It is a time of turmoil. A time when the horrors of war engulf and extinguish the Germany that is. Harald Winter had two sons at this time: Peter and Pauli Winter, two very different brothers, whose lives—whose destinies—are forever bound to the madness that lies ahead. From their sheltered childhood through their violent coming of age in the Great War... from the chaos of 1920''s Berlin to the spreading power of Hitler... they are wrenched apart by conflicting ideals and ambitions. Blood brothers, now mortal enemies, they are trapped in a holocaust that threatens to tear them - and the world - to pieces. Since the entire story unfolds as a flashback from the time of the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials after the Nazis'' defeat, the readers know that both would make a career as lawyers, but in widely divergent directions: one would enter the Nazi Party and think up various "legal" ways to legitimise their crimes, while the other brother would be a staunch anti-Nazi, go into exile and come back to Germany after the war as a member of the American war crimes prosecution. But the reader cannot be sure, until deep in the book''s plot, which is which.

Winter

Old Mombi, formerly the Wicked Witch of the North, is now a cook in the land of Kimbaloo. One day she comes across Pajuka, the former prime minister of Oz, enchanted by Mombi into a goose years before. She sets out to find Pastoria, the king of Oz, whom she also enchanted in the past. She kidnaps a local boy called Snip as her unwilling assistant and bearer of burdens. Eventually deciding, however, that he knows too much, Mombi throws Snip down a well; he ends up in Blankenburg, populated by the invisible Blanks. Snip meets and soon rescues Tora, an amnesiac old tailor. Tora has been held prisoner for many years by the Blanks, to do their tailoring; he has compensated by sending his detachable ears flying about the countryside to hear the news. Meanwhile, Dorothy is accidentally transported to Hollywood, where she meets Humpy, a live stunt dummy, whom she brings back to Oz. They escape the Back Talkers in Eht Kcab Sdoow (by running backwards), and meet the Scooters who help scoot them on their way. Kabumpo the Elegant Elephant shows up to provide transport (of the mandane sort). Dorothy''s party encounters Snip and Tora, and Mombi and Pajuka too. They come to the conclusion that Humpy the dummy is the enchanted Pastoria. Eventually, matters are clarified and settled: Pajuka is restored to humanity, but Humpy proves not to be the missing king after all. Old Tora is disenchanted and turns out to be Pastoria. He spurns any notion of returning to his throne, however; he is content to settle down as a humble tailor in the Emerald City, with Snip as his apprentice and Humpy as his tailor''s dummy. In a rare act of Ozite capital punishment, Mombi is ruthlessly doused with water and melts away like the Wicked Witch of the West, so that nothing is left of her but her buckled shoes.

The Lost King of Oz

Wedge Antilles, fresh back from the Bacta War on Thyferra, decides to make a new fighter squadron/commando team. While pitching the idea to Admiral Ackbar, he proposes a way to build the squadron without any cost to the New Republic: he''ll use screw-ups, wash-outs, and pilots who are a hair''s breadth of being kicked out of Fighter Command&mdash;the pilots that no one else will take. Whilst Rogue Squadron was compiled from elite pilots with ground fighting expertise as a secondary, this new squadron was to be consisted of expert ground combatants with piloting skills as a secondary. Antilles, with help from Wes Janson, scrounges up a team that comes to be known as Wraith Squadron: *Jesmin Ackbar, communications expert and the niece of Admiral Ackbar *Hohass "Runt" Ekwesh, a Thakwaash with multiple personalities *Garik "Face" Loran, a former Imperial child-recruitment actor *Voort "Piggy" SaBinring, a Gamorrean pilot *Kell Tainer, the son of a Rebel pilot that Janson was forced to kill and a demolitions expert *Myn Donos, the sole surviving pilot of an Imperial ambush to his Talon squadron *Ton Phanan, former doctor and part mechanical *Falynn Sandskimmer, vehicle specialist from Tatooine with chronic insolence *Tyria Sarkin, former Antari Ranger with minor Force abilities *Eurrsk "Grinder" Thri''ag, an expert code slicer and prankster The novel focuses on Wraith Squadron''s antics as it goes undercover as the crew of Night Caller, an Imperial blockade runner under the employ of Warlord Zsinj.

