The novel begins detailing the travels of the main characters as they move through the Old World in order to accomplish temporary goals. Their travels are interrupted by the entrances of Nicholas, who is a Slide (a wizard that is capable of soul stealing and using souls to project himself into animals). This situation is further complicated by Owen, a man from the Bandakar Empire. He poisons Richard in order to force him to help the Bandakar Empire shed the yoke of the Imperial Order. Much of the novel focuses on Richard''s interactions with the Bandakar people. The people of Bandakar are all pristinely ungifted like Richard''s half-sister Jennsen. They are descendants of the house of Rahl who were banished into the Old World thousands of years before. These people were then again banished by the people of the Old World. A wizard,Kaja-Rang, placed them behind a boundary that would force any that tried to leave to walk straight to the Pillars of Creation. The Bandakar shunned all forms of violence and they laid their lives down before any aggressor. It was believed that,because they "could not see evil" or, rather because they strongly embraced a philosophy which required them to disbelieve reality that they were a threat to the existence of the Old World. Richard convinces several of the Bandakar to shed their ideals and embrace the individualist ideas espoused by Richard and his D''Haran Empire. This allowed the Bandakar to take up arms and fight for their own freedom. However, throughout the entire ordeal Richard is reeling not only from the poison the Bandakar gave him, but also because his gift is out of balance. Nathan and Ann go to the Bandakar Empire in order to realign Richard with prophecy. They save Richard and his companions from certain death, but are ultimately unable to aid him in restoring his gift to balance. Eventually Richard realizes that his belief that not eating meat would be the necessary balance to his need to kill was mistaken. By not putting his faith in himself and in his abilities he was creating improper balancing ultimately causing not only the gift within himself to twist and fail, but also the magic of the Sword of Truth to fail. He realizes that his actions are justified in themselves and require no additional balancing. After Richard has once again set himself in order, he and the Bandakar people destroy the remaining Imperial Order encampment in Bandakar resulting in the death of Nicholas, who destroys the antidote, and the rescue of Kahlan. Richard uses his gift to piece together the what and how of creating the antidote himself. During the course of these actions, Zedd and Adie are captured as the Keep is taken by men captured from Bandakar and forced to do the work of the Imperial Order. They were forced to identify random objects from within the keep for a Sister of the Dark. If they refused to do so, they were forced to listen to the screams of children being tortured while their parents begged them to give up the information. As a result of this identification process, Zedd is able to unleash a constructed spell within an object that kills several men in the camp along with all the other artifacts. Zedd and Adie are saved from destruction by three independently orchestrated rescue attempts: Captain Zimmer and some of his men, Chase and Rachel, and Rikka. Adie goes with Zimmer and his men to free the families being used for torture, while Zedd and Chase go back to reclaim the Keep. While in the keep, Zedd remembers a time when it was full of the laughter of children and families; as a result, he invites Chase to move in with his family to guard the keep.

Naked Empire

Martin, the narrator, a rich South African businessman, recalls the events of a weekend which settled the future of his family farm: he wants to sell it although he has promised his father on his death-bed that he will never do so, and although his brother wants to take it over. So he visits the farm for a weekend to tell his mother she will be "evicted". For the trip, he calls off a meeting with his lover Bea, who leaves him for that because she wanted to tell him that she is pregnant. It is a long drive to the farm and he does not often go there. He takes his son Louis along to get closer to him. Since Louis has come back from the Angolan War of Independence, he is traumatized and silent. The imagined good talk between them makes matters worse, though - the father begins by asking his son casually about his "trip to Angola", and when Louis finally opens up and talks about the atrocities of the war, they end up arguing about politics. The farm is extremely drought-stricken, and Martin''s mother has invited a water diviner to look for an underground stream. Martin thinks this is ridiculous. When he then visits the family graveyard for one last time, loses his glasses, so that from then on the egocentric man is in every sense of the word "blind” to the events happening around him. At night, a black worker murders his wife and is taken to prison, leaving a baby and older children behind. This is regarded by the whites as "typical” tribal behavior and helps Martin to underline his opinion that his mother should not run the farm on her own because it is too dangerous - although the real reason is that he will get a good price for the farm. The visit of a few neighbours, who are also farmers, shows that most people in the area are selling their land, which is regarded by those who stay on their family farms as treason. When Martin – still almost blind without his glasses – gets lost in the jungle on a short walk, almost not making it back to the farm where he was born and raised, it is obvious that he does not belong here. Father and son drive home. The farm will be sold and Martin''s mother will live with their family although she and Martin''s wife do not get along. Louis gets an ultimatum to find a job, after which he disappears and never comes back.

