When entrepreneur Greg Lockland arrives in California to attend his parents'' funeral, his world begins to unravel. Pictures of a brother he barely remembers and letters discovered hidden in his father''s safe deposit box suggest an illicit affair between his late father and Greg''s ex-lover Lian Wan. Confused and angry, Greg visits Kate Walken, a young woman with whom his relationship has taken an unexpected, romantic turn. Greg hates secrets and the hurt they cause. Yet, he tells Kate only of the pictures he found. Greg battles with his mixed emotions and can''t bring himself to tell her about Lian. Does he still love Lian? Does he love Kate? Can he love Kate? Greg is like a boy who never grew up. He''ll stop at nothing to get what he wants. Though he can be affectionate, he can be obnoxious, deceiving and secretive-all the things he loathes. Seething anger, growing suspicion, and inescapable jealousy accompany Greg on a transpacific journey to Hong Kong in search of Lian and the truth about the affair. Greg has no idea he''s about to unlock a secret that has been kept closeted for years. One after another, people return from his past, each adding another roadblock to Greg''s mysterious puzzle. With each piece of information, Greg is forced to re-examine his beliefs, feelings, and relationships with old friends and family. Among those who help Greg is Agnes, the Director of Nursing at the hospital where his father once worked. She is a bossy, mannish, British nurse whom Greg never liked. During his relentless search to uncover the truth, Greg is surprised to find Agnes with his happy-go-lucky friend Old Chow and realizes Agnes has a passionate side. Agnes and Old Chow prod Greg to explore his feelings and their secret plans push him into another situation of doubt. (Summarized by Joanne D. Kiggins)

The Pacific Between

David is a ten-year old boy who plays the violin and does not know his last name. He leads an idyllic life in the mountains with his father, until his father becomes gravely ill, forcing them to go down into the valley. With his father''s health worsening, they spend the night in a barn. Just before he dies, the father gives David a large number of gold coins, telling him to hide them until they are needed. David plays the violin to soothe his "sleeping father" and is found by Simeon Holly and his wife. Realizing the man is dead, they try to figure out who David is, but all he can tell them is that he is "just David." David is unable to tell them his last name, his father''s name, or if he has any relatives. They find some letters on the dead man, but the signature on it is illegible. The couple reluctantly let him stay with them as he reminds them of their own son, John, whom they no longer speak with. David learns to adjust to live in the village, taking one of his two violins with him wherever he goes and "playing" the world around him, such as playing "the sunset" and "the flowers," and using his music to express his feelings. His innocence and musical skills charm the villagers and change several of their lives, uniting in marriage two childhood sweethearts who had grown apart. He also changes the Hollys, healing Simeon''s heart enough that he reconnects with his son and allows him to come visit with his new wife and child. During the visit, they learn that David''s violins are quite valuable. His own is an Amati and his father''s, which he had loaned to a blind friend, a Stradivarius. Reading the old letter from David''s father, John recognizes the signature and realizes that David''s father was a world-famous violinist who had disappeared with his son after his wife''s death. David is sent to be reunited with his relatives and to study the violin. He becomes famous and wealthy, but continues to visit the Hollys every year to play for them.

Just David

1878 in The town of Fort Weakling, Texas, is "terrorized" by the notorious outlaw Billy the Kid - or rather, the citizens cower in fear of the things Billy, a bullying type, could (supposedly) do to them. When Lucky Luke, who happens to pass by, does not succeed in bringing in Billy through the local justice, he decides to teach the citizens that desperados are not as bad as they pretend to be by playing the role of a desperado himself, with the help of the only courageous person in the town, the local newspaper editor. And so, much to Billy''s increasing consternation, the townspeople begin to view him no longer as their primal terror, but as the one who will free them of this new "menace". This ends in the situation depicted on the cover: Lucky Luke giving Billy a sound spanking before ferrying him to jail. As a result of his unusual action, the people of Fort Weakling find the courage of fending off desperado incursions with nothing more than a smile and cool wits - as Jesse James is quick to discover.

