In the near future, a race riot results in the destruction of an area just outside Los Angeles. In order to prevent the area from devolving into a tent slum, the city sells the construction rights to a private company, which then constructs an arcology, named Todos Santos. The higher standard of living enjoyed by Todos Santos residents causes resentment among Angelenos. The arcology dwellers have evolved a different culture, sacrificing privacy - there are cameras (not routinely monitored) even in the private apartments - in exchange for security. The residents are fiercely loyal to the arcology and its management, and the loyalty runs both ways. During the course of the novel, Todos Santos is compared to a feudal society, with loyalty and obligations running both ways, hence the title. The systems at the arcology are run by MILLIE, an advanced computer system, and some high-level executives have direct links to MILLIE via implants in their brains. Other workers in the arcology work by telepresence, including one woman who remotely operates construction equipment on a lunar base. Todos Santos causes resentment among Angelenos, but has improved their lives as well. The company that owns the arcology tows icebergs in, solving the water shortage for all Southern Californians. Todos Santos has dug a Los Angeles subway using a digging machine, which uses an oxyhydrogen torch. Todos Santos is at the hub of the subway system, and contains a huge mall, which Angelenos may visit. This easy access causes Los Angeles'' city officials to complain about the shopping dollars and tax revenues going outside the city limits. As the story opens, three young Angelenos sneak into the maintenance areas of Todos Santos. When they are detected by Todos Santos'' security systems and personnel, they give every appearance of being terrorists, including spoofing the correct electronic access codes. When non-lethal means of stopping the three fail, Deputy Manager Preston Sanders orders lethal gas released rather than risk a bomb going off. Two of the intruders are killed. They turn out to be youths, with high tech equipment and boxes with such labels as "bomb", but without the actual means of harming the arcology. It soon turns out that they were duped by the "Friends of Man and the Earth" (FROMATE), anti-technology zealots who want to see Todos Santos destroyed or abandoned, as a means of forcing the arcology to turn off its lethal defenses for a later real attack. The deaths of the two youths cause political problems. Sanders is charged with murder. While arcology manager Art Bonner is quite prepared to defy the city authorities, Sanders turns himself in. The arcology is forced to turn off its lethal defenses as the FROMATEs planned. When that happens, they soon face a full-fledged attack by the FROMATEs, which they deter by non-lethal means, until the intruders prove they have deadly weapons, at which point Todos Santos security responds in kind, shooting and killing most of the intruders. While city authorities are still reacting to this, the arcology launches a jailbreak, the idea of chief engineer (and resident genius) Tony Rand. They tunnel under the jail, release sleep gas into the jail, and free Sanders. Los Angeles soon retaliates with arrest and search warrants, but they are soon defeated by the sheer size of the arcology and the ability of the Todos Santos executives, aided in part by their direct links to MILLIE, to hide Rand and Sanders. After Todos Santos shows that it can cause Los Angeles trouble, such as by contaminating the Los Angeles water supply with salt water, and by work stoppages among the telepresence operators, a truce is arrived at: Rand and Sanders will leave the country permanently, and relations between Los Angeles and Todos Santos will be restored. In effect, Todos Santos has won, if only by restoring the status quo ante. Notable Quote: "Think of it as Evolution in Action" (Tony Rand)