Rumours of Rain

This first-person narrative describes the main character Heinrich''s maturation in the regimented household of his father and his subsequent encounter and involvement with the owner of the Rosenhaus, the home, and part of the estate, of a wise, but mysterious older man who becomes a mentor to Heinrich. Heinrich accepts his regimented upbringing without criticism. His father is a merchant who has planned out Heinrich''s early education at home in the minutest detail. When it is time for Heinrich to head out on his own, his father allows his son to choose his own path. We are told that his father is a man of great judgement, as is his mother a model of the matronly virtues. Heinrich''s narration is understated. His retrospective examination of his personal development is presented with what seems to be humility, objectivity and emotional distance. Heinrich becomes a gentleman Natural scientist exploring Alpine mountains and foothills. He is interested in the geology, flora and fauna of the region. On one of his hiking excursions, Heinrich attempts to avoid what he believes will be a dousing by an approaching thunderstorm. Going off the main highway, he approaches the almost fairy-tale like residence of the man of mystery, Freiherr von Risach. The Rosenhaus is the center of Risach''s carefully ordered world devoted to art and gardening, among other things. His mentor''s life-choices and interests, and the model of his day to day, season to season, orderly life in the Rosenhaus, expand Heinrich''s understanding of the way to live his own life. Heinrich''s repeated visits to the Rosenhaus influence his future life choices, including his eventual marriage.

Der Nachsommer

Kramer begins by explaining how this was the most difficult speech he had ever written and introduces a refrain repeated throughout the speech, "I love being gay. I love gay people. I think we''re better than other people. I really do. I think we''re smarter and more talented and better friends. I do, I do, I do, I totally do." He then states that George W. Bush was re-elected based on the trope of "moral values," which served as a synecdoche for gay men and lesbians, leading Kramer to exclaim, "Please note that a huge population of the United States hates us." Rather than offer up answers, Kramer directs the audience to find truth for themselves, stating, "We''re living in pigshit and its up to each one of us to figure out how to get out of it." He addresses the topic of AIDS, one of the main foci of Kramer''s lifework, and warns, "WE HAVE LOST THE WAR AGAINST AIDS." He explains that drugs which treat the symptoms of HIV or AIDS are no cure, and that their ameliorative effects will not last forever. He urges gay men and lesbians to remember those who fought for the rights of People With AIDS and for gay rights, in general, for "we cannot move forward without accepting and understanding our past." Quoting the research of journalist Bill Moyers, Kramer places the struggle for gay and lesbian civil rights within the structure of socioeconomic inequality in the United States, and states that those most privileged in the United States are dedicated not only to destroying the rights and lives of the poor, racial minorities, and non-Christians, but of gay men and lesbians as well. He reveals that in 1971, future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell created a plan to "take back America for the survival of the free enterprise system. Not democracy. Free enterprise." As part of the Powell Manifesto, conservatives in America created foundations to transform one of the most liberal nations in the world into a "classist, racist, homophobic, imperial army of pirates." AIDS worked in favor of this cabal, for "Their wildest dreams then started to come true. The faggots were disappearing and they were doing it to themselves," leading Kramer to conclude, "[I]ntentionality is the only word to describe the genocidal treatment millions of bodies have been drowning in." Kramer concludes by calling gay men and lesbians to action, and states that new treatments for HIV and AIDS make action more urgent, not less: "You who have been given a new lease on life, the very gift of life itself, piss it away." The answer for such destructive ambivalence is a united front that recognizes the negatives, as well as the positives, of gay life.

