The opening scene of Skinny Legs finds newlyweds, Ellen Cherry Charles and Randolph "Boomer" Petway III, driving cross-country in an Airstream that has been welded into the shape of a giant turkey by Cherry''s betrothed. During her journey to seek freedom as an artist, Cherry loses precious objects and observes Boomer attain greater artistic recognition. Through a metaphorical belly dancer, Skinny Legs and All confronts the veils of society; and the pain, pleasure and freedom derived as they are lifted. Irony, opposites and parallels, in relationships, art, artists, sex, politics and religion expose the danger of deeper issues in humanity; regarding outmoded gender and cultural roles and rituals, insecurity, guilt, indulgence, gluttony, occultism, war, violence, hypocrisy, greed, and psychosis. The reader is introduced to an array of off-beat and whimsical characters, including the estranged couple of artist/waitress Ellen Cherry and welder/accidental artist Randolph "Boomer" Petway; Spike Cohen and Roland Abu Hadee (a Jew and an Arab who co-own a Middle-Eastern restaurant across from the UN building in New York); fundamentalist preacher Buddy Winkler; a doe-eyed belly dancer named Salome; Detective Jackie Shaftoe; Raoul Ritz, the libidinous doorman turned rock star; pretentious art gallery owner Ultima Sommerville; a mysterious performance artist known as Turn Around Norman; and Verlin and Patsy Charles, Ellen Cherry''s parents. A host of inanimate objects (Can o'' Beans, Dirty Sock, Spoon, Painted Stick and Conch Shell) also play a key role in the novel, and even biblical "harlot" Jezebel and Dan Quayle make cameo appearances.

Skinny Legs and All

Sergeant Doakes, a detective in Homicide, has grown suspicious of Dexter and begun tailing him in his free time, making it impossible for Dexter to investigate (and perhaps kill) someone he suspects of complicity in the abduction, pornographic molestation and murder of a series of young boys. When an unknown man is found bizarrely mutilated, Doakes recognizes the work of a torturer nicknamed "Doctor Danco" (after a brand of knives), who served with Doakes during the Salvadoran Civil War and has come to Miami to take revenge on his former comrades. Danco drugs his victims with painkillers and psychotropics and, over a period of several days, surgically removes their limbs, genitalia, lips, tongue and eyelids, before leaving them to contemplate themselves in a carefully placed mirror. Dexter is drawn into the case when Danco abducts his sister Deborah''s new boyfriend, detective Kyle Chutsky. Amidst all the chaos, Dexter finds himself accidentally engaged to his girlfriend Rita. He perceives a "dark passenger" similar to his own in Rita''s children Astor and Cody, and looks forward to teaching them as his foster-father had taught him. At the climax of the story, Dexter learns that Danco''s murder ritual includes a word game resembling hangman. Each victim is asked to guess a word chosen for them by Danco, each wrong answer – or unintelligible answer, after removal of the tongue – resulting in the amputation of a body part. cs:Drasticky dojemný Dexter es:Querido Dexter fr:Le Passager noir it:Il nostro caro Dexter lt:Dearly Devoted Dexter pl:Dekalog dobrego Dextera pt:Dearly Devoted Dexter ru:Добрый друг Декстер simple:Dearly Devoted Dexter fi:Dexterin kolkko kutsumus

