The crushing 1940 defeat of France (an event the author lived through) is the subject of this novel. Marshall implies that France lost its soul and was itself more responsible for its defeat than Germany. We meet Bigou, the protagonist, in 1934. He is an honest, hard-working, but irreligious and immoral accountant, employed by a successful industrial firm in Paris. He is mildly troubled that his firm expends considerable effort conniving to avoid paying its legitimate taxes. Conversations with accountants and employees of other companies lead Bigou to realize that most of the business enterprises of the time in France are behaving similarly, The novel gives us a picture of Bigou’s life. The reader is introduced to his family, sulky, plucky daughter Odette and sickly wife Marie, friends, his coworkers and other people he meets in his business life. The author endeavors to show that money and pleasure were the main goals sought with any sincerity. Even religion, when it did exist, wasn’t much more than an outward display. Bigou does come to believe that the local priest is one of the few people he knows who exhibits integrity. The “petit bourgeois” in the novel are shabby and bewildered as they assist helplessly at their nation’s funeral, but they stand in brilliant contrast to the insatiable greed and craftiness of the wealthy. Marshall clearly believes that France lost its virtue, especially among its elites. He even implies that the leaders of the Church were more interested in status and materialism than spirituality. The novel indicates that the common people, deprived of the just rewards of their labor, and without worthy spiritual direction, became trapped in immorality, and were spiritually and physically impoverished.

Yellow Tapers for Paris

Princess Ivy, who is now a 5 year old in this book, asks one of Castle Roogna''s ghosts to tell her how he became a ghost. Ivy uses her talent of enhancement - and some caustic Crewel Lye to strip off centuries of accrued grime - to improve the range and clarity of Castle Roogna''s magical Tapestry. The Tapestry is a woven hanging which allows anyone to view recent or historical events (although it cannot violate the Adult Conspiracy, nor does it include sound). The ghost, known as Jordan the Barbarian when he was alive 400 years ago, begins his story by recounting how he set off on an adventure with his horse Pook. Jordan had the magical talent of self-healing — which came in handy as he was cut, stabbed, and dismembered during his travels. In one case, a woman finds him gravely injured and hauls him to her cottage, not knowing of his talent. Jordan ends up falling in love with this woman, Threnody. Unfortunately, the evil magician Yin-Yang had already claimed Threnody to be his wife, and was willing to do anything to have her. Intending to keep Jordan safe from Yin-Yang, Threnody makes it appear that she has betrayed Jordan. She cuts him into pieces and buries each piece in a different remote location — knowing that if the pieces were reattached, he would be able to heal himself. However, she is never able to break free of Yin-Yang long enough to collect Jordan''s dismembered body and eventually kills herself. After hearing Jordan''s story, Ivy decides to gather his body parts herself. Once placed near each other, the pieces mend together and cover back up with muscle and skin (greatly sped up due to Ivy''s enhancement). Jordan is alive again — but he wants his new love, the ghost Renee, to be brought to life again too. When Ivy and Jordan use a regenerating potion on Renee''s remains (after accidentally teleporting Stanley Steamer the baby Gap Dragon away), Threnody emerges from her grave. Threnody explains that her "cruel lie" had been done to protect Jordan. After some time, he forgives her and they get married. pl:Okrutne kłamstwo

Crewel Lye: A Caustic Yarn

The Ship''s Cat is introduced as a patriotic swashbuckling crewmember of the English privateer Alcestis. After attacking a lone Spanish ship, the Alcestis is defeated by Spanish reinforcements and its crew taken as captives to the Panamanian port of Chagres. The Ship''s Cat is initially imprisoned, but the gaoler''s daughter takes pity on him and has him released to serve in the gaoler''s kitchen. After the gaoler and his companions become drunk celebrating Saint Philip''s Day, the Ship''s Cat steals the keys to the gaol and releases his shipmates. Together, they steal a ship from the harbor and sail for home, pursued by their erstwhile captors. Their pursuers are frightened off by the sudden appearance of Sir Francis Drake (outward bound on his global circumnavigation of 1577). After Drake departs, the Ship''s Cat reveals that he has discovered a hoard of treasure in the ship''s hold. The crew sail home to England, where they are greeted as heroes and the Cat is knighted by Queen Elizabeth I.

