Paul Faustino, a journalist for La Nación, is interviewing El Gato about his recent World Cup win. During the interview, El Gato tells Faustino about his teenage years and his entry into soccer. When El Gato tells Faustino that he is coached by a ghost known to El Gato as "the Keeper," Faustino thinks El Gato is lying to him. However, El Gato seems honest and looks like he is telling the truth. El Gato continues to tell the interviewer his story. As a teenager, he secretly trains with the Keeper in an abandoned soccer field hidden in the rainforest. The young El Gato convinces his parents his time in the rainforest is the result of his fascination with nature. His family takes him for a naturalist, buying him collection materials and calling him "Professor." The charade continues until El Gato turns 15, when he is expected to start working in the logging industry with his father. He does not tell the Keeper that he will no longer come to practice. His first Saturday at work he finds out that his co-workers play a game of soccer after work. His co-workers invite him to play as the goalkeeper and, in his first game since his training with the Keeper, he helps his team win. The next Saturday, he plays with a new player who the others call "El Ladron", meaning "the thief." In reality, El Ladron is a director for a soccer camp named DSJ. He also brings the owners of the team, Mr. and Mrs. DaSilva to the games. They want to sign El Gato for a two year contract and give him 10,000 dollars. This begins his professional soccer career. Finally, El Gato reveals to Paul Faustino that he cheated in the second last penalty shot of the World Cup. El Gato tells Faustino that he wants the interview to be a book. Faustino hesitates because he has to give this interview to his boss. However, he changes his mind and helps El Gato turn his interview into a book. El Gato eventually quits soccer and becomes a naturalist, just as his parents had always imagined. At the end of the novel, El Gato explains the Keeper''s history as a real player.

Keeper

Michael Tighe of the Psychotechnic Institute has been kidnapped by Thomas Bancroft, a politician with ties to an authoritarian movement called the Actionists. Tighe''s adopted son, Simon Delgatty, sets out to find him, but is himself captured by Bancroft and taken to his base on an island off the coast of Mexico. In the course of raising Delgatty, Tighe has trained him to exert conscious control over what are normally subconscious and autonomic brain functions. This allows Delgatty to speed up or slow down his metabolism at will, and also allows him to tell what other people are thinking by listening to them subvocalize their thoughts. Delgatty escapes from Bancroft''s control, and forms an uneasy partnership with Elena Casimir, an undercover FBI agent who has infiltrated Bancroft''s organization. Together, Delgatty and Casimir free Tighe and take Bancroft prisoner, then return to the United States. Bancroft will be imprisoned for kidnapping, but the leader of the Actionists, Bertrand Meade, is still free to continue his secret war against the Psychotechnic Institute.

The Sensitive Man

In A Handful of Dust Waugh satirises the British landed gentry and mercantile class. The novel is set in the 1930s, and focuses on the breakdown of the marriage of Tony and Brenda Last. The aristocratic Tony is preoccupied with the maintenance of his family home, Hetton Abbey, an example of unfashionable Victorian Gothic architecture. John Beaver, a self-interested and impoverished social climber, invites himself to Hetton for the weekend, and soon after begins an affair with Brenda, who yearns for urban excitement. After the Lasts'' son, also called John, dies in a riding accident, Brenda decides that she wants a divorce. In order to avoid any scandal for his wife, Tony agrees to go through the sham of creating appropriate grounds for divorce. Their agreement on the divorce falls apart when Brenda''s brother reveals that Brenda''s family (at Beaver''s urging) will insist on a monetary settlement so large as to require Tony to sell Hetton; Tony refuses to grant or file for a divorce. Instead, he participates in an expedition to Brazil. Stranded in the jungle, Tony falls ill, and his expedition companion, Dr. Messinger, dies while attempting to retrieve help. Tony wanders, delirious, until he stumbles into an isolated tribal village. Once there, he is nursed back to health, and then held captive by a Mr. Todd, who insists that Tony remain forever, reading the works of Charles Dickens to him. Meanwhile, Brenda''s relationship with John Beaver has fallen apart, after it became apparent that she would not become a rich divorcée. Shortly after Tony is declared dead, Brenda marries the couple''s mutual friend, Jock Grant-Menzies. The novel ends with obscure relatives of Tony taking over Hetton. Waugh used as the final chapter for the novel a slightly adapted version of a pre-existing short story, "The Man Who Liked Dickens". When the novel was serialized in the American magazine Harper''s Bazaar, Waugh had to supply a new ending because the short story, which had been published in the US earlier, could not for copyright reasons appear in the magazine. In the alternative ending, included as an appendix in some editions of the book, Tony returns from Brazil and to his relationship with Brenda. Waugh wrote of the novel''s development: "I had just written a short story ["The Man Who Liked Dickens"] about a man trapped in the jungle, ending his days reading Dickens aloud. The idea came quite naturally from the experience of visiting a lonely settler of that kind and reflecting how easily he could hold me prisoner [...] eventually the thing grew into a study of other sorts of savages at home and the civilized man''s helpless plight among them." (Gallagher, 303).

