War, starvation, crime and birth control have been eliminated. Life is now totally fulfilled and sustained within Urban Monads (Urbmons), mammoth thousand-floor skyscrapers arranged in "constellations", where the shadow of one building does not fall upon another. An Urbmon is divided into 25 self-contained "cities" of 40 floors each, in ascending order of status, with administrators occupying the highest level. Each building can hold approximately 800,000 people, with excess population totalling three billion a year transferred to new Urbmons, which are continually under construction. The Urbmon population is supported by the conversion of all of the Earth''s habitable land area not taken up by Urbmons to agriculture. The theoretical limit of the population supported by this arrangement is estimated to be 200 billion. The farmers live a very different lifestyle, with strict birth control. Farmers trade their produce for technology and the two societies rarely have direct contact; even their languages are mutually unintelligible. The Urbmons are a world of total sexual license where men are expected to engage in "night walking"; it is considered a capital crime to refuse an invitation for sex. In this world it is a blessing to have children: most people are married at 12 and parents at 14. Just thinking of controlling families is considered a faux pas. Privacy has been dispensed with due to the limited area. Because the need to be outdoors and to travel has been eliminated, thoughts of wanderlust are considered perverse. The dwellers of the Urban Monad share scant resources and believe that sharing of everything is required in order for people to peacefully co-exist in close quarters. The sharing extends to wives and husbands, a sentiment likely springing from the free love movement of the mid-to-late Twentieth century. Although great effort is spent to maintain a stable society, the Urban Monad lifestyle causes mental illness in a small percentage of people, and this fate befalls two of the book''s main characters. "Social engineers" reprogram those who are approaching an unacceptable level of behavior. Given the extremes of life in the Urban Monads, law enforcement and the concept of justice employ a zero tolerance policy. There are usually no trials, and punishment is swift; anyone who threatens the stability of the Urbmon society (a "flippo") is "erased" by being thrown into a shaft that terminates in the building''s power generator. This gives one of the book''s characters the idea that humanity has been selectively bred for life within the Urbmons.

The World Inside

Senator Decius Metellus has returned from his military expedition to Cyprus, having concluded a successful campaign against local pirates and gathered enough booty to pay off his outstanding debts and finance his campaign for praetor. He is campaigning in the Forum when a young aristocrat loudly denounces him for alleged fraud and theft while in office on Cyprus, and boldly threatening to prosecute him for said acts. A minor scuffle breaks out, before the young man is dragged away. Later, the young man is found gruesomely murdered, and suspicion falls on Decius. To his consternation, his family inform him that, although the charges are unlikely to stick, they can nevertheless delay his election for at least a year. Decius, thinking hard, realizes that the young man may have been a virtual nobody, but could recite a pedigree that would virtually guarantee him popular support - claiming descent from Scipio Africanus and the Gracchi, among others. This means that the young man was likely the figurehead of a conspiracy. The exact aim of the conspiracy is unclear, but Decius reasons that someone must be aiming at reducing the Caecilia Metelli''s voting bloc in the Senate (as Decius concedes, he himself is not that important). Decius consults Sallustius, who gives him a small lecture about the Republic''s political landscape: for generations, the great aristocratic families of Rome have been slowly shrinking, more dependent on adoption to sustain their numbers, and gradually losing their hold on the highest offices of state which they consider to be their birthright. Now, with Caesar''s power, wealth, and popularity growing on a daily basis, these aristocrats are being pushed to increasingly desperate lengths. Sallust confides that he was a guest at several dinner parties at which schemes were discussed to seize control of the State; the young man was to have been the figurehead, and popular support was supposed to have been further mobilized by proposing a mass cancellation of debts. Of course, Sallust dismissed the scheme as hare-brained.

