive gastronomy, and practices highly esoteric sex with his concubine. Hel''s shibumi existence is interrupted by the arrival of the niece of a man who saved Hel''s life many years ago, herself the only survivor of a Jewish commando unit that took up arms to terminate the last of the Black September terrorists, the rest of the small unit having been gunned down in an Italian airport by CIA agents. She begs Hel to help her finish her mission and eliminate the terrorists, and gain revenge on the Mother Company.

Shibumi

Taking place almost a year after the first novel, the plot picks up with Third Echelon attempting to search and bring to justice the members of The Shop, an international arms dealing ring that played a large part in the first novel. While Sam Fisher is working to collect information on The Shop in Ukraine and Russia, Third Echelon is continuing its investigation into how the Shop had previously managed to gain the identity of a number of Splinter Cells and murder them, another plot element from the first book. However, when a German scientist named Jeinsen, who had defected to the United States from East Germany long ago, goes missing and then reappears dead in Hong Kong, heads begin to turn. Jeinsen had developed a new submarine vehicle for the United States Navy, that could theoretically carry a nuclear weapon. Sam Fisher is sent to learn why the scientist was in Hong Kong and who killed him; it is suspected that a local group of Triads named the Lucky Dragons had involvement. What Third Echelon does not yet realize is that Jeinsen, the Lucky Dragons, The Shop, and a traitor inside their own government are all part of a much larger picture involving a rogue Chinese general named Lan Tun, with ambitions to invade and conquer Taiwan. With Sam Fisher not even aware that he is the world''s only hope of stopping an international crisis, he has to balance his job and a new romantic relationship with his Krav Maga instructor Katia Loenstern. Despite Sam''s best efforts, Katia is killed by a Russian Mafiya sniper hired by The Shop to assassinate Sam Fisher. Ultimately, General Tun threatens to use the submarine vehicle to detonate an MRUUV (a very deadly nuclear bomb) off the coast of California, destroying LA with a massive tsunami, unless America abandons Taiwan when it is invaded by China. Fisher manages to foil the plot, and all the conspirators involved including the traitor, the general, and the Shop are viciously gunned down. The attack on Taiwan is a failure, as the Taiwanese military, with backup from the United States Navy, fends off the invading forces in a matter of hours.

Tom Clancy''s Splinter Cell: Operation Barracuda

The story starts with Chamberlain’s 1938 triumphant return to 10 Downing Street, a public hero after the signing of the Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler, declaring "peace in our time." The story ends with the fall of the Chamberlain Government, and the appointment of Churchill as Prime Minister. Churchill, relegated to the periphery of British politics by the late Thirties, lashes out against appeasement despite having almost no support from fellow parliamentarians or the British press. The novel includes many of the momentous historical personages of the day: Chamberlain, the ailing and pacifist Prime Minister; Churchill, the political outcast, whose pugnacity created opprobrium in the public eye; Joseph Kennedy, the U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James''s; Guy Burgess, an alcoholic BBC journalist of later Cold War infamy; the machiavellian newspaper mogul, Max Aitken, (Lord Beaverbrook), and the stuttering and insecure King George VI, who personally detests Churchill and tries to persuade his good friend, Lord Halifax, to take the reins of leadership. Winston''s War is the first in a series of novels by Dobbs about Churchill''s wartime leadership. The sequel Never Surrender continues the storyline over the first few weeks of Churchill''s premiership.