Wraith Squadron

is a parody of young adult horror fiction. It is about three high school girls, Danielle, Brooke and Tiffany, popular, privileged and malicious. They are known as the Huns of Cliffside High. A beautiful foreign exchange student from Norway named Helga steals their spotlight and grabs the attention of the school stud Drew. They become insanely jealous and accuse Helga of being a ghost because of her pale skin and light hair. Determined to win their popularity back, the girls conjure up numerous ways to torture Helga. However, every time the girls try to "mess up" Helga in some way, a strong force holds them back. For example, when she tries to cut off Helga''s hair, Brooke becomes completely paralyzed and limp. The paralysis does go away, but they soon begin to notice other changes. Tiffany complains of severe pain in her knuckles and also develops a bladder problem, forcing her to wear diapers, and Danielle is slowly losing all of her teeth while Brooke is losing her hair. The girls also complain of getting liver spots on their skin. Eventually they realize that although they are only in high school, they are aging rapidly and suffering complaints typical of septuagenarians. The horrified girls believe Helga is doing this to them. They think that if they kill Drew, he will become a ghost just like Helga, making her happy enough to grant them mercy. They arrange for Drew and Helga to meet at the park the next night. However, in their attempt to shoot Drew, the girls accidentally shoot Helga instead. Danielle winds up in a hospital bed, plugged into many tubes and practically dying. Mrs. Witt, an elderly woman that she used to visit, talks to her for a while, and then reveals the reason for the girls'' problems. Mrs. Witt tells her that Charity Chase, a girl killed by Danielle, Brooke and Tiffany not too long ago because Drew was interested in her, was her granddaughter. She says her friend''s husband injected a potion into the girls, making it so the faster their hearts beat, the older they became, as punishment for killing her wonderful granddaughter. Mrs. Witt taunts Danielle for not being able to move, and finally does the same thing Danielle did in the nursing home when she thought Mrs. Witt was asleep—eats all of her cherry truffles.

A Fate Totally Worse than Death

The novel was written in 1914. It is set a few years previous and is divided into three parts. In the first part, Sensei and I, the narrator, a guileless university student, befriends an older man, Sensei (most of the characters'' real names are not given). Sensei lives as a recluse, interacting only with his wife and the narrator, and occasional unseen visitors, but still maintaining a distance between himself and them. He regularly visits the grave of a friend, but for the moment refuses to tell the narrator any details of his earlier life. In the second part, My Parents and I, the narrator graduates and returns to his home in the country to await his father''s death. As his father lies dying, the narrator receives a letter from Sensei which is recounted in the third part of the novel, Sensei and His Testament. Sensei reveals that in his own university days he was cheated out of most of his fortune by his uncle. As a result he moved to Tokyo and began living with a widow and her daughter, with whom he fell in love. Later he convinced his childhood friend (known only as K), who was in dire straits, to move in with him. Gradually K recovered, but also fell in love with the landlady''s daughter. K confessed this love to Sensei, who was shocked, and later full of jealousy. Sensei then proposed marriage, and shortly after, K committed suicide. Sensei, who had lost his faith in humanity after being cheated by his uncle, was horrified to find the same dark impulses lurking in his own heart, and felt a heavy guilt for the death of his friend. In the present, 1912, Sensei is prompted by the suicide of General Nogi Maresuke (following the death of the Meiji Emperor) to take his own life, writing the letter to his only friend to explain his decision.

Kokoro

Zinnia "Zinny" Taylor, a quiet yet sometimes outrageous thirteen year old girl, enjoys the care of her aunt and uncle, Jessie and Nate, as her parents are preoccupied with her siblings. Jessie and Nate live in a home that fits snug against the Taylor home, and Zinny prefers to spend her time with her aunt and uncle. They once had a daughter, Rose, around Zinny''s age who died of whooping cough. Because Rose caught the cough from Zinny, she has always, in some way, blamed herself for Rose''s death. Years later, Zinny accidentally rediscovers a large overgrown trail that is over two hundred years old. When her aunt unexpectedly dies, Zinny blames herself. Soon afterwards she begins to try to clear the trail. In her grief, the trail becomes an obsession, as she decides to clear and travel the entire length of it. Thinking clearing the trail is the only way to be forgiven by God, Zinny camps out on the trail to clear the trail before the end of the summer. At the same time Zinny learns to cope with her grief, her guilt, and a boy named Jake Boone, who she starts to have feelings for. Throughout the story she must attempt to get over the death of Rose and Aunt Jessie. She also tries to find out whether Jake returns her feelings or is just using her to get to her older sister, May. Through all this Zinny finally finds something to call her very own, the trail that she cleared. Throughout the story Creech uses flashbacks as a literary device, showing snippets of what Zinny''s life was like before her aunt''s death.

