A spacecraft filled with refugees from a cosmic catastrophe crash-lands on an unmapped planet. There the survivors must face the reality of their precarious situation; the ship was lost and little had been salvaged from it. Everything comes to depend on one bright young man accidentally among them, a trainee planet-builder ("polymath"). While it would have been his job to oversee all aspects of establishing a successful colony he faces major difficulties; not only is his education incomplete, he had been studying a vastly different planet. Two ships escaped the catastrophe. One lands in the jungle in a mountainous area. The other, with the polymath, lands on water, allowing the passengers just enough time to escape the sinking ship. With his education incomplete, he is faced with an array of problems he needs to overcome, in order to ensure the survival, of not only the passengers from his ship, but those on the lost ship as well, who are under the control of a despotic captain determined to get back into space.

Polymath

Nicola''s merlin, the Sprog, makes off from the train when she is on her way back to school, taking a sparrow for the first time in his life. Returning to the station, she finds a new girl, Esther Frewen. Esther''s parents are divorced and have sent her to boarding school because she doesn''t quite fit in their new lives. She is not too worried about this, but mainly about leaving her puppy, Daks, behind. A few weeks into term, Nicola, along with most of the school, is shocked to find that she has been left out of the Junior Netball team. In fact, this is the work of Lois Sanger, Nicola''s old enemy and now school Games Captain. She is a soloist in the Christmas Play, but does not find this much consolation. Half-term is less fun than expected, mainly because Mrs Marlow''s mother is visiting. Nicola and Patrick manage to sneak off for a day to visit Wade Minster and look at the carved falcon and then enjoy a cold, dark ride back over the downs, while Patrick recites the Lyke-Wake Dirge. Back at school, Nicola finds that she has been given the part of Shepherd Boy in the Christmas Play, the part Lawrie desperately wanted. Lawrie thinks this is treachery on a grand scale. However, when she falls and hurts her leg so that she cannot play in a netball match, she finds a possible solution. Nicola agrees to pretend to be Lawrie so that she can play in the match - which they win comfortably. Lawrie is now convinced that somehow she will be the Shepherd Boy. On the day of the Play, Esther (who is now supposed to be singing Nicola''s solos) disappears, leaving a note for Nicola. She has gone home to prevent her mother getting rid of Daks. Nicola, Lawrie, and their friends Tim and Miranda agree that Nicola should go back to singing and Lawrie will act. Miranda, despite being Jewish, agrees to fill the spare place in the procession. There is a huge fuss at the Minster when the staff realise what has happened and there will clearly be "blood for breakfast" before too long. However, no-one can think of a better plan. Everyone, including Grandmother and Patrick, is amazed by Nicola''s singing and Lawrie''s acting. Ginty and Ann play Gabriel and Mary respectively, causing Mrs Marlow a certain embarrassment when she realises how much her family have dominated the production.

End of Term

The novel ends with a surprise twist, when Nikolai''s worst fears are realized. The Mongol hordes that the Tsar kept at bay for hundreds of years are finally unleashed on the weakened empire of Russia via a complex labyrinth of tunnels. The inhabitants of Petersburg, unable to defend themselves from the ravaging horde of Tartars, quickly capitulate to the rule of the Khan. Appolon Appolonovich is beheaded by the tyrannical Khan and his son Nikolai assumes his rightful place as guardian of the Russian people. This was intended to be the first in an epic trilogy detailing the resistance movement of the intelligentsia against the alien invaders. However, with the onset of post-revolutionary censorship, the series was deemed to be too monarchist and was therefore abandoned. Bely presents the idea of the entire world being connected by a series of tunnels. As a symbolist he saw tunnels as a gateway to the soul. By having the Mongols use these tunnels to breach Russia''s defenses, he expresses the widely held fear of Orientalism defiling the Russian soul.

Petersburg

Set in the autumn of 1541, the novel describes fictional events surrounding Henry VIII''s ''Progress'' to the North (a state visit accompanied by the royal court and its attendants, the purpose of which was to formally accept surrender from those who had rebelled during the Pilgrimage of Grace). Most of the novel is set in York, though events in London and on the return journey via Hull are also depicted. Matthew Shardlake (a London lawyer) and his assistant Jack Barak arrive in York ahead of the Progress to fulfill an official role, but also with a secret mission from Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury. The official role is to deal with petitions to the King from the citizens of York; the secret mission is to ensure the welfare of an important political prisoner, Sir Edward Broderick, so he can be brought to London for questioning in the Tower of London. However, events are quickly complicated when the murder of a York glazier leads Shardlake to the discovery of important documents that bring the King''s right to the throne into question.

