Mary begins with a description of the conventional and loveless marriage between the heroine''s mother and father. Eliza, Mary''s mother, is obsessed with novels, rarely considers anyone but herself, and favours Mary''s brother. She neglects her daughter, who educates herself using only books and the natural world. Ignored by her family, Mary devotes much of her time to charity. When her brother suddenly dies, leaving Mary heir to the family''s fortune, her mother finally takes an interest in her; she is taught "accomplishments", such as dancing, that will attract suitors. However, Mary''s mother soon sickens and requests on her deathbed that Mary wed Charles, a wealthy man she has never met. Stunned and unable to refuse, Mary agrees. Immediately after the ceremony, Charles departs for the Continent. To escape a family who does not share her values, Mary befriends Ann, a local girl who educates her still further. Mary becomes quite attached to Ann who is in the grip of an unrequited love and does not reciprocate Mary''s feelings. Ann''s family falls into poverty and is on the brink of losing their home, but Mary is able to pay off their debts after her marriage to Charles gives her limited control over her money. Ann becomes consumptive and Mary travels with her to Lisbon in hopes of nursing her back to health. There they are introduced to Henry, who is also trying to regain his health. Ann dies and Mary is grief-stricken. Henry and Mary subsequently fall in love but are forced to return to England separately. Mary, depressed by her marriage to Charles and bereft of both Ann and Henry, remains unsettled, until she hears that Henry''s consumption has worsened. She rushes to his side and cares for him until he dies. At the end of the novel, Charles returns from Europe; he and Mary establish something of a life together, but Mary is unhealthy and can barely stand to be in the same room with her husband; the last few lines of the novel imply that she will die young.

Mary: A Fiction

Vasquez, Moriz, and Felipe are the three lighthouse keepers stationed at the Staten Island lighthouse off the southern tip of Argentina. Two of them are murdered by a band of newly arrived pirates led by one Kongre. Vasquez is the only survivor, and spends several months until the dispatch boat Sante Fe is due to return, surviving off the pirates'' hidden stores of food in a cave. After the Century, an American ship from Mobile, Alabama, crashes on the island due to the light having been put out by the pirates, Vasquez bands with the sole survivor of the wreck — First Officer John Davis — to stop the pirates from escaping into the South Pacific. They manage to scavenge a cannon from the wreckage, and shoot the pirates'' ship, the Maule, as it is about to leave the bay they are situated in. The shell only causes minor damage, however, and the pirates'' carpenter is able to fix it in only a few days. The night before the ship is about to attempt to leave again, Vasquez swims to the Maule at its mooring and plants a bomb in the rudder. This causes, yet again, only minor damage, and is fixed in only one day. The next day however, Carcante, the second-in-command of the pirate ship, spots the Sante Fe on the horizon. Fortunately for the pirates, it will not arrive till night, and the Sante Fe can''t possibly get into the bay without light from the lighthouse. This will give them the perfect chance to slip out and sail around the southern side of the island, which they know quite well by now. Vasquez and Davis, however, return to the lighthouse and turn the light back on. The troop of pirates tries to regain the lighthouse and kill the two, but they find the bolted iron door to the staircase too reinforced to break down. Kongre, the band''s leader, orders Carcante and the carpenter to climb the side of the lighthouse and murder Vasquez and Davis at the top, but they are shot as soon as their heads peek over the banister. Kongre and the remaining pirates realize it is all over for them, and flee to the interior of the island. Most surrender afterward, a few starve, and Vasquez watches as Kongre commits suicide. Vasquez returns home with the Sante Fe after making sure the island is safe for the new lighthousemen.

