{| cellpadding="5" style="width:40%; float:right; font-size:85%;border-collapse:collapse; background:transparent; border-style:none;" |- | width="20" valign=top | | align="left" |... she fell back upon the dust, amongst intimations of the nightmare which threatened to re-shape itself around her. Her trembling only gradually subsided as she lay fingering the ring threaded into her fringe of leaves... |- | colspan="3" | A Fringe of Leaves, p 223 |}A young Cornish woman, Mrs Ellen Roxburgh, travels to the Australian colonies in the early 1830s with her much older husband, Austin, to visit the &#34;black sheep&#34; of the family, Austin&#39;s brother Garnet Roxburgh. After witnessing the brutalities of Van Diemens Land, the Roxburghs embark on their return trip to England on The Bristol Maid. However, the ship runs aground on the coral reef off Fraser Island on the coast of what is now Queensland. Ellen is the only survivor from the leaky vessel in which the passengers and crew travel to the shore. She is rescued by the aboriginal people of the island, and she later meets Jack Chance, a convict who has escaped from Moreton Bay (now Brisbane), the brutal penal settlement to the south. It is Chance who escorts her through the dangerous coastal territory south to the outskirts of the settlement, but who refuses to accompany her further and returns to his exile. She returns to &#34;civilisation&#34; transformed and tormented by her experience with Garnet in Van Diemen&#39;s Land, with the aboriginal people, and with Chance. The novel sets in sharp relief the distinctions between men and women, whites and blacks, the convicts and the free, and English colonists and Australian settlers. The contrast between Ellen&#39;s rural Cornish background and the English middle-class she has married into is also highlighted.

A Fringe of Leaves

The plot begins in 1992 with an elderly woman, Aliide Truu, who lives in a remote portion of Estonia. The woman had isolated herself from the surrounding society and watches the youth of her nation, including her daughter, leaving the countryside for the more urban regions and Finland. One day while looking out the kitchen window, she discovers Zara, the granddaughter of her sister Ingel. Zara had been forced to partake in the sex trade by the Russian Mafia but escaped them. The only guide she had to help her find help, was a photograph from her grandmother with Aliide''s name on it. The story then continues with a series of flashbacks which develops the relationship of Aliide and her sister, which hinged upon their competition for the love of Hans Pekk during World War II. The story ends as Aliide begins to reconcile herself with her jealousy of her sister and Zara''s redemption from her disenchantment with the world caused by her sexual subjugation. The plot of Purge focuses on two main females, both of whom reviewers have commented on as complex and are integral to understanding the themes of the book. The novel begins with Aliide Truu, an elderly woman who has survived many of the horrors of the Soviet occupation of Estonia. The Aliide who the reader first meets has alienated herself from the local people, though strongly self-reliant. Though cloaked in a rough exterior, she represents a woman who has weathered considerable hardship. She has hardly anything in the way of motherly instinct, especially in regards to the other main character, Zara. Zara is the grandniece of Aliide and at the beginning of the book she is subjected to sex trafficking by the Russian mafia. Her interaction with her great-aunt eventually forces Aliide to reconstruct and confront the history of her past. Ultimately, Aliide is responsible for delivering Zara from the torments caused by the sexual violence persecuted against her.

Purge

House of Chains takes place immediately after the events of Deadhouse Gates on the subcontinent of Seven Cities. The Chain of Dogs - the evacuation of 50,000 Malazan civilians across 1,500 miles of hostile territory - has ended in the tragic loss of the entire 7th army and its heroic commander, Coltaine. However, with their sacrifice was bought the lives of nearly 30,000 refugees. Meanwhile, the Chain of Dogs has become a legend spreading across Seven Cities, cowing even those responsible for its destruction. Now Adjunct Tavore Paran has arrived at the head of the 14th Army, largely consisting of untried recruits. Their mission is to advance into the heart of the Holy Desert Raraku, the very heart of the rebellion known as the Whirlwind, and destroy Sha''ik and her forces once and for all. The rebels outnumber the Malazans vastly. However, all is not well in Sha''ik''s camp and internal conflicts threatens to destroy her army before the Malazans can. Meanwhile, a mighty warrior named Karsa Orlong descends from his mountain fastness on Genabackis, beginning a journey that will live in legend, and the thief Crokus and assassin Apsalar find themselves drawn into a desperate struggle for control of the Throne of Shadow. Finally, a warrior named Trull Sengar is rescued from certain death with news of a terrible new foe arising to trouble all the world...

