The story concerns a small native boy from the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, who meets a blonde tourist girl who gives him a rose. In return, she asks for a squirrel monkey. Smitten, he fulfills his promise by setting a trap made out of rice and a coconut, but when he returns to where he had seen her, the boat she had come in was gone. When he returns, to his home, he finds that the rose she had given him had wilted. He asks his mother, Drusila, why it had lived such a short time while other things last much, much longer. She doesn''t know, so he ran around his village, asking the neighbors the same question. None of them know, so he asks his friend, Doña Madorra the turtle, his question. She doesn''t know, so she brings him and the squirrel monkey around the jungle, asking some old and wise animals including Don Torcuato the alligator, Talamanca the Bocaracá, and the snake. After the interrogations of the alligator and the snake go disastrously, Cocorí returns home to find that Drusila had planted the stem of the wilted rose and so grown a rose bush. Here the book ends.

Cocorí

The Dell mapback edition of 1950 is subtitled "Murder in the Zoo". Edward Benton, director of the Royal Albert Zoological Gardens, is worried about what the year 1941 will bring to his beloved collection of snakes and reptiles; it seems as if they will be destroyed, at the request of the Department of Home Security, to prevent poisonous snakes from escaping in the case of an air raid. Nevertheless, he is still making arrangements to add to the exhibits, including a recent acquisition, "Patience", a Bornese tree-snake. Accomplished stage magicians Carey Quint and Madge Palliser, whose professional rivalry goes back four generations, are visiting the zoo, each to research certain snakes in connection with an illusion which both claim was invented by an ancestor. They quarrel, and somehow the glass cage breaks that encloses a tropical American lizard. The lizard immediately attacks Sir Henry Merrivale, also a visitor. After the lizard is subdued, all three are led by the security guard to Dr. Benton''s home on the grounds, to make their explanations and apologies. He is easily mollified, and his daughter Louise invites all three to dinner that evening. Louise is worried about her father''s mental equilibrium. When the three arrive to find what seems to be an empty house, with dinner burning away merrily in the kitchen, they are perplexed—when they discover Dr. Benton has apparently locked all the doors and windows of his study, sealed them with paper strips, and gassed himself, they are aghast. Louise asks Sir Henry to investigate because she is sure that, even in committing suicide, her father would not have killed the innocent tree-snake, Patience. Sir Henry must investigate against the backdrop of England in 1940, with airplanes constantly buzzing overhead. The involvement of two professional magicians, however, points out a path to a solution—to make people think they''ve experienced something which indeed they have not. Sir Henry corners the murderer and extracts a confession in a dramatic climax that involves a rattlesnake, a mamba and a cobra.

He Wouldn''t Kill Patience

The unreliable narrator, Latimer, believes that he is cursed with an otherworldly ability to see into the future and the thoughts of other people. His unwanted "gift" seems to stem from a severe childhood illness he suffered while attending school in Geneva. Latimer is convinced of the existence of this power, and his two initial predictions do come true the way he has envisioned them: a peculiar "patch of rainbow light on the pavement" and a few words of dialogue appear to him exactly as expected. Latimer is revolted by much of what he discerns about others'' motivations. Latimer becomes fascinated with Bertha, his brother''s cold and coquettish fiancée, because her mind and motives remain atypically closed to him. After his brother''s death, Latimer marries Bertha, but the marriage disintegrates as he recognizes Bertha''s manipulative and untrustworthy nature. Latimer''s friend, scientist Charles Meunier, performs a blood transfusion from himself to Bertha''s recently deceased maid. For a few moments the maid comes back to life and accuses Bertha of a plot to poison Latimer. Bertha flees and Latimer soon dies as he had himself foretold at the start of the narrative.

