Spock travels back to the time and place of Here Come the Brides, a television program loosely based upon Asa Mercer''s efforts to bring civilization to 1860s Seattle by importing the marriageable Mercer Girls from the war-ravaged East Coast of the United States. The show''s premise was that eldest brother, Jason Bolt, bet his entire logging operation that he could persuade one hundred marriageable ladies to come to Seattle, and that all of them would be married or engaged within one year. Much of the dramatic and comic tension revolved around the efforts of their benefactor Aaron Stemple to thwart the deal and take control of the Bolts'' holdings. Spock discovers a Klingon plot to destroy the Federation by killing Aaron Stemple before Stemple could thwart an attempted 19th-century alien invasion of Earth. During most of the story, Spock has lost his memory and is cared for by Stemple, who passes him off as his nephew "Ishmael" and helps him hide his alien origins. Spock identifies one of the women in the story as likely to be an ancestress of his.

Ishmael

The devil Belphagor comes to live on Earth for a time, to investigate reports that women have grown extreme in their misbehaviors and have made marriage a curse. He disguises himself as a Spanish doctor named Castiliano. He offers to cure a mute woman named Honoria if she will marry him in return — a proposal that is accepted by the young woman and her family. Once he cures her, however, she repudiates her marital promise, calling him a "base Spaniard" who she wouldn''t allow her slave to marry. All the English seem to turn on him: he is bed-tricked into marrying Honoria''s shrewish maid, who cheats on him; one of the maid''s former suitors tries to kill him; and his wife eventually poisons him. Castiliano dies just as Belphagor''s predetermined time on Earth expires, and the devil returns to Hell with great relief at escaping the toils of earthly existence and its ferocious females. (The play''s depiction of its devil is surprisingly restrained; he is described as "patient, mild, and pitiful," and is rather a sympathetic character than otherwise. Its infernal domain, ruled by Pluto, is a mixture of Christian and classical elements.) In the play''s subplot, Grim the collier is a simple and good-hearted soul who is devoted to his love, Joan of Badenstock. After complications with Clack the Miller and Parson Shorthose, Grim wins her in the end, with the help of Puck or Robin Goodfellow (alias Akercock; in this play, a devil like Belphagor). Grim-the-collier is also the common name for Pilosella aurantiaca (sometimes under the genus Hieracium). Other common names are Orange Hawkweed, Fox and Cubs, Devil''s paintbrush and Red devil.

Grim the Collier of Croydon

The story circulates around the main character, Gennaro Accuci, and how he leaves his family behind in Italy in order to make riches in America. He takes over the business of an old friend by force, and soon rises to power and becomes an influential member of early Italian-American society in New York. After seven years of cheating on his wife, he finally calls for his family to come over to the new country. His oldest, rebellious son, is caught trying to rape a neighbor, and subsequently is forced to marry her by Gennaro, who often beats his son for being lazy. They children soon have an annulment, and the neighbor goes to a Protestant asylum where she is Americanized. She returns to her family, her parents move to the country, the oldest son (Domenico) is killed in the Spanish-American War, and Gennaro''s wife dies of sadness. Gennaro then marries Carmela who is now much older, although his youngest son also has feelings for her. However, in the recession of 1907, an old enemy of Gennaro''s shows up and kills him (Gennaro stole his business from him when first coming to the country in the 1880s).

The Grand Gennaro

When the book opens, G.H., a well-to-do resident of a Rio de Janeiro penthouse, is remembering what happened to her the previous day, when she decided to clean out the room of the maid who has just left her service. “Before I entered the room, what was I?” G.H. asks. “I was what others had always seen me be, and that was the way I knew myself.” In the maid’s room, G.H. expects chaos. Instead, to her shock, she finds a desert, “an entirely clean and vibrating room as in an insane asylum from which dangerous objects have been removed.” Only one thing disturbs the room''s perfect order: black carbon scratches on the dry white wall, outlines of a man, a woman, and a dog. Pondering the inscrutable drawing, she realizes that the black maid, whose name she has forgotten, and whose face she has trouble calling to mind, had hated her. Overwhelmed by anger, she opens the door to the wardrobe. Terrified by the cockroach she sees emerging, she slams the door shut, severing the cockroach in its center and sees the still-living animal''s entrails begin to ooze out. G.H. is appalled by the sight, but she is trapped in the room by the irresistible fascination of the dying insect. She wants to scream, but she knows it is already too late: "If I raised the alarm at being alive, voiceless and hard they would drag me away since they drag away those who depart the possible world, the exceptional being is dragged away, the screaming being.” Staring at the insect, her human personality begins to break down; finally, at the height of her mystic crisis, she famously takes the matter oozing from the cockroach—the fundamental, anonymous matter of the universe, which she shares with the roach—and puts it in her mouth.