Le Phare du bout du monde

This third memoir installment begins in November of 1722, eight months after the 1722 General Election that provided the historical setting for A Spectacle of Corruption. This time, Weaver finds himself involved in puzzling and dangerous events surrounding the all-powerful East India Company. Victimized, along with family and friends, by an elaborate extortion scheme, Weaver is forced to spy and steal for the enigmatic Jerome Cobb. Under Cobb''s direction, Weaver infiltrates the Company and attempts to learn its secrets before the upcoming meeting of the board of directors (called the Court of Proprietors). Trouble is, Cobb won''t (or can''t) say exactly what he''s looking for, or why. As is typical in this genre, the truth is not revealed until the final pages. Along the way, Weaver meets a colorful assortment of characters, including a betel-nut chewing Company director, an obsessive-compulsive clerk, a bi-sexual bigamist inventor, the London silk-weavers'' guild master and several varieties of international spy.

The Devil''s Company

Whitaker begins by showing that the antipsychotics, benzodiazepines and antidepressants were discovered as side effects during research for antihistamines (specifically promethazine), gram negative antibiotics (specifically mephenesin) and the anti-tuberculosis agents isoniazid and iproniazid respectively. The psychiatric mechanisms of action of these drugs were not known at the time and these were initially called major tranquilizers (now typical antipsychotics) due to their induction of "euphoric quietiude"; minor tranquilizers (now benzodiazepines) and psychic energizers (now antidepressants) due to patients "dancing in the wards." These compounds were developed during a period of growth for the pharmaceutical industry bolstered by the 1951 Durham-Humphrey Amendment, giving physicians monopolistic prescribing rights thus aligning the interests of physicians and pharmaceutical companies. This also followed the industry''s development of "magic bullets" that treat people with, for example, diabetes, which provided an analogy to sell the idea of these drugs to the public. It was not until many years later, after the mechanisms of these drugs were determined, that the serotonergic hypothesis of depression and dopaminergic hypothesis of schizophrenia were developed to fall in line with the drug''s mechanisms. According to Whitaker''s analysis of the primary literature lower levels of serotonin and higher levels of dopmine "have proved to be true in patients WITH prior exposure to antidepressants or antipsychotics (ie as homeostatic mechanisms) but NOT in patients without prior exposure." Another means by which he undermines the magic bullet theory is that he shows that the historical notion that the "invention of the antipsychotic Thorazine" having emptied the asylums is a myth. His case begins by showing that during the late 1940s and 1950s ~75% of cases admitted for first episode schizophrenia recovered to the community by approximately 3 years (Thorazine was not released until 1955). He then notes that the arrival of Thorazine did not improve discharge rates in the 1950s for people newly diagnosed with schizophrenia. In fact, based on the only large scale first episode schizophrenia study of this era, 88% of those who were not treated were discharged within eighteen months compared to 74% of neuroleptic treated. This is additionally evidenced by the fact that when Thorazine was introduced in 1955 there were 267 thousand schizophrenia patients in state and county mental hospitals, and eight years later, there were 253 thousand, thus indicating that the advent of neuroleptics barely budged the number of hospitalized patients. What he argues actually cleared the asylums was the beginning of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. These programs provided federal subsidies for nursing home care but no such subsidy for care in state mental hospitals, and so the states, seeking to save money, naturally began shipping their chronic patients to nursing homes. Whitaker favors psychiatric medications but believes that they must be used in a "selective, cautious manner. It should be understood that they’re not fixing any chemical imbalances. And honestly, they should be used on a short-term basis." Whitaker traces the effects of what looks like an iatrogenic epidemic: the drugs that patients receive can perturb their normal brain function. Whitaker suggests that the "wonder drug" glow around the second generation psychotropics has long since disappeared. He views the "hyping" of the top-selling atypical antipsychotics as "one of the more embarrassing episodes in psychiatry''s history, as one government study after another failed to find that they were any better than the first-generation anti-psychotics." One of Whitaker''s solutions is the style of care documented by professor Jaakko Seikkula at Keropudas Hospital in Tornio in Lapland where drugs are given to patients only on a limited basis, with good outcomes. According to Whitaker, the district has the lowest per capita spending on mental health of all health districts in Finland. He also advocates that those with depression engage in exercise. Exercise for depression is so successful that in the UK the doctor may write a prescription for exercise. In fact, studies have shown that exercise produces a "substantial improvement" within six weeks, that its effect size is "large," and that 70% of all depressed patients respond to an exercise program. "These success rates are quite remarkable," German investigators wrote in 2008. Whitaker sees that children are vulnerable to being prescribed a lifetime of drugs. As the author says, a psychiatrist and parents may give a child a "cocktail" to force him or her to behave. Then when this child grows up to eighteen, Whitaker says he or she becomes a disabled adult.

