The story opens in the town of Wheeling, West Virginia. We first see Roget Germyn, a banker and model Citizen. An Eye forms over him while he is meditating, but he is interrupted and the Eye vanishes. He then returns to a more Earthly concern - whether or not the ''sun'' will be regenerated, ending the current period of hunger and cold. Attention then shifts to Glenn Tropile, who lives among the Citizens, but regards himself as one of the feared Wolves. He has even managed to slowly coach his wife, Gala, toward a more Wolfish outlook. Despite this rebellious attitude, he maintains a genuine interest in meditation. Glenn Tropile is exposed as a Wolf while stealing bread. He escapes execution and is collected by a community of Wolves living in the town of Princeton. They find he doesn''t entirely fit in there either, but hope he may get collected by an ''Eye'', giving them a chance to measure this process in detail. This eventually happens and they find, as expected, that his disappearance was facilitated by the Pyramid on Everest. Glenn Tropile has been sent to the Pyramid''s planet. We then learn his fate. To the Pyramids, the human race is nothing more than a useful source of ''Components'' for a complex world-machine devoted mostly to feeding these artificial and semi-organic beings. Tropile is suspended in a fluid-filled tank and ''wired in'' to the vast computer system. Later, he is linked to seven other humans as a ''Snowflake'' - eight minds joined together to facilitate more complex tasks than a single human Component could manage. In this condition, Tropile wakes, manages to retain his sanity, and wakes the other humans. They eventually merge with one another to form a sophisticated collective mind. The freed Snowflake then spies on the Pyramids, finding that they have been traveling for some two million years, and have collected many species as Components, but seem locked in meaningless rituals surrounding an alien creature at the world''s North Pole. They later realize that this is the last survivor of the race that created the Pyramids. In the meantime, they have modified the collection process of human Components so that it selects persons known to at least one of the eight people composing the Snowflake (which has become almost as ruthless and inhuman as the alien Pyramids). These humans are intended as ''mice,'' disrupters of the planet, and later as an army with which to fight the Pyramids. Roget Germyn is one of them, as is Tropile''s wife. Facing a philosophical dead-end, the ''Snowflake'' decides to separate its component minds to study the problem. Restored to individual identity, Glenn Tropile becomes horrified at what he has done. However, the majority of the others want to carry on. While they are arguing, one of their number is taken over by the mind of the alien at the North Pole, who warns them that the Pyramids have noticed them and plan to wipe out half the planet to get rid of them. They initially re-merge their personalities as the Snowflake and expedite their plans. Tropile decides he must physically disconnect himself from the Snowflake and leave to lead the humans. They manage to defeat the Pyramids, but not before the remainder of the Snowflake is also destroyed. The humans free many of the other Components and ship them back to Earth. Tropile now finds he is a hero of sorts, but does not fit the role (though he never truly fit any role in which he was placed - Sheep, Wolf, or Component). He also sees that there is a need for someone to wire themselves back in to the alien planet''s surviving systems, to re-kindle the ''sun'' every five years and perhaps return the Earth to its original orbit. He doesn''t want to do it alone, but most of the people he knows are either unwilling or unsuitable. On the last page, though, his wife agrees to join him. He expects that there will later be others, that "[t]he ring of fire [will] grow."

Wolfbane

Suicide Circle: The Complete Edition tells in four different chapters the story behind a fictional mass suicide that takes place on the Shinjuku Station in 2002, on which 54 high school girls throw themselves in front of a train. This event unleashes in Japan—and soon after, in the world—a chain of suicides that seems endless. Police officers try to stop it and understand why this is happening, and after several events they find a connection between the suicides and a website that belongs to a mysterious organization called Family Circle. Through this website, Family Circle enrolls young people and incite them to run away from home to serve the Circle "family rentals", a service that the organization provides to families who lost relatives to suicide. Parallel to this, alongside the police''s quest, the book also follows the story of one of Family Circle''s new members that witnessed the mass suicide, Noriko Shimabara, and how her own family slowly falls apart to the suicide wave, while her father tries to "rescue" her from the Circle. In the end, all the pieces come together as the true meaning behind the website is revealed.