House of Chains

Archie gets a phone call from Dinky Byne, who is expected at a dinner party that night, given by his aunt in honor of four young, unwed mothers. These women have recently left Grantham House, a home where expectant unwed mothers receive support, room and board in the months prior to giving birth. Dinky wants to beg off the dinner, saying he has a bad cold, and asks Archie to fill in for him. Archie agrees and, chatting with Rose Tuttle after dinner, learns that Faith Usher carries around a vial of cyanide. Apparently Faith wants to have it handy should she ever decide to commit suicide. Rose is worried, and Archie reassures her by promising that he''ll see to it that nothing bad happens. But something bad happens a few minutes later, when Faith suddenly dies, poisoned by cyanide later shown to have been in her champagne. Those present hope that Faith suicided, largely because they hope to avoid notoriety. But Archie had been keeping his eye on Faith and is certain that she put nothing in her glass &ndash; therefore, it must have been murder. Archie comes under pressure from the guests, the police and the Police Commissioner himself to back off his position regarding Faith''s death. Meanwhile, Edwin Laidlaw hires Wolfe to see to it that the investigation does not result in the discovery that he is the father of Faith''s child. Wolfe agrees to identify and expose the murderer &ndash; if there is one &ndash; before the police learn of Laidlaw''s role in Faith''s life. The book reflects the transitional situation of American sexual mores at the time of writing, on the verge of the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Unwed mothers are a major issue in the book, and comprise a large part of its cast of characters. They are presented sympathetically, but still unwed motherhood is presented as "a problem" for which they need to be helped. The preferred solution is to provide a friendly and supportive environment during pregnancy and to have the baby given over to adoption immediately upon birth. The option of the unwed mother keeping and raising her child is presented as a far more problematic idea. Indeed — as it ultimately turns out — it has much to do with the circumstances that led to the murder being investigated. In chapter 2 Archie Goodwin is rather shocked to discover that one of the young women, Rose Tuttle, had given birth outside marriage not once but twice. He recounts at length his moral dilemma at hearing this: "I had on my shoulders the responsibility for the moral and social position of the community, at least in part (...). To list my objections would have been fine if I had been ordained, but I hadn''t, and anyway she had certainly heard these objections before and hadn''t been impressed. (...) While it was none of my business if she kept on having babies, I absolutely wasn''t going to encourage her." On the other hand, in chapter 6 Archie is surprised to learn that Edwin Laidlaw seriously expects his bride-to-be to remain a virgin until their wedding night. His reaction to this is scathing: "Laidlaw turned out to have an old-fashioned streak (...) an old fogey at thirty-one."

Champagne for One

The novel opens amidst a raging thunderstorm. Wolfstein is a wanderer in the Swiss Alps who seeks cover from the storm. He is a disillusioned outcast from society who seeks to kill himself. A procession of monks runs into him and saves his life. Bandits attack them and take Wolfstein to an underground hideout. He meets Megalena, whom the bandits have abducted after killing her father in an ambush. Wolfstein manages to poison the leader of the bandits, Cavigni, and to escape with Megalena. Ginotti, a member of the bandits, befriends Wolfstein. Wolfstein and Megalena flee to Genoa where they live together. Olympia, a woman of the town, seduces Wolfstein. Megalena, enraged by the relationship, demands that Wolfstein kill Olympia. Wolfstein is unable to kill her. Olympia kills herself. Ginotti follows Wolfstein. Ginotti is a member of the Rosicrucian, or Rose Cross, Order. He is an alchemist who seeks the secret of immortality. He tells Wolfstein that he will give him the secret to immortality if he will renounce his faith and join the sect. Eloise de St. Irvyne is the sister of Wolfstein who lives in Geneva, Switzerland. Ginotti, under his new identity of Frederic Nempere, travels to Geneva and seeks to seduce her. Ginotti reveals his experiments in his lifelong quest to find the secret of eternal life: "From my earliest youth, before it was quenched by complete satiation, curiosity, and a desire of unveiling the latent mysteries of nature, was the passion by which all the other emotions of my mind were intellectually organized. ... Natural philosophy at last became the peculiar science to which I directed my eager enquiries.". He has studied science and the laws of nature to ascertain the mysteries of life and of being: "I thought of death---... I cannot die.---''Will not this nature---will not the matter of which it is composed---exist to all eternity? Ah! I know it will; and, by the exertions of the energies with which nature has gifted me, well I know it shall.''" Ginotti tells Wolfstein that he will reveal the "secret of immortal life" to him if he will take certain prescribed ingredients and "mix them according to the directions which this book will communicate to you" and meet him in the abbey at St. Irvyne. In the final scene, which takes place at the abbey of St. Irvyne in France, Wolfstein finds the corpse of Megalena in the vaults. An emaciated Ginotti confronts Wolfstein. Wolfstein is asked if he will deny his Creator. Wolfstein refuses to renounce his faith. Lightning strikes the vaults as thunder and a sulphurous windstorm blast the abbey. Both men are struck dead. This is the penalty they pay for "the delusion of the passions", for tampering with forces that they neither can control nor understand in seeking "endless life".

