The story revolves around Lubrin Dhu, a younger son of the chieftain, who takes after the Little Dark People who predated the Celtic settlers of the Iceni tribe; and whose name "Dhu" is related to Gaelic "Dubh", reflecting his darker appearance. Much is made of cultural differences between the reigning Celts, who are associated with fair hair and skin, and the original Chthonic Little Dark People, who are associated with darker complexions and a closeness with the earth. This cultural contrast again comes to fore when the Iceni, being associated with the moon, are subjugated by the Attribates, who are associated with the Sun. Lubrin Dhu''s upbringing allows the reader to witness the culture of his people, from a somewhat "outside" point of view, as he is considered different to his people, on account of his darker color, reserved personality, and attraction to art. His people are matrilineal, with leadership going to the husband of Lubrin''s sister. His father''s status as chieftain derives from being married to the "woman of the tribe", and is intertwined with his duty to lay down his life for the tribe if needed, a duty which later descends to Lubrin Dhu. After their tribe is vanquished by the Attribates and their Strong Place occupied, Lubrin Dhu finds himself nominal leader of the survivors, his father and older brothers having been killed in battle. He strikes a bargain with the conquering chieftain, who will free Lubrin''s people after completion of a monumental horse carved from the hillside. This figure becomes the Uffington White Horse. The novel''s title reflects how the horse connects both the Solar attributes of the Attribates and the Lunar attributes of the Iceni, being considered an invocation to Epona. Lubrin Dhu ultimately voluntarily sacrifices himself for the consecration of the horse, fulfilling his duty as a chieftain''s son, and offering a depiction of possible Celtic blood sacrifice. The theme of the novel revolves around conflicting cultures, and the duties assumed and performed by individuals within those cultures. The duties of a king are shown in many of her novels, including Sword at Sunset and The Mark of the Horse Lord, and have been credited as being influenced by James Frazer''s The Golden Bough.

Sun Horse, Moon Horse

The sabotage of a substation of the prominent electrical energy distributor Algonquin Consolidated Power and Light Company in Queens, New York, causing a deadly arc flash leads to an investigation managed by esteemed criminalist Lincoln Rhyme and his team of investigators. The initial primary suspect, Ray Galt, a disillusioned troubleman who is an employee of Algonquin Consolidated, is believed to blame Algonquin and society''s reliance on electricity as the reason he developed leukemia due to radiation from working close to power lines. Signals intelligence (SIGINT) suggests that Galt is backed by a previously unknown eco-terror group named ''Justice For''. The collected intelligence fails to specify further details of the terrorist cell, other than the name ''Rahman''. A series of demand letters are sent after the first attack, ordering Algonquin to reduce its electrical distribution, or further acts of violence involving electricity would be executed. Rhyme must also deal with a parallel investigation into a recurring antagonist in the series: the criminal known as Richard Logan, who is nicknamed ''The Watchmaker''. A joint operation is conducted between Rhyme''s office and the Mexican Federal Police after Logan is located in Mexico.

The Burning Wire

In spite of his father willing him to be a preacher, Baldwin says he has always been a writer at heart. He is trying to find his path as a Negro writer; although he is not European, American culture is informed by that culture too - moreover he has to grapple with other black writers. Baldwin castigates Harriet Beecher Stowe''s Uncle Tom''s Cabin for being too sentimental, and for limning black slaves as praying to white God so as to be cleansed/whitened. Equally, he repudiates Richard Wright''s Native Son for portraying Bigger Thomas as an angry black man - he views that as an example of stigmatising categorisation. When considering the Nigger as a social problem, Baldwin suggests harking back to the past. He goes on to criticise Richard Wright''s Native Son as ensconced in its zeitgeist. To his mind the good/bad guy virgule when it comes to Negroes must be turned into good Negroes. Baldwin criticises Carmen Jones, a film adaptation of Carmen using an all African-American cast. Baldwin is unhappy that the characters display no connection to the condition of African-Americans, and sees it as no coincidence that the main characters have lighter complexions. Baldwin points out that the rent is very expensive in Harlem. Moreover, although there are black politicians, the President is white. On to the black press, Baldwin notes that it emulates the white press, with its scandalous spreads and so forth. However the black Church seem to him to be a unique forum for the spelling out of black injustice. Finally, he ponders on antisemitism amongst blacks and comes to the conclusion that the hatred boils down to Jews being white and more powerful than Negroes. Baldwin tells the story that happened to the Melodeers, a group of jazz singers employed by the Progressive Party to sing in Southern Churches. However, once in Atlanta, Georgia, they were used for canvassing until they refused to sing at all and were returned to their hometown. They now enjoy success in New York City. Baldwin explains how his paranoid and angered father died of tuberculosis when he himself was 19 years old. Prior to that Baldwin had been taken to the theatre by a white teacher of his, and his parents had let him go because she was a teacher. Later he worked in New Jersey and was often turned down in segregated places - once he hurled something at a waitress in a diner. He goes on to say that blacks doing the military service in the South often got abused. Finally, he recounts his father''s death which occurred just before his mother gave birth to one of his sisters; his father''s funeral was on his 19th birthday. This essay is an attempt to do away with the hatred and despair he feels towards his father. There are always three underlying factors in James Baldwin''s writing: the story, the white supremacy during the 1940-1950, and the question Baldwin is always trying to answer... What is really the blacks'' role in America? Baldwin compares Black Americans to Blacks in France. Whilst Africans in France have a history and a country to hold on to, Black Americans don''t - their history lies in the United States and it is in the making. Baldwin explains how Americans living in Paris cannot be true Parisians; they are either homeward-bound or ''too'' well-adjusted. Baldwin recounts getting arrested in Paris over the Christmas period in 1949, after an acquaintance of his had stolen a bedsheet from a hotel, which he had used. The essay stresses his cultural inability to know how to behave with the police. Baldwin looks back to his time in a village in Switzerland - how he was the first black man most of the other villagers had ever seen. He goes on to reflect that blacks from European colonies are still mostly located in Africa, whilst the United States has been fully informed by African Americans.

