In a world in orbit around a binary system, once every 7 years it is bathed in a bizarre radiance that rearranges physical reality. To cope with this, most inhabitants go to sleep for the entire two week period. To stay asleep, some of the inhabitants take a special medicine that keeps them under for the whole two week period. Only mystics, newcomers, and devotees to the bizarre religion are willing to stay awake and endure the two weeks of brilliance, where things materialize out of thin air. According to their religion, people undergo an unpredictable change, and many actually die. The good become better, and the bad become worse. One woman''s husband metamorphosized into a tree. Another person was chased down streets by statues that came to life. But facing the brilliance is also a rite of passage if you must develop as a being inclined towards acts of goodness, or a being inclined towards acts of evil. It is during those two weeks that the good are pitted against the bad, and it is also a time when their living god must face his successor. To help in the conversion effort, Catholic missionaries have been sent to the planet to help reconcile the planet''s religion with their own universal faith. The only problem is that the planet''s religion appears to be spreading across the stars.

Night of Light

Icefire is an action/science fiction novel about an unknown group using the Ross Ice Shelf to create a soliton wave&mdash;much more powerful and destructive than tsunamis caused by seismic displacement&mdash;directed into the Pacific Ocean. Roughly the size of France, the Ross Ice Shelf is first broken free of its shoreline anchor points by tactical nuclear weapons detonated around its periphery. A larger nuclear device is then airburst above the Shelf, slamming the entire mass of loose ice into the Ross Sea beneath it and generating the monster wave. The EMP from the airburst warhead disables most electronics within its line of sight, blinding the worlds'' satellites and silencing radio communication from the area. The main protagonists, Mitch Webber and Cory Rey, must escape the communication dead zone in time to tell the world what happened, warn everyone of the deadly wave racing towards it, discover who set it in motion, and find a way to catch the villains and stop the wave&mdash;if they can. The destruction caused by the bombs and peoples'' understandable skepticism are working against them as, with every passing second, the wave gets closer to major cities and their unsuspecting populations.

Icefire

Sesely, daughter of Baron Merd of Heg, and two companions are enjoying a picnic in the Forest of Lurla when they are accosted by a fairy. The fairy, bored with centuries of insipid fairy life, amazes the girls by pleading to be changed into a mortal. Though the girls are surprised that they might have the power to do such a thing, the fairy explains how it can be done. The girls agree to transform the fairy into a human boy for the space of one year. The newly-minted male is dubbed Prince Marvel, and, furnished with fairy arms and armor and an enchanted horse (a deer transformed), sets out to have adventures. Since Yew is so dominated by robbers and rogues, Prince Marvel doesn''t have to travel far to find said adventures. He starts off by confronting and besting the bandits of Wul-Takim, the self-styled King of Thieves. Marvel captures all fifty-nine of the band and is ready to send them to the gallows &mdash; but Wul-Takim convinces the naive ex-fairy that the robbers are now honest men, whom it would be unfair to hang. Marvel rescues a prisoner from the robbers, a young man named Nerle, who becomes Marvel''s squire-boy. The match is a good one: while Marvel yearns for adventure, Nerle actually longs to suffer pain and deprivation, and often reproaches Marvel for saving him from harm. A greater challenge awaits him in Spor, where he faces the Royal Dragon of King Terribus. The dragon is visually spectacular: {| align=center cellpadding+5px cellspacing=0 border-0 style="background-color:#FFFDD0" |- | "...more than thirty feet in length and covered everywhere with large green scales set with diamonds, making the dragon, whenever it moved, a very glittering spectacle. Its eyes were as big as pie plates, and its mouth &mdash; when wide opened &mdash; fully as large as a bathtub. Its tail was very long and ended in a golden ball, such as you see on the top of flagstaffs. Its legs, which were as thick as those of an elephant, had scales which were set with rubies and emeralds." |- | | valign=bottom | |} The dragon, however, is far less formidable than it appears: its inner fire was blown out in a gale, and its keepers are out of matches. It can''t lash its tail or gnash its teeth, either &mdash; because they hurt. In the end, even after getting its fire re-lit, the beast refuses to fight Prince Marvel; it''s too much a gentleman. With such opposition, it isn''t surprising that Marvel is victorious in Spor as well. He next has a stay in the curious hidden kingdom of Twi. It is a land of perpetual twilight, hence its name. Everything is doubled in Twi, and everyone is a twin. The people even lack a word for "one." The local rulers, the High Ki of Twi (twins like everyone else), are considering the fate of the intruding Marvel, when he places a spell on the twins, dividing them from their united and shared mind into two separate consciousnesses. The results are chaotic, and Marvel has to remedy the mess by re-uniting the twins. Marvel next exposes the pretended magician Kwytoffle (a fraud, like the more famous Wizard of Oz). He meets his sternest test when he confronts the Red Rogue of Dawna; even then, however, his native fairy abilities enable him to emerge victorious. By the end of his mortal year, Marvel has pacified the formerly troublesome inhabitants; the Island of Yew has become civilized. Baum adapted material from the novel into Prince Marvel, a short play for children printed in 1910 in L. Frank Baum''s Juvenile Speaker.

