The main protagonist and narrator is Hermann Sörgel, a self-described devotee of Shakespeare. After giving a short list of works that he has written on Shakespeare, he tells the story of how he came to be in possession of Shakespeare''s Memory: He meets a man named Daniel Thorpe at a Shakespeare conference, and after relating a story about a ring that had a price so high it could never be sold. Thorpe then offers Sörgel Shakespeare''s memory, and after a short retelling of how he managed to get hold of it, passes it on to him. The memory, Thorpe says, has to be ''discovered'': Sörgel whistles melodies he has never heard, and slowly starts seeing unknown faces in his dreams. Later, he gains insights into Shakespeare''s works and techniques, and considers but decides against writing a biography. Soon after, Shakespeare''s memory almost overwhelms his own: one day he becomes confused as he does not recognise engines and cars. Finally he decides to give away the memory by telephone: he phones random numbers (sparing women and children from the memory), and at last gives the memory to a man on the other end of the phone.

Shakespeare''s Memory

Animal Dreams opens with a chapter narrated in the third person from the point of view of Doc Homer. This establishes a double narrative voice, which switches between dreams and memories of the past and events of the present. Doc Homer remembers his daughters, Codi and Hallie, when they were young. Their mother is dead. In the second chapter, narrated by Codi in first person, the plot line begins. Hallie leaves Tucson, Arizona, where she was living with Codi and Carlo, for Nicaragua. She plans to assist the newly established communist regime with their crop cultivation. Shortly thereafter, Codi also leaves Tucson, returning to her small rural hometown, Grace, to care for her ailing father and to teach high school biology. The return to Grace is fraught with difficulty for Codi, as she has always felt herself an outsider in the town and has never had a very close relationship with her father. Her return home raises the specter of several mysteries surrounding Codi and her family''s past: her failure to hold a medical license despite her attendance at medical school, the deaths of her mother and of her child, and the relationship of her family to the rest of the community. In Grace, Codi stays in her friend Emelina Domingos''s guest house. As the two women talk, Codi''s high school relationship with Loyd Peregrina is revealed. Loyd, a friend of Emelina''s husband J.T., still lives and works in town. Re-visiting Grace, Codi is again struck by her feeling of being an outsider. Codi and Hallie''s mother died shortly after Hallie''s birth. At the age of fifteen, Codi became pregnant with and then miscarried Loyd''s child. She never told anyone. Her father, the town doctor, was aware of the situation, but Codi still does not know this. Codi and Loyd meet again and begin a new relationship. Loyd, a Native American who grew up on the nearby Reservation, is ready to establish a serious and committed relationship, but Codi is not ready to imagine herself as staying in one place or loving only one person. Loyd accepts her ambivalence. They continue to see each other, and he teaches her about Native American Cultures.

