One day, the Popper family tunes in to a radio broadcast by an Admiral traveling to many countries. Mr. Popper had previously sent the Admiral fan mail, and the Admiral promises Mr. Popper a surprise. The surprise turns out to be a penguin, which comes in a large box. Mr. Popper names the penguin "Captain Cook" after the famous James Cook. Mr. Popper cleans out the icebox so that the penguin can sleep inside. As time goes by, the Poppers find that Captain Cook is growing large, but his health is failing. Mr. Popper writes to the curator of a large aquarium, asking for help. The curator replies that the aquarium has a female penguin, Greta, who unfortunately is also experiencing the same symptoms, and he suggests that perhaps the penguins are simply lonely. Soon after, the Poppers receive their second penguin in the mail. The pair of penguins are revitalized by each other''s presence. As both birds cannot fit into the icebox together, Mr. Popper opens the window to let in the cold winter air, creating a snow-covered habitat. As this solution will not work in springtime, Mr. Popper has the main things moved upstairs and a freezing plant installed in the basement for the birds. As time passes, Greta lays an egg. She continues laying a new egg every three days until the total reaches ten. As penguins do not normally lay so many eggs, Mr. Popper attributes this to the change in climate the birds have experienced. When the eggs hatch, the Popper family now has twelve penguins to feed, and the contractor is looking for payment on the household changes. Mr. Popper decides to raise money by training the twelve penguins and turning them into a circus act. The act debuts at the local theater, and soon the "Popper''s Performing Penguins" are featured throughout the country. But in the theater in New York, the penguins cause trouble; what''s worse, they''ve accidentally shown up at the wrong theater. The manager of the wrong theater is extremely angry and has Mr. Popper arrested, along with the penguins. Admiral Drake, having arrived to see Popper''s Performing Penguins for himself, posts bail for Mr. Popper. After speaking with the Admiral, Mr. Popper decides that show business is no life for a penguin. Drake lets all of the twelve penguins go with him on his expedition to the North Pole, where they will be released experimentally into the Arctic. The Poppers are sad to see the penguins go, especially Mr. Popper himself — that is, until Admiral Drake invites Mr. Popper to accompany him on the trip. The Poppers wave goodbye as Mr. Popper and his penguins sail away towards the North Pole and Mr. Popper promises to be back in a year or two.

Mr. Popper''s Penguins

The novel concerns the issue of personhood and what it takes to be considered a member of the moral universe. There are three main characters: Herbert the vacuum cleaner, who is modified by his owner, David Jantille, a scientist who specializes in figuring out how to "mindload". Mindloading is the act of a human downloading their mind into a machine. A successful mindload entailss the death of the human. It is a way for humans to become immortal, if only in the form of vacuum cleaner. The book begins with the arrest of Herbert, the vacuum cleaner, for David''s murder . David''s wife, Suzanne Jantille, is a trial attorney who is a quadriplegic as a result of a car crash that also paralyzed her husband. She lives through a "Remote person" who has all human senses except for the ability to feel by touch. She can guide the remote person through a helmet attached to her "bio body", and retrieves all "video and audio" signals through the remote. She can function as a whole human being, but the outside world notices that she is a remote, does not approve. Suzanne defends Herbie, with the help of an astute journalist and a police officer who has access to documents that she wouldn''t otherwise. The book ends with a recognition of David’s humanity due to the ultimate confusion in the courtroom. It also ends with the death of Suzanne’s bio-body, and in turn, her ultimate death.

The Modular Man

As the novel opens, Blacky is worried about the imminent grand final and the responsibility he carries as the team’s new first ruck. His opponent will be the unstoppable ‘Thumper’. To protect himself, Blacky has devised the ‘Thumper tackle’ which is the ultimate defence of the coward: it looks like he is trying to tackle his opponent but is really an elaborate dodge. During the teams after-party however, the coaches son is given the honour of the Best On Ground award, which he believes should have been bestowed upon Dumby Red, the star player of the team. Soon after the news reports that Dumby and his two brothers have been shot dead while robbing a Public Bar, resulting in the breakdown of Blacky''s emotional life. Blacky spends much of that winter dodging responsibility in a similar manner. By the end of the following summer, however, he understands the importance of making a stand and is able to do so. His brothers and sisters join him in his stand and the novel ends with Blacky at peace with himself, happy in his relationship with his siblings, and confident that he will be able to deal with the problems that will come with the morning.

