Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi go to the planet of Telos on an unofficial mission to apprehend Xanatos, the Dark Jedi who had tried to destroy the Jedi Temple. Upon their arrival, they are surprised to find that Xanatos wields significant financial and political power on Telos. They soon discover that Xanatos and the government of Telos have been distracting the populace with a new form of gambling called Katharsis. In the meantime, the company UniFy, a subsidiary of the massive Offworld Corporation headed by Xanatos, has been mining the planet''s resources despite the importance the native Telosians place on their environment. Pursued by Xanatos'' men, Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon are forced to trust Denetrus ("Den"), a con man associated with POWER, an outlawed political party dedicated to preserving the Telosian environment. The three infiltrate the UniFy headquarters, looking for evidence to prove that Offworld is mishandling the planet''s resources. However, the two Jedi are arrested, and Xanatos personally informs them they have been sentenced to death. The Jedi manage to escape the public execution with the help of Andra, a member of the POWER party. Obi-Wan and Andra infiltrate the Sacred Pools of Telos and discover that the site is indeed being used for mining operations. The two are detected by surveillance droids, but are able to escape and record evidence that Offworld is connected with UniFy. Meanwhile, Den and Qui-Gon have rigged the Katharsis lottery so that Den will win. When Den does win and Xanatos presents the prize to him, the recorded images are played for all the Telosians to see. However, Xanatos deceives the crowd and the Jedi are captured once more. But Den, addressing the crowd, tells the people how the lottery was rigged and how the Telosians were robbed of their money. Xanatos then makes his get-away, but Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan chase him back to the Sacred Pools site. After a lightsaber battle amid the black acid pools, the two Jedi finally corner the Dark Jedi. But Xanatos, not willing to be defeated, commits suicide by throwing himself into the acid pools.

The Day of Reckoning

Azriel is telling the story of his transformation into and subsequent existence as an immortal genii who is forced to obey the Master who calls him. Over centuries, Azriel becomes less obedient to the Masters and a warning is placed on the casket of his bones that he is not to be summoned lest his evil be loosed upon the undeserving world. After many centuries of rest, Azriel finds himself awake and in New York City, a dazed witness to the murder of a young woman, Esther Belkin. He becomes inexplicably obsessed with the desire to avenge her death and to find out who called him into the physical world in time to see Esther die but not in time to save her. This quest leads him to the girl''s stepfather, Gregory Belkin, who would pay any price to fulfill his messianic dream via his immense worldwide religious organization, the Temple of the Mind of God. As his quest approaches its climax, he risks his supernatural powers to forestall an attempt to destroy the world thus redeeming what was denied him for so long: his own eternal human soul.

Servant of the Bones

In South Africa under apartheid, Mehring is a rich white businessman who is not satisfied with his life. His ex-wife has gone to America, his liberal son (who is probably gay) criticizes his conservative/capitalist ways and his lovers and colleagues do not seem actually interested in him. Out of a whim he buys a farm outside the city, afterwards trying to explain this purchase to himself as the search for a higher meaning in life. But it is clear that he knows next to nothing to farming, and that black workers run it - Mehring is simply an outsider, an intruder on the daily life of "his" farm. One day the black foreman, Jacobus, finds an unidentified dead body on the farm. Since the dead man is black, the police find no urgency to look into the case and simply bury the body on the spot where it was found. The idea of an unknown black man buried on his land begins to "haunt" Mehring. This has been interpreted as the influence of apartheid on the class of privileged white people who profit from it while ignoring its victims. A flood brings the body back to the surface; although the farm workers do not know the stranger, they now give him a proper burial as if he were a family member. There are hints that Mehring''s own burial will be less emotional than this burial of a stranger. This can be interpreted to symbolize the white man''s position in South Africa: although he "owns" the land on a piece of paper, the black natives have the actual claim on the land. it:Il conservatore

