The novel''s narrative is divided into three distinct strands. One is centred on Urania Cabral, a fictional Dominican character; another deals with the conspirators involved in Trujillo''s assassination; and the third focuses on Trujillo himself. The novel alternates between these storylines, and also jumps back and forth from 1961 to 1996, with frequent flashbacks to periods earlier in Trujillo''s regime. The Feast of the Goat begins with the return of Urania to her hometown of Santo Domingo, a city which had been renamed Ciudad Trujillo during Trujillo''s time in power. This storyline is largely introspective and deals with Urania''s memories and her inner turmoil over the events preceding her departure from the Dominican Republic thirty-five years earlier. Urania escaped the crumbling Trujillo regime in 1961 by claiming she planned to study under the tutelage of nuns in Michigan. In the following decades, she becomes a prominent and successful New York lawyer. She finally returns to the Dominican Republic in 1996, on a whim, and finds herself compelled to confront her father and elements of her past she has long ignored. As Urania speaks to her ailing father, Agustin Cabral, she recalls more and more of the anger and disgust that led to her thirty-five years of silence. Urania retells her father''s descent into political disgrace, and the betrayal that forms the crux of both Urania''s storyline and that of Trujillo himself. The second and third storylines are set in 1961, in the weeks prior to and following Trujillo''s assassination on the 30th of May. Each assassin has his own background story, explaining his motivation for his involvement in the assassination plot. Each has been wronged by Trujillo and his regime, by torture and brutality, or through assaults on their pride, their religious faith, their morality, or their loved ones. Vargas Llosa weaves the tale of the men as memories recalled on the night of Trujillo''s death, as the conspirators lie in wait for "The Goat". Interconnected with these stories are the actions of other famous Trujillistas of the time; Joaquín Balaguer, the puppet president, Johnny Abbes García, the merciless head of the Military Intelligence Service (SIM), and various others&mdash;some real, some composites of historical figures, and some purely fictional. The third storyline is concerned with the thoughts and motives of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina himself. The chapters concerning The Goat recall the major events of his time, including the slaughter of thousands of Dominican Haitians in 1937. They also deal with the Dominican Republic''s tense international relationships during the Cold War, especially with the United States under the presidency of John F. Kennedy, and Cuba under Castro. Vargas Llosa also speculates upon Trujillo''s innermost thoughts and paints a picture of a man whose physical body is failing him. Trujillo is tormented by incontinence and impotence; and this storyline intersects with Urania''s narrative when it is revealed that Urania was sexually assaulted by Trujillo. He is unable to achieve an erection with Urania, and in frustration and anger he rapes her with his hands. This event is the core of Urania''s shame, and her hatred towards her father. In addition, it is the cause of Trujillo''s repeated anger over the "anemic little bitch" that witnessed his impotence and emotion, and the reason he is en route to sleep with another girl on the night of his assassination. In the novel''s final chapters, the three storylines intersect with increasing frequency. The tone of these chapters is especially dark as they deal primarily with the horrific torture and death of the assassins at the hands of the SIM, the failure of the coup, the rape of Urania, and the concessions made to Trujillo''s most vicious supporters allowing them to enact their horrific revenge on the conspirators and then escape the country. The book ends as Urania prepares to return home, determined this time to keep in touch with her family back on the island.