Suicide Circle: The Complete Edition

Retired junior college history professor Andrew Lachlan has returned to his family home on a lake in north central Georgia to spend the last year of his life. Diagnosed with a terminal disease, he has decided to forego life-extending treatments so he can focus on learning what he feels he does not yet know about the world. With strong interests in Native American history and the natural world, he begins a journal that chronicles his last year. He lives alone, his wife have died some time before, and he looks forward to solitude, but a young country boy, Willie Sullivan, comes into his life. Willie’s world is cramped and difficult, and he brings to Andrew a kind of learning he’s never had before. At the same time, Andrew begins to teach Willie about the life beyond Shadow Pond, where Andrew lives. Andrew also reconnects with Callie McKenzie, a woman he loved years earlier and who is now a widow herself. Each begins to see in the other reflections of the life they once led. As Andrew’s life draws toward its inevitable end, he begins to find the edge of a new transcendence and an understanding of how generations learn and pass on the best of what they know and feel.

The Heart of a Distant Forest

Slipper-on-the-Water is a Minnipin village in the Land Between the Mountains. Slipper-on-the-Water is special, as it is home to the Periods, descendants of Fooley the Balloonist. They hold high offices in Slipper-on-the-Water and have a "Council of Periods" that rules the village. Gummy, a carefree poet, along with Walter the Earl and Curley Green, are three Minnipins who shun the tradition-based existence of the Minnipins and do things such as wear different-colored cloaks and have different color doors. Walter the Earl finds a collection of Ancient Treasures which includes items of warfare like swords and armor. Muggles is a candymaker who runs the Fooley Museum. One night, she wakes up and sees what she at first thinks is the sunrise, but is actually fires on the Sunset Mountains. At first, she thinks that seeing the fires on the mountains was just a dream, but later on she talks to Gummy and realizes that it was not a dream. The mayor returns from the annual meeting of mayors with news that there will be a contest to find the most deserving of the twelve villages. The winning village will win the most valuable thing in the valley: The Gammage Cup. The villagers participate in the contest. A few people decide to repudiate the contest as well as the fact that they are kicked out of the village, and leave. le, they explore the old mines in the Sunset Mountains and hear an odd tapping sound which soon emerges is the sound of the Minnipins'' enemy, the Mushrooms. Mingy is taken prisoner and Gummy is hit by a poisonous spear. Walter the Earl warns the village of the threat and gathers an army to fight the Mushrooms. A fierce battle ensues. As the Mushrooms flee back into their tunnel, Mingy sets a heap of sleeping mats on fire, making it impossible for the Mushrooms to escape into the Land Beyond the Mountains. In escaping the flames, the Mushrooms are defeated by the Minnipin army. An antidote for the poison is discovered and all the injured Minippins are cured. On their way back to the village, Gummy and Curly Green announce their engagement, as do Mingy and Muggles. The villagers hang garlands and streamers to celebrate the safe arrival home of the soldiers and the five outlaws, who are now respected, and paint all the doors of the houses of different colors. Ltd. gives a speech and so does Muggles, someone strikes up a song and everybody goes out into the meadow beyond the village to celebrate. While the villagers celebrate, the three judges of the contest arrive. Witnessing the happy scenes, they decide that Slipper-on-the-Water is the most deserving village and leave the Gammage Cup in the town square.