The Adventures & Brave Deeds Of The Ship''s Cat On The Spanish Maine: Together With The Most Lamentable Losse Of The Alcestis & Triumphant Firing Of The Port Of Chagres

The protagonist is born in the mid-1960s. After her father''s premature death when she is seven, she and her sister are brought up in England by their mother, who is a French Catholic. Conditioned to believe that pre-marital sex is a sin, at 18 the heroine is forced into an early marriage with a teacher, who works literally day and night at a remote boarding school for boys. Stripped of her privacy and her youthful ways, she clings to her husband, hoping he will take a job elsewhere. When he does not she deserts him and embarks on a series of affairs with wealthy men who are not interested in a long-term relationship with her: a lawyer, a capitalist ("the Billionaire"), a Lord. Similar to Caroline Meeber in Dreiser''s Sister Carrie, the protagonist is not prepared to earn a living through honest work dependent on her qualifications. Accordingly, she always has to rely financially on the men in her life. In particular, it is the billionaire who, as a kind of parting present, volunteers to pay for her very expensive university education at some exclusive New York college as well as for her Upper East Side apartment. After her graduation the protagonist eventually moves back to London. An affair with a sexually inexperienced man ("the Virgin") leads to her first pregnancy ever and a subsequent miscarriage. Having trained as an actress, she gets a few jobs in TV commercials. When she meets her ex-husband again it is only to find out that he is going to get married again. At the end of the novel, aged about 38 and still indecisive, she meets a single father who might become her future partner.

Ten Men

Tim Purdom is born in 1937 in a small village on the Kentish coast as the illegitimate son of a young woman who dies in her early forties. After her death in 1959, Purdom decides to move to London as he does not have any sense of belonging to his home town any more. He finds cheap accommodation in Bayswater and work in a snack bar in Soho. Purdom is not only a jazz fanatic (his favourite musician is Thelonious Monk) but also an intellectual who reads books and who is interested in what is going on in the world, both politically and culturally. His intellectual pursuits do not go together with his lifestyle or his job. However, without any formal education or money, he is reduced to the kind of life he is leading; but, unambitious by nature, he is quite content with it for the time being. Very early during his stay in London Purdom is confronted with petty crime through his contact with guests and workmates. When he is offered some extra money by one of the older regulars he tags along with him and suddenly finds himself in a place where "dirty pictures"&mdash;which were illegal at the time&mdash;are taken. He is then approached by the owner of some adult bookshops and encouraged to become a pornographic photographer himself. The customers like his pictures, which are sold under the counter, and Purdom makes some good money. He is initiated into the world of private parties where old blue movies of foreign origin are shown to middle-aged upper middle class men in the company of young, attractively made up women. At one of those parties, where he works as the projectionist, he meets a man who later turns out to be Stephen Ward, one of the key figures in what will later be referred to as the Profumo affair. Ward supplies Purdom with a good many "models" for his photographic sessions. Eventually Purdom buys an 8 mm amateur movie camera and starts shooting pornographic movie shorts himself. His short-lived career is already over in early 1963 when he is told by his employer that the industry has moved on and that cheap Scandinavian imports are now in demand, which are also in colour rather than black and white. Purdom keeps on working at the snack bar and in addition is commissioned to do some serious photography about London for foreign magazines. He has become a respectable citizen with a new girlfriend who does not know anything about the shady business he has left behind. It is then that he feels he is being haunted by his past.

