Hunter S. Thompson receives a letter from the editor of Running magazine, asking him to cover the 1980 Honolulu Marathon, which the editor says should be "a good chance for a vacation". Hunter asks the illustrator Ralph Steadman to accompany him. On the flight over, he meets a man named Ackerman, who seems to have connections to the drug trade in Hawaii. Hunter covers the marathon with his characteristic gonzo style, weaving his own experiences into the coverage of the story. After the marathon, Hunter, Ralph and Ralph''s family move to a rented beach side "compound" on Hawaii''s Kona coast. The weather is miserable and they are trapped indoors, besieged by huge waves. Ralph and his family, upset about the terrible conditions of their vacation, return to England. Later, Hunter reunites with Ackerman to go fishing. Hunter eventually catches a huge Marlin, which he beats to death with a Samoan war club. The fishing boat returns to the dock, with Hunter screaming triumphantly, "I am Lono!", referring to the ancient Hawaiian god. After this, Hunter ends his story in the City of Refuge, hiding from those he upset with his antics at the docks. The story frequently breaks away to excerpts from The Last Voyage of Captain James Cook, which tells the story of the man the native Hawaiians thought was the reincarnation of Lono.

The Curse of Lono

The novel, set in 1865 London, follows Charles Lenox as he seeks to solve a murder. Lenox is an independently wealthy gentleman who enjoys solving crimes as a hobby, though he generally prefers to pass the cold winter days in his library with a cup of tea, a roaring fire and a good book. He is drawn into a new case when his lifelong friend Lady Jane Grey makes a special request for his help. Prudence Smith, Grey''s former housemaid, is dead in an apparent suicide. But Lenox immediately suspects foul play: murder by a rare and deadly poison. Smith lived and worked in the patrician house of George Barnard, a place full of suspects. While Smith played with more than a few hearts, the motive behind her death proves elusive. When another body turns up during the season''s most fashionable ball, Lenox must untangle the web of loyalties and animosities surrounding Barnard’s mansion. Lenox receives help with the task both from his faithful valet, Graham, and his friend, Dr. Thomas McConnell. Throughout the story, Lenox’s efforts are intermittently enabled or hampered by Scotland Yard Inspector James Exeter, who requires Lenox’s help with the case but wants always to appear in total control. The subplots of the novel focus on Lenox''s evolving personal relationship with Grey and McConnell''s strained marriage to Lady Victoria "Toto" Phillips, all recurring characters in Finch''s books.