The Enchanted Island of Yew

The novel opens on 7 September 1914; the continuing characters Patsy Doyle, Beth De Graf, and their uncle John Merrick are reading a newspaper account of the end of the Siege of Maubeuge and the German victory. Both of the girls are intensely concerned with the war news; Beth in particular is a partisan of the French cause. The protagonists are soon re-united with "Ajo" Jones and the movie star Maud Stanton, two characters from the previous book in the series, Aunt Jane''s Nieces Out West. (Baum arrived at Maud Stanton''s name by combining his wife''s first name, Maud, with his mother''s maiden name, Stanton.) Maud Stanton takes the place of the third of the trio of cousins, Louise Merrick, who does not appear in the final book. Both Maud and Ajo have come to New York; Maud is one her way to Europe to serve as a nurse. (She trained in nursing before becoming a film actress.) Patsy and Beth are struck with admiration for her action, and are eager to follow her example. When Uncle John finds that he cannot dissuade them, he resolves to back their effort; he uses his wealth and influence to form a connection with the American Red Cross. Jones, also enthusiastic for the cause, volunteers his ocean-going yacht, the Arabella, for conversion to a hospital ship. Uncle John pays for its refitting and for two ambulances to carry the wounded. Merrrick''s money and the girls'' enthusiasm work wonders; by the end of September the Arabella, painted with large red crosses, is in Dunkirk. Among their staff is a talented surgeon, Doctor Gys. He is "an eccentric, a character...erratic and whimsical," an adventurer who has been from the Arctic to the Yucatán, and in the process has been badly disfigured by various hard-luck accidents (involving icebergs and poisoned cacti). Gys calls himself a coward, but also sees death as a release from his disfigured body; he wonders what kind of death would be preferable, and has a morbid interest in confronting the violence of the War. The Americans also acquire a Belgian chauffeur named Maurie as an ambulance driver; he provides comic relief for the book, in somewhat the same way as the chauffeur Wampus does in Aunt Jane''s Nieces and Uncle John. The protagonists cope with military bureaucracies and confront the horrors of the battlefield &mdash; though Baum, "in keeping with his Van Dyne persona...kept his descriptions mild." Beth has previously had a year of nursing training; but Patsy is a neophyte who is shocked at the conditions she encounters. Doctor Gys reacts with paralyzing fear on his first exposure to combat, but his medical discipline soon takes over and he functions effectively. In the climax of the story, Patsy is injured but recovers, but Dr. Gys is killed on the battlefield. Though Gys had repeatedly proclaimed his cowardice, his death is heroic. The Americans lose the confidence of the French authorities at Dunkirk when a German prisoner they are treating escapes their custody; fewer wounded come to their ship as a result, and it appears that their usefulness is limited. After three months of service, the girls return to the United States. Uncle John tells them that "You have unselfishly devoted your lives for three strenuous months to the injured soldiers of a foreign war, and I hope you''re satisfied that you''ve done your full duty."

