The book opens with scenes of astonishing opulence, beginning with Renée and Maxime lazing in a luxurious horse-drawn carriage, very slowly leaving a Parisian park (the Bois de Boulogne) in the 19th century-equivalent of a traffic jam. It is made clear very early on that these are staggeringly wealthy characters not subject to the cares faced by the public; they arrive at their mansion and spend hours being dressed by their servants prior to hosting a banquet attended by some of the richest people in Paris. There seems to be almost no continuity between this scene and the end of the previous novel, until the second chapter begins and Zola reveals that this opulent scene takes place almost fourteen years later. Zola then rewinds time to pick up the story practically minutes after La Fortune des Rougon ended. Following Eugene Rougon''s rise to political power in Paris in La Fortune, his younger brother Aristide, featured in the first novel as a talentless journalist, a comic character unable to commit himself unequivocally to the imperial cause and thus left out in the cold when the rewards were being handed out, decides to follow Eugene to Paris to help himself to the wealth and power he now believes to be his birthright. Eugene promises to help Aristide achieve these things on the condition that he stay out of his way and change his surname to avoid the possibility of bad publicity from Aristide''s escapades rubbing off on Eugene and damaging his political chances. Aristide chooses the surname Saccard and Eugene gets him a seemingly mundane job at the city planning permission office. The renamed Saccard soon realises that, far from the disappointment he thought the job would be, he is actually in a position to gain insider information on the houses and other buildings that are to be demolished to build Paris''s bold new system of boulevards. Knowing that the owners of these properties ordered to be demolished by the city government were compensated handsomely, Saccard contrives to borrow money in order to buy up these properties before their status becomes public and then make massive profits. Saccard is at first unable to get the money to make his initial investments but then his wife falls victim to a terminal illness. Even while she lies dying in the next room, Saccard (in a brilliant scene of breathtaking callousness) is already making arrangements to marry rich girl Renée, who is pregnant and whose family wishes to avoid scandal by offering a huge dowry to any man who will marry her and claim the baby as his own. Saccard accepts and his career in speculation is born. He sends his youngest daughter back home to Plassans and packs his older son Maxime off to a Parisian boarding school; we meet Maxime again when he leaves school several years later and meets his new stepmother Renée, who is only a couple of years older. The flashback complete, the rest of the novel takes place after Saccard has made his fortune, against the backdrop of his luxurious mansion and his profligacy and is concerned with a three-cornered plot of sexual and political intrigue. Renée and Maxime begin a semi-incestuous love affair, which Saccard suspects but appears to tolerate, perhaps due to the commercial nature of his marriage to Renée. Saccard is trying to get Renée to part with the deeds to her family home, which would be worth millions but which she refuses to give up. The novel continues in this vein with the tensions continuing to mount and culminates in a series of bitter observations by Zola on the hypocrisy and immorality of the nouveau riche. A near-penniless journalist at the time of writing La Curée, Zola himself had no experience of the scenes he describes. In order to counter this lack, he toured a large number of stately homes around France, taking copious notes on subjects like architecture, ladies'' and men''s fashions, jewellery, garden design, greenhouse plants (a seduction scene takes place in Saccard''s hothouse), carriages, mannerisms, servants'' liveries; these notes (volumes of which are preserved) were time well spent, as many contemporary observers praised the novel for its realism. Roger Vadim updated the setting to modern-day Paris in a movie adaptation by Jean Cau, starring Jane Fonda, Michel Piccoli and Peter McEnery in 1966. The film was released in English-speaking markets as The Game is Over.

La Curée

Martin, the main character, is supposed to be writing a book. He finds himself invited to dinner at the house of a repellent and warring couple, on whom the land and property they own seems entirely wasted. Martin happens on a painting which he takes to be by Brueghel. Painstaking research leads him (via a full scale reassessment of the interpretation of the five surviving pictures in Brueghel''s The Months) to identify the picture as the missing sixth picture of Brueghel''s famous book of hours. Meantime his wife, (an actual art historian whereas he is only peripherally connected with the scholarly art world), and their baby live in a cottage and he fears his wife eyes him with increasing disdain as, instead of working on his book, he pursues the Breughel data. Martin has to fake the promise of an affair with the woman of the house to get hold of the picture, and indulge in a series of implausible transactions in other pictures to keep his access to the Brueghel open. Once he gets it, his troubles have only begun. Finally, as he is about to succeed in taking it to a safe place and secure his fortune, he crashes the old Landrover and the picture goes up in smoke. You never do find out whether it was actually a Breughel or not.

