Not sure what to expect after the heavy damage the Syndicate''s inflicted on his fleet when they escaped 11 days before, John ''Black Jack'' Geary discovers the system is practically undefended with nothing left behind but warships too badly damaged to participate in the fleet chasing him. The Alliance fleet quickly gains control of the system and lays a trap for the pursuing Syndicate Fleet. When the Syndicates arrive 5 hours later, they fall for the lure of unprotected auxiliaries and quickly get decimated by Geary''s plan to explode the cores of the abandoned Syndic ships left in the system. When the surviving Syndicate leaders realize their huge pursuit fleet has been destroyed, they order the two remaining Syndic battleships guarding the hypernet jump gate to destroy it. The resulting explosion unleashes a large nova-like explosion that destroys practically everything in the system except for the Alliance fleet which only suffers minor damage. Meanwhile Geary and Victoria Rione end their relationship with Rione feeling that Geary actually is in love with Captain Tanya Desjani. Captain Geary jumps to the Branwyn Star System where he finds no threats to his fleet. Right before jumping to Wendig, he receives a message about a computer worm in the jump engines which would have left his ship and a few others trapped in jump space forever. Geary now realizes that his enemies within the Alliance fleet are getting desperate and are willing to take whatever means necessary to remove him and his supporters. In the Wendig Star System, they discover the Syndicates Leaders have abandoned the system, but left 500 civilians to die on the main planet as their life support fails. Believing no one should die like that, Captain Geary orders the civilians to be rescued. Before the shuttles arrive at the planet, another worm is discovered, this time targeting the weapons systems to have them destroy the civilians. The worm is blocked and the citizens of the Wendig Alpha surrender themselves to the Alliance fleet and heads towards the Cavalos jump point. Ten days later, in the Cavalos Star System, Captain Geary safely delivers the Wendig citizens and faces off against another fleet of Syndicate warships. Emerging victorious, he captures a Syndicate CEO and gets him to admit that there is an alien civilization on the other side of Syndic space. Geary lets the CEO go after making a deal with him about working together to end the war. Later Geary and Desjani admit to each other their feelings for each other but realize that as long as Geary is her commanding officer they can never be together. Desjani also fervently believes that Geary has a mission from the living stars themselves to end the war and he must complete this also before they can be together.

The Lost Fleet: Valiant

The story is set in 1874. Hans Bengler is an entomologist from Skåne, Sweden who is studying at Lund University and decides to go on an expedition on his own to the Kalahari Desert in Southern Africa to find insects new to science and thereby to make a name for himself. After a long and arduous journey by sea to Cape Town and then in the desert he arrives at a trading post run by an expatiate Swede which Bengler decides to make the base for his explorations. Whilst at the trading post he comes across a small boy, called Molo, who was the sole survivor of his extended family all of whom had been brutally killed by men on horseback with spears and rifles, some who were white and some who were black. He is taken to the trading post where he was put in a cage to be bartered in exchange for provisions. Bengler decides to rescue the boy adopting him as his son. Not knowing his name Bengler decides to call him Daniel. Bengler sets himself the challenge, as he sees it, of civilising the young savage boy. The two of them journey back to Sweden. Daniel initially seeks to escape but over time grows to accept Bengler as his new father who begins to learn to speak Swedish and adopt some basic European customs, though still recalling the aspects of his African culture and beliefs he had been taught. On board ship and on arrival in Stockholm Daniel is treated with curiosity and disdain and experiences some racial abuse. Bengler decides to gain notoriety and earn a living by displaying and giving lectures on his exhibits, stored in glass jars. However, noticing the great interest the public had displayed in Daniel he decides to include him as a surprise exhibit in his lectures. After a serious incident father and son are forced to flee hiding their tracks to avoid being pursued. Bengler hands Daniel over to an elderly farmer and his wife in Småland to look after as he decides to disappear, promising to return in time. Daniel finds he is not welcomed into the deeply religious close-knit rural community. He becomes more and more homesick and has increasingly disturbing dreams about his mother and other family members. He befriends a young girl called Sanna whose unusual behaviour has resulted in her being ostracised by local people and is abused by her adopted father. After making one unsuccessfully attempt to make his way home, subsequently, Daniel and Sanna set off together to find a ship to take them both to Africa. Their adventure ends with the two friends arguing and returning home with events spiralling out of control with a sequence of disastrous consequences.

