Of all of Ainsworth''s novels, the plot of St. James''s is almost non-existent. The story takes place during the end of Queen Anne''s reign. She was friends with the Duchess of Marlborough, and two Tories, Robert Harley and Henry St John, want to separate the Duchess and the queen. After plotting, they are finally able to separate the two, which allows them to remove the Duke of Marlborough from the queen''s favour. Without the Duke around, Harley is made Earl of Oxford and St. John made Viscount of Bolingbroke. When Queen Anne dies, Harley and St. John turn against each other and soon lose their status at court. * Queen Anne * John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough * Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough * Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer * Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke The Ainsworth''s Magazine edition of St. James''s included 14 illustrations by Cruikshank. However, only 7 appeared in the three volume book edition of the work. Two of the illustrations not carried over in the book edition were of Cruikshank''s best depictions: one titled "The Double Duel" and another titled "Sergeant Scales''s Drum". A rift developed between Cruikshank and Ainsworth, and St. James''s was the last work of Ainsworth that Cruikshank illustrated. It is possible that the rift came as Ainsworth was giving up his ownership of the Ainsworth''s Magazine, but the cause is unknown. It is also possible that the dropping of illustrations from the three volume edition was either a cause or an effect of the rift.

St. James''s

The frame story of the poem, as set out in the 858 lines of Middle English which make up the general prologue, is of a religious pilgrimage. The narrator, "Geoffrey Chaucer", is in The Tabard in Southwark, where he meets a group of "sundry folk" who are all on the way to Canterbury, the site of the shrine of Saint Thomas Beckett. The setting is April, and the prologue starts by singing the praises of that month whose rains and warm western wind restore life and fertility to the earth and its inhabitants. This abundance of life, the narrator says, prompts people to go on pilgrimages; in England, the goal of such pilgrimages is the shrine of Thomas Beckett. The narrator falls in with a group of pilgrims, and the largest part of the prologue is taken up by a description of them; Chaucer seeks to describe their ''condition'', their ''array'', and their social ''degree'': :To telle yow al the condicioun, :Of ech of hem, so as it semed me, :And whiche they weren, and of what degree, :And eek in what array that they were inne, :And at a knyght than wol I first bigynne. The pilgrims include a knight, his son a squire, the knight''s yeoman, a prioress accompanied by a second nun and the nun''s priest, a monk, a friar, a merchant, a clerk, a sergeant of law, a franklin, a haberdasher, a carpenter, a weaver, a dyer, a tapestry weaver, a cook, a shipman, a doctor of physic, a wife of Bath, a parson, his brother a plowman, a miller, a manciple, a reeve, a summoner, a pardoner, the host (a man called Harry Bailly), and a portrait of Chaucer himself. At the end of the section, the Host proposes the story-telling contest: each pilgrim will tell two stories on the way to Canterbury and two on the way back. Whoever tells the best story, with "the best sentence and moost solaas" (line 798) is to be given a free meal.

General Prologue

Retired junior college history professor Andrew Lachlan has returned to his family home on a lake in north central Georgia to spend the last year of his life. Diagnosed with a terminal disease, he has decided to forego life-extending treatments so he can focus on learning what he feels he does not yet know about the world. With strong interests in Native American history and the natural world, he begins a journal that chronicles his last year. He lives alone, his wife have died some time before, and he looks forward to solitude, but a young country boy, Willie Sullivan, comes into his life. Willie’s world is cramped and difficult, and he brings to Andrew a kind of learning he’s never had before. At the same time, Andrew begins to teach Willie about the life beyond Shadow Pond, where Andrew lives. Andrew also reconnects with Callie McKenzie, a woman he loved years earlier and who is now a widow herself. Each begins to see in the other reflections of the life they once led. As Andrew’s life draws toward its inevitable end, he begins to find the edge of a new transcendence and an understanding of how generations learn and pass on the best of what they know and feel.

