The setting is the Islaev country estate in the 1840s. Natalya Petrovna, a headstrong 29-year-old, is married to Arkadi Islaev, a rich landowner seven years her senior. Bored with life, she welcomes the attentions of Mikhail Rakitin as her devoted but resentful admirer, without ever letting their friendship develop into a love affair. The arrival of the handsome 21-year-old student Aleksei Belyaev as tutor to her son Kolya ends her boredom. Natalya falls in love with Aleksei, but so does her ward Vera, the Islaevs'' 17-year-old foster daughter. To rid herself of her rival, Natalya proposes that Vera should marry a rich old neighbour, but the rivalry remains unresolved. Rakitin struggles with his love for Natalya, and she wrestles with hers for Aleksei, while Vera and Aleksei draw closer. Misunderstandings arise, and when Arkadi begins to have his suspicions, both Rakitin and Aleksei are obliged to leave. As other members of the household drift off to their own worlds, Natalya''s life returns to a state of boredom.

A Month in the Country

The protagonist, a boy called Paul Crabbe, is taught piano by his teacher (or maestro), Eduard Keller. Paul does not like his teacher at first, but by the end of the novel has grown to appreciate him dearly. Paul learns the limits of his own musical ability through Keller, but he also grows to understand himself and Keller enough to write the novel. Additionally, he has a loving relationship with his sweetheart, Rosie. This book deals with the main idea of contrasts, as well as other themes. Contrasts are shown by Paul''s mother and father – how they differ; Vienna and Darwin – high culture vs. low culture; Paul as an adolescent and Paul as an adult – through the continual change in narrator, as Paul changes. Paul slowly comes to realisation that he is now learning from the maestro, and that his talent starts growing day by day. The most influential character, Eduard Keller, lost his family during The Holocaust, despite performing for Adolf Hitler in private concerts in the belief Hitler would spare his Jewish family. For Keller, the grand piano is his sanctity and security, assisting him to deal with the horrors of the world; "safe beneath that grand piano," and likewise offering Eduard a method of deconstructing life. As Paul matures, Keller''s phrasings, which seemed absurd in adolescence, ossify into a "musical bible whose texts I knew by heart" but Paul does not relate them to his life until middle-age, leaving him "smug, insufferable," throughout his life. Keller originates from Vienna, where he was a renowned musician "becoming so visible so that nothing can touch him", therefore believing he is exempt from the effects of war. Eventually he lost his wife and son and disappeared from the country, leaving every-one to believe he was dead. Filled with remorse and regret, Keller transforms and evolves to become a completely different man, "if we are discussing the same man how different our two versions." Keller understands the frivolities and foolish nature of human society, passed onto Paul in the form of clippings from newspapers, Keller''s "textbooks." "The thousands of stories of human foolishness and greed and cruelty that he had tried to patch together into some kind of understanding of his fellow beings" depicts Keller''s knowledge. When Paul initially began lessons with Keller, his first impressions were misleading, "a boozers incandescent glow", "I''d seen nothing like him before." As Paul matures, his attitudes towards the Maestro become warmer and they develop an unexpressed bond. "I slipped my arm beneath his head and kissed him" represent Paul''s final realisation of his connection with Keller in death. Throughout his life, Paul took the Maestro for granted, believing his advice was "irritating – and also contradictory." After Keller''s death, Paul realises the opportunities Keller had presented him. "Mourning for a great man, yes, but also mourning for myself – for times and possibilities that will never come again." Throughout the novella the tone shifts from egotism and selfishness to regret and wisdom depicting Paul''s growth. In conclusion, Maestro has the main themes of adolescence and growing up. Paul is educated about life through music and Keller''s experiences in Vienna and understanding of human nature contribute to Paul''s knowledge of the world. The book tracks Paul as he develops into a responsible, mature man from an obnoxious, egotistical teenager.

