The Animorphs meet survivors of Elfangor''s Dome Ship, the GalaxyTree. One Andalite called Gafinilan-Estrif-Valad suffers from a genetic disease called Soola''s Disease while the other, Mertil-Iscar-Elmand, is crippled, or a vecol, as Ax puts it, missing half of his tail. Gafinilan attacks Marco when he gets too close to the human home he owns, while Ax comes to his defense. Both enter his home and Gafinilan asks to meet Ax''s prince, not realizing his "prince" is human, as Visser Three had captured Mertil and had offered his release only if Gafinilan brought him a healthy adult Andalite (as Mertil was a vecol, and Visser Three discovered through Mertil that Gafinilan had a fatal disease, rendering them both as useless, in the Visser''s perspective). The Animorphs assume that since Soola''s Disease is genetic, and the only ''cure'' is for Gafinilan to acquire and morph another Andalite, this is the reason why Gafinilan wanted to meet Ax''s "prince", not wanting to acquire Ax himself because he would prefer to morph the adult Andalite he believes Jake is, as Ax''s body would take too long to reach physical maturity. Jake agrees to meet with him, with the intention of laying a trap for Gafinilan, and they overpower him by force of numbers. When they tell Gafinilan what they assumed his plan was, he is shocked at the mere thought, as Andalites consider using morphing to escape an illness as an act of cowardice. He confesses his real intentions, justifying his attempt at betraying one of his own kind by saying he cares deeply about his friend Mertil, and he did what he was told to do by the Visser in order to ensure Mertil''s safety. Although still skeptical of Gafinilan''s motives, they join forces with him and help rescue Mertil from Visser Three. Ax, who is so far in the series seen as an honourable character, shows his open disapproval of Mertil and the thought that he should be treated with as much respect as other Andalites, on the grounds that he is disabled, which may have been a trait he picked up from his Andalite upbringing, as Andalites as a whole are shown in this book to not take their handicapped kind seriously. However, when Marco accuses his kind of being unfeeling, Ax points out that humans are similarly flawed, as people with handicaps are often pushed away from the limelight and kept hidden away in hospitals and institutions, instead of being allowed to live the kind of life they would have had, were they not disabled. The softer side of Marco''s personality is also shown in this book, as he shows concern about how Mertil, a morph-incapable Andalite, would survive in a human world once his friend Gafinilan succumbs to his illness and passes away. He visits Mertil at the end of the book and offers his support and company, should Mertil ever feel he needed it. Although he fears that Mertil might regard his offer as impertinent, as Andalites are a proud race that do not like to be seen as vulnerable, Mertil thanks him, and appears to consider his offer.

The Other

In The Forests of Silence, the topaz had been retrieved by Lief, Barda, and Jasmine. They continue on their way to the Lake of Tears, to retrieve the ruby. They learn that the land surrounding the Lake of Tears is controlled by the evil sorceress Thaegan, who has 13 monster children. As the companions travel through the countryside they rescue a man named Manus from the Shadow Lord''s servants, Grey Guards. Manus is from the city of Raladin. 100 years ago, Thaegan put a spell on Raladin that caused them and all of their offspring to never be able to speak. Lief, Barda, and Jasmine also learn that Thaegan put a spell on the city of D''Or and turned it into the Lake of Tears. The companions, with Manus, escape from the Grey Guards only to be captured by Jin and Jod, two of Thaegan''s children. They eventually defeat Jin and Jod and journey to the city of Raladin, where Manus hopes to find his people. Upon arrival, they find the city empty. Only when the Ralad people hear the companions, they come out of hiding. Lief, Barda, and Jasmine tell the Ralads that they must journey to the Lake of Tears, despite the Ralads pleas, but they do not tell them they are going in quest of one of the gems of the Belt of Deltora. Manus agrees to be their guide. When they get to the Lake of Tears, the monster Soldeen attacks them. Soldeen is a giant fish-like creature who is very deadly and has the ability to speak. Using the power of the topaz, Lief persuades Soldeen to give them the ruby. As Soldeen agrees, Thaegan appears and threatens to kill them all. The ruby flies out of Lief''s hand and into the depths of the Lake as Thaegan uses her magic to harm them. Just as Thaegan is about to kill them all, Jasmine''s bird Kree comes and kills Thaegan by drawing blood. All of Thaegan''s spells are broken: the Ralads can now speak and the Lake of Tears turns back into the city of D''Or. Soldeen is a man named Nanion and gives the three companions the gem and wishes them well on their quest. The Belt now holds the topaz and ruby and now they journey towards the City of the Rats.