A Point of Law

A young man (William Bloom), at the deathbed of his father (Edward Bloom), tries to reconcile his memories of his dad with who he really is. Whereas he always saw his father as an irresponsible liar, he comes to understand his dad''s exaggerations and their roots in reality. The book is written in a chronological (although they may not appear so at first) series of tall tales. Despite the novel''s first-person narration, there is no present tense part of the book. The various stories are Will''s retelling of tales that Ed has told about his life. The ''My Father''s Death Take'' chapters are William planning out his final conversation with his father in his head and how it will go, so that when the actual conversation takes place, he will be able to get to bottom of the truth and find a way of truly understanding his father. The book draws elements from the epic poem The Odyssey, James Joyce''s Ulysses, and American tall tales. The story of Edward Bloom also includes at least seven of the Twelve Labors of Hercules. The subtitle "A Novel of Mythic Proportions" may be a reference to the dimensions of the Penguin edition, which make a Golden ratio. Conversely, the dimensions of the Penguin edition may derive from the subtitle. The Golden ratio dimensions carry through the bodies of type on each page, and are most apparent on the opening pages of each chapter.

Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions

Cassandra Palmer is a clairvoyant. She can see visions of the future as well as communicate with the spirits of the dead. These unusual gifts make her make her attractive to both the dead and the undead. Ghosts recognise that Cassandra is one of the rare people who can actually see them so they love to talk to her and all in all they are fairly harmless. However undead vampires are not so harmless. Ever since she was a child Cassie had been forced to work for Tony, a ruthless vampire Mafioso. She managed to escape from him three years ago but has been on the run ever since. When he finds her and sends his vampire thugs to kill her she is forced to turn to the Vampire senate for protection. Raised by vampires from childhood she knows that vampires are not motivated to act out of kindness. They will definitely want something in return but what will it be and is it something that she is willing to give? While she is meeting with the senate, a rogue vampire launches an assassination attempt on the senate''s members and it becomes clear to Cassie that the vampires have problems of their own. In fact the whole magical world is on the brink of war with itself due to the Pythia (a powerful seer and the Guardian of Time) being on her deathbed and the official heir to her powers being mysteriously missing. Every faction of magical being, light or dark, appears to be jostling for position at this time of upheaval and every one wants control of the Pythia and her powers. As Cassie starts to have powerful visions of the past, it becomes apparent that her powers are changing. As one of the heirs to the Pythia she seems to be acquiring her new skills as power leaches out of the old Pythia. Cassie has enough knowledge of vampire ways to know that if she was attractive to them as a clairvoyant, as a potential Pythia they will never let her go…. In Touch the Dark, Cassandra "Cassie" Palmer is introduced as a powerful clairvoyant who has been on the run for three years from Antonio "Tony," a criminal vampire who raised her after her parents'' death. It was Antonio''s intention, as Cassie grew up, to use her increasing powers for his own purposes. As Antonio wished to keep the benefits of Cassie''s powers to himself, he kept her isolated in his enclave. The only people Cassie got to see on a regular basis were her governess, Eugenie; Rafe, a servant vampire; and Mircea Basarab, Tony''s master vampire. As well as the gift of clairvoyance, she is also able to talk to, and see, ghosts, some of whom she has made friends. One ghost in particular, Billy Joe, is her best friend. The story commences three years after her escape from Tony''s clutches, after Cassie found out that he had her parents killed.

Touch the Dark

The Prince Horace can be spoiled and, craving attention from his father, he frequently misbehaves; as a prince, no one may raise a hand against him. Therefore, his family provides him with a whipping boy, Jemmy, an orphaned boy who will be punished in the prince''s stead. Though he has learned to read, write and mathematics while living in the castle, Jemmy is beaten several times a day and longs for the freedom he had on the streets. When the prince decides to run away on a whim he demands that Jemmy act as his servant during his journey. While on the run, the boys are picked up by two notorious highwaymen, Hold-Your-Nose Billy and Cutwater, who hatch a scheme to ransom the prince. Jemmy talks them into believing that he is the prince, and sets into motion a plan of escape. The prince misunderstands Jemmy''s intentions and betrays him. Even so, the boys escape. They come across a girl searching for her lost dancing bear and she directs them to the river where they find a kind man with a wagon full of potatoes. The boys help the man get his wagon from the mud, and in return the potato man gives the boys, the girl, and the bear a lift to the fair, but they are soon intercepted by the highwaymen. Still believing Jemmy is the prince, and believing it to be a crime worse than murder to beat the prince, they beat Horace instead. The dancing bear scares the highwaymen away, and everyone arrives at the fair. The girl earns a few coins with her bear, the potato man boils the potatoes and sells them and the boys head down to the sewer to catch some rats. On their way, they hear some people talking about the missing prince. One woman makes a remark about how much worse things will be when the prince becomes king. The prince''s feelings are hurt very deeply, but he does not show his emotions. When the boys learn that the king has posted a reward for the whipping boy, they go into the sewers where they see the highwaymen. They trick the highwaymen into the most dangerous sewer, where rats attack them, the prince decides that he wants to finally to go home. When they return to the potato man, Horace reveals himself as a prince and suggests that the potato man collect the reward for the whipping boy. When the prince explains the entire escapade to the king, Jemmy is pardoned, and the two boys live in the palace as the best of friends.