Dearly Devoted Dexter

Senator Decius Metellus has returned from his military expedition to Cyprus, having concluded a successful campaign against local pirates and gathered enough booty to pay off his outstanding debts and finance his campaign for praetor. He is campaigning in the Forum when a young aristocrat loudly denounces him for alleged fraud and theft while in office on Cyprus, and boldly threatening to prosecute him for said acts. A minor scuffle breaks out, before the young man is dragged away. Later, the young man is found gruesomely murdered, and suspicion falls on Decius. To his consternation, his family inform him that, although the charges are unlikely to stick, they can nevertheless delay his election for at least a year. Decius, thinking hard, realizes that the young man may have been a virtual nobody, but could recite a pedigree that would virtually guarantee him popular support - claiming descent from Scipio Africanus and the Gracchi, among others. This means that the young man was likely the figurehead of a conspiracy. The exact aim of the conspiracy is unclear, but Decius reasons that someone must be aiming at reducing the Caecilia Metelli''s voting bloc in the Senate (as Decius concedes, he himself is not that important). Decius consults Sallustius, who gives him a small lecture about the Republic''s political landscape: for generations, the great aristocratic families of Rome have been slowly shrinking, more dependent on adoption to sustain their numbers, and gradually losing their hold on the highest offices of state which they consider to be their birthright. Now, with Caesar''s power, wealth, and popularity growing on a daily basis, these aristocrats are being pushed to increasingly desperate lengths. Sallust confides that he was a guest at several dinner parties at which schemes were discussed to seize control of the State; the young man was to have been the figurehead, and popular support was supposed to have been further mobilized by proposing a mass cancellation of debts. Of course, Sallust dismissed the scheme as hare-brained.

A Point of Law

When Enrique is five years old, his mother, Juanita, leaves Honduras to find a job the United States. The move allows her to send money back home to Enrique so he can go to school past the third grade. Lourdes promises Enrique she will return quickly. But she struggles in America. Years pass. He begs for his mother to come back. Without her, he becomes lonely and troubled. When she calls, Lourdes tells him to be patient. Enrique despairs of ever seeing him again. After eleven years apart, he decides he will go find her. Enrique sets off alone from Tegucigalpa, with little more than a slip of paper bearing his mother’s North Carolina telephone number. Without money, he will make the dangerous and illegal trek up the length of Mexico the only way he can–clinging to the sides and tops of freight trains. With gritty determination and a deep longing to be by his mother’s side, Enrique travels through hostile, unknown worlds. Each step of the way through Mexico, he and other migrants, many of them children, are hunted like animals. Gangsters control the tops of the trains. Bandits rob and kill migrants up and down the tracks. Corrupt cops all along the route are out to fleece and deport them. To evade Mexican police and immigration authorities, they must jump onto and off the moving boxcars they call El Tren de la Muerte–The Train of Death. Enrique pushes forward using his wit, courage, and hope–and the kindness of strangers. It is an epic journey, one thousands of immigrant children make each year to find their mothers in the United States.

Enrique''s Journey

The book covers the planning, execution and aftermath of what became known as The Great Escape. Other escape attempts (such as the Wooden Horse) are mentioned as well as the postwar hunt for the Gestapo agents who murdered fifty of the escapees on Hitler''s direct order. Much of the book is focused on Royal Air Force Squadron Leader Roger Bushell, also known as "Big X", including his capture, early escape attempts, and planning of the escape. All the major participants and their exploits are described by Brickhill. Among these are Tim Walenn, the principal forger, who ''gave his factory the code name of "Dean and Dawson", after a British travel agency''; Al Hake, the compass maker; Des Plunkett, the ingenious chief map tracer, who made a mimeograph for reproducing maps; and Tommy Guest, who ran a team of tailors. Major John Dodge, who was related to Winston Churchill, was one of the escapees. The German officers and guards (called ''goons'' by the prisoners) included teams of ''ferrets'' who crawled about under the huts looking for signs of tunnels. They were carefully watched by teams of POW ''stooges'', one of whom was Paul Brickhill, ''boss of a gang of "stooges" guarding the forgers''. In the end, seventy-six men escaped. Seventy-three were recaptured and fifty of those were shot by the Gestapo. Four of the remaining twenty-three later tunnelled out of Sachsenhausen, but were recaptured and chained to the floor of their cells. One of them, Major John Dodge, was released to secure a cease-fire. The book is dedicated "to the fifty". In the aftermath of the escape, according to Brickhill, 5,000,000 Germans spent time looking for the prisoners, many of them full time for weeks.