The Heart of a Distant Forest

Angeline is extremely intelligent, because she knew things, especially related to ocean animals and the ocean, "before she was born." Even though she is only eight, she is sent to the sixth grade. She wants to be a garbage collector like her father, although he wants her to become famous and is afraid of her intelligence at times. At school she also faces problems, bullied by the other students and misunderstood by her teacher, Mrs. Hardlick. Her only two friends are a fifth grade teacher, Miss Turbone (also known as Mr. Bone) and Gary Boone (who later gets a book to himself, Dogs Don''t Tell Jokes). Mr. Persopolis wants the best for his daughter, and he often pushes her too hard to achieve. When she is elected Secretary of Trash, he becomes angry and orders her to resign. The next day at school, Mrs. Hardlick does not listen to Angeline when she tries to resign, and Angeline is so frustrated that she messes up the classroom, denouncing everything as "Garbage!" Mrs. Hardlick is furious and tells Angeline to not come back without a signed note from her father. For the next week she goes to the aquarium each day, instead of going to school. Her father gets home after she does, so he does not know. When Miss Turbone finds out about this, she arranges to talk with Mr. Persopolis (it is implied that the two fall in love when they meet). They decide Angeline will be transferred to Miss Turbone''s fifth grade class, and that she will return to Mrs. Hardlick''s class for a day or two while the transfer is arranged. They also plan to go on a date the next evening. However, Mrs. Hardlick succeeds in alienating Angeline one more time, and she once more runs away from school, this time to the beach, where she jumps off the pier (the better to see the fish) and nearly drowns. However, she is saved by a fisherman and later gets completely better.

Someday Angeline

After acting as an aide-de-camp at the Battle of Waterloo, Jack Staple is finding civilian life tedious. Following a formal (and somewhat boring) dinner party in honour of his cousin''s engagement, Jack sets out by himself on horseback to visit a more congenial friend some 60 miles away. After getting lost in the dark and rain he reaches a toll-gate where a frightened 11-year old lad is acting as toll collector in the absence of his father. A combination of curiosity, compassion, tiredness, and dampness lead him to stay at the toll house overnight with a view to sorting out the situation in the morning. Over the next few days Jack''s circle of acquaintances rapidly expands to include a highwayman, a Bow Street runner, and the local gentry plus their devoted retainers. Other complications include a dead body, stolen treasure, and some masked villains. In the process of preventing a scandal, Jack also manages to identify the murderer, deal with the villains, retrieve the treasure, satisfy the law, provide for his friends, and resolve his own romance.

The Toll-Gate

Summer of the Monkeys takes place in the very late 19th century. It is about a fourteen-year old boy named Jay Berry Lee who wants a pony and a .22 caliber gun. In his first attempt to catch the monkeys, he sets the traps under a tree, hides them, and pins apples on the tree. This plan fails when Jimbo simply reaches high and gets the apples off the tree, and, when he is satisfied, he gives the rest of the apples to the little monkeys. For his second plan that day, Jay sets the traps, hides them, and places apples on the trigger. This plan also fails when Jimbo uses a stick to trip the traps. He again shares the apples with the little monkeys. Later, Jay Berry decides to take a break and heads to the nearby spring. When he gets back, he finds that the monkeys have stolen his lunch and traps. He gets angry and shoots rocks at the monkeys. The monkeys then get very angry and chase Jay home. The next day, Jay Berry goes to consult with Grandpa. Grandpa gives him a butterfly net that can open and close using two pull strings and tells him to dig a hole that night so he can hide from the monkeys to try to catch them. He catches two monkeys, but Jimbo releases them and orders the small monkeys to attack Jay and Rowdy. They come out of the fight with many scratches and bites. His sister wants to be a Red Cross nurse when she grows up so she gives Jay her "Red Cross treatment" as she always does whenever Jay and Rowdy are injured. After recovering, Jay Berry goes to talk to Grandpa again. Grandpa tells him that he wrote to the circus asking them for advice on how to catch the monkeys. The animal trainer responds by telling them to call Jimbo by his name and try to make friends with him. With this in mind, Jay goes back to the river bottoms. However, when he arrives, he is astonished to find the monkeys drunk on whiskey at a still. Jimbo offers Jay the mixture since he no longer sees him as a threat, and Jay reluctantly accepts. Jay wakes up in the middle of the night feeling drunk. He unsteadily goes home, where Daisy notices he is drunk and tells Mama and Papa. They tell Jay never to get drunk again. Once again Jay receives the "Red Cross treatment". Grandpa decides to take Jay Berry to the town of Tahlequah to go to its library and do research on how to catch monkeys. They find out to use coconuts and a trap cage, and they go to the general store for these. As they return, they stop by a spring. When they return to the buggy, they find that the monkeys have stolen the items they bought. Later on Daisy finds a fairy ring which is capable of granting wishes. The book has her wishing something, but it doesn''t say for what. It turns out that she wished for Jay Berry to get his pony and his gun. Then, there is a storm. The monkeys are scared enough that they go with Jay to his house. Jay Berry gives the monkeys to the circus. The owner gives him lifetime passes to their circus and the $156 reward. This is enough to buy his pony and .22 or to get Daisy''s leg operation. Jay almost buys the pony of his liking, but decides to use the money for Daisy''s leg operation. During the many weeks Daisy and Mama are gone for the operation in Oklahoma City, Jay Berry and Papa miss them and struggle to handle daily chores without them. While Daisy is in Oklahoma City, she buys Jay a .22 which she gives to him during her return. Also, Grandpa buys Jay the pony that he was going to buy. Daisy and Mama come home on the train. Once they get off the train, Daisy kisses Jay Berry on the lips because she is so happy. When they all get home, She and Jay Berry run around the hills together, holding hands.

