As the play opens, Countess Isabella is at her house in Venice, where she observes the customary period of mourning for her recently-deceased husband Viscount Hermus. Her state of mind is far removed from what society expects: instead of grieving over her husband''s death, she wishes he had died much sooner. She quickly strikes up a new romance with Roberto, the Count of Cyprus; they violate mourning with a sudden marriage. A masque is staged at their wedding feast &mdash; and the wanton Countess is attracted to one of the dancers in the masque, Count Massino. She writes him a love letter; they meet and quickly flee together to Pavia. There, Isabella meets Massino''s friend Gnaica, the Count of Gazia, and just as precipitously she conceives a passion for him. Gnaica resists her advances at first, unwilling to betray his friend; but the Countess''s appeal soon overwhelms his scruples. Massino returns from hunting, only to be denied admission to Isabella''s presence. He denounces her uncontrolled lust in satiric verses; she, outraged, solicits Gnaica to kill Massino. The two meet and duel &mdash; but soon find that their hearts aren''t in the matter. They talk over the situation, and part amicably. Isabella is even more outraged by this, and determines to work the deaths of both men. A Spanish colonel named Don Sago falls in love with her on first sight; she uses him to kill Count Massino. Sago is captured and brought before the Duke of Medina; he confesses fully. As a result, Isabella is condemned to death. Her husband Count Roberto, disguised as a friar, visits her on the scaffold, to offer her his forgiveness and bid her a final farewell. Isabella''s lustful career is contrasted with the three virtuous women of the play''s subplot. Two foolish citizens, Mizaldus and Clardiana, are determined to continue a family feud begun by their grandfathers; even on their mutual wedding day, the two quarrel in the street. Their new brides, Thais and Abigail, are old friends, and decide to teach their silly husbands a lesson. The two men are not brave enough to fight an actual duel; each tries to gain advantage on his rival by seducing the rival''s wife. Thais and Abigail use this circumstance to stage a doubled version of the bed trick that is so common in English Renaissance drama. Both Rogero and Clardiana have sex with their own wives, each mistakenly thinking that he is a successful seducer. Meanwhile, the virtuous widow Lady Lentulus is being pursued by her own would-be seducer, Mendoza Foscari, nephew of Duke Amago of Venice. When Mendoza tries to climb to the widow''s balcony, his rope ladder breaks under him. Mendoz is injured in the fall; he crawls away from the Lady''s house, and is apprehended by the night watch. The watch assume that the Duke''s nephew has been assaulted, and scour the city for suspects; they find Clardiana and Rogero in each other''s houses, and arrest them both. The two silly men are ready to be wrongfully condemned, rather than admit publicly that they''ve been cuckolded (as they now believe); Mendoza, wanting to spare Lady Lentulus dishonor, claims that he was climbing to her apartment to steal her jewels. The exasperated Duke sentences all three men to death, hoping that the move will shock someone into telling the truth. On the day appointed for the executions, Abigail and Thais come forward to explain the double bed trick; their husbands, now realizing that they are not cuckolds, retract their confessions and are released. (Mendoza''s part of the story is never resolved.)

The Insatiate Countess

The first character introduced to the reader is a young girl named Lola, who shares a room with five other girls, including the narrator, in a college dormitory. Lola records her experiences in a diary, relating her efforts to escape from the totalitarian world of school and society by riding the buses at night and having brutish, anonymous sex with men returning home from factory work. She also has an affair with the gym teacher, and soon joins the Communist Party. This first part of the book ends when Lola is found hanging in the closet; she has left her diary in the narrator''s suitcase. Having supposedly committed suicide and thus betrayed her country and her party, Lola is publicly denounced in a school ceremony. Soon after, the narrator shares Lola''s diary with three male friends, Edgar, Georg, and Kurt; Lola''s life becomes an escape for them as they attend college and engage in mildly subversive activities—"harbouring unsuitable German books, humming scraps of banned songs, writing to one another in crude code, taking photographs of the blacked-out buses which carry prisoners between the prison and the construction sites." in the well of a deserted summerhouse in town. Very quickly it becomes clear that an officer of the Securitate, Captain Pjele, is interested in the four and begins to subject them to regular interrogations. Their possessions are searched, their mail opened, and they are threatened by the captain and his dog. After graduation the four go their separate ways, but they remain in contact through letters and regular visits, although their letters are read by the Securitate. They take menial jobs: Kurt works in a slaughterhouse as a supervisor, for instance, and the narrator translates German manuals in a factory. A fifth member, Tereza, befriends the narrator even as it becomes clear that she is acting partly on Pjele''s orders. The lives of all five become more miserable, and each conforms to the regime''s demands even as they lose their jobs for apparently political reasons. They discuss fleeing the country, and Georg is the first to do so; weeks after he arrives in Germany, he commits suicide by jumping out the window of a Frankfurt hotel. The narrator and Edgar likewise acquire passports and go to Germany, still receiving death threats. Kurt remains in Romania, no longer working, and later found hanged. The novel ends with the same passage as it began: "When we don''t speak, said Edgar, we become unbearable, and when we do, we make fools of ourselves".

