The title character is a poor and fatherless teenager growing up in The Bronx. Billy and his friends are in awe of the flashy mobsters in the neighborhood. Dutch Schultz and Otto Berman, based on the real-life mobsters, hire Billy as a gofer and become mentors to him. The gangsters take Billy up to their upstate hideaway, where they are awaiting a trial. Schultz becomes a community leader and converts to Catholicism. Billy works his way up but begins to question his actions when he falls in love with Dutch''s moll Drew, whom Dutch plans to have killed. Billy is sent to Saratoga Springs with Drew to keep an eye on her. They act as a couple in Saratoga. He realizes that she is to be killed and calls her husband in New York City to come and rescue her. After Schultz is acquitted, Attorney General Thomas Dewey brings up more charges and the gang goes into hiding. This time they are in Union City, New Jersey. While Billy is visiting the gang to give them updates on Dewey''s routine, unnamed gangsters come in and kill everyone except Billy and the bartender. Billy goes back to Schultz''s hotel room and takes all the money from his safe.

Billy Bathgate

Life in the Iron Mills begins with an omniscient narrator who looks out a window and sees smog and iron workers. The gender of the narrator is never known, but it is evident that the narrator is a middle class observer. As the narrator looks out the windowpane, an old story comes to mind; a story of the house that the narrator is living in. The narrator cautions the reader to have an objective mind, and to not be quick to judge the character in the story he/she is about to tell the reader. The narrator begins to introduce Deborah, Wolfe''s cousin. She is described as a meek woman who works hard, and has a hump in her back. Deborah finds out from Janey, that Hugh did not take lunch to work, and she decides to walk many miles in the rain to take a lunch for Wolfe. As she walks up to the mills, Deborah begins to describe it as if it were hell, but she keeps going for Wolfe. When she arrives Wolfe is talking amongst friends and he recognizes her. The narrator explains his affection for her, but also describes his affection as loveless and sympathetic. Hugh finds no time to eat his dinner and goes back to do a day of labor in the mills. Deborah, who is exhausted, stays with Hugh and rests until his shift is over. In the meantime, the narrator further explains that Wolfe does not belong in the environment of the iron mill workers. He is known as "Molly Wolfe" by other workers because of his manner and background in education. When Wolfe is working he spots men that do not look like workers. He sees Clarke, the son of Kirby, Doctor May who is a physician, and another two men that he does not recognize. These men stop by to look at the working men, and as they are talking and observing, they spot a weird object that has the shape of a human. As they get closer, they see that it is an odd shaped statue built with korl. They begin to analyze it and wonder who created such a statue, one of the workers points at Wolfe and the men go to him. They ask him why he built such a statue and what it represents. All Hugh says is that "She be hungry". The men begin to talk about the injustice of labor force, and one goes as far as to say that Hugh can get out of the meager job he is in, but that he unfortunately can not help. The men leave, but not before Deborah steals one of their wallets, which has a check for a substantial amount inside. They go back home and Wolfe feels like he is a failure and feels anger towards his economical situation. Once home, Deborah confesses to stealing from Mitchell, and shamefully gives the money to Wolfe to do with it what he pleases. Wolfe decides to keep the money believing he is deserving of it because after all they are all deserving in Gods eyes. The narrator transitions to a different scene with Dr. May reading the newspaper and seeing that Wolfe was put in jail for stealing from Mitchell. The story goes back to Hugh and he is in prison with Deborah. The narrator explains how terrible their situation is, and goes on to give detail of Wolfe''s mental disintegration. Hugh ends up losing his mind and killing himself in prison. The story ends with a quaker women who comes to bless and help with the body of Hugh. She talks to Deborah and promises her that she will give Hugh a proper burial, and come back for her when she is released from jail.

Life in the Iron Mills

Every night water strangely disappears from the new Tarnack Reservoir near Skull Mountain. Frank and Joe join forces with a team of skilled engineers to solve the baffling mystery. The book takes place on Skull Mountain, a mountain where many skulls have been seen, near Bayport, U.S.A. This city around Skull Mountain loses water each night because of the new reservoir. There is always something mysterious happening on the mountain, which has an underground channel. The story begins when Joe wants to go swimming, however, Frank points out that there is no water. When they discover that the water is missing, they team up with Chet Morton, Dick Ames and Bob Carpenter in order to solve the mystery. While exploring Skull Mountain, where the reservoir is located, the boys are attacked several times. They finally find Timothy Kimball Jr. (sweeper) breaking into Mr. & Mrs. Kleng’s store in order to steal the safe which holds his pay ($5000). Timothy is arrested and questioned about the reservoir. This leads the Hardy Boys to catch the villain, Mr. Kleng, and solve the crime. At the end, the Hardy Boys can go swim because there is enough water in the pool.