Animal Dreams

Bruno is a 9-year-old boy growing up during World War II in Berlin. He lives in a huge house with his loving parents, his twelve-year-old sister Gretel (whom he refers to as a Hopeless Case) and maidservants. His father is a high-ranking SS officer who, after a visit from Adolf Hitler (referred to in the novel as "The Fury", Bruno''s misrecognition of the word "Führer") and Eva Braun, is promoted to Commandant, and to Bruno''s dismay, the family has to move away to a place called "Out-With" (which turns out to be Auschwitz). When Bruno gets there, he feels a surge of homesickness after leaving behind his grandparents and his three best friends. Unhappy with his new home, Bruno becomes lonely and has no one to talk to or play with. One day, Bruno notices a group of people all wearing the same striped pyjamas and striped hats or bald heads. He asks who these people are and his father tells him that these people are not real people at all, as they are Jews. Gretel has changed from a normal young girl into a strong Nazi with the help of her tutor, but Bruno does not seem to take the same stance as his sister. Bruno finds out he is not allowed to explore the back of the house or its surroundings. Due to the combination of curiosity and boredom, he decides to explore anyway. He spots a boy on the other side of the fence. Excited that there might be a boy his age, Bruno introduces himself and finds out the Jewish boy''s name is Shmuel. Shmuel and his family were brought here, broken apart from each other and forced to work in Auschwitz. Almost every day, the two boys meet at the same spot. Soon, they become best friends, so similar, they are basically the same person in different circumstances, one a Polish Jew, the other a German. Over the course of the book, Bruno shows a great deal of naivety whilst Shmuel seems to have more knowledge, as he has felt the suffering first-hand. Bruno''s mother persuades his father to take them back to Berlin (after what is presumed to be an romance between a young soldier called Lieutenant Kotler and Bruno''s sister is broken up by the father) after a year at their new home, while the father stays at Auschwitz. With Bruno about to go back to Berlin with his mother and sister, as a final adventure, he agrees to dress in a set of striped pyjamas and go under the fence to help Shmuel find his father, who went missing in the camp. The boys are unable to find him, and are mixed up in a group of people going on a march. Neither boy knows where this march will lead. However, they are soon crowded into a gas chamber, which Bruno assumes is a place to keep them dry from the rain until it stops. The author leaves the story with Bruno pondering, yet unafraid, in the dark holding hands with Shmuel: "...Despite the chaos that followed, Bruno found that he was still holding Shmuel''s hand in his own and nothing in the world would have persuaded him to let it go." In an epilogue, the book states that Bruno''s family spent several months at their home trying to find Bruno, before his mother and Gretel return to Berlin, only to discover he is not there as they had expected. A year afterwards, his father returns to the spot that the soldiers found Bruno''s clothes (almost the same spot Bruno spent the last year of his life) and, after a brief inspection, discovers that the fence is not properly attached at the base and can form a gap big enough for a boy of Bruno''s size to fit through. Using this information, his father eventually pieces together that they gassed Bruno to death. Bruno''s father then realizes what he was really doing, and thinks about his job as Commandant. Losing Bruno makes him greatly depressed, and he stops caring about his job. Several months later, the Red Army arrives to liberate the camp and orders Bruno''s father to go with them. He goes without complaint, because "he didn''t really mind what they did to him anymore".

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

On a hot August day in 1880, at the Ingalls homestead in Dakota Territory, Laura offers to help Pa stack hay to feed their stock in the winter. As they work, Laura notices a muskrat den in the nearby Big Slough. Upon inspecting the den, Pa notes that the walls are the thickest he has ever seen, and fears the upcoming winter will be a hard one. In mid-October, the Ingalls wake to an unusually early blizzard howling around their poorly insulated claim shanty. Soon afterward, Pa receives another warning from an unexpected source: an old Native American man comes to the general store in town to warn the white settlers that there will be seven months of blizzards. Pa decides to move the family into his store building in town for the winter. In town, Laura attends school with her younger sister, Carrie, until the weather becomes too unpredictable to permit them to walk to and from the school building, and coal too scarce to keep the school heated. Blizzard after blizzard sweeps through the town over the next few months. Food and fuel become scarce and expensive, as the town depends on trains to bring supplies but the frequent blizzards prevent the trains from getting through. Eventually, the railroad company suspends all efforts to dig out the trains that are snowed in at Tracy, stranding the town until spring. With no more coal or wood, the family learns to use twisted hay for fuel. For weeks, the Ingalls subsist on potatoes and coarse brown bread made from wheat ground in their coffee mill. As even this meager food runs out, Laura''s future husband Almanzo Wilder and his friend Cap Garland hear rumors that a settler raised wheat at a claim twenty miles from town. They risk their lives to bring sixty bushels of wheat to the starving townspeople &ndash; enough to last the rest of the winter. As predicted, the blizzards continue for seven months. Finally, the spring thaw comes and trains begin running again, bringing the Ingalls their long-delayed Christmas barrel from Reverend Alden, containing clothes, presents, and a Christmas turkey. With the long winter finally over, the family enjoys Christmas dinner in May.

