Horselover Fat believes his visions expose hidden facts about the reality of life on Earth, and a group of others join him in researching these matters. One of their theories is that there is some kind of alien space probe in orbit around Earth, and that it is aiding them in their quest. It also aided the United States in disclosing the Watergate scandal and the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974. There is a filmed account of an alternate universe Nixon, "Ferris Freemont" and his fall, engineered by a fictionalised Valis, which leads them to an estate owned by the Lamptons, popular musicians. Valis (the fictional film) contains obvious references to identical revelations to those that Horselover Fat has experienced. They decide the goal that they have been led toward is Sophia, who is two years old and the Messiah or incarnation of Holy Wisdom anticipated by some variants of Gnostic Christianity. She tells them that their conclusions are correct, but dies after a laser accident. Undeterred, Fat goes on a global search for the next incarnation of Sophia. Dick also offers a rationalist explanation of his apparent "theophany", acknowledging that it might have been visual and auditory hallucinations from either schizophrenia or drug addiction sequelae.

VALIS

Harriet Johnson has been ill and her doctor arranges for her to take up ice skating in order to build strength in her legs. When she gets to the rink Harriet meets Lalla Moore, a young skater who has been training since she was three years old; Lalla''s parents were killed in a skating accident, and her Aunt Claudia is determined that Lalla will be the greatest figure skater in the world. Harriet and Lalla soon become friends and as Harriet is still not well enough for school, it is arranged that she will share Lalla''s governess and her various dance and fencing lessons. Harriet soon shows herself to be a talented skater, and she starts to take, and pass, the same skating tests that Lalla does. Lalla, on the other hand, is much more of a performer than a figure skater and starts to have trouble with various figures she needs to learn for tests. Lalla becomes jealous of Harriet and tells her that if she takes and passes her next skating test, Lalla will tell her aunt that she does not want Harriet to have lessons with her any more. Distraught, Harriet pretends to once again be ill while she decides what to do. But when Lalla hears that Harriet is seriously ill, she faints and later explains how nervous, miserable and guilty she feels. Lalla and Harriet go for a holiday together with their families and they talk about their futures. Lalla''s coach tells her that she will never be a good enough figure skater to succeed in competitions, but that she could be a fantastic show skater and performer; whereas Harriet has potential to be a great skater one day, as she is better at the figures required to do well. Both girls are thrilled with their ''plans'' and the story closes with them as children, though it is implied that both are successful.

White Boots

The novel begins with Keir arguing with Gigi about the events which occurred the night before. It continues with Keir''s first-person narration of his senior year in high school. Keir is crushed when he learns that Gigi has accused him of date rape. He goes on to tell Gigi that he loves her, and would never do such a thing. One of Keir''s main problems is his home life. His father treats him more like a friend than a son. The big question throughout the novel is this: "Could a self-proclaimed "good guy" be capable of such a heinous act?" Keir goes over the events of his senior year that led to this night, and how this could have happened. The novel never mentions Gigi''s point of view, so her feelings and thoughts are not taken into consideration through the use of dialogue. As the novel unfolds, Keir becomes more unpopular because of his substance abuse, school behavior, and his infamous tackle on the football field giving him the nickname "Killer." Keir''s self-image dissipates after he accidentally paralyzes an opponent, participates in bullying classmates, and then tries cocaine. First, he leans on Gigi because she listens to him and doesn''t judge him. Once he learns about Gigi and her new boyfriend, he is angry and leans on his two sisters, Fran and Mary. Keir''s older sisters have mixed feelings about his behavior. He leans on Fran the most because she sees the "good" in Keir despite his terrible actions. One night close to graduation, after a night of partying and substance abuse, Gigi decides to accompany Keir on a visit to Fran''s college and they end up in her dorm room alone. In addition to all of this, Gigi tells Keir that her boyfriend could not go to the dance and she needed him to come with her to the dance. When they were both in that cabin there were two beds and when Keir saw how beautiful Gigi looked he went to her bed and something inexcusable happened. Then, the setting reverts back to the opening with the two arguing about what happened while they were sleeping next to each other.