Headlong

As a teenager, Mort had a personality and temperament that made him rather unsuited to the family farming business. Mort''s father, named Lezek, felt that Mort thought too much, which prevented him from achieving anything practical. Thus, Lezek took him to a local hiring fair, hoping that Mort would land an apprenticeship with some tradesman; not only would this provide a job for his son, but it would also make his son''s propensity towards thinking someone else''s problem. At the job fair, Mort at first has no luck attracting the interest of an employer. Then, just before the stroke of midnight, a man concealed in a black cloak arrives on a white horse. He says he is looking for a young man to assist him in his work and selects Mort for the job. The man turns out to be Death, and Mort is given an apprenticeship in ushering souls into the next world (though his father thinks he''s been apprenticed to an undertaker). When it is a princess'' time to die (according to a preconceived reality), Mort, instead of ushering her soul, saves her from death, dramatically altering a part of the Discworld''s reality. However, the princess, for whom Mort has a developing infatuation, does not have long to live, and he must try to save her, once again, from a seemingly unstoppable death. Both the princess and Mort end up consulting the local wizard, Igneous Cutwell, for various methods of assistance with the crisis. As Mort begins to do most of Death''s "Duty", he loses some of his former character traits, and essentially starts to become more like Death himself. Death, in turn, yearns to relish what being human is truly like and travels to Ankh-Morpork to indulge in new experiences and attempt to feel real human emotion. Conclusively, Mort must duel Death for Mort''s freedom. Though Death wins the duel, he spares Mort''s life and sends him back to the Disc. The princess is saved from a second death when the alternate reality Mort created is reduced to a pearl-like state. This pearl is given to Mort for safe-keeping. At the end of the novel, Mort marries Ysabell, Death''s adopted daughter.

Mort

The novel is set in the near future (2034–2080), after the solar system has been surrounded by an impenetrable shield (constructed by either aliens or extra-solar humans) known as the Bubble. The Bubble permits no light to enter the solar system, and as a consequence the stars can no longer be seen. This seems to be mere background at first, but in fact it is central to the plot. In the novel a physical process in the human brain is responsible for collapsing quantum wavefunctions representing systems into particular eigenstates. Human observations of the universe were reducing its diversity and potentiality (for instance, by rendering it uninhabitable to beings that relied on stars being something other than the enormous nuclear fusion-powered furnaces human astronomers have observed them to be). Hence it is suggested that the Bubble was constructed to prevent humanity from wreaking massive destruction on the rest of the universe through the process of mere observation. In the course of the novel, the situation is further complicated when human researchers discover a way of modifying the brain to provide conscious control over the process, allowing people to suspend wavefunction collapse at will, and to choose which state the wavefunction will collapse to. This allows a person to choose how any nondeterministic event (such as flipping a coin) will turn out, provided that he is not being observed by anyone who is still involuntarily collapsing wavefunctions. This is used to perform a variety of low-probability tricks, such as tunneling through locked doors or getting past guards who happen to all be looking the other way as the person passes. The novel contains ideas not related to quantum mechanics. Of particular note is the fact that people habitually download software to run in their brains. Such "neural mods" (whose titles are always given in boldface, such as Sentinel or P3) are installed by insufflating several drops of fluid carrying genetically modified microorganisms, which in turn carry nanomachines capable of rewiring nerve cells. The story''s narrator accepts a case to investigate the disappearance of a woman from a psychiatric Institute, which leads him to the Ensemble. This is an organization that is developing a wavefunction collapse inhibitor neural mod, the "eigenstate mod". This mod allows the user to stop being an observer in the sense of quantum mechanics and consequently to "smear", i.e. to exist in a superposition of different states at the same time and to pick eigenstates of personal preference from the range of possible states, when the personal wavefunction is collapsed. He is put under the control of the Ensemble by the forced installation of a "loyalty mod" in his brain which makes loyal support for the organization his highest goal. The narrator meets a group of other Ensemble loyalists (the Canon) who have discovered that their keepers have failed to specify exactly what they are to be loyal to (except by its name) and consequently, being its most loyal members, start to define what the Ensemble is themselves. The narrator, working with the Canon, then proceeds to steal the eigenstate mod. A rogue member of the Canon infects all of humanity with the software. (Normally, neither the microorganisms nor the nanomachines involved in installing neural mods can survive long outside the human body, but in this case the rogue scientist uses the eigenstate-control mod to modify their properties.) As a result, causality is weakened all over the globe, and the untrained humans, not knowing what to do with their newfound freedom, break down the fabric of reality as the stars suddenly reappear in the sky then turn into an almost blinding flash as the heavens fill with lights and possibilities undreamed of... Then things suddenly are back to normal (less the loyalty mod) and two main characters debrief each other on a park bench, trying to understand how the "smeared" humanity was able to control events BEFORE people were all infected with the eigen-mod and WHY the "smeared" humanity chose to return the world to normal (one theory put forward is that they reached the edge of the bubble, had a nice chat with the aliens and decided to go home and enjoy life as it was).