Maestro

A series of perfect clones of members at Angel Investigations are lurking in the city, planning to kill the originals. Team Angel must find out where the replicas are coming from and why, before the murder spree hits the whole city. Thanks to Wesley''s research, the gang realise that they are facing the ''Seven Sinners'', dimension-jumping demons who travel to other worlds, steal the negative aspects of the souls of some of the greatest heroes of that world, and subsequently gain power by killing the originals and absorbing their souls into their power source. Once they have been copied, only the original can kill ''their'' Sinner, with other attempts simply incapacitating the Sinners until they can regenerate. The Sinners have targeted Angel Investigations with the intention of duplicating Angel, as they feel that only Angelus would possess the necessary skills to lead them in their destruction of this world. However, the final seven clones- consisting of Angelus, Lorne, Wesley, Connor, Fred, Gunn, and Lilah- are all killed by their templates, Angel subsequently destroying their power source.

Dark Mirror

After having reached the Maze of the Beast and finding the amethyst, they continue their journey off to the Valley of the Lost to retrieve the seventh and final gem, the diamond. The seven gems are the lost gems from the Belt of Deltora, which had been stolen by the Shadow Lord to overthrow Lief''s country, Deltora. The three travel along the river Tor, passing villages that have been raided by pirates. When they stop for a rest, they see a pirate ship. Realizing that it was the ship that a boy named Dain was captured aboard upon, they steal a rowboat in an attempt to rescue him. After Dain and a polypan climb into their boat, the polypan rows against the flooding currents of the river away from the pirates and toward shore. The polypan jumps out of the boat before the boat reaches the shore, and Lief, Barda, Jasmine, and Dain are floating adrift the violently overflowing river. They drift over a sand bar and arrive at the edges of Tora, a great city that Dain had been trying to travel to. They enter the city, and Dain is significantly weakened by the magic of the purifying entrance. They meet two Resistance members, Doom and Neridah after finding the city deserted. Neridah travels with the trio to the Valley of the Lost to find the seventh gem. Upon entering the valley, they meet the Guardian, who doesn’t use physical force, but games to protect the diamond. The Guardian enchants them to enter his castle, and asks them to play a game with him for the diamond. The winner of the game will keep the diamond, but the loser will have to be kept in the valley forever. Scared by this, Neridah runs away, leaving the three behind to play the game. Lief, Barda, and Jasmine manage to find all of the clues and guess the name before the time is up, and realize that the Guardian’s name is Endon, the king of Deltora. They also find out that Doom had been there before and won the game, but did not take the gem because of his shock when he realized that the Guardian was actually the king. Lief, Jasmine, and Barda find out the gem is not the real diamond, and leave the castle to find Neridah had stolen it. The diamond curses those who gain the gem by theft, and Neridah dies by tripping on a rock and drowning in a stream. After the trio retrieves the gem, the Valley of the Lost disappears and all of the creatures in it are replaced by people, who reveal themselves to be the people of Tora. They had been turned into their form because they broke a vow that they had sealed by magic. The Guardian turns into Fardeep, a mere man from Rithmere, but not Endon. The name Endon was actually the Shadow Lord’s idea, and was intended to trick any winners of the game. Knowing that they have all seven gems, the three travel with Dain back to Del to find the king who will put on the Belt to banish the Shadow Lord from Deltora.

Valley of the Lost

War between Earth and insectoid-dominated Alpha III ended over a decade ago. (According to the novel, "Alphane" refers to the nearest star to our own system, Alpha Centauri). Some years after the end of hostilities, Earth intends to secure its now independent colony in the Alphane system, Alpha III M2. As a former satellite-based global psychiatric institution for colonists on other Alphane system worlds unable to cope with the stresses of colonisation, the inhabitants of Alpha III M2 have lived peacefully for years. But, under the pretence of a medical mission, Earth intends to take their colony back. Against this background, Chuck Rittersdorf and his wife Mary are separating. Although they think they are going their separate ways, they soon find themselves together again on Alpha III M2. Mary travels there through government work, Chuck sees it as a chance to kill Mary using his remote control simulacrum. Along the way he is guided by his Ganymedean slime mold neighbour Lord Running Clam and Mary finds herself manipulated by the Alphane sympathiser, comedian Bunny Hentman.