Winston''s War

Writing his thesis (''The Book of Daniel'') Daniel investigates the background to his parents'' conviction and execution with his adoptive parents (the Lewins). The final dénouement is the revisiting, in flashback, of the death of his parents, and in due course the death from nervous disorder (and attempted suicide) of Daniel''s sister. The novel closes with the library in which Daniel is working being closed by student unrest, and Daniel closing his work with a parody of lines from Chapter 12 of the Biblical Book of Daniel. The book is written in four parts, and in each Daniel is the principal narrator; the narrative moves fluidly and rapidly between 1967 (''the present'') and flashback (to the late 40s/early 50s), and between first and third person:- :1. Memorial Day - Opens, in 1967, with Daniel, his young wife, Phyllis and baby Paul, walking to the sanatorium to see Susan; closes with the dropping of atom bomb in Japan :2. Halloween - closes with the lawyer, Ascher, telling Daniel and Susan of the forthcoming start of the Isaacsons'' trial :3. Starfish - closes with Daniel''s bruising involvement in an anti-draft march, whilst his sister (the starfish of the title) is lying dying from complications following her suicide attempt. : Daniel says with irony to Phyllis through broken teeth ''...It looks worse than it is. There was nothing to it. It is a lot easier to be a revolutionary nowadays than it used to be.'' :4 Christmas - recalls the closing moments of the trial, including the key evidence from their co-accused, Selig Mindish; Daniel''s later search for, and discovery of Mindish, now senile, in Disneyland; and the funerals of Daniel''s parents and his sister Susan.

The Book of Daniel

In South Africa under apartheid, Mehring is a rich white businessman who is not satisfied with his life. His ex-wife has gone to America, his liberal son (who is probably gay) criticizes his conservative/capitalist ways and his lovers and colleagues do not seem actually interested in him. Out of a whim he buys a farm outside the city, afterwards trying to explain this purchase to himself as the search for a higher meaning in life. But it is clear that he knows next to nothing to farming, and that black workers run it - Mehring is simply an outsider, an intruder on the daily life of "his" farm. One day the black foreman, Jacobus, finds an unidentified dead body on the farm. Since the dead man is black, the police find no urgency to look into the case and simply bury the body on the spot where it was found. The idea of an unknown black man buried on his land begins to "haunt" Mehring. This has been interpreted as the influence of apartheid on the class of privileged white people who profit from it while ignoring its victims. A flood brings the body back to the surface; although the farm workers do not know the stranger, they now give him a proper burial as if he were a family member. There are hints that Mehring''s own burial will be less emotional than this burial of a stranger. This can be interpreted to symbolize the white man''s position in South Africa: although he "owns" the land on a piece of paper, the black natives have the actual claim on the land. it:Il conservatore

The Conservationist

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

Dr. Jonathan Kingsley, traveling to a Himalayan spiritual hermitage, tries to save himself from suicidal thoughts after the death of his wife. This hermitage, known as an Ashram, was meant to provide him peace even as he sought to rehabilitate others through volunteer work. But he never expected the practices and rituals he would discover, or imagined himself trying to save one woman from her unwanted future. As the doctor searches for an excuse to keep on living, Seeta struggles to keep her own husband alive, not only out of love, but for her own safety. The townspeople of Baramedi, bowing to the wishes of a local landowner (nicknamed Satan), have decided that when her husband dies, Seeta should climb atop a burning pyre to burn with his body. This practice of suttee, out of use for many years, brings Jonathan to her town in an effort to save her, but when he arrives at the pyre, he realizes there is more to his journey and that—unbeknownst to him—the woman’s safety is intricately tied with his own spiritual salvation. A woman''s emancipation from oppressive culture and fear of men; a man''s overcoming of inability to cope with death and learning to love—again!

The Ashram

An artificial radio signal from Barnard''s Star listing prime numbers (although the term "prime" is never used in the story) is received at the Mesa Radio Astronomy Observatory. One of the radio-astronomers is a Russian spy and tries to inform his superiors; however he is uncovered by his fellows and subsequently killed. The CIA hires James Bludd, a prominent astrophysicist, to try to understand what is going on. Several plotlines follow and intertwine, most of them centering around personal greed. News of the extraterrestrial message leaks to the outside world, with different consequences. A bum and a waitress build a cult, calling themselves the Star People, which seeks to find a new home on the Barnard''s planet. Multinational, a corporation, decides to invest money into the cult, in order to have an easy to manipulate spaceship crew ready to take possession of the inhabited planet on behalf of the company. A dying biologist, Dr.Crowben, decides to push on the creation of plant-human hybrids biologically suited to the planet environment, which also this plan falls within the scope of the Multinational. Meanwhile, the two surviving astrophysicists have been abducted by the KGB, and Bludd learns that Russians plan to answer to the signal using neutrinos. The international situation further complicates when a small fictional African state, Sidiami, burdened by debts with other countries, decides to "secede from planet Earth" and declares itself a colony of the planet around Barnard. The "Star People" decide to relocate in Sidiami, and the Multinational starts plans to launch a probe towards the Barnard''s planet from there. James Bludd finds himself implicated in the ongoing struggle between the USA, the Multinational and the "Star People" to get advantage of the situation. At the end, the space probe is launched towards the Barnard''s planet. Bludd, convinced that humankind is not ready for contact with aliens, has sabotaged it and after a while makes it explode with the aid of a remote control. When later, in the observatory, a new possible artificial extraterrestrial signal is received from space, Bludd destroys all evidence of it with a smile.

