Charlemagne''s army is fighting the Muslims in Spain. The last city standing is Saragossa, held by the Muslim king Marsilla. Terrified of the might of Charlemagne''s army of Franks, Marsilla sends out messengers to Charlemagne, promising treasure and Marsilla''s conversion to Christianity if the Franks will go back to France. Charlemagne and his men are tired of fighting and decide to accept this peace offer. They need now to select a messenger to go back to Marsilla''s court. The bold warrior Roland nominates his stepfather Ganelon. Ganelon is enraged; he fears that he''ll die in the hands of the bloodthirsty pagans and suspects that this is just Roland''s intent. He has long hated and envied his stepson, and, riding back to Saragossa with the Saracen messengers, he finds an opportunity for revenge. He tells the Saracens how they could ambush the rear guard of Charlemagne''s army, which will surely be led by Roland as the Franks pick their way back to Spain through the mountain passes, and helps the Saracens plan their attack. Just as the traitor Ganelon predicted, Roland gallantly volunteers to lead the rear guard. The wise and moderate Oliver and the fierce Archbishop Turpin are among the men Roland picks to join him. Pagans ambush them at Roncesvalles, according to plan; the Christians are overwhelmed by their sheer numbers. Seeing how badly outnumbered they are, Olivier asks Roland to blow on his olifant, his horn made out of an elephant tusk, to call for help from the main body of the Frankish army. Roland proudly refuses to do so, claiming that they need no help, that the rear guard can easily take on the pagan hordes. While the Franks fight magnificently, there''s no way they can continue to hold off against the Saracens, and the battle begins to turn clearly against them. Almost all his men are dead and Roland knows that it''s now too late for Charlemagne and his troops to save them, but he blows his oliphant anyway, so that the emperor can see what happened to his men and avenge them. Roland blows so hard that his temples burst. He dies a glorious martyr''s death, and saints take his soul straight to Paradise. When Charlemagne and his men reach the battlefield, they find only dead bodies. The pagans have fled, but the Franks pursue them, chasing them into the river Ebro, where they all drown. Meanwhile, the powerful emir of Babylon, Baligant, has arrived in Spain to help his vassal Marsilla fend off the Frankish threat. Baligant and his enormous Muslim army ride after Charlemagne and his Christian army, meeting them on the battlefield at Roncesvalles, where the Christians are burying and mourning their dead. Both sides fight valiantly. But when Charlemagne kills Baligant, all the pagan army scatter and flee. Now Saragossa has no defenders left; the Franks take the city. With Marsilla''s wife Bramimonde, Charlemagne and his men ride back to Aix, their capital in France. The Franks discovered Ganelon''s betrayal some time ago and keep him in chains until it is time for his trial. Ganelon argues that his action was legitimate revenge, openly proclaimed, not treason. While the council of barons which Charlemagne has assembled to decide the traitor''s fate is initially swayed by this claim, one man, Thierry, argues that, because Roland was serving Charlemagne when Ganelon delivered his revenge on him, Ganelon''s action constitutes a betrayal of the emperor. Ganelon''s friend Pinabel challenges Thierry to trial by combat; the two will fight a duel to see who''s right. By divine intervention, Thierry, the weaker man, wins, killing Pinabel. The Franks are convinced by this of Ganelon''s villainy and sentence him to a most painful death. The traitor is torn limb from limb by galloping horses and thirty of his relatives are hung for good measure.

The Song of Roland

Bond teams up with CIA agent Cedar Leiter, daughter of his old friend, Felix Leiter, to investigate one Markus Bismaquer, who is suspected of reviving the criminal organisation SPECTRE, which was believed to have been disbanded years earlier following the death of its leader, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, at the hands of Bond (in You Only Live Twice). The British Secret Service learns that Bismaquer is an obsessive collector of rare prints, so Bond and Cedar visit the man''s huge ranch in Amarillo, Texas posing as art dealers. Their true identities are soon revealed, but not until Bond holds his own both in an impromptu (and fixed) car race arranged by Bismaquer, and in the bed of Bismaquer''s frustrated wife, Nena. Nena, who has only one breast, quickly wins Bond''s heart and his sympathy and Bond is convinced that Bismaquer is the one now being referred to as the new Blofeld. Bond discovers that the revitalised SPECTRE plans to take over control of NORAD headquarters in order to gain control of America''s military space satellite network. His true identity revealed, Bond is captured and brainwashed into believing he is an American general assigned to inspect NORAD. Although he has been set up to be killed in the ensuing attack by SPECTRE forces on the base, Bond regains his personality and his memory. Apparently Bismaquer, who is bisexual, has taken a liking to Bond and sabotaged the hypnosis. When Bond returns to Bismaquer''s ranch, he witnesses Bismaquer being killed by Nena, who is in fact the mind behind the operation and the daughter of Blofeld, a fact she confesses to Bond just before falling into the crushing grip of her pet pythons. She is later put out of her misery by Felix Leiter, who arrives on the scene to help rescue his daughter.