The Long Winter

The story is around him trying to find out who murdered his mentor, Klingferm, before they had a chance to meet. (In their organisation, members only meet face to face if an extremely serious situation is at hand, such as imminent nuclear war). Klingferm was killed after riding a sabotaged elevator which shot him out through the roof. Harry follows clues left by Klingferm, in the process earning the suspicions of the local police, led by the irate Captain Zuccho. A clue left by Klingferm instructs him to go to Vienna. Along the way, his investigation leads him through numerous facets of Europe''s incompetent new society. Harry is eventually arrested and placed in jail, but soon manages to get himself released. He is being followed by Klingferm''s killer, who plants false evidence on him linking him to the murder of a senior politician, but the police destroy all this evidence themselves. Against all odds, however, Harry finally meets up with Twinkle, an extremely old bunny girl (who happens to be male), who tells him a locker number, which he has forgotten and gives Harry many variants. Afterwards, Harry is attacked by hired thug Wolfie and taken to the murderer, who turns out to be Klingferm himself. Klingferm is an undercover American agent attempting to stop the United States of Europe from ever becoming a potent global force. Klingferm traps Harry in a sabotaged roller coaster, but Harry is able to fatally shoot Klingferm before it activates. Captain Zuccho, having tracked Harry for most of the book, arrives and rescues him. The story ends with Harry, as it began, being subjected to poor piloting of an aeroplane.

Incompetence

The story follows a French engineer, d''Arrast, as he is driven by a local chauffeur, Socrates, to a town in Iguape, Brazil, where he is to construct a sea-wall to prevent the lower quarters from flooding. After a night-drive through the jungle, D''Arrast wakes in Iguape and is greeted by the notable people of the town. An incident follows when the chief of police, apparently drunk, demands to see d''Arrast''s passport and claims it is not in order. The other dignitaries of the town are embarrassed and apologetic, and the judge asks d''Arrast to choose a punishment for the chief of police, which he later refuses to do. On a tour of the lower quarters of the town, d''Arrast sees the poverty of the poor, black people who live there. He is shown around a hut and offered rum by the daughter of the house as part of his visit, although he feels the hostility of the local people towards him and his guides. On his return, his chauffeur explains the ritual that is to take place that night. Having found a statue of Jesus drifting in from the sea and up the river, the local people had stored it in a cave, where, since then, a stone had grown. Now they celebrated the miracle each year with a festival and a procession. Socrates and d''Arrast then meet an old sailor who has his own miracle to tell of. He explains how his ship had caught fire and he had fallen from the lifeboat. He recognised the light from the church of Iguape and despite being a weak swimmer was able to swim towards it to safety. The sailor had made a promise to Jesus that, should he be saved, he would carry a stone of 50 kilos to the church in the procession. After telling his story, the sailor invites d''Arrast to come to a different ceremony that evening, with dancing, although he mentions that he himself will not dance as he has his promise to carry out the next day. As dusk falls d’Arrast follows the sailor and his brother to a hut near the forest, containing a statue or idol of a horned god, where men and women are dancing. As the drums get louder and faster and the dancers get wilder, d’Arrast’s new friend forgets his decision not to dance and joins the circle. D’Arrast tries to remind him not to dance but is asked to leave the ceremony. The next day d’Arrast is watching the town procession when he sees his friend of the night before trying to carry out his promise. The sailor is struggling to carry the fifty-kilo stone and falls more than once. D’Arrast goes to walk with him and tries to offer support but it is no use. Tired out from a night’s dancing, the sailor must give up his attempt to carry the stone to the church. When the sailor finally falls, d’Arrast decides to take over his task for him. He takes the stone from his friend and carries it towards the church. The stone seems to grow heavier as he goes, and he too struggles. However he suddenly decides to change his route, and carry his burden, not to the church, but down-town to the sailor’s own hut, where he flings it down in the centre of the room. As the sailor and his brother catch up with d’Arrast, they react, not with anger, but by asking him to sit and join them.

