George Smiley is called by a wartime colleague, Miss Brimley, who now publishes a small Christian magazine, to investigate a "death menace" letter sent by a reader who claims her husband, a boarding school teacher, is trying to kill her. Terence Fielding, the brother of a classics professor who was one of Smiley''s close wartime associates in the Circus, is also a teacher at the school where the woman''s husband teaches, the famous Carne College. Unfortunately, the woman is killed before Smiley can even talk to her, and Smiley goes to the school to investigate, in an effort to ease Miss Brimley''s concern that her failure to call the police was a cause of the woman''s death. The town of Carne was the youthful home of Smiley''s estranged wife Ann, and Smiley is both the subject of snide gossip and witness to a rural "town and gown" gap (with mistrust on both sides) that makes finding the killer seem more and more unlikely. At every step, he realizes there were many possible reasons for the murder, and the number of suspects only seems to get bigger. The town police focus on a madwoman as the murderer, but both Smiley and the investigating officer believe her to be innocent. Smiley discovers the hiding place of the murderer''s blood-stained clothes, while the police find a second murder victim, a boy in Fielding''s house. The clues, and a confession about the secret, delusional vindictiveness of the murdered woman from her husband (which confirms the odd reaction to her that Smiley had noted from the local minister), lead Smiley to the real murderer: Fielding, who was being blackmailed by the woman due to a WWII homosexuality conviction, and who had only kept his job at substantially-reduced wages. The boy had inadvertently seen evidence that disproved Fielding''s alibi for the time of the woman''s murder, although the boy was never aware of it before his death. Le Carré has denied that Carne was based on any particular school: "There are probably a dozen great schools of whom it will be confidently asserted that Carne is their deliberate image. But he who looks among their common rooms for the D''Arcys, Fieldings and Hechts will search in vain." Nonetheless, the geography and descriptions of Carne bear a great deal of resemblance to le Carré''s own alma mater, Sherborne School.

A Murder of Quality

The book begins with the words "There''s been an accident! Something''s wrong!" - and something is. There is a ghost. She does not know who she is, or how she died, or quite where she is. All she knows is that there has been a terrible accident. The as-yet unnamed heroine finds herself attracted to a large building, a boys'' boarding school, which she finds to be strangely familiar. After a little detective work, the disembodied spirit concludes that she is Sally Melford, one of a quartet of eccentric sisters (Imogen, Cart, Fenella and Sally) who live at the school and are neglected by their overworked parents, both of whom teach at the school. Their father, only known as Himself, is the headmaster, and his wife, Phyllis, is the school nurse. Both of them are constantly busy with school business, and leave their daughters to fend for themselves. As the plot continues, evidence of time-travel begins to emerge. In the present day, the adult, university-age Sally is in a hospital, badly injured after her abusive boyfriend threw her from a speeding car. Some part of her has journeyed back seven years into the past, where, with the help of her sisters and their schoolboy friends, she must undo a rash bargain with the powerful and ancient goddess, Monigan. The Worship of Monigan is a game that the sisters made up, in which an old rag doll supposedly represents the goddess Monigan. Although Cart, Fenella and Imogen treat it as somewhere between a belief and a game, the ghost discovers that the fourth, Sally, is romantically involved with a student at the school, the enigmatic fifth-former Julian Addiman, and both of them take the Worship of Monigan very, very seriously. After a deal of detective work, Sally (in her ghostly form) discovers the truth. The young Sally had dedicated herself to Monigan in a midnight ritual, with the help of Julian. Monigan had taken her up on the offer, and had agreed that Sally would be hers in seven years time. The seven years are now up, and Monigan had attempted to call in the debt, in the form of the boyfriend (now revealed to be the same Julian Addison) tossing her out of the car. However, Sally survived; and, with the help of her sisters and her childhood friends, she is determined to cheat Monigan, and take back her life.

