The novel takes place about 25 years after the events in the previous novel, Skyfall. Eldrinson Valdoria and his wife Roca Skolia live happily on his homeworld Lyshriol and have ten children. Some of them have already left home, like the second oldest son Althor who is training to become a Jagernaut, or the firstborn Eldrin who at the request of the Skolian Assembly had to marry his aunt, the Ruby Pharaoh Dyhianna Selei. The sixth of the Valdoria children, 16-year-old Sauscony (Soz), wants to enter the Military academy to become a Jagernaut like her brother. But Eldrinson has other plans – he would rather prefer to see his "little girl" living safely on Lyshriol, married to a local landlord. When she disobeys, he disowns both her (for leaving) and Althor (for taking her off-world). Though he regrets his harsh words immediately, he has no chance to take them back. Soon after, his teenage son Shannon, unhappy about the family discord, runs away from home. The book is told from the perspective of several main characters – young Soz during her military training; Shannon searching for his lost kin, the mystic Blue Dale archers; and their father Eldrinson, being captured, crippled, and nearly tortured to death by a sadistic Aristo who infiltrated Lyshriol to destroy the Ruby Dynasty.

Schism

The book opens as King Arthur prepares himself for his final battle. Merlyn reappears to complete Arthur''s education and discover the cause of wars. As he did in The Sword in the Stone, Merlyn again demonstrates ethics and politics to Arthur by transforming him into various animals. The last chapter of the book takes place only hours before the final battle between King Arthur and his son and nephew Mordred. Arthur does not want to fight after everything that he has learned from Merlyn. He makes a deal with Mordred to split England in half. Mordred accepts. During the making of this deal, a snake comes upon one of Mordred''s soldiers. The soldier draws his sword. The opposing side, unaware of the snake, takes this as an act of betrayal. Arthur''s troops attack Mordred''s, and both Arthur and Mordred die in the battle that follows. Guenever joins a convent, and remains there till death. Lancelot becomes a hermit and dies a hermit. His last miracle was making the room that he died in smell like heaven.

The Book of Merlyn

In the wake of the tragedy that befell the Children of Llyr, Prince Pryderi of Dyved returns to his realm with Manawyddan, the last survivor of the family. There Pryderi is reunited with his wife Cigfa and Manawyddan marries Pryderi''s mother Rhiannon. An enchantment descends on the land, leaving it a wasteland empty of all domesticated animals and humans apart from the four protagonists. They support themselves by hunting at first, then move to the larger realm of Llogres where they make a living making saddles, shields and shoes. Their work is of such quality that the local craftsmen cannot compete, and drive them from town to town. Finally they return to Dyved and become hunters again. Pryderi and Manawyddan follow a white boar to a mysterious castle. Against Manawyddan''s advice Pryderi goes inside, and does not return. Rhiannon goes to investigate and finds Pryderi clinging to a bowl, unable to speak. The same fate befalls her, and the castle disappears. Manawyddan and Cigfa return to Llogres as shoemakers, but are once again forced to leave so they return to Dyved. They sow three fields of wheat, but the first is destroyed before it can be harvested. The next night the second field is destroyed. Manawyddan watches over the third field, sees it destroyed by mice, and catches one of them. He decides to hang it for theft the next day. Three strangers turn up in succession to offer him gifts if he will spare the mouse. Manawyddan refuses. Asked by the third stranger what he wishes in return for the mouse''s life, he demands the release of Pryderi and Rhiannon and the lifting of the curse from Dyved. The stranger agrees to these terms, and his captives are freed and the land restored. He reveals himself as Llwyd, an ally of Gwawl, whom Pryderi’s father Pwyll had once killed. The mice who destroyed Manawyddan’s crops were his attendants, magically transformed, and the one Manawyddan captured is Llwyd’s own pregnant wife. He had placed the enchantment on Dyved in vengeance for Gwawl’s death.

