In a parallel universe, England and Imperial Russia have fought the Crimean War for more than a century; England itself is a police state run by the Goliath Corporation (a powerful weapon-producing company with questionable morals); and Wales is a separate, socialist nation. The book''s fictional version of Jane Eyre ends with Jane accompanying her cousin, St. John Rivers, to India in order to help him with his missionary work. Literary questions (especially the question of Shakespearean authorship) are debated so hotly that they sometimes inspire gang wars and murder. Single, thirty-six, Crimean War veteran and literary detective Thursday Next lives in London with her pet dodo, Pickwick. As the story begins, Thursday is temporarily promoted to investigate the theft of the original manuscript of Charles Dickens''s Martin Chuzzlewit because she is one of the few people able to identify the thief, Acheron Hades. She comes close to capturing him during a stakeout, but is badly injured, saved by a copy of Jane Eyre that stops Hades'' bullet. A mysterious stranger aids her until the paramedics arrive, leaving behind only a monogrammed handkerchief and jacket. Next recognizes these items as those of Rochester, a character from Jane Eyre, because she entered the novel as a child and briefly became acquainted with Rochester himself while she was there. While recovering in hospital, Thursday is instructed by her future self to take the LiteraTec job in her home town of Swindon. There, she discovers that her Uncle Mycroft has created the Prose Portal, which allows people to enter works of fiction. Next also renews an acquaintance with her former fiancé Landen Parke-Laine (a reference to the British version of the board game Monopoly). Hades kidnaps Mycroft, Polly, and the Prose Portal in order to blackmail the literary world; any changes made to the plot of a novel''s original manuscript will change all other copies. When his demands are not met, Hades kills Mr Quaverley, a minor character from the original manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit. Next and a Goliath Corporation operative named Jack Schitt trace Hades to Wales and rescue Mycroft and the Prose Portal, but find that Polly is stuck in one of Wordsworth''s poems and Hades has gone into the original text of Jane Eyre. Next pursues Hades, and after much trouble, succeeds in killing him. In the process, Thornfield Hall is burned, Rochester''s mad wife Bertha falls to her death, and Rochester himself is grievously injured (in other words, she alters the ending of the book to match the actual ending to Jane Eyre). Returning to her own world, Next uses the Prose Portal to release her Aunt Polly and imprison Jack Schitt in the text of Edgar Allan Poe''s "The Raven". She shows up at the church where Parke-Laine is about to be married to another woman, but a lawyer interrupts the wedding and Next and Parke-Laine are reconciled and marry instead. Next''s father, a renegade agent from SpecOps-12, the ChronoGuard, turns up to dispense some fatherly advice to his daughter. The novel ends with Next facing an uncertain future at work: public reaction to the new ending for Jane Eyre is positive, but there are other repercussions.

The Eyre Affair

Lise is a spinster, working in an accountancy firm somewhere in Northern Europe, probably Denmark (the location is not explicitly specified). Spark described The Driver''s Seat as a ''whydunnit'' (and she uses the term in the novel). This is because in the novel''s third chapter it is revealed that Lise will be murdered. Hence Spark''s novel is an examination, not of what events take place but why they do so. Lise''s strangeness and her isolation is mirrored in Spark''s detached narrative. It is eventually revealed that Lise has suffered years of illness; her erratic and often confrontational behaviour and her garishly clashing, provocative clothing continually alert the reader of this. Lise travels to a South European city, apparently Naples, ostensibly to meet her illusory boyfriend. But her quest is more complex: it is not merely for acknowledgement, but also annihilation (she admits that I wish my parents had practised birth control) and ultimately the story is about a woman seeking to control her own death. The Driver''s Seat is a study in the alienation and isolation of modern life, in which trendy New Age "lifestyles" replace genuine spirituality and in which chaos and absurdity replaces the moral certainty of the God-ordered world. Deprived of these values and existing in a small, sterile, impersonal world (reflected in her blandly expensive, utilitarian flat), Lise is driven to search not for her ideal lover but her ideal death. Spark perverts the traditional fairy tale romance, denying the reader the comfort that the perfect love affair is the antidote to the empty isolation of modern life. In its place she raises a series of thought-provoking, disturbing questions about the nature of female victimisation and empowerment and the debasement of social and spiritual values in modern society.