The Tragedy of Today''s Gays

At an English public school, five students - Liz (the narrator of many flash backs), Mike (the protagonist of most of the student''s time in the titular "hole"), Alex, Frankie and Geoff - are lured into an abandoned cellar by a malevolent prankster named Martyn. All is well for the three days, in which they socialise and get to know each other better; but when three days pass and Martyn is nowhere to be seen, the group must face the possibility that they are trapped indefinitely. Flash forwards of a "dream summer" section punctuate the story, narrated by Liz, reveal that most of them got out of the hole (Liz interacts awkwardly with Alex at one point) and Mike and Liz are now living together while Liz writes a book based on everything that happened within the Hole. Liz also keeps tapes of interviews with a girl named "Lisa" who talks of her romantic relationship with Martyn. In the Hole, they become increasingly desperate for food, beginning to face up to the fact that Martyn''s experiment was really to play God with all of them. Mike and Liz meet at night in the small bathroom section and talk a lot. At one point Mike believes he sees the keyhole of the trapdoor locking them in the Hole "winking" at him, but dismisses this on grounds that he is hallucinating, or so he thinks. The water supplies go off. Mike tells Liz his experience with the "winking" keyhole and from this she decides that Martyn must have bugged the main room but not the bathroom area where Mike and Liz have been talking. Liz formulates a plan to test their theory, by saying how lucky they are to have light, and see if Martyn turns off the electricity. They then sleep together. Liz follows through with it, and everything goes to plan. The electricity goes off. Liz tells the others that a friend of hers knows about the prank and if she doesn''t return he will come and rescue them. Everyone rejoices, but Mike is suspicious. Lisa''s story goes on in parallel to this, via the tapes Liz has made of "interviews" she had with Lisa. On the same day Liz plots this, Lisa goes over to Martyn''s house and tries to break up with him. Martyn barely listens and, in anger, rapes Lisa. After this, he walks out and supposedly never returns. Lisa goes into his office, searching for him, and sees the tapes of The Hole. She realises everything that has gone on and goes to the Hole, rescuing everyone. At this point, Liz''s narrative ends and there is an extremely ambiguous epilogue written by Dr. Phillippa Horwood, who casts the whole of Liz''s testimony in doubt by saying that Michael ("Mike") Rollins died on the sixteenth day in the Hole, that Liz was the "sole survivor" and that no records of the infamous Martyn exist, heavily implying that Liz created Martyn in order to place blame on someone other than herself. It is also heavily implied - but never actually decided - that Liz and Lisa are the same person.

After the Hole

The novel opens with a brief prologue set in 1957 in which the narrator, an Italian Jew, describes a visit to the Ferrara cemetery where the Finzi-Contini family mausoleum stands, empty in all but two slots: a young child, Guido, who died of illness before the narrator was born; and Alberto, the son of the Finzi-Continis and a friend of the narrator''s, who died of lymphogranulomatosis (Hodgkin’s disease) before the mass deportation that sent the remainder of the family to a concentration camp in Germany. At this point, the narrator reveals that none of the Finzi-Continis survived. The first part of the book covers the narrator''s childhood experiences, describing the various social circles of the local Jewish population and the mystery around the Finzi-Contini children, Alberto and Micòl, who were schooled separately from the other Jewish children and who only appeared at the main school for the annual exams. The narrator fails his math test in this particular year, the first time he has failed any of the annual exams required for promotion, and he takes off on his bike out of fear of his father''s reaction. He ends up outside the walls of the Finzi-Continis'' mansion, where he has a conversation with Micòl, the Finzi-Continis'' pretty daughter. The narrator is invited by Micòl to enter the garden. He excuses himself out of concern for the safety of his bicycle. She then comes over the wall to show him a safe hiding place, but while hiding his bike he dallies in contemplation of Micòl - and loses his chance to see the garden until years later. The next two parts of the book cover the years when the children are all in or just out of college. The racial laws have restricted their ability to socialize with the Ferrarese Christians, and so the narrator, Alberto, Micòl, and Giampi Malnate (an older Christian friend with socialist views) form an informal tennis club of their own, playing several times a week at the court in the Finzi-Continis'' garden. During these visits, the narrator declares, shyly at first but more and more forcefully, his love for Micòl. However, her attitude towards the narrator remains one of friendship so that the relationship slowly peters out. The final section of the book covers the slow fading of the narrator''s involvement in the tennis club, his futile attempts to restart the romance with Micòl, and his growing friendship with Malnate whom he suspects at the end of the book of having an affair with Micòl.

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis

During their most recent outing, three friends see Zenia, a long-dead university classmate who had stolen, one by one, their respective beaux. The novel alternates between the present and flashbacks featuring the points of view of Tony, Charis, and Roz, respectively. Zenia has given each woman a different version of her biography, tailor-made to insinuate herself into their lives. No one version of Zenia is the truth, and the reader knows no more than the characters. Their betrayals by Zenia are what initially bring the three together as friends and bind their lives together irrevocably; their monthly luncheons began after her funeral. The novel, like other works by Atwood, deals with power struggles between men and women; it is also a meditation on the nature of friendship, power, and trust between women. Zenia''s character can be read as either the ultimate self-empowered woman, a traitor who abuses sisterhood, or simply a self-interested mercenary who cunningly uses the "war between the sexes" to further her own interests. One reading posits Zenia as a kind of guardian angel to the women, saving them from unworthy men. Atwood claims that of all the characters she has written, she identifies most "with Zenia. She is the professional liar, and what else do fiction writers do but create lies that other people will believe?" In the novel''s present, Roz, Charis, and Tony finally each individually confront Zenia in a Toronto hotel room, where she tells each of them that the men they''d been with got what they deserved, and gives various versions of her earlier staged death, each as implausible as the accounts of her life. One of the four women never leaves that hotel alive. The novel itself leaves the reader questioning who was (or were) the victim(s) of life.