A Handful of Dust

Many of the other characters in the book refer to Jonathan Troy as the golden boy. He''s a senior at the local high school and they call him that because he has everything: Looks, intelligence and talent. But he is not an easy character for the reader to like. We''re given an insight into the mind of a teen-age boy, where he holds nearly everyone he meets in contempt—especially his father, Nathaniel, and his favorite teacher, Feathersmith. The book is written as a series of different events, almost none of them related. Jonathan has had an ongoing relationship with one girl, Etheline. But once he finally succeeds in seducing her, he begins to lose interest, especially when she starts talking about marriage. A chance meeting with a new girl in town, Leafy, gives him new inspiration and he begins pursuit of her. Abbey also introduces the only major gay character in any of his eight novels, Phillip Feathersmith. Abbey doesn''t come right out and say he''s gay, but he describes his "fairy-flower" hands, talks about what a pink little fellow he is, and Jonathan calls him "Fairysmith" in his own mind. Feathersmith shows an attraction to Jonathan that is not very subtle. Most of the story is set in a western Pennsylvania town called Powhattan. It was actually based on the town near where Abbey grew up, Indiana, Pennsylvania. Abbey even uses some of the names of businesses in Indiana in the 1940s for his story. The Blue Star Restaurant becomes the Blue Bell Bar that is the business under the apartment Jonathan Troy shares with his father. There are many hints of the greatness Abbey would fine tune in his later works, including his love of the desert (Jonathan longs to go there); his deep passion for women and beer; and above all his sense of humor. One of the memorable characters in the book is Fatgut, a pathological liar who Jonathan seems close to. But for most of the book you figure Jonathan has no friends, mostly because he''s too full of himself. You hear his every thought, and it''s all very brutally honest. The key secondary character of the story is Jonathan''s father, Nathaniel Troy. He is a Communist living in 1950s America, right about the time of the Red Scare. He receives almost daily threats to his well-being. Jonathan avoids his father as much as possible, living a mostly independent life. But the climax of the story comes when some town drunks decide they''re going to make the Communist kiss the American flag. Another character in the novel is Red Ginter, who would also be a character in The Fool''s Progress. In this book, Ginter is the neighborhood bully who has tormented Jonathan most of his life. In the latter book, he''s a member of a baseball team who hits the game-winning home run, but then refuses to run the bases. There was a real person named Earl "Red" Ginter who was part of Abbey''s early life and seems to be the inspiration for these characters. There is no nobility in Jonathan Troy. Having access to his thoughts kills any affection you might be able to muster. He''s rude to nearly everyone he meets, especially his father. Once he''s made love to Etheline, he looks at her again with fresh perspective and decides he hates her body. And when given an opportunity to stand up for something noble, Jonathan usually turns and heads in the other direction. One of the techniques Abbey uses in this book is devote a few chapters to printing notices in the local newspaper. It provides a slice of small-town life and in at least once case, relates to the plot.

