In the prologue, the RiverClan camp is flooded. Duskwater, an elder, is washed away. Rainflower''s kits are coming. Because the water was getting higher, she climbs up an oak tree to give birth. Brambleberry delivers her kits, and Rainflower names one Stormkit, after the storm they were born in, and the other Oakkit, after the tree that offered her protection from the water while she gave birth. The book follows Crookedstar, first known as Stormkit. Stormkit was chased by the ThunderClan medicine cat, Goosefeather, at the Sunningrocks, where he breaks his jaw. His mother, Rainflower, feels no sympathy for Stormkit and asks the RiverClan leader, Hailstar, to rename Stormkit to Crookedkit, and Crookedkit is left distraught by this. Crookedkit is curious of what his destiny will be, and he attempts to travel to the Moonstone. However, he gets lost and ends up at a barn instead, where he stays for a while. Mapleshade, an evil ThunderClan she-cat, talks to Crookedkit in a dream, and asks him to make a promise to be loyal to RiverClan above all other things. Crookedkit did not understand what he was promising when he made his pledge. Throughout the novel, Crookedkit, who becomes Crookedpaw and then Crookedjaw, begins to realize what "sacrifices" he has to make because of what he promised Mapleshade. He tells her he doesn''t need her help, but she says she is only doing this for his good. She sends an omen, making Crookedjaw deputy. Then she kills Hailstar, making Crookedjaw leader of RiverClan. She meets him when he receives his nine lives, with the words "We did it!" Crookedstar tells her to get out of his way; he regrets making the promise. But Mapleshade says she will follow him wherever he goes.Brambleberry says that Mapleshade wasn''t responsible for all the death in his family and clan. Finally, when Mapleshade "kills" Willowbreeze, Crookedstar''s mate, Crookedstar demands to know from Mapleshade why she is doing this to him. Mapleshade tells him her story, and promises to keep haunting him until his dying day. Finally, when Mapleshade "takes" Silverstream''s life, she visits Crookedstar to tell him his "punishment" was over and that she was "avenged".

Crookedstar''s Promise

Exultant is set in Baxter''s "Xeelee Sequence" twenty thousand years into the Third Expansion of Mankind, "a titanic project undertaken by a mankind united by the Doctrines forged by Hama Druz after mankind''s near extinction." The human-supremacist Interim Coalition of Governance has conquered almost the whole Milky Way &mdash; all but the alien Xeelee concentrated at the galactic core around a supermassive black hole called Chandra. The mysterious Xeelee are far more advanced but less numerous than the humans, and the war has been at a stalemate for three millennia even though the entire Coalition has been directed toward the war effort and ten billion humans die at the front every year. In a war fought with faster-than-light technology (equivalent to time travel), each side has foreknowledge of the other''s actions and can develop counter-measures to plans before they are made. Pirius is a fighter pilot stationed at the front. When a battle turns to disaster for the Coalition forces, he disobeys suicide orders to stand and fight, choosing instead to risk survival. In a desperate gamble to outrun a pursuing Xeelee, Pirius captures a Xeelee fighter for the first time in history. Returning to base via FTL travel, he arrives two years previous to the battle, when his younger self is still a cadet. Rather than being lauded as a hero, both instances of Pirius are court-martialed for disobeying orders. Commissary Nilis of the Office of Technological Archival and Control, part of the Commission for Historical Truth, defends both the older Pirius (whom he calls "Pirius Blue") and the younger one ("Pirius Red") but loses the trial. Pirius Blue is sent to a penal unit at the front as a foot soldier, and Pirius Red is remanded to the custody of Commissary Nilis, who has plans for the fruits of Pirius Blue''s battlefield victory. Using the Xeelee fighter and the innovative tactics that saved Pirius Blue, he starts to plan an unheard of assault on the Xeelee''s primary stronghold at Chandra itself. While Nilis and his new team struggle to confront ossified government and military institutions, they try to understand and to develop new and sometimes alien technologies: FTL computers, a gravastar shield to protect them from FTL foreknowledge, and a black hole gun, capable of disrupting a supermassive black hole''s event horizon. Meanwhile, in the course of his new duties to Commissary Nilis, Pirius Red is practically taken on a tour of the Solar system and some of the Coalition''s most scandalous secrets, rife with references to events from previous books in the Xeelee sequence. As Nilis''s project nears completion, it transpires that the Chandra black hole is home to not only the Xeelee, but a host of other organisms, many of which are based on exotic physics and non-baryonic matter. Regardless, the assault on the black hole continues despite protestations from Nilis. After a brutal fight to reach the surface of the black hole, the team commence their assault, causing the Xeelee to abandon it (and the rest of the Milky Way galaxy) to prevent humanity from harming the black hole''s inhabitants. After the assault, the protagonists realise that the Coalition is unlikely to remain intact, now that the war with the Xeelee is no longer present to hold it together. Luru Parz, one of the team, realises that the Xeelee will eventually return, and returns to Earth to ready its defences for when the return happens.