The Land of Green Plums

In response to a radio plea from Abner Perry, a scientist who with his friend David Innes has discovered the interior world of Pellucidar at the Earth''s core, Jason Gridley launches an expedition to rescue Innes from the Korsars (corsairs), the scourge of the internal seas. He enlists Tarzan, and a fabulous airship is constructed to penetrate Pellucidar via the natural polar opening connecting the outer and inner worlds. The airship is crewed primarily by Germans, with Tarzan''s Waziri warriors under their chief Muviro also along for the expedition. In Pellucidar Tarzan and Gridley are each separated from the main force of the expedition and must struggle for survival against the prehistoric creatures and peoples of the inner world. Gridley wins the love of the native cave-woman Jana, the Red Flower of Zoram. Eventually everyone is reunited, and the party succeeds in rescuing Innes. As Tarzan and the others prepare to return home, Gridley decides to stay to search for Frederich Wilhelm Eric von Mendeldorf und von Horst, one last member of the expedition who remains lost (The missing Von Horst''s adventures are told in a sequel, Back to the Stone Age, which does not involve either Gridley or Tarzan).

Tarzan at the Earth''s Core

Eight year old Princess Irene lives a lonely life in a wild, desolate, mountainous kingdom, with only her nursemaid, "Lootie" for company. Due to her sheltered upbringing, her father being absent attending to affairs of state and her mother being dead, Irene has never known about the existence of the goblins, which lurk in the underground mines. These goblins (also known as "gnomes" or "kobolds") are grotesque and hideous beings, who centuries ago were once human, but due to varying reasons, were driven underground and were malformed and distorted by their new lifestyle. This caused them to despise the humans above the ground and vow revenge against them. Irene and Lootie &ndash; who knows of the goblins &ndash; stay out late one night and are chased by the goblins, who only appear on the surface at night as sunshine repulses them. Lootie and Irene barely escape the goblins after a miner''s child, a boy named Curdie Peterson, appears and sings loudly to the goblins, which drives them away. Curdie states that goblins are repelled by singing, and he and Irene begin to become friends. However, Curdie soon discovers, after he ventures into the mines and accidentally enters the realm of the goblins, that the goblins are planning a war against the humans on the surface, where they plot to abduct the Princess and marry her to Prince Harelip, the heir to the throne of the goblin kingdom, therefore forcing the humans to accept the goblins as their rulers. The driving force behind this scheme is the vile Goblin Queen, the stepmother of Harelip, who hides a secret &ndash; she has toes, a physical trait that goblins do not have and therefore regard with disgust. WIth the help of Irene''s ethereal great-great grandmother, the Princess and Curdie must hatch a plan to defeat the goblins and save the kingdom.

The Princess and the Goblin

Set in puritan Kent in 1657, the story focuses on the intrigues of Sir Marmaduke de Chevasse "as stiff a roundhead as ever upheld my Lord Protector and his Puritantic government" who is determined to secure the vast fortunes of his lovely ward, Lady Sue, for himself. Sue presents a girlish figure; she is young, alert and vigorous. The charm of her own youth and freshness even means she looks dainty and graceful in clothes that disfigure her elders. She enjoys the adulation which her appearance guarantees, laughing and chattering with the women and teasing the men. She does of course have plenty of admirers, including young Richard Lambert who worships her with protective reverence. Sir Marmaduke who has plans to woo and win Lady Sue disguised as the exiled French Prince of Orléans, resents this faithful espionage and lays a plot to lure young Lambert to a gaming-house in London. Richard knows that gambling is an illicit pastime and that he is breaking the law, but is compelled to take his seat at the table by his employer. Richard is then duped into taking part in a brawl and is summarily arrested leaving the way open for Marmaduke to carry out his cowardly deception and he soon tricks Sue into marrying him. Sir Marmaduke persuades his widowed sister-in-law to abet him in this plot, in which she unwittingly disgraces one of her long lost sons and finds the other murdered by the villain. Though set in a completely different kind of background, the plot has some resemblance with the Sherlock Holmes story "A Case of Identity".