Jonathan Troy

The first time Chub gets the impulse to write, he has witnessed a fight between the girl of his dreams, B.J. Peacock, and her boyfriend Del that centers on a man knowing he''ll never be able to make his woman happy, but that he''ll never be able not to try. Two-Brew is a harsh critic, but feels Chub has the gift—his highest praise for anything Chub has written are four words: "on to the next"--implying that he wants to read more of Chub''s work. Two-Brew''s father runs Sutton Press in New York, and Chub''s first long-awaited visit to New York City is punctuated with the surprise that Two-Brew''s father has agreed to publish Chub''s first short story. Chub''s writing continues, usually after a collision of an emotional experience in his daily life with a childhood memory, and results in a series of short stories. Over one Christmas break, he visits his mother to surprise her with his published short story, but she sees herself portrayed negatively and explodes. Chub leaves almost as soon as he arrives, and returns to the Oberlin dorm with weeks of Christmas break ahead of him and nothing to do but write. He births a long story about his father''s rise, fall and suicide—the best story he''s written, Chub thinks—but Two-Brew insists that it''s wrong for a short story and should be a novel. Chub''s writing continues, but his focus on his studies suffers, and he graduates jobless. He works at a bar the summer after graduation when Two-Brew, now a young executive in his father''s publishing house, suggests Chub connect his short stories and pitch them as a book, as a prelude to the novel about his father. Chub agrees immediately, but Two-Brew has already made the pitch. He hands Chub an envelope with two advance checks, and Chub moves to New York to write his novel. The book of short stories is published as Under the Weather, and is a modest hit. While Chub enjoys the praise, his walkup flat and New York life in general, he simply isn''t writing. He is distracted by illness, and the return of B.J. Peacock into his life, now divorced with a young daughter Jesse, and aware that she inspired Chub''s first story. They fall in love, marry and Chub is blissfully happy as both husband and father. However, B.J.''s jealousy extends to his relationship with Jesse, and during a Hawaii trip designed to recapture their happiness, Jesse is drowned by a rogue wave while in Chub''s care, which leads to divorce, and a long, dark period for Chub. He teaches at his old school and is terrorized by a student he reported for plagiarism. Years pass. Chub lives in New York doing research for other writers, paralyzed by the incandescent emotion of his father''s suicide, Jesse''s death and his divorce. At a party for Two-Brew celebrating his ascension to head of the publishing company, he meets Bonita Kraus ("The Bone"), a tall, intense ex-model with aspirations of writing in the genre of Trash. Two wounded people, they share intimacy of a sort, but only when Sandy Smith, a nubile young fan of Under the Weather shows up at Chub''s doorstep and stays does he feel the urge to love and write again. However, she sought him out because another man told her he was "Charley Fuller" the writer of Under the Weather. Sandy falls to her death from his window while Chub is gone, and while the police seem convinced it was suicide, Chub investigates his former student, now an escaped mental patient, then the man posing as Charley Fuller. His efforts to untangle the case make his writer''s impulse run even more strongly, and he works up an outline of the story, shows it to Two-Brew and gets the cherished "On to the next" reaction. Finally back on the right path, Chub seeks out The Bone, wanting to move in with her so they both can write and support each other, but upon telling his story, The Bone unconsciously lets slip a detail linking her with Sandy''s murder. Chub, terrified, can only repeat to himself that this is excellent material. He just has to live long enough to know how to use it.

The Color of Light

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

The book is about a fourteen-year-old girl, Annie, who falls in love with a boy named Danny. She soon becomes the victim of domestic violence, along with rape. Not long after the two start dating, she finds out she is pregnant. Annie and her mother are left to decide what will become of the baby. At first, Annie tries to keep the baby, who is called "Little Annie," but soon finds it too difficult and gives her up for adoption. The book ends with the words "Annie loves Danny," meaning that Annie had to remember her very first love. There are inconsistencies in the book that support the theory that Beatrice Sparks fabricated the diary. On the first page, Annie remarks, "This morning I... threw a last minute polish on my (due-yesterday) science paper..." However, the entry is written on a Monday. As school never operates regularly on weekends, this would have been impossible. At the end of the novel, Annie mentions that she drew a heart with the words "Annie loves Danny" on a tree on the day of their first meeting; however, Annie did not learn Danny''s name until their second meeting. Whether this is a true story is still unclear.