Oath of Fealty

In the prologue, which takes place in 1985, Rose Daniels''s husband, Norman, beats her while she is four months pregnant, causing her to suffer a miscarriage. Rose briefly considers leaving Norman but dismisses the idea: Norman is a policeman, and is excellent at finding people. Norman also has a violent temper and was recently accused of assaulting an African-American woman named Wendy Yarrow. The subsequent lawsuit and Internal Affairs investigation has made him even more volatile. Nine years later, when Rose is making the bed, she notices a drop of blood on the sheet from her nose the night before; Norman had punched her in the face for spilling iced tea on him. Rose realizes that she has passively suffered through Norman''s abuse for fourteen years and that if she continues to put up with it, he may well eventually kill her. Rose reluctantly decides to leave Norman, departing from her unidentified city on a bus, with their bank card. Once Norman realizes Rose''s flight, he resolves to hunt her down. Rose arrives in Midwestern city, disoriented and afraid. When she arrives at the bus station, she meets a man named Peter Slowik, who guides her to a women''s shelter. There, she quickly makes several friends and, with the help of the shelter''s director, gets an apartment and a job as a hotel housekeeper. Rose decides to pawn her engagement ring, only to learn that it is absolutely worthless. However, she notices a painting of a woman in a rose madder gown and immediately falls in love with it. She trades her ring for the painting, which has no artist''s signature. Outside, a stranger asks her to read a passage from a novel, and is so impressed that he offers her a job recording audio books. Then, Bill Steiner, the nice gentleman who owns the pawnshop, asks her for a date; the two begin a relationship. Rose discovers that that the painting seems to periodically change, and is eventually able to travel through it. On the other side, she encounters a woman called Dorcas, who resembles Wendy Yarrow, as well as the woman in the rose-madder gown. Rose refers to her as "Rose Madder" because of her gown and her evident insanity. Rose Madder asks Rosie to rescue her baby from an underground labyrinth inhabited by a one-eyed bull called Erinyes. Rose does so, and Rose Madder promises to repay her. Rose returns to her world and puts the strange incident at the back of her mind. bg:Роуз Мадър de:Das Bild (Roman) es:El retrato de Rose Madder fr:Rose Madder it:Rose Madder he:רוז מאדר hu:A két Rose ja:ローズ・マダー pl:Rose Madder pt:Rose Madder ro:Rose Madder (roman) ru:Роза Марена fi:Naisen raivo sv:Rasande Rose tr:Çılgınlığın Ötesi

Rose Madder

The book starts with an unnamed black cat investigating the run-down former living quarters of the wizard Merlin of Arthurian Legend with the implied intent of trying to find something worth stealing. While there she meets a Northern Spotted Owl who takes her through the house and explains Merlin''s life, magical abilities, and what the book describes as ''The Pendragon Alchemy'', a philosophy of life that says that giving nets greater rewards, both monetary and emotional, than taking. The book deviates from previous Arthur legends and tells of Merlin protecting an unnamed princess from a cadre of evil sorcerers (and in the process creating a ring of stones in Avebury), and falling in love with Nimue, The Lady of the Lake, here described as being a water sprite princess. During this it is revealed simultaneously that the black cat is Nimue and the owl is Merlin, who resume their love. Nimue retrieves the Merlin''s Wand in order to give it to the aforementioned evil sorcerers to free them in the misguided belief that they will begrudgingly help save the magical world. However, in trying to defend Merlin she accidentally uses the wand on him, shattering his soul and destroying both his body and his wand in a large fiery flash. Merlin''s last magical act is to rescind Nimue''s human form, and she becomes the water of the lake near the cave where Merlin was destroyed. However, Merlin has become the mountain and cave next to the lake, and the two remain, insubstantial but together, until, as Merlin explains, ''The seeker'' (here to mean the reader) casts ''the spell'' (the solution to the puzzle) and causes the wand (the reward for solving the puzzle) to appear.

The Merlin Mystery

In 1942, a young Scot, Charlotte Gray, travels to London to take a job as a medical receptionist for a Harley Street doctor. On the train she talks to two men sharing her compartment, and one of them - who works for the secret service - gives her his card. Despite the war, social life in London is in full swing and the attractive, intelligent girl soon meets up with an airman, Peter Gregory. The temporary nature of life at the time is epitomised when she quickly loses her virginity and then her heart to him. The romance is heightened when Gregory is sent on a mission over France and news comes back to Charlotte that he is missing In action. Charlotte spent much of her childhood in France and speaks the language fluently - a talent that the secret service wishes to exploit in its effort to support the French Resistance. Charlotte decides to throw in her job - which she has no talent for anyway as the doctor informs her - and joins a Special Operations Executive (SOE)* training course. Once it has grilled her on methods of interrogation, dyed her hair a mousy brown and replaced her fillings, Charlotte is parachuted into France to complete a specified mission. But instead of doing her job and heading home, she sets out to find Gregory''s whereabouts. When he speaks of fidelity and conflicting passions, he is not just referring to Charlotte''s love of her missing man but of the Occupation by the Nazis that turned Frenchmen against each other as well as against Jews.