The Great Escape

The novel is set during the Allied occupation of the Italian coastal town of Adano in 1943. The main character, Major Victor Joppolo, is the temporary administrator of the town during the occupation, and is often referred to by the people of Adano as Mister Major. Joppolo is an idealistic Italian-American who wants to bring justice and compassion to Adano, which has been hardened by the authoritarian Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini. When Major Joppolo arrives at Adano, he immediately asks the people of the town what they need the most. The first spokesman of the town tells Joppolo that they are in great need of food for some people have not eaten in days. The second spokesman of the town argues that the town''s immediate necessity is a new bell. Joppolo is touched by the story of a 700 year old bell that was taken away from the town by the Fascists. Mussolini had ordered that the bell be removed from the town and be melted to make weapons for the war. The people were greatly attached to the bell. To them, the bell was a source of pride and unity. Joppolo immediately sees the importance of the bell and makes persistent attempts to locate the bell. In addition to finding the bell, Joppolo spends time trying to supply the town with food and other basic necessities. He soon discovers that the town has no fish because the fishermen have not gone out in months. When he speaks to Tomasino, the leader of the fishermen, Joppolo finds out that this is because the fisherman were forced to pay ''protection'' money to the corrupt Fascist government simply to go out fishing. Joppolo tells Tomasino that he will not have to pay any bribes or extra taxes to the Americans for fishing. At first, Tomasino is convinced that Joppolo is lying to him and that it is some sort of cruel trick. Tomasino hates persons of authority because he believes that they are all power-hungry and corrupt. It takes extensive persuading and a visit to the authoritarian Lieutenant Livingston''s office to convince Tomasino that Joppolo''s intentions are good and that his only want is for the people of Adano to have fish. Joppolo is faced with another problem in which he had to countermand the order of General Marvin in order to do what was best for the town. General Marvin is an army general who happens to pass through Adano. All day his armored car has been slowed down by mule carts that are blocking the road. Finally, on the road to Adano, he loses his temper and orders that his men shoot a mule that refuses move from the center of the road. When General Marvin arrived at Adano, he orders Major Joppolo to keep all mule carts out of the town. Joppolo is disheartened but complies with the order. Immediately, he calls for a meeting with all the officials of the town and tells them of the new order, but also that he is prepared to find a solution. The next day, Joppolo decides that countermanding General Marvin''s order is more important than his own position as mayor of the town; therefore he tells the people of Adano that they may bring their carts into the town (among other things, the town has no source of water without the carts). Later in the novel, Joppolo gains the admiration of Lieutenant Livingston and the Lieutenant invites Joppolo to come have a drink with some of his navy buddies. While there, Joppolo tells them of the town''s need for a bell. Commander Robertson realizes that they might have exactly the bell that Adano needs, the USS Corelli. The arrival of the bell to the town coincides with a party that the town is hosting for Joppolo to express their gratitude for all of his great doings. Although the bell has arrived at the town, the engineers say that it will take them until the next morning to install it. At the same time Sergeant Borth, one of Major Joppolo''s aides, finds a note from General Marvin that says that Joppolo has been relieved of duty as administrator of Adano because he countermanded General Marvin''s order. Sergeant Borth tells Joppolo that he has been relieved from duty while they are at the party and hands Joppolo the order. The next morning, Joppolo leaves Adano, but does not say goodbye to anyone because he does not think he could. As the jeep is driving away, he tells the driver to stop for a moment. They hear the clear sound of a loud bell.

A Bell for Adano

Story is about the lives of a few people living in a small town north of Kingston, Ontario. Carl McKelvey, a "white trash male" as he describes himself, returns to the town after a three-year absence in the hope that he can live with his daughter again, and maybe even renew his relationship with his ex-wife, Chrissy. He carries deep in his heart his guilt of having driven his car into a tree, killing his mother, Elizabeth, many years ago. Elizabeth''s sudden death ended not only an unhappy marriage she had with William McKelvey, a failed farmer, but also a secret relationship she had with Adam Goldsmith, Carl''s real father. Elizabeth might have felt that the uncultured McKelvey ruined her life, or she might be too frightened to ruin her life herself by leaving him. In any case, her life has affected McKelvey, Adam and Carl so deeply that her influence is still felt eleven years later. When Carl is attacked by Fred (Chrissy''s boyfriend), Adam, even though reserved and gentle-natured, decides to do something for his son. Adam takes Fred in his car and drives him into the same tree that Elizabeth''s car crashed into eleven years earlier. Both Adam and Fred are killed instantly. Carl learns about his relationship with Adam in a letter Adam left for him.