Billy the Kid

The Diamond Smugglers is the account of Ian Fleming''s meeting with John Collard, a member of the International Diamond Security Organisation (IDSO). The book takes the form of background narrative by Fleming of where the two men met, interspersed with the interview between Fleming and Collard, who is introduced under the pseudonym of "John Blaize". Collard relates how he was recruited into the IDSO by Sir Percy Sillitoe, the ex-head of MI5, under whom Collard had worked. The book goes on to look at the activities of the IDSO from the end of 1954 until the operation was closed down in April 1957, when its job was complete. Collard explained that the IDSO was set up at the instigation of the Chairman of De Beers, Sir Philip Oppenheimer, after an Interpol report stated that £10 million of diamonds were being smuggled out of South Africa each year, as well as additional amounts from Sierra Leone, Portuguese West Africa, the Gold Coast and Tanganyika. As well as providing a history of the IDSO''s operations, Collard relates a number of illustrative vignettes concerning the diamond smuggling cases he and the organisation dealt with.

The Diamond Smugglers

Turpentine Jake is an epic play about the turpentiners, African-American men who worked fourteen hours a day harvesting pine gum from the longleaf pines in the Florida Panhandle. This forgotten chapter of American history (1890-1960) illustrates the story of Blacks held under debt peonage, earning less than the cost of food and clothing provided by the company store. Co-authors Linda Bannister and James E. Hurd, Jr. based the drama on the true story of Hurd’s grandfather and oral histories gathered from surviving turpentine workers. The play follows Jake, a legendary storyteller and mentor to those in the camps, as he spins tales and songs that help his fellow workers assert some control over their oppressive environment. A drama with music and original folktales, the play has a total of twenty-one roles. Double casting can bring the number down to nine or ten actors, if preferred. The set and costumes can be abstract or minimalist, with mere suggestions of the pine forest and turpentine camps. Productions can be mounted relatively easily, but offer high impact and strong audience involvement, as well as address slavery issues more timely than ever, given rising worldwide human trafficking. The play’s premiere was staged in workshop at Loyola Marymount’s Del Rey Theatre and received two NAACP Theatre Award nominations. Constance Congdon, Playwright in Residence at Amherst College writes, “Turpentine Jake is a play full of mystery and song, with an epic story and indelible characters. I left the theater feeling thanks and hopeful about what theater can accomplish with wonderful material.” “While the historical setting of Turpentine Jake takes place more than fifty years ago, debt peonage is as much an issue in the present as it was in the past. Turpentine Jake is a play for our time,” says Elias Wondimu, publisher and editorial director, Marymount Institute Press and Tsehai Publishers.

Turpentine Jake

The narrator, Walker Easterling, is a film actor and screenwriter. His director friend Nicholas Sylvian introduces him to Maris York, a sculptress who makes model cities and who is freeing herself from Luc, her abusive partner. On the day Maris and Walker meet, Luc has just threatened to kill her, so Walker and Nicholas take her away to Vienna, where Maris and Walker commence a relationship. Walker, who knows nothing about his parents or family background, discovers that he can perform magical acts and has dreams of inhabiting another identity, that of an Austrian named Moritz Benedikt who fought in the First World War and was subsequently murdered. After Maris'' brother Ingram loses his lover in an earthquake, Walker is able to foretell, or induce, Ingram''s meeting with a certain Michael Billa, who will be a significant person in Ingram''s life. (The consequences of Ingram''s and Billa''s friendship are recounted in Black Cocktail.) Through an acquaintance, screenwriter Philip Strayhorn, Walker meets Venasque, a mystic and teacher who appears in several other Carroll books. With Venasque''s help, Walker learns to control his talent, but inadvertently causes Venasque''s death because of the strength of his powers. He is contacted by his real father, a little man with no genitals whose name he does not know. The little man is an immortal (and the real-life source of the Rumpelstiltskin legend) who has murdered all Walker''s previous incarnations, the last of whom was Moritz Benedikt, because they kept falling in love with women and repudiating the little man''s sterile immortality. His father tries to persuade Walker to leave Maris by telling him that she''ll mourn him forever and never love anyone else; this above all persuades Walker that his father is selfish and evil. Thanks to his and Maris'' complete understanding of each other, Walker is able to discover his father''s name in a city which Maris is building him as a birthday present. Walker uses his magic powers to call up the two sisters who originally told the Rumpelstiltskin story to the Grimm brothers. The sisters retell the story, changing it to end with the little man''s death. Soon after Maris'' and Walker''s son is born, a little girl (apparently the original source of the Little Red Riding Hood story) appears on the doorstep and tells Walker: "You''re dangerous." As Walker observes that "nothing in life is done without regret", it seems that his and Maris'' son has been affected in some way by the vengeful immortals.