Aunt Jane''s Nieces in the Red Cross

Blart, after the imprisonment of Zoltab, is living the good life on his own pig farm. But a wily merchant named Uther has conned him out of everything he owns and his freedom by a game of cards called "Muggins". To play Muggins, the dealer simply picks two cards from the deck, hands one to the non-dealer and keeps one himself. Each player turns over their cards. If the cards were the same, say, a king and a king, then the dealer wins. If the cards are different, say, a three and a five, then the non-dealer wins. Even Blart has grasped it that the chances of the non-dealer winning is drastically in his favour and resolves to play the game with Uther to make money. However, no sooner than Blart bets stakes in the game of Muggins than Uther begins to win every round. But then quite out of the blue, Capablanca arrives to tell him that Blart and the other questors are wanted, dead or alive - or both. They are wanted because it is believed that they are minions of Zoltab, even though it was them that imprisoned him. So Blart, Capablanca and Uther (who must help them as he is wanted for associating with Blart) must find and warn the other questors. After gathering the original company (with the exception of the deceased dwarf Tungsten) they must travel to where Capablanca has imprisoned Zoltab, so as to prove their innocence. However, Capablanca has difficulty remembering where he has imprisoned the last lord. As soon ddakjfdioasdjfoasdfjs it:Blart 2

Blart II: The Boy Who was Wanted Dead or Alive - Or Both

The story concerns the life of Johnnie Pascoe, a retired commercial and military pilot, who has engaged in a dangerous rescue in a mountainous region of Tasmania. He has crashed his plane and lies injured and unconscious in the house of the child he had been sent to help. Hearing of his plight, Ronnie Clarke, a younger pilot who was taught to fly by Pascoe, offers to try and land a doctor to assist. His efforts do not succeed. Whilst resting at Pascoe''s house that night, Clarke dreams of aspects of the life of his former mentor. Pascoe had been a fighter pilot during The Great War and had married an up and coming actress. At war''s end, they had become separated and his wife accepted a role in Hollywood—and filed for divorce from there with sole custody of their daughter. A few years later, Pascoe opens a small flying school and is embroiled in an adulterous affair with a local upper-class woman, Brenda Marshall, whose husband is in a mental asylum. Things go awry after the birth of a daughter between her and Pascoe and the woman commits suicide, by deliberately crashing her light aircraft, when she learns that her divorce request from her husband has been refused. In the final part of the story, we learn of Pascoe''s later life as a civil pilot—shortly before the story''s opening. It seems that he has become enamoured of one of the flight attendants. In a touching scene, Pascoe proposes marriage to this young woman only to learn that she is his daughter by Brenda Marshall. The framing story closes with Ronnie Clarke making a successful attempt at Pascoe''s rescue only to learn that Pascoe had died during the night. Like Conrad, Shute often uses a narrator to tell the story; in The Rainbow and the Rose, the narrator periodically shifts from Clarke to Pascoe.

The Rainbow and the Rose

Save Me the Waltz, according to its author, derives its title from a Victor record catalog, and it suggests the romantic glitter of the life which F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald lived and which Scott’s novels have so indelibly written into American literary and cultural history. Divided into four chapters, each of which is further divided into three parts, the novel is a chronological narrative of four periods in the lives of Alabama and David Knight, names that are but thin disguises for their real-life counterparts. Save Me The Waltz is the story of Alabama Beggs, a Southern girl who marries a twenty-two-year-old artist, David Knight. As with Zelda and Scott, Alabama met David when he was in the South during World War I. Knight becomes a successful painter, and the family moves to the Riviera where Knight begins an affair with an actress. Determined to be successful in her own right, Alabama decides to become a ballet dancer and devotes herself relentlessly to the cause, eventually achieving success. Alabama dances her solo debut in the opera Faust. Though outwardly successful, Alabama and David are miserable. At the novel''s end they return to the South when Alabama''s father dies. Though she says otherwise, her friends from the South go on about how happy and lucky Alabama is. Alabama searches for meaning in her father''s death, but finds none. While cleaning up after their final party before returning to their unhappy lives, Alabama remarks — an interesting contrast to the closing lines of The Great Gatsby — that emptying the ashtrays is "very expressive of myself. I just lump everything in a great heap which I have labeled ''the past,'' and having thus emptied this deep reservoir that was once myself, I am ready to continue."