The Time of the Ghost

The primary focus of Democracy in America is an analysis of why republican representative democracy has succeeded in the United States while failing in so many other places. Tocqueville seeks to apply the functional aspects of democracy in America to what he sees as the failings of democracy in his native France. Tocqueville speculates on the future of democracy in the United States, discussing possible threats to democracy and possible dangers of democracy. These include his belief that democracy has a tendency to degenerate into "soft despotism" as well as the risk of developing a tyranny of the majority. He observes that the strong role religion played in the United States was due to its separation from the government, a separation all parties found agreeable. He contrasts this to France where there was what he perceived to be an unhealthy antagonism between democrats and the religious, which he relates to the connection between church and state. Insightful analysis of political society was supplemented in the second volume by description of civil society as a sphere of private and civilian affairs. Tocqueville''s views on America took a darker turn after 1840, however, as made evident in Aurelian Craiutu''s Tocqueville on America after 1840: Letters and Other Writings.

Democracy in America

Dr. Jason Howard is a resident surgeon at Massachusetts General. When a patient of his is admitted complaining of heart problems and later dies, Jason finds that, though having received a clean bill of health less than a month before, that the heart attack came totally out of left field and the patient looks decidedly older than he ought to at 56. Soon two more cases come to his attention, both healthy a month before, now dead, both looking older than their years. Alvin Hayes, a former classmate of Jason''s at Harvard, asks to speak to him about his recent strange caseload. Hayes is a shifty, twitchy man whose personal life is a subject of some question who seems unduly paranoid, and Jason wonders if the resident mad scientist has gotten into something illicit. At dinner Hayes, while talking about his genetic research on aging, suddenly begins expelling blood violently. He dies a gory death right there in the restaurant. Jason begins investigating the connection between the man''s sudden demise, his nervous demeanor, and the patients in his hospital who have all been admitted with what seems to be a mutant strain of progeria that killed them in mere days. nl:Doodsangst (boek) pl:Śmiertelny strach

Mortal Fear

The Eyes of the Dragon takes place entirely within the realm of Delain (which itself is located within In-World from The Dark Tower series). It is told from the perspective of an unnamed storyteller/narrator, who speaks casually and frankly to the reader, frequently adding his own commentary on characters'' motivations and the like. The King''s magician, Flagg, seeking to destroy the Kingdom of Delain, sees his plans being ruined by the good heart of Queen Sasha. After Sasha gives birth to Peter, a noble and worthy future king, Flagg realizes that his position, his plans, and his life may be in danger because of Peter. When Sasha is pregnant with a second son, Flagg seizes the opportunity. He forces the Queen''s midwife to cut Sasha as the second son, Thomas, is born. Sasha bleeds to death and Flagg begins plotting to remove Peter. As Peter becomes a teenager, he begins the custom of bringing a glass of wine to his father before bed each night. Flagg decides to use this as a means of framing Peter. He dissolves a poison called "Dragon Sand" in a glass of wine and delivers it to the king after Peter leaves. Previously, in an attempt to win Thomas'' friendship, Flagg had shown him a secret passage where Thomas could spy on his father. Unbeknownst to Flagg, when he delivers the poison, Thomas is watching through the glass eyes of the mounted head of Roland''s greatest trophy, the dragon. Flagg plants evidence incriminating Peter. After a brief trial, during which the judge decides Peter is guilty, he is locked up in the enormous tower called the Needle in the center of the city. Thomas is then crowned King, although he is only twelve years old; due to his youth and his fearful inexperience, he allows Flagg enormous amounts of power. At the start of his long stay in the Needle, Peter manages to send a note to the judge who convicted him, Anders Peyna, with the seemingly innocuous requests to have his mother''s old dollhouse and napkins with his meals. Peyna is puzzled by the requests, but, seeing no harm in them, grants them. Five years later, Peter escapes from the Needle, having used the toy loom in the dollhouse and threads from the napkins to make a rope. After the escape he and his allies rush to get Roland’s bow and arrow. However, it is not to be found because Thomas had it once they got into the king''s "sitting room". Flagg, now revealed as a demonic being, is about to kill them when Thomas reveals himself and tells Flagg that he (Thomas) watched Flagg poison Roland. Thomas shoots Flagg in the eye, but Flagg uses magic to disappear and escape. At the end of the novel, Peter is declared to be the rightful king. Thomas, who has become deeply hated in Delain, sets off alongside his butler, Dennis, to find Flagg. They find him and they confront him, but the narrator does not reveal the outcome.