The Passion According to G.H.

The novel begins by introducing Massoud Behrani, a former colonel exiled from Iran after the Iranian Revolution. Because his background is military rather than professional, he has not been able to establish a career in the US and works as a trash collector and convenience store clerk. With savings, he pays the rent on an expensive apartment for his family and for an elegant wedding for his daughter, and his fellow, more successful Iranian exiles do not know that he holds low-skilled jobs. Meanwhile, Kathy Nicolo, a former drug addict who is still recovering from her husband abruptly leaving her, has been evicted from her home, long owned by her family, because of unpaid taxes the county wrongfully claimed she owed. When the house is placed for auction, Behrani seizes the opportunity and purchases it. He bets his son''s entire college fund, planning to renovate the house and then resell it for much more than he originally paid as a first step on the way to establishing himself in real-estate investment. He moves his family from their apartment into the house. Meanwhile, when Kathy moves out, she meets Deputy Lester Burdon. They go through the system, hiring a lawyer to fight Kathy''s wrongful eviction, but although the County admits the error, Behrani insists that he will not return the house unless he''s paid what it''s worth, not merely the low sum he paid at auction. In desperation, Kathy goes to the house and attempts to commit suicide twice, first trying to shoot herself and then overdosing on pills. The Behranis manage to stop her both times and she is put in a bedroom to rest. Lester breaks into the house and locks the Behranis in their bathroom at gunpoint until they agree to return the house to Kathy. When Lester takes the Behranis to the county office, Behrani''s son, Esmail, retrieves the gun and is shot by authorities. When Behrani finds out in the hospital that his son has died, he is overcome with grief and rage at both Lester and Kathy. He returns to the house to find Kathy still there and attempts to strangle her. Believing Kathy to be dead, he dons his Army uniform and suffocates both himself and his wife, who had been asleep in the bedroom. Kathy and Lester are arrested and await trial. In the novel''s final scene, Kathy, unable to speak after her final encounter with Behrani, mimes a request for one more cigarette.

House of Sand and Fog

The story, set in the small town of Huntington near Minneapolis, Minnesota, centers around a fifth grader named Jack Rankin Jr. who, while the new middle school is being built for the town, finds himself going to school in the old high school, where his father works as a janitor. After being ridiculed for wanting to be a janitor "like his dad" several years ago, he has tried to separate himself from his father as much as he can, but now finds these attempts futile since they are now in the same building. In order to let out his frustration, he concocts a plan to stick a large wad of gum to the bottom of a desk for his father to later clean up. Unfortunately, his plan backfires, and he is sentenced to three weeks of cleaning gum off of the bottom of desks and chairs in different parts of the school, for one hour every day. Jack is enraged by this punishment, since he will now be working for his father, but still manages to make some interesting discoveries: he finds a picture of his dad, another janitor, and two other men during their time in the army, and finds the key box for the building. Intrigued, he takes a key to the school bell tower, and another for the steam tunnel beneath the school. After his exploration of the bell tower, he realizes that he must, to his disappointment, drive home with his father. During the ride home, Jack''s dad reveals that before his days as a janitor, he worked for his father at an old car dealership, and absolutely loathed it. He tells Jack that his grandfather would never let John have his own car, and that in anger he stole his father''s corvette, only to completely destroy it in a crash with a light pole. In the hospital, John''s father told him that he could forget about college until he paid off the price of the car in work, and so John joined the army the next day. John finishes his story by saying that at his father''s funeral; several people approached John and mentioned how his father would always give away a couple of cars every year, free of charge, to help people. He tells Jack that the reason John never got a car was because his father loved him and didn''t want him to be spoiled. Astounded by this revelation, Jack must nevertheless continue cleaning gum off different parts of the school, and while cleaning the auditorium he discovers the access door to the steam tunnel. Feeling courageous at first, Jack still ends up locking himself in the tunnel, and must follow his keen sense of smell to get out. As he reaches the final crossroads, he finds that a tiny "apartment" has been set up. Jack also finds that a boy named Eddie is currently staying there while his father tries to recover from his days in the Vietnam War, which he spent with Jack''s father. Emerging from the tunnels in the town''s fire station, Jack manages to catch a ride home with his dad, who explains to him that the little living area beneath the town was set up to give people a place to go, like Eddie. After the Vietnam War, John was completely out of it until a janitor at the high school offered him a job in order to get back on his feet. In turn, John put together the living area under the crossroads to help others. The first "resident" happened one of John''s fellow janitors, Lou, who John met during his second tour during the war. Eventually, Lou moved out of the tunnels, but the furniture was left in the tunnels in case somebody else ever needed them. Touched by his father''s kindness, and the kindness of those his father knew, Jack receives a newer, kinder image of his father, and the bond between them begins to grow closer.