The Robber Bride

In the 19th century, a boy named Nello becomes an orphan at the age of two when his mother dies in the Ardennes. His grandfather Jehan Daas, who lives in a small village near the city of Antwerp, takes him in. One day, Nello finds a dog who was almost beaten to death and names him Patrasche. Due to the good care of Jehan, the dog recovers, and from then on, Nello and Patrasche are inseparable. Since they are very poor, Nello has to help his grandfather by selling milk. Patrasche is shackled to a dogcart and helps Nello pull the milk into town each morning. Nello falls in love with Aloise, the daughter of a well-off man in the village named Nicholas Cogez. Nicholas doesn''t want his daughter to have a poor sweetheart. Although Nello is illiterate, he is very talented in drawing. He enters a junior drawing contest in Antwerp, hoping to win the first prize, 200 francs per year. However, the jury selects somebody else. Afterwards, he is accused of causing a fire by Nicholas (the fire occurred on his property) and his grandfather dies. His life becomes even more desperate. Having no place to stay, Nello goes to the cathedral of Antwerp to see Rubens'' The Elevation of the Cross, but he doesn''t have enough money to enter. On the night of Christmas Eve, he and Patrasche go to Antwerp and, by chance, find the door to the church open. The next morning, the boy and his dog are found frozen to death in front of the triptych. In another version, they go the village church. The pastor, finding them in the church, covers them with a woolen blanket, thus saving their lives. Two days later, one of the judges comes, and because he thought Nello was the true winner, he asks him to stay with him. As years pass, Patrasche dies, and Nello becomes a famous artist.

A Dog of Flanders

The year in which the novel is set is never made explicit, but cannot be later than 1951. Jim Dixon is a medieval history lecturer at a redbrick university in the English Midlands. The comic dynamic of the novel is Dixon''s rebellion against the cant and pretension he meets in academic life, and the uncontrolled escalation of this from private fantasy to public display. It seems a disastrous trajectory, but Jim is ''lucky'', and the novel ends with possession of relative affluence, the London life he craves, and the girl. Dixon is a northern, grammar school-educated, lower middle class young man, and not a natural fit with the high cultural values he meets in academic society. The action takes place towards the end of the academic year, and having made an unsure start in the department, he is concerned not to lose his position at the end of his probationary first year. In his attempt to be awarded tenure, he tries to maintain a good relationship with his head of department, Professor Welch, an absent-minded and gauche pedant. He must also, to establish his credentials, ensure the publication of his first scholarly article, and with very little time remaining. Dixon struggles with an on-again off-again "girlfriend" Margaret Peel (a fellow lecturer and possibly based on Monica Jones, the sometime muse and companion of Amis'' friend Philip Larkin), who is recovering from a failed suicide attempt in the wake of an unsuccessful relationship with a previous boyfriend. Margaret employs emotional blackmail to appeal to Dixon''s sense of duty and pity to keep him in an ambiguous and sexless relationship. Professor Welch holds a musical weekend that seems to be an opportunity for Dixon to advance his standing amongst his colleagues, but this goes dreadfully wrong when Dixon gets drunk and burns his host''s bedclothes. At the weekend, Dixon meets Christine Callaghan, a young Londoner and the latest girlfriend of Professor Welch''s son Bertrand, an amateur painter whose affectedness particularly infuriates Dixon. After a bad start, Dixon realises he is attracted to Christine, who is far less pretentious than she initially appears. Dixon''s obvious attempts to court Christine upset Bertrand who is using his relationship with her to reach her well-connected Scottish uncle, who is seeking an assistant in London. Dixon rescues Christine from the university''s annual dance when Bertrand treats her badly. The pair kiss and make a tea date, but during the date Christine admits she feels too guilty about seeing Dixon behind Bertrand''s back and because Dixon is supposed to be seeing Margaret. The two decide not to continue seeing each other. Meanwhile, Margaret''s ex-boyfriend telephones Dixon and asks to see him to discuss Margaret. The novel reaches its climax during Dixon''s public lecture on "Merrie England," which goes horribly wrong as Dixon, attempting to calm his nerves with an excess of alcohol, uncontrollably begins to mock Welch and everything else that he hates; he finally passes out. Welch, not unsympathetically, informs Dixon his employment will not be extended. However, Christine''s uncle, who reveals a tacit respect for Dixon''s individuality and attitude towards pretension, offers Dixon the coveted assistant job in London that pays much better than his lecturing position. Dixon then meets Margaret''s ex-boyfriend, who reveals that he was not exactly Margaret''s boyfriend at all, and the two realize that the suicide attempt was faked to emotionally blackmail both men. Dixon feels he is free of Margaret. Dixon finally has the last laugh, as Christine finds out Bertrand was also pursuing an affair with the wife of one of Dixon''s former colleagues; she decides to pursue her relationship with Dixon. At the end of the book, Dixon and Christine bump into the Welches on the street; Jim cannot help walking right up to them, with Christine on his arm, and collapsing in laughter at how ridiculous they truly are.

