At the beginning of the novel several characters formerly seen in Huntingtower and Castle Gay are about to go to Europe for the summer, for a number of different reasons: Mr McCunn going to a German Kurhaus for his health, Alison to join her parents in the Tirol, the Roylances to attend a dull conference in Geneva, Jaikie on a walking tour, Dougal on a mission for his newspaper. Jaikie meets Randal Glynde who encourages him to visit Evallonia, which is on the verge of a revolution, and arranges for him to meet Prince Odalchini at his castle, "The House of the Four Winds". On the way he meets Ashie, a friend from Cambridge who is now a leader of the third element in the Evallonian political scene, Juventus, a cross between a youth group and a national revival movement. The Juventus people, like the Monarchists, want to overthrow the corrupt and unpopular government, but see young Prince John as a puppet of the conservatives, "the old gang". Jaikie eventually agrees to act as a secret liaison between the two groups. Meanwhile Alison and the Roylances have rescued Prince John from Mastrovin. They bring him into Evallonia in disguise. Dickson McCunn, informed of the situation by Dougal and feeling obliged by his promise to Prince John to lend a hand, joins the Monarchists and proposes a shrewd scheme for inducing Juventus to back Prince John. Mishaps and the machinations of Mastrovin lead to dangerous complications before the prince attains the throne.

The House of the Four Winds

At the start of the novel, Evelyn, a male English professor is taking up a new post in a university in New York. His tribute to Tristessa de St Ange, the American silent movie star, on his last night in England is to be given fellatio by a girl he takes to see one of her films. He arrives in a dystopian New York, a city in its last stages of rotting death, overrun by huge rats and human emotions distilled to their most primeval. He becomes fascinated with Leilah, an exotic young African American night club dancer, and while they have a short relationship he makes no emotional link, seeing her only in terms of sex. He becomes repelled by her when she falls pregnant and abandons her to an abortion. Evelyn seeks out the clean, clear desert and is captured by a woman from the subterranean female city of Beulah and dragged across the sandscape to encounter Mother, a cruel mother goddess figure who fashioned herself with the surgeon''s knife. She changes Evelyn into Eve, ironically the woman who he has always lusted after, and aims to impregnate him with a new Messiah, using his own sperm (harvested from him before the operation). The transformation from male to female, seems to be absolute as despite the fact that Eve struggles to learn to become the woman that her body is, from this point on she is referred to only in female pronouns. Eve, escapes but is enslaved by Zero, a cruel male cult leader and "poet" with only one eye and one leg&mdash;a half man who celebrates his degraded self. His harem are all passive, slavish "wives" who he whips unless they talk in grunts and honour their bedfellows, the pigs. Zero rapes Eve and makes her his newest wife. He then leads Eve on a search for the silent film star Tristessa, an embodiment of beauty, sorrow, and loneliness, whom he hates obsessively, because he believes Tristessa has made him infertile. Tristessa was Evelyn''s first object of desire in his boyhood, and Eve has his own obsession with this figure. Zero leads his dungaree-clad harem to the glass palace of Tristessa and invades and decimates the beautiful, gothic pile, discovering Tristessa herself laid out in a room surrounded by waxwork effigies in coffins. However she is alive and only when Zero tracks her down to the top of one of the towers and cuts her thong do the gang discover that Tristessa is male. Upon discovering this, Zero and his wives create a mock-up wedding ceremony and marry the two, forcing Tristessa to rape Eve. Eve and Tristessa escape and spin the Zero and his harem to death in Tristessa''s spinning glass palace and escape back into the desert where they imbibe each other''s newly discovered sexuality, they fall in love through their realisation that they are Tiresias until Tristessa is shot by a passing band of desert, mafia, teenage boys. Their Colonel is 14 years old and scared of the dark. They "rescue" Eve, but she escapes and encounters Leila in a new guise of Lilith, vagabond rebel leader. Lilith takes Eve to the coast to meet with Mother again, here they see a crazy old lady on a beach&mdash;a manifestation of ageing superficiality: dirty, caked in make-up, with piled high golden locks, singing old musical songs and living on vodka and cold tinned food and defecating in the bushes behind her deck chair. Eve realises that Leilah never objectively existed but was only a manifestation of his own lusts and corruption. Lilith tells Eve she must go and meet The Mother and pushes her into a cleft in the rocks that metamorphoses into the uterus of time. Eve progresses through the increasingly deep and warm subterranean rock pools to her rebirth. The amber Eve discovers in one of the caves and holds in her hands liquifies into ancient pine forests and primeval species. Eve is then symbolically reborn, guided by Leilah, and rejects her chauvinistic male past. Eve emerges onto a beach by Lilith, (name taken from the apocryphal story of Adam''s first wife) who leaves her to go back and fight with her rebels, saying Eve cannot join her because she is pregnant. Eve swaps the gold alchemical on a neck chain that Lilith has given her for the purple skiff belonging to the crazed old woman and launches herself into the ocean.