The Song of Rhiannon

The story begins with a painter named Tim Picasso who suffers critical rejection from his peers and decides to take a break in the Caribbean, where he ends up crewing on a drug smuggling sailboat. When the captain gets drunk and falls overboard, Picasso takes the boat to Florida, and meets up with Jesus Castro, the lead drug smuggler. Castro intimidates Picasso into running the drugs from Miami to Boston, however after Picasso collects the $1.5 million payment from the Irish Republican Army, he escapes by train to the New England town of Tyburn, where a winter storm is picking up force. He decides to lodge at the seaside Admiral Benbow Inn for the weekend, until he can depart for Italy. Meanwhile, Mr. Glowery, a bitter New York journalist and writer who believes that a rival author is sabotaging his literary career, arrives in Tyburn where he is to speak at a fiction workshop being held at the Admiral Benbow Inn. He is immediately tasered by one of Castro''s detectives, who mistakenly confuses him for Picasso. Back at the Admiral Benbow Inn, the innkeeper, George Hawthorne, worries about Mr. Briscoe, a cross-dressing contract worker who is stranded in the abandoned lighthouse just off the coast because of the raging nor''easter, while his unhappy wife, Magdalene Hawthorne, threatens to leave him. The next morning, Mr. Glowery is stuck in a restaurant where he is being coerced by a psychotic cook to peddle his novel in order to pay off a debt he incurred during the night. When Professor Eggman, the director of the fiction workshop, comes across Mr. Glowery, he rescues him and brings him back to the inn. However, few people show up for the fiction workshop because of the storm. Hawthorne''s wife returns from a spa with Picasso; Mr. Hawthorne informs her that he is trying to procure a prostitute for his new arrival, Jesus Castro, who has registered under the false name of Mr. Wassermann. Mr. Hawthorne asks Picasso if he has had sex with his wife and Picasso meekly admits to it. At the lighthouse, Mr. Briscoe decides to brave the storm in a landing craft, but is immediately swamped with water and carried by the tide towards the mainland. After Castro avails himself of the services of a prostitute, he rampages around the property searching for Picasso. The storm crashes through the inn. A guest is killed by a billiards table that falls on top of him and is dragged off into the sea. Mr. Glowery is also dragged off into the sea by the storm. Castro and his assistant round up the guests and interrogate them about the location of the $1.5 million Picasso stole. In another part of the inn a fire starts. Finally, Mr. Briscoe shows up and kills Castro''s assistant before knocking Castro unconscious. While Hawthorne learns his wife is leaving him for the prostitute, the inn becomes completely engulfed in flames. Picasso, Hawthorne, and Briscoe motor a lobster boat over to the lighthouse, and dump Castro''s dead assistant into the sea along with Castro himself, weighed down with two cinder blocks chained to his ankles. When they land on the island, Briscoe runs into the lighthouse and blows himself up. Amongst the rubble of the lighthouse, Picasso notices the inscription "MORTE D''AUTHOR" painted on one of the surrounding rocks and says to the innkeeper "He''s been thinking about this for some time, George."

Light House: A Trifle

In Moulmein, the narrator—Orwell, writing in the first person—is a police officer during a period of intense anti-European sentiment. Although his intellectual sympathies lie with the Burmese, his official role makes him a symbol of the oppressive imperial power. As such, he is subjected to constant baiting and jeering by the local people. After receiving a call regarding a normally tame elephant''s rampage, the narrator, armed with a .44 caliber Winchester rifle and riding on a pony, goes to the town where the elephant has been seen. Entering one of the poorest quarters, he receives conflicting reports and contemplates leaving, thinking the incident is a hoax. The narrator then sees a village woman chasing away children who are looking at the corpse of an Indian whom the elephant has trampled and killed. He sends an orderly to bring an elephant rifle and, followed by a group of roughly a few thousand people, heads toward the paddy field where the elephant has rested in its tracks. Although he does not want to kill the elephant, the narrator feels pressured by the demand of the crowd for the act to be carried out. After inquiring as to the elephant''s behaviour and delaying for some time, he shoots the elephant multiple times, but is unable to kill it. The narrator then leaves the beast, unable to be in its presence as it continues to suffer. He later learns that it was stripped, nearly to the bone, within hours. His elderly colleagues agree that killing the elephant was the best thing to do, but the younger ones believe that it was worth more than the Indian it killed. The narrator then wonders if they''ll ever understand that he did it to avoid looking a fool.