Daniel

The book is about a federal judge''s murder and an imprisoned lawyer who has inside knowledge on the details of the murder. Given the importance of what they do, and the controversies that often surround them, and the violent people they sometimes confront, it is remarkable that in the history of this country only four active federal judges have been murdered. Judge Raymond Fawcett has just become number five. Who is the Racketeer? And what does he have to do with the judge’s untimely demise? His name, for the moment, is Malcolm Bannister. Job status? Former attorney. Current residence? The Federal Prison Camp near Frostburg, Maryland. On paper, Malcolm’s situation isn’t looking too good these days, but he’s got an ace up his sleeve. He knows who killed Judge Fawcett, and he knows why. The judge’s body was found in his remote lakeside cabin. There was no forced entry, no struggle, just two dead bodies: Judge Fawcett and his young secretary. And one large, state-of-the-art, extremely secure safe, opened and emptied. What was in the safe? The FBI would love to know. And Malcolm Bannister would love to tell them. But everything has a price—especially information as explosive as the sequence of events that led to Judge Fawcett’s death. And the Racketeer wasn’t born yesterday . . . Nothing is as it seems and everything’s fair game in this wickedly clever new novel from John Grisham, the undisputed master of the legal thriller.

The Racketeer

The events of Homeboyz takes place four to five years after the events in Hip Hop High School. The book''s main character is 17-year-old Dixon Theodore Anderson, nicknamed Teddy. He is a smart teenager who is both a hacker and a bodybuilder. Teddy''s entire neighborhood is overrun by gangsters and his sister, Tina Anderson, is killed in a crossfire. While the Anderson family mourns her death, Teddy goes to his car to seek vengeance. He is unsuccessful in getting revenge and is arrested. He then spends time in a California juvenile prison waiting for a judge to hear his case. During this time, Teddy is treated as if he was a gangster. He is set free, but is put under house arrest and is enrolled in a probation program. Teddy is forced to spend five days each week mentoring a kid named Micah. Teddy has difficulty tutoring Micah because he is wants to be a gangster. But through Micah, teddy is taught how to love someone and see how people can change. Also this book talks about when Teddy meets the person that killed his sister,and he wasn''t from 0-1-0. He was a member of another rival gang. Teddy fought hard and he won but the guy was sent to jail and died there.

Homeboyz

This highly elliptical novel, set in England after World War II, deals with a sedate, bored lower-class couple -- Michael and Margaret Banks -- who are lured into fronting a racehorse scheme. Michael Banks is befriended by William Hencher, a well-meaning but lost soul who fell into association with a ruthless gang during the war. After his mother''s death, Hencher wants to repay the Bankses for their allowing him to rent a room in their home, where he lived with his mother twenty years prior. Knowing Michael likes horses, Hencher invites him to the heist of the racehorse Rock Castle -- which goes awry, leading to Hencher''s death. The gang members then keep Michael under wraps. Realizing that Margaret is becoming suspicious of Michael''s absence, they force Michael to call and tell her to meet him at a party. In order to ensure that Michael will front as the owner of the stolen stallion, they kidnap Margaret while distracting Michael with two women, both sexual predators. The heavy of the gang, Thick, beats Margaret mercilessly with a truncheon after she attempts to escape; then, Larry, the seemingly invincible kingpin of the gang who orchestrates the novel''s events, slashes and rapes her. Meanwhile, in a brutally ironic contrast, Michael finds delirious pleasure in a femme fatale, Sybilline, the mistress of Larry -- and two other women, as well. Having been badly beaten in a street fight with a constable, Michael attempts to redeem himself from both criminal activity and infidelity by thwarting the race, which has been set up in order to allow Larry to retire to America in comfort. Plot, though, is decidedly subordinate in Hawkes'' fiction to intense imagery and a nightmarish, hallucinatory atmosphere. Many details of the plot can only be inferred, and many narrative questions cannot easily be answered. The narrative parodies detective thrillers, particularly through the final presentation of two baffled detectives in bowler hats who, having discovered Hencher''s corpse during a heavy rain, set out "separately on vacant streets to uncover the particulars of this crime." In some sense, these figures may be taken as representatives of the reader, who is left to make coherent sense out of the novel''s fragments. Some readers have found the novel''s events highly disturbing, but the ultimate meaning and value of the work are irreducible to incident; instead, they inhere in the vividly impressionistic style through which these sordid events are both presented and transfigured.