Anatomy of an Epidemic

Ae has been imprisoned for a crime rarely committed in the society he lives in: murder (mainly due to the difficulty of killing a body protected by nano-tech). He is placed in a high-tech prison (a stone with an artificial environment inside held in the plasma of a sun). He is "executed" by having his Dot-tech purged from his body, which, while not immediately lethal, will eventually cause him to die of natural causes. He is broken out and picked up by a sub-light ship, where he recuperates before traveling onward, employed by a mysterious agency. During the escape, he is implanted with an artificial intelligence who relays his instructions. The AI reveals that Ae is to kill an entire planet, but does not explain who has ordered the murder, nor their motive for doing so. All Ae is told is that the nature of his mission will be revealed upon its completion. Ae travels to a planet where he learns the secret of creating black holes. Meanwhile, he meets and travels with a woman named Klabier, and forms something of a romantic connection to her (something uncommon in the t''T), until she reveals herself to be a policewoman. However, Ae escapes before she can detain him. Ae uses the stolen black hole technology to destroy the atmosphere of his target planet, wiping out its 60 million inhabitants. Upon completing the murder, his directors reveal themselves to be a distributed intelligence that is distributed throughout Dot-tech. The connection involves distributed quantum waveforms, which humans collapse every time they use the Dot-tech, inhibiting its processing power. The Dot-tech cleared the planet of its human inhabitants to create space where they can operate unimpeded (it was necessary to use an unaugmented human for this task, as the Dot-tech''s inherent programming apparently prevents them from carrying out the operation themselves). Unable to cope with the enormity of his crimes, Ae makes no attempt to escape despite being given ample opportunity to do so. Eventually, the police locate him and return him to his prison. Some large-scale effects of the application of quantum theory are also explored in this novel.

Stone

The book consists of nine chapters and a section of endnotes. All of the chapters combine narrative, personal reflection, historiography, and social commentary. Pearson''s style is evident in the beginning to the eighth chapter, "2001: A Drugs Odyssey": In this book, Pearson frequently challenges generally accepted layman views about mental health and mental health treatment. "The idea that people need antidepressants because they have a ''chemical imbalance'' in their brains," she says at one point, "has evolved into a sort of urban legend." She states that "[t]he trouble with this soothing explanation...is that serotonin deficiency is an unsupportable claim." Pearson also challenges conventional medical wisdom: at one point, she states that, although some psychoactive medications target dopamine in the brain, over 85 percent of the body''s dopamine is found outside the brain, and the medications'' effect on those other tissues is almost completely unresearched. The Notes section contains 172 references ranging from scholarly articles to the poetry of William James and the philosophical writings of Søren Kierkegaard.