Clans of the Alphane Moon

Natil is a gardener at Kingsley College, a private university in Denver. She has found a small group of people who have started transforming into Elves and need guidance, though she has not revealed many details of the early portions of her existence, nor has she revealed the divine vision she once had but now cannot even describe to them. In one narrative thread, Sandy Joy comes to Denver at the invitation of a man named Terry Angel. Exploiting the weak emotional condition of the Dean of Kingsley College, Maxwell Delmari, he has been given free rein to set up a sham program, named Hands of Grace, that purportedly uses music to heal people. Referring to obscure or bogus publications and fake references, Terry has hidden the fact that there is no program and no factual basis for his work. Thoroughly insane and plagued by fleeting partial visions of a hidden higher power, Terry tortures himself with self-mutilation in an effort to finally see this higher power. When Sandy states that she has had a vision of a higher power, he comes to envy and loathe her. After she realizes the falsity of his convictions and tries to distance herself from him, he attacks her, slashing her hands with a knife. Fighting for her life, she sprays him in the face with oven cleaner, blinding him. In another narrative thread, T.K. has just recently returned from Desert Storm missing a leg. A Vietnam veteran and a black man, he has been marginalized his entire life and is now working at the same security firm that once employed George Morrison, who is now the elf Hadden. Living in Denver''s projects, he sees a crack house operating every day just down the street from him, and he is powerless to do anything about it. Finding employment at Treestar Surveying, he finds his barriers eroding as he comes to realize that he is becoming an Elf too and is no longer subject to the same hopeless future he once had. After Heather, one of the Elves, is shot by drug dealers for TK''s efforts at evicting the crack house from his neighborhood, he steals military ordnance and demolishes the crack house with two pounds of C4 after a desperate gun battle that destroys his artificial leg. Concluding his transformation into an Elf while he sleeps a few nights later, he wakes up the following day whole, his leg intact, having finally discharged his last tie to his old life. When the police come to question him about the pieces of his artificial leg, which he left at the ruins of the crack house when Sandy drove him to safety, the presence of both of his legs deflects their attention away from him. As both narrative threads come together, Sandy is held by the police for assault after Terry lies and says that Sandy attacked him first. Out on bail, Sandy''s overwhelming grief at her predicament serves as the final catalyst for helping all of the Elves finally learn how to draw strength from the patterns and use all of the powers at their disposal. Natil, seeing no choice, strikes a deal with Terry and uses her regained powers to heal Terry''s eyes so that he will tell the truth of what happened to Sandy. Consumed with shame and grief at the banality of bargaining her healing powers for the truth from Terry and knowing that he will soon commit suicide because of what she has done for him, Natil finally gives up her immortal existence of four and a half billion years and fades from the earth. The others search for her and finally find her grieving in the land of sunlight with the Lady.