Annie''s Baby

The fugitive starts a diary after tourists arrive on the desert island where he is hiding. Although he considers their presence a miracle, he is afraid they will turn him in to the authorities. He retreats to the swamps while they take over the museum on top of the hill where he used to live. Through his diary we learn that the fugitive is a writer from Venezuela sentenced to life in prison. He believes he is on the (fictional) island of Villings, a part of the Ellice Islands (now Tuvalu), but is not sure. All he knows is that the island is the focus of a strange disease whose symptoms are similar to radiation poisoning. Among the tourists is a woman who sees the sunset everyday from the cliff on the west side of the island. He spies on her and while doing so falls in love. She and another man, a bearded tennis player called Morel who visits her frequently, speak French among themselves. Morel calls her Faustine. The fugitive decides to approach her, but she does not react to him. He assumes she is ignoring him, but his encounters with the other tourists have the same result. Nobody on the island notices him. He points out that the conversations between Faustine and Morel repeat every week and fears he is going crazy. As suddenly as they appeared, the tourists vanish. The fugitive returns to the museum to investigate and finds no evidence of people being there during his absence. He attributes the experience to a hallucination caused by food poisoning, but the tourists reappear that night. They have come out of nowhere and yet they talk as if they have been there for a while. He watches them closely while still avoiding direct contact and notices more strange things. In the aquarium he encounters identical copies of the dead fish he found on his day of arrival. During a day at the pool, he sees the tourists jump to shake off the cold when the heat is unbearable. The strangest thing he notices is the presence of two suns and two moons in the sky. He comes up with all sort of theories about what is happening on the island, but finds out the truth when Morel tells the tourists he has been recording their actions of the past week with a machine of his invention capable of reproducing reality. He claims the recording will capture their souls, and through looping they will relive that week forever and he will spend eternity with the woman he loves. Although Morel does not mention her by name, the fugitive is sure he is talking about Faustine. After hearing that the people recorded on previous experiments are dead, one of the tourists guesses correctly they will die, too. The meeting ends abruptly as Morel leaves in anger. The fugitive picks up Morel''s cue cards and learns the machine keeps running because the wind and tide feed it with an endless supply of kinetic energy. He understands that the phenomena of the two suns and two moons are a consequence of what happens when the recording overlaps reality &mdash; one is the real sun and the other one represents the sun''s position at recording time. The other strange things that happen on the island have a similar explanation. He imagines all the possible uses for Morel''s invention, including the creation of a second model to resurrect people. Despite this he feels repulsion for the "new kind of photographs" that inhabit the island, but as time goes by he accepts their existence as something better than his own. He learns how to operate the machine and inserts himself into the recording so it looks like he and Faustine are in love, even though she might have slept with Alec and Haynes. This bothers him, but he is confident it will not matter in the eternity they will spend together. At least he is sure she is not Morel''s lover. On the diary''s final entry the fugitive describes how he is waiting for his soul to pass onto the recording while dying. He asks a favor of the man who will invent a machine capable of merging souls based on Morel''s invention. He wants the inventor to search for them and let him enter Faustine''s conscience as an act of mercy.