The Feast of the Goat

Tintin is informed by the Thompsons of a case involving the ramblings of a drunken man, later killed, found with a scrap of paper from what appears to be a tin of crab-meat with the word Karaboudjan scrawled on it. His subsequent investigation and the kidnapping near his apartment of a Japanese man interested in giving a letter to him leads Tintin to a ship called Karaboudjan, where he is abducted by a syndicate of criminals who have been hiding opium in the crab tins. Tintin escapes from his locked room after Snowy chews through his bonds and Tintin knocks out a man sent to bring him food. He leaves him bound and gagged in the room. Tintin encounters Captain Haddock, an alcoholic sea captain, who is manipulated by his first mate, Allan, and is unaware of his crew''s criminal activities. Tintin hides in the locker under the bed and defeats Jumbo, the sailor left in the cabin, as Tintin is thought by Allan to have climbed out of the porthole back into the store-room. He blows open the door, then finding it empty goes back to the Captain''s room, where he finds Jumbo tied to a chair and gagged. Escaping the ship in a lifeboat in an attempt to reach Spain after sending a radio message to the Police about the cargo, they are attacked by a seaplane. They hijack the plane and tie up the pilots, but a storm and Haddock''s drunken behaviour causes them to crash-land in the Sahara, where the crew escapes. After trekking across the desert and nearly dying of dehydration, Tintin and Haddock are rescued and taken to a French outpost, where they hear on the radio the storm apparently sunk the Karaboudjan. They travel to a Moroccan port, and along the way are attacked by Tuareg tribesmen, defending themselves with French MAS-36 rifles. At the port, Captain is kidnapped by members of his old crew after he sees the disguised Karaboudjan. Tintin meets the Thompsons who got his message and went to the port, they find the crab tins are being sold by the wealthy merchant Omar Ben Salaad, who Tintin tells the Thompsons to discreetly investigate. Tintin tracks down the gang and saves the Captain, but they both become intoxicated by the fumes from wine barrels breached in a shootout with the villains. Haddock ends up chasing a gang-member from the cellar to an entrance behind a book-case in Salaad''s house. Upon sobering up, Tintin discovers the necklace with the Crab with the Golden Claws on the now-subdued owner of the wine cellar, Omar Ben Salaad, and realizes that he is the leader of the drug cartel. After Tintin captures Allan, who has stolen a boat to try escaping, the gang is put behind bars. The Japanese is freed when the Police arrest the ship-members, and reveals he is a Policeman, and was trying to warn Tintin of the group he was up against. The sailor drowned at the beginning was about to bring him opium, but was eliminated by the gang.

The Crab with the Golden Claws

Ben’s story starts in Gunflint Lake, Minnesota in June 1978. He was born deaf in one ear. Ben’s mom, Elaine, was the town librarian, but died in a car crash a few weeks before. He now lives with his aunt and uncle next to the house he grew up in. Ben has never known his dad, but feels a pull to find out who he was. Ben discovers a bookmark in his mother''s book, Wonderstruck inscribed to his mother that ends with the words "Love, Danny." Ben thinks Danny must be his father and proceeds to call the number listed on the bookmark. As he is calling, a bolt of lightning hits his house, travels through the phone line and causes him to lose his remaining hearing. He wakes up in the hospital, unaware of where he is. A short time later, he decides to run away from the hospital and journey to New York City, eventually hiding out in the American Museum of Natural History. While at the museum, he meets Jamie, whose father works at the museum. Jamie takes him on tours of the back areas of the museum and helps him to hide in an unused storage room. Ben is still determined to track down his father, so he leaves the museum to locate the bookstore listed on the bookmark he found in his mother''s book. Once there, he encounters Rose and they try to piece together how they might be connected. Rose’s story starts in Hoboken, New Jersey in October 1927. She is kept at home with visits from a tutor because she is deaf. Unhappy and lonely at home, she runs away to New York City to see her idol, actress Lillian Mayhew. In New York, Rose travels to the theater where Lillian Mayhew is performing. She sneaks in and is found by the actress herself, who we learn is actually Rose''s mother. Mayhew is furious, despite Rose telling her that she came because she missed her. Mayhew threatens to send Rose back to her father, so Rose runs away again. This time she goes to the American Museum of Natural History. She is found there by her brother, Walter. He takes her back to his apartment and promises to speak to their parents. At this point, Rose''s story skips forward 50 years, and we see her as an older woman entering a bookstore. It is there she meets Ben. It is then revealed that Rose is Ben''s grandmother, and Danny was both Rose''s son and Ben''s father. Rose takes Ben to Queens and leads him into the Queens Museum of Art where she tells her story and explains how Danny met Ben''s mother, Elaine, and how Ben''s father died from a heart disease. The book ends with Ben, Rose and Jamie (who followed them to Queens) looking at the stars waiting for Rose''s brother, Walter, to pick them up.