A Beautiful Blue Death

The first month of the tour is spent in the countryside of Armagh, where Charles’ battalion make their presence felt by ending all British Army contact with the locals and pursuing a deliberately more aggressive stance than the previous garrison unit. The month is mainly boring, with most days spent carrying out menial tasks in barracks or conducting patrols. However, towards the end of the period an anti-vehicle mine meant for Charles’ regular Land Rover patrol to an electricity sub-station destroys an electricity board van minutes before Charles arrives. Seeing his first explosion, as well as finding the scattered body parts of a man who should have been him and his soldiers, brings the realities of his situation home to him and increases his thoughts that he should never have joined the army: something which he must tackle throughout the book. In moving to Belfast for the remaining three months of the tour, things take a turn for the worse – something Charles thought couldn’t happen after the endless boredom and sporadic fear of Armagh. Billeted in a working factory which produces bottles 24 hours a day, his company’s quarters are ridiculed by the entire Belfast garrison as the worst in the city. The floor given over to officers for accommodation, dining and radio watch-keeping consists of ‘rooms’ created only by cardboard separations. As well as the deprivations of the location, Charles finds the customs of army life difficult to understand and get used to, especially as they seem to have no logic behind them. The officers and men of his battalion learn to deal with the pressures and squalor of urban guerrilla warfare by drinking, making mischief and engaging in sexual orgies. Charles, always aloof from his brother officers and institutionally separated from his men, finds it hard not to constantly question his own competency and worth, both as an officer and a human being. Having been involved in two riots, he is moved to Battalion Headquarters after the Press Relations Officer (PRO) has a negligent discharge and shoots himself in the foot. Charles shares his room with the Adjutant, and sets about ensuring that the battalion is seen in a good light by the press. This task is complicated somewhat by his Commanding Officer’s hatred of the press and idiosyncratic way of doing things, but Charles finds living in the police station which houses HQ much more bearable than the grim surrounds of the factory. More escapades follow, with Charles being involved in heart racing riots and close scrapes with members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, as well as comic activities with his brother officers. During this time, Charles begins writing indirectly for The Times. His job as PRO leads him into contact with The Times cowardly and drunkard Northern Ireland correspondent Beazley, who pays Charles and his Lance Corporal photographer to write and send his dispatches, thus allowing himself to avoid danger and sit in his hotel bar. Charles’ slightly more pleasant life at HQ ends abruptly, however, with the bombing of the police station. The adjutant is killed and their room destroyed, leading Charles to be sent back to the Factory but still in his role as PRO. More brilliantly described riots and arms finds occur, while Charles realises that he both enjoys and excels at journalism through his arrangement with Beazley. Charles resolves to leave the army, and eventually amasses enough money to buy himself out of his contract which runs for another few years. His resignation is accepted, and he gains permission to leave on his battalion’s return to England. The climactic scene of the book involves Charles and his CO in a gun battle with some young IRA gunmen. Fighting through an alley, Charles fires at point blank range and misses his target several times, before hitting his mark and killing the teenage boy. Charles’ reaction to his first kill is necessarily short, the battalion is preparing to leave Ireland and return home. The novel ends with Charles, for the first time in the novel, being completely at ease, enjoying a parachute drop into England and revelling in the fact that all he has to worry about is the drop itself.

A Breed of Heroes

At first it appears to be the autobiography of Harry Hubbard, which is made up of anecdotes of his life and actions with the CIA, the aftermath of the Cuban Revolution, the Mafia in the 60''s and the assassination of JFK. The very beginning of the book starts with Harry being told by a friend that his mentor Hugh Montague (a top level CIA officer) has either been assassinated or committed suicide on his boat. He then is told by his wife, Kittredge (a CIA member), that she has been unfaithful and is in love with another high level CIA intelligence officer. Under perceieved threat of his own assassination by the CIA he escapes to Moscow. It is there that he rereads in a hotel room the dense manuscript of his life at the CIA which he has documented and kept secret over his career. At that point, the book really begins. It details the life of a CIA inelligence officer who has connections to the highest levels of the CIA. It raises basic questions about the fight against Communism and goes into the Cuban Revolution and the Cuban Missle Crisis and perhaps most importantly raises questions about the assassination of JFK and who was ultimately responisble. Well written (the book is a lyrical treasure at times) it is considered by some to be Mailer''s masterpiece work. The book ends in 1984 with the words "To be continued."

Harlot''s Ghost

Amidst the massive upheavals that followed World War I, there was a pronounced emphasis in both nations to return to an idealized past of order and stability. The key to such recovery, according to popular thinking, was by reconstructing traditional gender roles, which had been thrown out of balance during the war. Such a nostalgized gender order could not be restored, however, without discursive modifications to account for the significant changes in society since 1914. Instead, a renewed emphasis on traditional gender norms required the provision of a degree of seeming empowerment to women by granting them discursive access to modernity. These connections between women and the modern were carefully constructed in order to ensure that women''s involvement with items of modernity, such as technological consumer goods, did not necessarily involve an assertion of female independence or liberation. Women''s association with modernity went only so far as such links could reinforce women''s traditional roles or highlight their continued subservience to and dependence on masculine guidance, expertise, and authority. Using advertisements and related ideological tools of consumerism, this study examines those modernized constructions of traditional gender roles. In a broader context, the book documents the wide-ranging similarities between French and German conceptions of gender. The transnational nature of this study illustrates that French and German notions of gender and modernity were strikingly congruent, and suggests the possibility of a broader gender ideology common to larger segments of Europe as a whole. These gendered ideals were consistent across not only geographical boundaries, but also chronological and political ones as well. The interwar decades were an era of rapid and stark changes politically, economically, and socially, but gender imagery in popular discourse remained virtually identical over the duration of these years, regardless of political regimes in power or prevailing economic circumstances. One of the important contributions of this study is to note this continuity and consistency of definitions of masculinity and femininity in the interwar era. The ability of traditional gender ideologies to hold firm among disparate elements of the population, people at all points on the political spectrum, and highly differentiated political regimes should form in future scholarly endeavor a vital point for analysis and questioning of cultural attitudes about gender. The fact that gender conceptions remained relatively the same over the course of these two decades—years when virtually every other aspect of society and culture seemed in a constant state of flux—attests to the extraordinarily powerful constancy of these gender constructions in French and German society.