Elizabeth and After

Player Piano is set in the future after a fictional third world war. During the war, while most Americans were fighting overseas, the nation''s managers and engineers faced a depleted work force, and responded by developing ingenious automated systems that allowed the factories to operate with only a few workers. The novel begins ten years after the war, when most factory workers have been replaced by machines. The bifurcation of the population is represented by the division of Ilium into "The Homestead", where everyone who is neither a manager or engineer lives, and the other side of the river, where all the engineers and managers lives. Player Piano develops two parallel plot lines that converge only briefly, and insubstantially so, at the beginning and the end of the novel. The more prominent plot line follows the protagonist, Dr. Paul Proteus (hither to referred to as Paul), an intelligent, thirty-five-year-old factory manager of Ilium Works. The ancillary plot line follows the American tour of the Shah of Bratpuhr, a spiritual leader of six million residents in a distant, underdeveloped nation. The purpose of the two plot lines is to give two perspectives of the system: one from an insider who is emblematic of the system, and one from an outsider who is looking in. Paul, for all intents and purposes, is the living embodiment of what a man within the system should strive to be, while the Shah is a visitor from a very different culture, and therefore applies a very different context to happenings he sees on his tour. The main plot line follows the metamorphosis of Paul from being within the system to being against the system. At the beginning of the novel, Paul displays a sense of dissatisfaction with the industrial system and his contribution to society. Symbolically, he reflects on his colleagues'' desire to destroy an old building, once a part of Edison''s factory, which he saves and instead keeps it alive to store new machinery. Looking for salvation from a yet unknown plight, he gets a knock at his door, figuratively speaking, and Ed Finnerty, an old friend whom Paul has always held in high regard, informs him he has quit his important engineer job in Washington D.C. Paul and Finnerty visit a bar in the "Homestead" section of town, where workers who have been displaced by machines live out their meaningless lives in mass-produced houses. There, they meet an Episcopal minister, named Lasher, with an M.A. in anthropology, who puts into words the unfairness of the system that the two engineers have only vaguely sensed. They soon learn that Lasher is the leader of a rebel group known as the "Ghost Shirt Society", and Finnerty instantly takes up with him. Paul is not bold enough to make a clean break, as Finnerty has done, until his superiors ask him to betray Finnerty and Lasher. He quits his job and is captured by the "Ghost Shirt Society;" he is forced to join as their leader but only in name. Paul''s father was the first "National, Industrial, Commercial Communications, Foodstuffs, and Resources Director"” As his lengthy title suggests, Dr. George Proetus has almost complete control over the nation’s economy and was more powerful than the President of the United States. Through his father''s success, Paul''s name is famous among the citizens, so the organization intends to use his name to their advantage by making him the false ''leader'' to gain publicity.