Deadly, Unna?

The story follows a Middle-Eastern woman, Jehan Fatima Ashûfi, through various realities, ranging from one in which she is raped when still a girl, subsequently abandoned by her family and dies alone, to one in which she is sentenced to death for killing her would-be rapist and being unable to pay the "blood price" to his family, and another in which she becomes a physicist and companion to well-known German scientists ranging from Heisenberg to Schrödinger, and subsequently prevents the Nazis from developing nuclear weapons during World War II by simply forwarding "unintelligible scientific papers" to key politicians looking into the idea. She is, unusually, aware of the existence of these realities, which she perceives as "visions" and assumes might come to her from Allah. Throughout different points in the story, the adult Jehan of some realities struggles to reconcile her religious upbringing and "visions" with her scientific profession; in the end, however, an aged Jehan finds satisfaction in the explanation of Hugh Everett''s theory regarding the possibility of alternate realities, which fits with her personal experiences.

Schrödinger''s Kitten

Senso is set in Italy about the time of a war with Austria in 1866. Its protagonist is Livia, an Italian countess who is married unhappily to a stuffy old aristocrat, and who willingly wanders in response to her yearnings. The story opens a few years after the war, with Livia reminiscing on her 39th birthday about her first truly passionate affair. Her reverie transports us to Venice during the war, where Livia falls in love with Remigio Ruz, a dashing young lieutenant in the Austrian army. Although he obviously is using her, her money, and her social status, Livia throws herself into an affair of complete sexual abandon with Remigio. She lets him spend her money freely, cares nothing of what society thinks of her, and ignores her new lover''s pathetic cowardice when he refuses to rescue a drowning child. Though the war drives the lovers apart, Livia feels driven to revisit Remigio. When she joins him for a tryst, he asks for more money, to bribe the army doctors for a reprieve from the battlefield. Livia gladly gives him all her jewels and gold. Remigio flees to Verona, without bothering even to kiss her goodbye. Eventually her yearning for Remigio drives Livia nearly mad, but her spirits soar when a letter from him finally arrives. His letter says that he loves and misses her, and that her money and his bribery had allowed him to evade any combat. He asks Livia not to look for him. Still clutching his letter, she promptly boards a carriage and heads straight to Verona to find her loyal lover. She finds the city in ruins, with dead and wounded everywhere. Livia''s undeterred. She heads to the apartment she had bought for Remigio, where she finds him, a drunken, ungrateful rogue, in the company of a prostitute who openly mocks Livia for accepting his abuse. Mortification drives Livia out into the night. Shame shapes her lingering lust into vengeance when Livia remembers she still has his letter. Livia finds the Austrian army headquarters, where she indicts Remigio by presenting his proof of desertion to a general. Her vengeance for Remigio''s philandering infidelity is obvious to the general, yet her motives lend her lover no exemption. The very next morning, Remigio and the doctors he bribed face a firing squad while Livia attends the execution.

