The setting is the fictional Missouri frontier town of Dawson''s Landing on the banks of the Mississippi River in the first half of the 19th century. David Wilson, a young lawyer, moves to town and a clever remark of his is misunderstood, which causes locals to brand him a "pudd''nhead"a nitwit. His hobby of collecting fingerprints does not raise his standing in the townsfolk''s eyes, who see him as an eccentric and do not frequent his law practice. Puddn''head Wilson moves into the background as the focus shifts to the slave Roxy, her son, and the family they serve. Roxy is only one-sixteenth black, and her son Valet de Chambre (referred to as "Chambers") is only 1/32 black. Roxy is principally charged with caring for her inattentive master''s infant son Tom Driscoll, who is the same age as her own son. After fellow slaves are caught stealing and are nearly sold "down the river", to a master further south, Roxy fears for her life and the life of her son. First she decides to kill herself and Chambers to avoid being sold down the river, but then decides instead to switch Chambers and Tom in their cribs so that her son will live a life of privilege. The narrative moves forward two decades, and Tom Driscoll (formerly Valet de Chambre), believing himself to be wholly white and raised as a spoiled aristocrat, has grown to be a selfish and dissolute young man. Tom''s father has died and granted Roxy her freedom. Roxy worked for a time on river boats, and saved money for her retirement. When she finally is able to retire, she discovers that her bank has failed and all of her savings are gone. She returns to Dawson''s Landing to ask for money from Tom. Tom meets Roxy with derision and Roxy tells him that he is her son, and uses this fact to blackmail him into financially supporting her. Twin Italian noblemen visit the town to some fanfare, a murder is committed, and the story takes on the form of a crime novel. "The reader knows from the beginning who committed the murder, and the story foreshadows how the crime will be solved. The circumstances of the denouement, however, possessed in its time great novelty, for fingerprinting had not then come into official use in crime detection in the United States. Even a man who fooled around with it as a hobby was thought to be a simpleton, a ''pudd''nhead''." (From Langston Hughes'' introduction to the novel) The story describes the racism of the antebellum south, even as to seemingly white people with minute traces of African ancestry, and the acceptance of that state of affairs by all involved, including the black population.

Pudd''nhead Wilson

Set in Brown''s hometown of Châteauguay, Quebec in Canada in 1975 when Brown was 15, the story opens in church, with Brown''s angel-demon (Brown''s id) cajoling him into buying a Playboy magazine he had seen for sale. He works up the courage to do it at a convenience store at a considerable distance from his house, hoping that at that distance he won''t be caught. After bringing the magazine home and masturbating over it, he disposes of it by hiding it under a plank of wood in the woods near his house. His building obsession battles his guilt, though, and eventually goes back for it, a binge and purge situation which repeats itself several times throughout the story, even into adulthood, when he alternately hunts down back issues of Playboy and disposes them over the guilt he feels or his fear of being found out by a girlfriend. His obsession so overcomes him that, even when his mother passes away while he is at camp, his first thought at returning home is to retrieve the Playboy he has hidden in the woods. As an adult, he hunts down back issues, and becomes something of a connoisseur of Playmates, memorizing dates and names. His obsession interferes with his relations with women, however—he admits that, while seeing one girlfriend, he could only maintain an erection for her by fantasizing about his favourite Playmates, and that he preferred masturbation to having sex with her. The story finishes with himself drawing the story we are reading. Though he knows his friends will be reading about it shortly, he still feels embarrassment, and is unable to talk about it with them face-to-face.