The Nest of the Sparrowhawk

A waiter at Rusterman''s Restaurant turns up at Wolfe''s front door late one night, claiming that a man is going to kill him. Shortly after Archie puts him in one of the spare bedrooms, the waiter dies when a bomb planted in his coat pocket explodes. Wolfe, outraged at the thought of such a violent act taking place in his own house, resolves to find the murderer without sharing any information with Inspector Cramer. Soon Wolfe and Archie find themselves investigating two additional murders: the earlier killing of a customer at Rusterman''s, and the subsequent death of the waiter''s daughter. For much of the story, Stout leads the reader to believe that the central murder mystery is related to the Watergate scandal. Ultimately, Wolfe discovers that the killer is one of his closest associates, a character who had been appearing in Nero Wolfe mysteries for over forty years. A Family Affair is an unusual Nero Wolfe mystery in that Archie reveals his (correct) opinion of the killer''s identity well before Wolfe does so in the closing chapters.

A Family Affair

The book opens on Thanksgiving evening, about 10 years after the events of A Wind in the Door. Meg is now married to Calvin and is expecting their first child. Calvin has become a scientist and is in Britain at a conference. The Murry family is joined for Thanksgiving dinner by an unusual guest—Meg''s very antisocial mother-in-law, Mrs. O''Keefe. When they receive the news of impending nuclear war caused by the dictator "Mad Dog Branzillo", Mrs. O''Keefe lays a charge on Charles Wallace &mdash; to prevent the disaster. She teaches him "Patrick''s Rune", a rhyming prayer of protection that has been passed down to her from her Irish grandmother. Charles Wallace goes for a walk to the star-watching rock, a family haunt, and begins to recite Patrick''s Rune. His recitation summons a flying unicorn from the heavens who introduces himself as Gaudior. The winged unicorn explains to Charles Wallace that he must prevent nuclear war by traveling through time and telepathically merging with people who lived in the locale of the star-watching rock at points in the past. By doing so he may change pivotal situations, "might-have-beens", in which things might have turned out better than they did. Though unsure how events in the distant past near his home can affect a South American dictator, Charles Wallace agrees. They are threatened along the way by the Echthroi, the antagonists introduced in A Wind in the Door. The Echthroi are evil beings whose goal is the total destruction of the universe. As Charles Wallace tries to make the might-have-beens turn out for good, the Echthroi are fighting to make them turn out for evil. Gaudior and Charles Wallace''s travels bring them to: Harcels, a Native American boy at least 1,000 years in the past; Madoc Gywnedd of Wales, a pre-Columbian trans-oceanic traveler; Brandon Llawcae, a Welsh settler in puritan times; Matthew Maddox, a writer during the American Civil War who wrote a novel about the legend of Madoc Gwynedd; and Mrs. O''Keefe''s brother Chuck Maddox, during their childhood. Meg connects with Charles Wallace from home through "kything", the telepathic communication she learned in A Wind in the Door. Eventually, a connection arises between the star-watching rock and Mad Dog Branzillo. In the 12th century, two Welsh princes named Madoc and Gwydyr travelled to North America to escape the in-fighting for their father''s throne. But once there, Gwydyr turned against Madoc and tried to conquer their new home. Madoc defeated Gwydyr in combat, and Gwydyr left to South America. Both men married into the local Native American populations and became part of the local folklore. Many generations later in the 1860s, a descendant of Madoc marries a descendant of Gwydyr, and Mad Dog Branzillo is their descendant. However, thanks to Charles Wallace''s changing of "might-have-beens" in the history of Branzillo''s ancestors, things turn out differently. Distant descendants of Madoc marry, reuniting Madoc''s line and resulting in a peaceful man being born instead, and the threat of nuclear war is dissolved.

