Russell Trainor is the good guy in the story, who seems to get picked on lately. Nobody talks to him, nobody likes him, he''s a nobody. Until one day Richie, one of the bullies at his school, starts to follow and threaten him, to the point where he punches Russell and pours root-beer over his head. Russell seeks advice from the school''s most-picked-on boy, Elliot Gekowitz. Elliot and Russell soon become friends with a Filipino girl called Catalina, who receives horrible notes from the popular girls especially queen bee Bethany Demere. Using the school''s internet service, KidNet, they tell their stories to all the seventh-graders, eventually the whole school, and form The Bully Lab. The site''s purpose is to talk about any events of bullying a person may have witnessed or suffered. It turns later into "The Revealers" and soon, dozens of affected kids confess their stories to The Revealers to show how bad this conflict has become in middle schools all over. However, the popular student Bethany sends The Revealers a false report and the principal, who''s being threatened with being sued by Bethany''s father, ends up shutting down the bully lab and KidNet. But thanks to the help of Richie, Bethany''s scam is foiled and they win the science fair. The lesson in this book is that people should not be bullied just because of the way they look or where they come from.

The Revealers

Linda Condon is raised by her single mother, who denies the girl any information about her absentee father. Mother and daughter live together in a seemingly endless succession of hotels in various regions of the United States, and Linda receives little formal education. While Stella Condon frequently goes out with men of dubious reputation, her daughter, who is always loyal to her shallow and superficial mother, spends her early adolescent days alone in her hotel room or with other guests in the artificial and phony atmosphere of the lobby. Stella Condon does have a suitor, a self-made millionaire and widower of Jewish descent called Moses Feldt, but she explains to Linda that she is not going to repeat past mistakes by getting married again. However, when Stella Condon realizes the onset of old age and her vanishing beauty, she consents to a marriage of convenience with Feldt. From one day to the next Linda''s itinerant life is replaced by life in a palace-like New York mansion together with her mother, Feldt and his two daughters. Already at the early age of 15 Linda experiences a "sense of looking on, as if morning, noon and night she were at another long play. [...] Probably it would continue without change through her entire life." Through Feldt''s daughter Judith and her boyfriend Markue, Linda, not yet 18 years of age, is launched into New York society. At a party she meets Dodge Pleydon, a sculptor many years her senior who is fascinated by the young girl despite, or maybe because of, her frozen charm and subdued behaviour. Her first kiss, which she gets from Pleydon later that night, does not mean a lot to her, so she is hardly moved when he announces his intention to go abroad for an indefinite period of time. Her life takes a decisive new direction when, after attending a concert, she is approached by her father''s sister, who has recognized her immediately because, as she claims, Linda is taking after her father. Naturally curious to learn more about the paternal branch of her family, Linda accepts her aunt''s invitation to visit her and her sister in Philadelphia and to stay in the house where her father, now dead, was raised. Her decision to go there leads to an ever-increasing estrangement from her mother. In Philadelphia, Linda is introduced to her aunts'' 45 year-old nephew Arnaud Hallet, a lawyer and confirmed bachelor who immediately falls for the girl just like Pleydon before him. Caught between the two men, who both propose to her, Linda eventually decides to marry Hallet, with the fact that he has "a hundred thousand dollars a year" certainly adding to his attraction. Seven years later, Arnaud and Linda Hallet have two children, Lowrie and Vigné. Remembering her own unhappy childhood spent in hotels, Linda realizes how different from herself her children are being brought up. However, she feels inadequate as a wife and especially as a mother. She sees that both Lowrie and Vigné have inherited their love of books from their father, while she herself has never taken up reading. Also, she regrets not being able to play the piano. And although she is only in her late twenties, she imagines her beauty is fading without finding solace in the "vicarious immortality of children". She believes she has "lost her youth without any compensating gain of knowledge". Several years pass until Lowrie becomes a law student at university. Vigné follows in her mother''s and maternal grandmother''s footsteps by getting married at the age of 18. Linda admires her daughter, who with perfect ease has picked an eligible young man, and whose "radiant happiness" is something she has never experienced herself. When she learns that a public statue created by Pleydon has been destroyed she suddenly feels sympathy and maybe even more for the sculptor, who has always considered her his muse. Considering that Arnaud Hallet has "had over twenty years of her life, the best", Linda leaves him without a word to go and live with Pleydon. Once at his studio, she realizes that there is no way she could stay with that ageing, sickly man whose love for her could never be more than platonic. On the following day, she returns to her husband without ever telling him about her intended betrayal. At the end of the novel, three years after her aborted decision to live with Pleydon, her son Lowrie marries a college-educated suffragette while Linda Hallet herself, while grieving over Pleydon''s death, starts dyeing her hair in a fruitless struggle against time.