Exultant

The plot opens up with successful Los Angeles lawyer and hunter named Madec, who hires Ben, a timid college student to help him find bighorn sheep in the nearby Mojave Desert after receiving a rare permit to hunt them. Ben has experience working in the desert as he is studying to be a geologist, but he is also low on money, so he accepts. Things take a deadly turn when Madec accidentally shoots an old prospector, as he was a man of importance who does not have time to sit in jail. Ben thinks that the honest thing to do is for the two of them to report the accidental shooting, and although Madec tries to reason with him, Ben remains stubborn and refuses to comply with Madec. As a result, Madec gives Ben two choices. Madec could shoot Ben on the spot, or Ben could make an attempt to escape the desert by walking 45 miles to the nearest highway without clothes, food or water. Worst of all, Madec would make sure Ben wouldn''t make it and that he would be watching him the whole way and aiming at him with his .358 Norma Magnum. Ben tries to climb a butte and signal for help while finding water on it, but is shot in the arm by Madec causing him to fall and injuring his back. Now time is running out as he begins to hallucinate, suffering from dehydration, hunger, sunburn, gunshots, and heat. However, Ben gets the upper hand when he finds water in a cave and eats a lizard and hunts some birds with the prospector''s slingshot. Later, Madec attempts to scale the butte where Ben''s cave is. However, Ben buries himself in the sand and breathes through the tubes of his slingshot. While Madec is on the other side of the butte, Ben unearths himself and creates a distraction by setting Madec''s tent on fire. This brings Madec closer and allows Ben to, using the slingshot, shoot several buckshots into Madec with the slingshot that he found in the prospectors tent. Ben overpowers Madec, ties him up, and escapes the desert in his Jeep CJ. Ben travels back to the town with the old man and Madec. Madec offers Ben $10,000 to just forget everything, but that doesn''t happen. They get back and Madec makes up a lie that everyone believes, making Ben guilty. The doctor in the town finds evidence in the bodies to prove that Ben was right. The doctor also found the slingshot, and says that Madec tried to throw it away when he first came into the hospital. This truth made Madec guilty. In the end, Ben only wanted to report the an accident.