The Secret of Skull Mountain

Life is not easy for any thirteen-year-old, but when your mother was a human and your father was a vampire, and they were both killed in a fire, it''s especially hard. The school bullies harass Vlad, the principal seems to have it in for him, and his dream girl, Meredith, seems to prefer his friend, Henry. Vlad''s mother''s long-time friend, Nelly, is raising him, and she understands his problems and helps him to hide the fact that he is a vampire and must have blood to survive. Vlad''s best friend, Henry is the only other person who knows his secret, and Vlad bit Henry once when they were eight years old, making Henry his drudge (someone who is forced to the will of a vampire). Vladimir has real rapport with one teacher, but that teacher has disappeared and no one knows where he is. Vlad and Henry are determined to find out what happened to him. But the substitute teacher begins to question Vlad too closely ... and there is just something strange about Mr. Otis. Vlad worries that Otis might suspect the truth. Then when Otis assigns Vampires as Vlad''s research project, and the teacher scribbles "I know your secret" across the bottom of his essay, he is really frightened. Vlad discovers his father''s journal and is learning about the reality of being a vampire and the powers that he may possess. He also becomes convinced that there is a Vampire slayer in town, and that he is searching for Vlad. Things go from bad to worse when Nelly invites Otis to dinner and he confronts Vlad with what he knows.

Eighth Grade Bites

The novel begins where The Waste Lands ended. After Jake, Eddie, Susannah and Roland fruitlessly riddle Blaine the Mono for several hours, Eddie defeats the mad computer by telling childish jokes. Blaine is unable to handle Eddie''s "illogical" riddles, and short-circuits. The four gunslingers and Oy the billy-bumbler disembark at the Topeka railway station, which to their surprise is located in the Topeka, Kansas, of the 1980s. The city is deserted, as this version of the world has been depopulated by the influenza of King''s novel The Stand. Links between these books also include the following reference to The Walkin'' Dude from The Stand on page 95, "Someone had spray-painted over both signs marking the ramp''s ascending curve. On the one reading St. Louis 215, someone had slashed watch out for the walking dude."(King, 2003, pg 95) among others. The world also has some other minor differences with the one (or more) known to Eddie, Jake and Susannah, for instance, the Kansas City baseball team is the Monarchs (as opposed to the Royals), and Nozz-A-La is a popular soft drink. The ka-tet leaves the city via the Kansas Turnpike, and as they camp one night next to an eerie dimensional hole which Roland calls a "thinny," the gunslinger tells his apprentices of his past, and his first encounter with a thinny. At the beginning of the story-within-the-story, Roland (age fourteen) earns his guns—an episode retold in the inaugural issue of The Gunslinger Born —and becomes the youngest gunslinger in memory. He did it because he discovered his father''s trusted counsellor, the sorcerer Marten Broadcloak, having an affair with his mother, Gabrielle Deschain. In anger, Roland challenges his mentor, Cort, to a duel to earn his guns. Roland bests his teacher, and his father sends him east, away from Gilead, for his own protection. Roland leaves with two companions, Cuthbert Allgood and Alain Johns. Soon after their arrival in the distant Barony of Mejis, Roland falls in love with Susan Delgado, the promised "gilly" of Thorin—the mayor. His love for Susan Delgado clouds his reasoning for a time and nearly results in a permanent split between him and his previously inseparable friend Cuthbert. He and his ka-tet also discover a plot between the Barony''s elite and "The Good Man" John Farson, leader of a rebel faction, to fuel Farson''s war machines with Mejis oil. After being seized by the authorities on trumped-up charges of murdering the Barony''s Mayor and Chancellor, Roland''s ka-tet manages to escape jail with Susan''s help, destroy the oil and the detachment Farson sent to transport it, as well as the Mejis traitors. The battle ends at Eyebolt Canyon, where Farson''s troops are maneuvered into charging to their deaths into a thinny. The ka-tet also captures the pink-colored Wizard''s Glass, a mystical, malevolent orb or crystal ball from the town witch, Rhea of the Cöos. The globe had entranced Rhea so much that she was starving herself and her pets to death because she spent every free moment watching the visions in the orb. The glass then shows Roland a vision of his future, and also of Susan''s death (she is burned as a harvest sacrifice for colluding with Roland). The visions send him into a stupor, from which he eventually recovers—at which point the glass torments him with other visions, this time of events that he was not present for but nonetheless shaped his fate and Susan''s, such is the nature of the Wizard''s Glass. Thus Roland''s sad tale comes to a close. In the morning, Roland''s new ka-tet comes to a suspiciously familiar Emerald City. The Wizard of Oz parallels continue inside, where the Wizard is revealed to be Marten Broadcloak, also known as Randall Flagg, who flees when Roland attempts to kill him with Jake''s Ruger and narrowly misses (Flagg has bewitched Roland''s own guns, saying, "Only misfires against me, Roland, old fellow"). In his place he leaves Maerlyn''s Grapefruit, which shows the ka-tet the day Roland accidentally killed his own mother. Roland, it has been explained time and again, tends to be very bad medicine for his friends and loved ones. Nonetheless, when given the choice, Eddie, Susannah and Jake all refuse to swear off the quest; and as the novel closes, the ka-tet once more sets off for The Dark Tower, following the Path of the Beam.