Inexcusable

Four American tourists&mdash;Eric, his girlfriend Stacy, her best friend Amy, and Amy''s boyfriend Jeff, a medical student&mdash;are vacationing in Mexico. They befriend a German tourist named Mathias and a trio of hard-drinking Greeks who go by the Spanish nicknames Pablo, Juan, and Don Quixote. Mathias convinces Pablo and the Americans to accompany him as he joins up with his brother Heinrich who had followed a girl he''d met to an archeological dig. The six of them head down to the rural Yucatan in search of Heinrich. Near a Mayan village, they discover a disguised trail which leads to a large hill covered in vines and surrounded by bare earth. The group approach the hill, ignoring the warnings of a young boy who had followed them to the village. The boy soon returns with armed adults who force the group to stay on the vine-covered hill. Among the underbrush, they discover the body of Heinrich, already overgrown with vines. They realize that the vines contain an acidic sap that burns their hands after they pulled the vines away from Heinrich''s body. At the top of the hill is a camp with tents, a campfire and windlass and rope which leads down a mine shaft. Much of the camp is overgrown with the same acidic vines. Hearing the ring of a cell phone from the bottom of the shaft, they use the rope to lower Pablo down in an attempt to retrieve it. However, the acid from the vines has weakened the rope which snaps, sending Pablo falling down the shaft. His back is broken and the group raises him on a makeshift backboard. Jeff, who quickly emerges as the most level-headed and action-oriented of the group, explores the hill and discovers that the Mayans have formed a perimeter around the entire hill, not approaching, but always watching him and ready to shoot them dead with bow and arrow. He also discovers a warning sign made by someone else, which has been pulled into the underbrush of vines. That night, Eric, who had received a wound on his leg while rescuing Pablo, awakes to find one of the vines curled around his leg and inserting itself in his wound. Jeff surmises that the Mayans are afraid of the vines. They salted the earth around the hill to prevent their spread and are now intent on killing anyone who strays onto the hill. Already, spores from the vines have embedded themselves in the group''s clothes. He also realizes that they will die soon without any food or water. Jeff and Amy return to the mine shaft to find the cell phone. After almost falling into a pit, Jeff realizes that the cell phone noise is being made by the vines. The plants can imitate sounds made on the hill. As they climb back up, they hear the plants laughing at them. Eric becomes convinced that the vines have infested his body and attempts to cut himself to get them out. That night, he, Amy, and Stacey get drunk and nastily criticize everyone. Later, the vines repeat their criticisms, especially those of Jeff. Amy and Jeff fight and Amy leaves the tent drunkenly. Jeff ignores the sound of her vomiting, and calling his name. The next morning they discover that Amy is dead; the sounds they heard were of the vine suffocating her. They seal Amy''s body in a sleeping bag, intending to bury her, but that night they hear her calling Jeff''s name. Seeing the bag moving, they open it to discover it full of writhing vines which have eaten Amy''s body. Jeff, taking advantage of a torrential rainstorm, heads down the hill and attempts to escape but is shot by the Mayans. The vines pull his body back into the underbrush. The next morning, Stacey and Matthias go to check on Jeff. Increasingly disturbed, Eric begins cutting himself in an effort to remove the vines which he believes have infested his body. Hearing the vines telling them that Eric is dead, Matthias and Stacey run back up the hill to find him bloody, but alive. Eric angrily confronts Matthias, and accidentally stabs the other man with his knife. He then asks Stacey to kill him which, after much pleading, she does. Alone, Stacey heads to the bottom of the hill and seats herself on the path leading to the top. She then calmly slits her wrists and waits to die so that her body will be a warning to anyone else who comes. As she loses consciousness, the vines reach out and pull her off the path into the underbrush. A few days later, the other two Greeks, with some Brazilian tourists in tow, find the trail. A little girl&mdash;who''s acting as a sentinel, as the little boy on the bike was&mdash;runs back to the village, but the new tourists are already halfway up the hill, calling for Pablo, before the men on horseback arrive.