The Eyes of the Dragon

Living in Oakland at the beginning of the 20th century, Martin Eden struggles to rise above his destitute, proletarian circumstances through an intense and passionate pursuit of self-education, hoping to achieve a place among the literary elite. His principal motivation is his love for Ruth Morse. Because Eden is a rough, uneducated sailor from a working-class background and the Morses are a bourgeois family, a union between them would be impossible until he reaches their level of wealth and refinement. Over a period of two years, Eden promises Ruth that success will come, but just before it does, Ruth loses her patience and rejects him in a letter, saying, "if only you had settled down&nbsp;... and attempted to make something of yourself". By the time Eden attains the favour of the publishers and the bourgeoisie who had shunned him, he has already developed a grudge against them and become jaded by toil and unrequited love. Instead of enjoying his success, he retreats into a quiet indifference, interrupted only to rail mentally against the genteelness of bourgeois society or to donate his new wealth to working-class friends and family. The novel ends with Eden committing suicide by drowning, which contributed to what researcher Clarice Stasz calls the "biographical myth" that Jack London''s own death was a suicide. London''s oldest daughter Joan commented that in spite of its tragic ending, the book is often regarded as "a ''success'' story&nbsp;... which inspired not only a whole generation of young writers but other different fields who, without aid or encouragement, attained their objectives through great struggle".

Martin Eden

Vlad saves a small goth boy named Sprat, who was being bullied by Bill and Tom. Later on Sprat''s group of friends (Goth kids that hang out front of the high school at night that Vlad was eager to talk to but afraid.) came to Vlad’s table at lunch to thank him for saving Sprat. Henry and Meredith, Vlad''s girlfriend, disapproved of the goth kids so Vlad decided to go with them to the Crypt (Gothic club). Nelly tries giving the sex talk with Vlad, but he didn''t want to listen. They both agreed that Otis will be the one to explain it to Vlad. Vlad has night terrors of a dark figure, and out of the shadow that surrounded it appear a silver blade. Moonlight glinted off its razor sharp surface, the man plunged the blade downward, ripping it through Vlad’s stomach. Later on he finds out that the dreams are from Otis who was captured by D’Ablo. Henry and Vlad end up separating from their friendship demanding Vlad undo the bond between them. When Vlad goes with them he meets a beautiful girl named Snow. After saving Snow from her abusive father He sinks his teeth into her neck sucking her almost dry making her drop to the ground and him leaving her there scared, wanting more of her blood. Later he calls Henry sobbing asking for help, Vlad and Henry end up friends and vampire/drudge again. Both going to face D’ablo and give the journal to him. While walking only ten steps Henry lets out a scream and Vlad turns to see Ignatius, the vampire who’d attacked him before, had Henry by a fistful of hair. A sharp, curved blade was pressed dangerously close to Henry’s throat. Later on finding out that Ignatius is none other than his own grandfather, who wants to kill Vlad and bring honor back to his family’s name. D''Ablo goes and ties Vlad up to a chair and gags him. Later than Vlad gets free. D’Ablo got away after Vlad burnt his hand off. Otis returns to Nelly’s house with Vlad and Henry waiting upon the letter from Vikas stating otherwise. At the freedom Fest Vlad breaks up with Meredith to save her from himself, and goes to the back ally where he once bit into Snow''s neck and meets her there. Finally, Vlad bites into her neck because she is now his drudge. they meet frequently for some days. The book ends with a letter that Vlad was supposed to get awhile back containing Otis''s teaching on writing in Elysian Code.

