David Garth, M.D., has fallen in love with the beautiful widow Betty, Lady Calder. Detective-Inspector Twigg of Scotland Yard tries to warn Dr. Garth about the chequered past of Lady Calder, but it takes all the nerve of Garth''s friend Cullingford Abbot, assistant to the Commissioner of Scotland Yard, to state that, among other things, Betty danced for three seasons at the Moulin Rouge and is thought to have joined a Satanist group in Paris. She is also reputed to be a blackmailer responsible for at least two suicides. However, Betty herself raises the possibility that she is being mistaken for the machinations of her sister Glynis. When Glynis is found dead on the beach near a bathing-pavilion, in the middle of a stretch of unmarked sand, Betty is suspected of arranging the death (although no one can suggest how it might have happened). It takes Dr. Garth''s special knowledge of both medicine (the new science of "psychanalysis") and literature like Gaston Leroux''s The Mystery of the Yellow Room to solve the impossible crime and reveal the criminal.

The Witch of the Low Tide

A new teleportation technology makes travel by spaceship obsolete. A new colony, Whale''s Mouth, has been the destination for forty million emigrants, but it is a one way trip - teleportation back to Earth is supposedly impossible. The only way to return is by spaceship, an eighteen-year journey for passengers who are subjected to a limited form of suspended animation. Rachmael ben Applebaum, whose spaceship business has been ruined by teleportation, decides to make the journey to Whale''s Mouth in his own craft, the Omphalos. Driven by a powerful hunch that the utopian vision may be false, he chooses to make the trip the old-fashioned way in case some of the colonists wish to return. Powerful figures oppose his journey. Lies, Inc., the expanded version of The Unteleported Man, includes a new first chapter and about one hundred pages of additional exposition. This previously unpublished material begins in Chapter 8 with the phrase, "Acrid smoke billowed about him, stinging his nostrils." What then ensues is a truly horrific drug trip, described in excruciating detail, that Rachmael endures after arriving at his destination and being hit by an LSD-tipped dart. The expansion material finally terminates in Chapter 16 just before the repeated phrase, "Acrid smoke billowed about him, stinging his nostrils." Confusion may arise in the reader, however, over Dick''s attributing at least part of the perceptual chaos to a deliberately incorporated effect of the teleportation process. Circumstances had forced Rachmael to abandon his original plans and to journey to Newcolonizedland via energy transfer instead. Sinister modifications to the "Telpor" technology apparently cause its victims to experience a variety of so-called "paraworlds" which are thought to actually exist, somehow, as viable alternate realities. Participants are fearful that consensus or agreement amongst themselves as to the paraworlds'' descriptions could somehow cause one or the other paraworld to manifest itself ever more aggressively until eventually displacing the current reality-paradigm altogether. And Rachmael''s own paraworld experience is said to be the worst one of all. The novel in its current form is itself a tangled, chaotic jumble of interactions, perceptions and jump-cuts that leave the reader nearly as bewildered as Rachmael ben Applebaum himself. And the supremely anti-climactic resolution makes one wonder, whether Dick intended it or not, if there weren''t possibly a more satisfying ending lurking about somewhere earlier in the story.

The Unteleported Man

Part I: Search By the Mule is about The Mule''s search for the elusive Second Foundation, with the intent of destroying it. The executive council of the Second Foundation is aware of the Mule''s intent and, in the words of the First Speaker, allows him to find it -- "in a sense". In the end the agents of the Second Foundation are able to catch the Mule off guard and telepathically alter his psyche, causing him to return to Kalgan to live out the remainder of his short life as essentially a benevolent despot. Search by the Mule was originally published in the January 1948 issue of Astounding Science Fiction under the title "Now You See It—". Part II: Search By the Foundation takes place sixty years after the first part, fifty-five years after the Mule''s death (by natural causes). The members of the (First) Foundation are now fully aware that the Second Foundation is out there (they had known of its existence all along, but had not known its purpose or nature until the Mule''s arrival). Also concurrent with this plot thread is the Foundation''s ongoing conflict with the Mule''s former imperial capital at Kalgan. The ensuing war is won by the Foundation, and is listed in the Encyclopedia Galactica as the last major conflict before the rise of the Second Empire. After inventing a device that can jam telepathic abilities and can even be used to cause telepaths great pain, the Foundation finds and locates telepaths on Terminus, "at the other end of the galaxy" (from the First Foundation, also at Terminus). Since, as Arkady Darell puts it, "a circle has no end", then by tracing the disc of the galaxy around its edge, one would come back to Terminus. Thus, they declare the Second Foundation destroyed after finding the roughly 50 mentalist agents on Terminus, and are content to forget the matter. Finally, in response to the question "Where is the Second Foundation?", the First Foundation had found an answer that fit. However, although this was "the answer that satisfied", this was not "the answer that was true". The Second Foundation was actually located on Trantor, at the centre of the galaxy. It was called "Star''s End" due to the ancient saying that "All roads lead to Trantor, and that is where all stars end". The location was also said to fit the "other end of the galaxy" location since the galaxy is not in fact a disc, but a spiral &mdash; and from the edge, the other end of a spiral lies at the centre. The book also noted that Hari Seldon was a social scientist, not a physical one. When the two Foundations were founded, they could be described as being at opposite social ends of the Galaxy &mdash; with Trantor at the very center of galactic power and prestige, and Terminus at the other extreme, something the First Foundation failed to realize because its members were inclined to analyze Seldon''s statement in physical terms. The Second Foundation would again be revisited in Foundation''s Edge. Search by the Foundation was originally published in the November and December 1949 and January 1950 issues of Astounding Science Fiction under the title "—And Now You Don''t".