Modernizing Tradition

The novel''s protagonist, Laurence, is a hermaphrodite whose unsettled father, Paternus, decides to raise the child as a male, though "he" displays normative gender characteristics of both sexes. Laurence is sent off to college, where he excels in his studies, particularly the writing of poetry, a skill that inflames the passions of an older widow, Emma. Laurence, however, is not attracted to her, and even displays asexual tendencies. On the night of his graduation, Emma professes her love to him and, being told the truth of Laurence''s hermaphroditism, goes into a deep state of shock, and subsequently dies. Though it was Laurence who had stalled the consummation of their relationship, he nonetheless reacts emotionally, and returns home to his cold father. Here, Paternus displays the true level of repulsion he feels towards his child, as well as his regret that Laurence will never beget a male heir. He offers Laurence his inheritance in a premature bulk sum, if he allows Paternus to effectively disown him. Laurence vehemently rejects the offer, instead offering the money to his younger (and importantly gender-neutral) brother, Phil, with the hope that his brother will share his wealth upon their father''s death.

The Hermaphrodite

Vasquez, Moriz, and Felipe are the three lighthouse keepers stationed at the Staten Island lighthouse off the southern tip of Argentina. Two of them are murdered by a band of newly arrived pirates led by one Kongre. Vasquez is the only survivor, and spends several months until the dispatch boat Sante Fe is due to return, surviving off the pirates'' hidden stores of food in a cave. After the Century, an American ship from Mobile, Alabama, crashes on the island due to the light having been put out by the pirates, Vasquez bands with the sole survivor of the wreck — First Officer John Davis — to stop the pirates from escaping into the South Pacific. They manage to scavenge a cannon from the wreckage, and shoot the pirates'' ship, the Maule, as it is about to leave the bay they are situated in. The shell only causes minor damage, however, and the pirates'' carpenter is able to fix it in only a few days. The night before the ship is about to attempt to leave again, Vasquez swims to the Maule at its mooring and plants a bomb in the rudder. This causes, yet again, only minor damage, and is fixed in only one day. The next day however, Carcante, the second-in-command of the pirate ship, spots the Sante Fe on the horizon. Fortunately for the pirates, it will not arrive till night, and the Sante Fe can''t possibly get into the bay without light from the lighthouse. This will give them the perfect chance to slip out and sail around the southern side of the island, which they know quite well by now. Vasquez and Davis, however, return to the lighthouse and turn the light back on. The troop of pirates tries to regain the lighthouse and kill the two, but they find the bolted iron door to the staircase too reinforced to break down. Kongre, the band''s leader, orders Carcante and the carpenter to climb the side of the lighthouse and murder Vasquez and Davis at the top, but they are shot as soon as their heads peek over the banister. Kongre and the remaining pirates realize it is all over for them, and flee to the interior of the island. Most surrender afterward, a few starve, and Vasquez watches as Kongre commits suicide. Vasquez returns home with the Sante Fe after making sure the island is safe for the new lighthousemen.