Player Piano

The central theme of the novel is time travel using a highway that links all times and all possible histories. Exits from the highway lead to different times and places. Changing events in the past cause some exits further up the road, in the future, to become overgrown and inaccessible and new exits to appear, leading to different alternative futures. The narrator and protagonist, Red Dorakeen, has vague memories of a place or time that is no longer accessible from the Road. He runs guns to the Greeks at Marathon, trying to recreate history as he remembers it in an attempt to open a new exit from the Road to his half-remembered place. The phrase "Last Exit to Babylon" was the manuscript title of the book and appears on the cover art; it was later used as a title for Volume Four in the Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny collection. All "One" chapters feature Red Dorakeen, and all "Two" chapters feature secondary characters. These are Red''s natural son Randy, newly introduced to the Road and tired of his old life in Ohio; a bevy of would-be assassins attempting to kill Red, some of whom are comic references to pulp characters, or real people (it is implied that Ambrose Bierce is writing a novel somewhere on the metaphysical highway) and Leila, a woman whose fate is bound to Red''s in mysterious and unexplained ways. The "One" storyline is fairly linear, but the "Two" storyline jumps around in time and sequence, first bringing in Randy and Leila without introduction, then later showing Randy''s introduction to the Road and meeting with Leila, who will/has just abandoned Red following an incident in the "One" timeline. Everything comes clear in the final chapter, however. There are a number of interesting humorous touches and allusions in the story. These include an ancient dragon who falls in love with a tyrannosaurus, a futuristic warrior robot left behind by aliens because it is malfunctioning and has now taken up pottery, a lost crusader who now works in a gas station located somewhere on the timeless road, occasionally asking his customers about the "current" status of the Holy Land, an ancient Sumerian who buries artifacts later to be found by himself as archaeologist, along with the brief appearances of pulp heroes such as Doc Savage and John Sunlight as well as real historical figures, including Jack the Ripper, Marquis de Sade and an angry Adolf Hitler (who is furiously searching for the place "where he won").

Roadmarks

Set at an bucolic Midwestern college known only as The-College-on-the-Hill, White Noise follows a year in the life of Jack Gladney, a professor who has made his name by pioneering the field of Hitler Studies (though he hasn''t taken German language lessons until this year). He has been married five times to four women and has a brood of children and stepchildren (Heinrich, Denise, Steffie, Wilder) with his current wife, Babette. Jack and Babette are both extremely afraid of death; they frequently wonder which of them will be the first to die. The first part of White Noise, called "Waves and Radiation," is a chronicle of contemporary family life combined with academic satire. There is little plot development in this section, which mainly serves as an introduction to the characters and themes that will dominate the rest of the book. For instance, the mysterious deaths of men in Mylex suits and the ashen, shaken survivors of a plane that went into free fall anticipate the catastrophe of the book''s second part. Outside of the family, another important character introduced here is Murray, another college professor, who frequently discusses his theories, which relate to the rest of the book. In the second part, "The Airborne Toxic Event," a chemical spill from a rail car releases a black noxious cloud over Jack''s home region, prompting an evacuation. Frightened by his exposure to the toxin, Gladney is forced to confront his mortality. An organization called SIMUVAC (short for "simulated evacuation") is also introduced in Part Two, an indication of simulations replacing reality. In part three of the book, "Dylarama," Gladney discovers that Babette has been cheating on him in order to gain access to a fictional drug called Dylar, an experimental treatment for the fear of death. The novel becomes a meditation on modern society''s fear of death and its obsession with chemical cures as Gladney seeks to obtain his own black market supply of Dylar. However, Dylar does not work for Babette, and it has many possible side effects, including losing the ability to "distinguish words from things, so that if someone said ''speeding bullet,'' I would fall to the floor to take cover." Jack continues to obsess over death. During a discussion about mortality, Murray hypothesizes that killing someone could perhaps alleviate the fear. Jack decides to test Murray''s theory by tracking down and killing the man who had given Dylar to Babette in exchange for sex. After a black comedy scene of Jack driving and rehearsing, in his head, several ways in which their encounter might proceed, he successfully locates and shoots Willie Mink, who is delirious from his own Dylar addiction. He then puts the gun in Willie''s hand to make the murder look like a suicide, but Willie then shoots Jack in the arm. Suddenly realizing the needless loss of life, Jack carries Willie to a hospital run by German nuns who do not believe in God or an afterlife. Having saved Willie, Jack returns home to watch his children sleep. The final chapter describes Wilder, Jack''s youngest child, riding a tricycle across the highway and miraculously surviving.