The Playboy: A Comic Book

The tale begins with three feline siblings &ndash; Mittens, Tom Kitten, and Moppet &ndash; tumbling about the doorstep and playing in the dust. Their mother, Mrs. Tabitha Twitchit, expects "fine company" for tea so she fetches the children indoors to wash and dress them before her friends arrive. Tom is "very naughty" and scratches his mother while she grooms him. Tabitha dresses Moppet and Mittens in clean pinafores and tuckers, and Tom in "all sorts of elegant uncomfortable clothes" taken from a chest of drawers. Tom is fat and bursts several buttons, but his mother sews them back on again. Tabitha turns her kittens into the garden to keep them out of the way while she makes hot buttered toast for the party. She tells them to keep their frocks clean, then returns to her work. Moppet and Mittens soon have their pinafores smeared with grass stains. They climb upon the garden wall and lose some of their clothing in the ascent. Tom has a more difficult time gaining the top of the wall "breaking the ferns, and shedding buttons right and left". He is dishevelled when he reaches the top of the wall, and loses his hat, but his sisters try to pull him together. The rest of his buttons burst. Three Puddle-ducks come marching along the road &ndash; "pit pat paddle pat! pit pat waddle pat!" Jemima Puddle-duck and Rebeccah put on some of the dropped clothing. The kittens lose the rest of their clothing descending the wall. Moppet invites Mr. Drake Puddle-duck to help dress Tom. He picks up various articles of Tom''s clothing and "he put[s] them on himself!" The three ducks set off up the road just as Tabitha approaches and discovers her three children with no clothes on. She pulls them off the wall, "smacks" them, and takes them back to the house. "My friends will arrive in a minute, and you are not fit to be seen; I am affronted!" she says. Tabitha sends her kittens upstairs, and tells her guests the kittens are in bed with the measles. However, "the dignity and repose of the tea party" is disturbed by the "very extraordinary noises overhead" as the playful kittens romp in a bedroom. An illustration depicts the bedroom in complete disorder and Tom in his mother''s bonnet. The author interrupts to promise the reader she will make a larger book about Tom some day. In the last pages, the Puddle-ducks have lost the kittens'' clothing in a pond, and they have been looking for them ever since.

The Tale of Tom Kitten

April Lady is the story of Nell Cardross the young beautiful wife of the Earl of Cardross. She is of a "good family", one that is accepted by high society, but nonetheless her father and brother spend freely and the family is known to be impoverished. Cardross, on the other hand, is significantly older and has been out in society for some time. Rich and handsome he could have his pick of the season''s débutantes. He falls for Nell on sight and, in spite of the warnings of his friends who are concerned about the gambling habits of her family, he proposes to her at once. Nell''s mother, who has "more hair than wit", tells Nell that Cardross wants an heir and wishes to marry into a good family. She also tells her that she must be a conformable wife and not trouble Cardross. Consequently Nell, who fell for her husband in the same instant he fell for her, keeps him at arm''s length until he starts to doubt her appeal. The couple dance at this misunderstanding for many months ably assisted by Cardross'' half-sister, her fiancé Jeremy, Nell''s brother Dysart and Cardross'' cousin Felix. Naturally the resolution is happy.

April Lady

Luxor, 1906-1907. The Emerson clan is trying to determine where to dig during the upcoming season. But before they even leave England, they encounter Sethos and foil an attempt to kidnap Amelia. Suspicion for the attempt falls on Sethos, but not everyone is sure. Upon arriving in Egypt, the children, Nefret, Ramses and David, now in their early twenties but still children to Amelia and Emerson, acquire a magnificent papyrus, but are also stalked. Is Sethos behind this too? Since Emerson has managed to annoy M. Maspero to the point of distraction, he is initially not even allowed near the Valley of the Kings, where another of Emerson’s rivals and targets of invective, Theodore M. Davis, has the rights to the entire valley. Much to everyone’s surprise (and possibly with Nefret’s help), Emerson is granted permission by Davis to clean up three tombs thought to be already excavated in full, KV3, KV4 and KV5. Not only does his rival Davis find yet another rich tomb, right next to the debris-filled and empty tomb he excavates, once again somebody is still after the Emersons—particularly, it seems, Amelia. But help is on the way, from surprising, or perhaps not so surprising, quarters.