For Special Services

The story takes place in the mid to late 21st century, but in a world where the Cold War has ended, yet the Soviet regime remains strong and proud. Americans and Soviets enjoy peace, but without fully accepting each other''s ways, and with each always struggling for technological superiority. Under conditions of absolute secrecy, the Soviets have developed a miniaturization technology that can reduce a man to the dimensions of a molecule, or smaller. Although successful, the process requires an enormous input of energy to accomplish the task. So, although miniaturization has been shown to be scientifically possible, it also appears to be economically impracticable - a hollow triumph. One Soviet scientist, Pyotor Leonovich Shapirov, a pioneer of the miniaturization process, had spoken vaguely of a way to make it affordable. Unfortunately, he now lies in a coma, with his secrets apparently locked away forever. But Shapirov had been acquainted with an American scientist, Albert Jonas Morrison, who has his own peculiar theories regarding the brain''s processing and storage of creative thought. Shapirov had been greatly intrigued by Morrison''s ideas, and it''s this interest that led the Soviets to turn to Morrison for help. After a great deal of coercion, Morrison agrees to be miniaturized along with four Soviet scientists, enter Shapirov''s dying brain, and attempt to use his computer program to retrieve the thoughts contained therein. Later, having returned safely to normal size, but without any usable information from Shapirov, Morrison has made a new, startling discovery, which may help the Americans beat the Soviets at their own game.

Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain

Jamaica Inn tells the story of 23-year-old Mary Yellan, who was brought up on a farm in Helford but had to go and live with her Aunt Patience after her mother died. Patience''s husband, Joss Merlyn, a great big bully who is almost seven feet tall, is the keeper of Jamaica Inn. On arriving at the gloomy and threatening inn, Mary finds her aunt in a ghost-like state under the thumb of the vicious Joss, and soon realizes that something unusual is afoot at the inn, which has no guests and is never open to the public. She tries to squeeze the truth out of her uncle during one of his benders, but he tells her, "I''m not drunk enough to tell you why I live in this God-forgotten spot, and why I''m the landlord of Jamaica Inn." Against her better judgement, Mary becomes attracted to Joss''s younger brother, Jem, a petty thief, but less brutal than his big brother. After Mary realizes that Joss is the leader of a band of wreckers and even overhears Joss ordering the murder of one of their member, she is unsure whether to trust Jem or not. She turns to Francis Davey, the albino vicar of the neighbouring village of Altarnun, who happened to find Mary when she got lost one day on the moor. Mary and Jem leave the moors for Christmas Eve and spend a day together in the town of Launceston, during which Jem sells a horse he stole from Squire Bassat back to the squire''s unwitting wife. When it comes time to return to Jamaica Inn, Jem leaves Mary to go get the jingle, but never returns. Mary hires a coach to take her home wherein she meets Francis Davey, but they are waylaid by her uncle''s band of wreckers, and the coach driver is killed. Mary is then forced to watch as the wreckers trick a ship into steering itself on to the rocks and then murder the survivors of the crash as they try to swim to shore. A few days later, Jem comes to speak with Mary, who is locked in her room at the inn. Mary uses Jem''s help to escape and goes to Altarnun to tell the vicar about Joss'' misdeeds, but he isn''t at home. She then goes to the squire''s home and tells his wife her story, but Mrs. Bassat tells Mary that her husband already has the evidence to arrest Joss and has gone to do so. Mrs. Bassat has her driver take Mary to Jamaica Inn, where they arrive before the Squire''s party. Mary goes inside to find her uncle stabbed to death; the lawmen arrive soon thereafter and discover Aunt Patience similarly murdered. The vicar arrives at the inn, having received a note Mary left for him that afternoon, and offers her refuge for the night. The next day, Mary surreptitiously sees a drawing by the vicar which she found in a drawer of the desk in her room at the vicar''s cottage; she is shocked to see that the vicar has drawn himself as a wolf while the members of his congregation have heads of sheep. The vicar returns, tells Mary that Jem was the one who informed on Joss. Realizing that she has seen the drawing, the vicar then reveals that he was the true head of the wrecker gang and the murderer of Joss and her Aunt Patience, and he tries to escape with Mary as his hostage. The vicar goes on to explain that he tried to find faith in the Christian Church but did not, setting his faith instead in the ancient Druid following. As they flee across the moor to try to reach a ship to sail to Spain, Squire Bassat and Jem lead a search party that closes the gap, eventually coming close enough for Jem to shoot the vicar and rescue Mary. Mary has an offer to work as a servant for the Bassats, but instead plans to return to Helford. One day as she walks on the moor, she comes across Jem, leading a cart with all of his possessions, headed in the other direction from Helford. After some discussion, Mary decides to abandon Helford to go with Jem.