Save Me the Waltz

It was the best of times. The kingdom was safe, wealth was abundant, and the people were happy. At the age of nine, Finnikin sees this all torn away. The royal family is murdered. The forest people are slaughtered. Finnikin''s father is thrown into jail on accounts of treason, while his beloved wife is executed. Angered by the carnage, Seranonna of the Forest People proclaims a dark curse, trapping the people of Lumatere inside. All that remains are a pair of bloody little handprints on the kingdom''s door, presumably those of Bathalzar, the lost prince. Ten years pass... Finnikin of the Rock and his guardian, Sir Topher, have not been home to their beloved Lumatere for ten years. Not since the dark days when the royal family was murdered and the kingdom put under a terrible curse. But then Finnikin is summoned to meet Evanjalin, a young woman with an incredible claim: the heir to the throne of Lumatere, Prince Balthazar, is alive. Evanjalin is determined to return home and she is the only one who can lead them to the heir. As they journey together, Finnikin is affected by her arrogance...and her hope. He begins to believe he will see his childhood friend, Prince Balthazar, again. And that their cursed people will be able to enter Lumatere and be reunited with those trapped inside. He even believes he will find his imprisoned father. But Evanjalin is not what she seems. And the truth will test not only Finnikan''s faith in her... but also in himself.

Finnikin of the Rock

It is 1876. Captain Augustus "Gus" McCrae and Captain Woodrow F. Call, two famous ex–Texas Rangers, run a livery called the Hat Creek Cattle Company and Livery Emporium in the small dusty Texas border town of Lonesome Dove. Smooth, charming and easy going, Gus loves women and women return the sentiments, but he''s twice a widower and he never marries the love of his life, Clara. Although he had proposed many a time, she had rejected him every time because, in her words, Gus is "a rambler," and she despises Call because she feels jealous of the years Gus spent with him instead of her. She needed to settle down and have a family and a good life; he was brave and a dead aim, but was lazy and prone to wandering away for another adventure. While McCrae is warm, good natured, and understanding of people, Captain Call, Gus''s best friend and partner, is the opposite: a workaholic taskmaster who hides in his work, emotionally cut off. He is afraid "to admit he''s human," according to McCrae. He loved only one woman, a prostitute named Maggie, who gave birth to his only son, Newt. Though he knows he is his bastard son''s father, he refuses to admit it and give Newt his name. He is hypercompetent at his work to compensate for his complete failure at human relationships. He is cold and driven by pride and honor, not love. Even when he drags the body of the only human who ever understood him and loved him anyway over 2000 miles across the Great Plains, suffering ridicule and hardship, he claims he is doing it for duty, not friendship. He is the Western version of Captain Ahab whose reckless stubbornness ends in tragedy. Working with them are Joshua Deets, a black man who is an excellent tracker and scout from their Ranger days, Pea Eye Parker, another former Ranger who works hard but isn''t all too bright, and Bolivar, a retired Mexican bandit who is their cook. Also living with them is the boy Newt Dobbs, a seventeen-year-old whose mother was a prostitute named Maggie and whose father may be Call. The story begins in the small town of Lonesome Dove, as Jake Spoon, a former comrade of Call''s and McCrae''s, shows up after an absence of more than ten years. He is a man on the run, having accidentally shot the dentist of Fort Smith in Arkansas. The dentist''s brother happens to be the sheriff, July Johnson. Reunited with Gus and Call, Jake''s breath-taking description of Montana inspires Call to gather a herd of cattle and drive them there, to begin the first cattle ranch in the frontier territory. Call is attracted to the romantic notion of settling pristine country. Gus is less enthusiastic, pointing out that they are getting old and that they are Rangers and traders, not cowboys. But he changes his mind when Jake reminds him that Gus'' old sweetheart, Clara, lives on the Platte, 20 miles from Ogallala, Nebraska, which is on their route to Montana. Captain Call prevails. They make preparations for their adventure north, including stealing horses in Mexico and recruiting almost all the male citizens of Lonesome Dove. Ironically, Jake Spoon decides not to go after all, being selfish and undependable and because he promises the town''s only prostitute, Lorena Wood, known as Lorie, he''ll take her to San Francisco. Ogallala also happens to be the destination of Elmira, the wife of Sheriff Johnson, as she runs away to meet up with her true love, Dee Boot. So the three groups head north. They encounter horse thieves, murderers, hostile Indians, inclement weather, and a few inner demons.