Linda Condon

Family of former fellow student and rival to Obi-Wan Kenobi, Bruck Chun''s father comes to Coruscant to investigate the events leading to Bruck''s death. A trial commences to determine if there is need to have criminal charges brought against Obi-Wan. Meanwhile the Jedi are having trouble with an experimental pilot program as their ships are constantly being sabotaged. Obi-Wan is eventually found innocent of any wrongdoing, and the saboteur is found to be a spy using a false identity provided by someone working in the senate but the saboteur escapes. 12 years later Obi-Wan and Anakin Skywalker are sent on their first mission together to determine if the citizens of a bioship are being brainwashed into staying there. They discover that the ship''s leader is none other than Bruck Chun''s brother. Bruck''s father Vox is found to still be working for Offworld corporation(now under the name Broken Circle). Vox causes fake malfunctions in the ship so it will stop at certain planets which a short time later come under the thumb of Offworld. They discover a plot by vox to cause an evacuation of the ship so as to allow himself and Offworld to plunder the vast treasury of the bioship. His plan fails as his ally(the same saboteur from 12 years ago) steals the treasury for himself and shoots vox. Offworld ships open fire on the bioship and Anakin gets into a starfighter along with Jedi Knight Garen and they manage to fight off the attack.

Jedi Apprentice: Deceptions

Ramona is well into her second grade year at Glenwood School, and all is going well until one day her father comes home and announces he has lost his job. The Quimbys must now cope with the breadwinner searching for another job, filling out job applications and collecting unemployment insurance. Mrs. Quimby goes to work full time, but things are still very tight for the family. Mr. Quimby gets depressed and Mrs. Quimby tells the children that they must not do anything that would further upset their dad. Ramona wants to help, so she crosses almost everything off her wish list for Christmas. Then she adds one more item - a happy family. But will her wish come true? The Quimbys are also dealing with the family''s temperamental car, Beezus'' problems with creative writing, and Ramona''s efforts to get her father to stop smoking. One day when Ramona worries about the family, Mr. Quimby reassures her the Quimbys will always be together and strong, no matter what happens. That Christmas Beezus and Ramona participate in their church''s Christmas pageant. Beezus is to be the Virgin Mary and Ramona decides that she and her friends Howie and Davy should be sheep. Unfortunately, her Mother doesn''t have time to sew a costume so Ramona has to wear a pair of old pajamas, which she hates. In the end, the sheep steal the show and Ramona and her family share a wonderful night together.