Sovereign

On Guy Fawkes Night, Mary Poppins arrives in the wake of the last fireworks display by the Banks family. The Banks children Michael, Jane, the twins, and Annabel plead with her to stay. She reluctantly agrees to do so "till the door opens". Mrs. Banks has Mary and the children find a piano tuner, who happens to be Mary''s cousin, Mr. Twigley. When Mary and the children visit, Mr. Twigley tries to unburden himself from seven wishes given to him when he was born. Besides pianos, Mr. Twigley also specializes in songbirds such as nightingales, one of which he releases when he''s finished. He also provides music boxes for Mary and the Banks children to dance to. When they return home later, the drawing room piano is playing perfectly, and when the Banks children ask Mary what happened, she sharply rebukes them. Other adventures in the book include Mary telling the story of a king who was outsmarted by a cat, the park statue of Neleus that comes to life for a time during one of their outings, their visit to confectioner Miss Calico and her flying peppermint sticks, an undersea (High-Tide) party where Mary Poppins is the guest of honor, and a party between fairy tale rivals in the Crack between the Old Year and the New. When the children ask why Mary Poppins, a real person, is there, they are told that she is a fairy tale come true. Finally, the citizens of the town as well as many other characters from the previous two books turn out to say good-bye to Mary. The children realize they''re not leaving, but Mary is, and they rush to the nursery window and see her entering a house just like theirs, opening the door, and walking in. Later that evening, Mr. Banks sees a shooting star, and they all wish upon it, the children faintly make out Mary Poppins. They wave and she waves back to them. "Mary Poppins herself had flown away, but the gifts she had brought would remain for always."

Mary Poppins Opens the Door

Vincentio, the Duke of Vienna, makes it known that he intends to leave the city on a diplomatic mission. He leaves the government in the hands of a strict judge, Angelo. Claudio, a young nobleman, is betrothed/unofficially married to Juliet. At the time, marriages were supposed to be announced by banns in advance. Due to lack of money, Claudio and Juliet did not observe all the technicalities. This did not make them unique however; at the time most people (including the Church) would have considered them married. Technically, however, all the formalities for a civil marriage had not been followed and so a strict judge might rule that they were not legally married. Angelo, as the personification of the law, decides to enforce the ruling that fornication is punishable by death, and since he does not accept the validity of the marriage, Claudio is sentenced to be executed. Claudio''s friend, Lucio, visits Claudio''s sister, Isabella, a novice nun, and asks her to intercede with Angelo on Claudio''s behalf. Isabella obtains an audience with Angelo, and pleads for mercy for Claudio. Over the course of two scenes between Angelo and Isabella, it becomes clear that he harbours lustful thoughts about her, and he eventually offers her a deal: Angelo will spare Claudio''s life if Isabella yields him her virginity. Isabella refuses, but she also realises that (due to Angelo''s austere reputation) she will not be believed if she makes a public accusation against him. Instead she visits her brother in prison and counsels him to prepare himself for death. Claudio vehemently begs Isabella to save his life, but Isabella refuses. As a novice nun, she feels that she cannot sacrifice her own immortal soul (and that of Claudio''s, if he causes her to lose her virtue) to save Claudio''s transient earthly life. The Duke has not in fact left the city, but remains there disguised as a friar (Lodowick) in order to spy on the city''s affairs, and especially on the actions of Angelo. In his guise as a friar he befriends Isabella and arranges two tricks to thwart Angelo''s evil intentions: #First, a "bed trick" is arranged. Angelo has previously refused to fulfill the betrothal binding him to Mariana, because her dowry had been lost at sea. Isabella sends word to Angelo that she has decided to submit to him, making it a condition of their meeting that it occurs in perfect darkness and in silence. Mariana agrees to take Isabella''s place, and she has sex with Angelo, although he continues to believe he has enjoyed Isabella. (In some interpretations of the law, this constitutes consummation of their betrothal, and therefore their marriage. This is the same interpretation that assumes that Claudio and Juliet are legally married.) #After having sex with Mariana (who he thinks is Isabella), Angelo goes back on his word, sending a message to the prison that he wishes to see Claudio''s head, and necessitating the "head trick." The Duke first attempts to arrange the execution of another prisoner whose head can be sent instead of Claudio''s. However, the villain Barnardine refuses to be executed in his drunken state. As luck would have it, a pirate named Ragozine, of similar appearance to Claudio, has recently died of a fever, so his head is sent to Angelo instead. This main plot concludes with the ''return'' to Vienna of the Duke as himself. Isabella and Mariana publicly petition him, and he hears their claims against Angelo, which Angelo smoothly denies. As the scene develops, it appears that Friar Lodowick will be blamed for the ''false'' accusations levelled against Angelo. The Duke leaves Angelo to judge the cause against Lodowick, but returns in disguise moments later when Lodowick is summoned. Eventually the friar reveals himself to be the Duke, thereby exposing Angelo as a liar and Isabella and Mariana as truthful. He proposes that Angelo be executed but first compels him to marry Mariana— with his estate going to Mariana as her new dowry, "to buy you a better husband". Mariana pleads for Angelo''s life, even enlisting the aid of Isabella (who is not yet aware her brother Claudio is still living). The Duke pretends not to heed the women''s petition, and only after revealing that Claudio has not, in fact, been executed, relents. The Duke then proposes marriage to Isabella. Isabella does not reply, and her reaction is interpreted differently in different productions: her silent acceptance of his proposal is the most common in performance. This is one of the "open silences" of the play. A sub-plot concerns Claudio''s friend Lucio, who frequently slanders the duke to the friar, and in the last act slanders the friar to the duke, providing opportunities for comic consternation on Vincentio''s part and landing Lucio in trouble when it is revealed that the duke and the friar are one and the same. His punishment, like Angelo''s, is to be forced into an undesired marriage: in this case with the prostitute Kate Keepdown.