The Lifted Veil

The book''s plot revolves around Thrall''s journey from birth, to slavery as a gladiator and finally his path on the journey to becoming Warchief of the orcish Horde. The main villain of the book is Aedelas Blackmoore, who commands the encampments where the orcs were imprisoned, and also Thrall''s (thrall means slave to humans) former owner. Blackmoore''s plans were to raise Thrall to command an orcish army to overrun the Alliance, allowing him to forcibly take the position of King. Thrall was trained to handle every weapon and learned battle tactics, but also studied basic writing and history. Also, to enrich Blackmoore further, Thrall was forced to compete in many gladiator tournaments, which made him want to escape even more. Thrall eventually escapes Blackmoore''s tyranny with the help of a young human girl named Taretha. During his captivity, she would sneak notes to Thrall and was one of his only friends while in the grasp of Blackmoore. After earning his freedom thanks to Taretha, Thrall set out to find a group of orcs that had evaded Blackmoore. He found these orcs to be those of the Warsong Clan, led by Grom Hellscream. After learning some of his history from Grom, Thrall then headed for the mountains of Alterac to find his original clan, the Frostwolf Clan. There he met with their Shaman, Drek''Thar, who taught Thrall the ancient ways of Shamanism. There he also met with the Warchief Orgrim Doomhammer and learned more of his past and the reasons for his parents'' death. With his new power, and knowledge provided by both Drek''Thar and Doomhammer, Thrall raised an army by freeing his people from the prison encampments, rallying them under the goal of freedom and a return to the orcish life before the war. Unfortunately, Doomhammer fell in a battle liberating one of the encampments, so in his final moments, he granted Thrall the title of Warchief. Thrall then decided to attack the fortress of Durnholde, home of Aedelas Blackmoore, his former captor, to free all the remaining entrapped Orcs at once by cutting off any more reinforcements. He succeeds in taking Durnholde fortress, killing Blackmoore with the help of the elements and of course, his Orcish army. Tragically however, he is too late to save the one human who had helped him during his captivity. At the end of the book, Thrall crushes Durnholde with his elemental powers, then addresses the Horde, promising they will succeed under his leadership.

Warcraft: Lord of the Clans

Having returned his fleet to Alliance space, Jack "Black Jack" Geary is brought before the Alliance senate, and is nearly arrested as it is assumed that he is returning as a conquering hero, planning to usurp control of the Alliance as a dictator. Rather than, Capt. Geary briefs the Alliance Senate on the entire journey of the fleet, as well as the alien race that was strongly implied to exist, including the fact that the aliens have established system killing devices, in the form of every hypernet gate in existence, in Alliance and Syndic territory. A captured Syndic CEO, commanding the Syndic reserve flotilla, confirms the existence of the alien race, and that they''ve been responsible for the total destruction of every human they''ve encountered, and have begun to encroach aggressively into Syndic territory. Faced with two possible wars, the Senate elects to finally finish the Syndic war, using sword point diplomacy if necessary. Geary is promoted to Admiral of the Fleet, and charged to attack the Syndic homeworld and force a cease fire. After fighting back to the Syndic system where he began his journey, he nearly stumbles into an ambush. The Syndic Executive Council, planning to use the Syndic homeworld hypernet gate to destroy Geary''s fleet, and with it, nearly sixty billion Syndic citizens, is instead deposed, and after destroying a large portion of the Syndic Home Fleet, a cease fire is drawn up. Immediately afterward, a Syndic system bordering the area of space occupied by the aliens claims an evacuation ultimatum has been issued by the aliens. The aliens are dubbed the Enigma race because despite a century of contact, not a single thing is known about the alien race: ships, resources, or the aliens themselves. Geary, realizing that the aliens taking the system would effectively condemn half of the system population to probable death, as well as allow the aliens control of an important strategic location, elects to intervene. Arriving in system, the alien armada arrives, apparently outnumbering Black Jack''s fleet by 3 to 1. After realizing that the aliens had used extensive computer manipulation on the Alliance, Geary orders another computer scrub, finding that the Fleet actually outnumbers the aliens 2 to 1. Engaging them in combat after a total failure of diplomacy results in the near total destruction of the alien fleet, who scuttle every wounded ship before fleeing, leaving no possible evidence of the Enigma race. Returning to Alliance space, Admiral Geary abdicates his Admiralty, awards himself a month of leave, and races after Captain Desjani, who was returning home, unwilling to explore a relationship with Geary. After catching her, he quickly proposes to be married, citing that it was the only option to allow them to remain together. Desjani accepts, and the two plan their wedding aboard the civilian transport Desjani conveniently booked for two, and to honeymoon on her homeworld.