The Gammage Cup

The novel is set in the year 2074, in a future U.S., now called the United Safer States of America, that has become obsessed with safety and security. Nearly every potentially unsafe action has been criminalized, including school fights. The main character is Bo Marsden, a 16-year-old at high school. Bo''s father and brother are in prison, and Bo tends to see his own rash behavior as genetic. Things get out of control when Bo tries to assault his classmate, Karlohs Mink, and is arrested. As a result, Bo is sentenced to work making pizzas in the Canadian tundra, where he is surrounded by hungry bears and eats only pizzas everyday. Bo finds prison life boring and dangerous, and he is tired of eating pizzas. However, on the strength of his running ability, Bo is soon invited to join the Goldshirts, together with his extremely strong roommate Rhino. The Goldshirts are a specially privileged group at the camp because they play football for the camp warden, Hammer, who bets money on the matches. Training to play the sport, which is now highly illegal, makes Bo stronger and more self-confident. At the same time, Bork, an artificial intelligent being which Bo invents for his science project in the school, mutates and becomes a rogue, spreading across the web. Using its great knowledge of criminal law, Bork arranges the early release of Bo and his family members. Rogue AI programs are illegal, and Bork is eventually discovered and destroyed by Security&Safety. Bo, however, has already gained what he needs: his high school graduation certificate and the skills of running and football. He takes his grandfather''s shoes and decides to go to South America to play football, as it is still legal there.

Rash

Harriet has evacuated her family to the Wimseys'' country house, Talboys (in Hertfordshire), taking her two children, along with the three children of her sister-in-law, Lady Mary, and Peter''s venerable old housekeeper, Mrs. Trapp. Peter and Bunter are away on an undercover assignment. During a practice air raid, a young woman is murdered in the village, and Superintendent Kirk recruits Harriet to help solve the murder, partly because the police are too busy organizing all the changes necessitated by the war and partly because as the wife of a detective, and as a crime novelist, she is the best qualified person to find the murderer. The murdered girl had come from the city as a "Land Girl", to do agricultural work and help the war effort. She was killed in the village street during an air raid drill, while most people were underground, and much of the investigation turns on the issue of who had been, or could have been, outside the shelter when the murder was committed. Many of the witnesses—and some of the possible suspects—are RAF pilots stationed at a nearby air base, who need to be questioned in between going out on missions. Gerald, Lord Peter''s favourite nephew, who was first seen a decade earlier as a precocious boy playing a major role in solving "The Learned Adventure of the Dragon''s Head" and appeared as an Oxford undergraduate in Gaudy Night; is now an RAF combat pilot. At least one character introduces the possibility that the murder is directly linked to German espionage. While conducting the investigation and riding herd on the five children under her charge, Harriet worried about her husband, whose life is in danger. She regrets the lost years when she had put him off before finally agreeing to marry him. Wimsey, realizing that the Germans had broken the code which he had been using, devises a new one which is unbreakable because of being based on things only he and Harriet knew. His Secret Service colleague brings her Peter''s message and she shows considerable skill in decoding it. Eventually, Bunter comes back from the continent—uncharacteristically dirty, scruffy and so exhausted that he lets Lady Peter wait upon him and put him to bed—and is followed some days later by Peter, who arrived by a different route. It is never revealed where exactly they had been. Lord Peter is retired from active service and, while still involved in intelligence issues, would not be sent again behind enemy lines. Being presented with Harriet''s record of her investigations—which, as he notes, already solved most of the mystery—he is able to add the last missing pieces. Finding the solution for the mystery does not mean, however, just handing the perpetrator to the police; rather, solving the mystery arouses a complicated new problem involving legal, military, ethical and moral issues—which Lord Peter manages to neatly tie up.