Quarantine

The story is written from the perspective of young Oxford graduate and aspiring poet Nicholas Urfe, who takes up with Alison Kelly, an Australian girl he meets at a party in London. To get away from an increasingly serious relationship with her, Nicholas accepts a post teaching English at the Lord Byron School in the Greek island of Phraxos. Bored, depressed, disillusioned, and overwhelmed by the Mediterranean island, Nicholas struggles with loneliness and contemplates suicide. Finding himself habitually walking the isle, he stumbles upon the estate, and soon the person of, wealthy Greek recluse Maurice Conchis, who may or may not have collaborated with the Nazis during World War II. Nicholas is gradually drawn into Conchis'' psychological games, his paradoxical views on life, his mysterious persona, and his eccentric masques. At first, these various aspects of what the novel terms the "godgame" seem to Nicholas to be a joke but, as they grow more elaborate and intense, Nicholas''s ability to determine what is real and what is artifice vanishes. Against his will and knowledge, he becomes a performer in the godgame and realizes that the reenactments of the Nazi occupation, the absurd playlets after de Sade, and the obscene parodies of Greek myths are not about Conchis'' life, but his own.

The Magus

May Norman and Ethel arrive at the summer house, finding it in need of repairs. There are hints that Norman is having problems with his memory. June Norman makes a nominal effort to find a job in the classified ads, to Ethel''s chagrin. The mailman, Charlie, stops by and reminisces about the Thayer''s daughter, Chelsea, whom he used to date. A letter arrives from Chelsea saying that she is coming from California with her boyfriend Bill to celebrate Norman''s 80th birthday. It becomes clearer that Norman is struggling with memory loss, as he continues to forget names and places that should be familiar. July Chelsea arrives with Billy Ray and his 13-year-old son, Billy Ray Jr. Chelsea asks her parents if Billy Jr. can stay with them while she and Billy go to Europe. Norman (a bit reluctantly) and Ethel agree to keep Billy Jr. August Norman and Billy Jr. have become friends, and spend much of their time fishing. Chelsea returns, and reveals that she and Billy are now married. Ethel shows her impatience with Chelsea''s habit of bitterly harping on the past. Chelsea confronts her father about their troubled relationship, and the two have a reconciliation. September Norman and Ethel are packing to leave for the winter. Chelsea calls, and they agree to go visit her in California. Norman seems to suffer a heart attack, (whilst picking up a box of his mother-in-law''s heavy china) but recovers, and the pair leave their home along Golden Pond.