Notes of a Native Son

In 1912, the RMS Titanic sunk to the bottom of the North Atlantic in one of history''s most infamous maritime disasters. 75 years later it is discovered that Titanics hold contains a shipment of a rare mineral, the only available supply in the world large enough to power a top-secret and vital United States defense program. When no method can be found of extracting the mineral under more than of water, Pitt and his crew set out to do the impossible: raise the Titanic. Dr. Gene Seagram leads the top-secret Pentagon program Meta Section, which secretly attempts to leapfrog current technology by 20 to 30 years. One result: the Sicilian Project, which uses sound waves to stop incoming ballistic missiles. The immense power needs of the Sicilian Project can be met only by an extremely rare mineral called byzanium. After satellite data pinpoints the most likely source of byzanium, Meta Section sends Sid Koplin to a small island off the northern coast of the USSR. There he discovers that the byzanium ore has already been mined. While making his way back to his hidden boat Koplin is shot and captured by a Russian guard but is rescued by the story''s protagonist, Dirk Pitt. Using clues found by Koplin, Seagram determines that the byzanium &mdash; a chunk worth more than a quarter of a billion dollars in 1912 figures &mdash; was mined in the early part of the 20th century by a group called The Coloradans, including Joshua Hayes Brewster. The group was hired by the French but persuaded by the US government to steal the mineral for the United States. Brewster and his men engage in a running battle with French assassins as they crisscross Europe trying to get their stolen goods home. Only Brewster reaches England alive, and he books passage on the maiden voyage of the great White Star Line ship Titanic. Realizing that the only supply of byzanium sufficient to power the Sicilian Project now lies at the bottom of the North Atlantic, Dr. Seagram approaches Dirk Pitt and the National Underwater and Marine Agency and gives them the near impossible task of raising the Titanic. Using data from drop tank experiments Pitt is able to narrow down the search area and begin searching with deep sea submersibles. After finding a presentation model cornet that they can link positively to a member of the Titanics band, Pitt and his colleagues know they are searching in the right place. After discovering that the Titanic is intact they set out on audacious plan to patch all of the holes and then raise the wreck using compressed air. Meanwhile the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) convinces the President of the United States to leak information on both the Sicilian Project and the Titanic mission to the USSR in the hopes of setting a trap to capture one of the Soviet''s best intelligence men. When the leaders of the USSR realize that the development of the Sicilian Project would throw off the balance of power in the world and leave their nuclear arsenal impotent they do just as the CIA hopes and launch an operation to sabotage the mission and steal the byzanium for themselves. Once the Titanic is secured for the trip to the United States a massive hurricane strikes the salvage area, allowing the Soviets to board the ship and take the crew hostage. Pitt, who was previously believed dead after being last seen on board a crashed helicopter, reemerges to expose the Soviet spies within the salvage crew. After the crew regains control of the Titanic the ship is eventually towed to New York Harbor and laid up in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. When the ship''s vault is opened all are shocked to discover the byzanium was never actually aboard the ship. This revelation, coupled with deep troubles with his marriage and the President''s agreement to leaking word of the Sicilian Project to the Soviets, eventually cause Dr. Seagram to have a nervous breakdown from which he never recovers. It is eventually revealed that Joshua Hayes Brewster, fearful that he would not make it onto the ship with the mineral, buried the byzanium in the grave of the last of the group to fall to the French assassins and located in the tiny English village of Southby. The novel ends with a test of the Sicilian Project in the Pacific Ocean.