Tenth Grade Bleeds

Dr Watson is called upon late at night by a female friend of his wife. Her husband has been absent for several days and, as he is an opium addict, she is sure he has been indulging in a lengthy drug binge in a dangerous East End opium den. Frantic with worry, she seeks Dr. Watson''s help in fetching him home. Watson does this, but he also finds his friend Sherlock Holmes in the den, disguised as an old man, trying to extract information about a new case from the addicts in the den. Mr. Neville St. Clair, a respectable and punctual country businessman, has disappeared. Making the matter even more mysterious is that Mrs. St. Clair is quite sure that she saw her husband at a second-floor window of the opium den, in Upper Swandam Lane, a rather rough part of town near the docks. He withdrew into the window immediately, and Mrs. St. Clair is quite sure that there was something very wrong. Naturally, she tries to enter the building, but her way was blocked by the opium den''s owner, a Lascar. She quickly fetches the police, but they cannot find Mr. St. Clair. The room, in whose window she saw her husband, is that of a dirty, disfigured beggar, well known to the police, by the name of Hugh Boone. The police are about to put this report down a mistake of some kind when Mrs. St. Clair spots and identifies a box of wooden bricks that her husband said he would buy for their son. A further search turns up some of her husband''s clothes. Later, his coat, with the pockets full of several pounds'' worth of pennies and halfpennies, is found in the Thames just below the building. The beggar is arrested and locked up at the police station, and Holmes initially is quite convinced that Mr. St. Clair has been the unfortunate victim of murder. However, several days after Mr. St. Clair''s disappearance, his wife receives a letter in his own writing. The arrival of this letter forces Holmes to reconsider his conclusions, leading him eventually to an extraordinary solution. Taking a bath sponge to the police station in a Gladstone bag, Holmes washes Boone''s still-dirty face, causing his face to be revealed — the face of Neville St. Clair! Upon Mr. St. Clair''s immediate confession, this solves the mystery, and also creates a few problems. It seems that Mr. St. Clair has been leading a double life, one of respectability, and the other as a beggar. In his youth, he had been an actor before becoming a newspaper reporter. In order to research an article, he had disguised himself as a beggar for a short time, during which he earned a very large amount of money. Later in his life, he returned to the street to beg for several days in order to pay a large debt. Given a choice between his newspaper salary and his high beggar earnings, he eventually became a professional beggar. His takings were large enough that he was able to establish himself as a country gentleman, marry well, and begin a respectable family. His wife never knew what he did for a living, and Holmes agrees to preserve Mr. St. Clair''s secret as long as no more is heard of Hugh Boone.

The Man with the Twisted Lip

Alan Grant, Scotland Yard Inspector (a character who also appears in five other novels by the same author) is confined to bed in hospital with a broken leg. Bored and of restless mind, he becomes intrigued by a reproduction of a portrait of King Richard III brought to him by a friend. He prides himself on being able to read a person''s character from his appearance, and King Richard seems to him a gentle and kind and wise man. Why is everyone so sure that he was a cruel murderer? With the help of friends and acquaintances, Alan Grant investigates the case of the Princes in the Tower. Grant spends weeks pondering historical information and documents with the help of an American researcher for the British Museum. Using his detective''s logic, he comes to the conclusion that the claim of Richard being a murderer is a fabrication of Tudor propaganda, as is the popular image of the King as a monstrous hunchback. The book points out the fact that there never was a Bill of Attainder, Coroner''s inquest, or any other legal proceeding that accused - much less convicted - Richard III of any foul play against the Princes in the Tower. Further, the book explores how history is constructed, and how certain versions of events come to be widely accepted as the truth, despite a lack of evidence. "The Daughter of Time" of the title is from a quote by Sir Francis Bacon: "Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority." Grant comes to understand the ways that great myths are constructed, and how in this case, the victorious Tudors saw to it that their version of history prevailed. Other alleged historical myths touched upon by the author, are the commonly believed (but false) story that troops fired on the public at the 1910 Tonypandy Riot, the traditional depiction of the Boston Massacre, the martyrdom of Margaret Wilson and the life and death of Mary, Queen of Scots. Grant adopts the term "Tonypandy" to describe widely believed historical myths, such as the Tonypandy Riot, or deliberately falsified history, such as the life of Richard III.