St. Irvyne

Leo is 12 years old, imaginative, sympathetic, but often lost in his large family, with his busy parents, older sister, two younger brothers, and large extended family. He has just tried out for the school play, a fantasy about an old man who accepts two lost children into his life and regains some of his childhood magic, and Leo is cast oddly as "the old crone". At the same time, Leo is learning more about his father after finding an old autobiography his father wrote at 13 and has had stashed in his attic along with some tap shoes. Part of the discovery is of the existence of a long-lost aunt. Leo''s friend Ruby, who plays a donkey in the play, also reveals the death of her younger brother. Leo is trying to make sense of losses, life-changes, and regrets as the play and his life lead to mutual revelations. Leo wonders about the mysteries of his life, not least of all, why his father is so sad and what happened to Rosaria, his sister, and why no one mentions her. Leo feels lost in the sea of people that are his family. He dreams of changing the world, or at least getting his family to notice him. Leo''s family is very busy with their own problems, and hardly talk to him besides to tell him to do one chore or another. Near the beginning of the story Leo joins a play called Rumpopo''s Porch.

Replay

In the mid-1920s, a young Danny Fisher and his family move in to a new house in a Brooklyn suburb. Within a few years, however, the Great Depression hits and Danny is forced to use his one talent, boxing, as a means of supporting his family. After a few years, the family have lost their house and are living in a mean apartment in the City. Danny continues to box, much against his father''s wish, and dates a young Italian Catholic girl, much to the chagrin of his mother. Danny''s boxing skills attract the attention of hoodlums, and he is offered a large sum of money to throw the Golden Gloves championship, a fight he could win easily and which would bring him professional fame as well as, he hopes, his father''s acceptance. Danny accepts the bribe but beats his opponent. After going on the run for a two years in Coney Island, he returns to marry his sweetheart. Their early married life is marred by the death of their first born child in poverty. Danny seeks out his former manager and goes into business with him as a black marketeer. This activity brings him into contact with the very criminals he previously cheated. The story concludes with Danny''s death in counterpoint to arrival of new life.

A Stone for Danny Fisher

In 2009, humans make contact with their first extraterrestrials. The signal comes from beyond Neptune and even Pluto, on 1999 ZX, a celestial body between comet and planet in size, out in the Kuiper belt at 35 AU from the Sun. Twenty years later they send a scientific team to this small, ice-bound planetoid in the farthest reaches of the solar system in the Oort cloud. This cold, dark planetoid ends up being a strange world indeed. There is only a thin hydrogen atmosphere, almost vacuum, and the average temperature is some 30&nbsp;K (-243&nbsp;°C), where only hydrogen, helium, and neon are gaseous in state and nearly everything else is a solid. Yet on this icy, frozen world, life manages to thrive: the keracks, which are no bigger than a few centimeters in length resemble "large one-eyed prawns dressed in elaborate clothing". The keracks, despite their small size, have built rather small cities and developed a complex society on their planetoid which they dubbed "Ice". They have a collectivistic hive-like society with a rich culture suggesting that of England in the time of King Arthur. The human visitors'' first contact is the female kerack Merlene, wizard of the kerack city of Camalor. The humans themselves, being too hot and large, are unsuited for direct contact with the natives on this chilly world. So, instead, they have built "telebots" through which they can communicate with Merlene and the other keracks. Merlene develops a fondness for conversing with the humans and eventually the humans and the keracks get to learn much about each others'' worlds and cultures. The humans also teach Merlene more about science and technology which would hopefully advance the kerack race. The human scientists also uncover mysteries about the energy source of the keracks, who secrete an internal pellet of Uranium and moderate its decay with a Boron-rich carapace to provide internal warmth. Whenever a kerack dies its pellet is taken to be stockpiled by the colony''s queen. The scientists discover the tragic conclusion of the kerack life cycle almost too late to save Merlene; when a kerack colony accumulated a large enough stockpile the queen would instinctively arrange it in such a way as to trigger a nuclear explosion, blasting kerack spores off of the Kuiper belt object to colonize other objects in the belt. Since the kerack colony is exploded in the process no living kerack had known of their fate. The book concludes with Merlene going traveling to warn other colonies of the consequences of their expanding stockpiles.