A Presumption of Death

Hal Ambler, a former Consular Operations agent in the Political Stabilization Unit, is kept heavily medicated and closely watched in a psychiatric facility just off the US coast. However, Ambler is unique amongst the other patients in the Parrish Island psychiatric facility, because he is perfectly sane. With the help of a sympathetic nurse, Ambler manages to clear his mind of the drug-induced haze and stage a daring escape off the island. Although he is desperate to discover who put him on Parrish Island and why, the world he returns appears to have conveniently forgotten him. Friends and associates no longer recognize him, no official records of his existence are to be found, and the face he sees in the mirror is not his own. After contacting several old associates who do not recognize him or even have any recollection of his existence, Ambler goes to a cabin in certain part of country which had always been his lone solace even during his days as a field agent. He arrives to find no cabin, and the landscape looked such that there hadn''t been any before. A tranquillizer dart armed with carfetanyl then strikes him, but does not affect his thought processes severely . He tracks down the sniper and forces the sniper, a freelance operative, to give him authorisation codes. However, before the operative can be milked for more information, he is killed by a sniper whose single bullet also grazed Ambler''s neck. He then contacts the agency that is tracking him down. Ambler comes in contact with agents from his past in the Political Stabilization Unit. Among those is Osiris, a blind operative who had an uncanny linguistic ability and has also regarded Ambler as his close friend. His friend is subsequently shot and killed by a Chinese intelligence officer independent of the organization Ambler is being hired by, who believes Ambler wants to assassinate the Chinese head of state. He uncovers a conspiracy involving a State Department official to kill the Chinese President, in order to hinder the shift in power and to restore the old world order of Pax Americana, in accordance with her university lecturer, Ashton Palmer''s fanatical ideals. Ambler manages to unravel the conspiracy, while at the same time discovering that the nurse who had freed him and supposedly helped him on his endeavours to find out more about himself was in league with the "Palmerites", or so those who conform to Palmer''s ideals are called. Ambler''s ability to determine others'' emotions and pick up even the slightest of change in facial expression is foiled, for the nurse was trained in Method acting. At the end of the book, Ambler is seen to be lounging with a CIA officer, albeit a desk-jockey, who had assisted him in self-discovery and the foiling of the conspiracy. fr:L''Alerte Ambler pl:Kryptonim Ambler

The Ambler Warning

Challenger sends telegrams asking his three companions from The Lost World - Edward Malone, Lord John Roxton, and Professor Summerlee - to join him at his home outside of London. The cryptic telegrams also instruct each of them to bring a tank of oxygen. When they arrive they are ushered into a sealed room, along with Challenger and his wife. In the course of his research, Challenger has predicted that the Earth is about to come into contact with a belt of poisonous ether, which will, based on its effect on the people of Sumatra earlier in the day, cause the end of humanity. Challenger seals them in the room with the cylinders of oxygen, which he (correctly) believes will counter the effect of the ether. The sealing is not to keep the ether out - it permeates everything - but "to keep the oxygen in". The five of them wait out the Earth''s passage through the band as they watch the world outside die, and machines run amok. (In an interesting display of Victorian values - or, at least, Doyle''s take on them - Challenger does not even consider including his servants; they are left outside the room to die, and continue to perform their duties until the ether overtakes them.) Finally, the last of their oxygen cylinders runs dry, and they open a window, ready to face death. To their surprise, they do not die, and they wander through the dead countryside in Challenger''s car, eventually making it to London. They encounter only one survivor, who is an elderly, bed-ridden woman prescribed oxygen for her health. After going to London and back, they make plans for the fate of the world at their hands—when suddenly, people start to wake up again. The effect of the ether turns out to be temporary, and the world wakes up again after a little over a day in a coma, with no knowledge that they have lost any time at all. Eventually Challenger and his companions manage to convince the world what happened - a task made easier by the tremendous amount of death and destruction caused by runaway machines and fires that took place while the world was asleep - and humanity is shocked into placing a higher value on life, and how well we spend what little time we are given.

The Poison Belt

Miles graduates from the Academy, and is upset to learn he is being sent to replace the weather officer at the Empire''s winter infantry training base on remote Kyril Island, to see if he can handle the discipline and military routine. Miles refuses to obey what he deems a criminal order by the base commander, who has him arrested for mutiny, and as he is Vor, treason. He is quickly returned to the capital and sequestered in the bowels of Imperial Security (ImpSec) by Simon Illyan, who, along with his father, conclude that Miles had behaved correctly, but that they have larger problems than insubordinate Vorlings. Young Emperor Gregor has disappeared while on a diplomatic mission to Komarr. Miles, traveling to the Hegen Hub on an unrelated mission for ImpSec, is framed for murder and arrested. While in custody, he is startled to find Gregor, who tells him that he ran away from the embassy on Komarr, but was then shanghaied as a technician by an unscrupulous ship owner. Miles complicates matters in an attempt to extricate Gregor, and is soon up to his neck in a mysterious plot involving an amoral femme fatale, his murderous former Kyril Island commanding officer, and Hub power politics. Miles encounters his mercenary friends and, after outmaneuvering their leaders, resumes command under his Admiral Naismith persona. He is able to rescue Gregor, and as a bonus, unify the Hegen Hub in repelling a Cetagandan invasion fleet, with a little timely help from a Barrayaran fleet co-commanded by his father and Emperor Gregor. Gregor and ImpSec decide to put the Dendarii on permanent secret retainer for covert missions, with Miles officially installed as liaison. Thus begins the portion of Miles'' career that ends with his temporary disgrace in Memory.