The Whipping Boy

The primary subject of the novel revolves around two Berlin families. One is the upper-class Treibel family consisting of the Councillor of commerce and his wife, Frau Jenny, as well as their sons Otto and Leopold. The other family is that of Professor Wilibald Schmidt and his daughter Corinna. The families have a connection that has already existed for decades. Many years ago, when Wilibald was still a student, he was also the secret admirer of Jenny, who at that time was the daughter of Willibald''s landlord. The landlord was the proprietor of a small basement shop. Willibald even went so far as to write a poem to Jenny in which he pronounced his love for her, though he failed to achieve the desired effect. The poem itself was of a modest literary achievement, but due to the young student''s overwhelming sentimentality at the time, Jenny continues to bring the poem up in conversation quite often. Wilibald would like to see his daughter Corinna marry her cousin Marcell, a promising future archaeologist. Unfortunately, however, Marcell can not bring himself to propose to her. In any case, the intelligent and independent Corinna has other plans for herself. She wants to break out of the rather mediocre world of a secondary school teacher''s household. She finds the social life with the wives of the other teachers quite boring and her father''s correction of pupils school work offers little variation. Thus Corinna sets herself to marrying Leopold Treibel. To her social position and material prosperity seem to be an adequate guarantee for a happy future. Thus she uses any means possible in order to lure the kind but easily influenced Leopold into her trap. She uses all the charm and wit that she can manage and two dinner parties and an outing later she achieves her goal. They enter into a secret engagement. When Jenny finds out about the engagement, she is furious and makes it clear to Corinna that she does not want it to go ahead. Leopold, who is a shy and timid young man, promises Corinna that he will stand up to his mother and that the two shall be wed. Unfortunately he is not able to keep his word and when Corinna realises this, she breaks off the engagement. The novel ends with Corinna and Marcell''s wedding and the reader is led to believe that Leopold marries Hildegard Munk (whom Jenny didn''t really want as a daughter in law but had to make do with, so that Leopold wouldn''t move down in class, i.e. by marrying Corinna) de:Frau Jenny Treibel fr:Madame Jenny Treibel nl:Frau Jenny Treibel

Frau Jenny Treibel

Marty and Grace O''Hara were very different twins. After their journalist parents were lost in a helicopter crash, they went to their uncle''s island. Dr. Laurel Lee arrived with a Mokélé-mbembé egg, a dinosaur thought to have gone extinct but is believed by some to still exist in the Congo. Laurel explained how she''d given the egg to Dr. Noah Blackwood, an evil man who collects rare and unique animals, but is portrayed as a sweet and caring person. Laural stole the egg back, but Blackwood was on the trail of Mokélé-mbembé. Wolfe and his team depart to the Congo, to protect his friend Masalito and Mokélé-mbembé. The twins where to be left at their boarding school until afterwards. But on the plane, Grace and Marty had to catch a run-away chimp in the supply shoot. They fell out when the luggage drop over Congo takes place. While they were stranded in the wilderness, Wolfe contacted them and told them to travel to a safe place, the Skyhouse, by Lake Télé and to wait for them, and explained that he needed to avoid Butch McCall, Blackwood''s number one guy. The children forgot what Wolfe had said about Butch. Butch saw the children and spied on them, sending information back to Blackwood. Blackwood told him to find the girl. The children found the Skyhouse and Marty left shortly, leaving Grace behind. She climbed upstairs and knocked herself unconscious while Butch and his men kidnapped her and took her to their camp. Marty signaled Masalito and Marty realizes Butch must have kidnapped Grace. The twins realized that Grace was actually the daughter of Rose, Blackwood''s daughter, and Wolfe, and that Wolfe had handed her to her cousin Marty''s parents, the O''Haras. Marty and Masalito went to find Grace, and Wolfe and Laurel saw a note through a video feed in the Skyhouse. Grace''s captors fell asleep, and Grace escaped. Grace and Marty met up and hurried into a tunnel in the trees and saw the body of Mokélé-mbembé, setting it on fire and collecting two eggs. Blackwood and Butch arrived. Marty had went upstairs and Grace was about to come up also. Butch tied Grace up, about put her into Blackwood''s helicopter, and went to get Marty and the eggs. Marty forced Butch and Blackwood to hand out Grace. In the meantime, Dr. Lee and Wolfe has arrived at the cleaning. With Blackwood''s helicopter, they fly out of the clearing.