The Driver''s Seat

Andrew''s dream is to have freckles. He envies Nicky Lane because Nicky has numerous freckles all over his face, ears, and neck. Andrew feels as if he is at a disadvantage because he only had two warts on his fingers. Once, Andew tried counting all of Nicky''s freckles, but when he got to eighty-six, Miss Kelly, Andrew''s teacher, told him to pay attention. He wants to have his own so his mother will not be able to tell if his neck and face are dirty and he would not have to wash them. He makes many attempts to acquire freckles. Andrew thinks that freckles are really neat. After asking Nicky how he got his freckles, and getting the expected answer ("you get born with them"), a girl in his class named Sharon, who often fools him by using sneaky tricks, tells him he can get freckles by drinking a concoction that she claims she used to get freckles. At first, Andrew does not believe her. Sharon then tells Andrew to look closely and Andrew observes that Sharon has six freckles on her nose. She gives him the recipe for "Freckle Juice" for fifty cents. He thinks it is ridiculous that he has to use five weeks worth of allowance for a recipe, but he is dying to get freckles. After school, he runs home to make the recipe which calls for several disgusting ingredients (some of which he did not have and had to use substitutes). He ends up drinking it, after which he gets very sick. His mother comes home, notices how sick he looks, and puts him to bed immediately. She gives him pink medicine which tastes like peppermint to get better. He skips school the next day because he still feels queasy. He never wants to go back, but his mother makes him. Before he goes to school, Andrew tried to find a brown marker but could not find one so he used a blue marker to draw several little dots on his face. He believes this will make him look like he got freckles, which would prove Sharon wrong. He realises that her recipe was only a joke to fool him. He is angry and frustrated because he was the victim of a prank. Unfortunately, everybody, including Sharon, sees through this idea and ends up laughing at him. Miss Kelly gives Andrew her secret formula for removing freckles so he can do so to his blue "ones". Ironically, Nicky Lane, the boy he envied because of his real freckles, asks her if he could use the secret formula as well because he hates them. She explains freckles did not look good on Andrew, but they look good on him. Later, Sharon whispers to Nicky about this recipe for a concoction that can get rid of his freckles.

Freckle Juice

In the first chapter, “Modernity’s Consciousness of Time,” Habermas presents an outline of the “cultural self-understanding of modernity” as it emerged in Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and attempts to retrieve the “historical context of Western rationalism” in which modernity or modernization (more narrowly conceived in terms of social and economic transformation) was originally understood as both a process of disenchantment and alienation as well as the “historical objectification of rational structures.” This presentation prepares the ground for the larger argument of the book, namely, that by losing sight of the “cultural impulse of modernity,” and abandoning the project of modernity as a whole, European intellectuals on both ends of the political spectrum have ignored the emancipatory dimension of the European Enlightenment, and thereby have renounced the only means of developing a consistent and immanent critique of modernity itself. Modernity is defined by Habermas as a set of problems related to the issue of time, problems produced by the transformation of European society in accordance with what Hegel called the “principle of subjectivity,” the notion of individual autonomy as the essence of man. This freedom from all forms of external authority, which includes nature as well as tradition, means that the subject “has to create its normativity out of itself;” because it is free, it cannot accept any value or law that it does not recognize as its own. Subjectivity, in other words, is defined by “the right to criticism: the principle of the modern world requires that what anyone is to recognize shall reveal itself to him as something entitled to recognition." Insofar as the subject wills only those laws that recognizes as rational, laws which are “self-proscribed and self-obligated,” the subject wills only itself, or, in Hegel terms, it “wills the Will:” “The Will is Free only when it does not will anything alien, extrinsic, foreign to itself (as long as it does so, it is dependent), but wills itself alone&nbsp;– wills the Will. This is the absolute Will&nbsp;– the volition to be free.” According to Habermas, Nietzsche undertakes a critique of “subject-centered reason,” of modern forms of knowledge and ethics, from a standpoint that only appears to be “genealogical,” that is, situated, historically, outside of modernity and Enlightenment thinking in an archaic, Dionysian era of myth, prior to the formation of modern subjectivity in the renunciation of instinct or “life.” According to Habermas, Nietzsche’s argument that all moral and cognitive claims (along with the rational subject) are the historical products of a power forced inward by its inability to discharge itself is not, in fact, based on a genealogy of modernity, but rather a critique of the modern cognitive and practical subject from the perspective of an equally modern aesthetics (which Nietzsche “transposes,” according to Habermas, “into the archaic”), elevating the “judgment of taste of the art critic into a model for value judgment.” Nietzsche''s critique of subject, in other words, is based on a modern aesthetic experience&nbsp;– in particular, the “painful de-differentiation, a de-delimitation of the individual, a merging with amorphous nature within and without”&nbsp;– which presupposes the modern subject itself. What appears, then, in Nietzsche as the historical “other” reason is in fact a version of Kantian aesthetics shorn, of any claim of intersubjective validity.

