The main character, Nicholas Hunt, is an American politician and lobbyist, closely involved with some branches of secret military research including paranormal activities. He is not a hero: as Dukaj himself describes him, he is "a cynical, egoistic bureaucrat, whose main motivation for all of his decisions in his job is, it seems, covering his ass". Currently he has lost an internal power struggle and is assigned to oversee what seems like a dead-end, low-key project. Soon, however, his project starts to gain more importance, as scientists explore some promising theories from the borders of memetics and telepathy, including study of potential lifeforms that would use memes just as we use genes, and develop new sciences like psychomemetics. Suddenly a strange cataclysm takes place, with millions of people worldwide going insane and many densely populated areas becoming a ''no-go'' zone. Is this an alien invasion? A result of military or corporate experiment? A new step in human evolution? Or are we seeing the painful transformation into a post-technological singularity world? Nicholas Hunt is not sure, but he knows one thing: the rat race is going on, and he will do everything he needs to survive.

Black Oceans

The two main characters are thinly-veiled versions of two of Farmer''s favorite characters, Tarzan and Doc Savage. Called "Lord Grandrith" and "Doc Caliban", respectively, the two are recognizable as the iconic characters, but still unique. The two, half-brothers with the same father (the infamous Victorian era serial killer, Jack the Ripper) share a horrible affliction thanks to the powerful elixir that gives them near-eternal life. At the start of the novel they have discovered that they can no longer engage in sexual activity except during acts of violence (their penises become erect only during an act of violence) and they ejaculate after taking lives. By the end of the novel, Grandrith and Caliban will have grappled with each other in the nude, punching, clawing and biting, each of them sporting massive erections. The novel begins with Grandrith under attack by three parties: the Kenyan army, a group of Albanian mercenaries, and Doc Caliban who believes that Grandrith has killed Caliban''s cousin and one true love. In addition, both Caliban and Grandrith have been summoned for their annual appear before The Nine, a powerful group of near immortals, who have given them both the secret of immortality in return for their obedience. However, Caliban and Grandrith ultimately find a common enemy among the Nine that is revealed to be controlling the world, and to have been manipulating their own lives, and indeed, the entire preceding battle between the two. The two iconic warriors vow to defeat the Nine together—that tale is told in the intertwining sequels, Lord of the Trees and The Mad Goblin.

A Feast Unknown

In the first half of the book, Berne introduces transactional analysis as a way of interpreting social interactions. He describes three roles or ego states, known as the Parent, the Adult, and the Child, and postulates that many negative behaviors can be traced to switching or confusion of these roles. He discusses procedures, rituals, and pastimes in social behavior, in light of this method of analysis. For example, a boss who talks to his staff as a controlling ''parent'' will often engender self-abased obedience, tantrums, or other childlike responses from his employees. The second half of the book catalogues a series of "mind games" in which people interact through a patterned and predictable series of "transactions" which are superficially plausible (that is, they may appear normal to bystanders or even to the people involved), but which actually conceal motivations, include private significance to the parties involved, and lead to a well-defined predictable outcome, usually counterproductive. The book uses casual, often humorous phrases such as "See What You Made Me Do," "Why Don''t You&nbsp;— Yes But," and "Ain''t It Awful" as a way of briefly describing each game. In reality, the "winner" of a mind game is the person that returns to the Adult ego-state first. One example of these games is the one named "Now I''ve got you, you son of a bitch," in which A is dealing with B, and A discovers B has made a minor mistake, and holds up a much larger and more serious issue until the mistake is fixed, basically holding the entire issue hostage to the minor mistake. The example is where a plumber makes a mistake on a $300 job by underestimating the price of a $3 part as $1. The customer won''t pay the entire $300 unless and until the plumber absorbs the $2 error instead of just paying the bill of $302. Not all interactions or transactions are part of a game. Specifically, if both parties in a one-on-one conversation remain in an Adult-to-Adult ego-state, it is unlikely that a game is being played.