Shooting an Elephant

Throughout the 20 years of her marriage, Samantha Morrow has been content with her life, though she knows it isn''t perfect. She has a nice home, a great son, and a husband she loves. But everything is turned upside down when her husband, David, tells her he wants out of their marriage. His rapid departure on the heels of this announcement leaves Sam horribly shocked, utterly confused, and oddly obsessed with Martha Stewart. Her initial reaction is to go on a spending spree, charging thousands of dollars worth of merchandise at Tiffany''s to her husband''s credit card. But when reality sets in and her husband cuts her off, she realizes that if she wants to keep the house she loves and make a home for herself and her son, she''s going to have to generate some income. Her first solution to this dilemma is to find a couple of roommates. Between the finished portion of the basement and the extra bedroom upstairs, Sam figures she can take on two boarders and mitigate a large portion of the mortgage payment. She finds her first boarder quickly—the septuagenarian mother of an acquaintance—and is delighted. Lydia Fitch is quiet, clean, concerned, friendly, and more than eager to play grandmother to Sam''s son, Travis. Which is just as well, since Sam''s own mother doesn''t quite fit the bill. In fact, Sam''s mother has made a career out of dating since the death of her husband two decades ago and is now determined to fix Sam up as soon as possible—a plan with foreseeable disasters written all over it. Sam''s life is further complicated when she starts looking for a job, for other than a gig singing in a band years ago, she''s never been employed. But then King, the gentle giant of a man who helps Lydia move in, puts Sam in touch with the employment agency he works for. Suddenly Sam is off on a variety of short-term jobs, everything from making change at a Laundromat, to working as a carpenter''s helper. When she gets the devastating news that Lydia has decided to marry her longtime beau and move out, Sam takes on a second boarder for the basement space: a sullen, depressed college student.

Open House

Deutsch views the enlightenment of the 18th century as near the beginning of an infinite sequence of purposeful knowledge creation. Knowledge here consists of information with good explanatory function that has proven resistant to falsification. Any real process physically possible is able to be performed provided the knowledge to do so has been acquired. The enlightenment set up the conditions for knowledge creation which disrupted the static societies that previously existed. These conditions are the valuing of creativity and the free and open debate that exposed ideas to criticism to reveal those good explanatory ideas that naturally resist being falsified due to their having basis in reality. Deutsch points to previous moments in history, such as Renaissance Florence and Plato''s Academy in Golden age Athens, where this process almost got underway before succumbing to their static societies'' resistance to change. The source of intelligence is more complicated than brute computational power, Deutsch conjectures, and he points to the lack of progress in Turing test AI programs in the six decades since the Turing test was first proposed. What matters for knowledge creation, Deutsch says, is creativity. New ideas that provide good explanations for phenomena require outside-the-box thinking as the unknown is not easily predicted from past experience. To test this Deutsch suggests an AI behavioural evolution program for robot locomotion should be fed random numbers to see if knowledge spontaneously arises without inadvertent contamination from a human programmer''s creative input. If it did Deutsch would concede that intelligence is not as difficult a problem as he currently thinks it is. Deutsch sees quantum superpositions as evidence for his many worlds quantum multiverse, where everything physically possible occurs in an infinite branching of alternate histories. Deutsch argues that a great deal of fiction is close to a fact somewhere in the multiverse. Deutsch extols the usefulness of the concept of fungibility in quantum transactions, his universes and the particles they contain are fungible in their interactions across the multiverse structure. Deutsch explains that interference offers evidence for this multiverse phenomenon where alternate histories affect one another without allowing the passage of information, as they fungibly intertwine again shortly after experiencing alternate events. According to Deutsch, our perspective on any object we detect with our senses is just a single universe slice of a much larger quantum multiverse object. Deutsch speculates on the process of human-culture development from a genetic basis through to a memetic emergence. This emergence led to the creation of static societies where innovation occurs, but most of the time at a rate too slow for individuals to notice during their life times. It was only at the point where knowledge of how to purposefully create new knowledge through good explanations was acquired that the beginning of infinity took off during the enlightenment. His explanation for human creativity is that it evolved as a way to faithfully reproduce existing memes, as this would require creative intelligence to produce a refined rule set that would more faithfully reproduce the existing memes that happened to confer benefit (and all the other memes too). From this increased creative ability, the ability to create new memes emerged and humans thus became universal constructors and technological development accelerated. Deutsch criticizes Jared Diamond''s resource luck theories as to why the West came to dominate the other continents outlined in his book Guns Germs & Steel. For Deutsch the sustained creation of knowledge could have arisen anywhere and lead to a beginning of infinity, it just happened to arise in Europe first. Deutsch extols the philosophical concept of optimism where although problems are inevitable, solutions will always exist provided the right knowledge is sought out and acquired.