Charlotte Gray

Samual ''Sam'' Dodsworth is an ambitious and innovative automobile designer, who builds his fortunes in Zenith, Winnemac. In addition to his success in the business world, he had also succeeded as a young man in winning the hand of Frances ''Fran'' Voelker, a beautiful young socialite. While the book provides the courtship as a backstory, the real novel begins upon his retirement. At the age of fifty and facing retirement due to his selling of his successful automobile company (The Revelation Motor Company) to a far larger competitor, he sets out to do what he had always wanted to experience: a leisurely trip to Europe with his wife. His forty-one year old wife, however, motivated by her own vanity and fear of lost youth, is dissatisfied with married life and small town Zenith, wants to live in Europe permanently as an expatriate, not just visit for a few months to allow Dodsworth to visit some manufacturing plants looking for his next challenge. Passing up advancement in his recently sold company, Dodsworth leaves for Europe with Fran but her motivations to get to Europe become quickly known. On their extensive travels across Europe they are soon caught up in vastly different lifestyles. Fran falls in with a crowd of frivolous socialites, while Sam plays more of an independent tourist. ''With his red Baedeker guide book in hand, he visits such well-known tourist attractions as Westminister Abbey, Notre Dame Cathedral, Sanssouci Palace, and the Piazza San Marco. But the historic sites that he sees prove to be far less significant than the American expatriates that he meets on his extensive journeys across Great Britain and continental Europe'' He eventually meets Edith Cortright, an expatriate American widow in Venice, who is everything his wife is not: self-assured, self-confident, and able to take care of herself. As they follow their own pursuits, their marriage is strained to the breaking point. Both Sam and Fran are forced to choose between marriage and the new lifestyles they have pursued. Fran is clearly Lewis'' target here while Sam ambles along as a stranger in a strange land until the epiphany of getting on with his life hits him in the last act. Sam Dodsworth is a rare Lewis character: a man of true conviction and purpose. Purpose and conviction can be relied on significantly as the book (and film) concludes with the two main characters going in quite different directions. Set from late 1925 to late 1927, the novel includes detailed descriptions of Sam and Fran''s tours across Europe. In the beginning they leave their mid-Western hometown of Zenith, board a steam liner in New York and cross the Atlantic Ocean. Their first stop is England. They visit the sights in London and are invited by Major Clyde Lockert to join a weekend trip to the countryside. Later on, when Lockert has made an indecent proposal to Fran, they depart for Paris, where she soon engages in a busy social life and he takes up sightseeing. When Sam decides to go back to America for his college reunion in New Haven, Fran spends the summer months on the lakes near Montreux and Stresa, where she has a romance with Arnold Israel. Once Sam has picked her up in Paris, they agree to continue their travels together, touring France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Hungary and Germany. Their marriage comes to an end, when she falls in love with Kurt von Obersdorf in Berlin. Whereas she stays on with her new love, he criss-crosses Europe in an attempt to cope with his new situation. When Sam happens to run into Edith in Venice, she persuades him to accompany her on a visit to a village in the vicinity of Naples. As Fran''s fiancé calls off the wedding, Sam joins his former wife on her voyage back to New York. Only three days later he is back on the next ship to meet Edith in Paris.