The Vor Game

Nate is at home, about to test his latest invention - a machine that can dress humans, like in cartoons. However, the invention goes wrong and ruins his room, upsetting his parents. Nate goes to his best friend Cat''s house, to test their latest invention, the Bully Blow - also known as Pergophosphaticus III - a goo-like substance that causes whoever eats it to turn blue. They test it on the school bully by putting some in her chocolate brownie, but it is confiscated by the Headmaster, who turns blue when he eats it. Rather than getting Nate and Cat into trouble, he asks them to take part in Ebenezer Saint''s competition. They have under a week to invent something so good that Saint''s company, Saint Solutions, will take it on. The winners will be given a year-long scholarship at Saint Solutions, working with Ebenezer himself. After many failed attempts at making Facial-Recognition Glasses, they decide to use the Bully Blow, now in the form of a helmet for the army, allowing the wearer to blend in with the surroundings by turning the appropriate color. Saint loves their invention, and they, along with the other winners, are taken to Saint Solutions. At Saint Solutions, they soon realise that Saint is reluctant to let them leave. He wants to create a nuclear bomb to wipe out the world and start again. However, the kids escape, but Nate and Cat stay behind to stop his bombs from being sent out. They use an EMP Cat hid on the bombs to detonate them early, with the duo just managing to escape before the compound is destroyed, along with Saint. In an epilogue, it is revealed that Saint''s memory was saved onto a computer, which downloads his mind into a robotic body. As his memories come back, the robotic Saint heads for the exit.

The Inventors

The novel opens with a prologue relating a paragraph-long Dick and Jane tale in which none of Jane''s family will agree to play with her until a friend comes along at last. The tale is then repeated two times, each time with less punctuation or fewer spaces between words, until finally all the words are squashed together. The novel is alternately narrated in first-person by Claudia MacTeer and in third-person omniscient, focusing on various other characters. 9-year-old Claudia and her 10-year-old sister, Frieda, live in Lorain, Ohio with their parents, who take two other people into their home: Mr. Henry, a tenant, and Pecola Breedlove, a temporary foster child whose house has been burned down by her wildly (and widely-gossiped) unstable father. Pecola is a quiet, passive young girl with a hard life, and whose parents are constantly fighting, both physically and verbally. Pecola is continually being told and reminded of what an "ugly" girl she is, thus fueling her desire to be white with blue eyes. Claudia is given a white baby doll to play with and is frequently told how lovely it is, though she despises and spitefully dismantles it. Unlike Pecola, Claudia resists the white racial standard in her society, is aggressive and determined, and has a strict but ultimately stable family. While living in the MacTeer household, Pecola experiences menarche, bringing up the first of the book''s many themes of sexuality and adulthood. Likewise, ideas of beauty, particularly those relating to racial and class characteristics, are a major theme in this book. Insults or praises toward physical appearance are often given in racial terms. For example, a light-skinned student named Maureen Peal is shown favoritism at school. Claudia and Frieda initially feel both hatred and attraction toward Maureen. When they finally befriend her after finding Pecola bullied by a group of boys, though, Maureen herself insults Pecola regarding rumors about her father and the MacTeer girls furiously chase Maureen away. Throughout the novel, it is revealed through flashbacks that not only Pecola but also her dysfunctional parents had a life full of hatred and hardships. Her mother, Pauline, feels alive and happy only when she is working for a rich, white family who affectionately call her "Polly." Pecola''s father, Cholly, is a drunk who was left with his aunt when he was young but later ran away to find his father, who ended up wanting nothing to do with him. Equally troubling to Cholly as a young man was his loss of virginity, interrupted by a pair of white men who humiliatingly forced Cholly to continue having sex in their presence. By the time of the story''s current setting, both Pauline and Cholly have by now lost the tender and affectionate love they once had for each other in their youth. There is a contrast between the world shown in the cinema and the one in which Pauline is a servant, as well as the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant society and the existence the main characters live in. Most chapters'' titles are extracts from the Dick and Jane paragraph in the novel''s prologue, presenting a white family that may be contrasted with Pecola''s; perhaps to incite discomfort, the chapter titles contain much sudden repetition of words or phrases, many cut-off words, and no interword separations. One day while Pecola is doing dishes, her intoxicated father rapes her. His motives are unclear and confusing, seemingly a combination of both love and hate. Cholly flees after the second time he rapes Pecola, leaving her pregnant. Claudia and Frieda are the only two in the community that want for Pecola''s child to survive. Consequently, they give up money they had been saving to buy and plant marigold seeds with the superstitious hope that if the flowers bloom, Pecola''s baby will live. The marigolds never bloom and Pecola''s child, who is born prematurely, dies. Near the novel''s end, a dialogue is presented between two sides of Pecola''s own imagination, in which she indicates at strangely positive feeling about her rape by her father; in this inner conversation, Pecola converses as though her wish has been granted: she believes that she now has blue eyes. Claudia, as narrator a final time, describes Pecola''s insanity and suggests that Cholly (who has since died) may have shown Pecola the only love he could by raping her. Claudia lastly laments on her belief that the whole community, herself included, have used Pecola as a sort of scapegoat to make themselves feel prettier and happier.