The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity

Beka''s story continues when she gets sloppy with her reports to Ahuda, and she decides to practice again by starting a new journal. Now a first year Dog, Beka works the Evening Watch with her loathsome partner, Silsbee. His attitude of letting Day Watch catch the criminals they see annoys Beka to no end. Silsbee eventually dumps her as a partner, and she is partnered with Clara Goodwin and Matthias Tunstall, her former trainers. Beka learns of the existence of coles, or counterfeit coins, from her friend Tansy. As she and her partners investigate, they get word of a thin harvest, which bodes ill for the poor of the Lower City. Beka and Pounce--a speaking constellation in the form of a cat--find Achoo, a bloodhound, being hurt by her handler. When Beka steps in to stop the abuse, she takes Achoo as her scent-hound. Meanwhile, due to the thin harvest, bread prices go up and a riot starts in the city. Beka, Goodwin and Tunstall get caught up in the fight, and Tunstall gets both of his legs broken. After the riot, Lord Gershom, the Lord Provost, sends Beka, Goodwin and Achoo to Port Caynn to further investigate the coles while Tunstall recovers. Pounce, for once, cannot go with her as he is actually a constellation and he must deal with some troublesome stars. They depart and on board the ship are reacquainted with Dale Rowan, a banker who helped them during the Bread Riot. Together Goodwin and Beka make friends and try to pry information, pretending to be corrupt, or "loose." Beka''s romance with Dale blossoms, and Goodwin too flirts playfully, though she never forgets her husband Tomlan back home. When Goodwin returns to Corus to deliver reports to Lord Gershom, Beka comes across several pieces of evidence that point to Pearl Skinner, the Port Caynn Rogue, as the colemonger. She goes to Sir Lionel of Trebond, the Deputy Provost, but Sir Lionel''s fear of Pearl (who had previously murdered his children) prevents him from acting. Beka loses her temper with him, and Sir Lionel orders her sent to Rattery Prison. With the help of one of the loyal Dogs, Beka is able to escape and goes to Pearl for shelter. Through use of a gift, flattery and an amusing tale degrading Sir Lionel, Beka is able to convince Pearl to let her stay for now. However, one of Lionel''s men goes to Pearl and tells her that Beka has evidence that Pearl is the one behind the coles, and Beka is forced to flee once more. This time, Beka goes to Nestor Haryse, Lord Gershom''s younger cousin, and his transgender lover, Okha Soyan (Amber Orchid). With Nestor''s help, Gershom is able to bring in a large squad of Dogs to arrest Pearl and her conspirators. Pearl and her bodyguards escape, but Beka follows them down into the city''s sewers, where, with Achoo and Goodwin''s help, she manages to arrest Pearl. They suffer numerous wounds, and when Beka wakes, she must face the sad reality that she and Dale must part; they live too far apart, and their jobs leave no time for each other. When they return to Corus, Goodwin tells Beka that the Evening Watch Sergeant, Ahuda, was offered a position in Corus''s Flash District, and that Goodwin was going to take Ahuda''s place, leaving Beka with Tunstall as a partner. She says that she is tired of being a street dog, and that desk sergeant will be the perfect position for her. The novel ends at Beka and Goodwin''s welcome home party, as Beka and Tunstall agree to stay partners. She gains a new nickname, Bloodhound, from the public and her friends.