Ramona and Her Father

Four billion years in Earth''s past, a group of Salaxalans attempts to populate the earth; however, a mistake caused by their engineer – who used an Electric Monk to irrationally believe the proposed fix would work – causes their landing craft to explode, killing the Salaxalans and generating the spark of energy needed to start the process of life on Earth. The ghost of the Salaxalan engineer roams the earth waiting to undo his mistake, watching human life develop and waiting to find a soul that it can possess. The ghost finds it can only possess individuals that fundamentally want to do the same task it is trying to accomplish itself. Otherwise, it is only able to influence the individual in subtle ways. In the early 19th century, the ghost discovers Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and influences the writer to add a second section to "Kubla Khan" and alter parts of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" to describe how to correct the problem that destroyed the landing craft in the distant past. The ghost then begins seeking out someone whose hardship can be influenced by Coleridge''s work. It later discovers that Professor Urban "Reg" Chronotis at St Cedd''s possesses a time machine disguised as his quarters. In the late 20th century, during the annual St Cedd''s dinner reading of "Kubla Khan", the ghost influences Reg to use the time machine to perform a bit of trickery for a young child at the dinner, while the ghost lures another Electric Monk into Reg''s quarters. Upon return to the present, the ghost finds the Monk unusable for its purposes. The Monk then goes off to kill Wayforward Technologies II''s CEO, Gordon Way, due to a misunderstanding. The ghost later tries to influence Richard MacDuff, a former student of Reg and current employee of Gordon Way, who was also at the Coleridge reading. Richard finds himself breaking into the apartment of Susan Way—his girlfriend and Gordon''s sister— to erase an answering machine message. His actions lead the police to consider Richard a suspect in the murder of Gordon. Richard discusses this with his former college friend Dirk Gently, who claims to be a "Holistic Detective" believing in the "fundamental interconnectedness of all things". Currently on the case of a missing cat, Dirk examines Richard and finds him to have been in a hypnotic-like state, and determines that Richard was temporarily possessed. Richard recounts the events from the Coleridge reading, including Reg''s trick; Dirk, after consulting with a child, concludes that the only way the trick was possible was with a time machine. The two approach Reg, who admits to this fact. Meanwhile, the ghost has found Michael Wenton-Weakes, a recently-fired editor of an arts magazine. Through subtle influences the ghost makes Michael read Coleridge''s works and convinces him to kill Albert Ross, the editor who replaced him. Both now have sought to erase those that supplant them, and the ghost is able to fully possess Michael''s body. The ghost, in Michael''s body, arrives at Reg''s quarters while Dirk and Richard are there, and demands Reg use his time machine to return back 4 billion years in the past. They travel back, and ghost-possessed Michael, using a makeshift environmental suit, sets up to repair the damage to the Salaxalan craft. While they watch, Richard receives a call from Susan from the 20th century on Reg''s phone, a quirk of the time machine due to the phone company. Richard learns of Ross''s murder, and Dirk quickly surmises the ghost''s plan, which if successful will erase the formation of life on Earth. Realising Michael was influenced by Coleridge''s works, Dirk instructs Reg to take them to the 19th century, allowing Dirk to interrupt Coleridge long enough to disrupt the ghost''s possession and prevent the second part of "Kubla Khan" from ever having been written. Upon arrival back in the 20th century, Dirk, Richard, and Reg find humanity as they expect it but with very small, subtle changes. Reg also discovers his time machine no longer functions, after having the telephone company repair the phone line to his quarters. Dirk learns that the missing cat was never missing in the first place as a result of their actions, and charges the client a small amount for the finding of the lost cat, adding "saving the entire human race from extinction – no charge".

Dirk Gently''s Holistic Detective Agency

Virginia Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta has a bloody puzzle on her hands: five headless, limbless cadavers in Ireland, plus four similar victims in a landfill back home. Is a serial butcher loose in Virginia? That''s what the panicked public thinks, thanks to a local TV reporter who got the leaked news from Scarpetta''s rival, Investigator Percy Ring. But this is no run-of-the-mill serial killer. A shadowy figure has plans involving mutant smallpox, mass murder, and messing with Scarpetta''s mind by e-mailing her gory photos of the murder scenes, along with cryptic AOL chat-room messages. Central to the plot is the case of Janet Parker, the last person known to have died of smallpox, which she contracted in 1978 due to a lab accident in Birmingham, England, after the disease was eradicated in the wild. Cornwell makes the villain a junior employee of the lab at the time who was made a scapegoat for the accident and whose career was blighted as a result. This provides the plot with a credible source for the virus and a motive for the central crime.