London Blues

A Crown of Swords has three primary plotlines: * Rand al''Thor, the Dragon Reborn, prepares to attack the Forsaken Sammael in Illian while enjoying life with his friend, Min Farshaw, and attempting to quell the rebellion by nobles in Cairhien, during which Padan Fain severely injures him with the Shadar Logoth dagger. After recovering, Rand, accompanied by Asha''man, attacks Illian and defeats Sammael in a duel of the One Power in Shadar Logoth, where Sammael is destroyed by Mashadar. Rand then takes the crown of Illian, formerly the Laurel Crown, but now called the Crown of Swords. * Egwene al''Vere and Siuan Sanche attempt to manipulate the Aes Sedai rebels in Salidar to move against Elaida''s Aes Sedai in the White Tower in Tar Valon. After Egwene and Siuan investigate Siuan''s suspicions about Myrelle, Egwene exploits the transfer of Lan''s Warder bond from Moiraine to Myrelle in order to force Myrelle and Nisao to swear fealty to her. * In the city of Ebou Dar in Altara, Elayne Trakand, Nynaeve al''Meara, Aviendha, and Mat Cauthon search for a ter''angreal, the Bowl of the Winds, to break the unnatural heat brought on by the Dark One''s manipulation of climate. They find it and enlist the help of the Kin and the Atha''an Miere, or Sea Folk. They also confront a Gholam. Mat is left behind after searching for Olver, and is caught in the fighting as the Seanchan invade Ebou Dar.

A Crown of Swords

Player Piano is set in the future after a fictional third world war. During the war, while most Americans were fighting overseas, the nation''s managers and engineers faced a depleted work force, and responded by developing ingenious automated systems that allowed the factories to operate with only a few workers. The novel begins ten years after the war, when most factory workers have been replaced by machines. The bifurcation of the population is represented by the division of Ilium into "The Homestead", where everyone who is neither a manager or engineer lives, and the other side of the river, where all the engineers and managers lives. Player Piano develops two parallel plot lines that converge only briefly, and insubstantially so, at the beginning and the end of the novel. The more prominent plot line follows the protagonist, Dr. Paul Proteus (hither to referred to as Paul), an intelligent, thirty-five-year-old factory manager of Ilium Works. The ancillary plot line follows the American tour of the Shah of Bratpuhr, a spiritual leader of six million residents in a distant, underdeveloped nation. The purpose of the two plot lines is to give two perspectives of the system: one from an insider who is emblematic of the system, and one from an outsider who is looking in. Paul, for all intents and purposes, is the living embodiment of what a man within the system should strive to be, while the Shah is a visitor from a very different culture, and therefore applies a very different context to happenings he sees on his tour. The main plot line follows the metamorphosis of Paul from being within the system to being against the system. At the beginning of the novel, Paul displays a sense of dissatisfaction with the industrial system and his contribution to society. Symbolically, he reflects on his colleagues'' desire to destroy an old building, once a part of Edison''s factory, which he saves and instead keeps it alive to store new machinery. Looking for salvation from a yet unknown plight, he gets a knock at his door, figuratively speaking, and Ed Finnerty, an old friend whom Paul has always held in high regard, informs him he has quit his important engineer job in Washington D.C. Paul and Finnerty visit a bar in the "Homestead" section of town, where workers who have been displaced by machines live out their meaningless lives in mass-produced houses. There, they meet an Episcopal minister, named Lasher, with an M.A. in anthropology, who puts into words the unfairness of the system that the two engineers have only vaguely sensed. They soon learn that Lasher is the leader of a rebel group known as the "Ghost Shirt Society", and Finnerty instantly takes up with him. Paul is not bold enough to make a clean break, as Finnerty has done, until his superiors ask him to betray Finnerty and Lasher. He quits his job and is captured by the "Ghost Shirt Society;" he is forced to join as their leader but only in name. Paul''s father was the first "National, Industrial, Commercial Communications, Foodstuffs, and Resources Director"” As his lengthy title suggests, Dr. George Proetus has almost complete control over the nation’s economy and was more powerful than the President of the United States. Through his father''s success, Paul''s name is famous among the citizens, so the organization intends to use his name to their advantage by making him the false ''leader'' to gain publicity.