The Janitor''s Boy

Suicide Circle: The Complete Edition tells in four different chapters the story behind a fictional mass suicide that takes place on the Shinjuku Station in 2002, on which 54 high school girls throw themselves in front of a train. This event unleashes in Japan—and soon after, in the world—a chain of suicides that seems endless. Police officers try to stop it and understand why this is happening, and after several events they find a connection between the suicides and a website that belongs to a mysterious organization called Family Circle. Through this website, Family Circle enrolls young people and incite them to run away from home to serve the Circle "family rentals", a service that the organization provides to families who lost relatives to suicide. Parallel to this, alongside the police''s quest, the book also follows the story of one of Family Circle''s new members that witnessed the mass suicide, Noriko Shimabara, and how her own family slowly falls apart to the suicide wave, while her father tries to "rescue" her from the Circle. In the end, all the pieces come together as the true meaning behind the website is revealed.

Suicide Circle: The Complete Edition

It is 526 B.C. and the empire of the Pharaohs is dying, crushed by the weight of its own antiquity. Decay riddles its cities, infects its aristocracy, and weakens its armies. While across the expanse of Sinai, like jackals drawn to carrion, the forces of the King of Persia watch . . . and wait. Leading the fight to preserve the soul of Egypt is Hasdrabal Barca, Pharaoh’s deadliest killer. Possessed of a rage few men can fathom and fewer can withstand, Barca struggles each day to preserve the last sliver of his humanity. But, when one of Egypt’s most celebrated generals, a Greek mercenary called Phanes, defects to the Persians, it triggers a savage war that will tax Barca''s skills, and his humanity, to the limit. From the political wasteland of Palestine, to the searing deserts east of the Nile, to the streets of ancient Memphis, Barca and Phanes play a desperate game of cat-and-mouse — a game culminating in the bloodiest battle of Egypt’s history. Caught in the midst of this violence is Jauharah, a slave in the House of Life. She is Arabian, dark-haired and proud — a healer with gifts her blood, her station, and her gender overshadow. Though her hands tend to Barca''s countless wounds, it is her spirit that heals and changes him. Once a fearsome demigod of war, Hasdrabal Barca becomes human again. A man now motivated as much by love as anger. Nevertheless honor and duty have bound Barca to the fate of Egypt. A final conflict remains, a reckoning set to unfold in the dusty hills east of Pelusium. There, over the dead of two nations, Hasdrabal Barca will face the same choice as the heroes of old: Death and eternal fame . . . Or obscurity and long life . . .