On Golden Pond

The novel continues the events that happened on From the Highlands, and is set over the background of the fight against genetic slavery. The story begins after the truce between Manticore and Haven. Captain Zilwicki, his adopted daughter Berry, Princess Ruth Winton and the slave-turned-professor W.E.B. Du Havel are sent as Queen Elizabeth III''s (not the Manticoran government''s) official representatives to the funeral of a notorious Solarian anti-slavery activist, which will take place in Erewhon, a disgruntled member of the Manticoran Alliance. Erewhon''s location between Manticore, Haven and the Solarian League makes it a place where agents from the different star nations can play the intelligence game. From the first moment, Zilwicki, Berry and Ruth get entangled in a complex situation involving Havenite agents, ambitious Solarian Navy officers, violent Masadan mercenaries, the Audubon Ballroom and the powerful Mesan corporation Manpower Incorporated. Each faction has interests of its own, which collide with those of the others: the Manticorans want to salvage their relation with Erewhon (and upset the Prime Minister who allowed that relationship to sour). The Havenites intend to show support for the anti-slavery cause and improve their own relationship with Erewhon, with the unstated goal of breaking Erewhon away from Manticore. The Erewhonese want someone&nbsp;— anyone&nbsp;— to help them deal with a Mesan-owned planet which is a threat to their security. The Solarian officers work to further the interests of a powerful political patron who believes that the League is on the verge of collapse and wants to be prepared for that event. The Mesans want to stay out of the limelight and prevent all the other factions from attacking their major industry: slave trading, while the Audubon Ballroom simply wants to hit Mesa anywhere they can. And even the Masadan mercenaries employed by the Mesans have their own agenda: to force Manticore to free several of their imprisoned companions. The clash of interests comes to a head with an attempted kidnapping on Berry Zilwicki and Ruth Winton (who happens to be the sister of the leader of the Masadan mercenaries) aboard The Wages of Sin, Erewhon''s main civilian space station. After Manpower''s involvement is discovered, a haphazard alliance between the Manticorans, Solarians, Havenites and the Ballroom is organized to launch an attack on the Mesan-owned planet Verdant Vista, popularly known as "Congo". The planet is taken from Manpower''s hands, and it is decided to transform it into an independent nation of its own for escaped slaves, so that the conflict against Mesa may have a nation sponsoring it. The novel ends with Berry Zilwicki being crowned as Berry I, Queen of the new Kingdom of Torch.

Crown of Slaves

Miss Temptation''s real name is Susanna, and she lives in a small room above a fire house, in a little town with a theater, in which she hopes to make her acting debut. Susanna is beautiful, exciting, and every man''s dream. To those who gather in the country store to see her make her daily "entrance", she brings a rainbow to a dreary world. However, to Norman Fuller, a shy and lonely young man, her beauty is too much to bear. In an angry outburst at her, precipitated by years of rejection and hurt feelings from the female sex, he takes out his frustration against all pretty young women. However, neither Fuller nor anyone else had realized just how fragile and vulnerable Susanna really is. She is alone in a new town, and no man her age will even go out of their way to be nice to her. Emotionally shattered by Fuller''s outburst, Susanna decides to move out of her apartment, but on the day she is to leave, Fuller arrives at her door. After an emotionally draining conversation, Susanna forgives Fuller for his hurtful words, and the two end the night on friendlier terms.

Miss Temptation

The book chronicles a three-week fishing trip through central Nova Scotia, and is an excellent account of the unspoiled Nova Scotia wilderness that existed at the time, which has been largely diminished since. The group encounters moose (which Eddie tries to capture and bring back alive), beaver, and numerous trout, the first of which is now very scarce in the region, and legions of mosquitos, moose flies, black flies, noseeums, and midges, all of which are regrettably abundant to this day. Many of the areas described in the book, then virtually unexplored and uncharted, are now well known to back-country campers in Kejimkujik Park and the Tobeatic Wilderness Area. The descriptions of the central Nova Scotia woods contained in the book are beautifully written and uncannily accurate, and while the trout which brought Paine and Breck to Nova Scotia are less abundant, due in part to acid rain and increased fishing pressure, they still provide good sport for anglers. http://www.troutnovascotia.ca/issues.htm http://www.ilec.or.jp/database/nam/nam-56.html Paine, a wealthy New England socialite, initially had some difficulties with the lack of modern amenities in camp life, but soon came to love the rugged beauty and solitude of the woods. As advice to other potential campers, he has this to offer: "...if you are willing to get wet and stay wet - to get cold and stay cold - to be bruised, and scuffed, and bitten - to be hungry and thirsty, and to have your muscles strained and sore from unusual taxation: if you will welcome all these things, not once, but many times, for the sake of moments of pure triumph and that larger luxury which comes with the comfort of the camp and the conquest of the wilderness, then go! The wilderness will welcome you, and teach you, and take you to its heart. And you will find your own soul there; and the discovery will be worth while!"