Player Piano

In a town highly suspicious of the government and of outsiders in general, the arrival of a charismatic figure from the desert—Oyster—occasions an intensification of the town''s insularity and repression of dissident voices. The conjunction of conservative forms of Christianity and anti-government landowners is ripe for the messianic presence of Oyster and the cult community he establishes, a community closely integrated into the shadowy capitalism of the area''s illegal opal trafficking. The fragmented structure of the novel, in which various moments in the past are interspersed with events in the present, generates heightened suspense and tension as its several sub-plots come together in the apocalyptic destruction of the town and the cult. The paranoia and violence with which the town polices its "lost" status are repeatedly delineated, until events come to a head and the vicious forms of control begin to unravel. Women are crucial to the destabilisation and destruction of the menace represented above all by powerful men. The discourse of proud outsiderness on the part of these men is highlighted as being hypocritical and self-serving, while the real outsiders are revealed to be mostly women, and men who do not wield social power.

Oyster

Lady Sandrilene fa Toren is locked away in a dark room with a fading oil lamp. She was magically hidden in this storeroom days ago by her nurse, who was murdered moments later just outside the door by a mob bent on destroying everything infected by the fierce plague that killed Sandry''s parents. Sandry is concerned about the flickering oil lamp, even though she knows there is no chance of anybody finding her as the room she is locked in is protected by magic so that it cannot be found either magically or non-magically, and the only person who knows her whereabouts is her nurse, who is dead. Sandry is afraid of going crazy in the darkness. Unknowingly doing her first piece of magic, Sandry traps the remaining light in a simple braid. A powerful seer, Niklaren Goldeye, finds her and takes her to Winding Circle in Emelan. Trader Daja Kisubo is the lone survivor when her family''s ship is destroyed in a storm. She floats on the water for days, surviving only because she finds a suraku- a survival box full of food and water from the ship. When Niko finds her, they go to the Trader Council so they can decide Daja''s fate. Because Daja is the only survivor of her family, they declare her trangshi, or outcast- the worst sort of bad luck. As trangshi, she is forbidden to speak, touch, or write to other Traders. Niko is outraged at the council''s decision and conducts her to Winding Circle. Roach (later named Briar Moss) is a "street rat" in Hajra, Sotat. His mother died when he was four; he was then taken in by the Thief Lord, the leader of the gang Lightning. Each time Roach is caught committing a crime, an "X" is tattooed onto the web of skin between his thumb and forefinger. After his third capture, Roach is sentenced to the docks but is saved by Niko, who stopped the judge and convinced her to allow him to take Roach to Winding Circle. Roach also has the opportunity to choose a new name for himself; he chooses Briar Moss because of his curiosity and experience with plants. Trisana Chandler is from a merchant''s family. She has been passed from relative to relative because of the strange things that occur when she is around. Never staying long in one house, she never had a real family. Eventually, she is brought to Stone Circle Temple by her parents and left there, where she wreaks more havoc still. The temple''s dedicate superior pleads with Niko to take her to Winding Circle, and he agrees after Tris starts a hail storm out of anger. The four children are brought to Winding Circle Temple in Emelan, where they do not fit in. Daja is secluded and ignored because she is a Trader, Tris wreaks havoc through weather when girls upset her by making fun of her, Briar threatens other boys with knives, and Sandry is caught looking at the looms too much. They are all taken to Discipline Cottage, an isolated cottage for children who do not fit in, where they are overseen there by Dedicate Lark, a kind and gentle thread mage, and Dedicate Rosethorn, a sharp plant mage. The four learn they have magic, which none of them knew about. While they all practice meditation, each of the four is matched with a main teacher to guide them through their magical learning. Sandry begins studying with Lark, learning to weave and spin; Tris studies with Niko about weather; Daja is taken under the wing of Dedicate Frostpine, the greatest smith mage; Briar works with Rosethorn in her garden and workshop. They each grow closer together and stronger in their magic. During the course of the book, there have been tremors all summer. Near the end of the book, a big earthquake comes, having gained power by bouncing off the walls of a crystal used in an attempt to trap it. Just before, the four were out walking Little Bear, their dog, when he runs down a path and into the back of a large cave. The four and their dog are stuck underground when the earthquake begins. Daja holds to roof of their small space up by making a magical "suraku" around the space to help save them. Tris and Briar begin their own protections and Tris starts to open up air vents. However, the three of them cannot finish, because each person does not have the skill to finish. Sandry remembers her time trapped in the storage room and is paralyzed with fear when she remembers her weaving bag. She infuses it with the essences of the four and weaves their magic together, so each can complete his or her jobs. The four and their dog are rescued by their teachers after the quake. It is discovered that they are under the kitchens of the temple. At the very end of the book, Tris, Briar, and Daja present Sandry with a light-filled crystal to help her conquer her fear of the dark.