Raise the Titanic

In a parallel universe, England and Imperial Russia have fought the Crimean War for more than a century; England itself is a police state run by the Goliath Corporation (a powerful weapon-producing company with questionable morals); and Wales is a separate, socialist nation. The book''s fictional version of Jane Eyre ends with Jane accompanying her cousin, St. John Rivers, to India in order to help him with his missionary work. Literary questions (especially the question of Shakespearean authorship) are debated so hotly that they sometimes inspire gang wars and murder. Single, thirty-six, Crimean War veteran and literary detective Thursday Next lives in London with her pet dodo, Pickwick. As the story begins, Thursday is temporarily promoted to investigate the theft of the original manuscript of Charles Dickens''s Martin Chuzzlewit because she is one of the few people able to identify the thief, Acheron Hades. She comes close to capturing him during a stakeout, but is badly injured, saved by a copy of Jane Eyre that stops Hades'' bullet. A mysterious stranger aids her until the paramedics arrive, leaving behind only a monogrammed handkerchief and jacket. Next recognizes these items as those of Rochester, a character from Jane Eyre, because she entered the novel as a child and briefly became acquainted with Rochester himself while she was there. While recovering in hospital, Thursday is instructed by her future self to take the LiteraTec job in her home town of Swindon. There, she discovers that her Uncle Mycroft has created the Prose Portal, which allows people to enter works of fiction. Next also renews an acquaintance with her former fiancé Landen Parke-Laine (a reference to the British version of the board game Monopoly). Hades kidnaps Mycroft, Polly, and the Prose Portal in order to blackmail the literary world; any changes made to the plot of a novel''s original manuscript will change all other copies. When his demands are not met, Hades kills Mr Quaverley, a minor character from the original manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit. Next and a Goliath Corporation operative named Jack Schitt trace Hades to Wales and rescue Mycroft and the Prose Portal, but find that Polly is stuck in one of Wordsworth''s poems and Hades has gone into the original text of Jane Eyre. Next pursues Hades, and after much trouble, succeeds in killing him. In the process, Thornfield Hall is burned, Rochester''s mad wife Bertha falls to her death, and Rochester himself is grievously injured (in other words, she alters the ending of the book to match the actual ending to Jane Eyre). Returning to her own world, Next uses the Prose Portal to release her Aunt Polly and imprison Jack Schitt in the text of Edgar Allan Poe''s "The Raven". She shows up at the church where Parke-Laine is about to be married to another woman, but a lawyer interrupts the wedding and Next and Parke-Laine are reconciled and marry instead. Next''s father, a renegade agent from SpecOps-12, the ChronoGuard, turns up to dispense some fatherly advice to his daughter. The novel ends with Next facing an uncertain future at work: public reaction to the new ending for Jane Eyre is positive, but there are other repercussions.

The Eyre Affair

The book is highly critical of Richard Fuld, Henry Paulson, and the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, a 1999 act of Congress signed by former United States President Bill Clinton that repealed portions of the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933. The book contains an account of how McDonald, after attending the University of Massachusetts Amherst, selling pork chops, and self-teaching himself the material required to pass the General Securities Representative Exam, went on to develop the website ConvertBond.com, which was later purchased by Morgan Stanley. The author''s stated expertise, in the convertible bond market, was what allowed him to create the website ConvertBond.com during the dot-com bubble, and successfully sell it to Morgan Stanley before the Internet bubble burst. It was while he was working at Morgan Stanley that McDonald was offered a job as vice-president at Lehman Brothers. The book characterizes Richard Fuld as being out of touch, smug, and a ruthless CEO with a short temper and a penchant for rage. The book sarcastically refers to Fuld as "his majesty," "god-like," and a "spiritual leader." McDonald believes that the United States government should have saved Lehman Brothers, and that Dick Fuld falsely believed that the United States government would save the company after having a meeting with Henry Paulson in the spring of 2008, which led him to engage in unnecessarily risky behavior and reject an offer of $18 per share from the Korea Development Bank as late as August 2008.