The Beginning of Infinity

The Shri GuruCharitra is a holy book for Datta Sampradaya devotees. The book includes the life story of Shri Narasimha Saraswati, his philosophy and related stories. Some people regard the book to be historically important as it depicts stories or events which took place around the 14th Century. The language is 14-15th century Marathi. Shri Saraswati Gangadhar used only Sanskrit words. The poet''s full name is Saraswati Gangadhar Saakhare (Deshastha Brahmin). It has been said that he spent most of his life at Kadaganchi village in Karnataka. There is one composition of the GuruCharitra in Kannada language as well. However, this does not make this book any terse. It is far simpler to understand and follow. This shows the poet''s command over the Marathi language. Moreover, the poet''s mother tongue is Kannada and not Marathi. The book originally had 52 Chapters; the 53rd Chapter of "Avatarnika" (अवतरणिका) summarizes the previous 51 chapters. The whole book is considered a "Mantra" in itself and thus there are very strict rules for reading it. In Datta Sampradaya they consider this as their "Veda".

Shri GuruCharitra

After splitting up from the church, Judd Thompson and Vicki Byrne go together to O''Hare International Airport to get Judd''s car. Along the way they pray to receive Christ as a taxi driver drops them off three miles from the airport. They band together as brother and sister in their new faith in the early hours of the morning. Finding the parking lot hopelessly gridlocked they finally get the car out around four in the morning. Vicki asks Judd to take her to her trailer park where she hopes to stay. Finding her trailer burned to the ground, she has no choice but to stay with Judd at his house. Meanwhile, Lionel (who was the first to receive Christ) finds Ryan after he ran out of the church not wanting to hear that his parents are in Hell. They team up and go to Ryan''s house, where they set up a tent in the back yard. Next, they head over to Lionel''s house, a few miles away, to grab some of his clothes and stuff. There Lionel finds a voicemail message from his Uncle Andre telling Lionel He''s sorry and is going to kill himself. Not wanting that to happen, he and Ryan ride their bikes down to the hotel that Andre was staying in only to find his Uncle being taken out in a body bag. Scared and now without any family, They go back to Ryan''s house and spend the night in the back yard because Ryan is too scared to go in. The next day he convinces Ryan to go to his house to live. But after they get there they find that the house has been taken over by "friends" Of Andre. He goes and grabs some stuff and bolts out of there. They then go to the church where they meet up with Judd and Vicki. After telling Bruce their good news Lionel and Ryan decide to move in with Judd.

Second Chance

Martin Clarke is celebrating his acquisition and refurbishment of an old stately home by inviting a number of guests to stay for the weekend. The house has an unsettling history; two decades ago, the butler, a frail man of over 80 years, was killed when he uncharacteristically decided to swing back and forth from the chandelier, which then fell and killed him. Another report features a chair which leaps off the wall at the viewer. Clarke''s guests have been selected as a cross-section of "ordinary, skeptical human beings" and have been invited to investigate the rumours of ghostly hauntings. The weekend begins when, as the guests are entering the home, one woman screams and claims that something has clutched at her ankle—something "with fingers". The host immediately tells the story of a former owner of the home whose death was met with such suspicion of witchcraft from the servants that the body lay as it fell for days, and the servants reported that something seemed to clutch at their ankles. The weekend is off to a spooky start but proceeds spectacularly when three witnesses agree that a gun jumped off the wall and killed a seated guest, with no hand holding it. Famous crime-solver and debunker of impossible crimes Gideon Fell is called in to explain matters and does so in a way that leads to a spectacular and fiery finish.