The Invention of Morel

The book RAW is the story of Brett Dalton''s experience at The Farm, a detention/rehab centre, after being caught breaking into a liquor store at night and stealing alcohol, cigarettes and cash. When he gets to The Farm after an awful, hot, dehydrated trip in the back of a paddy wagon, he is determined not to cooperate or enjoy himself. This does not work in his favour. On meeting most of the inmates Brett makes enemies. He has confrontations with both of the “main guys” in the detention centre, Josh and Tyson. On the first night he decides he''s going to run away. He sneaks out at night and plans on hitch-hiking to civilisation but the first car that picks him up is Sam. After being on the run, and realising how hard his plan is he decides on going back to The Farm. Then he tries skipping class, (which is compulsory). When he doesn''t succeed he starts arguing with the teacher and gets sent out of class, which is just what he wants. He nicks off to behind the wood work shed to have a smoke, and spots a girl carrying supplies from a truck into the kitchen, he is stunned by her beauty. Eventually he meets this girl, Caitlyn and later they become more than friends. Brett meets up with his ex-girlfriend who has a new boyfriend, who tries selling drugs to Frog, (Brett''s room mate) and this causes them, and Josh to cover for each other. When Brett gets up the courage to ask Caitlyn out this come in handy, as the guys covered for him when he snuck out with her, that and the fact that they would but punished to. But things go downhill after he pushes his relationship with Caitlyn too far. She breaks up with him. This makes him angry so he meets up with Rebecca and they steal alcohol and get drunk. This led to Brett drink driving and crashing Sam''s ute. This led to Sam and Brett constantly fighting and Sam ends up sending Brett the magistrate. When Brett realises that he only has five days left in town he wants to ''make things right'' with Caitlyn. This doesn''t go well and leaves Brett more heart-broken and angry. Before he leaves town, Brett is forced to go the big Ride (a cattle drive). On the Ride Josh and Brett get paired and learn more about each other. Brett learns the real reason that Josh is at The Farm, he was raped. Brett is later re-arrested by the millicents for his newest crimes, the novel ends with Sam telling Brett that one can only change their own life. Brett now considers Sam to be an old friend of his.

While on holiday, the protagonist (Scott Carey) is exposed to a cloud of radioactive spray shortly after he accidentally ingests insecticide. The radioactivity acts as a catalyst for the bug spray, causing his body to shrink at a rate of approximately 1/7 of an inch per day. A few weeks later, Carey can no longer deny the truth: not only is he losing weight, he is also shorter than he was and deduces, to his dismay, that his body will continue to shrink. The abnormal size decrease of his body initially brings teases and taunting from local youths, then causes friction in his marriage and family life, because he loses the respect his family has for him because of his diminishing physical stature. Ultimately, as the shrinking continues, it begins to threaten Carey''s life as well; at seven inches tall, he has a battle with the family cat that drives him outdoors, where he is attacked by a swallow in his garden; the conflict drives him through a window into the cellar of his house. Although he survives on the cheese left over in a mousetrap for a while, his size is eventually reduced to less than half an inch, at which point he is forced to engage in a victorious battle with a black widow spider that towers over him. As Carey continues shrinking, he realizes that his original fear that he would shrink into non-existence is incorrect; that he will continue to shrink, but will not disappear as he originally feared, and utters his famous closing line: "If nature existed on endless levels, so also might intelligence."

The Shrinking Man

James J. Kelly, a former soldier in the American military, finds out that the American and Soviet governments are about to conduct tests of a new kind of neutron bomb called the model b or the nC, which will kill every living thing on the planet, leaving it uninhabitable for centuries. The American generals know the cataclysmic effects of conducting these tests but they acquiesce to the tests anyway, ignoring a report provided to the National Security Council which predicts the end of the world if six or more nCs are simultaneously exploded. Mistakenly assured that the Soviets would not explode reciprocating nCs, the generals are unwittingly about to destroy the whole world. James J. Kelly decides to save the human race through an elaborate religious hoax, declaring himself to be Kalki and announcing the end of the world. His secret plan is to kill off everyone in the world except for himself and his wife Lakshmi. These two would then be the last living human couple on the planet. They would be the Adam and Eve to a new human race, giving birth to three sons and six daughters over the next twelve years, who would then intermarry and in about two centuries, the world would be fairly well populated again. In addition to himself and his wife, Kalki decides to bring along three more people to his new world, teachers called Perfect Masters, chosen for their knowledge and the fact that they are all sterile. These three people will teach various fields of science to the new race. Teddy Ottinger will teach engineering, Geraldine O''Connor biology and genetics, and Dr. Giles Lowell medicine. Kalki''s wife Lakshmi is herself a physicist, and Kalki is a chemical engineer. Shockingly, Kalki succeeds in carrying out his insane plan and the entire world dies, leaving behind only Kalki, his wife Lakshmi and the three other Perfect Masters. However, Kalki''s plans go awry when Lakshmi miscarries the first baby girl and it is learnt that Lakshmi is incapable of having children with Kalki. At this point, the only other male in the group, Dr. Lowell, announces that he never had a vasectomy and is the only one now with whom Lakshmi can conceive a child. It had been his plan all along to be the one to father the new human race with Lakshmi, whom he claims to be in love with. When Dr. Lowell admits his treachery, Kalki kills him. The story ends with a bleak postscript from Kelly/Kalki, forty three years after the apocalyptic plague. In the interim period, Teddy died twenty seven years after the plague and Geraldine (Teddy''s lover and Kalki''s second consort) died, as has Lakshmi. Kalki has become the last human alive, and with his death, the human species will become extinct. It is implied that simians will inherit the post-apocalyptic world.