A Colossal Failure of Common Sense

Thidwick, a moose in a herd numbering approximately 60 who subsist mainly on moose-moss and live on the northern shore of Lake Winna-Bango, grants a small bug''s request to ride on his antlers free of charge. The bug takes advantage of the moose''s kindness and settles in as a permanent resident, inviting various other animals to live on and in the moose''s antlers. The moose acquiesces to the unexpected living arraingements, considering the animals ''guests'' even though he never told them explicitly that they were allowed to live there, and the situation quickly gets out of control. When one of the guests - a woodpecker - begins drilling holes in Thidwick''s horns, the other moose give Thidwick an ultimatum: Get rid of his guests or leave the herd. When Thidwick''s sense of proper etiquette directs him to forgo the comforts of herd life in favor of being kind to his guests, his herd leaves him. When winter comes, the herd swims across the lake to find fresh supplies of moose-moss, but when Thidwick attempts to follow them, his guests strenuously object. Even facing starvation, Thidwick refuses to break etiquette, and remains on the cold, northern shore of the lake where his guests prefer to reside. The residents of Thidwick''s horns, without regard to the increasing physical or psychological load that the moose has to bear, continue inviting other animals to live with them. The situation comes to a head when hunters attack Thidwick with the goal of mounting his head on the wall of the Harvard Club. Thidwick attempts to outrun the hunters, but the heavy load, coupled with his guests'' unwillingness to travel across the lake, prevents his escape. Just before his imminent capture, however, Thidwick remembers that it is time to shed his antlers. He promptly sheds his antlers, makes a snide comment to his former guests, and swims across the lake to rejoin his herd. His former guests are captured by the hunters and are stuffed and mounted with his antlers on the Harvard Club wall.

Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose

The story is set in United States on the brink of economic collapse, where inflation is spiraling out of control and the government struggles to keep hold of its power. Trading in foreign currency has become illegal and many shops are subject to rationing. As a result there is a sprawling black market for almost all conceivable goods. The setting reflects the world as Samuel Edward Konkin III conceived it would be just prior to a successful agorist revolution. The story begins with Elliot Vreeland, son of Nobel Laureate economist Dr Martin Vreeland (an economist of the Austrian school) hearing of his father''s apparent death and being rushed home from school. He quickly discovers however that the death is fake, a plot concocted by his father (after receiving a tip-off) to escape arrest by the FBI who are rounding up "radicals" accused by the government of worsening the economic crisis. Eliot is sent by his father to collect some gold coins that had been stored in a safe location, for use as hard currency during the families intended escape. However, upon his return Eliot finds his family to be missing. Not long after, FBI agents enter the house searching for Eliot who manages to escape. Eliot''s escape leads him into contact with the Revolutionary Agorist Cadre, an organisation plotting the downfall of the US government through the means of counter-economics. The cadre has grown strong over the years of its existence, and has its own militia and extensive underground network. Eliot enlists the help of the Cadre, and meets Lorimer, a girl similarly on the run from the law. As the novel progresses, government stability weakens still further, and they bring in tight controls on communication, travel and trade, however they fail to avert total collapse, leading to the private sector (unions, individuals, syndicates and many others) taking control of the old infrastructure.

Alongside Night

: Tagline: : Always before, he had been the Hunter. Now he had been the prey and he had survived. He would live. He would kill again. The book tells the story of a man who tries to kill the last wild wolves in England, and the wolf, raised among humans, who will try to strike back. What if there were still wolves in England and only a few people knew it? What if one of those people was an obsessive, half-mad, extremely able hunter who was determined to have the honor of killing the last wolf in England? We are with the last wolf cubs as they are born short minutes before the slaughter begins. The female survives, wounded by The Hunter, only long enough to teach her sole surviving cub a few skills before she too is killed by the man. The cub, Greycub, is reared by Ben and his family and, being a social animal, waits in vain for the sound or scent of a remaining wolf. This is not to be for he is the last wolf in England. Regretfully leaving his human friends, he roams for years searching for sign of his species. In a bizarre but very fitting climax to the story, Greycub becomes the hunter and The Hunter knows, too late, the feeling of the prey. This is a raw and brutal book and, to be sure, a cautionary tale about extinction. However, the focus is on obsession verging on madness. Ben, the boy who rears Greycub, becomes an innocent betrayer of the wolves for it is he who first alerts The Hunter to the presence of the wolf pack. The book reads like non-fiction with an almost detached manner but the brutality is so compelling that detachment on the part of the reader is nearly impossible. In fact, the feelings of readers would make for a fascinating discussion. At which point did they become engaged? Did they ever feel any sympathy for The Hunter? How did the author do that? Also, there is some anthropomorphism present. Could Burgess have done the book without it?