Strands of Sunlight

The evil Prince Ancar of Hardorn, while experimenting with magic, accidentally draws the equally evil man-cat Mornelithe Falconsbane from his prison in the Void. Meanwhile, Heralds Elspeth and Skif witness the reunion of Clan k''Leysha, a tribe of Hawkbrothers which was divided because of a magical mishap. The two Heralds, together with Elspeth''s lover Darkwind k''Sheyna, Skif''s lover Nyara (Falconsbane''s estranged daughter), the magical sword Need, the gryphons Treyvan and Hydona, the k''Treva mage Firesong, and the kyree Rris, are leaving for Valdemar, where the non-Heralds will be ambassadors for their various clans. Firesong''s Gate (a magical portal enabling the person to cross large distances in a single step) is co-opted by the ghost of Herald Vanyel, a Herald-Mage who died saving the kingdom. The party find themselves in the Forest of Sorrows near Valdemar''s northern border. Vanyel explains that he ''abducted'' them because he is about to remove the magical protections around Valdemar. He feels he must warn them because Ancar of Hardorn may take advantage of the lowered defenses and magically attack. Vanyel then makes a Gate to send the party to his ancestral manor near the western border. They head to Haven with all speed, though the gryphons create a minor sensation along the way. Elspeth discovers that rumors have been circulating that she has been murdered by her stepfather, or that she intends to take the throne from her mother by force. Upon arrival in Haven, she renounces her claim to the monarchy so that she can pursue her new job as the first Herald-Mage since Vanyel. The mages in the group begin finding and training potential mages among the Heralds as quickly as possible. Ancar, prompted by Falconsbane, launches an attack immediately, using magic-controlled troops. Valdemar responds with an assassination team composed of Elspeth, Skif, Darkwind, Nyara, Need, and Firesong, intending to eliminate Ancar, Falconsbane, and Hulda, an evil witch who tried to corrupt Elspeth in her youth. Disguised as a traveling show, they move towards the capital. The situation is complicated somewhat when the assassination team learns that Falconsbane has a secret agent in his head; the evil Adept had found a way to cheat death by arranging to ''take over'' the bodies of any member of his bloodline with Adept potential. The victim of the most recent takeover, An''desha, a boy of the Shin''a''in, survived; his personality took refuge in a hidden corner of Falconsbane''s mind. Two Avatars of the Shin''a''in Goddess come to him to help him, and he is able to pass information to the assassination party through the Avatars and Need. He slowly becomes aware that it might not be possible to kill Falconsbane without also killing him. Firesong, Nyara, Skif, and Need lure Falconsbane out of the palace. Need deals the body a mortal wound, causing Falconsbane''s spirit to flee into the Void. Firesong pursues him there and destroys him for good. Need is able to heal the damage she has caused and allow An''desha to have his body back. Darkwind, Elspeth, and her Companion attack Ancar and Hulda, who both perish, but Darkwind is injured and Elspeth also kills an envoy from the powerful Eastern Empire, causing it to turn its eye on Valdemar. With the death of Ancar, Valdemar has little difficulty repelling the Hardornen army. At the close of the book, An''desha and Nyara are healed from the damage Falconsbane had done to their bodies, and the party settles in to live in Haven.

Winds of Fury

Karl Sten is a young boy growing up on an industrial factory world called Vulcan. Sten''s parents are little better than indentured servants, always wanting to raise their children somewhere else, but never able to "buy out" their contracts and leave. After Sten''s family is killed in an industrial cover-up initiated by Vulcan''s CEO, Baron Thoresen, Sten rebels against the laws of Vulcan and escapes to live on his own in the background of the factory world. For several years he runs with the Delinqs, a band of young outlaws that have also rejected the ideals of The Company. One day he saves an off-worlder, Ian Mahoney, from a security team. Mahoney is the head of Imperial Intelligence and is trying to gather information on a special project Baron Thoresen is running. Mahoney offers Sten and his gang a chance to leave Vulcan if they can get the information he needs. Unfortunately, during the mission they are discovered and Sten is apparently the only one who makes it back alive. True to his word, Ian takes Sten off the hellhole of his birth, but enlists him the military to keep him safe. During Imperial Guards training, Sten proves to be square peg for the traditional military, but perfect for the super secret CIA-type covert branch of intelligence that Ian heads, called Mantis. While in Mantis, Sten excels and becomes the head of Team 13, with Alex Kilgour, a heavy worlder from New Edinburgh, (who has a rather ill-tempered view of the Campbell Clan) as his second in command. Eventually, The Eternal Emperor assigns Team 13 to bring down the government of Vulcan so the Baron''s secret project can be unmasked. Team 13 accomplishes this by organizing a rebellion, which gets out of control and almost tears apart the factory world in a heated frenzy. Sten and Team 13 finish the job up with sneakiness, judicious violence and a few well placed explosions. Sten confronts his parents killer, Baron Thorenson, and kills him by ripping his heart out with his bare hands. At the conclusion of the novel, while being dressed down for killing Thoresen against the emperor''s orders, Ian promotes Sten to lieutenant. It seems the emperor had thought better of his order not to kill the baron but had not been able to get word to the team in the field. A great future seems to be in store for our hero.