Wonderstruck

Paradyzja (from "paradise") is the story about the human colony on a space station orbiting a distant and mineral rich star system. The colony is controlled by a totalitarian regime. All human activity is tracked by electronic devices. It had been primarily devised as a ring, in which the gravity force is simulated by the centrifugal force exerting upon all objects inside a ring tube in the direction opposite to the centre of the ring. This space station was built accidentally. The expedition had to settle on planet Tartar in order to live there and exploit the natural goods. But general Cortazar, the leader of settlers, decided that Tartar was not suitable for settling because of a lack of good conditions for living, so the living place had to be built as a space station on the Tartar''s orbit. On Paradise, living rooms are made of transparent material and to get to some of them you have to pass through other living rooms. Personal watches are not allowed, there; the only clocks are those in living rooms. Rinah Devi''s first impression is that all people strictly adhere to the regime law, but then he discovered that they had devised various ways to work around the system. One of them is "the only language of truth" - Koalang, an artificial poetic language invented by the inhabitants of Paradise in order to cheat the electronic eavesdropping system. The government and the safety service is trying to suppress every possible knowledge of physics, which could allow a verification of the statements about what Paradise is as presented to Paradisians. That is why every research in physics is blocked, especially every research about Coriolis force. The main hero discovered this, when he was trying to check whether the forces really differ on every floor: all things that would be used to make such an experiment (even such as a spring from his ballpen) have been taken from him by the customs officers and no other things that would make such a simple experiment possible are accessible. Then he discovers that minutes on clocks in living rooms are not equal in length. Finally, he finds out that Paradise is not a ring-tube space station, but a train of buildings lying on the surface of Tartar planet. In addition, Tartar is a planet quite well suitable for settlement and the group in charge built some buildings and gardens for itself, keeping the majority of settlers in the fictional Paradise and making them believe that it was an artificial planet.

Paradyzja

Once again diverting from his assigned task of finding the ancient Tar-Aiym weapon that will help save the galaxy from the approaching evil, Flinx lands on the planet Gestalt, known as Tlel to its natives, looking for his father. In the previous volume of the series, Flinx was told his male parent, a former member of the Meliorare Society, was now living on an obscure minor planet that was part of the Commonwealth. Though the information was suspect, coming from a dying member of the Meliorares, Flinx jumped at the opportunity. Following a series of adventures, including his attempted murder at the hands of a local hit man hired by the Order of Null, Flinx finds his father. Or rather, he finds the last man associated with his creation. Since Flinx is a semi-successful experiment in eugenics, the man he finds is just another Meliorare in hiding. However, the man reveals to him that Flinx was the product of so much DNA splicing that he has no real parents; no father who donated sperm, and his dead mother was nothing more than a surrogate womb for hire. Upset that Flinx, who does not reveal the true extent of his talents, was hardly the super-genetic success they had hoped for, Flinx''s creator attempts to kill him, but only wounds the minidrag Pip before Flinx''s erratic yet powerful mental gifts save his life, but destroy all traces of the scientist.

Patrimony

Chester W. Chester IV inherits a run-down mansion and millions in back taxes. In order to pay the taxes, he initially decides to auction off the mansion and its contents, including a massive computer (the Generalized Nonlinear Extrapolator, or "Genie"). However, while examining the mansion and the computer with his friend Case Mulvihill, he finds the computer can solve complex problems involving historical fact and display realistic images of them. He hits on the idea of using its capabilities to create an elaborate hoax ... a fake time machine. Accordingly, he asks the computer to show him "real, three-D, big as life dinosaurs and plenty of em - and how about a four-wall presentation?" The computer asks if it should employ a method of doing so that "is a purely theoretical approach, which might prove simpler, if feasible, and would perhaps provide total verisimilitude..." Chester tells the computer to "go to it" and the computer does. However, the computer has managed to actually transport the two through time, and on their second trip back, before they realize that they actually do have a time machine, they make the mistake of leaving their arrival area, and become trapped in the past. Even when they manage to return to the present, their actions in the past have altered it completely, but they are able to use the computer to (perhaps, more or less) restore everything to the way it was.