The Conservationist

For more than two centuries, what would have become the United States and Canada has been the North American Union, a territory encompassing the northern portion of the continent except Alaska, retained under the rule of Russia. The Two Georges, a Gainsborough painting, commemorates the agreement between George Washington and King George III that created this part of the British Empire. The painting itself has become a symbol of national unity. While being displayed in New Liverpool, the painting is stolen while a crowd is distracted by the murder of "Honest" Dick (a.k.a. "Tricky" Dick), the Steamer King, a nationally-known used car salesman. Colonel Thomas Bushell of the Royal American Mounted Police leads the search for the painting, accompanied by its former curator Dr. Kathleen Flannery and Captain Samuel Stanley. Some days later, a ransom note is received from the Sons of Liberty, a terrorist organization that wants to see America independent of Britain. The Governor-General of the North American Union, Sir Martin Luther King, informs Bushell in confidence that the painting must be recovered before King Charles III''s state visit, or the government will have to pay the Sons'' ransom demand of fifty million pounds. The search takes Bushell, Flannery, and Stanley across the country via airship (an advanced form of dirigible), train, and steamer. They also meet many members of the Sons of Liberty, including Boston newspaper editor John F. Kennedy. After chasing many false leads and the wrong suspects, Bushell and his associates arrive at Victoria and find The Two Georges an hour before the King arrives. They also uncover the true culprits: the Holy Alliance, a union of France and Spain controlling almost everything from the Rio Grande to Cape Horn, and Bushell''s superior officer and covert fanatic Sons of Liberty sympathizer, Lieutenant General Horace Bragg. Bushnell then thwarts Bragg''s two tries to assassinate the King. Bragg is sent to the gallows, while Bushell and Stanley are both knighted by the King for their accomplishments.

The Two Georges

In the beginning of the book, Odd Thomas is silently approached by the ghost of a young girl brutally raped and murdered, and through his unique ability to understand the dead, is psychically led to her killer, a former schoolmate named Harlo Landerson. With this opening, we are introduced to Odd''s world. Koontz soon discloses how Odd was named and begins, layer by layer, to show how Odd''s dysfunctional upbringing has shaped his life, and as those details are uncovered, his supernatural abilities begin to make more sense. We see Odd at work as a short order cook in a California desert town, and in a fateful 24-hour period, he meets a suspicious-looking man in the diner followed by bodachs, shadowy spirit creatures who appear only during times of death and disaster. This man, who Odd nicknames "Fungus Man" (due to his waxy complexion and blonde hair that resembles mold), has an unusually large swarm of bodachs following him, and Odd is convinced that this man is connected to some terrible catastrophe that is about to occur. To gather more information about him, Odd uses his gift of supernatural intuition, which his soulmate Bronwen (a.k.a. Stormy) Llewellyn calls "psychic magnetism," to track him down. Odd''s sixth sense leads him to Fungus Man''s home, and Odd begins to uncover more details about the man and a mysterious other-worldly link to the dark forces about to be unleashed on the town of Pico Mundo. Accompanied sometimes by the ghost of Elvis Presley and encountering other memorable spirits, including a murdered prostitute, Odd is soon deeply involved in an attempt to prevent the disastrous bloodshed he knows will happen the next day.

Odd Thomas

In A Glorious Way to Die, Russell Spurr recounts the final mission of the . He describes the events that led to the decision by the Japanese at Combined Fleet headquarters to send Yamato, the pride of the Imperial Japanese Navy, on a suicide mission to help defend Okinawa Island against the advancing Allied forces. Spurr tells the story of Yamatos last mission in a "dramatic narrative" from both the Japanese and the American point of view. Construction of the Yamato began in secrecy at the Kure naval base in 1937. She was completed soon after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, but had already been rendered obsolete by the Japanese themselves after their successful carrier-based attacks at Pearl Harbor and elsewhere. Yamato, the largest battleship in the world, with nine 18.1-inch guns with a range of over 22 miles, became a "70,000-ton white elephant the Japanese did not quite know what to do with". In March 1945, after the Americans had invaded Okinawa and all but eliminated the Japanese Navy, a final Kamikaze mission called Operation Ten-Go (Operation Heaven One) was conceived to repulse the American advances. The plan was to send Yamato with eight support destroyers and a cruiser to Okinawa. Yamato would only be given enough fuel to reach Okinawa, and would have no air-cover as all available airplanes would be used for a series of Kamikaze attacks on US aircraft carriers. At Okinawa Yamato and her support craft would beach themselves and assist the island defenders. Without air-cover there was little chance of Yamato reaching her destination, but the Japanese high command were "perfectly prepared to sacrifice the remnants of [their] fleet to avoid the stigma of surrender". The Americans intercepted the Japanese fleet on April 7, 1945, 200 miles from Okinawa. Using 280 bombers and torpedo planes in three waves of attacks from nine aircraft carriers, the Americans sank Yamato and five of her support ships within three hours. After Yamato went down the Americans machine-gunned survivors in the water. Spurr explains the reason for their hatred of the Japanese: After the US planes left the area, the remaining Japanese support ships picked up what survivors they could from the water and returned to Kure. Of Yamatos total crew of 3359, only 269 survived. The Americans lost 12 men in their attack on the Japanese fleet.