Dodsworth

Capt. Robin Weinbaum of Earth Security submits to a request for an interview from Dana Lje, a video commentator, mostly because she can and has made his life difficult with her reporting of Security lapses, especially in a recent case involving the Government of Erskine, another planetary system. Ms. Lje reveals that she has received a communication from an outfit calling itself "Interstellar Information Ltd." about an incident in a star system so far away that even by a faster-than-light ship, no message could return from it in less than two months. The incident in fact is due to take place in the next few days. The communication also alleges that there is a new device aboard the ship, and gives the name of the device. When Weinbaum hears the name—the Dirac communicator—he is forced to believe that Interstellar Information have access to information even he doesn''t have. He brings in Dr. Thor Wald to explain the Dirac device to Dana Lje. She agrees to play along with Interstellar and its owner, J. Shelby Stevens, to let Security find out how the company gets its information. A long investigation turns up exactly nothing. Even when J. Shelby Stevens allows an interview, under the conditions of so-called "stoolie''s arrest" in which he voluntarily places himself in custody for interview, with a guarantee of being set free immediately afterward, there is no progress. The only result is that Stevens predicts the date of their next meeting. Weinbaum uses the Dirac device to communicate with his agents, even though he suspects the communications may not be secure. Each audiovisual message is preceded by a loud beep and burst of visual static, which is so annoying that Weinbaum orders it edited from the tapes he reviews. Finally Weinbaum discovers who Stevens really is, and to his amazement the day this happens is the exact day Stevens predicted they would meet again. He orders his agents to arrest the miscreant. The explanation he gets is this: the beep that he found so annoying represents all the messages ever sent, or that ever will be sent, using the Dirac device. With proper techniques, it is possible to extract any message, whether it be recent, or far in the future. Weinbaum realizes that this is an incredible and dangerous thing. On the one hand he can be ready for any hostile act on the part of Earth''s enemies, but on the other he may, by choosing some events over others, affect the course of future history. The final chapters of the book are a long and well-informed discussion on free will and determinism (the preface of the novel has a quote on the subject from philosopher William James). Eventually Weinbaum decides that the best choice is no choice at all. If information in the beep states that something will happen, then his agents must make sure that it happens. He calls this principle "Thy will, not mine".

The Quincunx of Time

Treasure lives with her mother and her abusive stepfather, Terry, whom she hates very much. When Terry whips Treasure with his belt, scarring her forehead, her grandmother Rita puts her foot down and takes Treasure in herself, although she still has nightmares that Terry is coming to get her. India lives in the upper-class Parkfield estate with her parents and her au pair, miserable Wanda. Her father is a businessman with a terrible drinking problem, and her mother, Moya Upton is a controlling fashion designer who finds India''s weight problem particularly embarrassing. India is unpopular at school and her only friend now goes to boarding school. Her only source of comfort is rereading The Diary of Anne Frank, whom she considers her heroine. One day, after Wanda fails to collect her from school, India decides to walk home. While passing through the Latimer Estate she meets Treasure, and the two hit it off instantly. India is very taken with Treasure''s charismatic family, and Treasure is impressed by India''s posh lifestyle. Their friendship proves to be the bright spot in both of their lives, as India begins to suspect that her dad is having an affair with Wanda and Treasure receives a phone call from her mum and Terry, telling her that they are coming to take her home. To protect Treasure, Rita sends her granddaughter and the other kids out of the flat until the coast is clear. However, Treasure is spotted by Terry and has to run away where he can''t find her - to India''s house. India takes advantage of her family''s inattention to hide her friend away in her attic, where she can live "like Anne Frank". She lends the book to Treasure, who begins to idolize Anne as well. Meanwhile, word has spread around the Latimer Estate that Treasure has been abducted. Her mother and stepfather broadcast an appeal on the news, and her neighbour''s son, "Mumbly" Michael Watkins, is accused of kidnapping her. Treasure is horrified and wants to go home, knowing that her Nan is worried about her, but India does her best to convince her to stay where she is safe, all the while coping with her own problems, including her father''s alcoholism and the fact that Wanda may be pregnant. When Nan shows up at India''s school, demanding to know where Treasure is, India has no choice but to reveal their secret. Her mother is horrified, and scolds her, which results in India revealing Wanda''s secret too, out of spite. After Nan promises to keep India''s involvement in the incident quiet, and takes Treasure home, Treasure tells her Nan that she is going to tell everyone the truth about Terry. Her revelation on the news leads to a custody battle between her parents and her grandmother, which Rita eventually wins with the aid of a campaign.Treasure''s mum declares that she doesen''t want Treasure anymore because she told the truth about terry but they hug each other and Treasure sets out into her new life with Rita. In the last chapter, India discloses that her parents are getting a divorce after her father narrowly escaped arrest for embezzlement; Wanda was sent back to Australia, allegedly after terminating the pregnancy; and India is in love with her new therapist, Chris, who has encouraged her to pursue a career in psychology. Treasure, meanwhile, is still her best friend: she is now working as a model for India''s mum (Moya Upton, the clothes designer), who takes them on a photoshoot to Amsterdam at the end of the story, complete of course with a visit to Anne Frank''s attic. The sight of the book makes both girls cry; although they cannot read Dutch, India states that it wasn''t necessary as "we both know it by heart".