Measure for Measure

Breaking with the more or less historical setting in previous albums, two rival outer space alien ships appear above the Gaulish village. Before it, Obelix and Asterix were hunting boars, when they found one rigid. As they went back to the village, everyone is also rigid while indulged in a fight. Luckily, Getafix was in his normal state, and says he was just testing the magic potion, causing Asterix to realise the magic potion has made them immune to the effects, and also that Obelix has been giving Dogmatix magic potion. Soon, they found a spaceship resembling a gigantic yellow sphere, from which an alien named Toon emerges. He reveals he forgot to switch off a landing device on his ship, which has led to the village becoming rigid. Soon, when the ship departed, everything was normal again. The evil aliens Nagma want to know the secret of, and confiscate the "great weapon" the Gauls have (Getafix''s potion), that is "known throughout the universe", in order to conquer more planets. However a Tadsilweny called Toon comes to the village, after burning down a Roman Camp, with the mission to destroy the weapon. It turns out the potion causes immunity to many of the alien devices. Nagma was forced out of Earth in his defeat, and Toon erases all memory of his visit due to his embarrassment over him being temporarily enlarged to giant size when he consumed the potion due to it being incompatible with his physiology. The aliens are styled on the happy-faced Walt Disney and DC Comics superheroes of the American comic book style on one side, and futuristic robot and insect-like Japanese manga style on the other.