Jamaica Inn

Ronald Malcolm is a CIA employee who works in a clandestine office in Washington, D.C. responsible for analyzing the plots of mystery and spy novels. One day, when he should be in the office, Malcolm slips out a basement entrance for lunch. In his absence a group of armed men gain entrance to the office and kill everyone there. Malcolm returns, realizes he is in grave danger, and telephones a phone number at CIA headquarters he has been given for emergencies. When he phones in (and remembers to give his code name "Condor"), he is told to meet an agent named Weatherby who will "bring him in" for protection. Alas, Weatherby is part of a rogue group within the CIA, the same group responsible for the original assassinations. Weatherby tries to kill Malcolm, who escapes with his life. Malcolm uses his wits to elude both the rogue CIA group and the proper CIA authorities, each of which would very much like to find him first. Seeking shelter, Malcolm kidnaps a paralegal named Wendy Ross whom (he overhears) intends to spend her coming vacation days holed up in her apartment—hence he knows that nobody will notice her absence. He quickly wins her trust, and she assists him in his quest to stay alive and to find out more about the forces after him. But she is shot and seriously wounded while trying to do this. Malcom believes her to be dead, but learns later that she has survived. It turns out that the rogue group was using the section where Malcolm works to import illegal drugs from Laos. A supervisor stumbles on a discrepancy in the records resulting from clandestine drug importation, necessitating the elimination of the section.

Six Days of the Condor

The story takes place ten years after the end of The Black Gryphon. The k''Leshya tribe of the Kaled''a''in nation, along with the gryphons, some hertasi, tervardi, and kyree, have fled from the gates that they escaped before the Cataclysm from the end of the mage wars. They have traveled very far and have reached the ocean, and now have established a city called, White Gryphon. The city is named based on its shape, a large gryphon preparing for flight over the ocean, and the white gryphon, Skandranon. The city has established a council to govern all aspects of the city life. The council members consist of Skandranon, Amberdrake, Cinnabar, Judeth, and Snowstar. The Cataclysm has led to mage storms that causes magic to be unstable, meaning that many that had the mage ability have lost their powers, or are seriously weakened. Amberdrake as one of the council members brings up a man that is practicing as a kestra''chern illegally. Judeth orders for the arrest of this man, Hadenalith, through her position as the leader of the newly established Silver Gryphons. Hadenalith is arrested while he is molding a woman to be his slave. The city does not have a jail, and his crimes are not severe enough for instant death, so the Silver Gryphons decide to exile him to the forests on one side of the city, presuming that the animals will take care of him. Hadenalith is very upset about the interruption to his deeds and swears revenge on Amberdrake, and White Gryphon. Later, there are ships spotted by a gryphon, and Skandranon is contacted using the city''s mind connection, Kechara. Kechara has been recruited by Judeth and is being used to communicate with the Silvers in White Gryphon. Some of the council members, Skandranon, Amberdrake, Judeth, and Tamsin, arrive on the dock and await the people to exit the ships. Amberdrake has identified the crewmen as members of the Haighlei, pronounced "highly", Nation, a nation of all black people. Three of the Haighlei crewmen exit the ship and claim that the land that White Gryphon is part of their country. Judeth makes a stand claiming that the gryphons flew from one part of the land to another and never saw any markers that showed that the land belonged to any other place. At this time, the crewmen finally notice Skandranon and decide that they need to contact their home city. After the discussion with their leaders, the crewmen decide to stay in the city of White Gryphon and then take Skandranon, Zhaneel, and their children (Tadrith and Keeneth), along with Amberdrake, Winterhart, and their daughter (Windsong) back to their nation.