Sleeping in Flame

The main character lives in a converted hotel in Hollywood, where he works as the film critic for a weekly newspaper. The story is told in an oneiric fashion, without a clear explanation of all the strange elements of a partly real, partly imaginary Los Angeles. Amnesiascope focuses mostly on the protagonist''s relationship with Viv, a sexually adventurous yet committed artist, with whom the narrator works on the making of an avantgarde erotic short film. The narrator also has to deal with different factions at the paper, the various time zones he experiences driving through LA, the complexities of making a pornographic film, and his feelings of guilt after writing for his paper a review of The Death of Marat, a non-existent film by Adolphe Sarre, a non-existent director, which takes on a life of its own. The non-linear story is often interrupted by descriptions of dreams that the protagonist or other characters have had. Moreover, events told have a dream-like quality, inasmuch as what seems to have actually happened is subsequently dealt with as if it were a dream or fantasy (cf. the first meeting with Justine, who subsequently doesn''t seem to remember having met the protagonist). At the end of the novel, the narrating I has lost his job at the paper and Viv, yet he has gained back a sense of himself.

Amnesiascope

Dave Caros, a teenager troublemaker, lost his mother during his birth. More recently, his father dies after falling off a roof of a house he was helping to build. Always having lived under the shadow of his older brother Gideon, he is abandoned by his stepmother Ida while Gideon goes to live with his uncle. Ida sends Dave to a Hebrew orphanage, the Hebrew Home For Boys. When Dave first arrives at the orphanage, he absolutely hates it. The bedrooms are cold, the food is awful (and is often stolen by bullies) and the superintendent, Mr. Bloom (nicknamed Mr. Doom) is abusive and hits the boys with a yardstick. Mr. Doom takes the only thing Dave has left from his father, a wood carving of his family boarding Noah''s Ark. However, Dave enjoys the art lessons and explores his talented, creative side. Sick of the austere lifestyle, Dave sneaks out of the orphanage in the middle of the night and roams the streets of Harlem. He finds a nearby party and bumps into Solly, an old man who ''reads cards'' to get money. He enters the party with Solly and discovers a whole new world of jazz music, money and glamour—the Harlem Renaissance. Dave even meets Irma Lee, a girl who he is quickly attracted to. However, Dave needs to return to the orphanage every morning and return to the orphanage, but this new lifestyle isn''t always what it seems.

Dave at Night

Spock travels back to the time and place of Here Come the Brides, a television program loosely based upon Asa Mercer''s efforts to bring civilization to 1860s Seattle by importing the marriageable Mercer Girls from the war-ravaged East Coast of the United States. The show''s premise was that eldest brother, Jason Bolt, bet his entire logging operation that he could persuade one hundred marriageable ladies to come to Seattle, and that all of them would be married or engaged within one year. Much of the dramatic and comic tension revolved around the efforts of their benefactor Aaron Stemple to thwart the deal and take control of the Bolts'' holdings. Spock discovers a Klingon plot to destroy the Federation by killing Aaron Stemple before Stemple could thwart an attempted 19th-century alien invasion of Earth. During most of the story, Spock has lost his memory and is cared for by Stemple, who passes him off as his nephew "Ishmael" and helps him hide his alien origins. Spock identifies one of the women in the story as likely to be an ancestress of his.