Chasing Redbird

In the year 2040 scientists created a drug (called Longevity) to prevent the aging process and stop dying. However, because people are still being born yet no one is dying, the Earth quickly becomes too crowded. Therefore, in the year 2080, anyone who wants to take Longevity is forced to sign The Declaration, agreeing that if they take Longevity, they will not have any children. Of course, there are people who resist, and refuse not to bear children. The children of those individuals are offensively referred to as "Surplus". In some countries, the Surpluses are killed the moment they are born, but in countries such as Britain, they are taken from their parents at birth to live in "Surplus Halls" where they are taught that their existence is a crime against Nature, and that they ought to work hard if they want to redeem for their parents'' sins and become a "Valuable Asset", in which case they would be able to work for "The Legals" and be partially free. Surplus Anna is nearly 15 years old. She lives in Grange Hall (a surplus hall), and is a prefect. She was taken away from her parents at the age of two and now, in year 2140, she has learned to hate them for bringing her to this world. Anna has already worked for a legal lady for a month (Julia Sharpe), as a part of her pending process, by which she ought to become Valuable Asset the moment she comes of age. Mrs Sharpe has given her a small pink diary in which Anna writes every night, but is forced to hide it away in the bathroom, in order not to get in trouble with Mrs Pincent, the House Matron in charge of Grange Hall. Then one day, Peter arrives at Grange Hall, and Anna''s world is turned upside down. Peter defies everything she believes in, insists upon calling her Anna Covey, and keeps telling her that he knows her parents, and they love her. Anna is at first annoyed with him, but soon she becomes intrigued by his bold attitude and bravery. When Peter offers for them to run away, to find her parents, Anna is torn between her curiosity and the rules she has been following her whole life. She then accepts Peters invitation to run away from Grange Hall, leading to a lot of trouble. They then have a close call with the Catchers and are helped by a lady named Julia Sharpe. The plot proceeds to Anna reuniting with her parents and later, them killing themselves to make her, and her brother Ben, legal. Meanwhile, Margaret Pincent kills Peter''s father, making him legal as well. The two legals arouse a lot of suspicion leading to the next book, The Resistance.

The Declaration

Nearly all the principals in the book have something to hide, and therefore something for Archie and Wolfe to inquire about, but not every secret is criminal, and the balance between private lives (including a passionate but commercially meaningless liaison between two hostile principals) and responsible disclosure is handled adroitly, and far better than in most Rex Stout novels. Just as in Before Midnight the agency partners have strong personality clashes, but this is seen in this book as a price that is paid for complementary talents in a boutique firm. Wolfe''s right-hand man and amanuensis Archie Goodwin is attending a Super Bowl party thrown by his "good friend" Lily Rowan at her East Side penthouse in Manhattan. During the game, there is a spectacular commercial involving parachutists, acrobats, and more promoting a cherry-flavored soft drink call Cherr-o-kee. One of the partners of the ad agency that put on that stunt, Rod Mills, is also at the party, and takes Goodwin aside to say that he''d like help with a problem. Later, all three partners of Mills/Lake/Ryman meet at Wolfe''s office discuss an acute problem of industrial espionage they''ve been having lately: their best ideas being discovered and used by a larger agency representing another cherry-flavored soft drink. The problem as presented by M/L/R is simple: to find the spy within the agency: the source of the industrial esponiage. Therefore, Goodwin has to look into possible links between members of the firm and its rival. While this remains elusive, it becomes clear that the executive of the rival drink''s campaign is the recipient of the information, but it isn''t long before he is found dead in his apartment (by Archie, who else?). This prompts the owner of Cherr-o-kee, a reclusive part-Cherokee billionaire named Acker Foreman to pay Wolfe a visit, along with his two adult sons, Arnold and Stephen. Despite the tense situation, Wolfe gains Acker Foreman''s respect with his knowledge of his career and of Cherokee history, especially the Trail of Tears (documented poignantly by de Tocqueville in Democracy in America). Arnold, however, displays the same hostility as he has to M/L/R personnel. After further investigation, Wolfe gathers the interested parties at his brownstone to lay out his proposed solution, this time without enough evidence to please law enforcement. However, since his mandate is simply to stop industrial espionage, he can (arguably) collect his fee. The rest is left for the reader to discover.