The Lost Fleet: Victorious

One of the experimental texts Vidal refers to as his "inventions", Duluth describes both a novel written about Duluth (that, bordered on one side by Minneapolis and on the other by Michigan, bears scant resemblance to the real city) and a television series of the same name; when residents of the city die, they end up as characters in the TV show, who can in some cases continue interacting with the living through the TV screen. When members of the cast of Duluth, the TV show, die, they become characters in Rogue Duke, a romance novel serialized in the pages of Redbook, the popular women''s magazine. The author of all three, Rosemary Klein Kantor, is herself a character in the book, making cameo appearances throughout. She generates texts with the aid of a computer, adding to its numerous geographical and historical errors her mangled clichés ("Bellamy Craig II plays hardball...in the fast lane!") and unusual grammatical constructions ("Her handcuffs now handcuffed her hands"). However, there is in the city of Duluth a mysterious cerise flying saucer whose insectoid alien inhabitants, after meddling in the spectacularly corrupt politics of the city, use an accidental tense shift to seize control of the computer, erasing the human race from the face of the earth and bringing the book to an end.

Duluth

Brady Darby''s Story Sixteen-year-old Brady Wayne Darby and his eight-year-old brother Peter live in Touhy Avenue Trailer-Park with their alcoholic chain-smoking mother Erlene; Erlene''s husband had abandoned her shortly after Peter''s birth. Brady, who dreams of buying a car and fleeing the trailer-park, has obtained a part-time job sweeping up the local laundrette—from which he often takes a share of the coins in the machines'' boxes to supplement his wages. At school, he is on the Football Team; however, he generally does not perform well academically, which causes him to be cut from the athletic squad—with a suggestion from the coach to try the Drama Club. Thomas Carey''s Story Fortysix-year-old Thomas Carey, a pastor who has never been long at one church, finds a posting in Georgia. While going there, he and his wife Grace visit their twentyfour-year-old daughter Ravinia, a law student at Emory University of whose spiritual position they have great concern. The Careys are eventually driven out of this posting by the Selection Board chairman, who has decided hypocritically (as his own five sons have a combined-total of eight marriages) that Thomas Carey is a poor example of a Christian, having not raised Ravinia properly. They eventually move to Adamsville, OH where Carey is appointed as the chaplain of the Adamsville State Prison, a super-maximum-security facility which houses a death row. ASP''s warden, Frank "Yanno" (so nicknamed due to his oft starting sentences with "yeah, no"--a nickname he dislikes to hear) LeRoy allows inmates condemned to death to choose their method of execution, assuming they will choose between: * hanging (he boasts to Carey that ASP is one of the few prisons to still have a gallows) * electrocution * gas-chamber * lethal-injection When they reach Adamsville, Grace Carey is diagnosed as having a severe form of leukemia, for which inducing remission is possible for short-term, but not permanently. Brady Darby''s Conversion After Brady, now 30, is convicted of the horrific murder of twentythree-year-old Katie North (whom he believed to be in love with him), he is sentenced to death speedily—and though there is a mandatory appeals process which can take several (at least three) years, he informs his lawyer that he will be uncooperative so that his execution will be guaranteed. He is taken to ASP in Adamsville. After his 90-day administrative-break-in period, Brady asks for a meeting with Carey, and is mailed a literature packet (which includes The Romans Road and a modern-English translation of the New Testament). Within a month, he asks for a personal visit from Carey so that he can "confess Christ with his mouth". About six months into his time at ASP, Brady chooses the method of his execution—crucifixion, complete with thorn-crown and spear-pierce of his side after his death—which surprises not only Carey and Ravinia, but even Yanno who initially reacts that Brady must choose from the four methods he has in-situ. Ravinia is, however, able to persuade Yanno on this, as Brady''s idea is to show exactly how ugly and cruel that first-century Roman punishment was. As Ohio''s Director Of Corrections and its Governor argue against the appeals—successfully—and anti-death-penalty activists protest against the planned execution, the Government Of Israel donates a cross specifying it as "roughly of original Roman dimensions". Eventually, Brady''s request to be crucified is granted—but his requests for thorn-crown and post-mortem piercing are denied. As the date draws closer, Brady sees his mother claim on TV that she "had raised him to know Jesus" and that she is "glad he is coming back to his faith", and then wailing that she cannot fly from her current address in Florida to visit her son. The International Cable Network, which is covering the execution and its leadup, flies her to Adamsville for a visit. Brady, meanwhile, reads the Bible aloud for other inmates, hoping that some of them will also convert.