The White Gryphon

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

This novel follows Dragonsdawn and the short story The Dolphin''s Bell (short story contained in The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall) by discussing the present state (Ninth Pass) of the dolphins that were brought to Pern by the colonists. Set near the end and after the events of All the Weyrs of Pern it further integrates the science fiction aspects of the origins of the Pern series with the fantastical aspects presented by the original books. The plot focuses primarily on two young characters and chronicles the birth of the Dolphincrafthall and its first Dolphineer. Readis, the Paradise River Lord Holder''s son, is saved by talking dolphins ("shipfish") as a young boy after falling into the sea and subsequently develops a strong fascination with the dolphins. T''lion, the young Eastern Weyr dragonrider of Bronze Gadareth, also develops an interest after being involved in an early dolphin encounter. The two befriend each other due to their shared interest and, in their own ways, defy family, Hold and Weyr to maintain their friendships with dolphins and convince others of the dolphins'' intelligence and ability to speak. While familiar characters struggle to end the era of Thread, Readis, T''lion and others struggle to begin a new era in which dolphin and human work together again. Well-known characters from previous Pern novels are also involved in the plot, including Benden Weyrleaders Lessa and F''lar, and Masterharpers Robinton and Menolly.

The Dolphins of Pern

Nozick disclaims the title "political philosopher" and characterizes his Anarchy, State, and Utopia as "an accident" that came about because he was "getting nowhere" working on the problem of free will. He discusses his reverence for Socrates, and his intellectual debts to Sidney Morgenbesser and Carl Hempel. At "the most consequential party I ever attended," someone told him about a problem posed by a physicist in California, William Newcomb. Nozick brought this problem into the literature of decision theory ("rational choice theory"). He describes the influence of decision theory on Anarchy, State, and Utopias derivation of the state from individuals'' actions, and its game-theoretic analysis of utopia; and especially in The Nature of Rationality, where he proposed a "decision value" alternative to maximizing expected utility and also extended decision theory to issues about rational belief. He concludes the introduction by talking about philosophy as a way of life. Although "being philosophical" in the ordinary sense wasn''t his motivation for entering philosophy, he found himself being philosophical when diagnosed with stomach cancer and informed about the dire statistics, adding parenthetically an anecdote about the operation in which much of his stomach was removed, I maintain it was not a complaint when the first words I said to the surgeons upon coming up from anaesthesia after seven hours were, "I hope we don''t have to do this again. I don''t have the stomach for it." Nietzsche&#39;s demand, that you should lead a life you would be willing to repeat infinitely often, seems &#34;a bit stringent&#34;, but philosophy constitutes a way of life worth continuing to its end. He did exactly that, according to his friend Alan Dershowitz.

Socratic Puzzles

The main story of the novel is the narrative of the adventures of Adam More, a British sailor shipwrecked on a homeward voyage from Tasmania. After passing through a subterranean tunnel of volcanic origin, he finds himself in a "lost world" of prehistoric animals, plants and people sustained by volcanic heat despite the long Antarctic night. A secondary plot of four yachtsmen who find the manuscript written by Adam More and sealed in a copper cylinder forms a frame for the central narrative. They comment on More''s report, and one identifies the Kosekin language as a Semitic language, possibly derived from Hebrew. In his strange volcanic world, More also finds a well-developed human society which in the tradition of topsy-turvy worlds of folklore and satire (compare Sir Thomas More''s Utopia, Erewhon by Samuel Butler, or Charlotte Perkins Gilman''s Herland) has reversed the values of 19th century Western society: wealth is scorned and poverty is revered, death and darkness are preferred to life and light. Rather than accumulating wealth, the natives seek to divest themselves of it as quickly as possible. Whatever they fail to give away to wealthy people is confiscated by the government, which imposes the burden of wealth upon its unfortunate subjects at the beginning of the next year of reverse taxation as a form of punishment.