Secrets

Wolfe and Archie are on their way to show orchids at an upstate exposition when a tire blows and their car crashes into a tree. Uninjured, they notice a house across a large pasture and decide to walk there, to phone for help. On their way across the pasture, they are threatened by a large bull. Archie runs for the fence to divert the bull, giving Wolfe time to climb to safety atop a large boulder. Wolfe is subsequently retrieved by car. Wolfe and Archie get a lift to the house, where lives Thomas Pratt, the owner of a large chain of fast-food restaurants. Pratt plans to barbecue a champion Guernsey named Caesar, the very bull that threatened Wolfe and Archie, a few days later. The idea is to get publicity for Pratt''s restaurants by serving beef from a bull that has been purchased for the then-fantastic price of $45,000. The plan has outraged the members of the Guernsey League, who are in town for the exposition. Clyde Osgood, son of a despised neighbor, shows up and offers to bet Pratt $10,000 that Pratt will not barbecue Caesar. Pratt accepts the bet, and Wolfe offers Archie''s services in exchange for a comfortable stay at Pratt''s house: Archie will help guard the bull from possible theft. During his watch that night, Archie discovers Clyde''s body, gored to death in the pasture. The bull is using its horns to push at the corpse. Everyone involved assumes that the bull killed Clyde, but Wolfe thinks not.

Some Buried Caesar

Along with the Cirque Du Freak, Darren Shan returns to his home town, the place where it all began. He was still having nightmares about the Lord of the shadows. While the Cirque Du Freak rests at an old abandoned football stadium, Darren walks through his old home. After spotting his sister, Annie Leopard, living a happy life with her son at their old house, Darren decides not to disturb them. One night before the freak show starts a boy shows up hoping to get a ticket to attend the freak show. The boy, Darius, asks many questions and acts strangely, leaving Harkat and Darren curious. The freak show starts, Darren and Harkat wait for Darius but he doesn''t attend, instead, he sees his old friend Tommy Jones. Jekkus Flangs, a performer of Cirque Du Freak, introduces him to Tommy Jones who is now a famous footballer. Tommy is shocked that Darren was alive after he was proclaimed dead eighteen years ago when he became a vampire assistant, Darren tells him that he had a rare disease that prevented him from aging normally and they had to fake his death to leave home and travel with a physician so he could be helped. Tommy gives Darren a ticket to the semi final. After the soccer match ends, Darren witnesses RV and Morgan James kill Tommy. Thus, he goes on a hunt for them. He finds them in an old dark-end ally and edges out to the road where Gannen Harst and Steve Leonard had been waiting for him too. Darren also finds out that Darius is Steve''s son and that Steve has blooded him. Trained by Steve, Darius shoots Darren using his father''s arrow-gun where it strikes him high in his right shoulder. By luck, Darren manages to flee to safety even though he is badly hurt. Later, he is found by two hobos that take him to their leaders who turn out to be Debbie and Alice, recruiting for the vampire version of the Vampets called Vampirites. Reuniting with Vancha March, Debbie, Evra, and Alice, the group go ahead on their final hunt for the Vampaneze Lord, Steve Leonard. Darren finds Steve at the abandoned cinema theatre. They plan to make a trade between Shancus,Evra''s son, who Steve had captured earlier and Darius. However, before the trading proceeds, Steve breaks Shancus'' neck, killing him, and challenging Darren to do the same with Darius. Darren thinks it over and accepts the challenge, but it doesn''t end there. Darren was going to stab Darius in the heart but Steve told him that he didn''t know who he was killing. Sensing something dark and secret in Steve''s tone, Darren hesitates. When Steve asks Darius to tell Darren his mother''s name, Darius gawps at his father. Infuriated, Steve asks him to say his mother''s name again. He tells him: Annie Leopard, Darren''s younger sister, is the mother of Darius. But the Sons of Destiny has more to give... cs:Pán Stínů fa:ارباب سایه‌ها