Ishmael

Muna has never seen his father, and only knows that he is a samurai with a chrysanthemum tattoo on his shoulder. He meets a likable ronin named Takanobu on a ship which Muna was hiding on. Later on, after Muna and Takanobu have gotten off the ship, they are in the city and go exploring. Muna loses track of where Takanobu goes, and eventually gets lost. At night, Muna still isn''t able to find Takanobu and is wandering around when a girl finds him and invites Muna in for supper. Later on Muna learns that the girl''s name is Akiko and is the daughter of a sandal-maker. After supper, Muna stays the night. Finally, Muna finds Takanobu asleep next to a fence. As Takanobu takes care of Muna, he finds him a job cleaning stables. But one New Years a fire occurs at the Red Dog where Takanobu met Muna and sent him to do an errand. On the errand, he is told by someone that a man named "Plum Face" is dead, who was a person Muna knew. He is also told that Takanobu is "dead." Muna faints from the noxious fumes of the fire and is badly burnt, unable to wake up. Later on, Muna is found by a man named Fukuji, who is the master swordsmith of the capital. Muna stays with Fukuji, doing house chores and other "women''s work". One day when Muna was outside, he saw a man dressed as a monk who seemed to be following exactly what he did. When Muna pulls a trick on the man, he finds out that he is Takanobu. Takanobu is happy to see Muna again, and asks him to do one favor. Takanobu wants Muna to steal a sword from Fukuji and give it to him. He convinces Muna to give him the sword by saying that he is Muna''s father. But when Muna brings the sword to Takanobu, he says he wouldn''t give it to Takanobu unless he said he was Muna''s father. When Takanobu didn''t answer, Muna attacked. Muna runs away to the woods, and eventually buries the sword in front of a neglected shrine. At the same time, Fukuji, who woke up, wonders where Muna has gone. Suddenly, a visitor comes to Fukuji and tells him that he is Muna''s father. Fukuji realizes that the visitor is Takanobu. When Takanobu who never died claims that he is Muna''s father, Muna must choose between fulfilling his "father''s" wishes or proving his loyalty to Fukuji.