Sten

The novel is represented as a tale told by the "most learned of all cats". At the beginning and at the head of each chapter, the cat introduces the scenes and the characters. At the end, the cat asks the hearer/reader to pass on the tale so that it may "make its own way back to me, riding on another''s tongue." A slave woman gives her new-born daughter to an old witch to be raised as a "Woman of Power". The witch teaches the girl, Chingis, all her arcane wisdom, including the use of the shamanic ghost drum. With the drum she can enter many other worlds including the ghost-world, the land of the dead. When Chingis''s apprenticeship is complete, witches come from all around to congratulate her, but the shaman Kuzma envies and fears her potential for greatness. The Czar Guidon, the latest in a long line of ruthless rulers, has married by the counsel of his advisers, but he is deathly afraid of being overthrown by his son. He imprisons his pregnant wife, Farida, in a windowless room at the top of the tallest tower in the palace, and when she dies in childbirth he orders that his son, the Czarevich Safa, should never leave the room. Marien, Safa''s nurse, raises him there. When he becomes restless at his imprisonment, she dares to speak to the Czar about him and is summarily executed. The Czarevich spends many years alone before his psychic cries of distress reach Chingis, and then, with the help of the ghost drum, she finds and secretly spirits him away. He is filled with astonishment and wonder at the world he has never seen so much as a glimpse of before. Meanwhile the Czar dies, and fighting breaks out in the palace; Margaretta ascends to the throne and determines to find her nephew, intending to kill him. Kuzma, arriving in the form of a polar bear, offers to help her. Using his shamanic knowledge against Chingis, Kuzma succeeds in killing her and capturing Safa. However, in the ghost world, Chingis enlists the help of her mentor and of Marien and Farida, to return to her body and defeat Kuzma. The four spirits take over Kuzma''s body and confront Margaretta before returning to the ghost world to await rebirth.

The Ghost Drum

Seventeen-year-old tomboy and anti-materialist Emerson Watts, forced by her mother, accompanies her sister, Frida, and her best friend, Christopher, to a Stark Mega store opening in So Ho, which is attended by the teen supermodel, Nikki Howard. In addition to Howard''s celebrity presence there will be an appearance by British heartthrob, singer, and songwriter, Gabriel Luna. Frida has a crush on the musician. The event is protested, and one of the protesters shoots a plasma screen with a paint ball gun, snapping the wires. Emerson (Em for short) saves her sister from being hit by the plasma screen crashing down, and takes the hit herself. At the very moment, Nikki faints and goes brain-dead. A month later, Em finds herself in the hospital, trying to recall what had happened. She finds out she is in Nikki Howard''s body when she is kidnapped by Lulu Collins, Nikki''s best friend, and Brandon Stark, her on again off again boyfriend. She screams in the limo seeing that she is in Nikki Howard''s body on the way to Nikki''s loft. She tries to remember the events that went on during the last month, and Em finds out that not only did she die during the accident, but incidentally Nikki Howard had also suffered a fatality as well. Unknown to and without her permission, her brain is transplanted into Nikki''s brain-dead body, due to the fact Nikki suffered from a fatal collapse at the same time Em got hit. In an effort to save Em, her parents had agreed to a controversial brain transplant surgery offered free by Stark Industries, on condition that Em continues Nikki''s career as the face of Stark Industries. From then on, Em is forced to live the high life while concealing her real identity or be faced with the contract penalty of two million dollars. Em is forced to take on the role of Nikki Howard, all the while struggling with the fact that she does not have control over her life. She tries to let go of her tomboyish ways to take over the highly glamorous life that Nikki had lived. Although she is now dealing with Nikki''s job, Nikki''s friend Lulu and many boyfriends, she still fights to keep some of her old life by going back to school, also to face Christopher, on whom she has a secret crush. As Em follows through with Nikki''s commitments (photo shoots, interviews, etc., not to mention continuing school at Tribeca Alternative High School), she realizes that the supermodel lifestyle is a lot harder than she perceived it to be. Em notices that her best friend Christopher, is now a broken mess after her death. She goes out of her way to try to talk to him, and try to let him realize that she is still alive in someone else'' body, by leaving an important clue as stated early in the book. This part of the story ends with Em bringing Lulu to her family''s house for dinner, Em learns that Lulu doesn''t have a family and spends most of her time drinking and partying. When asked ''how does she know them,'' Em answers, ''doesn''t know where to begin.'' Leaving an open space for the sequel.