The Man Who Could Not Shudder

Halidom and Troth are two adjacent principalities within the Land of Oz, both resembling medieval kingdoms. Heir to the throne of Halidom is Prince Gules. The people of Halidom have always derived their physical and mental abilities from three golden circlets worn by their ruler: the first around his forehead, the second on his right forearm, the third on his right thumb. The first and third circlets have been lost, with attendant loss of abilities by the subjects of Halidom. Fess is a young pageboy in the household of Prince Gules, but Fess was born in Troth, so the circlets have no effect on him. Awakening one day to discover that all the natives of Halidom are strangely languid, Fess learns that the second (and last remaining) circlet has been stolen. He embarks on a quest with Prince Gules, aided by a unicorn and a Flittermouse (a mouse with wings) to retrieve all three. Meanwhile, Dorothy Gale and the Cowardly Lion temporarily leave the Emerald City to place an order with the Easter Bunny, whose underground domain is conveniently accessible from Oz. When Dorothy escapes from an orphanage, she and the Lion join the Prince and Fess in their quest. Robin Brown, an orphan from Oregon, USA, rides a magic merry-go-round horse to the Land of Oz. The horse whisks him to the Quadling and Munchkin Countries of Oz, where Robin has adventures in View Halloo (a region dedicated to fox-hunting) and Roundabout (a land where everything is round, inhabited by Roundheads). Eventually, Robin must help find the missing magic circlets of Halidom.

Merry-Go-Round in Oz

The book begins as McCourt lands at Albany, New York, and quickly makes his way to New York City. Friendless and clueless about American customs, he struggles to integrate himself into American blue-collar society. He is then drafted into the US Army, sent to Europe, and rises to the rank of corporal. On his stay in Germany, he has confrontations with many people who try to show Frank how to get a Russian refugee girl to have sexual intercourse with him by giving her coffee or cigarettes. He is granted leave from the army as compensation for his exceptional service as a clerk-typist and goes back home to Ireland to see his family. He then decides to return to the US, where he attends New York University &ndash; despite never having graduated from high school. He falls in love with and eventually marries a middle-class American-born girl, Alberta Small, whom he meets at college. After graduating from NYU, he teaches English and social studies at McKee Vocational and Technical High School on Staten Island. There, he is forced to deal with apathetic, indifferent students. Eventually, he moves on to teaching at the prestigious Stuyvesant High School. At Stuyvesant, he revises his teaching style to end his reliance on books and other teaching resources, to become an effective teacher. ''Tis examines Frank''s relationship to his family and his wife during this time (all his siblings and his mother move to America over the course of the book). Eventually, Frank''s relationship with his wife turns sour, and they stay together as long as they do only because of their daughter, Margaret Ann (named after Frank’s sister who died in infancy, and his grandmother, who is described in Angela''s Ashes). Nonetheless, Frank finally leaves them, an action he compares to that of his father leaving his family. Frank''s mother, Angela McCourt, is in increasingly bad health due to emphysema and dies in New York around the same time as Frank''s father, Malachy McCourt, Sr., dies in Ireland. Frank goes to Ireland to bury his father and scatter his mother''s ashes. The book ends after Frank and his brothers scatter Angela''s ashes over the graves of her family. "''Tis" was the final and only word of the last chapter of Angela''s Ashes, while Tis ends with the spreading of Angela McCourt''s ashes in Ireland. Frank McCourt has remarked in several interviews (perhaps joking) that he originally intended for each book to have the other''s title. Frank McCourt followed this book with another memoir, Teacher Man. ms:''Tis

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

Schism

By Catherine Asaro

The Book of Merlyn

By T. H. White

The Song of Rhiannon

By Evangeline Walton

Light House: A Trifle

By William Monahan

Shooting an Elephant

By George Orwell

Open House

By Elizabeth Berg

The Beginning of Infinity

By David Deutsch

Shri GuruCharitra

No Author Listed

Second Chance

No Author Listed

The Man Who Could Not Shudder

By John Dickson Carr

Merry-Go-Round in Oz

By Eloise McGraw

'Tis: A Memoir

By Frank McCourt