Second Foundation

The first and last parts of the novel are set in Tep''s Town, on the site of modern Los Angeles. The town consists of three classes: the Lords, the ruling class, who live in a separate area of the town; the kinless, essentially a slave class forbidden to carry weapons, descendants of a people conquered by the allied ancestors of the Lords and the Lordkin; and the Lordkin, proud, uneducated, undisciplined and indolent knife fighters organised into street gangs, who live by "gathering" whatever they wish from the kinless. The Lords supervise the kinless and placate the Lordkin. The kinless are unarmed and untrained in the use of weapons, and cannot resist the Lordkin. Some leave the town, but the surrounding vegetation is malevolent. The town is the base of a fire god, Yangin-Atep, who possesses the Lordkin every few years to burn the town down and rape any kinless woman they can catch. The main character, Whandall, is an 11 year old Lordkin boy severely beaten unto scarring and broken bones by Lordsmen (police) for associating with a Lord girl and illegally entering the segregated Lord''s Hills. As an adult he becomes a product of his culture - a thief, a rapist, and a murderer, but, strangely, not without regret, not without honor, and not without the reader''s sympathy. He teams up with an ex-Atlantis wizard and some kinless and they escape from the city. Beyond the city they find traders and Whandall founds a successful trading empire. Eventually, he returns to the city to establish a trade route there, and defeats Yangin-Atep. In the epilogue the authors add further information to the timeline of the described reality - long after the described events, the savage people who became the "so-called Native Americans" appear on the stage and wipe out the existing civilization, including horses (and presumably cats and wheels) in their conquest of the Americas.

The Burning City

Mises sees economic calculation as the most fundamental problem in economics. The economic problem to Mises is that of action. Man acts to dispel feelings of uneasiness, but can only succeed in acting if he comprehends causal connections between the ends that he wants to satisfy, and available means. The fact that man resides in a world of causality means that he faces definite choices as to how he satisfies his ends. Human action is an application of human reason to select the best means of satisfying ends. The reasoning mind evaluates and grades different options. This is economic calculation. Economic calculation is common to all people. Mises insisted that the logical structure of human minds is the same for everybody. Of course, this is not to say that all minds are the same. Man makes different value judgments and possess different data, but logic is the same for all. Human reason and economic calculation have limitations, but Mises sees no alternative to economic calculation as a means of using scarce resources to improve our well being. Human action concerns dynamics. The opposite to action is not inaction. Rather, the opposite to action is contentment. In a fully contented state there would be no action, no efforts to change the existing order of things (which might be changed by merely ceasing to do some things). Man acts because he is never fully satisfied, and will never stop because he can never be fully satisfied. This might seem like a simple point, but modern economics is built upon ideas of contentment-equilibrium analysis and indifference conditions. It is true that some economists construct models of dynamic equilibrium, but the idea of a dynamic equilibrium is oxymoronic to Mises. An actual equilibrium may involve a recurring cycle, but not true dynamics. True dynamics involve non-repeating evolutionary change. Mises explains dynamic change in terms of "the plain state of rest". A final state of rest involves perfect plans to fully satisfy human desires. A plain state of rest is a temporary and imperfect equilibrium deriving from past human plans. Though any set of plans is imperfect, to act means attempting to improve each successive set of plans. Movement from one plain state of rest to another represents the process of change, either evolutionary or devolutionary. Mises links progress and profits. Profits earned from voluntary trades are the indicator of economic success. It is monetary calculation of profits that indicates whether an enterprise has generated a net increase in consumer well being over true economic costs. The close association that Mises draws between economic calculation and monetary calculation leads him to conclude that market prices (upon which monetary profits are calculated) are indispensable to progress in bettering the human condition. Without markets there are no prices, and without prices there is no economic calculation. One point that Mises made, but did not get enough attention, is that monetary calculation takes place primarily in financial markets. Monetary calculation is vitally important. Mises stresses the importance of entrepreneurship because it is entrepreneurs who actually do monetary calculation. This fact puts entrepreneurs at the center of all progress (and failure). Entrepreneurs who estimate costs more correctly than their rivals earn high profits while also serving consumers. Such men rise to top positions in industry. Entrepreneurs who err seriously in their calculations experience financial losses and cease to direct production. Mises described this market test of entrepreneurial skills as the only process of trial and error that really matters. The concepts of monetary calculation, financial speculation, and entrepreneurship form the basis for the von Mises critique of socialism.