The Lime Twig

The book opens in a café in Piraeus, just before dawn on a gusty autumn morning in the 1930s. The narrator, a young Greek intellectual, resolves to set aside his books for a few months after being stung by the parting words of a friend, Stavridakis, who has left for the Caucasus in order to help some ethnic Greeks who are undergoing persecution. He sets off for Crete in order to re-open a disused lignite mine and immerse himself in the world of peasants and working-class people. He is about to dip into his copy of Dante''s Divine Comedy when he feels he is being watched; he turns around and sees a man of around sixty peering at him through the glass door. The man enters and immediately approaches him to ask for work. He claims expertise as a chef, a miner, and player of the santuri, or cimbalom, and introduces himself as Alexis Zorba, a Greek born in Romania. The narrator is fascinated by Zorba''s lascivious opinions and expressive manner and decides to employ him as a foreman. On their way to Crete, they talk on a great number of subjects, and Zorba''s soliloquies set the tone for a large part of the book. On arrival, they reject the hospitality of Anagnostis and Kondomanolious the café-owner, and on Zorba''s suggestion make their way to Madame Hortense''s hotel, which is nothing more than a row of old bathing-huts. They are forced by circumstances to share a bathing-hut. The narrator spends Sunday roaming the island, the landscape of which reminds him of "good prose, carefully ordered, sober… powerful and restrained" and reads Dante. On returning to the hotel for dinner, the pair invite Madame Hortense to their table and get her to talk about her past as a courtesan. Zorba gives her the pet-name "Bouboulina" and, with the help of his cimbalom, seduces her. The protagonist seethes in his room while listening to the sounds of their impassioned lovemaking. The next day, the mine opens and work begins. The narrator, who has socialist ideals, attempts to get to know the workers, but Zorba warns him to keep his distance: "Man is a brute.... If you''re cruel to him, he respects and fears you. If you''re kind to him, he plucks your eyes out." Zorba himself plunges into the work, which is characteristic of his overall attitude, which is one of being absorbed in whatever one is doing or whomever one is with at that moment. Quite frequently Zorba works long hours and requests not to be interrupted while working. The narrator and Zorba have a great many lengthy conversations, about a variety of things, from life to religion, each other''s past and how they came to be where they are now, and the narrator learns a great deal about humanity from Zorba that he otherwise had not gleaned from his life of books and paper. The narrator absorbs a new zest for life from his experiences with Zorba and the other people around him, but reversal and tragedy mark his stay on Crete, and, alienated by their harshness and amorality, he eventually returns to the mainland once his and Zorba''s ventures are completely financially spent. Having overcome one of his own demons (such as his internal "no," which the narrator equates with the Buddha, whose teachings he has been studying and about whom he has been writing for much of the narrative, and who he also equates with "the void") and having a sense that he is needed elsewhere (near the end of the novel, the narrator has a premonition of the death of his old friend Stavridakis, which plays a role in the timing of his departure to the mainland), the narrator takes his leave of Zorba for the mainland, which, despite the lack of any major outward burst of emotionality, is significantly emotionally wrenching for both Zorba and the narrator. It almost goes without saying that the two (the narrator and Zorba) will remember each other for the duration of their natural lives.