The Great Time Machine Hoax

The novel concerns the account of one Jane Martello, a middle aged woman undergoing divorce proceedings with her husband, and subsequently separating herself from a large and strong family she has known since her childhood. The intricate traditions of her family and the one she had married into begin to break down when the body of her sister-in-law, Natalie, is found buried in the garden, after over two decades. This startlingly close distance to the house leads to the revelation of the murderer being very close to the family after all. The revelation acts to bring down the family structure that for so long was unbalanced, but stable - such as Jane''s father-in-law, Alan, an openly crude and sexist novelist having once frequently had relations outside his marriage (to the knowledge of the whole family) and other underlying tensions between family members. Jane undergoes psychiatric counselling, as she revels in the mysterious circumstances of one of her best childhood friend''s death, and already present forerunnings to what appear to be a mid-life crisis. She undergoes a memory exercise (that the book is named for) to unlock memories lost from the trauma of her friend''s death. What she unlocks proves seemingly to be the key to the death of Natalie, but the validity of the memories become questionable with the serious allegations they lead to.

The Memory Game

The world of Operation Luna has an alternative history, which mostly resembled our own until a great "Awakening" brought awareness of supernatural forces to the world at large. This Awakening led to drastic changes in society; industrial machinery was largely replaced by technology driven by magic, spells, and "goetic forces" instead of fossil fuels and electricity. For example, the main mode of transportation is broomsticks and magic carpets fitted with cabins for people to sit in; radios are called "runers," apparently activated by runes; and the propulsion behind space flight is achieved by a combination of mechanical technology, spelled crystals, and arcane materials such as mummy dust. Steve helped in the construction of a spacecraft for Operation Selene, the United States'' first attempt to send a manned craft to the Moon. However, a disaster caused by beings adverse to the mission destroy the vehicle and nearly kill the celestonaut, Curtice Newton, although Steve, in wolf form, saves her. Afterward, Steve, Ginny, and a handful of people begin to investigate the disaster and make plans to put Operation Luna into effect, a smaller version of Operation Selene independent from NASA. Since the identities of the entities behind the Operation Selene disaster remain somewhat veiled and mysterious, Steve and Ginny enlist the help of a number of people, including Balawahdiwa, a Zuni high priest; Fotherwick-Botts, an enchanted sword that can talk; and Fjalar, a Norwegian dwarf who forged Fotherwick-Botts. Though the characters live in Gallup, New Mexico, the characters travel to various other locations in their investigations, including London, England, various parts of Norway, and even Yggdrasil, the legendary Norse site of the World Tree. The time period is roughly in the late 1990s. Although vague, their initial investigations reveal that the malevolent spirits who collaborated with Coyote are Asian in origin, leading them to suspect a connection to Dr. Fu Ch''ing, a Chinese scientist, government agent, and thaumaturge. (The U.S.'' largest competitor for space exploration in the novel is China rather than Russia.) Meanwhile, the F.B.I. suspects Ginny''s brother, Will, an astronomer who helped in the planning of Operation Selene and who has an interest in Chinese culture and connections with people in the country. Steve and Ginny themselves worry that he may be possessed by an evil spirit, though tests reveal no trace of a foreign entity.