The Daughter of Time

The book''s plot revolves around Thrall''s journey from birth, to slavery as a gladiator and finally his path on the journey to becoming Warchief of the orcish Horde. The main villain of the book is Aedelas Blackmoore, who commands the encampments where the orcs were imprisoned, and also Thrall''s (thrall means slave to humans) former owner. Blackmoore''s plans were to raise Thrall to command an orcish army to overrun the Alliance, allowing him to forcibly take the position of King. Thrall was trained to handle every weapon and learned battle tactics, but also studied basic writing and history. Also, to enrich Blackmoore further, Thrall was forced to compete in many gladiator tournaments, which made him want to escape even more. Thrall eventually escapes Blackmoore''s tyranny with the help of a young human girl named Taretha. During his captivity, she would sneak notes to Thrall and was one of his only friends while in the grasp of Blackmoore. After earning his freedom thanks to Taretha, Thrall set out to find a group of orcs that had evaded Blackmoore. He found these orcs to be those of the Warsong Clan, led by Grom Hellscream. After learning some of his history from Grom, Thrall then headed for the mountains of Alterac to find his original clan, the Frostwolf Clan. There he met with their Shaman, Drek''Thar, who taught Thrall the ancient ways of Shamanism. There he also met with the Warchief Orgrim Doomhammer and learned more of his past and the reasons for his parents'' death. With his new power, and knowledge provided by both Drek''Thar and Doomhammer, Thrall raised an army by freeing his people from the prison encampments, rallying them under the goal of freedom and a return to the orcish life before the war. Unfortunately, Doomhammer fell in a battle liberating one of the encampments, so in his final moments, he granted Thrall the title of Warchief. Thrall then decided to attack the fortress of Durnholde, home of Aedelas Blackmoore, his former captor, to free all the remaining entrapped Orcs at once by cutting off any more reinforcements. He succeeds in taking Durnholde fortress, killing Blackmoore with the help of the elements and of course, his Orcish army. Tragically however, he is too late to save the one human who had helped him during his captivity. At the end of the book, Thrall crushes Durnholde with his elemental powers, then addresses the Horde, promising they will succeed under his leadership.

Warcraft: Lord of the Clans

Flower Net ends March 14, 1997. The setting of The Interior is summer 1997—China "post- Deng Xiaoping", a period characterized by "an unholy alliance between post-Deng Communism (''market socialism'') and American capitalism", the China of Jiang Zemin. In the novel the narrator speaks about the times in more personal terms: "As the saying went, the blade of grass points where the wind blows. The only problem was that the wind was blowing in so many directions these days no one could completely protect himself". The plot centers on the conniving of American and Chinese businessmen to exploit poorly paid Chinese workers, especially women, for profit and power. See describes in great detail the dangers women face because they work in an American toy factory, located in a remote part of the interior of China, that lacks adequate safety protections and is a virtual fire trap. Miaoshan was working at the toy factory before her death. Elisabeth Sherwin quotes Lisa See speaking about the role of Chinese working women from a somewhat different perspective: "''The women making $24 a month in those factories are changing the face of China . . . They are making enough money to open up small stores in their home villages. These women are working at a free market economy and are providing an economic value they never had before.''" At the end of The Interior Hulan and David solve several murders related to the toy factory. The novel begins with Hulan''s friend Suchee and the murder of Miaoshan, her daughter. It concludes with the solution to the mystery of Miaoshan''s death (which had nothing to do with the toy factory) and with her mother Suchee working in the fields, unable to forget her.

The Interior

The novel concerns the account of one Jane Martello, a middle aged woman undergoing divorce proceedings with her husband, and subsequently separating herself from a large and strong family she has known since her childhood. The intricate traditions of her family and the one she had married into begin to break down when the body of her sister-in-law, Natalie, is found buried in the garden, after over two decades. This startlingly close distance to the house leads to the revelation of the murderer being very close to the family after all. The revelation acts to bring down the family structure that for so long was unbalanced, but stable - such as Jane''s father-in-law, Alan, an openly crude and sexist novelist having once frequently had relations outside his marriage (to the knowledge of the whole family) and other underlying tensions between family members. Jane undergoes psychiatric counselling, as she revels in the mysterious circumstances of one of her best childhood friend''s death, and already present forerunnings to what appear to be a mid-life crisis. She undergoes a memory exercise (that the book is named for) to unlock memories lost from the trauma of her friend''s death. What she unlocks proves seemingly to be the key to the death of Natalie, but the validity of the memories become questionable with the serious allegations they lead to.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

A Murder of Quality

By John le Carré

The Time of the Ghost

By Diana Wynne Jones

Democracy in America

By Alexis de Tocqueville

Mortal Fear

By Robin Cook

The Eyes of the Dragon

By Stephen King

Martin Eden

By Jack London

Tenth Grade Bleeds

No Author Listed

The Man with the Twisted Lip

By Arthur Conan Doyle

The Daughter of Time

By Josephine Tey

Warcraft: Lord of the Clans

By Christie Golden

The Interior

By Lisa See

The Memory Game

By Nicci Gerrard