Zorba the Greek

Hannah Stern is a young jewish girl living in the present day. She is bored by her relative''s stories about the past and not looking forward to the Passover Seder and is tired of her religion while at it She says she is tired of remembering. When Hannah symbolically opens the door for the prophet Elijah, she is transported back in time to 1941 in Poland of World War II. At that time and place, the people believe she is Chaya Abramowicz, who is recovering from cholera, the fever that killed Chaya''s parents a few months ago. The strange remarks Hannah/Chaya makes about the future and her inability to recognize her "aunt" Gitl and "uncle" Shmuel are blamed on the fever. At her uncle''s wedding, the Nazis come to transport the entire population of the village to a concentration camp near Donavin, and only Hannah knows all the terrors that they will face: starvation, mistreatment, forced labor, and finally execution. She struggles to survive at the camp, with the help of a girl named Rivka. At the concentration camp, Aunt Gitl, Hannah, Uncle Shmuel, and some other men try to escape. The men are caught and are shot in front of the inmates, except for Gitl and Hannah who return to their barracks and Yitzchak who escapes. Fayge, Shmuel''s girlfriend, is also killed because she runs to Shmuel when he is about to be shot. Later, when Hannah and the girls from Viosk are talking, while waiting for water, they are caught by a new Nazi soldier, who sends Esther, Shifre, and Rivka to the gas ovens. As Rivka is about to leave, Hannah takes Rivka''s place and tells her to run, since the guard doesn''t know their faces. Then, after she walks into "Lilith''s Cave" to be gassed, she is transported back to her family''s Seder. She notices Aunt Eva''s number was the same as Rivka''s, and while recounting her experience to her aunt, the aunt reveals that when she was in the concentration camps, she was called Rivka (and her brother was called Wolfe, which was Grandpa Will) and was saved by a girl named Chaya Abramowicz while in a consentration camp.

The Devil''s Arithmetic

Authors of this book, Leonid Hurwicz and Stanley Reiter, helped found the field of mechanism design. This book provides a guide for those who would design mechanisms. A decentralized mechanism is a mathematical structure that models institutions for guiding and coordinating economic activity. Such institutions are usually created by administrators, lawmakers, and officers of private companies to achieve their desired goals. Their purpose is to achieve their desired goal in such a way that economize on the resources needed to operate the institutions, and that provide incentives that induce the required behaviors. In this book, systematic procedures for designing mechanisms that achieve specified performance, and economize on the resources required to operate the mechanism, i.e., informationally efficient mechanisms, are presented. Most of the book deals with the systematic design procedures which are algorithms for designing informationally efficient mechanisms. In the book, informationally efficient dominant strategy implementation is also studied.

Designing Economic Mechanisms

The book questions the U.S. government version of the events and raises a large number of questions on the details of the events which, according to many observers, marked the beginning of the 21st century and changed the geopolitical world order. It makes the following claims: The actions that provoked the collapse of the Twin Towers in the heart of New York and damaged part of the Pentagon building were not the result of attempts by foreign suicide pilots, but were rather an action organized by a group within the U.S. administration; an internal plot aimed at driving opinion and forcing the course of events. The war on Afghanistan was not a response to the September 11 events, since it was prepared long before in coordination with the British. President Bush found support in evangelical groups to launch a crusade against Islam, according to the strategy known as “Clash of Civilizations”. The “war on terror” was a pretext to cut individual liberties in the United States and later in allied countries in order to impose a military regime. Osama bin Laden was a CIA fabrication and never stopped working for the U.S. secret service. The bin Laden and the Bush families jointly manage their wealth by means of the Carlyle Group. The U.S. administration was taken over by some industrial groups (weapons, oil, pharmaceuticals) whose interests would be defended by the government in detriment of others. The CIA would develop a program of interference at all levels, which would include the resource of torture and political assassination.