Operation Luna

Having defeated Spartacus in The Death of Kings, Caesar is serving a five year term as Governor Of Spain (Hispania Ulterior) with his Tenth legion. Depressed with guilt still over the death of his wife in The Death of Kings, he has exhausted himself in conquering and expanding Spain. However when his friend Marcus Brutus'' mother (Servilia Caepionis) arrives, she engages in a romance with him and re-awakens his desire for power. Before his term ends he deserts his Governorship (a serious crime amongst Roman patricians) to challenge for the role of Consul. With the help of current Consul Crassus he manages, yet only just and by getting himself into unbelievable levels of debt (and by defeating a rebel army on the verge of attacking Rome), to obtain the rank. To allow himself unprecedented military control of a province after his first six months as Consul, Caesar forms the First Triumvirate with Crassus and Pompey, the old Consuls. After six months fulfilling promises he made during the election campaign, Caesar takes his Tenth Legion, the Third Gallica (formed from the mercenary survivors) and four other legions from northern Italy to a small outpost in Gaul. While he is fighting in Gaul, Rome is sliding towards strife as two new senators, Clodius and Milo, attempt to wrest control of the city from each other with their gangs, by terrorizing and fighting in the city. On a final night, the Curia is destroyed and both are killed by each other and Pompeys legion. After this night, Pompey declares himself Dictator and begins his dominion of the city. Meanwhile Crassus is killed fighting with his legions in Parthia, leaving Pompey sole master. After ten years of fighting, two expeditions to Britain, one million Gauls killed and another million sold into slavery, Caesar must make possibly the most important decision of his life. Does he return to Rome alone, as ordered by the Dictator Pompey, where his only military rival will most likely kill him, or plunge the Roman world into a civil war and see whether he survives. With a night of soul-searching on the Rubicon riverbanks, Caesar utters the words "The die is cast" (alea iacta est in Latin) and heads south to Rome with his legions.

The Field of Swords

Abdulrahman Zeitoun is a Muslim who grew up in Syria. After a few years of apprenticeship in the Syrian port city of Jableh, Zeitoun spent twenty years working at sea as a muscleman, engineer and fisherman. During this time he traveled the world and eventually settled in the United States in 1988. There he met his wife, Kathy — a native of Baton Rouge who had converted to Islam — with whom he founded their business, Zeitoun Painting Contractors, LLC. In late August, 2005, as Hurricane Katrina approached the city, Kathy and their four children left New Orleans for Baton Rouge. Zeitoun stayed behind to watch over their home, ongoing job sites and rental properties. Once the storm made landfall, their neighborhood (although miles from the nearest levees) was flooded up to the second floor of most houses. Zeitoun began to explore the city in a secondhand canoe, distributing what supplies he had, ferrying neighbors to higher ground, checking on his tenants, and caring for abandoned dogs. On September 14, Zeitoun and three companions were arrested at one of Zeitoun''s rental houses by a mixed group of National Guardsmen, local police and police from out-of-state. Although the men were not immediately charged with any crimes, they were detained in a makeshift jail in a Greyhound bus station for three days time before being transferred to Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in nearby St. Gabriel, Louisiana. Zeitoun was held at Hunt for 20 more days without having stood trial. During that time he was refused medical attention and the use of a phone to alert his family of his predicament. People often say hurricanes are one of the most destructive forces on the planet. They destroy poverty and devastate lives. However, there is another powerful and destructive force that can be equally frightening—intolerance. “Zeitoun”, written by Dave Eggers, tells the story of Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a Syrian-American business owner who chose to ride out Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in order to watch over his home and business. What happened to Zeitoun in prison is a shameful experience that occurred when two destructive forces, Katrina and racism, collided with catastrophic results. The book says that when Zeitoun asked the guards to call Kathy, he was rejected. And when Kathy knew Zeitoun was in prison and the guards didn’t allow her to visit him. This worried Zeitoun’s brother “A Syrian in an American prison in 2005—this was not be trifled with. Abdulrahman had to be seen. He had to be freed immediately. The justice system should have allowed Zeitoun his phone call from the start, but he wrongly was never given one. Post 9/11 was an unfair time for people from the middle east. They were discriminated against and suspected for almost anything anywhere. The justice system would treat them unfairly like Zeitoun. Kathy was outraged she couldn''t be told the location of the jail, but once she got the press involved they told her right away. However, they didn''t allow her or anyone else testifying in the defense of Zeitoun in the court hearing. Innocent people can be thrown in jail. Moreover, the book also says that when Zeitoun was released, he and Kathy pursued information on the reasoning behind his arrest and the jail he stayed at. The government worried that "terrorists might target evacuation routes, creating ''mass panic'' and ''loss of public confidence in the government''" That is to say, after 9/11, it seemed like the government, or at least George Bush''s top priority, was terrorism. There are terrorists out there, but that doesn''t mean government should put all of their resources toward finding them.