Men of Bronze

The main theme in the story is an expedition to prove main character Erlend''s theory about Pacific islands. He believes that their inhabitants came from South America on skates. This is, of course, an impossible theory, but the story is kept alive with Loe''s personal, at times naïve, style. The book is divided into two parts. The first part is about how Erlend, inspired by Thor Heyerdahl''s Kon-Tiki, came up with the theory, and the planning of the expedition. The second part is about the expedition itself, which takes place on Manuae in the Cook Islands. The seven boys in the expedition, including fictionalized versions of Loe and artist Kim Hiorthøy, all feel that they have not contributed to "build Norway", so this trip is like their way of saying "sorry", and placing Norway on the map once and for all. Erlend strongly believes that his theory is correct and that they will be praised as heroes when they return. In the end of the book the boys feels like this wasn’t enough to place Norway on the map, so they start another experiment, where they try out the different ways of governing a country. For example, they try out apartheid and communism. They spend the last days on the island sitting around and waiting for the boat to pick them up. When they come home there is no marching band waiting at the airport, and realise that it will take more to get Norway "out there". no:L (roman) fi:L (kirja) sv:Expedition L

Eleven-year-old Eliza Naumann is the only "ordinary" member of a family of gifted people. Her father, Saul, is a cantor in the local synagogue and a keen student of Jewish texts; her mother, Miriam, is apparently a successful lawyer and her brother, Aaron, is a gifted student who is able to read and recite in Hebrew and is allowed into his father''s study, where he plays the guitar with his father. One day Eliza surprises herself by winning the class spelling bee, then the school bee. At first Saul is unaware of her success, but then he becomes increasingly involved with her. Eliza is invited into his study to practice, and Aaron for the first time finds the door closed to him. But as Eliza progresses through the district bee and prepares for the national bee, the troubled lives of her family come into sharp focus. Saul, who has tried to reach God first through drugs and then through study, becomes convinced that Eliza''s talent shows a propensity for mysticism greater than his, which has the potential to lead her to shefa, the influx of the Divine. He gradually introduces her to the writings of Abraham Abulafia, a Medieval kabbalist writer, and it becomes clear that his ambitions for her go far beyond the winning of the spelling bee. Aaron, who had a "religious experience" at the age of eight (it was actually the wing-light of a plane), finds himself disillusioned with Judaism and begins to look elsewhere, first to Christianity and then to Buddhism. Through a chance encounter in a park he discovers the International Society for Krishna Consciousness and becomes a devotee, unknown to his family. Miriam, who has always had an obsessive personality, is in fact a kleptomaniac who spends her time stealing small items from department stores, believing that they are small parts of herself from which she has become separated, a concept she formed when Saul told her about Tikkun olam, the "fixing of the world". With the other members of her family preoccupied, Miriam''s obsession takes a new turn when she finds herself entering people''s houses and stealing small objects from them. Several times she is almost discovered, but, though she tries to anchor herself to the real world through soulless sex with Saul, she cannot resist the pull of the empty houses. Having performed well, but ultimately failed to win the national spelling bee, Eliza begins to prepare for the following year, with Saul''s enthusiastic help. But the family is about to be torn apart. Miriam is arrested, pleads not guilty by reason of insanity, and is admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Aaron announces his intention to leave home, and his faith, to join ISKCON. Eliza, who has begun reading Abulafia on her own, without her father''s knowledge, has a terrifying experience on the night that she attempts to achieve shefa. The following day, at the class spelling bee, she deliberately misspells a word.

Bee Season: A Novel

The main character, Mr. Plumbean, lives on a "neat street" where all the houses look the same. A seagull flies over his house and drops a can of bright orange paint on his roof, but instead of repainting his house to look like all the others on the street, Mr. Plumbean paints it to resemble his dreams. His neighbors send people to talk him into repainting his house to look like theirs, but everyone he talks to ends up painting their houses like their dreams also. In the end, all the neighbors say: "Our street is us and we are it. Our street is where we like to be, and it looks like all our dreams." The drawings were made with markers, and if one looks closely one can see the marker lines. In an interview in 1978 Daniel Manus Pinkwater revealed the hallucinogenic undertones clearly referenced throughout the story. Due to this interview the book was pulled from most libraries in Missouri in the early 1980s. Many believe the seagull was a reference to his older brother Steven &#34;Seagull&#34; Pinkwater.