Summer of the Monkeys

The Yeerks have finished their anti-morphing ray and want to test it. Tobias comes up with a plan and that plan is to trick the Yeerks into thinking that it doesn''t work; if they capture him, they will try to use it on his hawk form, but hawk is his true form now. Tobias acquires Ax—thus allowing him to ''demorph'' and reinforce the impression that he is a genuine Andalite—and then gets captured by the Yeerks. Rachel was supposed to be with him in fly morph to be able to rescue him and tell the rest where the lab was. However, sub-visser Taylor gave them an anesthetic so she couldn''t grip to Tobias and fell to the floor. Tobias, alone and trapped, tries to get demorphed unsuccessfully since he is already demorphed. He is then tortured by the sadistic Taylor with a machine that controls the parts of the brain that induce pain and pleasure. He almost goes insane and nearly dies after receiving heightened, alternating doses of painful and pleasant sensations and memories. He sees painful memories of childhood neglect or battle, after seeing pleasant peaceful memories. This process nearly kills him. Here, he experienced an Utzum, later explained by Ax to be a vision ancient Andalites believed happened at the moment of death to comfort those crossing over. (Ax mentions that Andalites no longer believe this.) These images are supposed to be passed through DNA. Tobias is spoken to by his father Elfangor who shares with him his own memories of hardship, battle, his moments of questioning himself and his own actions. He reminds Tobias that he is part of a great tradition of warriors in order to comfort him before his death. Tobias is rescued by Ax and the other animorphs. In the battle he persuades Rachel not to kill Taylor, so as not sink to her level. After the battle Tobias continues to question who and what he is. Andalite? Human? Hawk? However he takes comfort in his relationship with Rachel. They kiss.... *Taylor is introduced. *Tobias and Rachel share their first time kissing in the main series. *Tobias hears Elfangor to talk to him in his part as his son