The Tent Dwellers

Maria, a young girl from a remote village of Brazil, with innocent brushes with love failures at an early adolescent stage and hatred for love goes to seek her fortune in Switzerland, only to find that reality is a lot harder than she expected. After working in a nightclub as a samba dancer for a brief period, she realizes that this is not what she wants. After a heated discussion with her manager one night, she storms out and begins to look for a career in modeling. After a long unsuccessful search for a position in that field, and as she starts running out of money, she engages herself for 1000 francs for "one night" with an Arab man. Delighted with the easy money and after compromising with her soul she lands in a brothel on Rue de Berne, the heart of Geneva''s red-light district... There she befriends Nyah who gives her advice on her "new profession" and after learning the tricks of the trade from Milan, the brothel owner, she enters the job with her body and mind shutting all doors for love and keeps her heart open only for her diary. Quickly she becomes quite successful and famous and her colleagues begin to envy her. Months pass and Maria grows into a professionally groomed prostitute who not only relaxes her clients'' mind, but also calms their soul by talking to them about their problems. Her world turns upside down when she meets Ralf, a young Swiss painter, who sees her "inner light". Maria falls in love with him immediately and begins to experience what true love is (according to the author, it is a sense of being for someone without actually possessing him/her). Maria is now torn between her sexual fantasies and true love for Ralf. Eventually she decides that it is time for her to leave Geneva with her memory of Ralf, because she realizes that they are worlds apart. But before leaving, she decides to rekindle the dead sexual fire in Ralf and learns from him about the nature of Sacred Sex, sex which is mingled with true love and which involves the giving up of one''s soul for the loved one. This book explores the sacred nature of sex. "Eleven minutes" describes the duration of sex. Also, it depicts two types of prostitution: prostitution for money and sacred prostitution. There are also direct references to sadomasochism. The story is of Maria''s journey to find what true love is by letting her own life guide her. She enters a life that leads her down the path of sexual awakening and almost leads to her self-destruction when she is introduced to all sides of sexual experience. When she has given up hope to find true love, she finds her true "inner light" and her everlasting true love.

Eleven Minutes

When Sol persuades almost all of ShadowClan to give up belief in StarClan, Tawnypelt takes her kits Flamepaw, Tigerpaw, and Dawnpaw to ThunderClan, hoping to find refuge there until Blackstar and ShadowClan see the light and return to believing in StarClan. In hope of helping ShadowClan, Raggedstar and Runningnose beg Jaypaw to help. Jaypaw, along with Tigerpaw, Flamepaw, Dawnpaw, Hollyleaf and Lionblaze, creates a fake sign from StarClan to show Blackstar StarClan is real. Blackstar is still not convinced until the fake sign turns real when Raggedstar and Runningnose come to tell Blackstar to get rid of Sol and to still believe in StarClan. Blackstar is convinced and tells his Clan. Soon Tawnypelt takes her kits back to ShadowClan, but greencough breaks out and Millie and Briarkit (one of Millie''s and Graystripe''s kits) are the first victims. Soon, the ThunderClan leader, Firestar, catches the sickness as well. The disease continues to spread through the Clan and Firestar comes up with the idea to temporarily shelter the sick cats in the abandoned Twoleg nest, then later loses his sixth life. The Clan is short of catmint: in the battle with WindClan, cats trampled and killed the supply. Jaypaw has a dream telling where there is a fresh supply: in WindClan territory. However, in one dream, he somehow goes back to the time of Fallen Leaves'' tribe as a young sharpclaw (warrior) called Jay''s Wing. The Tribe is being threatened by Twoleg expansion and votes to move to the mountains. Jaypaw suddenly realizes that this Tribe becomes the Tribe of Rushing Water and they originated from the Clan''s current lake home. When he returns to the Clans, he asks Lionblaze to fetch the catmint. Lionblaze refuses because of dreams where he kills Heatherpaw in the tunnels, but as the greencough gets worse, he finally goes. Lionblaze gets the catmint and gives it to Jaypaw, but not without a tension-filled encounter with Heatherpaw, now called Heathertail. Soon the Clan is healed and Jaypaw finally receives his full medicine cat name, Jayfeather. Then, during a storm, the camp catches fire. Jayfeather, Lionblaze, Hollyleaf, and Squirrelflight are trapped. Squirrelflight makes it through the flames and drags a stick through in an attempt to save her kits, but needs some help. Ashfur leaps in and drags it all the way through. Just as Lionblaze leaps on, though, Ashfur blocks the way. Squirrelflight begs him to let them through, but Ashfur tells her and the other three that he never forgave her after she left him for Brambleclaw. He also reveals that he was the one who helped Hawkfrost set the trap for Firestar to show her the pain of losing a loved one as he had lost her. He said that he will now kill her kits in another attempt to hurt her. Squirrelflight then reveals a crucial secret: that he cannot hurt her that way because they are not her kits. She explains how she kept the secret from Brambleclaw and the whole of ThunderClan. Ashfur lets them live, but he threatens to tell her secret, and she is shocked that Ashfur would betray her like this. Knowing this, Jayfeather, Hollyleaf and Lionblaze realize they are not the Three since they are not the kin of Firestar. The fire burns out and all the cats help get the camp set up again. Three days before the Gathering, Ashfur asks Firestar if he can go. Hollyleaf Lionblaze, Jayfeather, and Squirrelflight are worried that he is going to publicly announce their secret. Between then and the day of the Gathering, the three warn Ashfur that he will regret it if he reveals the secret. Although he is frightened, he refuses to listen to them. Right before the Gathering, the patrol of warriors going notices that both Ashfur and Squirrelflight are missing. Squirrelflight later shows up, wet and muddy, and explains that she was looking for herbs for Leafpool by the border near ShadowClan and fell into the stream. On the way to the Gathering, they see Ashfur''s body lying in the WindClan stream as if he had drowned. They take him back to camp and set him for vigil. Leafpool notices a slit in his neck, suggesting he was murdered. After the Gathering, Firestar announces that Ashfur''s death was unknown and suspects a cat from ThunderClan may have killed him, and the three see Squirrelflight looking scared and holding her breath. The three vow to keep the recent events involving them, Squirrelflight, and Ashfur a secret.