Lonesome Dove

Despite the passage of time, Major Quilan still suffers grief and bereavement from the death of his wife, killed during the Chelgrian civil war that resulted from the Culture''s interference. Quilan is offered the chance to avenge the lost Chelgrians who died in a civil war and is inducted into a plot to strike back at the Culture. As part of the plot, his "soulkeeper" (a device normally used to store its owner''s personality upon their death) is equipped with both the mind of a long-dead Chelgrian general and a device that can transport wormholes connected to weapons caches. Quilan is then sent to Masaq'' Orbital, ostensibly to persuade Mahrai Ziller to return to his native Chel but is in reality on a suicide mission to destroy the Orbital''s Hub Mind. To protect him from detection at Masaq'', Quilan''s memory is selectively blanked until he reaches his target. On Masaq'', Ziller lives in self-imposed exile, having renounced his privileged position in Chel''s caste system. An accomplished composer, he has been commissioned to compose music to mark the anniversary of the Idiran-Culture War. Upon hearing of Quilan''s visit, and his reason for travel, Ziller scrupulously avoids him, reluctant to engage with a civilization that repels him. Quilan succeeds in placing the wormholes in the Mind''s Hub, but the Mind detects them immediately and, although not able to track the location of the other end of the wormholes, suggests that the Involved "aliens" assisting Quilan''s mission may have been a group of Culture minds seeking to keep the Culture from being too complacent. Having struggled with its memories from the Idiran-Culture war, when it was the General Systems Vehicle Lasting Damage, the Mind reveals to Quilan that it seeks to cease existing and offers to take Quilan with it. They both die. In the end of the novel, a nightmarishly efficient E-Dust Assassin is unleashed against the Chelgrian priest who was responsible, as well as his immediate co-conspirators. It is not revealed whether this was a form of retribution by the Culture or a cover-up by a secret Culture faction.

Look to Windward

Griffin Moss is an artist living in London who makes postcards for a living. He is unhappy and lonely, though he is unaware of these feelings. His life is changed forever when he receives a cryptic postcard from Sabine Strohem, a woman he has never met. Like Griffin, she is an artist (she illustrates postage stamps) and comes from a fictional group of small islands in the South Pacific known as the Sicmon Islands (Arbah, Katie, Katin, Ta Fin, Quepol and Typ). The two begin to correspond regularly. Griffin comes to realize that he is in love with Sabine, who reciprocates his feelings, and that they are soulmates. However, his growing uncertainty as to Sabine''s true nature and the changes her presence in his life has brought to him develops into fear and he ends up rejecting her offer for him to come see her in person. He comes to the conclusion that Sabine is a figment of his imagination, created from his own loneliness. It appears to be true until another postcard arrives from Sabine with an ominous promise that if he will not come to her, she will go to him.

Griffin and Sabine

It tells the story of a girl named Coriander, and her childhood. Coriander starts an adventure she cannot stop when she slips on a pair of silver shoes from an anonymous person. Her mother insists that she must not have them, whilst she herself insists she must. Eventually, her father gives into them and her world begins to fall downhill. Coriander''s dad is arrested and is left with her step mother and step sister. The step mother has sacked Coriander''s favorite servant as well as friend. After hiding a doll in the cupboard Coriander''s step mother is mad.Coriander cannot wait until her dad''s return. But is he going to? It all starts to slowly change, a thread that never ends, and one that Coriander cannot control. She soon finds out all her mother''s deepest secrets and must fight the evil Queen Rosmore, her grandfather''s 2nd wife who has put him into a trance. To save her mother''s beautiful, yet deadly power and her father''s faith, she falls in love with Tycho, a fairy prince from the other world, a dangerous thing for her to do. As all things she once knew vanish, she must fight the horrors of the angry, puritan world in which she lives, and those of the world of magic, which holds the secret of time and all things possible. But as a death draws nearer, there is another question to answer. Whose is it?

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

Night of Light

By Philip José Farmer

Icefire

No Author Listed

The Enchanted Island of Yew

By L. Frank Baum

Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross

By L. Frank Baum

Blart II: The Boy Who was Wanted Dead or Alive - Or Both

By Dominic Barker

The Rainbow and the Rose

By Nevil Shute

Save Me the Waltz

By Zelda Fitzgerald

Finnikin of the Rock

By Melina Marchetta

Lonesome Dove

By Larry McMurtry

Look to Windward

By Iain Banks

Griffin and Sabine

No Author Listed

I, Coriander

By Sally Gardner