Wizard and Glass

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

Q-in-Law

The novel is told in the first person from various points of view; much of the narration is by Gemma and Tar, and takes place over the course of a few years in their lives. At the beginning of the story, Gemma is spending time with Tar, a gentle teenager who is planning to run away from home after suffering abuse at the hands of his father. Gemma is a rebellious 14 year old and, despite having loving parents, decides to leave home and join Tar in Bristol. In Bristol, Tar is introduced to Richard through Skolly, the tobacconist that took pity on Tar. Richard is a nervous, vegetarian anarchist, and he and his friends Vonny, a motherly character, and Vonny''s boyfriend Jerry break into an abandoned house to squat there and invite Tar to stay with them. Tar is eager for them to meet Gemma as she arrives in Bristol; they are less pleased because they think Gemma is young and impulsive and would be better off at home with her parents. Gemma and Tar experiment smoking marijuana while they are living in the abandoned house. Tar phones his mother to let her know he''s safe. However she makes him feel guilty for leaving her alone with his father, upsetting Tar greatly. Richard holds a party in the abandoned house and Tar and Gemma meet Lily, who enchants Gemma with her confidence and carefree attitude. Gemma and Tar leave to stay the night with Lily and her boyfriend Rob. While they are there, Lily and Rob encourage Gemma and Tar to smoke heroin with them, and they do, believing that only smoking it won''t get them addicted. Tar and Gemma live with Lily and Rob for a long time, their heroin smoking habit turning into long-term addiction. They are joined by Sally, another heroin addict. Lily becomes pregnant and this inspires them into attempting to quit by going cold turkey, however they fail after only a day. Lily continues to inject heroin while pregnant. Lily, Gemma and Sally work as prostitutes in a massage parlour to fund their addiction. After getting arrested, Tar is sent to a rehabilitation centre. Once out, he declares himself clean, but after going back to the flat with Gemma, Lily and Rob, he takes heroin again. The catalyst comes after Tar and Gemma are found with heroin again; Tar takes the blame and this time is sent to prison. Gemma, now pregnant with Tar''s baby, allows Vonny to get in touch with her mother, who asks Gemma to come home and have the baby with the help of her parents. She agrees, and after 3 and a half years she is back at home. Her story ends with her clean and heroin-free, bringing up the baby without Tar because she doesn''t trust him to stay off the drugs. Tar, once out of prison, slowly weans himself off methadone and settles down with a girlfriend, visiting his and Gemma''s daughter every few months.

Junk

Rebecca Tignor is mistaken for another woman named Hazel Jones one afternoon in the woods nearby Chatauqua Falls, New York in the fall of 1959. Over 20 years later, Rebecca finds out that the man who approached her is a serial killer. In a secondary plot, Rebecca''s parents escape from the Nazis in 1936, foreseeing the oncoming Holocaust; Rebecca is born in the boat crossing over. When Rebecca is 13, her father, Jacob Schwart, who has lost his intellectual dreams and has become a gravedigger and cemetery caretaker in Milburn, abruptly kills her mother, Anna, and nearly kills Rebecca, before committing suicide. At the time of the footpath crossing, Rebecca is just weeks away from being beaten and almost killed by her own husband, the brutal Niles Tignor. She and her only son, Niles Jr., flee, and she becomes the woman for whom she has been recently mistaken, purposefully adopting the identity of Hazel Jones. Niles Jr. assumes the alias of Zacharias. As Hazel, Rebecca seeks many livelihoods, as alternately a waitress, clerk and finally, the mistress of the overwhelmingly wealthy heir of the Gallagher media fortune, a man in whom she never felt the need to confide her past.