Riven

Seventeen-year-old Juno Marlowe is in love with Jonty and Francis and has just waved them off to war (World War II when the air raid sirens sound across London. Juno finds shelter in the house of a stranger, the frail Evelyn Copplestone. Juno spends the night with Evelyn and tells him the story of her life, and Evelyn decides to help her by writing her a letter of introduction to his family in the West Country. Evelyn, who is ill, dies of lungfailure due to gas in WWI during the night, and Juno flees the house. Reluctant to join her mother who has emigrated to Canada, and having nowhere else to go, Juno soon finds herself on her way to the West Country to see Evelyn''s family at a farm named Copplestone. The owner of the farm, Robert Copplestone, Evelyn''s father and only relative, is short of labour and hires Juno as a landgirl. Shortly after her arrival at Copplestone, Juno, to her surprise, finds out that she is pregnant. When her mother in Canada hears that Juno has given birth to a pair of illegitimate twins, the social embarrassment makes her break off any further contact with her daughter. Juno is left to fend for herself and the hard work at the farm helps her to blot out any unwelcome memories of her past. Gradually she learns to trust the other people at Copplestone, and the withdrawn and quiet Juno grows into an independent and determined woman, who is more than merely part of the furniture.

Part of the Furniture

The novel takes place in New York City, where a chemical truck gets into an accident and spills its contents on the street. Curiously, the trucker has fake identification, and no one seems to have heard of the company name on the truck: "Ladies, INC." Later that evening, Tom Braun and his family go to a party. Tom gets into a shouting match with his wife, Susan, which their son, Andy, overhears. Andy retreats to his room to pack for a scout camping trip. After Tom leaves the apartment for the night, the women of New York who inhaled the spilled chemicals (including Susan) begin to have severe headaches. Within a short time, the women are overcome by a desire to have sex with any man they can find. Finally, the women begin attacking those who have not been similarly affected by the spilled chemicals. In increasingly gruesome scenes, women kill their children, husbands, brothers, etc., and the seemingly few unaffected women of the city. As Tom works with a small band of men to make it home to Andy, Susan first tries to mate with her son, then tries to kill him. Andy hides in a bathroom until an unaffected woman unknowingly saves his life by knocking on the door. The woman is subsequently attacked by Susan and other crazed women. Tom is wounded on his journey home, but manages to severely injure his wife before she can kill their son. Susan then kills Tom, whereupon Andy shoots his mom with several arrows (which he had for his camping trip) to make sure she is not able to recover from her injuries.

Ladies'' Night

Maerth asserted that the eating of brain produces an aphrodisiac effect (presumably due to the vast amount of hormones in it), and that this initially caused apes to become addicted to them, organizing brain hunts wherein the males of another tribe were eaten and the females raped in a frenzy of brain-induced sex and violence. However, this diet also inadvertently increased brain size and intelligence while triggering the loss both of body hair and of our innate psychic abilities. Thus man gradually came into being, remaining cannibalistic until 50,000 years ago. Modern humans, alienated from their surroundings now that they''ve no telepathic contact with nature and each other as animals do, suffering from a distorted sexuality resulting from hormonal imbalances, and driven insane from the constant pressure of their unnaturally large brains pressing on the inside of their skulls,Maerth (1974), page 53: are inevitably destroying themselves with pollution, overpopulation, racial integration and ultimately, nuclear war. He foresees a return to cannibalism in the near future,Maerth (1974), page 199: and suggests that the reader should drop out of society, embrace a vegetarian diet, steep himself in the wisdom of the East and perhaps employ various wooden frames and wire devices to alter the shape of his skull as some ancient cultures did, thus relieving the pressure on the brain and partially restoring psychic powers.