The Ruins

The novel centers around the protagonist Henry Chinaski. The start of the novel are his first memories. Then as the novel progresses we follow him all the way through school and into adulthood. We start in elementary school and he tells us his experiences. We learn that he has an abusive father, and a mother that lets it happen. He isn''t very good at sports, but he wants to be and he tries hard. Football is hard for him, but he likes the violence that comes with it. Baseball, the other playground sport, is the sport he is better at. He hits hard, but hardly ever hits. As we progress into grammar school the focus of Henry''s attention, and the other boys, is on sports, violence and girls, as it has been. Then going into high school his father, who pretends they are rich, makes Henry go to a private school where he fits in even less. However, he develops horrible acne, bad enough that he has to get painful treatments from the doctor. Then we follow him to college, and eventually his attempt to get a job.

Ham on Rye

Frederica Merriville has long been in charge of her younger siblings. Since her parents'' death, she has taken it upon herself to make sure that her beautiful sister Charis is well married, whilst believing herself to be on the shelf. To further this end, she brings the family from their country home to London and introduces herself to a distant relation, the selfish and indolent Marquis of Alverstoke, asking him to sponsor her sister into "the ton" and the subsequent Season. The Marquis is initially reluctant but agrees to sponsor the Merriville ladies out of mischief, mostly to annoy his sister Louisa who had been demanding similar assistance to launch her own daughter into society. At their combined debut ball, Alverstoke''s homely niece is easily outshone by Charis'' beauty. The Merrivilles are liked by everyone for their easy and engaging manners and good breeding. Charis is admired by many young men but she falls for the Marquis''s slow-witted and handsome cousin Endymion Dauntry. Frederica also acquires her own share of admirers, including (to his own astonishment) Alverstoke himself. Alverstoke is fascinated by her frank and open manners, unlike the society manners of London''s fashionable ladies. He is also delighted by the high spirits of the two youngest Merrivilles, her brothers Felix and Jessamy, and comes to like them for their own sakes. He slowly but deeply falls in love with Frederica and is ready to do anything for her sake.

Frederica

Adolphe, the narrator, is the son of a government minister. Introverted from an early age, his melancholy outlook has been formed by conversations with an elderly friend, whose insight into the folly and hypocrisy of the world has hindered rather than helped her in life. When the novel opens, he is 22 years old and has just completed his studies at the University of Göttingen. He travels to the town of D*** in Germany, where he becomes attached to the court of an enlightened Prince. During his stay he gains a reputation for an unpleasant wit. A friend''s project of seduction inspires him to try something similar with the 32-year-old lover of the Comte de P***, a beautiful Polish refugee named Ellénore. The seduction is successful, but they both fall in love, and their relationship becomes all-consuming, isolating them from the people around them. Eventually Adolphe becomes anxious as he realises that he is sacrificing any potential future for the sake of Ellénore. She persuades him to extend his stay by six months, but they quarrel, and when she breaks with the Comte de P*** and leaves her two children in order to be with him, and tends him after he is injured in a duel, he finds himself hopelessly indebted to her. When he leaves the town of D***, Ellénore follows him, only to be expelled from his home town by Adolphe''s father. Adolphe is furious and together they travel to her newly-regained estate in Poland. However, a friend of the father, the Baron de T***, manipulates Adolphe into promising to break with Ellénore for the sake of his career. The letter which contains the promise is forwarded to Ellénore and the shock leads to her death. Adolphe loses interest in life, and the alienation with which the book began returns in a more serious form.