White Noise

We are introduced to Floyd Hubbard as his flight descends toward an airport in an unnamed, sunny and hot East coast beach city. Hubbard will be attending a convention as a representative of American General Machine (AGM). Fred “Freddy” Frick, local Assistant District Manager, is aware of Hubbard’s true reason for attending the convention. Frick decides to set up Hubbard in the hope that it will soften his report to the corporate office, and protect his job. Frick meets with Cory Barlund, an expensive and selective prostitute, and together they decide the best way to get to Hubbard would be for her to pose as a freelance writer doing a story on local conventions. She will seduce Hubbard, then “make some horribly slutty embarrassing scene in front of all the people he most wants not to know about his sneaky little romance,” and this, Frick hopes, will be enough to send Hubbard back to the corporate headquarters with his tail between his legs. Later, Hubbard circulates at the company hospitality suite and is introduced to Cory. Through many cocktail conversations, we learn that Hubbard is well-read, considerate, and uneasy with his administrative duties within the corporation, preferring to be the metallurgist he had been before. At dinner in the banquet hall, he spots Cory who appears to be fighting off the advances of various men from all sides. Eventually he rescues her, and they leave, exchanging stories about their lives. Hubbard is happily married with children, Cory is divorced, has one child “defective, institutionalized,” has money, and lives alone, “and [tries] to like it.” Before the night is over they kiss and the evening ends abruptly, Cory feigning guilt, Hubbard suffering the real thing. Cory does not want to go through with the plan to blackmail Hubbard, but is convinced by Alma, her madame, that she not only is having the same second-thoughts she usually does, but that she “wouldn’t want to have to send Ernie around to straighten [her] out again.” The threat works, and we see Cory for the first time not in control of her circumstances. She assures Alma she will go through with the plan. Back at the convention, Cory convinces Hubbard she needs to change some film for her camera in his room, and there she seduces him. Afterward, Cory is cruel to Hubbard, about his wife and about his fall from grace. Though Hubbard doesn’t know this, she had thought that he was different than other men and would not succumb to her charms. After they argue, she leaves, assuring him he’ll come back for more. The next day, she taunts Hubbard at a convention party at the pool, and he rebuffs her advances. Later that evening, Hubbard returns to his room and finds Cory there, nude and in his shower. He rebuffs her again, and now Cory softens. She tells Hubbard about Frick’s plan to employ “soft blackmail” to keep his reports positive, and explains what happened in her life to lead her to what she has become today. Hubbard leaves Cory in his room and proceeds to get visibly drunk among the rest of the conventioneers. Cory drifts off to sleep in Hubbard’s bed. Meanwhile, one of the men Cory had rejected earlier, Dave Daniels, has gotten very drunk and extracted Hubbard’s room key from him by force. Hubbard, drunk himself, passes out in a hallway. In Hubbard’s room, Daniels finds Cory, rapes and kills her. After sobering up some, he sets it up to look like she fell in the shower and attempts to make his escape via the balcony. He slips and falls eight stories to his death. Because the hotel is such a large part of the local economy, and because the police are unsympathetic to “one dead flooze” they decide to call both deaths accidental and unconnected. All involved are cleared of any wrongdoing. Later, Hubbard makes his report over the phone to the corporate honchos while Jesse Mulaney sits in the room listening. Mulaney has got to go, he’s “too limited for the job.” Mulaney accuses Hubbard of enjoying his job as hatchet man, and Hubbard suspects he might be right. On his flight home, Hubbard dreams of Cory pulling his heart from his chest, and despite his protestations to the contrary, he knows he has already lost it.