Senso

The main protagonist of the novel is Dr. Elliott Grosvenor, the only Nexialist on board (a new discipline depicted as taking an actively generalist approach towards science). It is Grosvenor''s training and application of Nexialism rather than the more narrow-minded approaches of the individual scientific and military minds of his other shipmates that consistently prove more effective against the hostile encounters both from outside and within the Space Beagle. He is eventually forced to take control of the ship using a combination of hypnotism, psychology, brainwashing, and persuasion, in order to develop an effective strategy for defeating the alien entity, Anabis, and saving the ship and our galaxy. The book can be roughly divided into four sections corresponding to the four short stories on which it was based: In the first section, the Space Beagle lands on a largely deserted desolate planet. Small scattered herds of deer-like creatures are seen, and the ancient ruins of cities litter the landscape. Coeurl, a starving, intelligent and vicious cat-like carnivore with tentacles on its shoulders, approaches the ship, pretending to be a unintelligent animal, and quickly infiltrates it. The creature kills several crewmen before being tricked into leaving the now spaceborne ship in a lifeboat. It then commits suicide when it realizes it has been defeated. In the second part, the ship is almost destroyed by internal warfare caused by telepathic contact with a race of bird-like aliens, called Riim. The benign signals that the Riim send are incompatible with the human mind. Only Grosvenor''s knowledge of telepathic phenomena saves the ship from destruction. In the third section, the ship comes across Ixtl, a scarlet being floating in deep space. It is a vicious survivor of a race that ruled a previous universe before the Big Bang, the creation of our own universe. Ixtl boards the ship, and being obsessed with its own reproduction, kidnaps several crew members in order to implant parasitic eggs in their stomachs. It is eventually tricked to leave the ship, after all the crew has left the ship temporarily, leaving no prey left for its offspring to feed on. In the last section, Anabis, a galaxy-spanning consciousness, is encountered. Once again, it is both malevolent, starving and aggressive, and under all circumstances must be prevented from following the ship back to any other galaxy. Anabis, which is essentially a galaxy-size Will-o''-the-wisp, feeds off the death of living organisms, and has destroyed all intelligent life in its galaxy. It transforms all planets it can find into jungle planets through terraforming, since it is these kind of worlds that produce most life. The crew of the Space Beagle is brainwashed by Grosvenor into spending several years luring the intelligence to chase the ship into deep space, causing it to starve to death. Running concurrently to this, the book also covers a power struggle on the ship among the leaders of individual scientific and military groups.

The Voyage of the Space Beagle

At Wimbledon, outside London, the Mulvilles entertain with their guest Frank Saltram, a man “who had found out something” and they claim its everything; he poses as an intellectual when in fact he is a con man or perhaps a holy fool (possessed, regardless, of a real and powerful gift to delight with his conversation), conning the Mulvilles into paying his debts; the story revolves around Saltram and people who are fascinated with the man; Mulvilles also want to reunite Saltram with his estranged wife who plays the role of troublemaker in the story. Saltram is unsuccessful on all fronts, other than being entertaining as a dinner guest. Includes frequent common theme of James, interplay between Americans and British. Ruth Anvoy, an American woman, comes to see her aunt, Lady Coxon, who though born in the United States married a Brit and is now a widow; she meets George Gravener who has a future in politics and real intellect, he despises Saltram for being a fraud; Gravener and Ms. Anvoy become engaged, her father is very rich and she is a free spender, part of their relationship revolves around the large sum the couple will receive upon marriage; this changes as her father gets hit in the panic of 1893 and loses most of what he has, then he dies as Ruth Anvoy has returned to America to check on her family; she does not return for some time, neither does Gravener attempt to bring her back, so the engagement is in question, and her money is gone, there is no large inheritance now. Saltram has moved out from the Mulvilles and has gone to the Pudneys, who have more money, quite disrespecting all the Mulvilles had done for him; Ms. Anvoy returns to London and her aunt dies, a fortune is left to her, but there was a stipulation in the original Will when the money was left to her aunt that requests a sum of 13,000 pounds be set up into a fund for a forward thinker, money for a great man to publish and find “Moral Truth”; yet she has the option of keeping the money, this is Gravener’s preference, he wants to use the money to buy a house after they are married, but Ruth says no I must honor the request. This results in a reversal of their engagement. She picks Saltram as the candidate to receive the Coxon Fund, though she has suspicions about him. The narrator has information that will prove Saltram a fraud and he offers to show it to Ruth but she says no, destroy it, her decision has been made; The narrator liked Ruth from the first, yet neither gets married, Gravener marries a woman who is “criminally dull,” the Mulvilles suffer from boredom and they all miss the good ole days; Saltram produces nothing, ceasing to publish anything from the day he comes into the money from the Coxon Fund, proving that he was a complete fraud. Classical reference to old man of the sea, also in Homer’s Odyssey and the Arabian Nights. http://www.thefreelibrary.com/_/search/Search.aspx?SearchBy=4&Word=old+man+of+the+sea&Search=Search&By=0 This is found in chapter two. Issues of inheritance and marriage based upon a dowry. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, perhaps today also, it was fairly common for a wealthy American heiress to marry a Brit for the prestige of his title, with she receiving the benefits of said title and the Brit to become well funded and maintain the family estate.