The Passion of New Eve

O Guarany is set back in 1604, a period when Portugal and its colonies submitted to Spanish dominion due to a lack of heirs to ascend to the throne. Alencar takes advantage of this dynastic complication to resurrect the historical figure of D. Antônio de Mariz, a nobleman connected to the foundation of the city of Rio de Janeiro and a pioneer settler. This historical (factual) background, which orients the novel throughout, is set in the first two chapters; then fantasy, both violent and erotic, starts to prevail. D. Antônio establishes himself in a deserted inland region, a few days’ travel from the seaside city of Rio. The land was granted to him through his services to the Portuguese crown, whose legitimacy the nobleman now distrusts. To be politically independent (if not economically) and keep to the Portuguese codes of honour, he builds a castle-like house to shelter his family in Brazilian soil where he lives like a feudal lord with his family and retainers. His family consists of his severe wife D. Lauriana, his angelic fair, blue-eyed daughter Cecília, his dandyish son D. Diogo and the ‘niece’ Isabel, a cabocla who is in fact his illegitimate daughter by an Indian woman. Other people are also attached to his household, a few loyal servants, forty adventurers/mercenaries kept for protection, the young nobleman Álvaro de Sá, an appropriate suitor for his lawful daughter Cecília, and Peri, an Indian of the Guaraní people, who once saved Cecy’s life (as the romantic/romanticised Indian endearingly calls Cecília) and who has since deserted his tribe and family. Peri is the hero who gives title to the book, he is treated as a friend by D. Antônio and Ceci and as a nuisance by Mrs. Mariz and Isabel. The life of the characters is altered by the arrival of the adventurer Loredano (former friar Angelo di Lucca) who insinuates himself into the house and soon starts subverting the other vassals, planning to kidnap Cecília and scheming against the house of Mariz; along with the accidental murder of an Aimoré Indian woman by D. Diogo.

O Guarany

Garrett is relaxing at the Joy House with Saucerhead and Morley Dotes, when Belinda Contague, daughter of Kingpin Chodo Contague, stumbles into the bar. She is attacked by a wizened old man who spits butterflies from his mouth and tries to kidnap Belinda in his black stagecoach. As strange as this is, Garrett moves on to his next job, tailing a religious crackpot by the name of Barking Dog Amato. This job, however, takes a backseat when Captain Westman Block comes knocking at Garrett''s door. Block needs Garrett''s help to solve a series of grisly murders, in which upper class young ladies are being strung up and gutted in strange, ritualistic killings. Garrett soon realizes that the attempted kidnapping of Belinda Contague is connected to the murders. Garrett and Morley then go pay the owner of the coach a visit, and in a bungled sleuthing attempt, Garrett ends up killing the serial killer. Figuring that the case is closed, Garrett finds time to spend on Barking Dog Amato, but before he can get going, Captain Block comes by to inform Garrett that there has been another murder. It seems that there is a curse associated with the murders, so that killing the murderer does not prevent the rise of a new serial killer. Even when Garrett and Block find the new killer, the curse spreads again. Meanwhile, Garrett finds out that Chodo Contague suffered a stroke during his encounter with the Serpent in Dread Brass Shadows, and Crask and Sadler are ruling the crime world in his stead. Belinda Contague, fearing Crask and Sadler, seeks out Garrett for help; Belinda is also in danger of being slain by the cursed serial killer. When Block and Garrett, along with Relway, an up-and-coming member of the Watch, find the new bearer of the curse, he escapes yet again. Ultimately, after a final plot twist, the curse is broken, and Belinda Contague overthrows Crask and Sadler and takes over as ruler of the underworld, using her father as a figurehead. Finally, as a gag gift, Morley gives Garrett an annoying talking parrot, which takes a major role in later Garrett novels.