Deathwatch

British historian Harrison Ashcroft is told by an informant of information which "proves" Hitler survived the end of World War II, rather than (the popular version) committing suicide. When he journeys to West Berlin to investigate, he is killed by a heavy Mercedes lorry and his murder is made to resemble an accident—and described as such by West Berlin''s police chief Wolfgang Schmidt. Ashcroft''s death draws the following people to Berlin to investigate: * Ashcroft''s daughter Emily. She worked with her father on a biography of Hitler. * California architect Rex Foster * Mossad agent Tovah Levine, for whom "the very mention of Hitler or Nazis, is grist to the mill" * Mr. Kirvov, collector of Hitler''s Art. Emily is working to finish her biography of Hitler that she started with her father. She visits one of Hitler''s dentists and he shows her two things, a dental chart and a drawing of a necklace. He says that Hitler always wore a necklace with a picture of Fredrick the Great for good luck, yet the Russians had never found it. He also told Emily that he had put another dental crown on his teeth during the last days of the war, yet the Russians never found that either. This prompts Emily to dig at the bunker where Hitler supposedly lived his last days. While she ventures on this quest to find the truth to Hitler''s story she meets Levine and Foster. Emily has an instant connection with Foster and unwillingly tells him information that she was supposed to keeps as a secret. After Foster saves her life from a murderous intruder and admits his love for her; she ends up spending the night with him while drunk with scotch. Emily along with Kirvov, Foster and Levine all used their combined power which leads them the unbelievable truth. Kirvov finds out about the painting that he has that is supposed to be an authentic painting by Hitler that the real Adolf Hitler might still be alive. The painting that depicted a Nazi building showed the image of a renovated building that had an additional element that was constructed in 1952. How could this painting which is supposed to be an authentic Hitler painting still have the designs of the building that were added in 1952 which was 7 years after his supposed death? Levine helps the four of them by discovering that Hitler and Eva Braun(his wife) had legitimate duplicates who normally attended functions in their place and who resembled Hitler very closely. Could the Hitler and Eva doubles have been the one who died in the bunker instead of the actual two people? Foster helped the group significantly and he discovered through a former Nazi bunker architect that Hitler had seven bunkers even though only six were known to other people. Foster discovers that the seventh Bunker is right next to the bunker that Hitler supposedly died in and he goes and investigates to find a secret passage that leads from the Hitler and Eva''s personal bedroom to a seventh bunker in a hidden passage route which was previously build by Jewish slaves (who were later killed to silence by Hitler himself). As Foster goes through this passage he find out that it certainly leads to another unknown bunker where he find that his love, Emily Ashcroft, is hidden after her sudden disappearance in the Cafe Wolf(this bunker happens to be right beneath this cafe which Eva Braun first used as her photo studio and later turned into a cafe to not attract too much attention. He also finds that Eva Braun is still alive and sleeping is the adjacent room! He let Emily escape and he later drugged Eva(who went by the name Evelyn Hoffman to not attract too much attention)with the truth drug which made her spit out the facts! Braun admits that she and Hitler used their doubles when they claimed their death and were alive and living in this bunker the entire time which completely escaped the eyes of the Soviets when they raided the bunker. She claimed that the real Hitler died on the same day as JFK did and ever since that, she has been at the head of the Nazis. She said that over fifty Nazis were in the secret bunker at the moment and that they would rise once more when Nazis were strong enough and when the Americans and Soviets destroyed each other with their missiles! Eva Braun also revealed one of the most ghastly secrets which was that she and Hitler had a child before he died! The daughter that they had was kept a secret from the rest of the world. Hitler did not want his daughter to rot in the bunker so he arranged for their previous maid to take care of the daughter as her own in exchange of a great bribe. The daughter''s name is Klara Feigbig who is already married and pregnant with Hitler''s grandchild but she has no idea about her actual parentage and she lives a peaceful life. Eva also revealed that the police chief, Wolfgang Scmitct, who the whole town trusted as an anti-Nazi was actually one of Hitler secret SS guards and was to take over as leader when the new Nazi Germany was established once again!

The Seventh Secret

The book is primarily an extended essay, entitled "Genocide by Any Other Name," tracing the history of the mandatory attendance of Native American children at residential schools, which generally meant they left their families to receive education in distant places, where they studied with children from other tribes. Churchill analyzes this as a process of genocide (forced assimilationist policies, as school policies often prohibited the use of the students'' own languages and their exercise of their own religions or cultural practices, such as style of hair and clothes. Particularly in the early years, the schools were generally run by religious organizations, many of which had already established missions among the Native Americans. During the nearly 100-year history of the schools, conditions varied from place to place. Former students have also reported positive experiences. Families often hid their children, or their cultural identities, in an attempt to keep their children from being kidnapped. Trickery and outright paternalistic force were used to remove young children from their homes. Families were devastated, and once enrolled at school, the children were not allowed to associate with siblings or loved ones. Stress and trauma for both native communities and individual children still haunt the people today. Children were forced to develop an identity which did not prepare them for life back home in the native communities from which they came, or in the society at large which did not accept native people as equals. These people did not belong anywhere. He describes the sometimes terrible conditions in the schools, with poor nutrition, a high rate of tuberculosis (untreatable until the use of antibiotics was developed) and other infectious diseases (which were common in the times); forced labor, and incidents of physical, sexual and emotional abuse. He says the students suffered a higher rate of mortality than children of their age in the general population. He notes that many graduates have reported being damaged by their experiences and have suffered high rates of alcoholism (note: this has been a problem for Native Americans outside of the school experience) and suicide. Churchill says the former students have transmitted the "trauma to successive generations," contributing to social disintegration among Native American communities. The author intended the book to compensate for his not having covered the boarding schools and their issues in his 1979 book A Little Matter of Genocide. It includes numerous photos and lists of such historic schools in the US and Canada.