Sandry''s Book

Brothers In Arms begins where The Soulforge left off, after Raistlin Majere has passed the Test of High Sorcery. Raistlin and Caramon Majere have decided to be hired as mercenaries, and are attempting to go to Langtree, the base of the army of Baron Ivor of Langtree. Antimodes goes with them part of the way. On the way, Raislin''s horse throws him while fording a river, and Raistlin catches pneumonia. He is taken to Haven, where he is healed by his friend, Lemuel. Antimodes leaves the brothers there. They winter in Haven, setting out in the spring towards Langtree. At the same time, Kitiara uth Matar, the twins'' sister, is in Sanction, trying to advance in the ranks of the Dragonarmy. To prove her worth, Ariakas sends her on a special mission: convince the red dragon Immolatus to come to Ariakas in Sanction, where he will receive orders from him. Kitiara succeeds, and the orders are to go to the city of Hope''s End, and find the hiding place of the Gold and Silver Dragon Eggs. Meanwhile the twins have joined the Army of the Baron Ivor, and are trained: Raistlin as a war mage by Master Horkin, Caramon as a warrior. They also meet Scrounger, a half-kender and fellow recruit, and forge a friendship with him. Finally, they receive marching orders: the army has been hired by Good King Wilhelm of Blodehelm to destroy the city of Hope''s End whose citizens have rebelled against the king.

Brothers in Arms

Set in 1990, Jenny Brix lives in Iowa City. She is a history buff. She even has a Ronald Reagan picture when he was in his 20''s as a lifeguard! When she goes to a meeting, a very old professor has a heart attack. Panicking, she uses CPR on him, thus saving his life. After a few stops to the hospital, he asks her which US president she likes best. She answers Ronald Reagan. So then the professor tells her that she can go back in time and meet him. She is shocked, but the professor keeps telling her it''s true. She finally believes him, sort of. The professor takes her to Dixon, Illinois, Reagan''s childhood home. There professor tells her she has 80 hours to stay out of the timezone, or her body will be used to the other timezones and can''t come back to present day (1990). When she goes into the time machine, it actually is set on 1832, instead of 1932 (where she was going). She then meets Abraham Lincoln (who develops a little crush on her), and Chief Black Hawk during the Black Hawk War. After all of that is straightened out, she goes to 1932 with less than half the time left she started with. Once she gets there she sees a young, handsome Ronald Reagan going past her to save a person from drowning. She then gets some friends, Scooter and Betsy. They say there is a dance at Dixon''s run down, old high school. There she dances with Ronald and his brother. While dancing with Ronald, she falls down the steps with him. They then get a crush on each other. Afer going on a few dates, she has to go to her original timezone. Her and Ronald have a sad exchange (Ronald doesn''t know about the time traveling) when she has to leave. Jenny then takes Scooter and Betsy to Lowell Park, where she shows them the time machine. She then leaves, leaving the others dumbfounded. Wen she comes back, professor says he is Scooter, and spent the rest of his life finding things about the time machine after she left until he finally made the time machine. In the epilogue, Reagan visits Dixon the final time. He goes back to Lowell Park, where he spent 6 years as a lifeguard at. He then sees a familiar face from the past (Jenny) near a tree. He shrugs it off and goes back visiting.