Red Iron Nights

Oakington is one of the lesser-known public schools in England, and Dr Roseveare, its headmaster, has been trying hard for seven years to improve its reputation. When, in the winter term of 1927-1928, one of the pupils is killed in his sleep by an old gas fitting falling down from the ceiling he contacts Colin Revell, an Old Boy, to discreetly investigate the matter. Not entirely convinced that there was no foul play involved but unable to pin down a motive on anyone, Revell leaves again after a few weeks, and most of the evidence is destroyed by the installation of electricity in the whole building. A few months later Revell is shocked to learn that the deceased boy''s brother has also died under mysterious circumstances&mdash;he seems to have jumped into the school''s indoor swimming pool late at night after the water had been drained&mdash;and travels to Oakington of his own accord. Now it turns out that the closest relative of the two brothers, who have been orphans for years, is actually a teacher at Oakington, and that he stands to inherit a small fortune. At the same time Revell falls in love with that teacher''s beautiful young wife.

Murder at School

The book opens with Peter Parker being forced to be a substitute basketball coach at the high school where he teaches science. He is challenged by Samuel Larkin, a star basketball player, who refuses to work with the other players. Peter soon finds out that Samuel never got the regular and required vaccines, and will be suspended and therefore unable to play for the rest of the season, making it nigh-impossible to get into a good university. After coaching, Peter returns home to find that Mary Jane Watson got a part as Lady Macbeth, but since the show is playing in Atlantic City, she bought a car, despite not knowing how to drive. As they are discussing Peter teaching her, The Rhino attacks Times Square, and Spider-Man is needed. As he swings to the battle, Felicia Hardy, otherwise known as "The Black Cat", tells him that he is in danger and the Rhino''s attack is a trap. Spider-Man swings on, and easily defeats the Rhino. After he knocks him unconscious, the three vengeful siblings of Morlun (Thanis, Malos, and Mortia), appear and say that Spider-Man caused the death of their brother. Spider-Man evades them until a SWAT team appears. In the end, it is Mary-Jane who defeats the siblings. Already angry that she can''t help Peter like Felicia can, Mary-Jane is enraged by what the siblings are putting her husband through. she defeats them by driving into them with her car. Another Marvel Comics character, Doctor Strange is included in the novel as a figure from whom the wall-crawler seeks assistance.

Spider-Man: The Darkest Hours

The work outlines Augustine''s sinful youth and his conversion to Christianity. It is widely seen as the first Western autobiography ever written, and was an influential model for Christian writers throughout the following 1000 years of the Middle Ages. It is not a complete autobiography, as it was written in his early 40s, and he lived long afterwards, producing another important work (City of God); it does, nonetheless, provide an unbroken record of his development of thought and is the most complete record of any single person from the 4th and 5th centuries. It is a significant theological work. In the work St. Augustine writes about how much he regrets having led a sinful and immoral life. He discusses his regrets for following the Manichaean religion and believing in astrology. He writes about Nebridius''s role in helping to persuade him that astrology was not only incorrect but evil, and St. Ambrose''s role in his conversion to Christianity. The first nine books are autobiographical and the last four are commentary. He shows intense sorrow for his sexual sins, and writes on the importance of sexual morality. The books were written as prayers to God, thus the title, based on the Psalms of David; and it begins with "For Thou has made us for thyself and our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee" . The work is thought to be divisible into books which symbolize various aspects of the Trinity and trinitarian belief.

The Confessions of St. Augustine

The story takes place in the 1840s up to 1850. The first part of the novel describes the hardships faced by rural families in Sweden. Karl Oskar Nilsson and his wife, Kristina, own a farm in Ljuder Socken in Småland. They have four children and work hard to make a living, but the poor harvests lead to famine, a catalyst for the beginnings of emigration to the United States in search of a better life. Karl Oskar and his brother Robert want to go, but Kristina doesn''t want to leave her home country, knowing that she will never see the rest of their family again. But after the death of their oldest child, she accepts her husband''s plans when she realizes that they are in just as much danger from their lives in Sweden as on the big sea and in a New World. They pack up all their belongings and book passage in a group with others from their parish. The characters illustrate some of the motives that prompted people to leave Sweden in the 19th century. The travelers include: * Karl-Oskar, Kristina and their four children - seeking to escape poverty and famine and finding a place where their work pays off. * Robert, Karl Oskar''s adventurous brother - landless, as the second son of a farmer whose holding is too small to sub-divide. He seeks escape from the harsh conditions of hired farm help. * Danjel Andreasson with family, Kristina''s uncle, who had been banished from the country due to his religious "delusions". The state Lutheran church was very powerful, and dissent, even in the simple form of home Bible study, was not tolerated. They bring their farmhand Arvid, who is a friend of Robert. * Jonas Petter Albrektsson, who seeks to escape from an unhappy marriage at a time when divorce was not possible. * Ulrika of Västergöhl, a former prostitute, looking to leave her past behind and start afresh with her daughter Elin. The second part of the book tells how they board the ship in Karlshamn, and then how the life goes on during the ten weeks they spend on board - battling sea-sickness and scurvy, before finally reaching New York City in midsummer of 1850. sv:Utvandrarna (bok)