Le Phare du bout du monde

The book attacked the use of investment funds to promote the consolidation of various industries under the control of a small number of corporations, which Brandeis alleged were working in concert to prevent competition. Brandeis harshly criticized investment bankers who controlled large amounts of money deposited in their banks by middle-class people. The heads of these banks, Brandeis pointed out, routinely sat on the boards of railroad companies and large industrial manufacturers of various products, and routinely directed the resources of their banks to promote the interests of their own companies. These companies, in turn, sought to maintain control of their industries by crushing small businesses and stamping out innovators who developed better products to compete against them. Brandeis supported his contentions with a discussion of the actual dollar amounts—in millions of dollars—controlled by specific banks, industries, and industrialists such as J. P. Morgan, noting that these interests had recently acquired a far larger proportion of American wealth than corporate entities had ever had before. He extensively cited testimony from a Congressional investigation performed by the Pujo Committee, named after Louisiana Representative Arsène Pujo, into self-serving and monopolistic business dealing.

Other People''s Money and How the Bankers Use It

John Lafcadio, who modestly described himself as "probably the greatest painter since Rembrandt", has left a bizarre legacy - a collection of twelve sealed paintings, to be unveiled one at a time at an annual event commencing ten years after his death. While the first seven ceremonies went smoothly, the eighth starts with family ructions, when John''s granddaughter Linda finds her boyfriend Tommy has returned from a painting trip to Rome with a model, whom he has married to get into the country. Albert Campion, a friend of Belle and the family, persuades her to attend the show, just in time to be there when Tommy is stabbed to death during a power outage. Campion calls in his old friend Stanislaus Oates to help avoid scandal, but Oates is convinced Linda must be guilty, as she has the only obvious motive. Max Fustian, a hanger-on to Lafcadio''s coat-tails and now a flourishing art dealer, confesses to the crime, but his confession is laughable and a clear attempt to clear Linda. No further proof can be found however, and thanks to pressure from some important dignitaries attending the show, the matter is hushed up. The mystery continues, however, as Tommy''s art and possessions slowly vanish, until no trace of him remains. Campion meets up with Max Fustian, and finds himself entertaining strange suspicions of the odd little man. Some weeks later, Belle visits Claire Potter in her studio in the garden and finds her dead, face down on the couch. Nicotine poisoning is diagnosed, and suspicion falls at first on her husband, who had skipped work that day and had returned home for a minute an hour before the body was discovered, only to leave again in a hurry. Potter reveals his wife suffered from alcoholism, and frequently drank herself unconscious; he had assumed she had done this once more, washed her glass and left her there. Seeking the source of the poisoned booze, Campion and Oates discover that Claire took in wood-blocks for cleaning from Max Fustian, and had returned a parcel that very day. Questioning the delivery boy, they find that he once dropped a similar package, and was surprised to find the wrapping wet. Convinced of Fustian''s guilt but lacking proof, Campion seeks a motive. He learns from the model Rosa-Rosa that Tommy had a cottage in the country, and from the cook Lisa that Lafcadio, despite his determination to defeat his rival and keep his fame alive, had only managed to complete eight of the twelve paintings of his legacy, filling the remaining packages with junk as a joke. Campion visits Tommy''s cottage and finds Max there, all traces of Tommy burnt. He returns to Little Venice later, and finds Max in a blazing row with Belle - he has insisted he must take the remaining Lafcadio works abroad and sell them, and she has refused to let him. Sure now that Max had Tommy fake the last four paintings for him, Campion gets further proof in the form of a drawing uncovered in Paris by Linda. He meets Max and they go out to dinner, where Max has him sample a strange and rare wine from Romania. Too late, Campion recalls the wine has a terribly intoxicating effect if taken after spirits - and Max had made sure Campion drank lots of gin before dinner. After a drunken tour of town, Max leads Campion to the edge of a Tube platform, and pushes hard - only to be stopped by the plain-clothes men Oates has had on their tail, after a meeting with Campion that morning. Visiting Fustian in prison, Campion finds him a gibbering lunatic, his mind pushed over the edge by the defeat of his schemes.