Camelot 30K

In The Country and the City, Raymond Williams analyzes images of the country and the city in English literature since the 16th century, and how these images become central symbols for conceptualizing the social and economic changes associated with capitalist development in England. Williams debunks the notion of rural life as simple, natural, and unadulterated, leaving an image of the country as a Golden age. This is, according to Williams, “a myth functioning as a memory” that dissimulates class conflict, enmity, and animosity present in the country since the 16th century. Williams shows how this imagery is embedded in the writings of English poets, novelists and essayists. These writers have not just reproduced the rural-urban divide, but their works have also served to justify the existing social order. The city, on the other hand, is depicted in English novels as a symbol of capitalist production, labor, domicile, and exploitation, where it is seen as the “dark mirror” of the country. The country represented Eden while the city became the hub of modernity, a quintessential place of loneliness and loss of romanticism. In the novels of Hardy and Dickens, there seems to be a feeling of loss, and at the same time a sense of harmony among the lonely and isolated souls. For Williams, “the contrast of the country and city is one of the major forms in which we become conscious of a central part of our experience and of the crises of our society” (p.&nbsp;289). What kinds of experience do the ideas appear to interpret, and why do certain forms occur or recur at this period or at that? To answer these questions, Williams argues that “we need to trace, historically and critically, the various forms of the ideas” (p.&nbsp;290). It is this historical perspective that makes Williams''s work essentially important for it rejects a simple, dualistic explanation of the city as evil in search of peace and harmony in the countryside. Instead, Williams sees the country as inextricably related to the city. In search of the historical, lived form, Williams distinguishes two of his best-known categories: “knowable communities” and the “structure of feeling.” Over the centuries, Williams describes the prevailing structure of feeling—traces of the lived experience of a community distinct from the institutional and ideological organization of the society—in the works of poets and novelists. In the same vein, Williams sees most novels as “knowable communities” in the sense that the “novelist offers to show people and their relationships in essentially knowable and communicable ways” (p.&nbsp;163). In sum, Williams notably said: “It was always a limited inquiry: the country and the city within a single tradition. But it has brought me to the point where I can offer its meanings, its implications and its connections to others: for discussion and amendment; for many kinds of possible cooperative work; but above all for an emphasis—the sense of an experience and of ways of changing it—in the many countries and cities where we live” (p.&nbsp;306).

The Country and the City

Adam Malone is a supermarket manager in Los Angeles who is obsessed with blonde movie star Sharon Fields. While watching her on a television in a bar one night he meets four other men who are also enamored of her. They get to talking, and soon are planning her abduction. Believing the sex stories put out by her manager, they think that if they kidnap her she will understand their lust and have sex with them. They get a van and disguise it as an exterminator''s, scout out her neighborhood and track her daily routine, find an isolated location to take her to, and plan vacations from their individual work. A sudden crisis takes place when they discover that she will be leaving for Europe, forcing them to move their plans ahead of schedule. They confront her while she is taking a daily walk, and ask for direction. When she stops to help, she is grabbed and chloroformed. After being driven unconscious to their hideout, Sharon awakes and finds out what they want. She explains that the publicity is untrue, but one of the men won''t take no for an answer and rapes her. Two of the others follow, with Adam not taking part. Deciding that they should not let the situation go to waste, they demand a ransom from the movie studio. Sharon writes a letter as proof they have her, but cleverly uses the first letters in each word to give the police a clue to her whereabouts. The ransom drop ends up with the three rapists killed, and Sharon saved. Because Adam did not take advantage of her, she omits his part in her abduction. Adam is soon back as his job, obsessed with a new younger actress, and planning on forming a new fan club.