Unnatural Exposure

Mma Ramotswe is now engaged to the mechanic Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, but he seems reluctant to set a wedding date, which makes her a little unhappy. She takes on an interesting investigation: Mma Holonga, a rich businesswoman, is seeking a husband, and asks Mma Ramotswe to check the men on her shortlist of four, to eliminate those who only want her for her money. Meanwhile Mma Makutsi, Mma Ramotswe''s assistant, moves to better rooms thanks to her promotion and extra income, but is mourning the loss of her brother. Mma Potokwani, the formidable matron of the orphan farm, manoevures Mr J.L.B. Matekoni into agreeing to do a sponsored parachute jump to benefit the orphans. The gentle and timid mechanic is terrified at the prospect, Mma Ramotswe solves the parachute problem by persuading the garage apprentice Charlie to do it instead, convincing him that it will make him attractive to girls. Mma Potokwani offers to sort out the matter of the wedding by arranging it all herself, and presenting it to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni as a fait accompli - Mma Ramotswe agrees, although Mma Makutsi is horrified. Everyone assembles at the orphan farm to watch Charlie''s parachute jump, which is successful. Mma Potokwani surprises everyone by announcing that she has made all the preparations for the wedding and, with the help of a priest who is present, Mma Ramotswe and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni are married there and then.

The Full Cupboard of Life

The book opens with the main character Omar going to visit a doctor, who was one of his friends from his youth, because he has become sick of life. The doctor tells him that there is nothing physically wrong with him, and tells him that he won’t be ill if he goes on a diet and takes regular exercise. Both the diet and a vacation make no difference to him though. In his youth Omar was a poet and a socialist. He gave up both in order to become a lawyer, and now that he has reached the age of forty-five he can no longer find meaning in his life and he has effectively given up working. He met his wife Zeinab in his youth. She was a Christian called Kamelia Fouad and she converted to Islam, and lost her family in order to marry him. He promised that he would never desert her. She took up the role of supporting him and has proved to be the backbone of their bourgeois life together. As his malady grows he becomes more distant from her. He tries to escape his condition through love. He first meets a foreign singer called Margaret. When she unexpectedly leaves Egypt, he gets together with an oriental dancer called Warda. He falls in love with her, and she with him and they set up home together. Initially Omar’s illness seems to pass in the excitement of love. Zeinab, who is pregnant, is first suspicious and then is told of his new lover. Omar moves out to be with Warda, who quits her job to be with him. This love however fails to lift him out of his illness for long, and he makes contact with Margaret again when he sees her back at her club. He then goes through a succession of women, including prostitutes, trying to pull himself out of his sickness, but it is all to no avail. One dawn he is out near the pyramids and he feels a momentary joy, which connects him to all life. He feels light and at peace, but he soon feels the illness again. Although he tries to win this feeling again he is never able to. He returns home but feels suffocated there. One day Othman Khalil turns up in his office. Othman had been his socialist comrade in his youth who had been caught by the police, but hadn’t given out his connections with Omar, despite having been tortured. He has only just been released from prison. Othman is disconcerted to find Omar as a sceptic, as he has hung onto all of his socialist orthodoxies. As writing poetry has also failed to cure him, in an attempt to regain the peace he felt by the pyramids, Omar goes off to live by himself in the countryside. He slips into delirium but still the calm he desires escapes him. After a year and a half Othman, who has got involved in politics again, turns up at the house escaping from the police, but Omar thinks he is an illusion. Omar is shot and wounded as the police catch Othman. Omar feels he is returning to the world as he is brought back to Cairo. fa:گدا (رمان)

The Beggar

Dr. Jason Howard is a resident surgeon at Massachusetts General. When a patient of his is admitted complaining of heart problems and later dies, Jason finds that, though having received a clean bill of health less than a month before, that the heart attack came totally out of left field and the patient looks decidedly older than he ought to at 56. Soon two more cases come to his attention, both healthy a month before, now dead, both looking older than their years. Alvin Hayes, a former classmate of Jason''s at Harvard, asks to speak to him about his recent strange caseload. Hayes is a shifty, twitchy man whose personal life is a subject of some question who seems unduly paranoid, and Jason wonders if the resident mad scientist has gotten into something illicit. At dinner Hayes, while talking about his genetic research on aging, suddenly begins expelling blood violently. He dies a gory death right there in the restaurant. Jason begins investigating the connection between the man''s sudden demise, his nervous demeanor, and the patients in his hospital who have all been admitted with what seems to be a mutant strain of progeria that killed them in mere days. nl:Doodsangst (boek) pl:Śmiertelny strach