The Gravedigger''s Daughter

Blanche DuBois is a fading, but still-attractive, Southern belle whose pretensions to virtue and culture only thinly mask alcoholism and delusions of grandeur. Her poise is an illusion she presents to shield others (but most of all, herself) from her reality, and an attempt to make herself still attractive to new male suitors. Blanche arrives at the apartment of her sister Stella Kowalski in the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans, on Elysian Fields Avenue; the local transportation that she takes to arrive there includes a streetcar route named "Desire." The steamy, urban ambiance is a shock to Blanche''s nerves. Stella, who fears the reaction of her husband Stanley, welcomes Blanche with some trepidation. As Blanche explains that their ancestral Southern plantation, Belle Reve in Laurel, Mississippi, has been "lost" due to the "epic fornications" of their ancestors, her veneer of self-possession begins to slip drastically. Blanche tells Stella that her supervisor allowed her to take time off from her job as an English teacher because of her upset nerves, when in fact, she has been fired for having an affair with a 17-year-old student. This turns out not to be the only seduction in which she has engaged, and, along with other problems, has led her to escape Laurel. A brief marriage marred by the discovery that her husband, Allan Grey, was having a homosexual affair and his subsequent suicide has led Blanche to withdraw into a world in which fantasies and illusions blend seamlessly with reality. In contrast to both the self-effacing and deferential Stella and the pretentious refinement of Blanche, Stella''s husband, Stanley Kowalski, is a force of nature: primal, rough-hewn, brutish, and sensual. He dominates Stella in every way and is physically and emotionally abusive. Stella tolerates his primal behavior as this is part of what attracted her in the first place; their love and relationship are heavily based on powerful—even animal-like—sexual chemistry, something that Blanche finds impossible to understand. The arrival of Blanche upsets her sister and brother-in-law''s system of mutual dependence. Stella''s concern for her sister''s well-being emboldens Blanche to hold court in the Kowalski apartment, infuriating Stanley and leading to conflict in his relationship with his wife. Blanche and Stanley are on a collision course, and Stanley''s friend and Blanche''s would-be suitor, Harold "Mitch" Mitchell, gets trampled in their path. Stanley discovers Blanche''s past through a co-worker who travels to Laurel frequently, and he confronts her with the things that she has been trying to put behind her, partly out of concern that her character flaws may be damaging to the lives of those in her new home, just as they were in Laurel, and partly out of a distaste for her pretense in general. However, his attempts to "unmask" her are predictably cruel and violent. In their final confrontation, it is implied that Stanley rapes Blanche, resulting in her nervous breakdown. Stanley has her committed to a mental institution, and in the closing moments, Blanche utters her signature line to the kindly doctor who leads her away: "Whoever you are, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers." The reference to the streetcar named Desire—providing the aura of New Orleans geography—is symbolic. Blanche not only has to travel on a streetcar route named "Desire" to reach Stella''s home on "Elysian Fields" but her desire acts as an irrepressible force throughout the play—she can only hang on as her desires lead her. The character of Blanche is thought to be based on Williams'' sister Rose Williams who struggled with her mental health and became incapacitated after a lobotomy.

A Streetcar Named Desire

The satirical comedy focuses on the effect talking pictures have on the entertainment industry. When the New York City vaudevillean team of Jerry Hyland, May Daniels, and George Lewis find themselves in a faltering vaudeville act, they decide to head west and present themselves as elocution experts in the hope someone will hire them to train actors unaccustomed to speaking on screen. On the train they meet gossip columnist Helen Hobart, who introduces them to megalomaniac film mogul Herman Glogauer when they arrive in Hollywood. The trio''s misadventures include encounters with Lawrence Vail, a New York City playwright driven to distraction and eventually a sanatorium by studio bureaucracy and a lack of work to keep him busy; silent screen beauties Phyllis Fontaine and Florabel Leigh, whose voices sound like nails on a blackboard; two pages in 18th century dress who periodically arrive carrying placards with announcements about Glogauer''s latest doings; a ditzy receptionist who wears an evening gown to work; and aspiring actress (and proverbial dumb blonde) Susan Walker and her chaperoning stage mother. Dimwitted George becomes a director who shoots the wrong script, forgets to turn on the soundstage lights, and audibly cracks nuts during filming, yet his movie is called a masterpiece and he''s declared a genius by trend-conscious journalists who believe he''s ahead of his time.