Cryptid Hunters

The Enterprise (NCC-1701-D) is assigned to diplomatic duty to host the wedding between two houses of the Tizarin, a race that lives only in space and engages in commerce. One of the guests is Lwaxana Troi, to represent Betazed. The time setting places it after the events of "Deja Q" (third season) and before "Q-Pid" (fourth season). Kerin, heir to the house of Nistral, will marry Sehra, the daughter of the house of Graziunas. Q puts in an appearance. Although he toys with Picard while asking to be allowed to attend the wedding festivities, he promises to behave himself. Q attracts Lwaxana''s notice, and she is fascinated by Q. To Picard''s horror, Q fans the flames of love. Later, Q also begins to fan the animosity between the two Tizarin houses, mainly by feeding on the occasional blowups between the bride and groom, who are themselves irritated: Sehra by her future father-in-law Nistral''s comments and Kerin by his future mother-in-law Mrs. Graziunas'' comments. The two families come to battle, and a despairing Lwaxana wishes she could do something. Q gives her power, and Lwaxana stops the battle, and Kerin and Serah determine they will marry, no matter what. Meanwhile, Q has revealed his true colors: another way of annoying lower life forms. He scorns Lwaxana, who gives Q a serious thrashing, thanks to Q2 helping her hold onto the power. Meanwhile, a gift of gratitude by Sehra to Wesley Crusher turns out to be anything but a joy, as Sehra gives Wesley a clumsy slave girl. After much pain and a broken rib, Wesley returns the slave girl to Sehra, who had been trying to get rid of her but is now happy to have her back.

Q-in-Law

Spenser has to protect the image of Ronni Alexander, Congressman Meade Alexander''s wife. The Congressman, who is running for senator, is being blackmailed, but is interested only in making sure that his wife suffers no setbacks because of the videotape. Spenser''s efforts take him to Washington, where he narrows down the suspects to Gerry Broz, the Boston mobster Joe Broz''s son, who is running a sex and drug racket, in which Mrs. Alexander had gotten filmed. Joe Brox has Congressman Alexander''s rival, Robert Browne in his pocket, and intends to make sure that he wins over Alexander. Spenser finds out that Joe has no idea of his son''s racket in Washington and uses this as leverage in order to get the tapes suppressed, managing to get shot in the leg in the course of the story. This book shows the first sighs of some distance between Spenser and Susan Silverman. Susan has been in Washington pursuing a Ph. D in Clinical Psychology, and Spenser gets scared of the loneliness that he feels without her. He also feels that she is conforming to every form of establishment that he hates. Paul Giacomin also plays a big role in this novel. He is shown to be a highly thoughtful young man who is wise beyond his age. Paul points out many things to Spenser about himself and his unbending code of ethics, and helps Spenser reach some sort of a resolution about Susan.