The Bluest Eye

The book''s point of divergence is the assumption that it is the Arab air forces which on June 5, 1967 launch a surprise attack and destroy the Israeli Air Force, rather than the other way around as it happened in actual history. Afterwards the Arab armies launch a lighting ground attack and - in an exact mirror image of the actual Six Day War - conquer the entire territory of Israel by June 10, 1967. The US, embroiled in the Vietnam War, takes no action to save Israel, nor does any other country (except for a valiant but futile sending of some planes from the Netherlands). The book is written in a semi-documentary way, with multiple and constantly shifting points of view characters, detailed maps and numerous fictional quotations from the international media. The three writers had the openly proclaimed aim of helping Israel''s case in international public opinion, and justifying its act in having been in actual history the one to attack first. This aim is evident in the book''s numerous depictions of atrocities committed by the victorious Arab armies, including detailed depictions of the mass rape of Israeli women, the public execution of Moshe Dayan by the Egyptian occupiers of Tel Aviv and the appointment of Nazi war criminals to run the Arab occupiers'' secret police. As depicted in the book, the Palestinians get no benefit from the Arab victory and are as a far away as ever from having a state of their own, with Israeli territory being partitioned between Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Nor are the Palestinian refugees allowed to return to their pre-1948 homes despite these being under Arab rule. The book ends in a relatively upbeat tone, with Yigal Alon - who had commanded the Palmach militia under British Mandate rule - holding a clandestine meeting in Syrian-occupied Tiberias, laying plans for an extensive guerrilla campaign. There is thus the implication that Israel might eventually regain independence, though it would be after a long and harsh struggle.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

Wolfbane

By Cyril M. Kornbluth

Suicide Circle: The Complete Edition

By Sion Sono

The Heart of a Distant Forest

By Philip Lee Williams

The Gammage Cup

No Author Listed

Rash

By Pete Hautman

A Presumption of Death

By Jill Paton Walsh

The Ambler Warning

By Robert Ludlum

The Poison Belt

By Arthur Conan Doyle

The Vor Game

By Lois McMaster Bujold

The Inventors

By Alexander Gordon Smith

The Bluest Eye

By Toni Morrison

If Israel Lost the War

By Edward Klein