A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder

After escaping the alternate Topeka and the evil wizard Randall Flagg, Roland''s ka-tet travel to the farming village of Calla Bryn Sturgis where they meet the townsfolk, as well as Father Callahan, who was originally introduced in ''Salem''s Lot. He and the townsfolk request the ka-tet''s assistance in battling against the Wolves of Thunderclap, who come once a generation to take one child from each pair of the town''s twins. After a few months of being away, the children are then returned "roont" (ruined) - mentally handicapped and destined to grow to enormous size and die young. The Wolves are due to come in about a month''s time. Father Callahan also tells the gunslingers his remarkable story of how he left Maine following his battle with the vampire Kurt Barlow in the novel Salem''s Lot. Since that encounter he has gained the ability to identify Type-3 vampires with a blue aura. After some time he begins killing these minor vampires as he finds them; however, this makes him a wanted man amongst the "low men" and so Callahan must go into exile. Eventually he is lured into a trap and dies, allowing him to enter Mid-World in 1983, much as Jake did when killed in The Gunslinger. He appears near the Calla with an evil magic ball called Black Thirteen, and is found by the Manni people in a place called The Doorway Cave. Not only do Roland of Gilead and his ka-tet have to protect the Calla-folken from the Wolves, they must also protect a single red rose that grows in a vacant lot on Second Avenue and Forty-Sixth Street in mid-town Manhattan of 1977. If it is destroyed, then the Tower (which is the rose in another form) will fall. In order to get back to New York to prevent this they must use the sinister Black Thirteen. To add to that, Roland and Jake have noticed bizarre changes in Susannah''s behavior, which are linked to the event recounted in The Waste Lands when Susannah couples with the demon in the stone circle. Roland informs Eddie that Susannah has been impregnated by the demon, and though he fears for her safety he remains surprisingly calm. They promise to keep the fact that they know a secret from Susannah, but later Susannah reveals to the ka-tet that she herself has come to grips with it, and knowledge of a second personality living in Susannah named Mia "daughter of none" is shared. Jake finds out that his new friend Benny Slightman''s father is a traitor by following him to a military outpost between the Calla and Thunderclap known as "The Dogan" (which is also featured in The Dark Tower: The Long Road Home). Jake tells Roland, who shows mercy by not killing Slightman, instead leaving him alive for his son and Jake''s sake. The wolves attack, using weapons resembling the snitches found in J.K. Rowling''s Harry Potter series (which are actually stamped ''Harry Potter Model'') and lightsabers found in George Lucas'' Star Wars, and are revealed to be robots and to have Doctor Doom-like visages. The gunslingers, along with some help from a few plate-throwing women in the Calla, defeat the wolves, all the while with the children safely hidden in a rice patch nearby. Mia takes over the body of Susannah and flees to the doorway cave, where she uses Black Thirteen to transport herself to New York.

Wolves of the Calla

The story concerns Lorimer Black a successful loss adjuster, His original name is Milomre Blocj and he comes from a family of Transnistrian gypsies who arrived in London in 1957 and set up an import-export business to Eastern Europe. They now run a taxi cab firm and are always borrowing money off Milo (as they still call him). Lorimer suffers from insomnia and spends many nights at the "Institute for Lucid Dreaming" in search for a cure. He collects antique helmets, listens to African music and is having an affair with Stella Bull, the owner of a scaffolding company. The book includes extracts taken from Lorimers journal The Book of Transfiguration in which he philosophizes on his situation and quotes from Gerard de Nerval. Hogg, his overbearing boss describes his profession thus: "people turn to insurance to remove uncertainty from areas of their lives. Insurance companies turn to loss adjusters to put uncertainty into insurance, and thus reintroduce uncertainty to insured people". The narrative itself begins when he turns up at a routine business appointment only to find the man he was to meet has hanged himself. From then on his already complicated life begins to unravel as he falls in love with Flavia Malinervo an unhappily married actress, is assigned to investigate a case of suspected insurance fraud in which a colleague Torquil Helvoir-Jayne is implicated, and suffers the death of his father...

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

The Song of Roland

No Author Listed

For Special Services

By John Gardner

Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain

By Isaac Asimov

Jamaica Inn

By Daphne du Maurier

Six Days of the Condor

By James Grady

The White Gryphon

By Mercedes Lackey

Rose Madder

By Stephen King

The Dolphins of Pern

By Anne McCaffrey

Socratic Puzzles

By Robert Nozick

A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder

By James De Mille

Wolves of the Calla

By Stephen King

Armadillo

By William Boyd