A Brief History of Anxiety

DryCo has sent two operatives, retired African-American general Luther and his white bodyguard Jake, to post-communist Moscow, where rival multinational corporation Krasnaya dominates Russian society through consumer capitalist mass production of products. However, Luther and Jake discover that Krasnaya has two highly advanced quantum physicists under duress, Oktobriana Osipova and Alekine. The two Dryco mercenaries manage to abduct the physicists, but their escape sends them back to 1939 in a conservative alternate history. In this world, Abraham Lincoln was killed by a Baltimore pro-slavery mob in 1861 CE, so the American Civil War never happened, and Theodore Roosevelt abolished slavery in 1907 due to European pressure on J.P. Morgan, who feared loss of his European financial assets. In 1932, Giuseppe Zangara assassinated Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill died from a car accident. As a result of Roosevelt''s premature death, it is noted that John Nance Garner proved to be a fiscal conservative, leading to a situation where much of the western United States had to threaten civil war to obtain economic relief from the ongoing Depression. As the novel progresses, Alekhine, actually a Krasnaya operative, abducts Joseph Stalin from Moscow, to be transferred to Krasnaya custody and kept in a dacha, in a future which has abandoned communism and uses the image of "Big Boy" as nostalgic consumer iconography. When this world eventually does undergo its World War II, it is assumed that there will be no effective opposition to Nazi Germany from its Soviet Union or United Kingdom as a result. However, as is disclosed in its sequel, Elvissey, this is an incorrect assumption. Luther and Jake make the accqaintance of Norman Quarles, an African American doctor and his wife, Wanda, but their presence attracts the suspicions of (unseen) J. Edgar Hoover, who sends FBI agents in pursuit. During the chase, Norman is killed, and Oktobriana contracts Dovlatov''s Syndrome, a mutated influenza virus that emerged in Irkutsk, Siberia in 1909, and led to the deaths of Queen Alexandra, US House Speaker William Dean Howells, Charlie Chaplin, Christy Mathewson, French Premier Clemenceau, Claude Debussy, Guillaume Apollinaire and Amedeo Modigliani, amongst others, during the ten year space of this epidemic. Ultimately, Luther and Wanda return to Dryco''s future, while Oktobriana and Jake are lost in the interdimensional void. As an aside, Luther notes that there are sects described as the Albigensian Church of Jesus the Light, Reformed and the Valentinian House of God in this world, which implies the survival of gnosticism has occurred in this timeline. Amongst the books cited in the Albigensian Bible are the Gospel of Matthew, Gospel of Mark, Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, but this gnostic bible also includes the Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Truth, and the Hymn of Light. The latter revelation will play an important role in Womack''s next novel, Elvissey.

Terraplane

Now aged fifteen Marianne returns to Brighton, where she recuperated from her illness at the end of Marianne Dreams, when she was ten. Much to her disappointment she finds Brighton a lonely and boring place, and she tags along with local girls Alice and Josie despite having little in common with them. One evening Josie''s friend Billie tells the girls of a visit to a local fortune teller who apparently gives remarkably accurate readings. Reluctantly, Marianne joins the girls on a trip to the fortune teller and there she is astonished at how much the woman guesses about her life, including details of her illness five years ago. The fortune teller assures Marianne that she will not be lonely for much longer and that soon she will experience romance. Spurred on by this Marianne accepts a date with a boy called Alan, whom she doesn''t realise is Billie''s former boyfriend. This inadvertent betrayal alienates Marianne from the few friends she had, and after Alan also deserts her she is left on her own. It is then that she meets Mark, a boy from London who, it transpires, is the same boy with whom she shared a tutor but never met in Marianne Dreams. The two enjoy the last few days of the holiday together and promise to meet again in London.

Marianne and Mark

The novel is set in December 1965. Carter is vacationing in a borrowed yacht in Hong Kong disguised as playboy, Clark Harrington. He is contacted by friend and CIA agent, Bob Ludwell. Ludwell confides in Carter that he is leaving Hong Kong that night to cross into China on an undisclosed mission and that he does not expect to survive. Ludwell has clearly lost his nerve and hands Carter an envelope with instructions to give it to his wife and children if he does not return in a week. Carter is followed indicating that he has been connected with Ludwell. Carter murders the tail and returns to his yacht anchored in Victoria Harbour where he finds that his cabin boy has been murdered in retaliation. A note pinned to the boy’s body warns Carter to leave Hong Kong immediately or face the consequences from the Society of the Red Tiger. A Marine Police cutter arrives and Carter is informed that Ludwell was murdered before he had the chance to leave Hong Kong. It is apparent to the police that Ludwell was killed and dismembered on the orders of James (Jim) Pok – leader of the Red Tiger tong. Carter arranges to undertake Ludwell''s mission. Carter''s yacht is being watched by the Tiger tong. Carter swims ashore helped by Fan Su – Ludwell''s contact in China who has come to Hong Kong to discover what has happened to him. Fan Su is an anti-communist guerilla fighter based in Hong Kong. She was working with Ludwell to foment an anti-communist revolution in China. She has made contact with a Chinese army general wishing to defect. Ludwell''s secret mission was to go to China and escort the general into Hong Kong and thence to the US. The general has been severely wounded and is holed up in a Buddhist temple 5-10 miles from the Hong Kong-China border. Fan Su helps Carter enter China in a coffin disguised as the repatriated corpse of her dead relative. Carter and Fan Su reach the temple as a company of Chinese soldiers begin to search the nearby countryside for the missing general. Under the cover of night, Carter, Fan Su and the general elude the search parties, steal a tank and crash through the border into Hong Kong. The general survives and is sent to the US to recover. Jim Pok meets Carter and tries to bargain with him to hand over Fan Su to save face with his Chinese paymasters. Carter refuses and threatens to spread rumours among the underworld crime network that Pok has double-crossed the Chinese government – damaging Pok''s reputation and putting his life at risk. Carter throws Pok over the side of his yacht and returns to the cabin to make love to Fan Su.