Kill the Indian, Save the Man

A young man named Don Harvey leaves his dude ranch high school on Earth to go to his scientist parents on Mars. He visits an old family friend who asks him to deliver a ring to his father, but they are both later arrested by security forces. Harvey is released and given his ring back, after it has been examined; he is told that his friend has died of "heart failure." It is only later that he realizes that all deaths can be described that way. Harvey boards a shuttle to a space station orbiting the Earth. The station doubles as a transshipment terminus and a military base, armed with missiles to keep restive nations in check. On the trip up, he befriends one of his fellow passengers, a Venusian "dragon" named Sir Isaac Newton. Sir Isaac is a renowned physicist who can speak English using a portable device. Harvey gets caught up in the Venusian war of independence when the station is captured by the colonials in a surprise raid. Most of the other travelers are sent back to Earth, while a few decide to join the rebels. Harvey is in a quandary. The spaceship to Mars has been confiscated, but he remains determined to get there, by way of Venus if necessary. Because he was born in space, with one parent from Venus and the other from Earth, he claims Venusian citizenship; more importantly, Sir Isaac vouches for him. He is allowed to tag along, which turns out to be very fortunate for Harvey. The rebels blow up the station to stir up trouble for the Earth government. When the shuttle returns to Earth with its radios disabled, the military assumes it has been booby-trapped and destroys it, killing all aboard. On his arrival on Venus, Harvey finds that his Earth-backed money is now worthless. A banker lends him money, telling him to pay it forward. He gets a job washing dishes for his keep for Charlie, a Chinese immigrant who runs a small restaurant. He befriends a young woman, Isobel, when he tries to send a message to his parents. However, communication with Mars has been cut due to the hostilities. Harvey settles in to wait out the war, when the war comes to him. Earth sends a military force to put down the rebellion. The Venusian ships are destroyed in orbit and the ground forces are routed. Charlie is killed resisting the occupying soldiers. Harvey is rounded up and questioned by a senior security officer, who is very eager to get his hands on Harvey''s ring. Luckily, Harvey had given it to Isobel for safekeeping and he does not know where she is or whether she is even alive. Before he can be interrogated with drugs, he escapes and joins the Venusian guerrilla forces. Harvey becomes an effective commando. In time, he is tracked down by the leaders of the resistance, who turn out to also be looking for the ring. Isobel and her father (who is an important member of the rebels) are safe at the very base where Harvey is taken. The seemingly valueless ring turns out to be carrying the secret of scientific breakthroughs resulting from archeological studies of an extict alien civilization on Mars. With Sir Isaac''s assistance, it is used to secretly build an advanced spaceship that is much faster than any other vessel in existence, with revolutionary weapons and defenses also derived from the new technology. As the only combat veteran with knowledge of the ship, christened Little David, Harvey is recruited for its maiden voyage, manning a self-destruct mechanism, with strict orders to blow up the ship if it is in danger of being captured. Little David intercepts and defeats a group of warships on their way to Mars to crush the revolt there. Afterwards, Harvey is probably reunited with his parents, although the story ends before then.