The Fan Club

The book is an autobiographical account of five years in the childhood of naturalist Gerald Durrell, age 10 at the start of the saga, of his family, pets and life during a sojourn on the island of Corfu. The book is divided into three sections, marking the three villas where the family lived on the island. Apart from Gerald (the youngest) and Larry, the family comprised their widowed mother, the gun-mad Leslie, and diet-obsessed sister Margo together with Roger the dog. They are fiercely protected by their taxi-driver friend Spiro (Spiros "Americano" Halikiopoulos) and mentored by the polymath Dr. Theodore Stephanides who provides Gerald with his education in natural history. Other human characters, chiefly eccentric, include Gerald''s private tutors, the artistic and literary visitors Larry invites to stay, and the local peasants who befriend the family. The human comedy is interspersed by descriptions of the animal life which Gerald observes on his expeditions around the family homes, island, and seashore and which he frequently brings back and keeps as pets; these include Achilles the tortoise, Quasimodo the pigeon, Ulysses the Scops owl, numerous spiders, Alecko the gull, puppies named Widdle and Puke, and the birds known as the Magenpies.

My Family and Other Animals

Dr. John Berry, the protagonist, is a pathologist working in Boston during the 1960s, a time when abortion was illegal in the United States. The story opens with an introduction of the various requirements and challenges of the medical profession during the era. Subsequently, Dr. Berry is notified that his friend, an obstetrician named Arthur Lee, has been accused of performing an illegal abortion that led to the death of Karen Randall, a prominent member of an established medical dynasty. The situation is further complicated by the fact that Lee is already well known amongst the medical community as an abortion provider and that Berry has in the past helped Lee disguise medical samples to hide the fact that Lee''s dilation and curettage patients were pregnant. After visiting his friend in a jail cell, Berry sets out to prove Lee''s innocence. Subsequently he investigates the personal life of the dead woman, creating an accurate portrait of her past, psychology, and character. During his search, which lasts several days vandals attack Lee''s home. The protagonist''s knowledge of medicine and law are helpful in overcoming various barriers in his search including a hostile police captain and bribes from the scion of the Randall family itself: Karen''s father, a well-established (though mediocre) doctor. Eventually, with the aid of an unscrupulous African-American lawyer, Wilson, Berry is able to obtain solid evidence showing Karen Randall''s uncle (who had already performed three previous abortions for her) to be the culprit. Nonetheless, Berry is troubled by this conclusion and is persuaded to continue his investigation despite Wilson''s displeasure. Eventually, he discovers that Karen''s drug dealing friends had performed the botched abortion, but Berry is attacked and sent to the hospital before he can reveal his discovery. Subsequently, Berry''s attacker, Karen''s African American boyfriend is also brought in an ambulance, dead after a fatal fall. The actual abortionist attempts to commit suicide. She is forced to confess in the hospital after being threatened with what she believes is an excruciatingly painful dose of Nalorphine (but is actually water). Berry continues to be suspicious about Karen''s boyfriend''s death, and ultimately forces one of his old friends and colleagues (the uncle of the woman who did Karen''s abortion) to admit to his involvement before turning him in to the police. However, despite being proven innocent, Lee''s reputation has been ruined, and he decides to move to California. Crichton then ends the novel with a postscript discussing the problems in the medical profession, including abortion. fr:Extrême Urgence it:In caso di necessità nl:A Case of Need ja:緊急の場合は ru:Экстренный случай tr:A Case of Need

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

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A Fringe of Leaves

By Patrick White

Purge

By Sofi Oksanen

House of Chains

By Steven Erikson

Champagne for One

By Rex Stout

St. Irvyne

By Percy Bysshe Shelley

Replay

No Author Listed

A Stone for Danny Fisher

By Harold Robbins

Camelot 30K

By Robert Forward

The Country and the City

By Raymond Williams

The Fan Club

By Irving Wallace

My Family and Other Animals

By Gerald Durrell

A Case of Need

By Michael Crichton