Lord of the Shadows

The story is episodic. First we learn of Stuart''s birth to a family in New York City and how the family adapts, socially and structurally, to having such a small son. He has an adventure in which he gets caught in a window-blind while exercising, and Snowbell, the family cat, places Stuart''s hat and cane outside a mouse hole, panicking the family. He is accidentally released by his brother George. Then two chapters describe Stuart''s participation in a boat race in Central Park. A bird named Margalo is adopted by the Little family, and Stuart protects her from their malevolent cat. The bird repays his kindness by saving Stuart when he is trapped in a garbage can and shipped out for disposal at sea. Margalo flees when she is warned that one of Snowbell''s friends intends to eat her, and Stuart strikes out to find her and bring her home. A friendly dentist, who is also the owner of the boat Stuart had raced in Central Park, gives him use of a gasoline-powered model car, and Stuart departs to see the country. He works for a while as a substitute teacher and comes to the town of Ames Crossing, where he meets a girl named Harriet Ames who is no taller than he is. They go on one date, and then Stuart leaves town. As the book ends, he has not yet found Margalo, but feels confident he will do so.

Stuart Little

The novel tells of John Grady Cole, a sixteen year old cowboy who grew up on his grandfather''s ranch in San Angelo, Texas. The story begins in 1949, soon after the death of John Grady''s grandfather, when Grady learns that the ranch is to be sold. Faced with the prospect of moving into town, Grady instead chooses to leave, persuading his best friend, Lacey Rawlins, to accompany him. Traveling by horseback, the pair travel Southward into Mexico, where they hope to find work as cowboys. Shortly before they cross the Mexican border, they encounter a young man, who says he is named Jimmy Blevins and seems to be aged about thirteen, but claims to be older. Blevins'' origins and the authenticity of his name are never quite clarified. Blevins rides a huge bay horse that is far too fine a specimen to be the property of a runaway boy, but Blevins insists it is his. As they travel south, Blevins'' horse and pistol are found and taken by a Mexican after his horse runs off while Blevins had been hiding during a thunderstorm. Blevins persuades John Grady and Rawlins to go to the nearest town to find the horse and pistol. They find the horse, and Blevins takes it back. As the three are riding away from the town, they are pursued, and Blevins separates from Rawlins and John Grady. The pursuers follow Blevins, and Rawlins and Grady escape. Rawlins and John Grady travel farther south. In the fertile oasis region of Coahuila state known as the Bolsón de Cuatro Ciénegas, they find employment at a large ranch. There John Grady first encounters the ranch owner''s beautiful daughter, Alejandra. As Rawlins pursues work with the ranch hands, John Grady catches the eye of the owner, who brings him into the ranch house and promotes him to a more responsible position. At this time John Grady begins an affair with Alejandra. In the meantime, Blevins works for a short time and then returns to the village where he retrieved his horse, this time to also retrieve the Colt pistol. In the process of getting the pistol, he shoots and kills a man. The Mexican authorities catch Blevins and then find Rawlins and John Grady at the other ranch. At first, the ranch owner protects Rawlins and John Grady; but when he finds out about the affair with his daughter, he turns them over to the authorities. Blevins is executed by a group of rogue police led by a captain and then Rawlins and John Grady are placed in a Mexican prison. The prison mafia first test the two boys: Grady is wounded while defending himself from a cuchillero, whom he manages to kill. Alejandra''s aunt is contacted by the prison thugs who manage to negotiate with her his ransom. The condition set by the aunt is that her niece Alejandra undertake never to see John Grady again. The boys are released. Rawlins goes back to the United States and John Grady tries to see Alejandra again. In the end, after a brief encounter, Alejandra decides that she must keep her promise to her family and refuses John Grady''s marriage proposal. John Grady, on his way back to the Texas, kidnaps the captain at gunpoint, forces him to recover the stolen horses and guns, and flees across country. He considers killing the captain, but a group of Mexicans find John Grady and the captain and take the captain as a prisoner. John Grady eventually returns to Texas and attempts to find the owner of Blevins'' horse. John Grady briefly reunites with Rawlins to return his horse and learns that his own father has died (something he has already intuited). After watching the burial procession of one of his family''s lifelong employees (a Mexican woman), John Grady rides through western Texas on his horse with Blevins''s horse in tow.