The Lake of Tears

After being forcibly divorced from his wife for political reasons, Spencer tries to force his way on board the ship she’s on. After being ejected, he gets drunk and implanted with a "feelgood" device that stimulates the pleasure centers of the brain. Spencer is saved from this addictive and lethal fate by an unknown Kona Tatsu (secret police) agent. They clean and care for him, then send him on a mission to the Daltgeld system. Working with Agent Suss Nanahbuc, Spencer is given command of a task force and told that Kona Tatsu (KT) agents are disappearing from the planet. Upon arrival, the ``Duncan`` splashes down to dock for repairs, and Nanahbuc heads out to learn the fate of the other agents. While docked, Spencer gets a visit from McCain, a KT agent hiding from the enemy. However, the enemy is aboard and kills McCain before they can analyze the data she found. The enemy turns out to be a small mercury-like blob that seems to react to its environment, weighs 16 tons, and can control the devices it infects. Spencer leaves the ship and closes it down tight, but it’s already too late. In the end, it turns out an alien artifact was recently discovered in an asteroid, and the captain of the mining freighter was "convinced" to take the artifact to the head of a local conglomerate, Jameson. The device, a helmet made of a mercury-like substance, takes over Jameson and uses him as a control center for taking over the system, with plans to leave it and spread throughout the galaxy. After losing his flagship to prevent an alien from leaving the system, Spencer and Nanahbuc locate the main asteroid of the enemy and head in with the task force to put an end to it for good.

The War Machine

The novel begins with a Japanese air strike on the port of Vladivostok, the prelude to a Japanese invasion of western Siberia. Simultaneously, Japanese forces strike southward, bypassing the American colony in the Philippines and taking Australia and the European colonies in southeast Asia. Facing invasion on two fronts, the Soviet Union soon collapses, as Joseph Stalin and his entourage are massacred by escapees from a gulag during their evacuation from Moscow. Though President Franklin D. Roosevelt endeavors to prepare the United States for war against Germany, he faces renewed isolationist opinion. A proposal to begin work on an atomic bomb is rejected because of the cost and uncertainty that it will work. Facing a resurgent Germany, Winston Churchill has little choice but to surrender. Adolf Hitler uses his dominance to complete the extermination of the Jews in Europe and expands his program to the Middle East. German scientists also complete work on an atomic bomb, which Hitler uses to destroy New York City and force the United States to surrender. When the Germans learn of the harsh Japanese treatment of the Australians, they force the Japanese to abandon their conquest of the continent on pain of atomic destruction. Though Germany now dominates the world, cracks start to appear in their empire. The puppet regime in the United States encounters resistance when they attempt to implement the "Final Solution" in America. News of the growing difficulties exposes the extent of the Holocaust to Albert Speer.

December 7, 1941: A Different Path

The story is set in AD 77, in Alexandria, Egypt, which was at that time part of the Roman Empire. Falco and his family travel to Egypt to see two of the seven wonders of the world, the Lighthouse of Alexandria and the Great Pyramid of Giza, but are caught up in investigation into a mysterious death, and soon several deaths. The plot revolves around the Library of Alexandria, with reference to library management practice, corruption, illegal autopsies, a man-eating crocodile, and the legendary catoblepas. For the duration of their trip, Falco and his family have chosen to stay with his mother''s brother, Fulvius, and his live-in partner Cassius who host a dinner party to which Falco''s family and the Chief Librarian of the Serapaeion, Theon, are invited. When Theon is found dead later in mysterious circumstances, locked in his own private Chamber at the Serapaeion, Falco, Fulvius and the others fall under suspicion by the authorities, and it is up to Falco to clear everyone''s names, eventually unravelling a web of corruption, deceit and even murder at the Library of Alexandria.

Alexandria

When the story starts out Liu Che,(Ping''s former friend and the emperor of China),has his troops attacking the Duke of Yan''s palace where Ping has been living for a year, because he believes that they kidnapped his former imperial dragon Kai. Meanwhile, Ping decides to wake Kai up from his winter hibernation for his safety, and finds that he has not only matured greatly in size, but knowledge as well. Ping leaves the palace with Kai to search for the Dragon Haven to further insure his safety. On the way, they find the emperor, Liu Che, wounded with a shard of Kai''s dragon stone in his hand. He repents his crimes and decides to abandon his quest for immortality. At the morning, Ping refuses his offer of love and continues on her journey. On the way, she meets Jun, and together they find an old man, "Lao Long Zi", one of Danzi''s former dragon keepers, at Tinkling Village. He brings them most of the way to Long Gao Yuan before dying. After getting there, however, Ping discovers only a heap of dragon bones from a massacre by dragon hunters. Ping and Kai are discouraged, and Kai refuses to leave. One day, a yellow dragon swoops down from the sky and carries Kai away. Ping stumbles towards the mountain in a half-dead state, until she too is picked up by the dragon(not too gently) and brought to the real, current dragon haven. There, she learns that many years ago, Hei Lei''s dragon keeper had abandoned him for a woman, and that his girlfriend, in her old age, had then betrayed the location of the dragon haven to a band of dragon hunters for three pieces of gold. They had killed many of the dragons in hibernation. Only Hei Lei, the black dragon, was awake, and attacked the hunters just in time. Still, they managed to get away with many dead dragons in their greedy hands, with only a handful escaping. Ping is distraught as she watches Kai pick up many of the wild dragons'' habits and feels him slowly drawing away from her. During a moon gathering, Kai and Hei Lei end up in a fight, and Kai, who wins, is revealed to be a "dragon of five colors"(green, yellow, black, white, and red). A "dragon of five colors" will automatically assume the position of leader(and no one can challenge him, as the dragons formerly had none). Ping eventually wins the trust and friendship of all the dragons, but realizes that she must end the dragons'' reliance on humans and leaves. The book ends with Ping beginning a new life with Jun, as she saw in one of her visions of her future.