Dragon Flame

We are first introduced to the Monroes, including the boys, Pete and Toby, as they return home from the movies on a dark and stormy night. Harold, the dog, notices that they return with a small bundle. The bundle turns out to be a rabbit they found at the theater, with a note tied around his neck written in an ancient Carpathian dialect. The rabbit has two tiny fangs and a black pattern on his back that looks like a cape. After some discussion the family decides to adopt him, and since they found him at the movie Dracula they decide to name him Bunnicula. Shortly after adopting Bunnicula, the family notices vegetables mysteriously turning white. Chester, the cat, notices that in each of the vegetables there are two tiny holes. After reading a book on vampires, Chester becomes convinced that Bunnicula is a vampire. He notes that Bunnicula sleeps all day, appears to be able to get out of his cage on his own, and has tiny fangs, which Chester believes he uses to suck vegetables dry. Chester then convinces Harold to help him prove this by catching Bunnicula in the act. He strews himself, and Bunnicula''s cage with garlic. This succeeds only in causing Mrs. Monroe to give him a bath. Later, after reading about killing vampires with a stake through the heart, Chester tries to punch a (meat) steak through the sleeping rabbit''s heart. Finally, he tries to drown the rabbit by tossing his water dish on him. This behavior results in Chester being locked outside. As the story progresses Harold refuses to cooperate in Chester''s antics. With Chester no longer speaking to him, he begins to take a liking to Bunnicula. After a few days he notices that Bunnicula is beginning to look ill. He stays up late one night and discovers that Chester is putting on garlic and blocking Bunnicula from feeding, essentially starving the poor rabbit. Harold decides to act, and that evening before Chester awakes he takes Bunnicula out of his cage and places him in the family''s dinner salad. But before the rabbit can feast Chester chases him off, and lands in the salad himself. At this point the family decides to take Chester to the vet to address his strange behavior. They also decide to take Bunnicula to the vet as they notice he seems ill. At the vet Chester is prescribed cat therapy. Bunnicula is put on a vegetable, liquid diet. He takes to this so well, that the family decides to keep him on it permanently, at which point the mysterious white vegetables stop turning up. However, the Monroes attribute the strange white vegetables to a vegetable blight at their supermarket, and change stores. The novel ends with the Monroes remaining blissfully unaware of Bunnicula''s strange feeding habits, and the danger Chester believes them to be in.