Kalki

Watson visits his friend Holmes at Christmas time and finds him contemplating a battered old hat, brought to him by the commissionaire Peterson after it and a Christmas goose had been dropped by a man in a scuffle with some street ruffians. Peterson takes the goose home to eat it, but comes back later with a carbuncle. His wife has found it in the bird''s crop (throat). Holmes makes some interesting deductions concerning the owner of the hat from simple observations of its condition, conclusions amply confirmed when an advertisement for the owner produces the man himself: Henry Baker. Holmes cannot resist such an intriguing mystery, and he and Watson set out across the city to determine exactly how the jewel, stolen from the Countess of Morcar during her stay at a hotel, wound up in a goose''s crop. The man who dropped the goose, Mr. Henry Baker, clearly has no knowledge of the crime, but he gives Holmes valuable information, eventually leading him to the conclusive stage of his investigation, at Covent Garden. There, a salesman named Breckinridge gets angry with Holmes, complaining about all the people who have pestered him about geese sold recently to the landlord of the Alpha Inn. Clearly, someone else knows that the carbuncle was in a goose and is looking for the bird. Holmes expects that he will have to visit the goose supplier in Brixton, but it proves unnecessary: the other "pesterer" that the salesman mentioned shows up right then, a cringing little man named James Ryder whom Holmes prevails upon to tell the whole sordid story, by first mentioning that Ryder is probably looking for a goose with a black bar on its tail, a remarkable bird that "[laid] an egg after it was dead". Of course, Holmes has already deduced most of it. Ryder, believing he was being pursued for the theft, fed the carbuncle to a goose being bred by his sister Maggie Oakshott. He was to have that goose as a gift, but lost track of which one it was. Thus, when Ryder cut open the goose and found no gem, he went back to his sister, who had provided the Alpha Inn geese, and asked if there was more than one goose that had a black bar on its tail. She said there were two, but he was too late: she had sold them all to Breckinridge at Covent Garden. Breckinridge already sold the geese to the Alpha Inn, and the other goose with a black bar on its tail found its way to Henry Baker as his Christmas fowl. Ryder and his accomplice — the countess''s maid, Catherine Cusack — contrived to disguise the crime to frame John Horner, a plumber who worked at the same hotel as Ryder and had previously been imprisoned for robbery. Holmes, however, does not take the standard action against the man, it being Christmas, and concluding that arresting the clearly anguished Ryder will only make him into a more hardened criminal later. Ryder flees to the continent and Horner will be freed as the case against him will collapse without Ryder''s perjured testimony. Holmes remarks that he is not retained by the police to remedy their deficiencies.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

Keeper

By Mal Peet

The Sensitive Man

By Poul Anderson

A Handful of Dust

By Evelyn Waugh

Jonathan Troy

By Edward Abbey

The Color of Light

By William Goldman

Dragons of Ice

No Author Listed

Annie's Baby

By Beatrice Sparks

The Invention of Morel

By Adolfo Bioy Casares

RAW

No Author Listed

The Shrinking Man

By Richard Matheson

Kalki

By Gore Vidal

The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle

By Arthur Conan Doyle