The Big Orange Splot

Grandfather Desouche, a pessimistic old French Montrealer, makes a living by digging bodies out of their graves and selling the embalmed corpses to a doctor who uses them for medical experiments. When the winter comes, the frozen ground forces Grandfather and Uncle to retire for the season. Grandfather, after his wife''s death, has taken to hating his neighbors and indulging in food and drink. Grandfather decides to marry Aline Souris, a spinster who cares for her widower father. She becomes the woman of the house, caring for the house and for Grandfather. Aline realizes that Grandfather tricked her into marrying him in order to have someone to take care of him. Granddaughter Marie Desouche, a leading member of the Front de libération du Québec, is abhorred by her family''s Anglo-ism. Her boyfriend Hubert is the leader of their cell. Her brother Jean-Baptiste, a quiet romantic poet, opposes his sister''s burning idealism, and spends most of his time reading and writing. One night, after planting a bomb next to a crowded restaurant, Marie comes home to find a police car outside her house and is immediately alarmed. She forces her brother to be her alibi, insinuating that they were having sex. It turns out the police were there to inform their Mother of the death of her father, Angus, who was killed by Marie''s bomb. Mother is destroyed by this news, and enters a coma-like state. Marie leaves to live with Hubert. Recognizing her marriage to Grandfather as a sham, Aline moves into Marie''s vacated room. She becomes attached to his pet crow, which she names "Grace". Grandfather gradually comes to hate the crow as his wife gains affection for it. Eventually Grace attacks Grandfather and scratchs out one of his eyes. Dr. Hyde becomes depressed at his mother''s condition. Her friends, Mrs. Harrison and Mrs. Pangloss, come every week to visit hoping she will recover. She, however, cannot hear a word they are saying when they try to speak to her. Grandfather becomes increasingly frustrated with his new handicap, a missing eye, but realizes that it is an excuse to be bed-ridden and have Aline wait on him hand and foot. At Christmas, the Desouches gather, and Marie gives Jean-Baptiste a blank book, a statement of her dislike of empty words but instead he choses to write a play. Meanhwile, Hubert has a drunken disagreement with his own father and wanders off very drunk. He gets hit by a car while shouting separatist manifestos into the night air. Ironically, he gets hit by a personal hero of his and is killed in the accident. The local police do not want the premier''s reputation, so take the corpse to Grandfather to be disposed of. Grandfather charges a high price for the body. Marie becomes the head of her FLQ division. Meanwhile, Jean-Baptiste becomes a political paraiah over the summer, thanks to the play he wrote about his family, creating a sensation. He is arrested by the police when Marie sneaks felquiste pamphlets into his possessions. Hoping to free her brother, Marie kidnaps a British government official and holds him hostage. Meanwhile, Dr. Hyde experiments on Hubert''s corpse, trying to revive him. He offers Grandfather and Uncle a pretty sum if they extract the bleeding heart of Frere Andre from the Cathedral so he can insert the heart into Hubert''s corpse, and thus find out where the human soul dwells. On Hallowe''en, he revives Hubert, Marie strangles the British diplomat, and Jean-Baptiste is finally let out of jail. Hubert comes back to the Desouche house, looking like a Zombie made of different body parts from different corpses. When he sees Mother sleeping it becomes apparent that it is not Hubert at all but Angus dwelling in the mangled body. Mother is revived upon seeing him, and a gas leak explosion destroys the house. Aline flies out the window with Grace. After the explosion, Jean-Baptiste sees his family from a distance, Grandfather and Marie, Mother and Father, Uncle and the ruined house. He realizes that he has lost all of his writing, but understands that he can now start again. And so the book ends as it begins "Montreal, an island..."

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

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Ishmael

By Barbara Hambly

Grim the Collier of Croydon

By J. T.

The Grand Gennaro

No Author Listed

The Passion According to G.H.

By Clarice Lispector

House of Sand and Fog

By Andre Dubus

The Janitor's Boy

By Andrew Clements

Suicide Circle: The Complete Edition

By Sion Sono

Men of Bronze

By Scott Oden

L

No Author Listed

Bee Season: A Novel

By Myla Goldberg

The Big Orange Splot

By Daniel Pinkwater

Black Bird

No Author Listed