Death of a Ghost

After her only daughter Amy suffers a crib death, Emily takes up running as a way to deal with her pain. She believes that "only fast running will do"—she pushes her body to its limits, often vomiting and sweating profusely. Her husband, Henry, finds out about this habit, and treats it as a psychological reaction to grief. Emily is hurt and runs out of the house, down to a local Holiday Inn. She contacts her father and explains her situation; after their conversation, Emily decides to stay in her father''s summer home, near Naples, FL. (In the story, she takes Southwest Air to the Naples Airport, even though, as is noted later, Naples Airport is a private airport, without commercial service.) She also speaks with Henry, and the two agree that a trial separation is a good idea. Emily''s life becomes quite simple—she eats plain meals and runs for miles every day. As her body shrinks, she gets to know the few people that hover around the island; Vermillion Key is mostly devoid of tourists. The only person Emily regularly contacts is Deke Hollis, an old friend of her father who runs the drawbridge on the island. During a chance meeting, Hollis tells Emily that Jim Pickering, one of the men who owns a home on the island, is back. He has brought along a "niece"—Hollis''s polite name for the young women Pickering lures to his home. Emily prepares to continue, but Hollis warns her that Pickering is "not a very nice man." As Emily continues her daily run, she notices a shiny red car outside one of the "McMansions" along the beach. She deduces that it must be Pickering''s car, and must satisfy her curiosity—which turns to concern as she hears a low moan coming from around the vehicle. Emily cautiously approaches...and notices a trail of blood running toward the trunk. She sees a young woman lying in the car with her throat slashed, meaning that she could not have made the groaning noise she heard. The moment she reaches this conclusion, though, someone cracks her on the back of the head. When Emily awakens, she finds herself imprisoned on a kitchen chair with duct tape. Pickering stands before her, licking his lips and acting excited. He is particularly aroused by Emily''s powerful legs, which have become lean and muscular due to her continued runs. Emily realizes that Pickering is insane, and hints that she let someone know where she was going. When Pickering presses her for details, Emily blurts out Deke Hollis''s name; Pickering leaves, presumably to kill the old man. Emily knows that she does not have much time, and hears her father''s voice in her head, giving her advice. She uses her strong legs to splinter the tape that binds her; the pain is excruciating, but she manages to free her lower body. She looks for a knife to release her arms, but settles on the corner of the island in the middle of the kitchen. She undoes all of her restraints just as Pickering returns. Emily fights Pickering in the kitchen, using the broken legs of the chair to attack. After temporarily knocking him out, she runs through the house, eventually stumbling into the bedroom. She hears Pickering chasing her, and realizes the only way out is to jump out of the window. Emily again recalls her father''s advice from her youth—"Gravity is everyone''s mother"—and leaps. She runs to the beach and hears Pickering behind her, and realizes, in a rather odd coincidence, that she has been "training" for this moment. Though exhausted from her imprisonment, Emily''s months of running serve her well. She keeps well ahead of Pickering, who now carries a pair of scissors as a weapon. She eventually meets a young Latino man on the beach, and begs for help, but he does not understand her cries. Pickering appears and tries to use Spanish to convince the man that Emily is with him, but Emily''s fearful expression convinces the young man otherwise. He pushes Emily behind him; incensed, Pickering brutally slaughters the man with the scissors. Emily, tiring quickly, runs into the ocean. Pickering follows her, but begins to flounder. Emily gasps as she figures out what is happening—Pickering cannot swim. Emily manages to escape him, and sits on the shoreline watching as Pickering drowns. When he finally goes under, Emily tells herself that a shark or some other creature attacked him. She wonders why, and guesses that it is a part of the human condition. Her long ordeal over, Emily stands and shouts at the birds flying about, and prepares to go home.