Bunnicula: A Rabbit-Tale of Mystery

It''s January and everyone is back from break. Waverly gets a new dean, Dr. Dresden, and two new students, Isla and Isaac Dresden. Instead of a new semester commencing, Jan Plan takes effect. It is a four-week course where students work on their own independent projects. Junior''s and Seniors tend to work on solo projects while everyone else are encouraged to work together. With permission from the dean (via help from Issac) Jenny starts an independent art project based on the two art classes she took the previous semester. Her goal is to experiment with motion, drawing people instead of taking a picture of them with a manual camera. She spends most of her time in the cafe drawing people coming and going. Heath and Brandon''s project is based on Man vs. Wild. Heath plans to live outside for three-weeks on basic essentials and camping skills. No tent, basic sleeping bags, no electricity, not contact with the outside world, hunting their own food, gathering fire wood, and taking notes. They take up camp in Waverly''s woods. Bradon leaves after a few days, and Heath stays until the night of the party when he is unexpectedly found by Easy. Brandon did not exactly agree to Heath''s project. He was conned into it having just returned from Switzerland. During his break, which was paid for by Heath, he visited his girlfriend Hellie Dunderdorf with whom he lost his virginity. After quitting Heath''s project he ends up working with Callie due to no other options. Callie and Brandon''s project looks into the psychology of love. Callie selected this project to find more information about true love. Is there such a thing? Do you get over your first love? Can you love again? They do research and take a video survey with some of the Waverly girls. During the project Callie finds herself becoming attracted to Brandon (along with most of the other girls), who has more of a sexy unshaven look going on. At one point they end up kissing in his dorm room. Unfortunately, Brandon''s webcam was on. Hellie saw the whole thing and promptly breaks up with him. Brett''s project, like Brandon''s, changes. Originally she was going to intern at Vogue thanks to her sister, Brianna. However, Leslie ends up not needing a new intern due to a promotion to Italian Vogue.She ends up returning to Waverly and joining Sebastian''s "friend" Christine Bosley''s Jan Plan project.

Devious

Detained at P.O.W. Camp 354 near Nanyuki, Kenya, Felice Benuzzi from Trieste, together with two fellow-prisoners Dr. Giovanni (''Giuàn'') Balletto from Genova and Vincenzo (''Enzo'') Barsotti from Lido di Camaiore, escaped in January 1943 and climbed Mt Kenya with improvised equipment and meagre rations, two of them reaching a point above the Petit Gendarme, at about 5000 metres, high up the NW ridge. After an eventful 18-day period on the mountain (24 January-10 February), and to the astonishment of the British camp commandant, the three adventurers broke back into Camp 354. As reward for their exploit, they each received 28 days in solitary confinement, commuted to 7 days by the camp commandant in acknowledgement of their "sporting effort". From the flyleaf of the 1952 William Kimber edition of the book: :"One of the most unusual adventures of the war years has now been written by the man who led it, and who has the ability to tell his story with the accuracy and vividness that compels the readers to live through it with him. Felice Benuzzi was a P.O.W. in a British Camp facing Mount Kenya (5,199 m - 17,058 ft). The depressing tedium of camp life and the fascination of the mountain combined to inspire him with a plan. He first put the prospect of escaping to climb it to a fellow prisoner who was a professional mountaineer. The expert told him that the idea was mad, that they would need six months'' training on first-class food and porters to carry equipment to a base camp. But Benuzzi was not to be put off. Eventually he got two others to conspire with him, a doctor and a sailor. Surreptitiously they improvised scant equipment and saved what food they could from rations. Their only ''map'' of the mountain was a sketch of it on the label of an Oxo tin. :"And then they escaped, and went to climb the mountain. The sailor was ill immediately after breakout but decided to carry on. The lower reaches of Kenya are jungle and forest infested with big game. They were unarmed, and their encounters with the animals are some of the most exciting passages in the story. But Benuzzi writes with a simplicity and vigour that take you with him every yard of the way. At the foot of the highest peak the sailor was too ill to go further, and Benuzzi and the doctor went forward to the climax of their adventure. Their way back was as hazardous as the ascent, and the tension never relaxes until they at last break back into the P.O.W. camp from which they had escaped and give themselves up to the British Commandant."

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

Mary: A Fiction

By Mary Wollstonecraft

Le Phare du bout du monde

By Michel Verne

The Devil's Company

By David Liss

Anatomy of an Epidemic

No Author Listed

Stone

By Adam Roberts

A Brief History of Anxiety

By Patricia Pearson

Terraplane

By Jack Womack

Marianne and Mark

By Catherine Storr

Dragon Flame

No Author Listed

Bunnicula: A Rabbit-Tale of Mystery

By James Howe

Devious

By Cecily von Ziegesar

No Picnic on Mount Kenya

No Author Listed