Adolphe

*Darren Shan *The Saga of Darren Shan Darren, Harkat, and Mr. Crepsley (Vancha going back to Vampire Mountain to inform the other Princes and Generals of their encounter with the Vampaneze Lord) go to Mr. Crepsley''s hometown once again to investigate if Vampaneze had set up territories there. But soon after their arrival Darren is discovered by the police and forced to attend school. He has trouble with most of his subjects as he only has a middle school education, but luckily (or perhaps unluckily?) his English teacher is Debbie, his old girlfriend from his first visit to this city. Mr. Crepsley has to go back to Vampire Mountain again for Paris Skyle''s funeral, leaving Darren and Harkat to continue the investigations alone. One night on his way back to the hotel room the three are staying in, Darren encounters a Vampaneze with hooks for hands and a mask wrapped around his face. The Vampaneze attacks, but Darren is saved by his old friend Steve. Steve joins Darren for the hunt of the Vampaneze, claiming he''s changed his ways and now understands who the real enemy is and dropped his desire for vengeance against Darren and Mr.Crepsley long ago. Darren later reveals himself as a vampire to Debbie, and after a long explanation and a day''s contemplating she joins Darren and Steve for the fight. Mr. Crepsley comes back and helps Darren pursue the Vampaneze, but understandably doesn''t trust Steve. Darren does convince him, however, that Steve will be a big help for them and lets him come with them. Vancha also joins them again a few days later. They chase the hooked Vampaneze to the sewers at night, but the Vampaneze led them to a trap. Darren and his team are soon surrounded and the Vampaneze Lord make his second appearance. Darren tries to kill him, but is stopped by Steve, who shows his true side as being a half-vampaneze and betraying Darren and his friends. The hooked Vampaneze is also revealed to be RV (Previously known as Reggie Veggie, but now claims it stands for Righteous Vampaneze). A fight begins between the Hunters and the Vampaneze. Vancha charges through the Vampets, scattering them and Mr. Crepsley follows, slicing with his nails to bring down many Vampaneze. Darren soon beats Steve and is about to finish him off, but RV uses Debbie as a hostage. RV, Gannen Harst, and the Lord soon leave with the threat that they will kill Debbie if they are followed. Darren and Vancha take a Vampet and Steve as their hostage and are given a warning by Gannen to leave the tunnels immediately or he''ll send Vampaneze to finish them off.

Allies of the Night

The novel tells the tales of four women, working the graveyard shift at a Japanese bento factory. All four women live hard lives. Masako, accepted as the leader of the four women, feels completely alienated from her estranged husband and teenage son. Kuniko, a plump and rather vain girl, has recently been ditched by her boyfriend after the couple were driven into debt leaving Kuniko to fend off a loan shark. Yoshie is a single mother and reluctant caretaker of her mother-in-law, who was left partly paralyzed after a stroke. Yayoi is a thirty-four-year old mother of two small boys. She hates to leave her children home alone to go to work. More than that, she hates the thought of her drunken, gambling husband returning home and hurting them or, more likely, herself. Returning home one night, Yayoi discovers her husband has gambled away all their savings and loses control of her temper. She strangles him to death. She desperately persuades Masako, who eventually gets Yoshie and Kuniko involved, to help her dispose of the body. The body is dismembered, secured in many black bin-liners and hidden all over Tokyo. It is isn''t long before one carelessly hidden bag is discovered and the police begin to ask questions. As if things weren''t bad enough, the women begin to blackmail each other, a loanshark is requiring their services and a criminal who has lost everything because of their antics has begun to hunt the women down. The way out is not easy and it is certainly not pretty, and the women soon have to pay the price.