A Swiftly Tilting Planet

Set in a fictitious version of the Spanish court of 1519, it is based on courtly romance and intrigues. In the first scenes Hugo introduces Doña Sol, a young noblewoman of the court of Don Carlos, King of Spain (the future Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor). The King has come to her room to seduce her. They are interrupted by the arrival of Doña Sol''s true love, the bandit Hernani, and the two argue over her and are about to duel. Her uncle (and fiancé) Don Ruy Gomez de Silva enters, and demands to know why both men are in Doña Sol''s private chambers. Don Carlos asserts that he had come hoping to meet Ruy Gomez to discuss affairs of state, and Hernani does not reveal the King''s true intent. In return for the bandit''s discretion, Don Carlos claims to Don Ruy that Hernani is a member of his entourage. Thus, each has given the other an honorable excuse for his presence in the quarters of Doña Sol. Thus, three men- two noblemen and a mysterious bandit, are in love with the same woman. What follows in the ensuing chaos of action prompted the biographer of Hugo, J.P. Houston, to write "... and a résumé [plot synopsis] will necessarily fail, as in the case of Notre-Dame de Paris, to suggest anything like the involution of its details" (Houston 1974:53). Don Carlos learns of a midnight rendezvous between Doña Sol and Hernani. He decides to interrupt it in the hope of abducting her. Hernani becomes aware of the plot and has his men surround the King''s guards. For the first time, the King becomes aware of Hernani''s true identity as a bandit, rather than a nobleman, and refuses a duel. Hernani, although he could charge the King with a crime, allows him to go free. The (interrupted) wedding of Doña Sol to Ruy Gomez. Hernani arrives in disguise, and confronts her for agreeing, however reluctantly, to marry. He admits his criminal past to Ruy Gomez, and the fact that he is being pursued by the King. On the King''s arrival, Ruy Gomez hides Hernani and refuses to surrender him, citing laws of hospitality, which, he asserts, protect his guests, even from the King. While Ruy Gomez and Don Carlos argue, Doña Sol, alone with Hernani, reveals that she plans to commit suicide before her marriage can be consummated. The King, frustrated by Ruy Gomez'' resistance, drops the pursuit of Hernani, and instead abducts Doña Sol. Ruy Gomez agrees to spare Hernani''s life long enough to free Doña Sol, on condition that Hernani will die willingly at some point in the future. Hernani gives him a horn which Ruy Gomez is to blow to announce the moment of Hernani''s death. Don Carlos is elected Holy Roman Emperor. He resolves to live up to the requirements and responsibilities of his new title. Carlos pardons Hernani and gives him Doña Sol. The two are married, but as they enjoy their wedding feast, Hernani hears the call of the horn blown by Ruy Gomez. As Hernani is about to drink poison Doña Sol enters the room and tries to convince him that he is hers and he does not have to listen to her uncle. He is unable to persuade her otherwise. She drinks half the bottle of poison. Hernani shocked by Doña Sol''s decision to kill herself drinks the other half of the poison and they die in each others arms. Ruy Gomez de Silva kills himself.

Hernani

The novel begins with a woman''s wave to her swim instructor: "She walked around the pool toward the exit. She passed the lifeguard, and after she had gone some three or four steps beyond him, she turned her head, smiled, and waved to him. At that instant I felt a pang in my heart! That smile and that gesture belonged to a twenty-year-old girl! Her arm rose with bewitching ease. It was as if she were playfully tossing a brightly colored ball to her lover. That smile and that gesture had charm and elegance, while the face and the body no longer had any charm. It was the charm of a gesture drowning in the charmlessness of the body. But the woman, though she must of course have realized that she was no longer beautiful, forgot that for the moment. There is a certain part of all of us that lives outside of time. Perhaps we become aware of our age only at exceptional moments and most of the time we are ageless. In any case, the instant she turned, smiled, and waved to the young lifeguard (who couldn’t control himself and burst out laughing), she was unaware of her age. The essence of her charm, independent of time, revealed itself for a second in that gesture and dazzled me. I was strangely moved. And then the word Agnes entered my mind. Agnes. I had never known a woman by that name." Divided into seven parts, Immortality centers on Agnes, her sister Laura and her husband Paul. Part One: the Face establishes these characters. Part Two: Immortality depicts Goethe''s fraught relationship with Bettina, a young woman who aspires to create a place for herself in the pantheon of history by controlling Goethe''s legacy after his death. Part Three: Fighting returns to Agnes and Laura, detailing the deteriorating state of Laura''s relationship with Bernard Bertrand. Part Four: Homo Sentamentalis chronicles Goethe''s afterlife and postmortem friendship with Ernest Hemingway. Part Five: Chance sees Agnes'' death, and intersects these fictional events with Kundera''s seemingly autobiographical account of a conversation with Professor Avenarius. Part Six: the Dial introduces a new character, Rubens, who had an affair with Agnes years prior to the onset of the main events in the plot. Part Seven: the Celebration concludes the novel in the same health club where Kundera first observed the inspirational wave gesture.