Mortal Fear

Casablanca begins when the narrator, who is driving his car to Mar del Plata seaside resort, is caught by a big storm. While looking for some shelter he comes across a place similar to Rick''s Café Américain. He gets out of the car and, almost blinded by the rain, hurries to the entrance door. Just then somebody starts playing "As Time Goes By" on a piano at the back of the room. The player is identical to Sam, but much older; he is wearing the same suit jacket that is shown in the film, but worn out now. In one of the corners, an old man in dark glasses, who looks like Humphrey Bogart, is dozing at a table. When the song is over, the black man starts to tell the narrator the story of the place and of the people who lived there. It all started, he says, in the early fifties, when the owner of those lands, a rich man very similar Sidney Greenstreet —the actor who interpreted señor Ferrari— decides to build a replica of Rick''s café to reproduce in it the main scenes of the movie. With this purpose he sends agents around the country and abroad, to look for people whose physical appearance is identical to the characters. He keeps for himself the role of Señor Ferrari. When the cast is ready, they rehearse for some months; their voices and accents must sound like the English spoken in the original version. To imitate the black-and-white movie, everything in the place is in lighter or darker shades of grey. When the café is opened, success is enormous. The people who visit it have the feeling they are “inside” the famous movie. Señor Ferrari''s dream (“Ferrari” is the name given to the ranch owner in the story) Señor Ferrari''s dream of turning the movie Casablanca into reality has come true. Some years of splendor follow, but an epidemic of hoof-and-mouth disease and an unexpected flood affect Señor Ferrari''s property, and he goes bankrupt. He speaks with President Perón to get a license to play for real money at the roulette wheel and the poker tables (up to that moment people pretended that they were gambling). President Perón —who had visited the place some months before and had an affair with Ilsa (Ferrari''s lover) — agrees to it. The café manages to survive, although far from its past magnificence. Then a military coup overthrows Perón, and the casino is closed. It is a hard blow for Ferrari, who commits suicide. In his will, he states that the café will remain the property of his employees, provided that they never shut it down or put it up for sale. In the following weeks, they try to do their best to make ends meet, but after a while some of them give up and desert the place. In a few months, the only ones who remain are Rick, Ilsa, Sam, Renault, and Ugarte. To make a living they decide to perform isolated scenes, which are shown to the few tourists who happen to go by. Time passes, and not only the place deteriorates but the health of its dwellers as well. The moment the narrator arrives, Sam can offer nothing but an account of what happened in that fantastic Casablanca, and introduce Rick and Ilsa, who are much older now (Rick is blind; Ilsa makes a brief appearance, dressed as Ingrid Bergman in one of the scenes of the movie). In a vase placed near the exit door, visitors leave a few coins. Meanwhile, the storm has subsided. Sam plays As time goes by once again, to say goodbye now. The narrator gets into his car and, with the feeling that he has witnessed a sequel to the movie that Hollywood never made, leaves the place.