Lowell Park

The story begins in 1944 and covers more than 30 years in the lives of four men and their families: Dieter Kolff, a German rocket scientist who worked for the Nazis; Norman Grant, a World War II hero turned U.S. Senator from a fictional state; Stanley Mott, an aeronautical engineer invested with a top-secret U.S. government mission to rescue Kolff from Peenemünde; and John Pope, a small-town boy turned Naval Aviator who becomes a test pilot and then astronaut. Randy Claggett, a rambunctious Marine Corps aviator and astronaut is considered by Michener to be the most important supporting character (the first two parts of the book are entitled "Four Men" and "Four Women"). The lives of the fictional characters interweave with those of historical figures, such as Wernher von Braun and Lyndon Johnson. A whole group of trainee astronauts are introduced to fly fictional but plausible Project Gemini and Project Apollo missions; the intensive training and jockeying for position amongst the astronauts forms much of the background of the middle of the novel, reminiscent of a fictional version of Tom Wolfe''s The Right Stuff and the movie as well. Michener dramatizes the life experiences of these men and their families against the backdrop of the real history of the U.S. space program, depicting their experiences in post-war aviation, the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union; the development of congressional funding for the space program; the early failures in the Gemini program; and the successful moon landings in the Apollo program. In a fictional postscript to history, Michener creates a last, "Apollo 18" launch to further the drama of Pope, Claggett and Linley, America''s first black astronaut. This is the only Apollo mission in which the lunar module lands on the far side of the Moon, unseen by Earth; in order to remain in contact with NASA after landing, while still in lunar orbit the Apollo craft must launch a communication satellite that will bounce the lunar module''s signals to Earth. An unusually high amount of sunspot activity, only partially predicted by the NASA ground crew, results in the death of Claggett and Linley in the lunar module when they are exposed to lethal levels of radiation following their ascent back towards the command module and they crash back into the lunar surface; Pope, the command module pilot returns to Earth safely. The mission profile is significantly different from that of the real-world canceled mission that would have been Apollo 18. On the human side, various subplots run through the novel, contrasting the "official" heroism of NASA with the human fallibilities of the cast—the difficulties the Kolffs face in integrating into American society; Norman Grant''s initial embrace of the space program and his abandonment of it as it no longer serves his political aims, while his unstable wife and their daughter fall in with a highly intelligent but cynical cult leader calling himself Leopold Strabismus who exploits first the UFO craze and then an anti-scientific creationist agenda to increase his fortune; Randy Claggett''s womanizing; the contrast between Stanley and Rachel Mott''s ordered, rational existence and their troubled relationship with their sons, and John Pope''s unusual yet supportive relationship with his lawyer wife Penny. The novel closes with Pope retired from NASA and a respected professor of astronomy, his wife Penny in the Senate, and Mott consulting on "Grand Tour" unmanned missions to the outer solar system. The two men finally attending a NASA workshop discussing the possibility of extraterrestrial life, at which Strabismus privately drops the creationist/fundamentalist persona he has adopted and joins in the intellectual debate on the inevitability of life elsewhere in the Universe.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

Yellow Tapers for Paris

By Bruce Marshall

Crewel Lye: A Caustic Yarn

By Piers Anthony

The Adventures & Brave Deeds Of The Ship's Cat On The Spanish Maine: Together With The Most Lamentable Losse Of The Alcestis & Triumphant Firing Of The Port Of Chagres

By Richard Adams

Ten Men

By Alexandra Gray

London Blues

By Anthony Frewin

A Crown of Swords

By Robert Jordan

Player Piano

By Kurt Vonnegut

Oyster

By Janette Turner Hospital

Sandry's Book

By Tamora Pierce

Brothers in Arms

By Don Perrin

Lowell Park

No Author Listed

Space

By James A. Michener