The Illusion

The novel is set in a hospital in Soviet Uzbekistan in 1955. As the title suggests, the plot focuses on a group of cancer patients as they undergo therapy. The novel deals with political theories, mortality, and hope — themes that are often explored either through descriptive passages or the conversations the characters have within the ward, which is a microcosm of the post-Stalin Russian Communist government. Also explored is the effect life in the labour camps will have on a man''s life, as Oleg Kostoglotov, the main character, is shocked to discover the materialist world of the city outside the cancer ward. Oleg is in "Perpetual Exile" in Ush-Terek, in Kazakhstan. Bureaucracy and the nature of power in Stalin''s state is represented by Pavel Nikolayevich Rusanov, a "personnel officer". The corrupt power of Stalin''s regime is shown through his dual desires to be a "worker" but also achieve a "special pension". At the end, Rusanov''s wife drops rubbish from her car window, symbolising the carelessness with which the regime treated the country. The novel is partly autobiographical. The character Oleg Kostoglotov was admitted to the hospital from a gulag, similar to Solzhenitsyn, and later subjected to internal exile in the same region of the USSR. Oleg is depicted as being born in Leningrad, while Solzhenitsyn was born in Kislovodsk. Some Uzbek landmarks are mentioned in the novel, such as the trolleyline and Chorsu Bazaar. The zoo Oleg visits is now a soccer field near Mirabad Amusement Park. Kostoglotov begins two romances in the hospital, one with Zoya, a nurse and doctor in training, though the attraction is mostly physical, and a more serious one with Vera Gangart, one of his doctors, a middle-aged woman who has never married, and whom he imagines he might ask to become his wife. Both women invite him to stay overnight in their apartment, ostensibly only as a friend, after he is discharged, because he has nowhere to sleep &mdash; his status as an exile makes finding a place to lodge difficult. His feelings for Vera are strong, and seem to be reciprocated, though neither of them has spoken of it directly: He could not think of her either with greed or with the fury of passion. His one joy would be to go and lie at her feet like a dog, like a miserable beaten cur, to lie on the floor and breathe on her feet like a cur. That would be a happiness greater than anything he could imagine." After wandering around the town, he decides against going to see either woman. He does find the courage to go to Vera&#39;s once, but he has left it so late in the day that she is no longer there, and he decides not to try again. He is well aware that the hormone therapy used as part of his cancer treatment may have left him impotent, just as imprisonment and exile have taken all the life out of him. He feels he has nothing left to offer a woman, and that his past means he would always feel out of place in what he sees as normal life. Instead, he decides to accept less from life than he had hoped for, and to face it alone. He heads to the railway station to fight his way onto a train to Ush-Terek. He writes a goodbye letter to Vera from the station: You may disagree, but I have a prediction to make: even before you drift into the indifference of old age, you will come to bless this day, the day you did not commit yourself to share my life ... Now that I am going away ... I can tell you quite frankly: even when we were having the most intellectual conversations and I honestly thought and believed everything I said, I still wanted all the time, all the time, to pick you up and kiss you on the lips. :So try to work that out. ::And now, without your permission, I kiss them.