The Gingerbread Girl

The book is about a fourteen-year-old girl, Annie, who falls in love with a boy named Danny. She soon becomes the victim of domestic violence, along with rape. Not long after the two start dating, she finds out she is pregnant. Annie and her mother are left to decide what will become of the baby. At first, Annie tries to keep the baby, who is called "Little Annie," but soon finds it too difficult and gives her up for adoption. The book ends with the words "Annie loves Danny," meaning that Annie had to remember her very first love. There are inconsistencies in the book that support the theory that Beatrice Sparks fabricated the diary. On the first page, Annie remarks, "This morning I... threw a last minute polish on my (due-yesterday) science paper..." However, the entry is written on a Monday. As school never operates regularly on weekends, this would have been impossible. At the end of the novel, Annie mentions that she drew a heart with the words "Annie loves Danny" on a tree on the day of their first meeting; however, Annie did not learn Danny''s name until their second meeting. Whether this is a true story is still unclear.

Annie''s Baby

Sally Blount''s father, Matthew Blount, has been arrested for the murder of Paul Jerin, a chess master. Blount had arranged for Jerin to play twelve simultaneous games of blindfold chess at his club. Well into the contest, Jerin complains of physical discomfort and cannot continue. Shortly thereafter, Jerin dies of what tests show to be arsenic poisoning. During the contest, Jerin had been sitting by himself in a small library off the chess club''s main game room. He had nothing to eat or drink except a pot of hot chocolate, brought to him by Blount. After Jerin fell ill, he was diagnosed by a doctor who was playing in the contest; the doctor called for an ambulance but Jerin died at a hospital. Not only had Blount brought the hot chocolate to Jerin, he had washed out the pot and the cup after Jerin complained that he didn''t feel well. Blount is charged with murder. The only people to enter the library where Jerin sat, other than Blount, were four messengers, who relayed the moves between the main game room and the library. The messengers apparently had no good opportunity to put arsenic in Jerin''s chocolate. Dan Kalmus is Blount''s corporate lawyer, and represents Blount after he has been jailed without bail. Blount''s daughter Sally is convinced, however, that Kalmus is in love with Blount''s wife Anna, and that he won''t be inclined to give Blount his best legal efforts. Furthermore, Blount''s specialty is business law, not criminal law, and he might not have the needed background. But Sally is certain that her father is innocent, so she hires a reluctant Wolfe to investigate on her father''s behalf. Neither Wolfe nor Archie seems to have his heart in the case because the circumstances point so clearly at Blount. And Wolfe learns from the police that their own inquiries discovered no connection between the messengers and Jerin, whereas Blount was unhappy that Jerin had been seeing Sally. Because none of the messengers could have a motive to kill Jerin, and because he has assumed that Sally is correct that her father didn''t, Wolfe conjectures that Jerin was poisoned not because the murderer had it in for Jerin, but to get at Blount, whose apparent motive would surely get him arrested. Wolfe''s hypothesis, then, is that Jerin was a pawn, sacrificed in a gambit to get rid of Blount. Wolfe speaks with each of the messengers as the best alternative suspects, to try to determine which of them might have wanted Blount, not Jerin, out of the way. Each of the four has a possible motive: Sally thinks Kalmus is in love with her mother, Farrow would like to take over Blount''s firm, Yerkes wants Blount''s vote in a board election but won''t get it, and Hausman resents Blount for going easy on him in chess games but winning anyway. Wolfe learns that there is, in Blount''s words, "a certain fact" known only to Blount and to Kalmus that will demonstrate his innocence. The fact turns out to be that Blount really did put something in Jerin''s chocolate, but it was sedative in effect, not poisonous. This puts a very different face on things, and as a result Wolfe and Archie, independently, are able to infer both the murderer''s identity and how the arsenic got into Jerin.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

The Curse of Lono

By Hunter S. Thompson

A Beautiful Blue Death

By Charles Finch

A Breed of Heroes

By Alan Judd

Harlot's Ghost

By Norman Mailer

Modernizing Tradition

No Author Listed

The Hermaphrodite

By Julia Ward Howe

Le Phare du bout du monde

By Michel Verne

Other People's Money and How the Bankers Use It

No Author Listed

Death of a Ghost

By Margery Allingham

The Gingerbread Girl

By Stephen King

Annie's Baby

By Beatrice Sparks

Gambit

By Rex Stout