The Ape Who Guards the Balance

The story begins with the Builders discussing what the Emberites should do when they are released from the city. The chief builder decides they should give them a piece of their own technology, but it is not found by the citizens of Ember because the vault door is covered by trees. Nine months later Lina Mayfleet and Doon Harrow are curious when a roamer comes into town with a mysterious book. They trade the roamer a match for the book and discover it only contains eight pages. On the front of the book the words "For the People of Ember" are printed in gold letters. Since they can''t make sense of the book, they decide to go back to Ember. When they return, a family of squatters has taken over the darkened city. The Troggs (Washton, Kanza, Minny, Yorick and an adopted boy called Scawgo, who are named after various American cities) believe they own Ember, and rename it Darkhold. They capture Doon while Lina goes back to Sparks for help. Meanwhile, Lizzie Bisco (from Ember), Torren Crane, and Kenny Parton (both from Sparks) realize that the two are gone, and decide to go and try to find them. They don''t succeed and a search party goes to look for them. While Doon is with the family they show him a diamond they found just outside Ember. Doon steals the diamond and escapes from Ember with help from Scawgo. While escaping, he also breaks the pipe connecting the generator to a waterwheel that created power for Ember, therefore shutting down Ember''s lights for good. He finds Lina, who is being attacked by a pack of wolves. Doon throws the diamond at the wolves to frighten them away but shatters it in the process. Lina treats his wound and takes Doon up to where the book with eight pages and the original diamond were discovered. They find a switch that uncovers shelves filled with hundreds of diamonds. Lina and Doon figure out that the diamonds are solar-powered sources of electricity. A lot of people decide to help them go back to Ember and look for other things to help in the winter. Doon thinks about going back to his old home and recover his book of bugs, but changes his mind, stating he can create a new one filled with the unique bugs in Sparks. Lina, however, looks for her drawings of her dream city at her old home but it isn''t there. She then goes to City Hall and stands on top of the mayor''s building and says "Goodbye Ember, forever." They bring back thousands of new inventions, which earns the town money and food to last the winter. A weary group of roamers, who are actually the Troggs, come into town one day, and the diamond is returned to them. But soon they learn the truth. There are hundreds (maybe thousands) of them and they can power all sorts of electronic devices as well as start fires. They also learned that Doon and many others lived in Ember before them, and that they left and evacuated because Ember was dying. So the Troggs come to live in Sparks as well. In the end, it is revealed that in the future, cities are rebuilt with the power of the diamonds and Lina, Doon, and Poppy all live together in a house in Sparks. It is revealed Lina and Doon are married,and have four kids named Mariana,Johnny, Pedro and Eliza. Lina gets a horse named Fleet and becomes a messenger between towns and Doon goes on to study the diamonds.

The Diamond of Darkhold

Set in 2030–2031, ten years after the events of Software, Wetware focuses on the attempt of an Edgar Allan Poe-obsessed bopper named Berenice to populate Earth with a robot/human hybrid called a meatbop. Toward this end, she implants an embryo in a human woman living on the Moon (Della Taze, Cobb Anderson''s niece) and then frames her for murder to force her to return to Earth. After only a few days, she gives birth to a boy named Manchile, who has been genetically programmed to carry bopper software in his brain (and in his sperm), and to grow to maturity in a matter of weeks. Berenice''s plan is for Manchile to announce the formation of a new religion unifying boppers and humans, and then arrange to have himself assassinated. (Rucker makes several allusions to the Christ story; Taze''s abbreviated pregnancy is discovered on Christmas Eve, for instance.) Before the assassination, Manchile impregnates several women, the idea being that his similarly accelerated offspring will create a race of meatbops at an exponential rate. The plot goes disastrously awry, and a human corporation called ISDN retaliates against the boppers by infecting them with a genetically modified organism called chipmold. The artificial disease succeeds in killing off the boppers, but when it infects the boppers'' outer coating, a kind of smart plastic known as flickercladding, it creates a new race of intelligent symbiotes known as moldies &mdash; thus fulfilling Berenice''s dream of an organic/synthetic hybrid. Both of the two main human characters of Software play prominent roles in Wetware: Cobb Anderson, whose robot body was destroyed at the end of the last novel, has his software implanted in a new body so he can help raise Manchile; while Sta-Hi Mooney &mdash; now known as Stahn Mooney &mdash; is now working as a private detective on the Moon after accidentally killing his wife, and is used as a pawn in various bopper and anti-bopper schemes. The Belle of Louisville, a steamboat of historic significance located in Louisville, Kentucky (the setting for the earthbound portions of the book), occurs as a character in the book, in which it is revealed that the steamer has been imbued with an onboard artificial intelligence.