Asterix and the Falling Sky

Peter Brownrigg, a 14-year-old boy who lives in Cumberland in the north of England, is involved in a secret night protest against the theft of his village''s farmland by Sir Philip Morton. He leaves his village to escape prosecution for throwing a rock at Sir Philip Morton. He first goes to Penrith, but unexpectedly encounters Sir Philip at a performance of Richard III by a touring playing company. He hides from him in a prop coffin (supposed to contain the body of King Henry VI) which is later carried on to the company''s cart. The players discover Peter hiding and the kindly Desmonds, who run the playing company, take him on as a boy actor. Another boy, Kit Kirkstone, also joins the company. Kit proves excellent at playing female roles while Peter acts as an understudy. After Peter''s jealousy leads to a fight, he discovers Kit''s secret. Kit is actually a girl in disguise, really called Katharine Russell, who is running away to avoid a forced marriage to Sir Philip, who is only interested in her inheritance. The company breaks up and the Desmonds promise to take Peter and Kit to a London theatre company. When Mr. Desmond breaks his leg in a river accident, the youngsters go on ahead. After being initially turned away by Richard Burbage of the Lord Chamberlain''s Men, they are accepted as apprentices by the playwright William Shakespeare, who recognises Kit''s acting ability and Peter''s gift of mimicry. They perform in various plays and see Sir Philip in the audience during Romeo and Juliet. Peter''s copy of Shakespeare''s new play Henry V is stolen by the "Yellow Gentleman", and Kit and Peter worry that he plans to profit from the unpublished play. While stealing back the script, Peter overhears a plot by Sir Philip and his associates to assassinate Queen Elizabeth. He also notices an odd poem written on the script. He realizes that some of the underlined words found in this poem must be part of a code but has no idea how to decipher it. After meeting the head of the Queen''s Secret Service, Kit and Peter travel back to Peter''s village in disguise with one of the Queen''s spies, Tom Boyd, to follow a clue which leads to Sir Philip''s peel tower. Tom is killed by the conspirators. Peter is captured but not before learning that John Somers, an actor in their company, is to shoot the Queen during the first performance of Henry V. This is part of a wider conspiracy to install a new regime in England, the rest of it is vague but they are evidently in league with Spain. He is taken for questioning to a deserted Ullswater islet but manages to knock out the guard. He swims to the mainland and narrowly escapes across the fells. Kit and Peter go to a local magistrate, but discover he is a part of the treasonous plan. They steal his horses, which are of exceptional quality, intending to ride to London to warn the Queen. Sir Philip and his associates give chase. On the road they meet Desmond and the rest of the company who are rehearsing Edward II. On hearing of the conspiracy, Desmond vows to stop Sir Philip. The actors dress up in their soldier costumes and rig the horses to sound like an army ready to attack, with trumpets and drums behind. Kit and Peter pretend to be captives so Sir Philip will dismount, and he and his followers are then taken into custody by Desmond''s men. Kit and Peter make a desperate dash back to London, and John Somers is captured by guards moments before he can shoot. Kit and Peter meet the Queen and tell her their adventures. In the last paragraph, Peter finishes writing the story and we learn that he and Kit are now married with 2 boys and living in a lakeside house in Cumberland.

Cue for Treason

A decade after the events of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms comes the story of Oree Shoth, a young street artist who lives in the city of Sky, which has been unofficially renamed "Shadow" after the growth of the enormous World Tree. Oree is blind, but has the ability to see magic; she has inherited this sensitivity to magic from her father, who also taught her to conceal her gift, as it is considered heretical by the Order of Itempas. Oree seeks only to live as ordinary a life as possible, despite her unusual abilities and disability. Shadow is a city in which many "godlings" -- immortal, demigod children of the gods—live hidden among the mortal citizens, so Oree is not very surprised to find a downtrodden being who is apparently unconscious, yet glowing brightly to her magic-sight, in the trash-strewn alley behind her house. She takes in this apparently mute homeless man, whom she later whimsically dubs "Shiny", and lives with him without incident for several months. She has no inkling of his identity, suspecting only that he is a godling, though readers familiar with The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms will quickly realize that he is Itempas, god of light and order. Itempas was disgraced and sentenced to humanity by his fellow gods at the end of the previous book. When one of the local godlings is murdered, Oree finds the body—and falls under suspicion when the Itempan Order seeks a scapegoat rather than the actual culprit. Shiny increases the danger to Oree when, in an apparent fit of pique, he manifests inhuman power and injures, then kills, several Orderkeepers. Madding, another godling denizen of the city and Oree''s ex-lover, attempts to aid her. However, he and a number of other godlings, and Oree, are then captured by a heretical group of Itempans who call themselves the Order of the New Light. The New Lights, led by a renegade Arameri fullblood named Serymn and her scrivener husband, oppose the Order of Itempas, which has attempted to change mortal society and doctrine in response to the events of the previous novel, which are not widely known. Dateh reveals to Oree that she is a demon, a part-god mortal whose blood is toxic to gods; it is demon blood, which Dateh also bears, that has been used to kill godlings. The gods, led by Itempas, long ago attempted to hunt down and destroy all demons due to the threat they represented, but a few escaped. Oree is left with no choice but to seek allies from among the gods and the Arameri—although both groups would happily kill or use her for their own purposes—in order to defeat the New Lights before their actions can threaten the entire mortal realm.