All the Pretty Horses

William Paulinha is a gay, Filipino hustler living in New York City. One night, he meets Shem C, a failed Jewish writer, in a bar. They become fast friends and Shem tells William his life story. Once upon a time, Shem had been married to the daughter of an acclaimed Jewish novelist. However, Shem’s wife Marianna realized he was cheating on her and left him. Furious with his present situation, Shem wants to take revenge on the New York elite that cast him out. He convinces William to help him carry out his revenge plot by posing as William Chao, a master of the ancient Chinese art of feng shui. Their first victim is Lindsay S, an aspiring poet. Bolstered by the ease with which they con her, William and Shem work their way up to bigger and better targets while word of mouth enhances their social status. William meets Cardie Kerchpoff, the Jewish daughter of a cardiologist. He finds her so irritating that he purposely fills her apartment with bad karma. William and Shem attend a dinner party hosted by Suzy Yamada, where many of their past and future clients mingle. Brian Q meets a girl named Norma and discovers after sleeping with her that she has given him herpes. William encounters Max Brill Carlton, author of Primitives, who informs him that Preciosa had no lines in the play. A later conversation with Shem reveals that Suzy was one of the women he had an affair when married and that she will be their last victim. Shem also informs William that Cardie’s husband left her after it was revealed he was having an affair. For the first time, William feels guilty about the purposefully bad feng shui work he did for her, the cause of her sudden misfortune. Rowley P takes William aside in confidence and asks him to help him avenge his second wife’s death. According to Rowley, Suzy stole his wife’s position and company and is thus responsible for her death. In arranging Suzy’s apartment, William enlists the help of his neighbor Preciosa X. She pretends to be a woman named Walung, re-enacting her part in Primitives, speaking in tongues and twirling about to distract from the fact that they are stealing. Several days later, Rowley P dies, leaving his apartment to William. Rowley’s family is not happy with this turn of events, so William agrees to relinquish all claims to the apartment. Kendo, who has been stalking William for a while now, takes him out to dinner. Afterwards, the two get drinks at a bar and discuss each other’s criminal activities. At the end of the evening, William is left wondering if Kendo plans on scamming him the way William scammed his mother, Suzy. Neil tries to get William to give him more money but William refuses, leaving a cash-strapped Neil with a grudge against him. William runs into Brian Q in a shoe store and learns that he has completely turned his life around, even founding a charity to raise money for AIDS patients. Suzy confronts William with her growing suspicions that Walung is responsible for stealing several valuable objects from her home. Suzy discovers the truth about William’s criminal past and his life begins to unravel. Suzy eventually persuades Preciosa to tell her everything. She hires Neil to murder William but they are interrupted by Kendo. Neil accidentally stabs Kendo and he dies. William discovers that even when he thought he was performing feng shui correctly, it was still all wrong. Several authors race to be the first to release a book on the “Master” Chao but Shem C publishes his first, thus realizing at long last his potential as an author. William moves to Los Angeles and finally begins pursuing his lifelong dream of becoming a writer.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

Oath of Fealty

By Jerry Pournelle

Rose Madder

By Stephen King

The Merlin Mystery

No Author Listed

Charlotte Gray

By Sebastian Faulks

Dodsworth

By Sinclair Lewis

The Quincunx of Time

By James Blish

Secrets

By Jacqueline Wilson

Some Buried Caesar

By Rex Stout

Lord of the Shadows

By Darren Shan

Stuart Little

By E. B. White

All the Pretty Horses

By Cormac McCarthy

Fixer Chao

No Author Listed