Bloodhound

Shade''s poem digressively describes many aspects of his life. Canto 1 includes his early encounters with death and glimpses of what he takes to be the supernatural. Canto 2 is about his family and the apparent suicide of his daughter, Hazel Shade. Canto 3 focuses on Shade''s search for knowledge about an afterlife, culminating in a "faint hope" in higher powers "playing a game of worlds" as indicated by apparent coincidences. Canto 4 offers details on Shade''s daily life and creative process, as well as thoughts on his poetry, which he finds to be a means of somehow understanding the universe. In Kinbote''s editorial contributions he tells three stories intermixed with each other. One is his own story, notably including what he thinks of as his friendship with Shade. After Shade was murdered, Kinbote acquired the manuscript, including some variants, and has taken it upon himself to oversee the poem''s publication, telling readers that it lacks only line 1000. Kinbote''s second story deals with King Charles II, "The Beloved," the deposed king of Zembla. King Charles escaped imprisonment by Soviet-backed revolutionaries, making use of a secret passage and brave adherents in disguise. Kinbote repeatedly claims that he inspired Shade to write the poem by recounting King Charles''s escape to him and that possible allusions to the king, and to Zembla, appear in Shade''s poem, especially in rejected drafts. However, no explicit reference to King Charles is to be found in the poem. Kinbote''s third story is that of Gradus, an assassin dispatched by the new rulers of Zembla to kill the exiled King Charles. Gradus makes his way from Zembla through Europe and America to New Wye, suffering comic mishaps. In the last note, to the missing line 1000, Kinbote narrates how Gradus killed Shade by mistake. The reader soon realizes that Kinbote is King Charles, living incognito—or, though Kinbote builds an elaborate picture of Zembla complete with samples of a constructed language, that he is insane and that his identification with King Charles is a delusion, as perhaps all of Zembla is. Nabokov said in an interview that Kinbote committed suicide after finishing the book. The critic Michael Wood has stated, "This is authorial trespassing, and we don''t have to pay attention to it," but Brian Boyd has argued that internal evidence points to Kinbote''s suicide. One of Kinbote''s annotations to Shade''s poem (corresponding to line 493) addresses the subject of suicide at some length.

Pale Fire

As the battlefield on which so many adolescent wars are waged, high school can be hell. No one knows this better than Robby Meyers, who is forced to move to south Florida in the middle of his freshman year after his father’s dies in a motorcycle accident. His older brothers Pete and Gus have no trouble making new friends and carving out spots for themselves on various athletic teams. Robby, on the other hand, is small for his age and better known for picking fights than for finishing them. Not surprisingly, he quickly gets himself into trouble at his new school with teachers, bullies, and of course girls. But then Robby meets Danny Ramerez, and things begin to look up. Danny’s tough but fair, cool but loyal, and their friendship definitely improves Robby’s social status. He even garners the attention of several girls, including a bright, thoughtful young student named Lacy. But as time passes and the two boys become closer friends, Robby suspects that all is not as it seems with Danny. His parents, Danny tells him, are “not in the picture,” leaving him in the custody of his sinister uncle. When Danny hatches a plan to get out from under his uncle’s thumb, Robby must choose whether to risk his own neck to help him or to remain uninvolved. Robby Fights the World is a gripping coming-of-age novel about a boy who learns first-hand just how hard it can be to distinguish between right and wrong. As Robby struggles with friendship, honor, loss, and love, he is called on to make the hardest choice of his young life, the consequences of which will no doubt change him forever. Joel Christie’s young-adult novel offers a realistic (and surprisingly humorous) glimpse into the complex, gritty world of modern teens.

Robby Fights the World

18-year-old April Lancaster, the child of Janice and Hugh Lancaster, enters the hospital for testing as she has been suffering from headaches, blackouts, and eventually passed out in English class. During this time, April becomes acquainted with Mark Gianni, who suffers from cystic fibrosis, and has been in and out of the hospital since he was born. Mark is very interested in April, and even tells her that he intends to marry her, but she declines his offer to go out, as she already has a boyfriend, Chris. April is told by her doctor that she has an inoperable brain tumor, a recurrence of the case she had as a five-year-old, and needs to start radiation treatments. Soon after breaking the news to Chris, he ends their relationship, and April begins to date Mark. Over time, the two fall in love, and Mark proposes to April. She accepts, although her parents aren''t thrilled about the match. Eventually, they do reconcile to the idea. Shortly afterward, the car that Mark is driving in during a race (he is an avid racing fan) flips over and ignites. Mark survives the crash, but he develops pneumonia and dies. The book ends with April and her parents in St. Croix for a vacation. April releases a red balloon for Mark, as he had once done for her. The sequel, For Better, For Worse, Forever begins with April in St. Croix.