The Growing Stone

Heer is an extremely beautiful woman, born into a wealthy Jat family of the Sayyal clan in Jhang, Punjab. Ranjha (whose first name is Dheedo; Ranjha is the surname), also a Jat of the Ranjha clan, is the youngest of four brothers and lives in the village ''Takht Hazara'' by the river Chenab. Being his father''s favorite son, unlike his brothers who had to toil in the lands, he led a life of ease playing the flute (''Wanjhli''/''Bansuri''). After a quarrel with his brothers over land, Ranjha leaves home. In Waris Shah''s version of the epic, it is said that Ranjha left his home because his brothers'' wives refused to give him food. Eventually he arrives in Heer''s village and falls in love with her. Heer offers Ranjha a job as caretaker of her father''s cattle. She becomes mesmerised by the way Ranjha plays his flute and eventually falls in love with him. They meet each other secretly for many years until they are caught by Heer''s jealous uncle, Kaido, and her parents Chuchak and Malki. Heer is forced by her family and the local priest or ''mullah'' to marry another man called Saida Khera. Ranjha is heartbroken. He wanders the countryside alone, until eventually he meets a ''jogi'' (ascetic). After meeting Baba Gorakhnath, the founder of the "Kanphata"(pierced ear) sect of jogis, at ''Tilla Jogian'' (the ''Hill of Ascetics'', located 50 miles north of the historic town of Bhera, Sargodha District, Punjab), Ranjha becomes a jogi himself, piercing his ears and renouncing the material world. Reciting the name of the Lord, "Alakh Niranjan", he wanders all over the Punjab, eventually finding the village where Heer now lives. The two return to Heer''s village, where Heer''s parents agree to their marriage. However, on the wedding day, Heer''s jealous uncle Kaido poisons her food so that the wedding will not take place. Hearing this news, Ranjha rushes to aid Heer, but he is too late, as she has already eaten the poison and died. Brokenhearted once again, Ranjha takes the poisoned Laddu (sweet) which Heer has eaten and dies by her side. Heer and Ranjha are buried in Heer''s hometown, Jhang. Lovers and others often pay visits to their mausoleum.

Heer Ranjha

In 1993, Harry Bosch and his partner Jerry Edgar caught the Marie Gesto case. Marie was a young equestrian who went missing. Her car and clothing turned up in a garage but her body was never found. Bosch and Edgar had pegged a likely culprit &mdash; the son of a wealthy and powerful industrialist, but the detectives never found enough evidence to charge the suspect and the case went cold. Between then and the start of this novel, Bosch had retired from the LAPD and worked as a private investigator for three years but returned to the force because things didn''t work out the way he thought they would in retirement. Now, nearing 60, Bosch is working in the prestigious Open-Unsolved Unit at Parker Center, going over cold cases with his most recent partner, Kizmin "Kiz" Rider. A serendipitous traffic stop in L.A.''s Echo Park neighborhood nabs Reynard Waits, a man with body parts in his van on the floorboard in front of the front seat. Detective Freddy Olivas is working the case and Richard O''Shea is the prosecutor assigned. Soon Waits has confessed to a string of slayings involving prostitutes and runaways, as well as to two earlier murders: one of a pawnshop owner during the 1992 riots, the other of Marie Gesto. When the Gesto case files are reexamined, it seems that Waits had called the police shortly after the murder, pretending to be a tipster, but Bosch and Edgar never followed up on the tip. Without this costly error, Waits could have been implicated within a week of Gesto''s disappearance. it:Il cerchio del lupo sv:Räven (roman)