Fade to Black

En route to Nasse House, Poirot gives a lift to two female hitch-hikers – one Dutch and one Italian – who are staying at the youth hostel adjoining the Nasse House grounds. When he arrives, Mrs Oliver explains that she feels that her plans for the Murder Hunt have been, almost imperceptibly, influenced by the advice that she has been given by people in the house, until it is almost as though she is being pushed into staging a real murder. The owner of Nasse House is George Stubbs, a wealthy man who has seemingly adopted an unearned title of "Sir" in order to confirm his position in the local community. His much younger wife is the seemingly simple and impressionable Hattie, a young woman who has apparently been introduced to him by Amy Folliat, the surviving member of the family that once owned the house. Now that her sons have been supposedly killed during the War, she is living out her days in the Lodge House. Other visitors at Nasse House include an architect, Michael Weyman, who criticises the siting some years earlier of a folly in an inappropriate area of the grounds. On the day of the fête, Hattie learns that a cousin, Etienne de Sousa, is about to visit, and she seems upset by this, referring to him as a killer. At the fete, a local Girl Guide, Marlene Tucker, is to play the part of the victim, and she waits in the boathouse to play her role when someone approaches her. Poirot observes the movements of some of the visitors to the house. Later, in the company of Mrs Oliver, he discovers the corpse of Marlene in the boathouse. Moreover, Hattie is discovered to have gone missing. Both the police and Poirot himself are initially baffled. The investigation focuses on Etienne de Sousa, a wealthy young man who shows no apparent concern at Hattie’s disappearance and has arrived in perfect time to have committed the murder. Another suspect is Amanda Brewis, George''s secretary, who appears to be in love with Sir George and claims to have been sent down to the boathouse by Hattie with refreshments for Marlene at around the time that the girl was killed. This sounds very out of character for Hattie. Further confusion is added by the behaviour of the Legges, who appear to have some sort of shady connection with a young man in a turtle shirt who has been seen in the grounds. (It later comes to light that this red herring is connected with Legge''s career as a nuclear physicist.) Poirot’s attention is directed to Amy Folliat, who seems to know more than she is saying. After the boatman Merdell dies, Poirot discovers that he was Marlene’s grandfather. Now he puts together several stray clues: Marlene had said that her grandfather had seen someone burying a woman in the woods; Marlene was the type to blackmail, and had in fact received small sums of money prior to her murder; Merdell had commented significantly to Poirot that there would "always be Folliats at Nasse House". In the denouement Poirot reveals that "Sir" George Stubbs is none other than Amy Folliat''s younger son, James, who had deserted during WWI. Instead, Amy had paired him with the impressionable, but very wealthy, Hattie, hoping they would make a good couple. However, he fleeced her of her money and established his new identity, buying the family house and ensuring the continuity of Folliat possession. Unbeknownst to his mother, however, George/James was already married, and as soon as he had possession of Nasse he killed Hattie, and substituted his legal, first wife, a young Italian woman, in her place. The real Hattie was buried on the grounds where the Folly was built. Marlene Tucker had guessed the secret from hints dropped by her grandfather, and George and his real wife decided it would be safer to kill her than continue giving her hush money. The day before the day of the murder, "Hattie" began to establish another identity as an Italian hitch-hiker. On the day of the murder, she switched between the two roles, killing Marlene and leaving the grounds as the hitch-hiker, with Hattie''s clothes in her rucksack. The day of the murder had been selected to cast suspicion upon Etienne, who had actually notified them some weeks earlier of his visit, of whom the fake Hattie pretends to be afraid. As Hattie''s cousin, Etienne would not have been deceived and would have realized that the fake Hattie was not his cousin. The arrests of the culprits is not referenced in the novel, the end of which focuses on the despair of Amy Folliat, who does not appear to be facing legal charges, although that is never quite spelled out, in her allocution to Poirot.

Dead Man''s Folly

Pangbourne Village is an estate for the upper middleclass, protected by security fences and discreet guards. Its ten families are wealthy, respectable, 40-something couples with adolescent children on whom they lavish everything money can buy. One morning it is discovered that all the adult residents have been killed and the children have disappeared without trace. Dr Richard Greville of Scotland Yard puzzles over the scanty evidence: it gives no leads to the identity of the murderers and kidnappers. No demands for ransom are received. No terrorist group claims responsibility. The reader soon realizes that the missing children are also the missing murderers. Their controlled and materialistic upbringing has left them no way to establish their own identities except by rebelling into criminal savagery. However, in a tradition of obtuse policemen going back to Inspector Lestrade in the Sherlock Holmes stories, Greville resists drawing this obvious conclusion - until the children strike again.