The Sign of the Chrysanthemum

A story about the narrator''s mother. It starts with a dream the narrator has in which her mother has not died. She then remembers a story that her mother used to tell her about a family she used to live with in the days before she was married. The story then changes to a third-person narrative about the Grieves family, specifically the two daughters, Flora and Ellie. This family is a rather odd one, as they live in a house with no electricity, no plumbing, and no oven. Other characters in the story note this as peculiar because the family is rather rich and is not religiously against these comforts. Flora is set up to marry a man named Robert. However Ellie is incredibly dependent on Flora and spends most of her time in the company of Robert and Flora. Flora wishes to remain chaste until her wedding with Robert. However, her father dies before the wedding can take place, so the wedding is postponed six months so that it will be over a year after the funeral of her father. Months later, Robert is getting married, not to Flora but to Ellie. The two are getting married because Ellie is pregnant. Flora takes this in stride and helps her sister prepare for the wedding. Ellie becomes somewhat of an invalid and remains bedridden or close to home for the rest of the story. She is constantly pregnant and miscarries or stillbirths all of her children. Flora and Robert have built up partitions in the house, so as to divide it in two to grant the married couple privacy. Flora cleans the entire house vigorously and caters to her sister''s every ridiculous whim. Ellie has become completely dependent on Flora and is not very grateful. Ellie becomes very awkward around guests and essentially alienates Flora from most of the community. Ellie eventually becomes very sick so a nurse is called for. Nurse Atkinson arrives at the house in a car, something that the Grieves have never used, and takes over the house. She demands expensive soaps and creams in an attempt to keep Ellie alive. The mother character, from whom the narrator has heard the story, takes an immediate disliking to the nurse after meeting her. She thinks that the nurse is using the creams and soaps on herself instead of Ellie. Eventually, Ellie dies from her illness. Nurse Atkinson, since she has no other immediate cases, continues to live in Flora''s house and complains constantly about the lack of luxuries. The townspeople assume that now that Ellie has passed, Flora and Robert will get married. However, it is Robert and Nurse Atkinson that end up getting married. The three live in the house together and the nurse makes many changes. She paints her half of the house, installs electricity and plumbing, and buys an oven. The mother character then moves away and gets married to her own husband. The only further development''s in Flora''s story comes from correspondence exchanged between Flora and the narrator''s mother. Flora is content with her life and is not outraged at the turn of events that cause her to lose Robert again or the butchering of her house. Eventually, Flora moves out of the house, if she was kicked out or voluntarily left is not clear, and has to work in a store to sustain herself. She has been forced to adapt modern ways and change her entire lifestyle. The narrator''s mother wanted to write a book about Flora''s life. She wishes to call it Maiden Lady. It would be a novel that would portray Flora as the poor, unfortunate, quaint soul that she is. The Narrator also wishes to write a book about Flora, but with her as a rather evil character, resistant to change and technology. The narrator wonders if she has seen Flora, run into her in a department store and wonders what she would have felt if she met her. The narrator then reminisces about her mother. She mentions how she felt cheated by the reprieve granted to her by the dream. She feels that this vision of her mother changes the "lump of love" that she has for her and that it feels like a "phantom pregnancy".

Friend of My Youth

Ratna, a young student, inadvertently meets Suparta, a medical student, on a train. There, Suparta tries to find her a seat but fails because a Chinese-Indonesian couple are using the spare seats for their luggage. Upon arrival in Cimahi, Suparta escorts Ratna to her school. Pleased by Suparta''s manners, Ratna and he agree to keep in contact via mail. A few months later, Suparta proposes to Ratna via post; Ratna accepts, and leaves for Sumedang to meet Suparta''s bangsawan parents. However, Suparta''s mother, Nyai Raden Tedja Ningrum, is unwilling to accept Ratna as her daughter-in-law because Ratna is not of bangsawan descent. Disappointed, Ratna decides to forget Suparta. Not long afterwards, her father''s chalk business becomes bankrupt, and Ratna has to drop out of school and find a job as a salesclerk, then later at a lawyer''s office and as a maid for a Dutch couple. However, one of the other maids, Jene, becomes jealous of her and tells the police that Ratna stole jewelry from her mistress. After being arrested, Ratna tries to escape but falls into a river, nearly drowning. She is brought to a hospital. She is treated by Suparta, who has already graduated from medical school and has been looking for Ratna. Hearing her plight, Suparta hires a lawyer for her and she is declared innocent; Jene''s boyfriend, Amat, is shown to have stolen the jewelry. After being discharged from the hospital, Ratna is asked to go to rest at the Bidara Cina pavilion. There Suparta treats her and they grow closer. Once Ratna is fully healed, Suparta proposes to her again and they are married the same day.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

The Pacific Between

By Raymond K. Wong

Just David

By Eleanor H. Porter

Billy the Kid

By René Goscinny

The Diamond Smugglers

By Ian Fleming

Turpentine Jake

No Author Listed

Sleeping in Flame

By Jonathan Carroll

Amnesiascope

By Steve Erickson

Dave at Night

By Gail Carson Levine

Ishmael

By Barbara Hambly

The Sign of the Chrysanthemum

By Katherine Paterson

Friend of My Youth

By Alice Munro

Pertemuan Jodoh

By Abdul Muis