Life on Another Planet

Texas Governor Elisha Pease sends a small troop of Texas Rangers, under the leadership of Captain Inish Scull, to the Llano Estacado in pursuit of the celebrated Comanche horse thief, Kicking Wolf. This bold Indian steals Hector, Scull''s famous horse, and takes it to the Sierra Perdida to give to the notorious Mexican bandit Ahumado, feared for the horrible tortures that he inflicts upon his victims. Scull, promoting McCrae and Call to Captains and instructing them to lead the Ranger troop back to Austin, sets off on foot after Kicking Wolf, accompanied only by the Kickapoo tracker Famous Shoes. Ahumado ties Kicking Wolf up to be dragged away by a horse, and takes Kicking Wolf''s companion, Three Birds, prisoner. Ahumado intends to impose a slow death on Three Birds, but Three Birds throws himself off a cliff. Scull finds the unconscious Kicking Wolf being dragged by the horse, and cuts the Comanche''s bonds, which allows Kicking Wolf to survive and return to his tribe. Scull is soon captured by Ahumado, and placed in a cage, where he is supposed to die slowly. Having returned to Austin, McCrae learns that his beloved Clara Forsythe intends to marry his rival, horse trader Bob Allen (though she is not married yet, as Scull''s wife had led McCrae to believe). Call learns that his lover, the reluctant whore Maggie Tilton, is pregnant with his child. Prompted by Scull''s insistent and promiscuous wife Inez, Governor Pease sends Call and McCrae out in charge of another typically small Ranger troop to rescue Captain Scull. While they are on this mission, Comanche chief Buffalo Hump leads his nation on the warpath. They burn much of Austin, killing Clara''s parents and ravaging fellow Ranger Long Bill Coleman''s wife, Pearl. Maggie, having been prepared by Call, hides under a smokehouse, thus escaping the Comanches'' notice. The Rangers turn back to Austin as soon as they hear of the raid there. Pearl and Long Bill are unable to recover emotionally, and Long Bill hangs himself. Scull handles the cage so well that Ahumado has him taken down, and has his henchman Goyeto cut off his eyelids. Ahumado sends word to Austin that he will return Scull for a ransom of one thousand cattle. Governor Pease sends the Rangers out once again, to collect the cattle and exchange the herd for Scull. The Rangers go to Lonesome Dove in search of cattleman Captain King. Realizing they will not be able to even gather the cattle, let alone persuade King to sell them, Call and McCrae set out to try to rescue Scull on their own terms, leaving the rest of their troop behind. Meanwhile, Ahumado has been bitten by a brown recluse spider, and goes South to die. Call and McCrae find Scull going insane in a pit, but the rescue is soon enough to allow Scull to mostly recover. Scull returns to Austin and later becomes a general with the Union army. Because of the eyepieces he has devised, he becomes known as "Blinders" Scull. Meanwhile, Buffalo Hump banishes his half-Mexican son Blue Duck. Blue Duck goes East and acquires wealth and notoriety as the leader of a gang of bandits. At this point, the novel moves more quickly, giving highlights covering the period leading up to the sequel, Lonesome Dove. Maggie gives birth to Call''s son Newt, but Call refuses to acknowledge the child is his. She goes to work at the general store, and Jake Spoon more or less moves in with her. The Civil War takes most of the soldiers away from the frontier, enabling the Comanches to push back the white settlers. After the Civil War, Call and McCrae are sent in pursuit of Blue Duck and his band of renegades. Buffalo Hump has gone off to die. Blue Duck hears of this and leaves his cutthroats to pursue his father. The Rangers attack his band, but Blue Duck, having left, evades capture. He finds his father at his chosen place of death and kills him there. Maggie dies while the Rangers are on this expedition.