The Beginning Was the End

The novel begins in the year 2019, when the SETI program, at the Arecibo Observatory, picks up radio broadcasts of music from the vicinity of Alpha Centauri. The first expedition to Rakhat, the world that is sending the music, is organized by the Jesuit order. Only one of the crew, Father Emilio Sandoz, a priest, survives to return to Earth, and he is damaged physically and psychologically. The story is told in framed flashback, with chapters alternating between the story of the expedition and the story of Sandoz'' interrogation by the Jesuit order''s inquest, set up in 2059 to find the truth. Sandoz'' return has sparked great controversy – not just because the Jesuits sent the mission independent of United Nations oversight, but also because the mission ended disastrously. Contact with the UN mission, which sent Sandoz back to Earth alone in the Jesuit ship, has since been lost. From the beginning, Sandoz, a talented Taino linguist born in a Puerto Rican slum, had believed the mission to Rakhat was divinely inspired. Several of his close friends and co-workers, people with a variety of unique skills and talents, had seemingly coincidental connections to Arecibo and one of them, a gifted young technician, was the first to hear the transmissions. In Sandoz''s mind, only God''s will could bring this group of people with the perfect combination of knowledge and experience together at the moment when the alien signal was detected. These were the people who, with three other Jesuit priests, were chosen by the Society of Jesus to travel to the planet, using an interstellar vessel made out of a small asteroid. Sandoz tells about how the asteroid flew to the planet Rakhat, and how the crew tried to acclimatize themselves to the new world, experimenting with eating local flora and fauna, then making contact with a rural village – a small-scale tribe of vegetarian gatherers, the Runa, clearly not the singers of the radio broadcasts. Still, welcomed as ''foreigners'', they settle among the natives and begin to learn their language and culture, transmitting all their findings via computer uplink to the asteroid-ship now orbiting above the planet. An emergency use of fuel for their landing craft leaves them stranded on the planet. When they do meet a member of the culture which produced the radio transmissions, he proves to be of a different species from the rural natives, a Jana''ata. An ambitious merchant named Supaari, he sees in the visitors a possibility to improve his status, while the crew hopes to find an alternative source of fuel in Supaari''s city, Gayjur. Meanwhile, the crew begins to grow their own food, introducing the concept of agriculture to the villagers. These seemingly innocent actions and accompanying cultural misunderstandings set into motion the events which lead to the murder of all but Sandoz and one other Earthling, and Sandoz'' capture and degradation which is a central mystery in the plot. It is revealed that Sandoz is made a slave of a famed poet/songwriter, whose broadcasts first alerted Earth to Rakhat''s existence. Sandoz is physically disfigured. In that culture, it is considered an honour to be dependent upon another, and likewise to have a dependent, so the flesh between Sandoz''s metacarpals is cut away to make it seem that he has long elegant fingers which start at his wrists, and with which he cannot even feed himself. Sandoz is routinely forced to sexually satisfy the musician, along with his friends and colleagues, and it is later revealed the songs which Sandoz had originally considered to be a divine revelation are in fact a kind of ballad pornography, relating the songwriter''s sexual exploits on broadcast to the populace. When Sandoz returns to Earth, his friends are dead and gone and his faith, once considered worthy of actual canonization by his superiors, is merely an extension of his bitter anger with the God who sent him to Rakhat. Due to relativistic space-time effects, decades had passed while he has been gone, during which popular outrage at the UN''s initial and highly out-of-context report on the mission, and especially Sandoz''s role in the tragedy, had left the Society shattered and nearly extinct. As Sandoz painfully explains what really happened, his personal healing can begin, but only time will prove whether the same is true of the Society.

The Sparrow

Dance opens with the last year or so of their school days in 1921&ndash;22. We are also introduced to their Housemaster Le Bas and Nick''s Uncle Giles. Lunching at the invitation of Stringham''s mother, the glamorous Mrs Foxe, Nick meets Cdr. Buster Foxe, "a chic sailor", and Miss ''Tuffy'' Weedon. On leaving school Jenkins visits the Templers, setting eyes for the first time on Templer''s sullen sister Jean and meeting the older Sunny Farebrother and Jimmy Stripling. Later Nick is sent off to France to learn the language, staying at La Grenadière, where Widmerpool puts in an appearance, displaying unexpected powers of persuasion. The final chapter sees Nick at university where he enjoys afternoon tea with Professor Sillery and meets Mark Members for the first time, JG Quiggin, and Bill Truscott. A car outing with Templer, Bob Duport and Jimmy Brent turns to minor disaster when Templer drives them into a ditch. *Adapted in part from material published by the Anthony Powell Society with consent

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Cocorí

No Author Listed

He Wouldn't Kill Patience

By John Dickson Carr

The Lifted Veil

By George Eliot

Warcraft: Lord of the Clans

By Christie Golden

The Lost Fleet: Victorious

By John G. Hemry

Duluth

By Gore Vidal

Riven

No Author Listed

Part of the Furniture

By Mary Wesley

Ladies' Night

By Jack Ketchum

The Beginning Was the End

No Author Listed

The Sparrow

By Mary Doria Russell

A Question of Upbringing

By Anthony Powell