Immortality

Elias Henders is the prosperous owner of a ranch and a gold mine. Competing for his daughter Diana, ranch hand Colby sabotages recovering alcoholic foreman Bull, and takes his job. The local stage is repeatedly robbed of gold bullion from the owner''s mine, and Bull is suspected. The cowardly sheriff does not take action on the robberies. Rich Easterner Wainwright tries to buy the mine and ranch for a low price, but Henders refuses the offer and discusses the property''s true value with Diana. She is intrigued by Wainwright''s Eastern-educated son Jefferson, who proposes marriage. However, when they are attacked by Indians during the roundup, he runs rather than defend her. Henders is mortally wounded in the battle. Henders will bequeaths his property to his brother John back East so that he can take care of Diana, but John dies too. The Wainwrights pretend that Henders had agreed to a sale, but Diana knows better. Diana''s Eastern cousin Lillian brings Corson, a lawyer, to try to seize the ranch and gold mine. They insist that the ranch and mine are nearly played out, and that they should sell the property, offering her a small amount. They show their ignorance about western ways. Bull encourages Diana that the property is worth more than they say, and advises her that the Wainwrights are often at the mine. The Eastern lawyer finally announces that Diana has no property rights due to the wills. As pressure from the opposing forces builds, a mob goes to hang Bull for the stage robberies, but Diana warns him in time. Bull discovers there are papers that will prove Diana''s claim to the property, and that Lillian has seduced Colby to obtain his help. Bull actually does rob the stage, simply to obtain the papers supporting Diana. Diana recognizes him at the robbery, and is devastated because she is starting to have feelings for him. She orders the Wainwrights, Lillian and Corson off the property, and fires Colby. Bull has the Mexican Gregorio deliver the important papers to Diana, showing that Lillian is not related to John and thus not entitled to the property. The villains try to take over the ranch. Bull catches Colby robbing the bullion stage, and has him watched in town, but he is released by the sheriff and his friends. Colby kidnaps Diana and heads for Mexico. He claims to be rescuing her, but she knows that she does not love him. Bull follows her doggedly, and eventually rescues her. They return to town, stop the illegal title transfers and announce their impending marriage.