Once in a Lifetime

On a snowy February 14, Freddy learns his friend Mr. Boomschmidt ran out of money for his circus during the war years, when performances were restricted. The animals scattered a year previously to manage for themselves. Freddy gets an appeal to reassemble them and find a way to finance restarting the circus. Valentines and Jinx the cat’s painting aside, Freddy and Jinx go to Centerboro for advice. The bank will not loan money without collateral: “Chickens are off two cents, and lambs very weak. But rhinoceroses—not a very active market in them”. On a different matter, on Freddy’s advice, the bank puts out cheese so the mice will not eat the money. Freddy learns that the circus lion Leo is 200 miles away. He is lucky to catch his rich friend Mrs. Church driving that direction. She pays for a hotel while he and Jinx investigate. At Mrs. Guffin’s pet shop Freddy buys a canary that winks at him while he is questioning. The canary turns out to be a chickadee dyed yellow; he gives Freddy enough information about Leo to confront Mrs. Guffin. They manage to free him, but are now fugitives, since Mrs. Guffin claims she owns Leo. She tries to reclaim him, but is held captive until Mrs. Church arrives to take them home. Freddy’s plan to solve the bank’s mouse infestation attracted even more mice. Since the townspeople are also infested, he decides to go into business with cat acquaintances removing them. Soon they are earning good money toward restarting the circus, but Old Whibley the owl has a better plan: to rent a place for the town mice to stay the winter. The mice are won over. Freddy decides to stage a little theater, and the move into the new place is done in a parade with the pig leading as the Pied Piper. Freddy decides to take the money earned and travel with Jinx and the circus animals to Mr. Boomschmidt. They almost reach him when they come across a race track. Some animals join a race. The rhinoceroses carrying the money is waylaid by a man from the track, and the money is stolen. They arrive at Mr. Boomschmidt’s empty handed, but are welcomed just the same. While there, Freddy gets a tip from a buzzard they met on their journey, and the animals recover their money. To save Mr. Boomschmidt’s pride, Freddy concocts a séance reading where the money he earned is discovered as hidden treasure. Satisfied, but not fooled, Mr. Boomschmidt restarts the circus.

Freddy the Pied Piper

While sailing a small yacht single-handedly from Australia to New Zealand, Modesty Blaise rescues Luke Fletcher, the world-renowned painter, from drowning. But how in the world did Luke Fletcher end up adrift in the Tasman Sea, after having disappeared in the Mediterranean two months earlier? Luke Fletcher is not the only person from the world of the arts who has disappeared in the last couple of years, but he is the only one who has turned up alive later. Back in England, Modesty and her good friend Willie Garvin refuse to get involved in trying to unravel the mystery, preferring to leave well enough alone. But then Luke Fletcher is killed, and Modesty and Willie make it their goal to find out who is behind it all and bring him/her down. The trail leads back to the Tasman Sea, to Dragon''s Claw Island, but Modesty and Willie make a mistake and find themselves in captivity. They''ve solved the puzzle of why certain people with artistic flair have disappeared, but will they live long enough to make use of this knowledge? Willie, ever the resourceful one, manages to break out of his cell, but then he''s recaptured. After that the bad guys don''t intend to give Modesty or Willie another chance to escape. They force Modesty to fight a gun duel against the Reverend Uriah Crisp, the gun-toting minister who has proven that he is faster on the draw than Modesty. Modesty is given her own gun and holster, her gun loaded with one bullet. She waits calmly as the crazy priest advances, a prayer book in one hand and a six-shooter on his hip.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

Billy Bathgate

By E. L. Doctorow

Life in the Iron Mills

By Rebecca Harding Davis

The Secret of Skull Mountain

By Franklin W. Dixon

Eighth Grade Bites

By Heather Brewer

Wizard and Glass

By Stephen King

Q-in-Law

By Peter David

Junk

By Melvin Burgess

The Gravedigger's Daughter

By Joyce Carol Oates

A Streetcar Named Desire

By Tennessee Williams

Once in a Lifetime

By Moss Hart

Freddy the Pied Piper

No Author Listed

Dragon's Claw

By Peter O''Donnell