The Cancer Ward

The book consists of three parts and an epilogue. Drawing from Fred Singer and Dennis Avery''s Unstoppable Global Warming, Booker presents a graph showing changes in temperature and carbon dioxide concentration over the last 11,000 years. In his analysis, rising carbon dioxide concentrations in the 1970s led scientists such as Paul Ehrlich to postulate that the earth, as a result of the greenhouse effect, may have been heating up or cooling down, either of which could have potentially disastrous consequences. Figures such as the environmental activist Maurice Strong and scientist Bert Bolin are then introduced, who would, according to Booker, "play a crucial role in what lay ahead" in influencing governmental policy and helping form the scientific basis for global warming. Booker contends that 1988 was a key year in which the IPCC was set up and James Hansen appeared at the Senate Committee of Natural Resources in Washington, where he stated that he was "99 percent certain" that man''s contribution to the greenhouse effect was the cause of global warming. According to Booker, "on all sides ''global warming'' became the cause of the moment" after Hansen''s appearance. He then describes how: * in 1990, the IPCC published its first assessment report which made projections of future temperature rises; * at the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit "politicians from 154 countries queued up to sign a ''UN Framework Convention on Climate Change''" that would "commit all the signatory governments to a voluntary reduction of greenhouse gas emissions"; * the second IPCC report (SAR) in 1995 found that the "body of statistical evidence now points to a discernible human influence on the global climate". Booker writes that the SAR was criticised by Frederick Seitz, who alleged that "more than 15 sections in Chapter 8 of the report—the key chapter setting out the scientific evidence for and against a human influence over climate—were changed or deleted after the scientists charged with examining this question had accepted the supposedly final text". Part one ends with an account of the signing of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the setting of new targets for reduced emissions. Booker begins part two by asserting that the medieval warm period "contradicted the idea that late twentieth century temperatures had suddenly shot up to a level never known before in history", and that this problem was dealt with by a 1999 graph depicting temperatures "suddenly shooting up in the twentieth century to a level that was quite unprecedented. Familiar features such as the Medieval Warm Period and the little ice age simply vanished". Booker writes that the graph became the "supreme iconic image for all those engaged in the battle to save the world from global warming". He then states that the IPCC''s methods, and in particular the draft summary of its next report, came in for serious criticism from scientists such as Richard Lindzen. Booker then examines Davis Guggenheim''s Oscar-winning film An Inconvenient Truth and the subsequent questioning of many of its assertions, including retreating glaciers, drowning polar bears, use of the "hockey stick" graph, the melting of the ice caps and snows of Kilimanjaro and rising sea levels. Booker begins part three by quoting the statement of the then British Environment Secretary that the IPCC''s fourth assessment report was "another nail in the coffin of the climate change deniers". Booker contrasts this assertion with what he sees as evidence emerging to the contrary: that the earth had in fact begun to cool, possibly as a result of solar variation, and that may thus not be the only driver of climate change. However, the results of research into this theory by the scientists Knud Lassen, Eigil Friis-Christensen and Henrik Svensmark were dismissed by Bert Bolin as "scientifically extremely naïve and irresponsible". Booker then alleges that a "consensus" and "counter-consensus" had begun to form, and gives details of a 2007 report by the US Senator James Inhofe that claimed to list 400 scientists "now prepared to express their dissent, sometimes in the strongest terms, from the IPCC''s ''consensus'' view of global warming". Booker then quotes the June 2007 International Energy Agency announcement that the cost of halving emissions by 2050 (the US and UK governments were intending 80% cuts) would be US$ 45 trillion—equivalent to "two thirds of the world''s entire current annual economic output". Booker sums up the book''s contents in a long epilogue, which quotes Theseus in A Midsummer''s Night Dream: In the night, imagining some fear, How easy is a bush supposed a bear Booker contends that in this quote Shakespeare is identifying that &#34;when we are not presented with enough information for our minds to resolve something into certainty, they may be teased into exaggerating it into something quite different from what it really is&#34;.

The Real Global Warming Disaster

In response to a radio plea from Abner Perry, a scientist who with his friend David Innes has discovered the interior world of Pellucidar at the Earth''s core, Jason Gridley launches an expedition to rescue Innes from the Korsars (corsairs), the scourge of the internal seas. He enlists Tarzan, and a fabulous airship is constructed to penetrate Pellucidar via the natural polar opening connecting the outer and inner worlds. The airship is crewed primarily by Germans, with Tarzan''s Waziri warriors under their chief Muviro also along for the expedition. In Pellucidar Tarzan and Gridley are each separated from the main force of the expedition and must struggle for survival against the prehistoric creatures and peoples of the inner world. Gridley wins the love of the native cave-woman Jana, the Red Flower of Zoram. Eventually everyone is reunited, and the party succeeds in rescuing Innes. As Tarzan and the others prepare to return home, Gridley decides to stay to search for Frederich Wilhelm Eric von Mendeldorf und von Horst, one last member of the expedition who remains lost (The missing Von Horst''s adventures are told in a sequel, Back to the Stone Age, which does not involve either Gridley or Tarzan).