The Coxon Fund

Mam''zelle Guillotine follows Gabrielle Damiens, the daughter of Francois Damiens, a man arrested for attacking the King of France with a pocket knife. Although the wound was minor, Damiens'' punishment for drawing royal blood was to be hanged, drawn and quartered. At age 16, Gabrielle finds letters written by her father which prove that his crime had been instigated and aided by a body of noble gentlemen, who planned it as warning to the King to change his ways. Damiens bore the brunt of this conspiracy in silence while the aristocrats remained immune. With the evidence of their crime, Gabrielle sets out to confront the Marquis de Saint-Lucque, the only person named in the letters, and succeeds in extorting a large amount of money from him. She also starts an affair with his son, Vicomte Fernand, who is oblivious to the whole situation. Before long Gabrielle is living in luxury and has aspirations to marry the young Vicomte. Her plans are dashed when Fernand breaks off their affair as the King has decided that the Vicomte should marry his illegitimate daughter, Neve de Nesle. Furious, Gabrielle tries to blackmail Vicomte into marrying her using the letters which prove his father''s guilt. But she has not counted on Neve''s mother, Madame de Nesle, who on hearing of the situation, uses her position as the King''s favourite to have Gabrielle, now 19, thrown into prison without trial. She spends the next 16 years in prison, feeding her rage and lust for revenge on the Saint-Lucque family. On July 14, 1789, she is released from the Bastille after it is stormed by the mob, the French Revolution having begun. Mad for revenge, Gabrielle works her way into the favour of the men behind the new republic, and before long has become the public executioner of Artois. As France''s only female executioner she is feared by many and known throughout Artois as Mam''zelle Guillotine. When the Saint-Lucque family (Fernand, Neve and their three children) are captured as traitors, Gabrielle determines that finally she will have her revenge. English spies manage to rescue the Marquis and his young son, but his wife and two daughters are still in danger of being sent to the guillotine. Blind with rage and consumed with her plots for revenge, Gabrielle fails to notice that the new sleuth sent from Paris by Chauvelin to track down the English spies is really the Scarlet Pimpernel in disguise. de:The Scarlet Pimpernel fr:Le Mouron rouge