Till Death Do Us Part

A young girl aged 13, Samantha, is extremely lonely after moving from Sydney to Melbourne. Both of her parents work long hours and she starts getting interested in chat rooms, where she meets new friends. While in the chat rooms she stumbles across a guy named Robin. He fakes his age as 17, even though he is really 27 and makes Sam feel special. He is charming, smart, romantic and good-looking. He tells her they have to wait for a while before he can tell her his final secret, which she does not realise is his age. Eventually he lets her know hes 27 and she freaks out, after 10 days of stressing and feeling more depressed than ever she goes online and asks to talk to him. He answers her and they confess to liking each other, then they decide to meet. she goes to meet him, hes extremelly gorgeous, and they go for a walk. During the time shes with him Erica, her babysitter, reaises Sam is missing and finds the emails from Robin. She calls the cops and they set out to find her. When they do Robin is caught and Sam is told what happened. Robin has been to court several times on child sexual abuse charges and has been let go on all charges before now because there was a lack of evidence. Now robin is taken in with the police and will be dealt with time in jail.

Chat Room

Mike Hammer wakes up being questioned by the police in the same hotel room as the body of an old friend from World War II. His friend, Chester Wheeler, has apparently committed suicide with Hammer''s own gun after they had been drinking all night. As it is not considered murder, Hammer is not under suspicion but the District Attorney takes the opportunity to revoke his Private Investigator and Gun licences. Considering the evidence, Wheeler had no motive to commit suicide and two bullets are missing from his gun with only one in his friend''s body, Hammer does not believe that it was really a suicide and proceeds to investigate. During the investigation he finds a formerly small time criminal and a modelling agency are involved in a large blackmailing scheme that seems to include many rich and powerful people across New York. Parts of the investigation are carried out by Hammer''s secretary, Velda, who has her own Private Investigator licence. This novel features the first time she shoots and kills someone.

Vengeance Is Mine!

Two friends - Derek Scully and "Outspan" Foster - get together to form a band, but soon realise that they don''t know enough about the music business to get much further than their small neighbourhood in the Northside of Dublin. To solve this problem, they recruit a friend they''d had from school, Jimmy Rabbite, to be their manager. He accepts graciously, but only if he can make fundamental changes to the group, the first being the sacking of the third, and mutually disliked, member - their synth player. After this, Rabbitte gets rid of their name, making them "The Commitments", ("All the good 60s bands started with a ''the''.") and, most importantly, forming them from another synth-pop group to the face of what he thinks will be the Dublin-Soul revolution. ("Yes, Lads. You''ll be playing Dublin Soul!") He witnesses a young man singing drunkenly into a microphone at a friend''s wedding and is struck by the fact he is singing "something approximating music". He decides the band should play soul music. Jimmy places an ad in the local paper reading "Have you got soul? Then Dublin''s hardest working band is looking for you". Eventually, he gets together a mismatched group with seemingly no musical talent, led by mysterious stranger Joey "The Lips" Fagan, who claims to have played trumpet with Joe Tex and the Four Tops. They quickly start learning how to play their instruments and perform a number of local gigs. With music fanatic Jimmy Rabbite as their manager, the Commitments seek to fulfil their goal of bringing soul to Dublin. In the beginning, Jimmy includes all of the country Ireland, but later realised that the culchies have everything whereas the Dubliners were the working-class and had nothing. Bringing soul music to Ireland was then reduced merely to the city. * Steven "James" Clifford - Pianist, * Imelda Quirke - Backup Vocalist, * Natalie Murphy - Backup Vocalist, * Mickah Wallace - Bouncer/ 2nd Drummer, * Bernie McGloughin - Backup Vocalist, * Dean Fay - Saxophonist, * Liam "Outspan" Foster - Guitarist, * Billy Mooney - 1st Drummer (quit because he couldn''t stand Deco), * Joey "The Lips" Fagan - Trumpet, * Derek Scully - Bassist, * Declan "Deco" Cuffe - Lead Vocalist. Tensions run high between the band members, not helped by the jealousy and animosity Joey receives from other male members due to the attention he receives from the female backing singers. The band slowly becomes more and more musically competent and draws bigger and more enthusiastic audiences. But the band falls apart after a gig when Joey is seen kissing Imelda and a fight ensues—all while Jimmy is negotiating to record the band''s first single with an independent label. Fagan soon goes to America after Imelda tells him she is pregnant (she was actually lying, only saying this for the attention). In the end, Jimmy, along with the band''s other founding members and Mickah, form The Brassers, an Irish hybrid of punk and country. They plan on inviting James into the band after he''s finished his medical degree, and they discuss getting the ladies involved as well.