Casablanca

The action of the story follows Sybil Gerard, a political courtesan and daughter of an executed Luddite leader (she is borrowed from Disraeli''s novel Sybil); Edward "Leviathan" Mallory, a paleontologist and explorer; and Laurence Oliphant, a historical figure with a real career, as portrayed in the book, as a travel writer whose work was a cover for espionage activities "undertaken in the service of Her Majesty". Linking all their stories is the trail of a mysterious set of reportedly very powerful computer punch cards and the individuals fighting to obtain them; as is the case with special objects in several novels by Gibson, the punch cards are to some extent a MacGuffin. During the story, many characters come to believe that the punch cards are a gambling "modus", a programme that would allow the user to place consistently winning bets. This is in line with Ada Lovelace''s historically documented penchant for gambling. Only in the last chapter is it revealed that the punched cards represent a program which proves two theorems which in reality would not be discovered until 1931 by Kurt Gödel. Lovelace delivers a lecture on the subject in France. Defending the cards, Mallory gathers his brothers and Ebenezer Fraser – a secret police officer – to fight the revolutionary Captain Swing who leads a London riot during "the Stink", a major episode of pollution in which London swelters under an inversion layer (comparable to the London Smog of December 1952). After the abortive uprising, Oliphant and Sybil Gerard meet at a cafe in Paris. Oliphant informs her that he is aware of her true identity, but will not pursue it, although he does want information that would compromise her seducer, Charles Egremont MP, now regarded as an obstacle to the strategies and political ambitions of Lords Brunel and Babbage. Sybil has longed for an opportunity for vengeance against Egremont, and the resultant political scandal destroys his parliamentary career and aspirations for a merit lordship. Oliphant also encounters a Manhattan-based group of feminist pantomime artists. After several vignettes that elaborate on the alternate historical origins of the world of The Difference Engine, Ada Lovelace delivers her lecture on Gödel''s Theorem, as its counterpart is known in our world. She is chaperoned by Fraser, and castigated by Sybil Gerard, who is still unable to forgive Ada''s father, the late Lord Byron, for his role in her own father''s death. At the very end of the novel, there is a dystopian depiction of an alternate 1991 from the vantage point of Ada Lovelace. Throughout the novel''s latter sections, there are references to an "Eye". At the end of the novel, human beings appear to have become digitized, ephemeral ciphers at the mercy of an all-powerful artificial intelligence.

The Difference Engine

The story opens with the narrator wandering the streets of St. Petersburg. He contemplates how he has always been a ridiculous person, and also, how recently, he has come to the realization that nothing much matters to him any more. It is this revelation that leads him to the idea of suicide. The narrator of the story reveals that he had bought a revolver months previous with the intent of shooting himself in the head. Despite a dismal night, the narrator looks up to the sky and views a solitary star. Shortly after seeing the star, a little girl comes running towards him. The narrator surmises that something is wrong with the girl''s mother. He shakes the girl away and continues on to his apartment. Once in his apartment, the narrator sinks into a chair and places his gun on a table next to him. He hesitates to shoot himself because of a nagging feeling of guilt that has plagued him ever since he eschewed the girl. The narrator grapples with internal questions for a few hours before falling asleep in the chair. As he sleeps, he descends into a very vivid dream. In the dream, he shoots himself in the heart. He dies but he is still aware of his surroundings. He gathers that there is a funeral and he is also buried. After an indeterminate amount of time in his cold grave, water begins to drip down onto his eyelids. The narrator begs for forgiveness. Suddenly his grave is opened by an unknown and shadowy figure. This figure pulls the narrator up from his grave, and then the two soar through the sky and into space. After flying through space for a long time, the narrator is deposited on a planet, one much like Earth, but not the Earth that he left through suicide. The narrator is then placed on what appears to be an idyllic Greek island, or in Christian literature, the earth before the Fall. Soon, the inhabitants of the island find him, and they are happy, blissful, sinless people. The narrator lives in this utopia for many years, all the while amazed at the goodness around him. One day the narrator accidentally teaches the inhabitants how to lie. This begins the corruption of the utopia. The lies engender pride, and pride engenders a deluge of other sins. Soon the first murder occurs. Factions are made, wars are waged. Science supplants emotion, and the members of the former utopia are incapable of remembering their former happiness. The narrator pleads with the people, he begs for martyrdom, but they will not allow it. The narrator then awakes. He is a changed man, thoroughly thankful for life. He promises to spend the rest of his days preaching the truth that he saw. His main lesson is to love others like yourself. At the conclusion of the story, the narrator states that he found the little girl, and that he will go on and on, presumably a reference to atonement for his past mistakes.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

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The Revealers

No Author Listed

Linda Condon

By Joseph Hergesheimer

Jedi Apprentice: Deceptions

By Judy Blundell

Ramona and Her Father

By Beverly Cleary

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

By Douglas Adams

Unnatural Exposure

By Patricia Cornwell

The Full Cupboard of Life

By Alexander McCall Smith

The Beggar

By Naguib Mahfouz

Mortal Fear

By Robin Cook

Casablanca

By Edgar Brau

The Difference Engine

By Bruce Sterling

The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

By Fyodor Dostoyevsky