The Widening Gyre

Sophie''s Choice is narrated by Stingo, a novelist who is recalling the summer when he began his first novel. As the story begins, in the early summer of 1947, Stingo (like Styron, a writer and Duke graduate) has been fired from his low-level reader''s job at the publisher McGraw-Hill and has moved into a cheap boarding house in Brooklyn, where he hopes to devote some months to his writing. While he is working on his novel, he is drawn into the lives of the lovers Nathan Landau and Sophie Zawistowska, fellow boarders at the house, who are involved in an intense and difficult relationship. Sophie is a beautiful, Polish-Catholic survivor of the concentration camps of World War II, and Nathan is a Jewish-American – and, purportedly, a genius. Although Nathan claims to be a Harvard graduate and a cellular biologist with a pharmaceutical company, it is later revealed that this is a fabrication. Almost no one – including Sophie and Stingo – knows that Nathan is a paranoid schizophrenic. However, Sophie is aware that Nathan is self-medicating with drugs, including cocaine and benzadrine, that he supposedly obtains at Pfizer, his employer. This means that although he sometimes behaves quite normally and generously, there are times that he becomes frighteningly jealous, violent, abusive and delusional. As the story progresses, Sophie tells Stingo of her past, of which she has never before spoken. She describes her violently anti-Semitic father, a law professor in Krakow; her unwillingness to help him spread his ideas; her arrest by the Nazis for smuggling food to her mother, who was on her deathbed; and particularly, her brief stint as a stenographer-typist in the home of Rudolf Höss, the commander of Auschwitz, where she was interned. She specifically relates her attempts to seduce Höss in an effort to persuade him that her blond, blue-eyed, German-speaking son should be allowed to leave the camp and enter the Lebensborn program, in which he would be raised as a German child. She failed in this attempt and, ultimately, never learned of her son''s fate. Only at the end of the book does the reader also learn what became of Sophie''s daughter, named Eva. As Nathan''s "outbreaks" become more violent and abusive, Stingo receives a summons from Nathan''s brother, Larry. He learns that Nathan is schizophrenic and is not a cellular biologist, although, as Larry says, "he could have been fantastically brilliant at anything he might have tried out … But he never got his mind in order." Nathan''s delusions have led him to believe that Stingo is having an affair with Sophie, and he threatens to kill them both. Sophie and Stingo attempt to flee to a peanut farm in Virginia which Stingo''s father has inherited. On the way there, Sophie reveals her deepest, darkest secret: on the night that she arrived at Auschwitz, a sadistic doctor made her choose which of her two children would die immediately by gassing and which would continue to live, albeit in the camp. Of her two children, Sophie chose to sacrifice her seven-year-old daughter, Eva, in a heart-rending decision that has left her in mourning and filled with a guilt that she cannot overcome. By now alcoholic and deeply depressed, she is clearly willing to self-destruct with Nathan, who has already tried to persuade her to commit suicide with him. Despite the fact that Stingo proposes marriage to her, and despite a shared night that relieves Stingo of his virginity and fulfills many of his sexual fantasies, Sophie disappears, leaving only a note in which she says that she must return to Nathan. Upon arriving back in Brooklyn, Stingo discovers that Sophie and Nathan have committed suicide by ingesting sodium cyanide. Stingo is devastated.