Zeitoun

A group of Iberian resistance fighters are holding out against the Romans, very much like Asterix''s village, so the Romans kidnap Chief Huevos Y Bacon''s son, Pepe. As the Romans are taking him to a garrison in Gaul (as it happens, it is one of the garrisons close the Gaulish village), Asterix and Obelix beat up the Romans under the command of the Roman officer Spurius Brontosaurus and take Pepe to their village. Obelix is assigned to take care of Pepe, but the boy proves to be highly taxing (especially in Obelix''s opinion when Pepe and little Dogmatix take a shine to one another), so Asterix and Obelix are assigned to take him back home. Asterix, Obelix, Pepe and Dogmatix travel to Spain, but little do they know that Spurius Brontosaurus — who has returned to Iberia in the meantime — has spotted them and is now accompanying them in disguise to take Pepe back to Gaul. If Brontosaurus fails, it would mean being fed to the lions in the circus for him. Brontosaurus sees Asterix and Obelix beat up some bandits, so he plans to steal the magic potion. That night, when they are asleep, Brontosaurus steals the potion but is caught red-handed by Asterix, and in the subsequent chase both run into a group of Roman legionaries. The legionaries take Asterix and Brontosaurus to the commander-in-chief, who throws Asterix and Brontosaurus in the dungeon. In the circus of Hispalis they are both pitched against an aurochs. A woman drops her red cloak, so Asterix gets it. The aurochs keeps on charging at him, so he gets the cloak out of the aurochs''s way to keep it from getting dirty, thereby introducing bullfighting. With his victory, Asterix is released, and Spurius Brontosaurus, discharged from the army, gladly decides to make his living as a bullfighter. Obelix has meanwhile brought Pepe back to his village. Asterix arrives at the village which is being besieged by Romans. In his eagerness to be re-united with Asterix, Obelix rushes through the Roman lines, scattering them all over the place. They then say a tearful goodbye to Pepe and the Iberians and return to Gaul for the usual banquet, Obelix giving a demonstration of Spanish dancing and singing that, it is hinted by Fulliautomatix (by muttering "A fish, a fish, my kingdom for a fish!") will lead to one of the typical internal fights in the Gaulish village.

Asterix in Spain

Nyora Tentay (the term senyora is the Filipino word for the Spanish term señora, meaning "Mrs."; nyora is the abbreviated form of senyora) is the matriarch of the wealthy Marcial family, and is labelled the "queen of Canal de la Reina". She is a money lender who charges high interest rates. She has a son, Victor, who is married to Gracia; Victor and Gracia have a son, Gerry. Salvador and Caridad De los Angeles are husband and wife; their children are Leni and Junior. Gerry Marcial and Leni de los Angeles are lovers. Nyora Tentay buys a piece of land from the De los Angeles'' former caretaker, Precioso or Osyong Santos. The land belongs to the De los Angeles family; Nyora uses bribery to assert her claim. A flood occurs at Canal de la Reina, which damages buildings and structures. Caridad finds documents belonging to Nyora Tentay, and returns them instead of using them against her. This gesture of goodwill causes Nyora to have a change of heart. Gerry Marcial and Leni de los Angeles marry.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

The Feast of the Goat

By Mario Vargas Llosa

The Crab with the Golden Claws

By Hergé

Wonderstruck

By Brian Selznick

Paradyzja

By Janusz Zajdel

Patrimony

By Alan Dean Foster

The Great Time Machine Hoax

By Keith Laumer

The Memory Game

By Nicci Gerrard

Operation Luna

By Poul Anderson

The Field of Swords

By Conn Iggulden

Zeitoun

By Dave Eggers

Asterix in Spain

No Author Listed

Canal de la Reina

No Author Listed