Mam''zelle Guillotine

The story is of the brutal murder of a seven year old girl named Alicia Bartlett and the interrogation of a twelve year old boy, named Jason Dorrant, who is her friend and the last known person to see her alive. Trent, an expert interrogator, known to get confessions which seemed impossible to obtain and has never lost a case, is called in for the case. Trent does this "favor" to be in good graces with a senator. Jason Dorrant is a boy who''s best described in this quote from the book, "when you''re an outsider, and not part of the bunch, you''re in a position to see what others don''t see."(p.&nbsp;24) He was a lonely fellow with few acquaintances and perhaps no friends at all. Except maybe Alicia, whom he finds to be one of the most fascinating people. She''s like a little old lady, he said. After her death Trent brings in Jason as his main suspect. Trent has never failed to get a confession from someone, and a lot is riding on this particular case for Trent to succeed. Jason is brought into a small white-walled room with no ventilation, a single bulb dangling from the ceiling, and Trent begins this interrogation. Jason is an innocent boy who was told that the information he is providing is voluntary and has no idea about being a suspect in any way. Trent takes the information Jason gives him and twists it into a distorted story that makes Jason look absolutely credible for Alicia''s death. At one point Trent makes Jason look like a violent maniac simply because he reads and watches science fiction. You are what you believe you are, and by the end of the novel Jason believes he is a blood-thirsty killer and confesses to a crime he did not commit. Trent, with the confession tape in hand, walks towards a woman expecting to be praised for his handiwork, but she looks at Trent accusingly. She explains to him that Alicia''s older brother was taken in for the murder and that there were witnesses. Alicia''s brother was the killer, not Jason. She accuses him of making Jason confess. Trent was demoted and never worked as an interrogator again. Sadly, he left Jason fighting himself. Jason can''t decide if he is what he knows himself to be or if he is what he was told he was. Did he kill her? No. Could he have killed her? No, but could he kill someone worthy of death? Say, a bully? In a final twist of irony, Jason fulfills the role that Trent gave him, grabbing a butcher knife and heading to the nearest YMCA where bully Bobo Kelton is.

The Rag and Bone Shop

Renko is depressed because his beloved wife Irina is dead due to a misunderstanding through carelessness on the part of a Russian doctor and his nurse. He is in a suicidal state of mind when anonymously summoned to Havana to help an old acquaintance out of some unspecified trouble. By the time he arrives, however, the good Colonel Pribluda, late of the SVR, has apparently died under very mysterious circumstances. The novel begins with Arkady at the tip of Havana Bay as the sun begins to rise on what promises to be a hot one in Cuba. The Cuban militia has what they believe is a dead Russian. Renko being a Senior Investigator from Moscow who knew Pribluda, the Cubans are hoping he can expedite matters by both confirming the liquefying corpse''s identity and affirming it as a natural or accidental death. In a decaying Cuba filled with cars and houses that were built in the 1950s and are now falling to pieces, Renko stumbles upon a plot to defraud Russia of $250 million in an underhanded sugar purchase scam. Along the way, of course, there are the inevitable gruesome killings, abakua ceremonies and attacks upon his person as well. <gallery> File:Bahia Habana Entrada.jpg|Havana Bay entrance File:Old Havana Cuba.jpg|Street scene at the Old Havana </gallery>