Wetware

"He" wakes up on a prison ship, and discovers that "he" is a copy. But he receives another shock, as he discovers that he is in a woman''s body, a criminal named Qwin Zhang, who was mindwiped so that his recording could be inserted. He quickly learns that this is not an insurmountable problem, as the Warden powers on this planet are such that everyone has them, but it manifests itself as body swapping, a process that occurs when both parties are asleep. The Warden Organisms exchange information pertaining to memories and personality, so that if given sufficient time, the two sleepers will fully exchange bodies. The agent arranges to sleep next to a male during the newcomer orientation, and so has a male body again. He also learns that Cerberus is covered completely in water, with the only "land" being the tops of underwater trees that grow tall enough to extend beyond the water''s surface. Given that Cerberus is a world of white collar criminals, and that their technology is 20 years behind the times, "Qwin" can do quite well, and quickly establishes himself as "president" of a minor subsidiary of a large company. He does this with the help of Dylan Kohl, a boat captain, and Sanda Tyne, a host mother. Host mothering is an important profession, as the body swapping allows for people to live forever, so long as there are enough new bodies to swap with. After a series of improbable adventures that gain him the position of company president, he attempts to carry out his mission of assassinating Wagant Laroo, the Lord of Cerberus. In the process of this, he comes across Dr. Dumonia, a psychologist who is later revealed to be a part-time Confederacy agent, though not especially loyal at all times. Qwin also learns that the human imitating robots are given human minds on Cerberus, specifically on Wagant''s island. With the help of his friends, he manages to get on that island, and even arranges to come up with the solution to a problem of Wagant''s. The problem Wagant had was that the robots are better in every way, and nearly immortal and invulnerable. But Wagant does not want to put his mind into one, as the aliens who provide the robots have hidden commands in them that make the person the slave of the aliens. Not being able to get rid of those commands, Wagant accepts Qwin''s help in getting rid of those commands. Qwin does so by asking his over-Agent in the picket ship to do so, which not only gets him in good with Wagant, but lets the Confederacy have a sample of the robot body and brain for examination. Wagant, while very untrusting of Qwin, does eventually transfer his mind into the body of a "cleared" robot. What Wagant doesn''t realize is that it wasn''t quite fully cleared, and when Qwin recites a Lewis Carroll poem in front of him, it places Wagant under Qwin''s complete control. Thus assassination is not necessary, as Qwin and Dumonia are in effect the rulers of Cerberus. The book closes with the Agent in the picket ship feeling more concerned, as he saw himself change again, this time putting other people above his own needs and mission. This increases his turmoil and soul searching. The saga continues in the third book of the series, called Charon: A Dragon at the Gate.