The Bandit of Hell''s Bend

The story takes place in Cedarville, while ''The Man with the Plan'' Griffin Bing is having a hard time adjusting to his school''s new atmosphere, which is more like a strict boot camp than a middle school. His new football fanatic Principal, Dr. Egan, does not like Griffin, due to his past. To make matters worse, somebody has stolen the priceless Superbowl ring that was in the school''s showcase, with Griffin''s retainer that he recently lost left in its place. For once, the Man with the plan DOESN''T have a Plan. Things only go from bad to worse when Griffin is accused of stealing it by Egan, and Griffin is sent to a state school for juvenile delinquents. Griffin realizes he has been framed by somebody and calculates a list of suspects: * Dr. Egan, (dubbed Dr. Evil) the principal who hates Griffin and could gain the ring as a football collectors item, as he loves the sport. * Celia White, A nosy reporter who is digging up dirt on Griffin. She often twists his words, and she will do anything to make him look guilty, possibly to gain a promotion. * Darren Vader, A burly boy who annoys Griffin. He could steal the ring after finding Griffin''s retainer in order to gain profit. His motive for framing Griffin would be to distract the police from him. * Tony Bartholomew, A boy who claims he is the rightful owner of the ring. Griffin tries to get the suspects through a metal detector at the courthouse after sending them an anonymous e-mail stating that a buyer was interested in purchasing a valuable possession that "recently" came to them. Griffin unfortunately discovers that Dr. Egan is the only suspect left. Logan, Griffin''s friend and amateur actor, agrees to get to know Egan''s daughter so he can search the house and find the ring, getting him off the hook. The plan fails when they discover Egan does not have the ring. Griffin is tried and placed under house arrest, where his friends meet him via video chat and formulate a final plan to clear their friend''s name. Savannah, the animal lover of the group, finds that a type of mouse that is attracted to shiny objects may have found Griffin''s lost retainer and swapped it out with the ring. Melissa, the computer whiz, hacks into Griffin''s house arrest system that allows him to leave the house without the alarm coming off while his parents are out. At the school during its play, Hail Caesar!, Griffin leads Egan to the mouse''s nest and clears his name. He is then raced home and resets his house arrest anklet as his parents arrive. Egan, who got Griffin home in time, clears up matters and apologizes to Griffin, saying that he was wrong to judge him. Also, Celia White shows up in an attempt to get a story on him. Before she can twist the words, however, Egan makes her stop and makes sure she won''t be doing it again. After this, Griffin asks the court if it will take a truly good-hearted friend out of the state school, so he can have a chance at life. They accept and it is implied that life will be better for Griffin and his friends.

Framed

The book starts off from the events at the end of The Clan of the Cave Bear detailing the life of a young Cro-Magnon woman named Ayla who has just been exiled from the Clan, the band of Neanderthals who had raised her from early childhood. Ayla now searches for her own people, whom the Clan refer to as "the Others". In a parallel narrative, Jondalar, a young Cro-Magnon man of the Ninth Cave of the Zelandonii, accompanies his impetuous younger half-brother Thonolan on a traditional rite of passage called the Great Journey. In these episodes, we learn of the Cro-Magnon''s neolithic nature religion, centered on the worship of the Great Mother of All, and follow their adventures and sexual exploits. It is also through these episodes that the animosity, verging on hatred, between the Others and the Clan (whom they refer to derogatorily as "flatheads") is introduced. The Others have repeatedly persecuted the Clan, taking land and resources, but justify it by classing them as animals. However, over the course of his adventures, Jondalar starts to question this prejudice, noting that no other animals have fire, tools or communicate intelligently, nor are they actively hated or attacked-as-sport by his people. Ayla, alone and ritually ostracized from the only people she has ever known, travels steadily from the Beran Sea peninsular home of her former tribe north for around half a year until finding the book''s titular valley sunk deep into the windy landscape of the periglacial loess steppes in Ukraine. Worried that she might never find the Others, she begins to prepare for winter. Finding a suitable cave and many conveniences in the valley, she establishes a comfortable but lonely life there. Her desire for companionship leads her to tame a filly whose mother she had killed, naming her Whinney. She also takes in and treats an injured cave lion cub, which she names Baby. In the course of their journey, Jondalar and Thonolan have met women and hope to settle with them, but Thonolan''s mate dies in childbirth and Jondalar feels he is not really in love with his woman friend. They continue on their journey and meet up with the Mamutoi people, planning to join them later in the year. Jondalar and Ayla meet when Thonolan is killed by a cave lion—Baby, now fully grown and with a mate of his own. Ayla heals Jondalar''s injuries and they begin to learn to communicate and get to know each other. Jondalar overcomes his inbred prejudice against the Clan and Ayla learns that all her peculiarities which confused and angered the Clan are actually fully accepted and encouraged by the Others. The two fall in love as the book nears its end, and decide to leave the Valley of Horses and explore regions around the valley Ayla has not yet investigated.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

The Insatiate Countess

By John Marston

The Land of Green Plums

By Herta Müller

Tarzan at the Earth's Core

By Edgar Rice Burroughs

The Princess and the Goblin

By George MacDonald

The Nest of the Sparrowhawk

By Baroness Emma Orczy

A Family Affair

By Rex Stout

A Swiftly Tilting Planet

By Madeleine L''Engle

Hernani

By Victor Hugo

Immortality

By Milan Kundera

The Bandit of Hell's Bend

By Edgar Rice Burroughs

Framed

By Gordon Korman

The Valley of Horses

By Jean M. Auel