Dragon Moon

The story centers on Hart, a young law student from Minnesota who attends Harvard Law School and becomes obsessed with one of his teachers, Professor Charles W. Kingsfield, Jr. Hart becomes an expert on Kingsfield''s subject, contracts; he reads everything about the subject, including all of Kingsfield''s papers, most of which are not on the reading list. He goes so far as to break into the law library to read Kingsfield''s original law school notes. Hart becomes such an expert that Kingsfield asks him to contribute to a paper. At the same time, he begins a relationship with Susan Field, who turns out to be Kingsfield''s daughter. Susan stands aloof from the law-school rat-race and dismisses all the things Hart cares about most. At the end of the term, Professor Kingsfield really means something to his students, but he still does not know their names; indeed, he appears to be unable to smile. For him, the class is only a group of people, the students simply names on a paper. He does not even recognize Hart after several encounters and classroom debates. After one incident, wherein Kingsfield asks Hart to leave the class, Hart says in front of the lecture hall, "You are a son of a bitch, Kingsfield," to which Kingsfield merely responded with "Mr. Hart! That is the most intelligent thing you''ve said all day. You may take your seat." After much effort preparing for the final exam, Hart''s grade is delivered to him, but he simply makes a paper airplane out of his final report card, and sends it sailing into the Atlantic Ocean without looking at it.

The Paper Chase

The book covers a wide range of topics to do with the issue. It starts by describing the myths that the public believes, that toxicity health issues are ''someone else''s problem'', and then goes on to talk about what is known to the scientific and chemical communities, and charts the history of the cover-up of chemicals in relation to human health, and the level of business made from this by the chemical companies. The book then goes on in detail about the dangers of food additives, the toxic threats of the processed food humans and animals currently eat, and how this chemical contamination has now affected the water that people drink, and how this has brought on increased biological changes, genetic mutations and newly discovered and increasing illnesses and diseases, in both human and animals. The book ends with a discussion on Western and Eastern medical approaches and philosophies, a focus on alternative medicine and eating healthily, avoiding synthetic foods, and a practical guide on how to detoxify one''s body.

The Hundred Year Lie

Jack Reacher gets off a Greyhound bus in the fictional town of Margrave, Georgia, because he remembers his brother mentioning that a musician named "Blind Blake" died there. Much to his surprise, he''s arrested in a local diner for murder. He meets an honest detective called Finlay, and tries to prove he was not there when the murder happened. After finding what seems to be a phone number in the dead man''s shoe, Finlay rings and tricks a man into telling him his name, Mr. Hubble, They bring Hubble (as he likes to be called) into the police station for questioning and he soon cracks and confesses to the murder, but Reacher doesn''t buy it. Both Reacher and Hubble are sent to the state prison and run into more than a little trouble. After a hellraising two days in jail, Roscoe (a female police officer for whom Reacher has begun to have feelings) proves he is innocent and that his claim to have been nowhere near the scene of the murder is true. Roscoe collects Reacher and they return to Margrave to find that all hell has broken loose. Reacher discovers the murder victim''s identity and realises that he indeed knows him, as he has all his life. Hubble has disappeared and his wife is in hysterics wanting Reacher to find him. It then transpires that Chief Morrison and his wife have been found horribly murdered in their own home. It is revealed later in the story that Margrave is home to a multi-billion dollar counterfeiting operation, which Reacher and his newly formed acquaintances try to destroy.