Long Shadows

In this book we return to Susannah (Suze) Simon''s life. Suze is going back to high school and on the first day, she meets Paul Slater from book 4, The Darkest Hour, whom she met during the summer. At home, Suze meets Neil Jankow, a friend of Jake''s, and also meets Neil''s brother''s ghost, Craig Jankow. Suze learns that Craig died from a catamaran accident and that Craig strongly believes that Neil should have been the one who dies. Afterwards, Paul tells Suze to come to his house by telling her about that they were more than just a mediator. At his house, Suze learns that they are "shifters" but soon afterwards, Paul abruptly kisses her. Suze runs away mad and finds Neil. Neil drives her home but during the trip, Craig takes over the wheel nearly killing Neil and Suze. Back at school, Suze learns from Father Dominic that Jesse, Suze''s crush, will be leaving her and will be going to the rectory. After Suze learns this, she becomes extremely mad at Jesse and believes that he never loved her. Later during the week, Suze''s stepbrother, Brad, hosts a hot-tub party at the house. During the party, Jesse learns that Paul had kissed Suze and tries to kill him. In order to end the fight, Suze drags Paul and unknowingly takes Craig to the spirit world. At the spirit world, Craig opens a door and disappears going to his "future." After Craig leaves, Paul tries to make a deal to Suze stating that he tell her about being more than a mediator and not hurting Jesse if Suze agrees to spend time with him. Suze agrees to what Paul makes, so she can protect Jesse. After they revisit the party, Paul goes to the hospital after being beat up by Jesse. At the feast of Father Serra, Dr. Slaski, the grandfather of Paul, visits Suze and tells her not to listen to what Paul tells her. After hearing this, Suze runs to the mission''s cemetery and there, she meets Jesse once again. Soon afterwards, she learns that Jesse truly is in love with her and always has been. The story ends with Suze overjoyed with happiness and kissing Jesse.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

La Curée

By Émile Zola

Headlong

No Author Listed

Mort

By Terry Pratchett

Quarantine

By Greg Egan

The Magus

By John Fowles

On Golden Pond

By Ernest Thompson

Crown of Slaves

By Eric Flint

Miss Temptation

By Kurt Vonnegut

The Tent Dwellers

By Albert Bigelow Paine

Eleven Minutes

By Paulo Coelho

Long Shadows

By Erin Hunter

Haunted

By Meg Cabot