Airhead

The young man Jules is a motorbike-riding courier for RCA in Paris, and a major fan of classical music and opera. Jules is also a groupie of the beautiful Cynthia Hawkins, an American opera singer. Hawkins is unusual in that she only performs live. She has never made a recording, studio or otherwise. One day, Jules secretly records a Cynthia Hawkins concert. He then shares the tape with his teenage friend Alba, who shares the tape with her adult friend Serge. Criminal Serge Gorodish is in his mid 40''s, he shares his life with Alba, a precocious teenage beauty. Serge realizes that the Cynthia Hawkins tape could fetch a large amount of money. Meanwhile, Nadia is a twentysomething in the employ of Saporta. Saporta controls the largest drug cartel and prostitution ring in Paris. Nadia records harmful evidence against Saporta on a cassette tape. Nadia''s cassette is erroneously dropped into the satchel on Jules'' motorbike. Soon, Jules is being chased by the police, as well as gangsters, though he has no idea why. Saporta mobilizes his entire crime organization to attempt to retrieve the tape from Jules. Locating an intrepid and skilled motorbike rider in Paris is not easy. Meanwhile, there is a furious underground bidding war for Jules'' tape of Cynthia Hawkins'' concert.

Diva: A novel

Velikovsky had put forward his ideas briefly in Theses for the Reconstruction of Ancient History in 1945, where he claimed that the history of the ancient Near East down to the time of Alexander the Great is garbled, but Ages in Chaos was his first full-length work on the subject. His starting point for the first volume of the series was that the Exodus took place not, as orthodoxy has it, at some point during the Egyptian New Kingdom, but at the fall of the Middle Kingdom. In this and later volumes, he made heavy use of the concept of "ghost doubles" or alter-egos: historical figures who were known by different names in two different sources (e.g. Egyptian and Greek) and were considered to be entirely different people living in different centuries, but who he proposed to be actually erroneously dated accounts of the same individuals and events. First he claimed that the Ipuwer Papyrus came from the beginning of Egypt''s Second Intermediate Period, and that this was an Egyptian account of the Plagues of Egypt. He then identified Tutimaios as the Pharaoh of the Exodus (much earlier than any of the mainstream candidates), the Hyksos with the biblical Amalekites, the Egyptian Pharaoh Hatshepsut with the Biblical Queen of Sheba, the land of Punt with Solomon''s kingdom, and Pharaoh Thutmose III with the Biblical King Shishak. He claimed that the Egyptian Amarna letters from the late 18th Dynasty describe events from the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, from roughly the time of King Ahab.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

A Month in the Country

By Ivan Turgenev

Maestro

By Peter Goldsworthy

Dark Mirror

By Diane Duane

Valley of the Lost

By Jennifer Rowe

Clans of the Alphane Moon

By Philip K. Dick

Strands of Sunlight

By Gael Baudino

Winds of Fury

By Mercedes Lackey

Sten

By Allan Cole

The Ghost Drum

By Susan Price

Airhead

By Meg Cabot

Diva: A novel

By Delacorta

Ages in Chaos

By Immanuel Velikovsky