Human Action

The Vom is an intergalactic intelligence described as a large black blob not unlike a gigantic amoeba, impervious to almost all energy and physical attack. Following years of battle with the Tar-Aiym it has sheltered on a planet where it has gone dormant for 500,000 years, waiting for an opportunity to escape the Tar-Aiym Guardian orbiting in space above it. Carmot MMYM a commander in the AAnn Empire discovers the Vom and brings it to the planet Repler for study at a concealed AAnn base. Lieutenants Kitten “Kitty” Kai-sung, a female human, and Porsupah, a male Tolian, of the Intelligence Arm of the United Church have been sent to Repler to investigate the newly re-established trade in the drug bloodhype (aka jaster, silly salt, brain-up, phinto) as the most deadly and addictive drug in and outside the Humanx Commonwealth. Once on Repler they make contact with the drug trader Dominick Rose who are using Captain Malcolm Hammurabi and his ship, the Umbra, as unwitting transporters of bloodhype. This trio tracks Rose to his base where they encounter Flinx, currently in Rose’s employ, who helps them escape when Rose’s men capture the agents. After reporting Rose’s activities to the United Church, Rose escapes to the AAnn base right before the AAnn lose control of the Vom. Meanwhile, the agents have enlisted the help of Rose’s brother who has discovered the Tar-Aiym Guardian and his machine now orbiting above Repler. With the assistance of Flinx’s psychic abilities the Guardian prepares to fight the Vom again, while Kitty, Porsupah, and Mal prepare a raid on the AAnn base to capture Rose. The Vom escapes and the Guardian is forced to fight it in a psychic battle, but is slowly losing until Kitty and Mal manage to recover Rose’s supply of bloodhype and use it to poison the Vom. Now weakened, the Vom succumbs to the Tar-Aiym Guardian. After the battle the Guardian self-destructs, Flinx leaves Repler on his ship Teacher, Porsupah gets drunk, while Mal and Kitty start a romantic relationship.

Bloodhype

On 25 October 1946, Popper (then at the London School of Economics), was invited to present a paper entitled "Are There Philosophical Problems?" at a meeting of the Moral Sciences Club, which was chaired by Wittgenstein. The two started arguing vehemently over whether there existed substantial problems in philosophy, or merely linguistic puzzles—the position taken by Wittgenstein. In Popper''s, and the popular account, Wittgenstein used a fireplace poker to emphasize his points, gesturing with it as the argument grew more heated. When challenged by Wittgenstein to state an example of a moral rule, Popper (later) claimed to have replied "Not to threaten visiting lecturers with pokers", upon which (according to Popper) Wittgenstein threw down the poker and stormed out. Wittgenstein''s Poker collects and characterizes the accounts of the argument, as well as establishing the context of the careers of Popper, Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell, also present at the meeting. The book follows three narrative threads, each pivoting off the 1946 confrontation at Cambridge; the first is a documentary investigation into what precisely took place and the controversy over the differing accounts from observers; the second, a comparative personal history of the philosophers, contrasting their origins in Vienna and their differing ascents to philosophical prominence; and thirdly an exploration of the philosophical significance of the disagreement between the two and its relevance for the great debates in the early 20th century concerning the philosophy of language.