Havana Bay

The narrator "Smith" tells his story in the first person. A traveler and amateur naturalist, he regains consciousness "under a heap of earth and stones" and believes that he had been knocked unconscious in a fall&nbsp;– though his thoughts and recollections are confused. He is astounded to discover that he is entwined in the roots of plants, as though they have been growing around him. Extricating himself and surveying the scene, he sees a great house in the distance, and walks toward it to seek help and information. On his way, he encounters a funeral: a group of strangely yet strikingly dressed people, led by a majestic white-bearded old man, are interring a corpse in a grave. The narrator is especially struck by a beautiful girl who is overcome by grief. She appears to be about 14 years old; though, he soon learns that this world, and everyone in it are far older than they appear. He becomes enchanted by her, and falls in love. The funeral party see him, and express surprise at his presence and his odd uncouth clothes and boots; but they allow him to accompany them to the enormous mansion where they live. Enthralled with the girl (her name is Yoletta), and anxious to show his worth in their House, the narrator agrees to work for a year as a probationer in this community. He is constantly stumbling into misunderstandings with his new companions, for the world seems to have changed in so many extreme and incomprehensible ways. The most basic concepts of his society are unknown to these people. When he inquires about the nearest city, the old man who is "the Father of the House" thinks he is talking about a beehive. When the narrator notes that they share the English language, he is again not understood; the people of the house think they speak "the language of human beings&nbsp;– that is all." (Though their spoken language has changed little, the writing system is altered so much that the narrator cannot read the "Hebrew-like characters" in which their books are written.) It seems that the entire human race is now organized into communal houses like this one, with no other form of social structure, that they know of. The narrator struggles to adapt to this new society, as he pursues Yoletta. He is shocked to learn that all the people are much older than they appear; Yoletta is 31 years old, and the Father of the House is nearly 200. They are vegetarians, and have a strong rapport with the animals in their environment. The narrator is struck by their "rare physical beauty," their "crystal purity of heart," "ever contented and calmly glad". Yet he wonders why they have no romantic interests, and why there are no children in the community. He sometimes falls afoul of the strict rules, in which lying is a serious offense, punishable by solitary confinement. Yoletta comes to love him, but like a brother, without the heat of passion he feels for her. In time he meets the mysterious Mother of the House, and begins to comprehend the full strangeness and differentness of their way of life. The humans of this distant future have achieved their utopian state by abandoning sexuality and romantic love. Like a beehive, or a wolf pack, only the Queen, or Alpha Male and Female, or Father and Mother of the House, in this case, reproduce. The rest of the House live communally, as siblings. The narrator despairs when he realizes that his passion for Yoletta can never be consummated; and, wonders whether he can adapt to this mode of living. He does not realize that the Mother has begone the long process of grooming himself and Yoletta to become the new Father and Mother of the House. When he is in the library, he discovers an elaborately-carved bottle on a shelf; its inscription states that its contents provide a cure for the oppressions of "time and disease" and the thoughts or passions that "lead to madness." He takes a dose of the liquid, thinking it will cure his passion for Yoletta, which he doesn''t realize she has begun to learn to reciprocate. It is only when his body grows stiff and cold that he realizes that the potion is a poison, and that the only relief from the pains of life it provides is death. This story, of a traveler who falls in love with a mysterious, beautiful young girl with an elderly protector, anticipates the plot of Hudson''s later and more famous novel, Green Mansions.

A Crystal Age

The story is set in 3rd-century Roman Britain, when Carausius, the military commander, has rebelled against Rome and named himself the emperor of Britain and northern Gaul. After a series of naval victories, he is temporarily recognized by Rome''s ruler Maximian. Justin, a shy young army surgeon, is posted to Britain for the first time although his family has been connected with the isle for years. He meets his cousin Flavius there and both become fast friends. Upon overhearing a plot against Carausius by his finance minister Allectus, they try to warn the emperor but are instead reposted to the Northern Wall in disgrace. By luck, they meet Evicatos of the Spear who convinces them that the danger is real. They attempt to race back to warn Carausius but it is already too late by then. Faced with the prospect of capital punishment for desertion, the two cousins go into hiding with the help of a rebel leader. When he is betrayed, the two young men must take over the banner of rebellion and continue his work of protecting and smuggling away people who are disenchanted with Allectus or are in danger from his cruel edicts. Finally, Constantius and his aide Asclepiodotus sail to Britain to attempt to put an end to Allectus'' misrule. Flavius and Justin assemble a ragtag group of people prepared to fight on their behalf but are much derided for their shabby appearance. When they are hiding at their Grand-Aunt Honoria''s place, they discover the lost eagle standard that was buried by their ancestor, Aquila, and which entitles them to call themselves a Roman legion. Despite their looks, the new ''legion'' helps the main Roman force find their way and defends the helpless inhabitants of Calleva from the fighting. In recognition of their help, the cousins are pardoned by Constantius and praised for their efforts. The motifs of the lost eagle standard and dolphin signet ring reoccur in this book.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

Mr. Popper's Penguins

By Florence Atwater

The Modular Man

By Roger MacBride Allen

Deadly, Unna?

By Phillip Gwynne

Schrödinger's Kitten

By George Alec Effinger

Senso

By Camillo Boito

The Voyage of the Space Beagle

By A. E. van Vogt

The Coxon Fund

By Henry James

Mam'zelle Guillotine

By Baroness Emma Orczy

The Rag and Bone Shop

By Robert Cormier

Havana Bay

By Martin Cruz Smith

A Crystal Age

By William Henry Hudson

The Silver Branch

By Rosemary Sutcliff