The Broken Kingdoms

When upper middle class businessman Rex Fortescue dies while having tea, the police are shocked. The diagnosis is death by taxine - a poison found as a mixture of cardiotoxic diterpenes in the leaves, but not the berries (darils), of the European yew tree. His wife was the main suspect in the murder, until she also was murdered, after drinking tea laced with cyanide. Going on the only clue, a pocket full of rye found on the victim, Miss Marple begins investigating. Marple realizes the murders are arranged according to the pattern of a childhood nursery rhyme, Sing a Song of Sixpence. The next to be murdered is a maid named Gladys with whom Miss Marple was acquainted. She knew Gladys to be romantic and gullible. The other maid, Ellen, was hanging out the washing when she found Glady''s body all mangled up in the clothes line with a peg on her nose. The younger Fortescue son, Lancelot, suddenly arrives from Kenya with his new wife. The older son, Percival, admits that his father was senile and ruining the business. Miss Marple discovers that the use of the rhyme in the crimes was to point the finger at an old dealing of the Blackbird Mine, in which old Fortescue was suspected of having killed his partner, MacKenzie, and swindled the mine from his partner''s family. The mine is in Kenya. Thinking that one of the two MacKenzie children is responsible, Miss Marple and Inspector Neele trace Jennifer Fortescue (Percival''s wife) to be the daughter of Mackenzie - something that she does indeed admit, as well as taking responsibility for placing dead blackbirds near Rex at various times to remind him of his past crimes. Jennifer''s involvement, however, turns out to be a red herring as the murderer is, in fact, Lancelot. He had found out that the Blackbird Mine was valuable and wanted to inherit it, and so he met and romanced his scapegoat Gladys. He talked her into joining the Fortescue household and administering the poison in Rex''s morning marmalade, telling her that it was a truth drug and fabricating her a story about needing old Fortescue to tell the truth in order to clear his name for something that he had been falsely accused of. Then, he killed Gladys so that she would not turn him in, and killed his stepmother so that the inheritance went to the children.

A Pocket Full of Rye

Monica Stanton, the pretty and rather naive daughter of a British clergyman, is the author of a surprisingly scandalous best-seller. As a result, she has been hired as a script writer for Albion Films, working with William Cartwright, a script writer from the world of detective novels. However, she is not going to be working on her own novel—she is helping Cartwright adapt his latest detective novel, And So to Murder. Tilly Parsons is a dumpy, bustling chain-smoking American woman in her early fifties who is the highest-paid scenario writer in the world, imported from Hollywood at great expense to adapt "punch up" the screenplay of another Albion film. Glamorous movie star Frances Fleur, whose punctilious husband Kurt von Gagern selects all her parts, will be the star. Against the backdrop of Pineham Studios and Fleur''s current movie, a series of mysterious attempts on Monica''s life begin—they are exceptionally nasty and completely inexplicable, involving sulphuric acid. When someone poisons Tilly Parsons'' cigarette and nearly kills her, Sir Henry Merrivale helps Chief Inspector Masters to bring home the crimes to their unlikely perpetrator.

And So to Murder

Set in early 1940s Austria, the novel centers around a young English woman called Ellen Carr. Raised in a family of prominent suffragettes, Ellen, to the surprise of all friends and family, grows up with a great love of all things domestic. Inspired by Henny, the servant/partner of her grandfather, she enjoys cooking, cleaning and the various other chores that her mother and aunts have abandoned in their academic and feminist pursuits. While Ellen attends University to please her family, she leaves school before her final exams when Henny contracts cancer in order to be at her side. After Henny''s death, Ellen travels to Henny''s homeland of Austria to become housemother at Hallendorf School, a progressive school for children stocked with characters of all sorts. Ellen soon finds that everything is not as it should be - the school is based on the Arts and is an institution for wealthy children; however, the parents of many of these children have used the school simply as a place out of sight and mind, in which to dump children that they see as nuisances. Ellen takes on the role of mother to these children, giving them the love and encouragement that they deserve. In the beautiful Austrian countryside Ellen discovers an eccentric world occupied by wild children and even wilder teachers, experimental dancers and a tortoise on wheels. And then there is the particularly intriguing, enigmatic, and very handsome Marek: part-time gardener, fencing teacher, and the most romantic, compelling, swoon-worthy hero figure since Mr Darcy. Ellen is instantly attracted to the mysterious gardener, but Hitler’s Reich is already threatening their peaceful world. But when she discovers that Marek is actually a famous musician working with various Reistances to smuggle Jews to safety, Ellen begins to realize the depth of her feelings for him—and the danger their newfound love faces in the shadow of war.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

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Polymath

No Author Listed

End of Term

By Antonia Forest

Petersburg

By Andrei Bely

Sovereign

By C. J. Sansom

Mary Poppins Opens the Door

By P. L. Travers

Measure for Measure

By William Shakespeare

Asterix and the Falling Sky

By Albert Uderzo

Cue for Treason

By Geoffrey Trease

The Broken Kingdoms

By N. K. Jemisin

A Pocket Full of Rye

By Agatha Christie

And So to Murder

By John Dickson Carr

A Song for Summer

By Eva Ibbotson