Comanche Moon

The curtain rises on three identical grey funeral “urns”, about three feet tall by preference, arranged in a row facing the audience. They contain three stock characters. In the middle urn is a man (M). To his right is his wife (W1) or long-time partner. The third urn holds his mistress (W2). Their “[f]aces [are] so lost to age and aspect as to seem almost part of the urns.” Beckett has used similar imagery before, Mahood’s jar in The Unnameable, for example, or the dustbins occupied by Nell and Nagg in Endgame. At the beginning and end of the play, a spotlight picks out all three faces, and all three characters recite their own lines, in what Beckett terms a "chorus"; “He wrote each part separately, then interspersed them, working over the proper breaks in the speeches for a long time before he was satisfied.” One character speaks at a time and only when a strong spotlight shines in his or her face. The style is reminiscent of Mouth’s logorrhoea http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/logorrhea%20 in Not I, the obvious difference being that these characters constantly use first person pronouns. Clichés and puns abound. While one is talking the other two are silent and in darkness. They neither acknowledge the existence of the others around them (M: “To think we were never together”) nor appear aware of anything outside their own being and past (W2: “At the same time I prefer this to . . . the other thing. Definitely. There are endurable moments”). Beckett writes that this spotlight "provokes" the character''s speech, and insists that whenever possible, a single, swivelling light should be used, rather than separate lights switching on and off. In this manner the spotlight is “expressive of a unique inquisitor”. Billie Whitelaw referred to it as “an instrument of torture.” The spotlight is in effect the play’s fourth character. In an almost fugal style the three obsess over the affair. Each presents his or her own version of the truth told in the past tense and each from his or her respective points of view. It is one of Beckett’s most ‘musical’ pieces with “a chorus for three voices, orchestration, stage directions concerning tempo, volume and tone, a da capo repeat of the entire action” and a short coda. Towards the end of the script, there is the concise instruction: "Repeat play." Beckett elaborates on this in the notes, by saying that the repeat might be varied. “[I]n the London production, variations were introduced: a weakening of light and voices in the first repeat, and more so in the second; an abridged second opening; increasing breathlessness; changes in the order of the opening words.” At the end of this second repeat, the play appears as if it is about to start again for a third time (as in Act Without Words II), but does not get more than a few seconds into it before it suddenly stops. “The affair was unexceptional. From the moment when the man tried to escape his tired marriage and odious professional commitments by taking a mistress, [events took a predictable enough course:] the wife soon began to ‘smell her off him’; there were painful recriminations when the wife accused the man, hired a private detective, threatened to kill herself, and confronted the mistress in an old rambling house reminiscent of Watt (and where the servant again is ‘Erskine’) … The man renounced the mistress, was forgiven by his wife who ‘suggested a little jaunt to celebrate, to the Riviera or … Grand Canary,’ and then, [true to form], returned to the mistress, this time to elope with her. [In time] their relationship too became jaded, and the man” abandons her as well. According to Knowlson and John Pilling in Frescoes of the Skull: the later prose and drama of Samuel Beckett, “[T]he three figures in Play … are not three-dimensional characters. Any attempt to analyse them as if they were would be absurd. The stereotype predominates … [They] belong … to the artificial world of melodrama and romance embodied in romanticized fiction.”

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Belthandros and Chrysantza

No Author Listed

How to Eat a Small Country

No Author Listed

Shibumi

No Author Listed

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Operation Barracuda

By David Michaels

Winston's War

By Michael Dobbs

The Book of Daniel

By E. L. Doctorow

The Conservationist

By Nadine Gordimer

The Holcroft Covenant

By Robert Ludlum

The Ashram

By Sattar Memon

Life on Another Planet

No Author Listed

Comanche Moon

By Larry McMurtry

Play

By Samuel Beckett