Between Planets

Immediately after the events of the television film, the Eighth Doctor finishes reading The Time Machine (a book written by his old friend H.G. Wells). After he checks the Eye of Harmony in his TARDIS, he falls prey to a final trap set by his old enemy, the Master; which erases all of his memory. The only fact he knows for certain is that he is called "the Doctor" - but Doctor who? His instincts tell him to "trust the TARDIS", which immediately lands. He has landed at a scrapyard at 76 Totters Lane, London in 1997; where he encounters a young lady by the name of Sam Jones, who is being accused by local drug dealers, led by Baz Bailey, of "grassing" them over to the police. Having saved Sam from these insidious characters, who were intending to force Sam into taking drugs to get her addicted, the Doctor falls foul of the local police who promptly charge him with possession and selling the cocaine he has confiscated from the thugs. Sam tells her two teachers, who have noticed her lateness, and takes them back to the junkyard to verify the story. The Doctor escapes in the confusion of Bailey''s desperate attack on the local police station, he runs back into the TARDIS and it dematerialises - taking the cocaine with him to dispose of it safely. This leaves Sam alone, defenceless against the knife-wielding druggies... The TARDIS lands in the year 100,000 BC, and he meets his first incarnation in the jungle and they psychically link (giving the Eighth Doctor his memories up to that point in his life). The Eighth Doctor stops his other self from killing a caveman who was slowing their party down. The First Doctor explains that he must get away before the "time bubble" his Eighth self is in bursts and starts to damage the timeline. The Eighth Doctor then leaves. The TARDIS then lands during the events of The War Games, where he helps his second incarnation, Jamie McCrimmon and Zoe Heriot with their important mission to contact the Time Lords. Having regained his second life''s memories, he leaves happily. He next meets the Third Doctor, who himself has just fought the Master and the Sea Devils; and has saved humanity by blowing up a Sea Devil base. He, blaming his Eighth self for his exile to Earth and for the Master''s concurrent escape, threatens him with the Master''s Tissue Compression Eliminator. But he tosses the weapon to him instead. The Master has again escaped to fight another day, and the Eighth Doctor leaves. Having landed during the events of State of Decay, the Eighth Doctor gives the Fourth Doctor an emergency blood transfusion after his younger self is attacked and nearly fatally drained by another group of vampires, and leaves with yet more memories (to the astonishment of companion Romana). Meanwhile, back on Gallifrey, Lady President Flavia has noticed the Doctor crossing his timelines and demands that he be carefully watched. A Time Lord called Ryoth demands the Doctor be executed: the resulting paradoxes could be irreversible. Flavia denies this. Ryoth alerts the Celestial Intervention Agency to the situation, and the Agency give him access to the fabeled Timescoop technology, perfectly preserved since the Death Zone incident. He uses it to send a Raston Warrior Robot to the Fifth Doctor and his companions, Tegan Jovanka and Vislor Turlough. Luckily, the Eighth Doctor then arrives at the aftermath of The Five Doctors, where he saves his fifth incarnation and his companions from the Raston Warrior Robot and a passing platoon of Sontarans by tricking the two into fighting each other. The Doctors create a feedback system, so when Ryoth sends a Drashig to kill them, it instead materialises in the same room as Ryoth and eats him and the Timescoop. It is then caught and transmatted to the Death Zone by guards in the Capitol in the hopes that it will take care of the other horrors there. Soon he arrives in the middle of his second trial by the Time Lords; which his Sixth self seems to be losing (especially as the insidious Valeyard has just accused him of a mass genocide attack against the Vervoids). After giving him advice and encouragement- as well as helping to begin an investigation into his past self''s trial on Gallifrey-, he leaves, his memories almost completely intact. He finally arrives on the planet Metebelis Three, where the alone and depressed Seventh Doctor is trapped by a giant spider. After rescuing his former self (by killing the arachnid with the TCE), he remembers leaving Sam, and immediately dashes back into the TARDIS to her rescue. Once saved by the Doctor, Sam decides to join him on his travels.

The Eight Doctors

Centered in New Orleans, Blood Canticle is narrated by Lestat. The protagonist is a young Mayfair witch named Mona. At the beginning of the novel Mona is wasting away, victim to a mysterious disease brought on by the birth of her daughter, a so-called Walking Baby. As the novel plays out, Mona and her guardian, Rowan Mayfair, the current designee of the Mayfair legacy, reveal more and more about the powerful genetic plague that has haunted the Mayfairs for generations: the Taltos. In what she believes to be her dying hour, Mona - highly romantic in nature - buys quantities of roses and takes them to the house of her lover, Tarquin "Quinn" Blackwood, who is a vampire and a dear companion to Lestat. She lays the roses on his bed, intending to spend her final moments here. So that she does not die from the massive decline that her body has undergone, Lestat makes her into a vampire. He does this largely to satisfy Quinn, who could never again hear the thoughts of Mona if he were to do it himself. When trying to prevent Mona''s family from discovering her transformation, Lestat falls in love with Rowan Mayfair. Secretly, she pines for him as well. Lestat''s blood is powerful; Mona learns this quickly and discovers that she can easily dispatch inferior vampires with the powerful gifts that Lestat''s potent blood has bestowed upon her. Now her renewed vigor and her anger about her situation with Rowan and their shared secret of the Taltos causes her to lash out verbally at Rowan and Rowan''s husband Michael. As she struggles with herself, Lestat and Quinn, she learns her place in her new world. As she learns, Lestat pledges to find her Taltos child if it still lives. For this, Lestat enlists the help of Maharet. In a very short time, Maharet provides critical information for their search. The story comes to a dramatic conclusion as Mona, journeying with Quinn and Lestat, comes to the remote island where the Taltos live. But instead of finding a secluded paradise, the three vampires learn about years of intrigue and civil war among this isolated race of beings. In the end, the remaining Taltos join the Mayfair clan at the medical center in New Orleans, where they can be safe, learn, and be together as a family. Mona and Quinn are taken by Khayman to go and live with Maharet and Mekare to go and be instructed properly in the ways of vampirism, leaving Lestat alone. Rowan Mayfair seeks out Lestat, half in love with him but still in love with Michael and exhausted by her life, requesting that he gives her the Dark Gift. Lestat declines, pained as he is, because she is a guiding force for the Mayfair family and he cannot take her away from it.