Wittgenstein''s Poker: The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers

Sara and Jeffrey have finally started to click again when a phone call from the woman he was unfaithful with brings their affair back into sharp relief. He and Sara are arguing about this on a walk in the woods when they make a discovery: the corpse of a young woman who was buried alive in a wooden coffin. They assume her death was accidental, but the autopsy reveals that she was pregnant and had been murdered – while she was underground. The search for her identity leads Jeffrey and Lena to an organic soybean farming cooperative out in the sticks owned by a large, tightly knit, religious family, led by the charismatic oldest son. They import their labor force from the people that populate Atlanta''s shelters and halfway houses, facilitated through the family church''s outreach program. At one time or another the case involves strippers, the one-legged, one-eyed lawyer extraordinaire Buddy Conford, an abused woman Lena both identifies with and wants to save, and a search to find more buried coffins before it''s too late. At the novel''s conclusion, Sara finally agrees to remarry Jeffrey after at least four proposals, and Ethan pushes Lena so far that she decides it''s time to escape. <!--

Faithless

Julián Estaban, who is impersonating the Mayan god Kukulcán, fights and escapes from a powerful gold hungry conquistador, Hernán Cortés. Kukulcán’s followers captured Rodrigo Perdoza, a bishop carrying a message to Cortés to detain Julián. Julián wants to be a priest and asks the bishop many times to make him one, but in the end he lets the Mayan priest sacrifice him, and Julián takes the bishop''s amethyst ring. Cortés attacks and captures Kukulcán’s city, the City of the Seven Serpents, but Julián escapes to a friendly large village and helps them harvest and trade pearls. He then goes to a smaller trading town and partners with Tzom Zambac and they have a successful feathered cloak business. Fearing betrayal from Tzom, he leaves and eventually finds Francisco Pizarro, a conquistador who is taking a band of Spaniards to get gold from the Inca. They capture the Incan king Atahualpa, who has a room filled with gold to pay his ransom. The Spaniards try and kill him anyway. Julián leaves the group because of his disagreements with the trial. He searches for Chima, a daughter of Atahualpa, whom he has fallen in love with. He finds her and she rejects him because he is a Spaniard. Julián then uses all of his gold to sail back to Seville. There he meets Cantú the Dwarf, who is now very wealthy from gold. Cantú gives Julián a lot of gold, but he joins the Brothers of the Poor and gives it all to them.

The Amethyst Ring

Eleven-year-old Harriet M. Welsch is an aspiring writer, who lives in New York City''s Upper East Side. A precocious and enthusiastic girl, Harriet enjoys writing and aspires to become a spy. Encouraged by her nanny, Ole Golly, Harriet carefully observes others and writes her thoughts down in a notebook as practice for her future career. She dedicates her life to her future career. She follows an afternoon "spy route" during which she clandestinely observes her classmates, friends, and people who reside in her neighborhood. Her best friends are Sport, a serious boy who lives with his father, and Janie, an aspiring scientist. Harriet enjoys having structure in her life. For example, she regularly eats tomato sandwiches and adamantly refuses to consume other types of sandwiches. Harriet''s routine life is abruptly changed when her parents attend a party. Ole Golly and her suitor, Mr. Waldenstein, take Harriet out for dessert and a movie. When they return home, they discover that the Welsches have returned early to an empty house. When Mrs. Welsch attempts to fire Ole Golly, Mr. Waldenstein discloses to the Welsches that he proposed to Ole Golly that evening, and she has accepted. In an astonishing about-face, Mrs. Welsch exclaims, "You can''t leave, what will we do without you?!" Ole Golly replies that she had planned to leave soon because she believes Harriet is old enough to care for herself. Harriet is crushed by the loss of her nanny, to whom she was very close. Later at school, during a game of tag, Harriet loses her notebook. Her classmates find it and are appalled at the mean and tactless things she has written about them. For example, in her notebook she compares Sport to a "little old woman" for his continual worrying about his father. Harriet has given her honest opinion of the world as she sees it and does not mean to be rude. In fact, she insists, her notebook is private and not for anyone else to see. The students form a "Spy Catcher Club" in which they think up ways to make Harriet''s life miserable, such as stealing her lunch, passing nasty notes about her in class, and spilling ink on her. Harriet regularly spies on them through a back fence and concocts vengeful ways to punish them. She realizes the consequences of the mean things she wrote, and though she is hurt and lonely, she still thinks up special punishments for each member of the club. After getting into trouble for some of her plans, Harriet tries to resume her friendship with Sport and Janie as if nothing had ever happened, but they both reject her. Harriet spends all her time in class writing in her notebook as a part of her plan to punish the Spy Catcher Club. As a result of never doing her schoolwork, her grades suffer. This leads Harriet''s parents to confiscate her notebook. Hearing of Harriet''s troubles, Ole Golly writes to her, telling her that if anyone ever reads her notebook, "you have to do two things, and you don''t like either one of them. 1: You have to apologize. 2: You have to lie. Otherwise you are going to lose a friend." Meanwhile, dissent is rippling through the Spy Catcher Club. Marion, the teacher''s pet, and her best friend Rachel are calling all the shots, and Sport and Janie are tired of being bossed around. When they quit the club, most of their classmates do the same. Harriet''s parents speak with her teacher and the headmistress, and Harriet is appointed editor of the class newspaper. The newspaper&mdash;featuring stories about the people on Harriet''s spy route and the students'' parents&mdash;becomes an instant success. Harriet also uses the paper to make amends by printing a retraction and is forgiven.