The Cry of the Wolf

The main character, Mike de Wolf, is a struggling pianist in New York. His friend, Horace Hackett, is an author and popular pulp fiction writer, who writes about Mike as the villain in his book, Mike enters the bathroom of Hackett''s apartment, and hears the sound of someone typing on a typewriter. Mike learns he is regarded in this world as the villain, Spanish Admiral Miguel de Lobo, a "pirate potboiler". He knows that the villains in stories written by Hackett often do not come to a favorable end, and is therefore eager to safely leave the realm to which he was transported. The story takes place on the high seas in the Caribbean during the 17th century with a conflict among colonists. Hackett writes under pressure, as he is facing a deadline. He falls in love with a woman in the story, but grows frustrated after realizing that she is just another of Hackett''s fictional creations. Mike looks up into the sky in search of this mystical device or its controller, "Abruptly Mike de Wolfe stopped. His jaw slackened a trifle and his hand went up to his mouth to cover it. His eyes were fixed upon the fleecy clouds which scurried across the moon. Up there &ndash; God? In a dirty bathrobe?"

Typewriter in the Sky

Julián Estaban, who is impersonating the Mayan god Kukulcán, fights and escapes from a powerful gold hungry conquistador, Hernán Cortés. Kukulcán’s followers captured Rodrigo Perdoza, a bishop carrying a message to Cortés to detain Julián. Julián wants to be a priest and asks the bishop many times to make him one, but in the end he lets the Mayan priest sacrifice him, and Julián takes the bishop''s amethyst ring. Cortés attacks and captures Kukulcán’s city, the City of the Seven Serpents, but Julián escapes to a friendly large village and helps them harvest and trade pearls. He then goes to a smaller trading town and partners with Tzom Zambac and they have a successful feathered cloak business. Fearing betrayal from Tzom, he leaves and eventually finds Francisco Pizarro, a conquistador who is taking a band of Spaniards to get gold from the Inca. They capture the Incan king Atahualpa, who has a room filled with gold to pay his ransom. The Spaniards try and kill him anyway. Julián leaves the group because of his disagreements with the trial. He searches for Chima, a daughter of Atahualpa, whom he has fallen in love with. He finds her and she rejects him because he is a Spaniard. Julián then uses all of his gold to sail back to Seville. There he meets Cantú the Dwarf, who is now very wealthy from gold. Cantú gives Julián a lot of gold, but he joins the Brothers of the Poor and gives it all to them.

The Amethyst Ring

A willful, disorganized teenage girl, Annabelle Andrews, awakens one Friday morning to find herself in the body of her mother, with whom she argued the previous night. Suddenly in charge of taking care of the New York family''s affairs and her younger brother Ben (whom Annabelle has not-so-affectionately nicknamed "Ape Face"), and growing increasingly worried about the disappearance of "Annabelle", who appeared to be herself in the morning but has gone missing after leaving the Andrews'' home, she enlists the help of her neighbor and childhood friend, Boris, though without telling him about her identity crisis. As the day wears on and Annabelle has a series of increasingly bizarre and frustrating misadventures, she becomes gradually more appreciative of how difficult her mother''s life is, and learns, to her surprise, that Ben idolizes her, and Boris is actually named Morris, but has a problem with chronic congestion (at least around Annabelle) leading him to nasally pronounce ms and ns as bs and ds. The novel races towards its climax and Ben also disappears, apparently having gone off with a pretty girl whom Boris did not recognize, but Ben appeared to trust without hesitation. In the climax and dénouement, Annabelle becomes overwhelmed by the difficulties of her situation, apparent disappearance of her mother, loss of the children, and the question of how her odd situation came about and when/whether it will be resolved. Finally, it is revealed that Annabelle''s mother herself caused them to switch bodies through some unspecified means, and the mysterious girl who took Ben was Mrs. Andrews in Annabelle''s body (to which she is restored) made much more attractive by a makeover Mrs. Andrews gave the body while using it, including the removal of Annabelle''s braces, an appointment Annabelle had forgotten about (and would have missed, had she been the one in her body that day). The book (and especially the film adaptations and its second sequel, Summer Switch) might be considered a modern retelling of Vice Versa, the 1882 novel by F. Anstey, in which the protagonists are a father and son.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

Sun Horse, Moon Horse

By Rosemary Sutcliff

The Burning Wire

By Jeffery Deaver

Notes of a Native Son

By James Baldwin

Raise the Titanic

By Clive Cussler

The Eyre Affair

By Jasper Fforde

A Colossal Failure of Common Sense

By Patrick Robinson

Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose

By Dr. Seuss

Alongside Night

By J. Neil Schulman

The Cry of the Wolf

No Author Listed

Typewriter in the Sky

By L. Ron Hubbard

The Amethyst Ring

No Author Listed

Freaky Friday

By Mary Rodgers