Cerberus: A Wolf in the Fold

When Zena, Manny, and Joe move into the cinder-block cottage next door, Barney is intrigued by their glamorous, exotic lifestyle. His fascination grows when Zena introduces Barney to their favorite pastime: Interstellar Pig, a board game in which the key objective is to finish the game with the Piggy card in hand. Zena quickly briefs him on the rules: each player picks their character from a box of cards depicting different aliens. Every alien race has their own strengths, weaknesses, and IRSC (Interstellar Relative Sapience Code, with lower numbers favorable). When the time runs out, every home planet will be obliterated except the one belonging to the holder of the Piggy. Barney is amazed when the neighbors keep choosing the same character cards: Joe repeatedly picks water-breathing Jrlb; Zena always chooses Zulma, an arachnoid nymph; and Manny always picks Moyna, an octopus-like gas bag. While snooping through Zena''s underwear drawer, Barney finds a manuscript written by Captain Lantham&mdash;the same Captain who had built the house that Barney and his parents were renting&mdash;telling of the event that caused his brother to go crazy. At sea, the Captain rescued a man floating in the ocean, described as having a "leathery, greenish, reptilian hide" due to sunburn and a "swollen contusion", "yellow and filmed with slime" on his forehead. Insisting that the man is the Devil, the Captain''s brother strangles him&mdash;and in punishment, is keelhauled. Although he survives, his mind is damaged due to the oxygen deprivation, and he spends the rest of his life locked in his room (which later became Barney''s bedroom), scratching patterns into the wooden walls and clinging to the strange trinket he had taken from the murdered man''s corpse. That night Barney begins to see a pattern in the marks the Captain''s brother had sawed in the walls of his bedroom: all the scratches centered on a particular rock on a nearby island. Remembering the trinket "to which [the brother] clung as he was pulled from the water, to which he still clings", Barney decides to go out to the boulder and see if the trinket had been hidden there. He finds a small, silver, round object: There was a face carved in this side, nothing but a rigid, slightly smiling mouth under a single wide-open eye... Crude as it was, the thing seemed alive. And it was the brutal wrongness of it, the mouth smiling with such placid idiocy, noseless, under the solitary gaping eye, that made the face so repellent. The Piggy. Barney realizes that the game is real, the clock is running, and his neighbors—aliens in disguise—will do anything to get the Piggy. Each tries to bribe him with a unique incentive, similar to the Judgement of Paris, but Barney turns them down. Unfortunately by doing so, he&#39;s just entered the real game as a player representing the human race. As Barney hurries to select his weapons and equipment before a horde of aliens descend on his cottage, he makes the startling discovery that he shares a psychic link to the Piggy. The Piggy tells him that it created the game so that it could be loved and appreciated, despite its tendency to detonate whole planets (and their surrounding solar systems) from time to time when it hiccups. Barney concludes that the object of the game is backwards, and it is only the possessor of the Piggy that will be blown up. Minutes before his home is destroyed, Barney concocts a plan to pass the Piggy off to another player convincingly enough so that it won&#39;t arouse suspicion. He tells the carnivorous lichen where to find the Piggy. However, as they approach it he realizes that the same logical inconsistency exists with the Piggy&#39;s version of the story. He decides that the only explanation that makes sense is that the Piggy created both stories in order to learn about new people. He abandons the Piggy and lets the lichen board their spaceship home, drawing off the other alien players. Once they depart, no damage is done to either the lichen or to Earth.

Interstellar Pig

Terry Anders is a fourteen year old boy who lives in Cleveland, Ohio. His parents are constantly fighting and arguing. One day, his mom calls saying she has left his dad. During the evening of the same day, his dad calls saying he has left his mom. Therefore, Terry was left alone. Terry then built a car that his dad got from his job being a mechanic to drive to Oregon to live with an uncle. After his first day of driving, he comes upon a man named Waylon Jackson who was a Vietnam war veteran. Together they set out to Omaha to visit Waylon''s friend, Wayne Holtz. When they arrive in Omaha, Wayne installs a turbocharger into the kit-car and he joins the journey on a Harley-Davidson he named Baby. They then travel to South Dakota to visit their friend, Samuel. Samuel is a very old man who speaks about random historical facts. While they were there, he talks about the Civil War and General Custer. Their next stop takes them to a small town, still in South Dakota. There, Waylon plays poker and wins $6,000 or $7,000. He then gives $6,000 each to Wayne and Terry. The threesome continues to travel west. In a fast-food place in Wyoming, they come upon four cocky cow boys. After taunting Waylon, he beats one of them up and rushes out to the car with Wayne and Terry. They continue west being chased by the bullriders. Eventually, they stop and proceed to beat the rest of them up. However, the police were on their trail so Terry escaped, because Wayne and Waylon said that they can handle business, and Terry should get away from the police due to being underage. Heading west for a little while, the novel ends as Terry turns around and decides to help out Waylon and Wayne.