9/11: The Big Lie

In 1512, it is decided that Mary will be sent first to the court of Archduchess Margaret of Austria and then to the French court as maid-in-waiting to Louis XII''s English wife, Mary Tudor. Although this decision leaves her mother, Elizabeth devastated, Mary is keen in working towards pleasing her father and advancing the Boleyns in society. Mary grows to love her mistress, the Queen, and the two form a special companionship when the ailing Louis XII dismisses the other English ladies-in-waiting from court. Mary Tudor confesses that her brother, King Henry VIII, has promised that she will be free to marry whomever she chooses upon the death of Louis. Describing women as pawns to the desires of men, she gives Mary a chesspiece as a constant reminder of this; green and white, it symbolizes that they are both mere Tudor pawns. With the death of Louis XII, his nephew, Francois, (with whom the young Mary is besotted), inherits the throne, and Mary Tudor is married to Charles Brandon in secret. With the marriage discovered by an angry King Henry, Thomas Boleyn decides to withdraw his daughter from the dowager queen''s service, and have her instead in the household of the pious Queen Claude. Mary''s younger sister, Anne arrives at the French court two years later, in 1517. Avoiding the flirtations of Rene de Brosse, Mary is eventually cornered by the youth as he physically expresses his desires. The Italian Leonardo da Vinci, a favorite of the King, rescues Mary, and advises her to forever keep her eyes open if she desires to survive court. William Stafford, a servant to Henry Tudor, makes Mary''s acquaintance, but she is altogether unimpressed and annoyed by his mannerisms. As Francois''s feelings towards his royal mistress, Francoise de Foix wane, he begins an affair with Mary. Although she is frightened of the possible backlashes, her father encourages the liaisons. Mary is seen as a possession by the King, and is traded amongst his friends as a whore; she quickly realizes that she was foolish to think that he could ever love her. When the English court visits France again in 1520, William Stafford warns Mary against allowing King Henry Tudor to take her as his mistress, while Catherine of Aragon and Thomas Boleyn discuss Mary''s future in England. When Mary returns to England, she is quickly married to William Carey, a gentleman of the royal privy chamber, who agrees to allow his newlywed wife to be mistress to the King of England. Unlike her predecessor, Bessie Blount, Mary is able to hold the King for five years. When Mary gives birth to a baby boy (Henry Carey) in 1522, the identity of his father is unknown. Her sister, Anne, is a flirtatious, pretty girl at court, and catches the king''s eye. Mary finds herself falling in love with William Stafford, the handsome man who sees and loves Mary for who she truly is. She has a love affair with him even though she still has a husband, but he loves her not. When her husband is killed in the summer sweat plague, her secret love affair with Stafford continues. They are eventually married in secret and it remains a secret until she becomes pregnant and has to tell Anne-who had been Queen for quite some time, and the King. They are sent away to live at Stafford''s Manor house. They live a very happy and peaceful life there as their love child is born. For well I might a'' had a greater man of birth, but I assure you I could never a'' had one that loved me so well. I had rather beg my bread with him than be the greatest queen christened.