Blood Canticle

Paula Power inherits a medieval castle from her industrialist father who has purchased it from the aristocratic De Stancy family. She employs two architects, one local and one, George Somerset, newly qualified from London. Somerset represents modernity in the novel. In the village there is an amateur photographer, William Dare, who is the illegitimate son of Captain De Stancy, an impoverished scion of the family. Captain De Stancy represents a dream of medieval nobility to Paula. She is attracted to both men for their different virtues but William Dare decides to intervene to promote his father in her affections. He fakes the telegram and photograph to make it appear Somerset is leading a dissolute lifestyle. His subterfuge is discovered by Captain De Stancy''s sister Charlotte who has befriended Paula. She decides to tell Paula the truth and Paula pursues Somerset to the continent where he has gone mistakenly believing Paula and the Captain to have been married. She finds him and they are reunited and marry. The castle burns down and Somerset proposes to build a modern house in its place. The last line has Paula summing up her dichotomy of mind between modernity and romantic medievalism, and thus the two men, also emphasising the title "a Laodicean" (someone indifferent or half-hearted) — "I wish my castle wasn''t burnt; and I wish you were a De Stancy!"

A Laodicean

The events of Mythago Wood occur between 1946 and 1948, just after the end of World War II. Stephen Huxley returns from service (after recuperating from his war wounds) to see his elder brother Christian who now lives alone in their childhood home, Oak Lodge, just on the edge of Ryhope Wood. Their father George has died recently; their mother Jennifer died some years earlier. Christian is disturbed, but intrigued, by his encounters with one of the mythagos whereas Stephen is understandably confused and disbelieving when Christian explains the enigma of the wood; although both had seen mythagos as children, their father explained them away as travelling Gypsies. Christian returns to the wood for longer and longer periods, eventually assuming a mythical role himself. In the meantime, Stephen reads about his father''s and Edward Wynne-Jones''s studies of the wood. Part of his research on the wood causes him to contact Wynne-Jones''s daughter, Anne Hayden. Stephen also meets a local man named Harry Keeton, a burn-scarred ex-RAF pilot, who had encountered a similar wood when he was shot down over France and has since been trying to find a city that he saw there. Stephen and Harry try to survey and photograph Ryhope wood from the air, but their small plane is buffeted back by inexplicable winds each time they fly over the forest. Stephen soon has his own encounters with the woodland mythagos (and an older Christian) and eventually, to save both his brother and a mythago girl named Guiwenneth (also referred to as Gwyneth and Gwyn), he must venture deep into the wood, and Harry accompanies him.