The Car

Etain Tur-Mukan finally tells Darman that her son, Kad Skirata, who is under the guise of Kal Skirata''s grandchild from one of his biological children, is also Darman''s son. Though Darman is angered by this initially for Etain and Skirata keeping this from him, he finally starts to spend time with Etain and Kad during their "quiet" moments when he and Etain are not out in battle in the Clone Wars. Skirata becomes a wanted in the Old Republic because of him falsely stating that he killed Kaminoan geneticist Ko Sai, who played a major role in creating the Jango Fett clones, and then stole her data. And during that time, Skirata manages to bust Ovolot Qail Uthan, Separatist scientist imprisoned three years earlier by Omega Squad for trying to create a Fett clone virus, from prison because Skirata believes that despite her actions, he sees her as the ultimate key to giving the Fett clones a normal life span, since their life spans are lengthened by double the time (e.g., if they are chronologically two years old, then they''re biologically four years old, etc.). Along with busting Uthan from prison is Arla Fett, Jango Fett''s long lost insane sister, and Ruusaan Skirata, Kal''s biological daughter. Meanwhile, Besany Wennen, Republic Treasury agent who is now married to one of Skirata''s clones, Ordo, is almost caught by the authorities for sneaking into data files to find out the Republic''s plan for the clones in the near future of the war. However, the Gurlanins, who have reclaimed their home planet of Qiilura from the colonist humans under the machinations of Etain, decide to repay the debt by framing Besany''s friend, Jilka Zan Zentis, for the crime. However, under Skirata''s hand, Jilka is set free from the authorities, a wanted fugitive now, and under Skirata''s band. But just when Skirata''s plans for bringing a positive future for his clone adopted sons seem to come into fruition, Chancellor Palpatine enacts Order 66, which means that all clones must kill off their Jedi commanders. Etain managed to have renounced her Jedi ways prior to Order 66''s enactment and married Darman in a traditional Mandalorian way over a comm message. But Etain is trapped on a bridge on Coruscant with many other citizens of the Republic by clone troopers who are scanning for any Jedi to be killed in the crowd. Skirata, Darman and Skirata''s other clones arrive to extract Etain, but Jedi are found among the crowd. And during the ensuing battle, Etain protects a clone from being killed by a Jedi wielding a lightsaber, and she is killed from the wound. Darman''s fellow clone brother, Niner, is wounded from the battle when his spine is broken, and clones extract Niner to heal him up, with Darman following along to stay with his wounded brother, now that he is grieving for his lost wife. Skirata and all the others leave Coruscant and head for the Mandalorian home planet of Mandalore just as the Clone Wars come to an end, along with the Jedi Order thanks to Order 66 and of the Republic, being replaced by Palpatine''s self-promotion to Emperor of the new Galactic Empire. As for Darman and Niner, they are now Imperial Commandos.

Star Wars Republic Commando: Order 66

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.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

Pudd'nhead Wilson

By Mark Twain

The Playboy: A Comic Book

No Author Listed

The Tale of Tom Kitten

By Beatrix Potter

April Lady

By Georgette Heyer

The Ape Who Guards the Balance

By Barbara Mertz

The Diamond of Darkhold

By Jeanne DuPrau

Wetware

By Rudy Rucker

Cerberus: A Wolf in the Fold

By Jack L. Chalker

Interstellar Pig

By William Sleator

The Car

By Gary Paulsen

Star Wars Republic Commando: Order 66

By Karen Traviss

Murder at School

By James Hilton