EE is mainly a history of the Ecotopian independence movement. The main characters are Vera Allwen, the leader of the Survivalist Party, and Lou Swift, a teenage physicist, along with their families and friends. Other characters are shown briefly as each one decides independently to break with the American status quo and begin living in an Ecotopian (low-tech, sustainable) fashion. Bolinas, California, high school student Lou Swift finds a way to generate electricity cheaply from seawater in a solar cell. However, she doesn’t understand how the cell works. She refuses to publish her results until she understands the science. Because she is determined to make the cell design freely available, she spurns corporate and academic offers to buy the cell design. Meanwhile, spies and burglars try to obtain her notes. Vera Allwen is a California state senator. Angered by an Eastern food corporation’s announcement it would stop selling fresh produce, she and other politicians, artists, and professionals form a new political party. It is decentralized, environmentalist, and populist. They create a platform and name it the Survivalist Party. As the book proceeds, they spread their ideas, coalition with like-minded people, and become a regional political force. Vera’s speeches are reprinted within the text. Some of their ideas come from a short novel called Ecotopia, and the Party publishes a paper called "The Survivalist Way to Ecotopia." The Party creates a think tank for environmentalist policies. When the Pacific Northwest states pass a special tax on cars to reduce car use, the U.S. Supreme Court overturns it; public outrage along the Pacific coast helps tip the people of the region toward supporting the Survivalist Party. When the Quebec government offers to establish diplomatic relations, the Party starts thinking about independence. A nuclear accident gives them the governorship of Washington State, and Northern California''s refusal to keep supplying Southern California with water leads to the state splitting into two. An ardent secessionist claims to have planted dirty bombs in New York City and Washington, DC, and threatens they will explode if the U.S. attacks the region. Bolinas declares itself independent of other governments. The Survivalist Party has infiltrated local units of the National Guard, which are now sympathetic to the secessionists. The U.S. is too busy with a war in Brazil to send troops to pacify Bolinas and its supporters. In a lucky coincidence, the U.S. helicopters massing on the Nevada border and preparing to attack the region are suddenly recalled to deal with a crisis in Saudi Arabia, and secession seems likely to proceed. Meanwhile, in the future Ecotopia, individuals move the local economy toward a more sustainable model. A collective sets up a solar remodeling business; a young man uses goats to mow lawns. Berkeley creates car-free zones; other cities adopt them. A suburban tract is replanted as an orchard. Rural residents build a lightweight, cheap horse-drawn buggy, and stills to distill alcohol from farm waste. Eventually, a large part of the public is car-free and ready to take the final steps to a sustainable economy. Lou finally discovers the key chemical that makes her solar cell work. She publishes her paper and people start building their own cells. With this breakthrough, the region will no longer be dependent for energy on the rest of the U.S. for imported fossil fuels or nuclear power. With this energy independence, the future nation of Ecotopia becomes a practical possibility. These events occur against economic and political breakdown in the U.S.: corporate concentration, slashed government budgets, and military adventurism abroad, aided by a compliant corporate media. The automobile habit has essentially bankrupted the U.S. Refusing to develop alternative energy sources, “oil-hungry America lurched toward some unseen economic catastrophe.” At the end, the Saudi oil refineries have been bombed, and the U.S. military is caught up in a war in the Middle East. The Ecotopian storyline ends with the Party making Lou’s solar cell technology available to the public, and a constitutional convention where the region decides to secede from the U.S. following the Quebec-Canada model. The book Ecotopia begins about 20 years after secession, when the new nation is securely established. Neither book describes events in between, such as the political difficulties of secession, the economic dislocations and outmigration from the region, and the Helicopter War with the U.S. (referred to in Ecotopia).