Tarzan at the Earth''s Core

Bloom is set in the year 2106, in a world where self-replicating nanomachines called "Mycora" have consumed Earth and other planets of the inner solar system, forcing humankind to eke out a bleak living in the asteroids and Galilean moons. Two groups of humanity exist—The Immunity which use "ladderdown" technology and augmented reality and lives on the moons of Jupiter, and The Gladholders which use human intelligence amplification and artificial intelligence and live in the asteroid belt. The story begins on Ganymede with an article about a “bloom”, or outbreak of Mycora, that serves to emphasize the danger and horror of this technogenic life (TGL). The author of said story, Strasheim, is also the main character. He is first seen in the office of Lottick, a major public figure, who has called him there for an unknown purpose. Lottick tells Strasheim that the Mycora have apparently been stealing human gene sequences and may develop resistance to the coldness of the outer system, which incites concern. In the short term, a mission to drop some TGL detectors onto Mars'' and the Earth''s polar icecaps has been approved and Lottick asks Strasheim to go along as a reporter. In the long term, a starship is being constructed to try to beat the Mycora to colonizing other star systems. Strasheim agrees and soon after goes to meet the other crew-members and inspect the ship, which is called the Louis Pasteur which is technologically camouflaged to protect the crew against Mycora. Unfortunately, an unnamed man releases a Mycora bloom in the hangar, killing one crew-member and forcing the others to launch the Pasteur three weeks earlier than planned and without adequate supplies. Because of their forced launch, the Pasteur docks at Saint Helier, a medium-sized Floral asteroid to pick up supplies. While there, they are surprised multiple times, but what shocks them most is that the asteroid''s inhabitants have apparently discovered human life on Venus, co-existing with the mycora. Shaken, the crew continues on their journey, but become aware that one of the crew is sabotaging the mission. The saboteur turns out to be a woman named Baucum, to whom Strasheim had formed a strong sexual attraction. She is secretly a member of the Temples of Transcendent Evolution, a spiritual group that believes the Mycora to be divine and invests large sums of money into researching them. After being found out, Baucum ruptures a storage bag inside herself that had been carrying spores of Mycora. Terrified, Strasheim shoves her out of an airlock before the Mycora can devour him and the rest of the crew too. Later, it is revealed that the mission has a somewhat more violent purpose than the crew was led to believe. The detectors that they are supposed to drop on Mars'' and the Earth’s surface are designed in such a way that they can generate enough heat to rid Mars and the Earth of most Mycora. The Louis Pasteur is being followed by an armada of Temples ships, seemingly intent on destroying them at any cost. Strasheim realizes that their "cascade fusion" technology could be used to initiate a massive wave of solar flares that would wipe out most Mycoran life in the inner solar system. For this reason, the Temples ships are willing to risk their own destruction to stop the Louis Pasteur. But the true purpose of the mission to Earth isn’t all the Temples were right about, as at the climax of the story, the Mycora is discovered to be sapient and without ill-will toward humans. Communication is brief but paradigm-shattering. An ambassador explains that nearly every person consumed on Earth or on the evacuation out-system was incorporated into the Mycosystem and are still alive, their consciousness and intelligence significantly upgraded, "Unpacked". The crew is given information on how to mark areas as off-limits to the Mycosystem. They are told that humanity is, "...Utterly free. Free to conduct your lives in the classical manner, to escape this solar system, to populate the stars. Free to Unpack, if you choose." The book ends almost thirteen years later. The captain of the Pasteur has been diagnosed with a terminal disease and requests that Strasheim (now a successful media magnate) be his witness as he joins the Mycora and transcends.

Bloom

After a battle, the Nightlord Steel Brightblade finds Palin Majere, nephew of the famed mage Raistlin. He allows him to return with the bodies of his two brothers, slain in the battle, to their parents, Caramon and Tika. The Knights of Takhisis visit an island where the hidden race of Irda make their home. The Irda hide themselves with an illusion, pretending to be primitive humans, and the knights leave. This fearful encounter causes the Irda to believe that another invasion will come, and convinces them to break open a magical item known as the Greygem of Gargath. The Irda did not know that the Graygem holds the entity known as Chaos inside it, long thought too dangerous to dabble with, which sets in motion the Chaos War. Among the Irda is Usha, an orphaned human girl they had raised among them. They believed while their kind would be immune to the effect of the Greygem, that she, being a human, might be affected by it. So they decided to send her away, giving her a message to deliver to Lord Dalamar, master of the Tower of High Sorcery in Palanthas. After she is gone, they crack open the Graygem and release the god Chaos.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

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St. James's

No Author Listed

General Prologue

By Geoffrey Chaucer

The Heart of a Distant Forest

By Philip Lee Williams

Someday Angeline

By Louis Sachar

The Toll-Gate

By Georgette Heyer

Summer of the Monkeys

By Wilson Rawls

The Illusion

By K. A. Applegate

The Cancer Ward

By Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The Real Global Warming Disaster

No Author Listed

Tarzan at the Earth's Core

By Edgar Rice Burroughs

Bloom

By Wil McCarthy

Dragons of Summer Flame

By Margaret Weis