A Glorious Way to Die

The novel begins when the main character Nebu, a Kikuyu tribe member, leaves his Mau Mau people to hunt down a white man who is traveling in the African bush. After catching up to the white man who has also brought his son along, Nebu throws a spear at the white man and kills him while simultaneously, the white man shoots at Nebu, injuring his side. After killing the white man, Nebu realizes that it was his old boss, an English planter. As a result of committing this crime, Nebu feels especially obligated to repay the boss, for having previously slept with his white wife. For this reason, he decides to safeguard the boss’ child, who is in truth, biologically his own, and return him to a white community. The decision to bring the child to a white community is a tough one for him, however, for he is himself very injured from the bullet, and also the child is incapable of walking alone, making the journey twice as difficult. As Nebu carries his son through the bush, the boy, who was raised with mixed emotions towards blacks and whites, continually taunts him. While they travel, they together become closely watched by the leopard, which plots to kill the two concurrently. Nebu’s wound from the bullet continuously weakens him, making him more susceptible to attack from the leopard. At this point, the leopard attacks and brings a tragic ending to the “twisted little cripple’s” life. Before Nebu could spear the leopard, an English army lieutenant shoots at the leopard, killing it instantly.

The Leopard

Aunt Pettitoes, an old sow, can no longer cope with her eight troublemaking offspring and thus makes them leave home, with the exception of a well-behaved sow named Spot. Two of them, boars named Pigling Bland and Alexander, go to market. Pigling Bland is very sensible but the more frivolous Alexander loses his pig license and, when he fails to produce them to a passing policeman, is made to return to the farm. Reluctantly going on alone, Pigling Bland later finds the missing papers, which ended up in his pocket as a result of an earlier scuffle with Alexander. He tries to find his brother but ends up getting lost in the woods and has to spend the night in a stranger''s chicken coop. He is found in the morning by a gruff farmer, Peter Thomas Piperson, who allows him to stay in his house, but Pigling is not sure the farmer is trustworthy. His fears are quickly confirmed when he discovers that Piperson has a second pig in his house who was stolen from her owner and whom he intends to turn into bacon and ham. The second pig, a beautiful black Berkshire sow named Pig-wig, suggests they run away so that they won''t be sold, or worse, eaten. Pigling Bland has in any case decided to avoid the market and become a potato farmer instead. At dawn the pair sneak off but in the course of their escape they come across a grocer in a cart who recognises Pig-wig as the recently stolen pig for whom a reward has been issued. By being co-operative, and with Pigling Bland faking a limp, the two pigs manage to gain time and, once the grocer is at a safe distance, flee to the county boundary and finally, over the hills and far away, where they dance to celebrate their new found freedom.

The Tale of Pigling Bland

Angel Sullivan has always been the outcast, suffering the taunts of cruel schoolmates and the wild fits of an alcoholic father. Things for Angel''s family have hit rock bottom until a call from her aunt has them moving to a new town and making a fresh start. In the town of Roundtree, Massachusetts a beautiful home awaits, a home that is selling at a steal of a price, there is only one problem...the house at Black Creek Crossing holds a murderous secret. Seth Baker lives in Roundtree and, much the same as Angel, he too is the outcast of his schoolmates, as well the victim of a psychically abusive father. Seth does his best to deal with his father, but finds sanctuary in photograph taking, until he meets Angel. As Seth and Angel become better friends, Seth tells her of the deadly legacy surrounding her home and the rumors of supernatural possession that still dwells there. Angel, desperate for the truth about Black Creek Crossing, uncovers a centuries-old horror that lies within her home''s walls. Now, that Angel and Seth have uncovered the dark secrets buried in Roundtree, they find themselves trapped in a maelstrom of desire and violence that will erupt in unspeakable tragedy. `Black Creek Crossing'' is a chilling page-turner that begs to be read in one sitting. From the shocking opening to the explosive climax the plot speeds along with unstoppable force. Vivid gothic descriptions and likable characters combined with creepy scares will hold readers breathless until the final page has been turned.

Black Creek Crossing

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

Flashman not only encounters Lord Palmerston at Balmoral, but also his old nemesis Nicholas Pavlovich Ignatiev. He escapes assassination narrowly and journeys to Jhansi in India, where he meets Rani Lakshmi Bai, the beautiful queen. He listens to her grievances against the British Raj and attempts to seduce her. Whether or not he is successful is unclear, but immediately afterwards Flashman is nearly garroted by Thuggees. In disguise as Makarram Khan, a Hasanzai of the Black Mountain, he takes refuge in the native cavalry at Meerut. Unfortunately, Meerut is where the Sepoy Mutiny begins. Flashman survives the Siege of Cawnpore and the Siege of Lucknow but ends up imprisoned in Gwalior after an attempt to deliver Lakshmi into British hands. He is released just in time to witness the death of Lakshmi, but then his appearance after two months in prison leads to his misidentification as a mutineer. After being knocked out during the British attack on the Rani''s camp, he awakens to something that makes Hugh Rose later wonder that Flashman did not lose his mind - he is gagged and tied to the muzzle of a cannon, about to be executed with other mutineers. Fortunately, quick thinking allows him to communicate with gestures his true ethnicity to his British captors. In an uncharacteristically humane act, he orders the Indian mutineers who were going to be blown away alongside him, to be freed saying "the way things are hereabouts, one of ''em''s probably Lord Canning." In this book Flashman often behaves heroically, though his interior thoughts are often - but not always - those of a coward and a cad.

Flashman in the Great Game

Linda Martin lands in Paris on a cold, gray, and rainy day. She is on her way to her new post as a governess to the young Count Philippe de Valmy. Having lost both his parents in a tragic accident, the nine-year-old boy lives with his aunt and uncle in the vast and ornate Château Valmy in the French countryside. Léon de Valmy, Philippe''s uncle, runs the estate on behalf of his underage nephew until he comes of age and arranged for a proper English governess for his charge. When Linda arrives at the imposing manor, she is at once enchanted by its beauty and history, but is also immediately struck by the sense of menace and doom surrounding the land and its inhabitants. Léon is a charismatic force of nature and quite charming and, when Linda meets his reckless and rakishly handsome son Raoul, she understands a bit more about the de Valmy heritage and what makes this family tick. As she becomes closer to Philippe and Raoul, Linda draws ever nearer to putting her finger on the source of the threat. But the layers of danger and darkness run deeper than any of them guessed and she may not be able to trust those she wants to, no matter how innocent or attractive they may seem. Soon it is up to the shy young governess to beat the clock in order to save Philippe''s life as well as her own.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

The Day of Reckoning

By Judy Blundell

Servant of the Bones

By Anne Rice

The Conservationist

By Nadine Gordimer

The Two Georges

By Harry Turtledove

Odd Thomas

By Dean Koontz

A Glorious Way to Die

No Author Listed

The Leopard

No Author Listed

The Tale of Pigling Bland

By Beatrix Potter

Black Creek Crossing

By John Saul

The Cancer Ward

By Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Flashman in the Great Game

By George MacDonald Fraser

Nine Coaches Waiting

By Mary Stewart