Ecotopia Emerging

Paladin of Souls is a sequel to The Curse of Chalion and is set some three years after the events of that novel. It follows Ista, mother of the girl who became Royina (Queen) in that book and a minor character in it. Recovering from the extreme guilt and grief that had marked her as mad while the Golden General''s curse on her family persisted, she finds herself bored to distraction and restless. To get away from her home town, Valenda, and its ugly memories she sets out on a religious pilgrimage with the dy Gura brothers (also minor characters from the earlier story) for protection; Liss, a feisty and clever courier girl; and dy Cabon, a plump priest of the Bastard (one of the five gods) as her ''spiritual guide''. The Bastard, god of disasters and of things out of season, becomes a larger presence in this novel than was The Lady of Spring in The Curse of Chalion; by its end, Ista herself has become a saint in his service. (The Father of Winter, another of the five gods, also makes a brief appearance.) The pilgrimage party is overrun and captured by a troop of Roknari raiders from the adjacent principality of Jokona, then set free by a patrol from nearby Castle Porifors. Leading the rescuers is Arhys, lord of the castle and a very effective warrior indeed—considering that he scarcely eats or drinks, or sleeps except for brief afternoon naps. Though she comes to be immensely attracted to him, she realizes in horror that he is the son of a man she had helped murder. Another obstacle is Arhys''s very young and very beautiful wife, Cattilara. Once in the castle Ista discovers another odd man: Lord Illvin, Arhys''s half-brother. He is unconscious except for afternoon wakings that match Arhys'' naps. She has seen him before, though, in a baffling dream that at last makes some sense. As this mystery begins to come clear, Castle Porifors is besieged by a new force of Roknari from Jokona that includes its Prince, Sordso, and his mother, Princess Joen. The latter is an elderly, minor daughter of the Golden General and has accumulated a whole troop of demon-ridden magicians, including her son, all of them controlled by one major magician: herself. As Castle Porifors and its defenders crumble under magical siege, Lord Arhys and a picked troop make a night raid that jolts the Jokonans but does not dislodge them. Only when Ista allows herself to walk as a hostage into the Princess'' lair is the siege ended. The remaining magicians'' demons are sent back to the Bastard''s care, and the remaining loose ends of the story are resolved, with Ista''s acceptance of the Bastard''s offer of skills and a job that give use and meaning to the rest of her life. Lord Illvin comes with the job as a bonus.

Paladin of Souls

For twenty years, Atrix Wolfe has turned his back on his magic to live with the wolves in the mountains. Once a powerful mage, Atrix Wolfe nearly caused the destruction of the kingdom of Pelucir when one of his creations, meant to force an invading army threatening his homeland to retreat, massacred not only the invaders, but the Pelucir forces defending their homeland as well. The daughter of the Queen of the Wood was another victim of Atrix''s Hunter; during the creation of the Hunter, Saro disappeared when the fairyworld was torn asunder by Atrix Wolfe''s magic. Talis, the prince of Pelucir, calls Atrix back to the human world to explain a spellbook written by a mysterious mage shortly after the massacre of Hunter''s Field that the aspiring mage was studying. In the kitchens of the castle, a mysterious scullery maid named Sorrow works silently, interacting more with the pots and pans than other people. The three characters are connected by the Queen of the Woods''s desire to find her daughter, but it is only when they uncover the truth of what happened twenty years earlier that they are able to find her as well as solve the mysteries of the spell book. Atrix Wolfe eventually discovers that the terrible Hunter was made, in part, from Ilyos, the consort of the Queen of the Wood and Saro''s father. Talis delivers Saro back to her mother, thinking that he will never see her again, as the Wood is a magical realm, which humans cannot reach by normal means. Saro regains the power of speech after being returned to the fairy world. Atrix Wolfe un-makes the Hunter. Ilyos, however, has been through so much that he cannot return to his life as the Queen''s consort. In order to protect the Queen''s world, he turns himself into one of the trees of the Wood. Talis is surprised when Saro returns to Pelucir, and they begin to become acquainted. She says that he was the only person she knew, for twenty years, who was kind to her.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

VALIS

By Philip K. Dick

White Boots

By Noel Streatfeild

Inexcusable

By Chris Lynch

The Ruins

By Scott Smith

Ham on Rye

By Charles Bukowski

Frederica

By Georgette Heyer

Adolphe

By Benjamin Constant

Allies of the Night

By Darren Shan

Out

By Natsuo Kirino

Ecotopia Emerging

By Ernest Callenbach

Paladin of Souls

By Lois McMaster Bujold

The Book of Atrix Wolfe

By Patricia A. McKillip