Echo Park

The novella centres on the antagonisms that exist between two brothers. It recounts the story of Robert, a priest whose conduct appears so exemplary that he is called "L''Abbé" ("the abbot"), and is also involved in the clandestine activities of the French Resistance. Against his perspective of ecclesiastical morality, one encounters his twin brother Charles, who is a "libertine." It is the Second World War, which serves as a backdrop for the paradox of interpersonal betrayal, anti-clericalism and its disconnection from public virtue that characterises this work. Charles has a sexual relationship with Eponine, a female libertine. However, Eponine is also attracted to Robert. Worse, Robert is secretly attracted to Eponine, which precipitates an atmosphere of psychological and sexual tension within this triangle. The story turns out badly for all involved, as the resolution of this unstable triangle is not a healthy outcome. The story is told mostly from Charles''s point of view. Robert undergoes a nervous breakdown, as he faints at a church service that he officiates at, with Eponine in the congregation. Robert becomes an alcoholic, and starts to harass Eponine at home late at night, leaving behind traces that suggest growing psychological instability. He loses his moral compass, and eventually becomes insane, leaving his village for a hotel on its outskirts, and spends a fortnight with two prostitutes, Rosie and Raymonde, before the Gestapo apprehend Robert for his activities with the French Resistance. While he has abandoned his clerical vows, however, Robert will not betray his resistance colleagues, and dies an heroic death after severe torture at the hands of his Nazi captors. Charles mourns his death, unable to forget what happened to his brother, until he and his wife Germaine encounter the unnamed narrator of the bracketing sections of this work, read as if an autobiography. Two years after Robert''s heroic death, Charles commits suicide, but the narrator fulfils his responsibilities and takes the work to a publisher.

L''Abbe C

The story is set on Fire Island, and also partly in nearby New York City. Alice, age 21, and Riley, 24, are two sisters. Nearly every summer of their lives, they have shared the same childhood friend, Paul, 24, whose widowed mother owns a Fire Island beach mansion next door to the smaller beach house of the girls and their parents. Paul has been absent for three summers, having been studying and volunteering in California. Alice is smart, graceful and elegant, planning on applying to law school at NYU. Riley is the athletic and adventurous one, having life-guarded on the island since she was fifteen. She is dyslexic and has attended outdoor leadership school in Colorado. Paul is something of a hippie, following in his father''s footsteps. He can be moody and is wary of trusting people. During the summer, Alice and Paul start to have feelings outside of friendship for each other. Paul goes to great lengths to hide his feelings about Alice. They both realize they have always loved one another, but now in a different way. Alice even goes as far to give Paul her virginity one night on the beach. They continue sneaking around, hiding their relationship from their families. One night when Alice has gone over to Paul''s house to make love, the emergency alarm goes off during the middle of the night. Alice dismisses the alarm as an elderly person needing attention, but it is not so; the person being helicoptered out is her own sister, Riley. It seems Riley is suffering from rheumatic heart disease. Alice is overwhelmed with guilt and a rush of feelings. She suddenly leaves the island without explanation to be with her hospitalized sister and parents, leaving Paul puzzled and hurt. Riley refuses to face the urgency of the situation and insists that her medical condition be kept secret from Paul until she can tell him herself. The following summer, Alice postpones graduate school to work as a groundskeeper and store cashier near the family''s Manhattan home, while Riley awaits a donor heart transplant. Alice buys Riley an indoor pool membership, which Riley is grateful for, trying to carry on normally and ignore her medical condition. During a swim, Riley misses an important opportunity to receive a heart transplant. While the rest of her family is upset over this, Riley insists that they stay out of her business, saying that she can take care of herself. Meanwhile Paul, studying philosophy at NYU, is constantly thinking about Alice and his feelings towards her. Still unaware of Riley''s condition, he is bitter and angry towards Alice. He even attends an old island acquaintance''s wedding with a beautiful date to spite her. Riley finally tells Paul of her medical problems, admitting that she isn''t entirely sure she wants a heart transplant. Paul''s mother gives him the beach mansion, which he clears out and sells for $3 million. He donates the money to Bellevue Hospital, where his wealthy but wild-living father died long ago. One night back in the city, Alice returns from work to find Riley has died. The funeral is held and Alice and her parents go to Fire Island to spread her ashes. Alice volunteers to tend to the beach house, as the family has decided to sell it. Paul turns up one day, discovering his house has been sold to a new family whose children Alice babysits each morning. The story ends with Alice and Paul having sex and leaving the Island for the first time together; she has decided to apply to NYU school of social work and be with Paul.