Harriet the Spy

The novel takes place seven hundred years after Nazism achieved power, by which time Adolf Hitler is worshipped as a god. Though no major character is a woman, the story concentrates on the oppression of women, portraying the Nazis as homosexual misogynists. Christians are marginalized, Jews eliminated, and women disenfranchised — deprived of all rights. Germany and Japan won the "Twenty Years War" (analogous to World War II), the time it took the Nazis to subdue the Soviet Union. The protagonist is an Englishman named Alfred on a German pilgrimage. In Europe, the English are loathed because they were the last opponents of Nazi Germany in the war. The story correctly postulates the air power''s importance in war. One of the religious sites Alfred was to visit was the "Sacred Airplane", which, according to long-established dogma, Hitler piloted on a mission to Moscow, thus achieving victory. The drastic rewriting of history, after living memory of Hitler, or the time when meaningful resistance to Germany existed, is the logical extension of Burdekin''s contemporary view of Nazi Germany. Per official history, Hitler is a tall, blond god who personally won the war. Alfred is astounded when shown a secret, historic photograph depicting Hitler and a girl before a crowd. First, he is shocked that Hitler is a small man with dark hair and a paunch. The crowd seem more interested in the girl; this does not fit the worldview of Hitler as god. The photograph''s most shocking betrayal of myth is the girl''s appearance. Alfred believed her to be a boy — the attractive figure has a proud posture and long, blond hair — and is appreciated by the crowd. Women have developed self-loathing, becoming pathetic beings who have difficulty performing their sole, utilitarian function: reproduction. Elsewhere, the Japanese rule the Americas, Australia, and Asia, to the borders of European Russia and Persia. Though Japan is the only rival superpower to the Nazi West, their inevitable wars always end in stalemate. The fascist Germans and Japanese suffer much difficulty in maintaining their populations, because of the physical degeneration of their women. In the event, the SS murder Alfred, yet he passes the truth about Nazi history to his surviving son.

Swastika Night

The protagonist of The Gruffalo is a mouse. The story of the mouse''s walk through the woods unfolds in two phases; in both, the mouse uses cunning to evade danger. On his way the mouse encounters several dangerous animals (a fox, an owl, and a snake). Each of these animals, clearly intending to eat the mouse, invites him back to their home for a meal. The cunning mouse declines each offer. To dissuade further advances, he tells each animal that he has plans to dine with his friend, a gruffalo, a monster-like hybrid that''s half grizzly bear and half buffalo, whose favourite food happens to be the relevant animal, and describes the features of the gruffalo''s monstrous anatomy. Frightened that the gruffalo might eat it, each animal flees. Knowing the gruffalo to be fictional, the mouse gloats thus: : Silly old fox/owl/snake, doesn''t he know? : there''s no such thing as a gruffalo! After being quit of the last animal, the mouse is shocked to encounter a real gruffalo – with all the frightening features the mouse thought that he was inventing. The gruffalo threatens to eat the mouse, but again the mouse is cunning: he tells the gruffalo that he, the mouse, is the scariest animal in the forest. Laughing, the gruffalo agrees to follow the mouse as he demonstrates how feared he is. The two walk through the forest, encountering in turn the animals that had earlier menaced the mouse. Each is terrified by the sight of the pair and runs off – and each time the gruffalo becomes more impressed with the mouse''s apparent toughness. Exploiting this, the mouse threatens to eat the gruffalo, which flees. The story is based on a traditional Chinese folk tale of a fox that borrows the terror of a tiger. Donaldson was unable to think of rhymes for "tiger" so invented one for "know" instead.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

The Witch of the Low Tide

By John Dickson Carr

The Unteleported Man

By Philip K. Dick

Second Foundation

By Isaac Asimov

The Burning City

By Larry Niven

Human Action

By Ludwig von Mises

Bloodhype

By Alan Dean Foster

Wittgenstein's Poker: The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers

No Author Listed

Faithless

By Karin Slaughter

The Amethyst Ring

No Author Listed

Harriet the Spy

By Louise Fitzhugh

Swastika Night

By Katharine Burdekin

The Gruffalo

By Julia Donaldson