The Commitments

The book is introduced by C. J. Henderson with an After Word by the authors. The plot summaries of the seven stories are: Made of Meat: In the Cambodian jungles, Major Harrison Peel of the Australian Army’s military intelligence and MI6 spy James Figgs, are involved in covert operations fighting a losing war against Tcho-Tcho terrorists. The Tcho-Tcho are able to predict Peel’s and Figgs’ every move, efficiently eliminating the foreigner’s agents under their very noses. Peel seeks the aid of a Vietnam War veteran who provides him with the intelligence he requires to bring the Tcho-Tchos’ reign to an end. To What Green Altar: In Siberia, Middle Eastern cultists slaughter every single employee at a remote Russian mine. In London, James Figgs calls NSA agent Jack Dixon to aid in the investigation of this attack, and together they uncover its connection to the 1908 Tunguska event. A trail leads to the Vatican City, where the summoning of a Cthulhu Mythos deity almost forces a global religious war between Muslims and Christians. Impossible Object: The ancient city of Pnakotus in Australia''s Great Sandy Desert, a city that was once home to the Great Race of Yith, has been unearthed by the Australian government. Their secret investigation of its ruins found nothing of value except for a strange artifact, the Impossible Object, which no one can describe or classify. Harrison Peel, now head of security at the city, tries to understand its purpose before more scientific researchers die, or are erased from existence altogether by the Object’s unpredictable properties. False Containment: Harrison Peel travels from Australia to Thailand, to Los Angeles and then into the deserts of Nevada, spurred on by a strange encounter with himself from the future with disturbing news of a wormhole leading to a monstrous god called the Many-Thing that devours worlds. Toxic and nuclear waste is materializing all over the world, and Peel becomes convinced its source is a new waste treatment plant in Nevada, utilizing technology of great interest to the Pentagon, and derived from knowledge offered by the Impossible Object. Resurgence: Shoggoths from Antarctica are waking. Discovering that there is nothing to feed their hunger in the icy wastelands, and freed from their incarceration as slaves to the ancient alien race of the Elder Things, they advance northwards. In Argentina, Jack Dixon’s expertise is called upon to defeat a bold shoggoth, which he destroys with a nuclear weapon. Facing a similar foe in Australia, Harrison Peel is not able to deploy weapons of mass destruction because no one in the Australian or United States government will provide him with one, fearful of the political ramifications if a nuclear bomb is detonated on Australian soil. Weapon Grade: After suffering severe radiation poisoning from his encounter with a shoggoth in Sydney, Peel is dying. He hopes to go quietly, but Dixon calls upon Peel’s expertise, taking him to Utah, Antarctica and finally another universe, to secret US bases where Dixon’s government has long been studying the properties of shoggoths. Meanwhile, an Israeli spy plans to steal a tissue sample of a shoggoth, only to be defeated by Peel as they pass between dimensions. The effects of higher-dimensional time flow, cures Peel of his radiation poisoning. The Spiraling Worm: In the jungle of the Eastern Congo Basin the cult of the Spiraling Worm is building an army, whose primary goal is to restore the powers of the Outer Gods. A team of British and American Special Forces, led by Peel, Dixon and Figgs, are sent into Africa to stop the army.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

The Eyre Affair

By Jasper Fforde

The Driver's Seat

By Muriel Spark

Freckle Juice

By Judy Blume

The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity

No Author Listed

Bloodhound

By Tamora Pierce

Pale Fire

By Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

Robby Fights the World

No Author Listed

Till Death Do Us Part

By Lurlene McDaniel

Chat Room

By Barbara Biggs

Vengeance Is Mine!

By Mickey Spillane

The Commitments

By Roddy Doyle

The Spiraling Worm

By John Sunseri