The Emigrants

With Her in Ourland begins where its predecessor Herland ends: Vandyck Jennings, his newlywed Herlandian wife Ellador, and the exiled Terry Nicholson proceed by airplane and motor launch away from Herland and back to the outside world. (Ourland is narrated by the Jennings character.) At an unnamed Eastern seaport, the three board a ship for the United States. Their craft is battered by a storm, however; the three travelers take alternative passage on a Swedish ship that is heading to Europe. This detour brings Van and Ellador into contact with World War I, then raging; and Ellador is devastated by the carnage and horrors of the conflict. This new dark knowledge inaugurates Ellador''s education in the nature of the male-dominated world beyond Herland. Van praises the quality of her intellect &mdash; though he regularly finds himself discomfitted as Ellador''s penetrating mind examines the logical lapses and the moral and ethical failures of human society. Ellador pursues a detailed understanding of the world, interviewing and studying with historians and other experts (while keeping the existence of her own society secret). Van and Ellador take a long journey on their way to Van''s home in the United States; they travel through the Mediterranean to Egypt, and then eastward through Persia and India, China and Japan. On the way, Ellador examines the differing customs of the cultures they visit. By the middle of the book, Van and Ellador arrive in San Francisco, and Ellador begins her study of American conditions. Van is forced to confront and recognize many of the inadequacies and contradictions of American culture through Ellador''s patient, objective, relentless scrutiny; in the process, Gilman can advocate her own feminist program of social reform. Van has to confront the fact that Ellador''s view of America rattles his previously "unshaken inner conviction of our superiority." The novel concludes with the return of Ellador and Van to Herland; they settle there, and in time Ellador gives birth to a son.

With Her in Ourland: Sequel to Herland

In the novel, Harley Hudson, the affable but inept Vice President from Advise and Consent, is now president and seeking a term of his own against a backdrop of Soviet-instigated war, as the Soviet Union backs rebel governments in Panama and in the fictitious African republic of Gorotoland. Hudson responds with U.S. troops in both countries, and the conflicts soon bog down. The election season soon turns on these foreign policy questions, with the media and others seeking a peace candidate &mdash; and finding it in the popular but weak-willed Governor Ted Jason of California. Having announced his candidacy late, Hudson announces an open contest for the Vice Presidential nomination, in which Secretary of State Orrin Knox, who supports Hudson''s policies, opposes Jason. The media, who had supported Jason heavily when it looked like it would be a Knox-Jason race for the Presidential nomination, continues its effort for a Jason victory by any means they can. At the convention in San Francisco, extreme elements of the Left and Right combine to support Jason, and there are several violent incidents, including one in which Knox''s daughter-in-law is brutally attacked. When it becomes clear that the convention is split down the middle in fights over the platform, Jason challenges Hudson for the Majority Party''s nomination (the novels never use the proper names "Republican" or "Democrat" but the descriptions of Majority Party corresponds strongly to the Democrats of the 1960s). The media, meantime, spins merrily away, filtering what the country is allowed to see and hear from San Francisco. Ceil Jason, the Governor''s wife, leaves him when her husband''s lack of principle and willingness to tolerate the violence sinks in to her. Hudson wins narrowly, and Jason expects the Vice Presidential nomination since he commands the support of almost half the convention. Hudson seems amenable, and places Jason on the dais as he makes his acceptance speech. Hudson humiliates Jason by making it clear that he considers Jason a panderer, and states he will accept Knox, and only Knox, as his running mate. The convention duly nominates Knox, but almost half its delegates walk out, to the pleasure of the media commentators, who predict a third-party convention from among the disaffected delegates.