Running Wild

The Prophecy of Blood on a scroll given to him by Nerissa. Soon, a message from Vikus arrives in the laundry room with the announcement that the "Curse of the Warmbloods is upon us". Gregor and his father travel to Central Park and the entrance underneath and meet Ripred, who informs him that the Curse of the Warmbloods is a plague scouring the Underland, and that all warmbloods have united in order to find a cure. Gregor is uncertain that his mother will let him and Boots go, but Ripred encourages him by informing him his own bond, Ares, is a victim of the plague, and adding that if his mother does not comply, the rats will send an escort. Back at their apartment, Gregor''s mother will not let them go, but Ripred''s escort arrives in the form of hundreds of normal-sized rats in the walls. After being overwhelmed, his mother agrees to go on the condition that she come too (this is the first time she goes to the Underland). They meet the bat Nike, daughter of Queen Athena, in the laundry room and fly to Regalia, where delegations of cockroaches, rats, bats, and humans have gathered. The humans inform the other species that there is a cure for the plague, starshade, found deep in the Vineyard of Eyes. The rats agree to lend their assistance on one condition: that a yellow powder used to keep fleas, plague carriers, away be sent to the rats. A bat flies in from the Dead Lands, plague ridden, and fleas force the audience to retreat, but not before Gregor''s mother is bitten. Gregor, Boots, Ripred, Nike, Temp, Solovet, and two rats named Lapblood and Mange agree to journey to the Vineyard of Eyes. When they enter the jungles, they are greeted by Hamnet, Luxa''s long lost uncle, his Halflander(half Overlander, half Underlander) son Hazard, and a lizard, Frill. Hamnet agrees to be a guide, but only if Solovet does not come. The pack enters the jungle and run through several trials, such as flesh eating plants, which kill Mange, and quicksand, before arriving at the end and meeting Luxa and Aurora, who had been hiding with the mice the whole time. They make it into the Vineyard of Eyes, but ants destroy the field of starshade and kill Hamnet and Frill, leaving no hope of a cure. Temp mentions offhandedly that "unless this be, not the cradle, unless this be" making them realize there is still hope for a cure. Gregor realizes that Ares did not contract the plague from the mites, as thought, but in a laboratory, and it leads him to believe that the plague was invented by the humans. Luxa is horrified, but Ripred thinks it fits and orders that the first cures be sent to the rats. The plague was actually ordered by Solovet, Regent of Regalia and wife of Vikus, as a military weapon for killing. Back in Regalia, they have developed a cure, and Luxa exposes the project. Nerissa reveals to Gregor that had the quest never happened, the plague cure would never have been given to the gnawers, and so their journey was not in vain. Gregor''s mother cannot return to the surface without risking carrying the plague to the Overland, and so the book ends with Gregor confiding in Mrs. Cormaci in order to enlist her help.

Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods

Using the help of a hacker friend, Joanna and Deborah try to break into the online records of Wingate Clinic, but are met with failure as it was a very well-protected system. They then decide to get the inside information by first getting in posing as prospective employees. They use Social Security Number of recently deceased women to forge their identity and get employed in the clinic. Joanna (under the alias of Prudence Heatherly) gets the work as a word processing employee while Deborah (under the alias of Georgina Marks) get a job of a lab assistant. In order to get access to the high security data, they steal the Access Card of Wingate Clinic''s owner, Spencer Wingate by giving him an overdose of liquor. Using the Access Card, they gain (un)authorized entry into the Server Room, from where the records are managed. Unfortunately for them, as all movements into the Server Room as well as the changes made in the file system are logged, their identity gets revealed. In parallel, they find out that while Joanna was subjected to organ theft, the Clinic illegally performs ovary culture (on stem cells) on all the stolen eggs as well as uses many workers as surrogate mothers. From here starts the chase where the Wingate Clinic''s officers try to kill the women and they try to save their lives and bring Wingate''s ill-deeds to the knowledge of the world. The novel has an open-ending, leaving the readers to guess what happens to the villains in the end.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

Winter

By Len Deighton

The Lost King of Oz

By Ruth Plumly Thompson

Wraith Squadron

By Aaron Allston

A Fate Totally Worse than Death

By Paul Fleischman

Kokoro

By Soseki Natsume

Chasing Redbird

By Sharon Creech

The Declaration

By Gemma Malley

Fade to Black

By Robert Goldsborough

Dead Man's Folly

By Agatha Christie

Running Wild

By J. G. Ballard

Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods

By Suzanne Collins

Shock

By Robin Cook