Killing Floor

A group of 42,363 Union humans and azi are dispatched to set up a base on a very rare habitable planet named Gehenna II. Unknown to the settlers, their mission is designed to fail; they are deliberately abandoned in order to create long-term problems for the rival Alliance. The native Caliban are first presented as annoying lizard-like creatures. The humans at first attempt to keep them outside a perimeter or to drive them away. In time, larger and larger Caliban are seen, with differences in color, size, and even a social structure (some Caliban are subservient to the larger, different-colored Caliban). It becomes clear that the creatures are capable of communication, at least at the level of symbology, and of developing empathic or possibly telepathic links to humans. Eventually a symbiosis develops, with some of the Caliban pairing off with humans. Over a period of decades and several generations cut off from resupply, the colonists lapse into a primitive lifestyle. By necessity, the azi are allowed to raise families. The non-azi humans are in the minority from the beginning and over time, intermarry with the majority. An Alliance mission first seeks to intervene, then withdraws from direct contact, content to watch as two quasi-feudal, fundamentally opposed societies develop, while a third, smaller group called the "weirds" becomes much more closely associated with the Caliban, living with them rather than the other humans and becoming less comprehensible in the process. The novel follows several generations of descendants of one particular azi, who establish different lines and rise to become the leaders of two rival cultures. Historical moments depict the decline of the colony, the establishment of human/azi-Caliban relations, cultural development, and the planetary environment. Finally, the two cultures, one "masculine"-aggressive, the other more "feminine"-receptive, meet and fight for dominance. A Union delegation arrives at the very end, just in time to be given short shrift by Elai, the girl-ruler who has emerged victorious.

Forty Thousand in Gehenna

University professor James Lowry is a disbeliever in spirits or witches, or demons, so much so that he publishes an article in a newspaper denying the existence of them. He is warned of the possible repercussions by his friend Tommy Williams. That same spring evening his hat disappears. Lowry discovers that four hours of his life have gone missing. Lowry is pursued by an omnipotent evil force that is turning his whole world against him while it whispers a warning from the shadows: "...if you find your hat you''ll find your four hours. If you find your four hours then you will die..." Lowry is suspicious that Tommy may be having an affair with his wife, Mary, even in his dreams of demons. Lowry goes about his day-to-day life, but increasingly begins seeing demons, ghouls and odd things about him. He wakes up in the middle of the night to shadows that are leading him out of his bedroom and out into his garden which has transformed into a vast creepy slope. At this point, he is led down a long winding staircase in the middle of his lawn that seems to disappear. He goes out looking for the four hours of his life that he has lost and his hat (which he seems to have lost at the same time). He finds both the hat and realizes what he has done in the four hours in a final twist of the book, where the reader comes to realize that he had a psychotic break early on (the missing 4 hours) and most everything that you''ve read never even happened. It''s chilling to discover the truth of what happened during those four hours, as the reader has been led to like the protagonist, when he has been the antagonist all along.

Fear

;Dunyazadiad The Dunyazadiad is a retelling of the framing story of Scheherazade, the famed storyteller of the One Thousand and One Nights. The story is told from the point-of-view of Scheherazade''s younger sister Dunyazad. Its characterization as metafiction can be understood as a result of the use of several literary devices, most notably the introduction of the author as a character and his interaction with Scheherazade and Dunyazade. The author appears from the future and expresses his admiration for Scheherazade and the 1001 Nights as a work of fiction, of which Barth''s Scheherazade has no knowledge. Realizing that he has appeared to Scheherazade on the eve of her first encounter with Shahryar, and seeing her without a solution to her predicament, the author himself suggests the stratagem of using a chain of interrupted stories to forestall her execution, and offers to tell her a new story every day with which to regale the king the following evening. Taking the author for a genie, Scheherazade agrees. ;Perseid The second novella entitled Perseid follows the middle aged Greek hero Perseus in his struggle to obtain immortality. Told from Perseus'' point of view, the first part of the story revolves around the retelling of Perseus'' life history while the following part details his rise to, and eventual immortalization as a constellation of stars. ;Bellerophoniad The final novella, Bellerophoniad, chronicles the story of Bellerophon, yet another ancient Greek hero. While somewhat rooted in the myth as told by the Greek and Roman poets, Barth''s version of the story is not a direct retelling, but instead a re-imagining. Much like the Perseid, the Bellerophoniad surrounds a middle aged mythic hero who struggles with coming to terms with his past accomplishments and a desire to secure his future glory. It is, for the most part, told from the point of view of Bellerophon, with various interjections by unknown narrators, one of which is presumed to be the author Barth. Of the three novellas, it is by far the longest and&mdash;more so than in Dunyazadiad and Perseid&mdash;makes numerous references to the other novellas, further connecting common themes and events between the three.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

The Other

By K. A. Applegate

The Lake of Tears

By Jennifer Rowe

The War Machine

By David Drake

December 7, 1941: A Different Path

No Author Listed

Alexandria

By Lindsey Davis

Dragon Moon

By Carole Wilkinson

The Paper Chase

By John Jay Osborn, Jr.

The Hundred Year Lie

No Author Listed

Killing Floor

By Lee Child

Forty Thousand in Gehenna

By C. J. Cherryh

Fear

By L. Ron Hubbard

Chimera

By John Barth