The Last Boleyn Book

Arthur Winner Jr., an attorney in a small American town. The time is roughly contemporary. The novel follows Arthur through 49 hours of his life, with flashbacks to prior events that tell us more about Arthur, his acquaintances, and his community. Many of the more significant characters, including Arthur Winner Sr., the protagonist''s father, are dead at the time of the novel and are only seen in these flashbacks. Arthur Jr. is a partner in the small law firm founded by his father and Noah Tuttle. As a young man, Arthur married Noah''s daughter, Hope Tuttle; they had two children, a son and a daughter, who are now grown. Hope died after giving birth to their daughter. Arthur is now married to a younger woman named Clarissa, who had been his daughter''s tennis coach. The law practice currently consists of Arthur, Noah, and another man named Julius Penrose. It is said that Arthur had a brief but intense affair with Marjorie Penrose, Julius'' wife. Two cases preoccupy Arthur during the course of the novel. One concerns the probate of the estate of Michael McCarthy. The other is the arrest of Ralph Detweiler for rape. He is also called on to deal with a new pastor in the Episcopal Church, who is asking him to take a role in the leadership of the parish. He also meets with a friend of Marjorie''s, a woman who wants to discuss converting to Catholicism. Many years ago, a trolley line had been built in the town. Noah Tuttle had encouraged his clients, including Michael McCarthy, to invest in it. The trolley company went bankrupt, however, due to the rise of the automobile. Noah handled the bankruptcy case and, to the amazement of all, managed to return some money to the investors. The novel, however, begins to hint at a darker side to Noah''s brilliance. He ridicules an elderly woman for wanting to move some of her funds from bonds into stocks. He bristles at the suggestion that the endowment of the parish could be transferred to management by the dioceses. During a hearing supervised by Arthur, Noah has an outburst when questioned about the assets of the McCarthy estate. Meanwhile, Ralph Detweiler, a young man, has been accused of what would now be called “date rape," and is dealing with the pregnancy of another. He flees to New York, whereupon his distraught sister Helen commits suicide. Arthur examines the records that Helen has been maintaining and discovers that Noah has been embezzling from the trusts that he managed. This was the source of the money from the bankruptcy settlement. Noah embezzled $200,000 from the "Orcutt bequest" and has since been manipulating the money in his trusts, robbing Peter to pay Paul while attempting to replenish the funds. Arthur also learns that Julius Penrose has been aware of the embezzlement for some time. Julius urges Arthur to keep quiet, hinting that he is aware of Arthur’s affair with his wife, and that he is grateful that he has been silent about that. Arthur contemplates his position, where there are no good choices. He says: “Life, that has unfairly served so many others, at last unfairly serves me”.

By Love Possessed

The bar is run by Mike Callahan. The regulars are welcoming and willing to listen to any visitor''s problems, no matter how strange, but do not snoop if a visitor is unwilling to share. Strange and unusual events and visitors turn up with frequency in the stories. Regulars at Callahan''s include a talking dog, several extraterrestrials and time travelers, an ethical vampire, a couple of Irish mythological beings, and an obscenity-spewing parrot. The stories make heavy use of puns. Irish whiskeys are the preferred beverage, with Tullamore Dew and Bushmills mentioned in nearly every collection of shorts or novel that references the saloon. The stories make an obvious homage to Fletcher Pratt and L. Sprague de Camp''s Tales from Gavagan''s Bar and Arthur C. Clarke''s Tales from the White Hart. Lady Sally McGee, the madam of a house of excellent repute (and Mike Callahan''s wife), stars in Robinson''s Callahan''s Lady and Lady Slings the Booze. The regulars at Lady Sally''s brothel (where the employees are "artists" and the patrons are "clients") insist on the same empathy and humor as those at Callahan''s, and they are just as likely to have fantastic backgrounds. Relatedly, nobody in Lady Sally''s is forced into anything they are unwilling to do. This is the source of Callahan''s Law (also known as the Law of Conservation of Pain and Joy): "Shared pain is lessened; shared joy, increased—thus do we refute entropy." Stated another way: "Just as there are Laws of Conservation of Matter and Energy, so there are in fact Laws of Conservation of Pain and Joy. Neither can ever be created or destroyed. But one can be converted into the other."

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

The Lost Fleet: Valiant

By John G. Hemry

Daniel

By Henning Mankell

The Racketeer

By John Grisham

Homeboyz

By Alan Lawrence Sitomer

The Lime Twig

By John Hawkes

Zorba the Greek

By Nikos Kazantzakis

The Devil's Arithmetic

By Jane Yolen

Designing Economic Mechanisms

By Leonid Hurwicz

9/11: The Big Lie

No Author Listed

The Last Boleyn Book

By Karen Harper

By Love Possessed

No Author Listed

Callahan's Crosstime Saloon

By Spider Robinson