Lucky Jim

Doyle''s pureblood Brachen demon father Axtius is the General for the Coalition of Purity which believes that all half-blood demons should be banished, leaving only the purebloods on Earth. Both Angel and Buffy are dealing with this threat in their respective cities when Buffy''s team learns that General Axtius plans to attack a half-blood demon safe haven island near Los Angeles. Uprooting the Scooby Gang, Buffy and the rest of them travel quickly to Los Angeles to help Angel deal with the increasing problem. Unfortunately, the demons on the island who are in need of saving seem to be sceptical about having vampires as well as the Slayer on their island and they must be convinced that it''s for their benefit before General Axtius and his troops launch a full-fledged attack on the island. In their final confrontation on the island, Angel defeats Axtius when unarmed despite Axtius wielding a powerful mystical weapon, taunting the Brachen by saying that he would have been ashamed of Doyle''s very human act of sacrifice and redemption. Having been defeated by Angel, Axtius is subsequently incinerated by his former second-in-command for his failure to destroy the island.

Monster Island

At the start of the book, a mother and her son escape from their evil stepfather. The stepfather, named Chris, hears them and chases them to the local tube station, though he is unsuccessful in his efforts to catch them. Unknown to Chris, the mother, Cathy, and the son, Danny, are going to live with Cathy''s mother and father, Joan and Harry, in an area of the country known as "the Edge". Chris believes that he owns Cathy, and tries to get her back. At first, Harry refuses to accept Danny because he is both Mixed Race, and the result of an unplanned teenage pregnancy. As the book progresses, Harry accepts Danny as his grandson. Danny has a lot of trouble at school with a racist bully named Steve Parker and his friends. Danny befriends, and later dates a girl called Nikki, who Steve fancies. Nikki warns him not to get on the wrong side of Steve; it is implied in the novel that Steve and his gang were responsible for an arson attack on a black-owned store. Also during this time Danny encounters his real father, a man named Des, who saves him from Steve''s gang. Chris, meanwhile, is attempting in vain to find out where Cathy fled to. She covered her tracks well leaving virtually no clues. Eventually, he finds a newspaper article, and is able to deduce where she and Danny have gone. Chris shows up at Danny''s new school, and chases him back to the house. Attempting to retake Cathy by force, he overpowers Harry, before being restrained by police officers. At the end of the novel, Chris is in prison, and Danny now has a happy family and a good life.

The Edge

"The Runaway Skyscraper" concerns Arthur Chamberlain, an engineer who works in a midtown Manhattan office building called the Metropolitan Tower. When the sun suddenly begins moving backwards in the sky, setting rapidly in the east, he is the only one to realize what is actually happening: a flaw in the rock beneath the building has caused it to subside, but instead of moving in space, the building is falling backwards into the past. When the subsidence finally ends, the building is located several thousand years in the past, and its 2000-odd inhabitants find themselves stranded in pre-Columbian Manhattan. Chamberlain also realizes that the same seismic forces that caused the building to drop back into the past can also be used to return it to the present, but that doing so will require several weeks of intensive work by the building''s inhabitants, and in the meantime they must concentrate on feeding themselves. Chamberlain convinces the president of a bank on the first floor that he can return them to the present, and together they are able to organize the other inhabitants into hunting and fishing parties. Two weeks later, Chamberlain is ready to implement his plan. He forces a jet of soapy water into an artesian well beneath the building, and this allows the pressure that has built up in the rock to be released. The building travels forward in time again, returning to the exact moment when it began to travel into the past.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

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Naked Empire

By Terry Goodkind

Rumours of Rain

No Author Listed

Der Nachsommer

By Adalbert Stifter

The Tragedy of Today's Gays

By Larry Kramer

After the Hole

By Guy Burt

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis

By Giorgio Bassani

The Robber Bride

By Margaret Atwood

A Dog of Flanders

By Ouida

Lucky Jim

By Kingsley Amis

Monster Island

By Thomas E. Sniegoski

The Edge

By Alan Gibbons

The Runaway Skyscraper

By Murray Leinster