A Key to the Suite

Parineeta takes place at the turn of the 20th century during the Bengal Renaissance. The story centers around a poor thirteen year old orphan girl, Lalita, who lives with the family of her uncle Gurucharan. Gurucharan has five daughters and the expense of paying for each dowry has impoverished him. He is forced to take a loan from his neighbor, Nabin Roy. Roy''s son Shekhar, is a twenty five year old successful lawyer who is close friends with Lalita. While she is infatuated with him, the differences in wealth and class (and later religion) preclude marriage (as Swagato Ganguly states in the introduction to the 2005 English translation, "child marriages were the norm during much of Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay''s life time...and did not attract any penalties from the law at the time of Parineetas publication in 1914", pp.v-vi). Shekhar is nonetheless jealous of Girin, a student who is the uncle of Lalita''s friend, Charubala (her mother''s cousin). Girin, Charubala and the rest of their family are Brahmos and Girin exerts a great deal of influence over Lalita''s family. Girin helps Gurucharan repay the loan to Nabin Roy. He also convinces Gurucharan to convert himself and his family from Hinduism to Brahmoism as it forbade the giving of dowry in a marriage (a move which so enrages Nabin Roy that he builds a wall between the two houses). As a triangle develops between Girin, Shekhar, and Lalita, tragedy ensues in the wake of a number of misunderstandings. *Lalita: the protagonist of the novella. Lalita came to live with her uncle''s family after she was orphaned at the age of eight. At the beginning of the novella, she is thirteen years old and is close with her cousin Annakali (Kali) and her neighbor, Charubala (Charu). Lalita is considered a member of not only her uncle''s family but of Charu''s and of Shekhar''s as well. Shekhar''s mother Bhuvaneshwari is so attached to Lalita that she tells Lalita to call her "ma". At a time (1914) when young women were typically married at the age of thirteen, Lalita becomes the object of a triangle between her neighbor Shekhar and Charu''s uncle, Girin. *Gurucharan: Lalita''s uncle is a bank clerk with a small salary and five daughters, as well as Lalita, to support. He becomes impoverished due to his attempts to follow social custom and pay large dowries for the weddings of his daughters. Indeed, the marriage of his second daughter was paid for by Shekhar''s father, Nabin. In lieu of returning the money with high interest, Gurucharan''s house was mortgaged to Nabin. *Lalita''s aunt: She is never named in the novella and has only a minor role. *Annakali or Kali: Gurucharan''s ten year old daughter and Lalita''s cousin and playmate. It is during Kali''s imaginary "doll-wedding" that Lalita and Shekhar exchange garlands. *Shekhar: The youngest son of the Roy family, Shekhar is twenty-five years old. He has a master''s degree as well as a law degree and is working as a teacher. From the time of her arrival to Gurucharan''s house, Shekhar had taken an interest in Lalita''s upbringing. While Shekhar contemplates marrying Lalita, he is restrained by social customs as well as by the resistance of his father who wants him to marry a wealthy woman with a large dowry. *Nabin: Shekhar''s father, who is a millionaire and an unscrupulous businessman. He becomes so enraged when Gurucharan''s debt is repaid and when Gurucharan converts himself and his family to Brahmoism, that he builds a wall between the two houses. *Bhuvaneshwari: Shekhar''s mother, who is an advanced thinker. She wants Shekhar to choose his own wife rather than marry the woman whom Nabin selects. She also accepts Lalita as her daughter despite the difference in wealth and position. *Abnash: Shekhar''s married elder brother, a lawyer, who is mentioned in passing but never appears in the novella. *Charubala or Charu: Lalita''s neighbor and playmate. She introduces Lalita to her uncle Girin. *Manorma: Charu''s mother and Girin''s cousin. She is an active card player and involves Lalita in many card games. *Girin: Manoroma''s cousin and a university student who as been away for many years. He, as with the rest of the family, is a Brahmo, and convinces Gurucharan to convert himself (and his family). As a Brahmo, Gurucharan will no longer have to pay large dowries for the weddings of his daughters. In addition to repaying Gurucharan''s loan, Girin repeatedly proves himself to be a man of integrity who acts according to the common good rather than his own self-interest.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

Skinny Legs and All

By Tom Robbins

Dearly Devoted Dexter

By Jeff Lindsay

A Point of Law

By John Maddox Roberts

Enrique's Journey

By Sonia Nazario

The Great Escape

By Paul Brickhill

A Bell for Adano

By John Hersey

Elizabeth and After

By Matt Cohen

Player Piano

By Kurt Vonnegut

Roadmarks

By Roger Zelazny

White Noise

By Don DeLillo

A Key to the Suite

By John D. MacDonald

Parineeta

By Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay