Leonora Eyre, an attractive and elegant, but essentially selfish, middle-aged woman, becomes friendly with antique dealer Humphrey Boyce and his nephew James. Both men are attracted to Leonora, but Leonora prefers the young, good-looking James to the more "suitable" Humphrey. While James is away on a buying trip, Leonora discovers to her annoyance that he has been seeing Phoebe, a girl of his own age. Leonora makes use of Humphrey to humiliate Phoebe, and turns out a sitting tenant in order that James can take up a flat in her own house. She does this in an apparent attempt to control his life. While abroad, the bisexual James has begun a relationship with an American, the amoral Ned, who later follows him to London. Ned prises James out of Leonora''s grasp, only to reject him for another lover. James attempts a reconciliation with Leonora, but she refuses to give him a second opportunity to hurt her, and settles for the admiration of the less attractive Humphrey. As with all Pym''s fiction, the novel contains many literary references, notably to works by Keats, John Milton and Henry James.

The Sweet Dove Died

Kelso, who has already published a number of books (for example novels entitled Desiring Machines in the Australian Bush and Fuck Your Mother Up the Arse, but also non-fiction), is in his thirties, several times divorced, a heavy drinker and, according to his own description, a "sex beast". As a writer, he says he has no intention whatsoever of using his imagination; rather, he wants to chronicle his present life, which in turn is fuelled by his most ambitious literary project so far, the completion of a trilogy entitled Countdown to Chaos. In order to be able to write the final part of his trilogy, Kelso wants to track down and have sex again with all the girls he "shagged" when he was in his teens—in reverse order. He always carries his laptop with him to be able to record each of his sexual encounters immediately after it has taken place. Although he says he wants to record all events exactly as they happened, he does embellish his story again and again. On his way through Europe -- England, Scotland, Austria, Finland and Estonia -- he has sex with all willing women and girls that cross his path, "asserting my inalienable right to freedom". Kelso is a "sex machine". He always has an erection, and never fails to please the woman or women he is with, even if he is drunk. They invariably enjoy multiple orgasms. Some of them want to have sex with Kelso because, they say, that way they are transformed into art and thus immortalized. Kelso is also into kinky sex. Although Kelso never commits any violent crimes in connection with his sexual exploits, violent death does play a role in Cunt. A maniac called Gary McMara, who likes to wear women''s underwear and who accuses Kelso of conspiring with some radical political group (the "secret state"), follows Kelso to Finland, where McMara dies after he is thrown into an ice-cold lake by Kelso and subsequently warmed too quickly in a sauna. Amber, a transsexual and his publisher''s new secretary, accompanies McMara to Finland and, standing under Kelso''s window, accidentally shoots herself when she slips on a piece of ice. After Kelso has left Finland incognito (using his false passport) he meets his ex-wife Cherry, who is a cocaine and heroin addict (Kelso himself never takes drugs) and who dies of an overdose while Kelso is present. At the beginning of the novel Kelso has a chance meeting with Sandra Stone, the girl with whom he lost his virginity back when they were at school. At the end he goes back to Aldeburgh to embark on the final chapter of his trilogy. He wants to stab Sandra so that he has a spectacular ending to his book. For that reason he is carrying a knife in his trouser pocket. However, he suddenly realizes that he has always been in love with Sandra. The words "The first shall be last" suddenly occur to him, and he reinterprets them his way: Sandra is the last woman he will ever make love to. He turns to, and embraces, Jesus, marries Sandra, hopes that she will also become a believer one day, gives away his royalties to the church, takes a blue collar job and leads a simple and honest life. He wants to find a Christian publisher who is willing to bring out this journal as the account of a reformed sinner.

Cunt

The lives of two couples intertwine in mid-1950s California, and all learn important lessons about life. Jim Briskin is a classical music DJ. He and his ex-wife Patricia Gray are still very much in love but have divorced because he is sterile. The two divorcees meet a teenaged married couple named Art and Rachael and essentially swap partners. Pat passionately loves the youthful but dysfunctional Art, almost as though he were her child, and the two of them have an abusive relationship in which he gives her a black eye. Meanwhile, Jim and Rachael hook up and Rachael offers to ditch Art and move to Mexico with Jim where he will adopt her baby and raise it as his own. In the end, however, maturity prevails and they all return to their original partners. Miss Thisbe Holt of the original title is actually a very minor character in the book. She is a well-endowed stripper who performs at an optometrists convention which occurs near the very end of the novel. Her act consists of climbing naked into a large clear plastic ball which the optometrists then roll around the hotel suite to more thoroughly examine her ample personal assets. The ball is demolished when it''s later filled with debris and pushed off the hotel roof by the inebriated optometrists. The shortened title seems more obviously appropriate in that its lack of specificity allows it to do double duty in serving as a metaphor symbolizing the irreversible effects of the various life-altering events that occur within the orbits of the main characters.

The Broken Bubble

Dirk Pitt, Special Projects Director for the National Underwater and Marine Agency, and his Deputy Special Projects Director, Al Giordino, are traveling to their assignment in the Aegean Sea in Dirk''s PBY Catalina when they receive a mayday distress call from the control tower at the nearby Brady Air Force Base on the Greek island of Thásos. The tower reports that they are under aerial attack by a World War I era German Albatros D-3 biplane painted a startling bright yellow and bearing the familiar black Maltese Cross of World War I Germany. The biplane, with its top speed of just 103&nbsp;mph, is strafing the runways and destroying multimillion dollar F-105 Starfire fighters and C-133 Cargomasters without a shred of resistance. Dirk and Al, armed with nothing more than a couple of rifles in their World War Two flying boat face-off against the World War I fighter and its machine guns. After a spectacular dogfight they exit the field of battle victorious. Dirk has been sent to the Aegean to meet Commander Rudi Gunn, captain of the NUMA research vessel First Attempt, to try to get to the bottom of the recent spate of mishaps on its current assignment. The First Attempt is on a research expedition attempting to find a living fossil lovingly named The Teaser, which scientists believe may be living evidence of the development of the first mammal. Following his fight with the biplane Dirk goes for a midnight swim and meets a beautiful young woman named Teri von Till whom he quickly seduces. She invites him to dinner at her uncle''s villa that evening where Pitt is introduced to the book''s primary villain, Bruno von Till. Pitt learns that von Till is an old comrade in arms of Lt. Kurt Hiebert, a World War I flying ace known as the Hawk of Macedonia, whose trademark was a bright yellow Albatross biplane. After dinner, he confronts von Till about his involvement with the attack on the airfield and while von Till admits nothing he forces Pitt to leave the villa at gunpoint through a door that that leads him into what is known as the Pit of Hades. It is later explained that the Pit of Hades is a labyrinth once used in ancient Greek times when the villagers sentenced a convicted felon to death. The person sentenced to die was given the choice of an instant death or choosing the Pit of Hades. The labyrinth had only one entrance, a concealed exit, and roaming amongst the many passages was a hungry lion. In recorded history no one had successfully found the exit before the lion found them. While von Till does not have a lion he does have a very large white German Shepherd with which Dirk Pitt engages in a mortal struggle. Following his successful escape Pitt is taken into custody when he returns to seek his revenge on Bruno von Till and is captured escaping the villa with Teri von Till as his prisoner. It is later revealed that Bruno von Till has been under surveillance by agents of Interpol and Inspector Hercules Zacynthus of the United States Federal Bureau of Narcotics. The inspector explains that von Till is suspected of being a world-class smuggler responsible for the transportation of all types of goods related to many heinous criminal acts. These acts include the great Spanish gold theft in 1954 which nearly toppled the Spanish economy; the mysterious disappearance of 83 high-ranking Nazi officers from Germany at the end of World War II and their sudden reemergence in Buenos Aires; and the abduction of a bus full of teenage girls in Naples, Italy who were sold into white slavery in Casablanca. The inspector now believes that von Till is attempting to smuggle nearly half a billion dollars worth of heroin into the United States using his fleet of cargo ships called Minerva Lines. Despite the best efforts of Interpol, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, Customs, and many other law enforcement agencies they have been unable to catch Bruno von Till transporting anything illegal on any of his ships. Pitt eventually discovers that von Till, using the resources of his shipping line, has raised the sunken wrecks of the German U-boat U-19 and a Japanese I-Boat class submarine which he has been using as part of a smuggling operation. Von Till has converted a German submarine into a completely automated smuggling craft that can be easily attached or detached from the holds of his cargo ships. Using Pitt''s surmises as a basis for action, the inspector launches a campaign to capture as many distributors of heroin in the United States as possible. However, Pitt suspects that Bruno von Till is aware of the approach of Interpol and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and he launches his own desperate mission with Al and members of the crew of the First Attempt in a last-ditch effort to stop von Till before he can escape and set up his nefarious drug smuggling operation somewhere else.

The Mediterranean Caper

The novel begins with Gurney, a young British officer, entering a deserted chateau as the British advance in November 1918. Inside he finds three corpses, and is astonished when he recognises one of them as a fellow officer, Gerard Bretherton, the more so since Bretherton is wearing the uniform of a German general. The story of how Bretherton met his fate is built up over a two-year period over the rest of the narrative. The story is told from the points of view of several of Bretherton''s friends and acquaintances. Gerard Bretherton, English but brought up partly in Germany and a fluent speaker of the German language, is taken prisoner during an attack on the enemy lines, and loses his memory, taking on the identity of a German officer with whom he was acquainted before the war. Having recovered his memory, he escapes and returns to Britain, where, after telling his story, he is recruited by the security forces who persuade him to masquerade as a German officer in order to infiltrate the German armed forces and supply them with information. While joining an escape attempt from a British P.O.W. camp (set up by the authorities) along with a German officer, Bretherton is trapped in a barrel in which he has hidden during the sea voyage across the Channel. The traumatic experience causes him to lose his memory again, and he reverts to the personality of a German. Recovering his memory on the brink of the end of the war in 1918, he returns to his own side, but heroically volunteers to re-cross the German lines in an effort to minimize the loss of life before the Armistice is officially signed. He succeeds in his task, but is himself killed before the British troops arrive on the scene.

Bretherton:Khaki or Field Grey?

Jeremy Fisher is a frog who lives in a damp little house amongst the buttercups at the edge of a pond. His larder and back passage are "slippy-sloppy" with water, but he likes getting his feet wet; no one ever scolds and he never catches cold. One day, Jeremy finds it raining and decides to go fishing. Should he catch more than five minnows, he will invite his friends to dinner. He puts on a Macintosh and shiny goloshes, takes his rod and basket, and sets off with "enormous hops" to the place where he keeps his lily-pad boat. He poles to a place he knows is good for minnows. Once there, he sits cross-legged on his lily-pad and arranges his tackle. He has "the dearest little red float". His rod is a stalk of grass and his line a horsehair. An hour passes without a nibble. He takes a break and lunches on a butterfly sandwich. A water beetle tweaks his toe, and rats rustling about in the rushes force him to seek a safer location. He drops his line into the water and immediately has a bite. It is not a minnow but little Jack Sharp, a stickleback. The fish escapes but not before Jeremy pricks his fingers on Jack''s spines. A shoal of little fishes come to the surface to laugh at Jeremy. Jeremy sucks his sore fingers, but a trout rises from the water and seizes him with a snap (Mr. Jeremy screams, "OW-OW-OW!!!"). The trout dives to the bottom, but finds the Macintosh tasteless and spits Jeremy out, swallowing only his goloshes. Jeremy bounces "up to the surface of the water, like a cork and the bubbles out of a soda water bottle", and swims to the pond''s edge. He scrambles up the bank and hops home through the meadow, quite sure he will never go fishing again. In the last few pages, Jeremy has put sticking plaster on his fingers and welcomes his friends, Sir Isaac Newton, a newt, and Alderman Ptolemy Tortoise, a tortoise who eats salad. Isaac wears a black and gold waistcoat and Ptolemy brings a salad in a string bag. Jeremy has prepared roasted grasshopper with ladybird sauce. The narrator describes the dish as a "frog treat", but thinks "it must have been nasty!"

The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher

The novel posits that space around the Milky Way is divided into concentric layers called Zones, each being constrained by different laws of physics and each allowing for different degrees of biological and technological advancement. The innermost, the "Unthinking Depths", surrounds the galactic core and is incapable of supporting advanced life forms at all. The next layer, the "Slow Zone", is roughly equivalent to the real world in behavior and potential. Further out, the zone named the "Beyond" can support futuristic technologies such as AI and FTL travel. The outermost zone, the "Transcend", contains most of the galactic halo and is populated by incomprehensibly vast and powerful posthuman entities. A human expedition investigates a five-billion-year-old data archive that offers the possibility of unimaginable riches for the ambitious young civilization of the Straumli Realm. The expedition''s facility, called High Lab, is gradually compromised by a dormant super-intelligent entity (actually encoded within the archive) later known as the Blight. The Blight rapidly learns how to infiltrate and control the computer systems of High Lab, and even develops the ability to possess and control the living humans. The novel starts with an imaginative description of the evolution of this superintelligence through exponentially accelerating developmental stages, culminating in a transcendent, nigh-omnipotent power that is unfathomable to mere humans. Shortly before its final "flowering", the changes in a single minute of the Blight''s life are said to exceed those of 10,000 years of human civilization. Recognizing the danger of what they have awakened, the researchers at High Lab attempt to flee in two ships. Suspicious, the Blight discovers that one of the ships contains a data storage device in its cargo manifest; assuming it contains information that could harm it, the Blight destroys the ship. The second ship is allowed to escape, unharmed, as the Blight assumes that it is no threat; but later realizes that it actually held a countermeasure, one of the few things in the universe that the Blight fears. The ship lands on a distant planet with a medieval-level civilization of dog-like creatures dubbed "Tines", who live in packs as group minds. The ship is revealed to be a sleeper ship, carrying most of High Lab''s children in "coldsleep boxes". The boxes are rapidly failing and the surviving adults begin unloading them, but are killed when one of two rival forces of Tines seize the ship. The faction that initially contacts the humans, led by a Tine known as Steel, kills the adults and destroys many of the coldsleep boxes. They also capture a boy named Jefri Olsndot, whom Steel intended on killing but eventually exploits in order to develop advanced technology (such as cannon and radio communication). Jefri''s older sister, Johanna, is rescued by Pilgrim and Scriber, wandering Tines who bring her to the rival faction, led by Woodcarver. She is asked to help develop technology that could gain the upper hand in the impending war. A distress signal from the sleeper ship eventually reaches "Relay", a major node in the galactic communications network. A benign transcendent entity (known as a "Power") named "Old One" contacts Relay, seeking information about the Blight and the humans who released it. Old One constructs a seemingly human man, Pham Nuwen, to act as its agent. Pham and Ravna Bergsndot – a human employee of Relay''s owners, the wealthy Vrinimi Organization – trace the sleeper ship''s signal to the Tines world. Old One designs a vessel, the Out of Band II, to reach the Tines world and to investigate what the ship carried with it from the High Lab. The Blight attacks Relay and Old One. Old One gives Pham the information necessary to activate the Blight Countermeasure while dying (a process known as godshatter), and Pham and Ravna escape Relay''s destruction in the Out of Band II. After arriving at the Tines homeworld and allying with Woodcarver to defeat Steel, Pham initiates the Countermeasure, which extends the Slow Zone by thousands of light-years to enclose the Blight. This ends the threat of the Blight at the cost of wrecking thousands of uninvolved civilizations, causing trillions of deaths and potentially the extinction of several galactic races. The process also kills Pham and strands the other humans on the Tines world, now in the depths of the "Slow Zone" where rescue by an advanced civilization is impossible.

A Fire Upon the Deep

The action of the novel is divided between Paris and Issoudun. Agathe Rouget, who was born in Issoudun, is sent to be raised by her maternal relatives, the Descoings in Paris by her father Doctor Rouget. He suspects (wrongly) that he is not her true father. There she marries a man named Bridau, and they have two sons, Phillipe, and Joseph. Monsieur Bridau dies relatively young, Phillipe, who is the eldest and his mother''s favourite, becomes a soldier in Napoleon''s armies, and Joseph becomes an artist. Phillipe, the elder son is shown to be a courageous soldier, but is also a heavy drinker and gambler. He resigns from the army after the Bourbon Restoration out of loyalty to Napoleon. Joseph is a dedicated artist, and the more loyal son, but his mother does not understand his artistic vocation. After leaving the army Phillipe took part in the failed Champ d''Asile settlement in Texas. On returning to France he is unemployed, and lives with his mother and Madame Descoings, and becomes a financial drain on them, especially due to his hard drinking and gambling lifestyle. Phillipe becomes estranged from his mother and brother after stealing money from Madame Descoings. Phillipe is soon afterwards arrested for his involvement in an anti-government conspiracy. Meanwhile in Issoudun, Agathe''s elder brother Jean-Jacques takes in an ex-soldier named Max Gilet as a boarder. Max is suspected of being his illegitimate half brother. Max and Jean-Jacques'' servant Flore Brazier work together to control Jean-Jacques. Max leads a group of young men who call themselves "The Knights of Idleness" who frequently play practical jokes around the town. Two of these are against a Spanish immigrant named Fario, destroying his cart and his grain, and therefore ruining his business. It is now that Joseph and his mother travel to Issoudun to try to persuade Jean-Jacques to give Agathe money to help cover Phillipe''s legal costs. They stay with their friends the Hochons. Jean-Jacques and Max only give them some old paintings, but only Joseph recognises their value. Joseph tells of his luck to the Hochons, not realising that their grandsons are friends of Max. Afterwards when Max discovers the value of the paintings he coerces Joseph into returning them. Then one night whilst out walking Fario stabs Max. As Max is recovering he decides to blame Joseph for the stabbing. Joseph is arrested, but later cleared and released, and he and his mother return to Paris. In the meantime, Phillipe has been convicted for his plotting. However, he cooperates with authorities and gets a light sentence of five years Police supervision in Autun. Phillipe gets his lawyer to change the location to Issoudun in order to claim his mother''s inheritance for himself. He challenges Max to a duel with swords, and kills him in the duel. He then takes control of Jean-Jacques and his household, forcing Flore to become Jean-Jacques'' wife. Phillipe marries Flore after the death of Jean-Jacques. Flore too soon dies. The book hints that both of these deaths are arranged by Phillipe but is not explicit about the means. Through his connections, Phillipe has now obtained the title Comte de Brambourg. Phillipe later marries a rich man''s daughter. An attempt by Joseph to reconcile Phillipe and their mother before her death fails. Phillipe''s fortunes take a turn for the worse after some unsuccessful speculation, and he rejoins the army to take part in the war in Algeria where he is killed in action, so that in the end Joseph, now a successful artist, inherits the family fortune.

La Rabouilleuse

The protagonist of The Gruffalo is a mouse. The story of the mouse''s walk through the woods unfolds in two phases; in both, the mouse uses cunning to evade danger. On his way the mouse encounters several dangerous animals (a fox, an owl, and a snake). Each of these animals, clearly intending to eat the mouse, invites him back to their home for a meal. The cunning mouse declines each offer. To dissuade further advances, he tells each animal that he has plans to dine with his friend, a gruffalo, a monster-like hybrid that''s half grizzly bear and half buffalo, whose favourite food happens to be the relevant animal, and describes the features of the gruffalo''s monstrous anatomy. Frightened that the gruffalo might eat it, each animal flees. Knowing the gruffalo to be fictional, the mouse gloats thus: : Silly old fox/owl/snake, doesn''t he know? : there''s no such thing as a gruffalo! After being quit of the last animal, the mouse is shocked to encounter a real gruffalo – with all the frightening features the mouse thought that he was inventing. The gruffalo threatens to eat the mouse, but again the mouse is cunning: he tells the gruffalo that he, the mouse, is the scariest animal in the forest. Laughing, the gruffalo agrees to follow the mouse as he demonstrates how feared he is. The two walk through the forest, encountering in turn the animals that had earlier menaced the mouse. Each is terrified by the sight of the pair and runs off – and each time the gruffalo becomes more impressed with the mouse''s apparent toughness. Exploiting this, the mouse threatens to eat the gruffalo, which flees. The story is based on a traditional Chinese folk tale of a fox that borrows the terror of a tiger. Donaldson was unable to think of rhymes for "tiger" so invented one for "know" instead.

The Gruffalo

The story begins with a woman named Tarissa giving birth to a girl outside the city Spire Vanis. The girl, Ash March (possibly the daughter of Jack, from the Book of Words(Ref Required)), is taken in by Penthero Iss, Spire Vanis''s Surlord (a supreme ruler). After discovering that she will soon be moved to more prison-like quarters by the supposedly benevolent Surlord, she escapes. The book also relates the tale of a young clansman of the Blackhail clan named Raif Sevrance. Raif and his brother, Drey, return from hunting one morning to discover their party has been slain. After dispensing final rites to their clansmen, the brothers return home to find the foster son of the chief, Mace Blackhail relating a different version of the tale implicating Clan Bludd in the death of their friends and family. Mace becomes chief of Clan Blackhail through various acts of treachery and declares war on Clan Bludd; Raif realises that Mace is lying, but no-one else who speaks against Mace lives to tell the tale. Raif is forced by social pressure in a raid on what Mace says is a Clan Bludd battle party; it instead contains the (innocent) family of Vaylo, chief of Clan Bludd. Refusing Mace''s orders to kill these innocents, Raif flees and is exiled from his clan for disobeying orders. His uncle, Angus Lok, takes him to Spire Vanis. There, Angus and Raif rescue Ash from the Surlord''s soldiers and flee the city, deciding to travel to another city called Ille Glaive. Along the way, Marafice Eye "the Knife", Iss''s leading general, pursues them with some soldiers and a sorcerer called Sarga Veys. Most of the soldiers are lost as they follow Ash onto the ice of a lake, and subsequently drown, though Veys uses magic to escape and the Knife also makes it out. Once in Ille Glaive, Angus, Ash and Raif meet with Heritas Cant, another sorcerer. Cant explains Ash''s abilities to reach the Blind, resting place of all manner of dark creatures sealed away in ancient history. Angus, Ash, and Raif then proceed northward to the Cavern of Black Ice, where Ash can get rid of her abilities as a Reach. As the group heads north they become captured by Clan Bludd, who have recently taken over a place they stop in. Raif is beaten severely for days. Vaylo fears Ash because of her connection to Iss, and contacts the Surlord to return her (we do not discover what happens to Angus). Ash forces Vaylo to postpone the execution of Raif, which allows his escape during a raid by Clan Blackhail. Drey, present at the raid, allows Raif to escape. The Knife attempts to rape Ash. She awakes before this occurs and unleashes the dark power within her, killing all but Veys and the Knife once more. Ash again travels towards the Cavern of Black Ice and re-meets Raif. Eventually, after a cold and difficult journey with the help of two mysterious "Sull" (a more advanced culture described earlier in the book), they arrive at the Cavern of Black Ice where Ash finally discharges her powers.

A Cavern of Black Ice

Kirth Gersen is on Alphanor with Alusz Iphigenia Eperje-Tokay, a woman he had rescued in the previous novel of the series. It is plain that their short-lived relationship is nearing an end, as she cannot understand why Gersen, made extremely wealthy by his epic defrauding of Interchange, still feels the need to exterminate the remaining Demon Princes himself, instead of hiring others to do the job, but most of all, she cannot accept his cold and singleminded pursuit of vengeance. Gersen notices a newspaper article announcing the forthcoming execution of a prominent Sarkoy venefice, Kakarsis Asm, not for selling poisons to the Demon Prince, Viole Falushe, but for violating a Guild-mandated pricing policy. He accordingly hastens to Sarkovy to pursue this lead. There he learns from Kakarsis Asm (in exchange for bribing his way to a swift and painless execution) that Falushe visited Sarkovy, at the beginning of his criminal career many years before, with a shipload of slaves, two of whom he sold to Asm and whom he subsequently resold. While they are on Sarkovy, Gersen’s relationship with Alusz Iphigenia finally ends, though he ensures that she will want for nothing in the future. After visiting his new financial advisor, Jehan Addels, to check how the program to invest the proceeds of his swindle is proceeding, Gersen locates a surviving slave, whom he buys and frees in exchange for further information concerning his enemy. He learns that Falushe was born Vogel Filschner, an Earth boy of disgusting appearance and habits who, to satisfy his obsession with a female classmate, Jheral Tinzy, had kidnapped the entire girls’ choral society at his school. Fortunately for Jheral, she had not attended choir practice that day. Gersen follows the trail to “Rolingshaven” in the Netherlands, to the people who knew Filschner as a youth. The most direct link is the mad poet Navarth, who was Filschner’s mentor and who later enjoyed a brief relationship with Jheral; after the kidnapping, she had attracted a share of the blame for having teased Filschner and turned to Navarth for comfort. However, she was later abducted by Falushe. Navarth has custody of a young girl, variously known as Drusilla Wayles or “Zan Zu from Eridu,” who was given to him as a child by Falushe to nurture and protect. She resembles the young Jheral to a disturbing extent. With the erratic assistance of Navarth, Gersen tries to engineer a meeting with Falushe. To this end, he buys the failing, but respected Cosmopolis magazine and authors a lurid article that paints the young Falushe in extremely unflattering terms. He is able, through Navarth, to contact Falushe by telephone and secures an invitation to Falushe''s legendary Palace of Love in his guise as a reporter in return for writing a more flattering article. He is transported to Falushe’s planet, where he sees that the Demon Prince has built an entire civilization acknowledging him as its supreme ruler. The inhabitants pay tribute to him, including their first-born children (the most beautiful going to staff the Palace). In the company of a party of invitees including Navarth, Gersen visits the Palace. Eventually, he discovers Falushe’s lifelong ambition: to create a copy of Jheral Tinzy who will be brainwashed into loving him. Navarth''s Drusilla Wayles was bred parthenogenically from the original Jheral, and there are at least two others on the planet. Jheral herself had succeeded in committing suicide some years into the forced breeding program. Gersen, guessing correctly that Viole Falushe is among the guests, intent on gaining Drusilla’s affections, narrows the possibilities down to three men and finally identifies his prey with the aid of a critical error by Falushe: he has an implanted telephone, which can be heard ringing when Navarth calls him. By this time, Gersen has rescued two Jheral copies and, along with Drusilla Wayles, they leave no doubt that they find Falushe repellent; the Demon Prince bitterly realizes that his life''s work has been an abject failure. As Gersen is about to throw him out of an airboat hovering ten thousand feet above the sea, Falushe breaks his bonds, but loses his balance and falls to his doom. Gersen frees the servants at the Palace, informs the planet’s inhabitants that they need pay taxes no more, and entrusts the various Drusillas to Navarth’s eccentric care. Some months later, he meets yet another, more mature Drusilla, plainly the oldest, and is about to read her some of Navarth’s poetry as the story closes.

The Palace of Love

The book tells the story of Victoria Cope, following her experience of hosting a home child - an orphan from England sent to Canada by Barnardo''s, essentially as a servant, receiving care and education in exchange. The Copes end up with a girl one year older than Victoria, named Marianna Wilson. She tells Victoria about her life in England, and as they become friends Victoria becomes more aware of some of the discrimination that Marianna faces from the local children, as well as from members of Victoria''s own family, notably her oldest brother, David. Something seems to be distracting Marianna and one night Victoria wakes up and finds Marianna in the barn with her younger brother, Jasper, who had escaped from the home where he was placed after his guardian whipped him and broke his arm. The family must decide what to do with Jasper, which is made difficult by David''s attitude towards the home children. The book ends with an epilogue detailing where Marianna and Victoria went in their lives, and explaining how the home child program worked. The orphan becomes rich and famous.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

The Sweet Dove Died

By Barbara Pym

Cunt

No Author Listed

The Broken Bubble

By Philip K. Dick

The Mediterranean Caper

By Clive Cussler

Bretherton:Khaki or Field Grey?

No Author Listed

The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher

By Beatrix Potter

A Fire Upon the Deep

By Vernor Vinge

La Rabouilleuse

By Honoré de Balzac

The Gruffalo

By Julia Donaldson

A Cavern of Black Ice

By Julie Victoria Jones

The Palace of Love

By Jack Vance

Orphan at My Door

By Jean Little