Mythago Wood

According to Tolstoy, art must create a specific emotional link between artist and audience, one that "affects" the viewer. Thus, real art requires the capacity to unite people via communication (clearness and genuineness are therefore crucial values). This aesthetic conception led Tolstoy to widen the criteria of what exactly a work of art is. He believed that the concept of art embraces any human activity in which one emitter, by means of external signs, transmits previously experienced feelings. Tolstoy offers an example of this: a boy that has experienced fear after an encounter with a wolf later relates that experience, infecting the hearers and compelling them to feel the same fear that he had experienced—that is a perfect example of a work of art. As communication, this is good art, because it is clear, it is sincere, and it is singular (focused on one emotion). However, genuine "infection" is not the only criterion for good art. The good art vs. bad art issue unfolds into two directions. One is the conception that the stronger the infection, the better is the art. The other concerns the subject matter that accompanies this infection, which leads Tolstoy to examine whether the emotional link is a feeling that is worth creating. Good art, he claims, fosters feelings of universal brotherhood. Bad art inhibits such feelings. All good art has a Christian message, because only Christianity teaches an absolute brotherhood of all men. However, this is "Christian" only in a limited meaning of the word. Art produced by artistic elites is almost never good, because the upper class has entirely lost the true core of Christianity. Furthermore, Tolstoy also believed that art that appeals to the upper class will feature emotions that are peculiar to the concerns of that class. Another problem with a great deal of art is that it reproduces past models, and so it is not properly rooted in a contemporary and sincere expression of the most enlightened cultural ideals of the artist''s time and place. To cite one example, ancient Greek art extolled virtues of strength, masculinity, and heroism according to the values derived from its mythology. However, since Christianity does not embrace these values (and in some sense values the opposite, the meek and humble), Tolstoy believes that it is unfitting for people in his society to continue to embrace the Greek tradition of art. Among other artists, he specifically condemns Wagner and Beethoven as examples of overly cerebral artists, who lack real emotion. Furthermore, Beethoven''s Symphony No. 9 cannot claim to be able to "infect" its audience, as it pretends at the feeling of unity and therefore cannot be considered good art.

What Is Art?

Mark Styler, a writer of "true crime" stories arrives at the Fairfields experimental hospital for the criminally insane, with the hope of interviewing serial killer Easterman for a new book. He meets Dr. Farquhar, the hospital director, however things don''t seem quite right. The doctor is reluctant to let Styler see Easterman, and encourages Styler to leave. Styler, however refuses with the excuse of a long car journey. In the end, he stays and Farquhar offers him dinner. His assistant Nurse Plimpton seems frightened of something, and is anxious. She tries to give a note to Styler, but Farquhar burns it in the bin. She reluctantly makes a pot of tea and liver sandwiches for Styler. After she leaves, the two discuss the book further, but Styler''s real feelings about Easterman are revealed. He is desperate to see Easterman, and suggests that he wore a strait-jacket to keep him from damaging anything. Farquhar, seemingly annoyed at this, retrieves a strait jacket from a closet and offers to put it on Styler to show what it is like, and he reluctantly agrees. Once Styler is strapped in, Farquhar taunts him about being mad, and threatens him with a scalpel, then Nurse Plimpton returns, and she knocks Farquhar unconscious with a wine bottle. She explains that Farquhar is in fact Easterman, who killed most of the staff during a "psychiatric drama" session. Nurse Plimpton is in fact Doctor Carol Ennis. She cannot undo the strait jacket straps, and as she bends down to get the scalpel from Easterman, he awakens and grabs her, then stabs her behind a curtain. When Easterman and Styler begin to talk, it turns out the two men used to be neighbours, and Styler admired Easterman, perhaps even loved him. It appears Styler''s motives for visiting are not as they appeared to be. Doctor Ennis suddenly awakens, and cries out for help; Easterman straps her to a chair and after removing the jacket, asks Styler to kill her. Styler is tricked into thinking he is Easterman, and they think up various methods, but in the end Styler suffocates her with a carrier bag. Once it is done, he feels guilt but Ennis awakes and now assumes the role of Doctor Farquhar. She and Easterman, who is now Carol completely change, and Styler is told he is Easterman and Styler was just his assumed name. He tries to prove them wrong, however his BMW is gone, and the letter he sent to Farquhar is blank. In the end, Styler is forced to believe he is Easterman, however it is never explicitly revealed to the audience who is actually who.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

Crookedstar's Promise

By Erin Hunter

Exultant

By Stephen Baxter

Deathwatch

No Author Listed

The Seventh Secret

No Author Listed

Kill the Indian, Save the Man

No Author Listed

Between Planets

By Robert A. Heinlein

The Eight Doctors

By Terrance Dicks

Blood Canticle

By Anne Rice

A Laodicean

By Thomas Hardy

Mythago Wood

By Robert Holdstock

What Is Art?

By Leo Tolstoy

Mindgame

By Anthony Horowitz