The Last Summer

After testifying against the murderer of bank guard Pop Walters, "Swede" Anderson finds himself number one on the River City, California crime syndicate''s hit list. He barely escapes fiery death after the mob wires a bomb into the door of his car. Captain Domms of the city police is unable to protect him or, worse, has his own hand in the mob''s pocket. Seeing no refuge for himself in River City, Anderson rides the rails out of town and fades from local memory. Anderson realizes that after four years of hobo living has melted away his flab, the sun has turned his formerly pale skin to leather, and a run-in with a railyard bull has left his nose broken and his cheek scarred, he is scarcely recognizable as his old self. With a bottle of henna he completes the transformation by coloring his blond hair red. Under the name of his late hobo pal, Mac McCarthy, Anderson returns to River city with revenge on his mind. There, he signs on as a driver with Tyler Trucking. The firm is being run by Gail Tyler, following her father''s death—under suspicious circumstances—in a high-speed truck wreck. Anderson soon learns that between the union and the crime syndicate it fronts, the lifespan of a trucker in River City is not entirely in the trucker''s hands. Using a mix of guts, muscle, and brains, Anderson builds a reputation as a cool-headed tough whose only interest is in a quick dollar. He manages to infiltrate the mob, but soon finds himself in over his head. In what he thinks will be simple heist, he becomes an unwilling accessory to the murder of the head of a rival trucking firm. In this he implicates not just himself but also Tyler Trucking and Gail, with whom he has developed a romantic attachment. Investigating the crime, Captain Domms fails to see through Anderson''s Mac McCarthy disguise and proves himself no more able to enforce the law than he''d been four years ago. Never losing his nerve, Anderson ultimately wins the mob bosses'' full confidence and is taken into a plot to rob the same bank he worked in when Pop Walters was killed. While rehearsing for the robbery, Anderson sees through the mob''s plan to murder him after he plays his part—to avoid making the generous payoff it''s promised him. Anderson develops a counter-strategy, but realizes the mob has turned the tables on him when the next rehearsal suddenly becomes the real thing. As the story reaches its climax, Anderson has only moments to adapt his half-formed plan to the new scenario, save his life, and find the revenge he has sought.

Come Back for More

During the 1930s, Walter Faber, who works at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, meets an art student Hanna. The two become lovers, and one day Hanna reveals that she is pregnant. Faber asks her to marry him, but she hesitates. Faber receives an offer by UNESCO to work in Baghdad and he accepts it; he and Hanna split up. Before his departure, Faber asks his friend Joachim to take care of Hanna, and Hanna agrees to abort their child. In spring 1957, Faber recounts the events of Faber''s travels in America. On a flight from New York to Mexico, his plane makes a forced landing in the desert. During the following stay he meets the German Herbert, who turns out to be the brother of Joachim, Faber''s friend. Faber had not heard from his friend since 1936. Faber decides to accompany Herbert, who is on his way to visiting his brother. After an oddysey through the wilderness, they reach Joachim''s plantation. But Joachim has hanged himself. Herbert decides to stay behind and manage the plantation. Faber returns to New York City, but meets up with his married mistress, Ivy. Looking to escape their relationship, Faber takes an unplanned cruise to Europe. On this journey, he meets the young woman Sabeth, with whom he falls in love. He proposes to Sabeth at the end of the journey, but she is traveling with a male friend. Faber and Sabeth meet again in Paris and Faber decides to go on vacation and accompany Sabeth on a road trip through Europe. Because of a foreboding, he asks Sabeth for the name of her mother: Hanna. Faber still hopes that Hanna has aborted their child, but it turnes out soon that Sabeth is his daughter. In Greece, where Hanna now lives, a poisonous snake bites Sabeth, who falls down a cliff and dies. Stricken by grief and stomach cancer, Faber realizes the beauty he has missed and finds redemption in Hanna. He dies knowing she will never leave Athens and their daughter''s grave.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

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Shakespeare's Memory

By Jorge Luis Borges

Animal Dreams

By Barbara Kingsolver

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

By John Boyne

The Long Winter

By Samuel Youd

Incompetence

By Rob Grant

The Growing Stone

By Albert Camus

Heer Ranjha

No Author Listed

Echo Park

By Michael Connelly

L'Abbe C

No Author Listed

The Last Summer

By Ann Brashares

Come Back for More

By Ralph Salaway

Homo faber

By Max Frisch