Capable of Honor

; Act I Clive, a British colonial administrator, lives with his family, a governess and servant during turbulent times in Africa. The natives are rioting and Mrs Saunders, a widow, comes to them to seek safety. Her arrival is soon followed by Harry Bagley, an explorer. Clive makes passionate advances to Mrs Saunders, his wife Betty fancies Harry, who secretly has sex with the servant Joshua and Clive''s son Edward. The governess Ellen, who reveals herself to be a lesbian, is forced into marriage with Harry after his sexuality is discovered and condemned by Clive. Act 1 ends with the wedding celebrations; the final scene is Clive giving a speech while Joshua is pointing a gun at him. ; Act II Although Act 2 is set in 1979, some of the characters of Act 1 are reappearing – for them only 25 years have passed. Betty has left Clive, her daughter Victoria is now married to an overbearing Martin, and Edward has an openly gay relationship with Gerry. Victoria, upset and distant from Martin, starts a lesbian relationship with Lin. When Gerry leaves Edward, Edward, who discovers he is in fact bisexual, moves in with his sister and Lin. The three of them have a drunken ceremony in which they call up the Goddess, and after that characters from Act 1 begin appearing in Act 2. Act 2 has a looser structure than Act 1, and Churchill played around with the ordering of the scenes. The final scene shows that Victoria has left Martin for a ménage à trois with Edward and Lin, and they are sharing custody of their son Tommy. Gerry and Edward are on good terms again, and Betty becomes friends with Gerry, who tells her about Edward''s sexuality.

Cloud Nine

The novel begins on the fifth birthday of Jack, who lives with his Ma in Room, a small enclosed space containing a small kitchen, a bathtub, a wardrobe, a bed and a TV set. Since it is all he has ever known, Jack likes living in Room and believes that it constitutes the real world, while everything he sees on TV is completely separate and not real. Jack and his Ma are "looked after" by Old Nick (so called for his satanic traits). He visits Room on most nights (via a door secured with an electric combination lock) to bring food and to go to bed with Ma while Jack sleeps in the wardrobe. Ma tries her best to keep Jack healthy via both physical and mental exercises, keeping a healthy diet, limiting TV watching time, and strict body and oral hygiene. She herself suffers from severe toothaches and has to take painkillers regularly. A week after Jack''s birthday, Ma learns that Old Nick has been unemployed for six months. Combined with an incident in which Jack startles Old Nick during the night, causing him to behave violently towards Ma and cut the power in Room for several days, this prompts her to decide that maintaining the status quo is too dangerous. She tells Jack that much of what he sees on TV is part of the real world outside Room, which Jack finds conceptually hard to believe. Ma recalls how she was abducted from college at the age of 19, had another child before Jack (a baby girl), who died at birth because the umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck, and how Old Nick broke Ma''s wrist during an unsuccessful escape attempt. She decides that she and Jack have to escape as soon as possible, and that the only workable plan is to simulate Jack''s death, that night she demands that Old Nick take Jack to a hospital, because he is "sick", Old Nick refuses, afraid that the boy will inform the authorities about Room, so he leaves, the next night, Ma wraps Jack in their rug, and she convinces Old Nick to dispose of the wrapped body in a remote location, and on the way there have Jack escape and alert the authorities. The plan is executed and works out okay. Jack jumps off the truck a few blocks away from "Room", but Old Nick hears him and chases him up the street, Jack runs to a man named Ajeet,and his dog Raja bites Jack on the finger, Then old Nick catches up to Jack and grabs him by the waist, Ajeet is afraid for Jack so he pretends to call the police, Old Nick releases Jack and runs to his truck and drives away. Then Ajeet really calls the police. The officers quickly realize the seriousness of the case and, despite communication problems, Jack manages to give them enough information to locate Room and free Ma. The two were taken to a mental hospital, where they get medical care and Ma is reunited with her family, not entirely without conflicts. It is revealed that since Ma''s abduction, her parents are now divorced, and her older brother is married with a three year-old daughter. Old Nick is found and faces several charges of abduction, rape, and child-endangerment that will likely lead to twenty-five years to life in jail. Jack however, has problems coping with the suddenly much larger world and wants to return to Room. Meanwhile, the case has attracted much attention from the public and the mass media, making it even harder for Jack and his mother to start leading a normal life. After a television interview that ends badly, Ma suffers a mental breakdown and Jack lives with his grandmother for some days. During this time Jack becomes even more confused by his surroundings, including his new extended family. Being separated from Ma is hard on Jack, but he slowly starts to adjust to the many changes in his life. Eventually, Ma and Jack move into an Independent Living residence. Jack gets his own room, and comes to accept the drastic changes in young life. At Jack''s request, they go on a last visit to Room where Jack says goodbye to the items that used to make up his world, ending the book on a happy note.

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The House of the Four Winds

By John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir

The Passion of New Eve

By Angela Carter

O Guarany

By José de Alencar

Red Iron Nights

By Glen Cook

Murder at School

By James Hilton

Spider-Man: The Darkest Hours

By Jim Butcher

The Confessions of St. Augustine

By Augustine of Hippo

The Emigrants

By Vilhelm Moberg

With Her in Ourland: Sequel to Herland

By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Capable of Honor

By Allen Drury

Cloud Nine

By Caryl Churchill

Room

By Emma Donoghue