Sophie''s Choice

Cassie comes home in owl morph to find a Hork-Bajir leaving the barn. Cassie realizes that if the Hork-Bajir is a Controller, the Yeerks might suspect that she is one of the "Andalite bandits". She attacks it, and nearly blinds him with her talons when she realizes it is in fact Jara Hamee. When she asks why he is there, he tells her that an Arn has come to the Hork-Bajir valley, and Toby wishes for their advice on what to do. Cassie tells the other Animorphs about the Arn the next day and they all agree to go. The Arn''s name is Quafijinivon, the last of the Arns. He tells them that he wishes to create a force of Hork-Bajir to fight the Yeerks on their home world, by taking a sample of each Hork-Bajir''s DNA. The Hork-Bajirs accept, but Quafijinivon also wishes to find a stash of weapons hidden by Aldrea - Seerow''s Daughter. They ask him how will he do this if she is dead, and he tells them about the ixcila of Aldrea he preserved, an electronic copy of her personality, thoughts, and brainwaves. The Arn says Aldrea must choose a host to enter, and they decide it will be either Rachel, because of her dangerous attitude, or Toby because she is her granddaughter. During the Atafalxical ceremony Cassie is chosen as the host instead, she is asked if she accepts and Jake shouts "No". Cassie feels she has no choice, and says yes. The Chee take their place as humans while they''re gone. When they make to the Hork-Bajir solar system, the ship is attacked by another Andalite ship. They cannot contact the ship because the Yeerks will pick up their signal. Ax refuses to fire back at the ship because he says he cannot attack a fellow Andalite for doing his job. Jake asks if Aldrea can do it and she says yes. She fires at the ship and destroys the engines, saving them. More Bug Fighters show up and Marco suggest that they move on, but Ax begs Jake to save the Andalite. Jake says they cannot leave, and they assist in destroying the Bug Fighters. Jake cuts the ensuing celebration short so they can focus on the task at hand. When they make it to the Hork-Bajir home world, Quafijinivon goes to his lab to work on the DNA samples. Aldrea has an idea where the weapons might be stashed and they travel deep into the woods. To their horror, they find that the place has been turned into a giant Yeerk pool. That is when they come up with an insane plan to get into the pool, which Aldrea is totally against. Cassie morphs into an Osprey and the others morph insects, and go into Cassie''s mouth. She gets as much altitude as she possibly can, and starts to demorph but keeps her wings and starts to morph into a Humpback Whale as well. She has to let her wings go and go full Humpback Whale at just the right moment or the plan will fail, but the Hork-Bajir Controllers already spot her in the sky, although they cannot make her out as a human because she is partly in whale morph, and start firing at her. This causes Aldrea to panic and try to convince Cassie to go full whale now. When she cannot she tries to take over, but Cassie overpowers her and waits until the time is right to morph fully. When she is in the pool, Jake and Rachel demorph and remorph into Hammerhead Sharks and attack the Taxxon Controllers, while Tobias and Ax go as Andalites and attack Hork-Bajir Controllers. Marco goes as a Hork-Bajir shouting, "Andalites everywhere, thousands of them run" causing them to flee. They break into the weapons stash, take them, and escape in a Yeerk ship, delivering them to the Arn. At the end, Toby Hamee says that she wishes to stay on her homeworld and fight the Yeerks there. Aldrea does not want her great-granddaughter to suffer this fate, and thus comes up with a plan with Cassie and Ax to force her to stay in the Hork-Bajir Earth colony. Cassie successfully convinces Jake that Aldrea is trying to take control of her, leaving Ax to tell Aldrea that she will never take over the Animorphs because her great-granddaughter is with them. Satisfied, Aldrea leaves Cassie''s body.

The Prophecy

The story concerns a family who move to "Three Chimneys", a house near the railway, after the father, who works at the Foreign office, is imprisoned as a result of being falsely accused of selling state secrets to the Russians. The three children, Roberta (Bobbie), Peter and Phyllis (Phil), find amusement in watching the trains on the nearby railway line and waving to the passengers. They become friendly with Albert Perks, the station porter, and with the Old Gentleman who regularly takes the 9:15 down train. He is eventually able to help prove their father''s innocence, and the family is reunited. The family take care of the Russian exile, Mr Szczepansky, who came to England looking for his family (later located) and Jim, the grandson of the Old Gentleman, who suffers a broken leg in a tunnel. The theme of an innocent man being falsely imprisoned for espionage and finally vindicated might have been influenced by the Dreyfus Affair, which was a prominent worldwide news item a few years before the book was written. And the Russian exile, persecuted by the Tsars for writing "a beautiful book about poor people and how to help them" and subsequently helped by the children, was most likely an amalgam of the real-life dissidents Sergius Stepniak and Peter Kropotkin who were both friends of the author.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

The World Inside

By Robert Silverberg

A Point of Law

By John Maddox Roberts

Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions

By Daniel Wallace

Touch the Dark

No Author Listed

The Whipping Boy

By Sid Fleischman

Frau Jenny Treibel

No Author Listed

Cryptid Hunters

By Roland Smith

Q-in-Law

By Peter David

The Widening Gyre

No Author Listed

Sophie's Choice

By William Styron

The Prophecy

By K. A. Applegate

The Railway Children

By E. Nesbit