Games People Play

After her only daughter Amy suffers a crib death, Emily takes up running as a way to deal with her pain. She believes that "only fast running will do"—she pushes her body to its limits, often vomiting and sweating profusely. Her husband, Henry, finds out about this habit, and treats it as a psychological reaction to grief. Emily is hurt and runs out of the house, down to a local Holiday Inn. She contacts her father and explains her situation; after their conversation, Emily decides to stay in her father''s summer home, near Naples, FL. (In the story, she takes Southwest Air to the Naples Airport, even though, as is noted later, Naples Airport is a private airport, without commercial service.) She also speaks with Henry, and the two agree that a trial separation is a good idea. Emily''s life becomes quite simple—she eats plain meals and runs for miles every day. As her body shrinks, she gets to know the few people that hover around the island; Vermillion Key is mostly devoid of tourists. The only person Emily regularly contacts is Deke Hollis, an old friend of her father who runs the drawbridge on the island. During a chance meeting, Hollis tells Emily that Jim Pickering, one of the men who owns a home on the island, is back. He has brought along a "niece"—Hollis''s polite name for the young women Pickering lures to his home. Emily prepares to continue, but Hollis warns her that Pickering is "not a very nice man." As Emily continues her daily run, she notices a shiny red car outside one of the "McMansions" along the beach. She deduces that it must be Pickering''s car, and must satisfy her curiosity—which turns to concern as she hears a low moan coming from around the vehicle. Emily cautiously approaches...and notices a trail of blood running toward the trunk. She sees a young woman lying in the car with her throat slashed, meaning that she could not have made the groaning noise she heard. The moment she reaches this conclusion, though, someone cracks her on the back of the head. When Emily awakens, she finds herself imprisoned on a kitchen chair with duct tape. Pickering stands before her, licking his lips and acting excited. He is particularly aroused by Emily''s powerful legs, which have become lean and muscular due to her continued runs. Emily realizes that Pickering is insane, and hints that she let someone know where she was going. When Pickering presses her for details, Emily blurts out Deke Hollis''s name; Pickering leaves, presumably to kill the old man. Emily knows that she does not have much time, and hears her father''s voice in her head, giving her advice. She uses her strong legs to splinter the tape that binds her; the pain is excruciating, but she manages to free her lower body. She looks for a knife to release her arms, but settles on the corner of the island in the middle of the kitchen. She undoes all of her restraints just as Pickering returns. Emily fights Pickering in the kitchen, using the broken legs of the chair to attack. After temporarily knocking him out, she runs through the house, eventually stumbling into the bedroom. She hears Pickering chasing her, and realizes the only way out is to jump out of the window. Emily again recalls her father''s advice from her youth—"Gravity is everyone''s mother"—and leaps. She runs to the beach and hears Pickering behind her, and realizes, in a rather odd coincidence, that she has been "training" for this moment. Though exhausted from her imprisonment, Emily''s months of running serve her well. She keeps well ahead of Pickering, who now carries a pair of scissors as a weapon. She eventually meets a young Latino man on the beach, and begs for help, but he does not understand her cries. Pickering appears and tries to use Spanish to convince the man that Emily is with him, but Emily''s fearful expression convinces the young man otherwise. He pushes Emily behind him; incensed, Pickering brutally slaughters the man with the scissors. Emily, tiring quickly, runs into the ocean. Pickering follows her, but begins to flounder. Emily gasps as she figures out what is happening—Pickering cannot swim. Emily manages to escape him, and sits on the shoreline watching as Pickering drowns. When he finally goes under, Emily tells herself that a shark or some other creature attacked him. She wonders why, and guesses that it is a part of the human condition. Her long ordeal over, Emily stands and shouts at the birds flying about, and prepares to go home.

The Gingerbread Girl

The book documents Smith''s memory of events recovered during therapy, documenting the many satanic rituals she believed that she was forced to attend (Pazder stated that Smith was abused by "the Church of Satan," which he states is a worldwide organization predating the Christian church). The first alleged ritual attended by Smith took place in 1954 when she was five years old, and the final one documented in the book was an 81-day ritual in 1955 that summoned the devil himself and involved the intervention of Jesus, the Virgin Mary and Michael the Archangel, who removed the scars received by Smith throughout the year of abuse and removed memories of the events "until the time was right". During the rites, Smith was allegedly tortured, locked in cages, sexually assaulted, forced to take part in various rituals, witnessed several murders and was rubbed with the blood and body parts of various murdered babies and adults. After Smith had seemingly recovered her memories, she and Pazder consulted with various church authorities, eventually traveling to the Vatican. An appendix reprints the article Witchcraft in City'' Claim by Paul Jeune; the article was referenced by Smith in the book in reference to the alleged black magic practised in Victoria. An evangelist named Len Olsen claimed on televangelist David Mainse''s talk show 100 Huntley Street that he and his wife were nearly sacrificed in a satanic ritual by Mark Fedoruk, also known as Lion Serpent Sun. Sun sued for defamation, and in court it was revealed that Olsen had been delusional, apparently due to drug use and guilt; Sun was awarded $10,000 and an appeal was denied. The lawsuit and result were not reported in Michelle Remembers, only the original false allegations.

Michelle Remembers

The events of Surface Detail take place around 2970 AD, according to Banks himself. The events occur six to eight hundred years after the "Chel Debacle", depicted in the earlier novel Look to Windward which is set a hundred years after the events in Use of Weapons. Each chapter of the book covers one or more of the six main protagonists—Lededje Y''breq, a chattel slave; Joiler Veppers, an industrialist and playboy; Gyorni Vatueil, a soldier; Prin and Chay, Pavulean academics; and Yime Nsokyi, a Quietus agent. Some of the plot occurs in various simulated environments. As the book begins, a simulated war game—the "War in Heaven"—has been running for several decades. The simulated war is to determine whether to allow or to disallow cultures in the galaxy from running Hells, simulated afterlives in which the mind-states of the dead are tortured. The Culture, fiercely anti-Hell, has opted to stay out of the war while accepting the outcome as binding. Vatueil is a soldier who has fought up the ranks of the war game to a position where he can determine policy, and he is instrumental in the decisions first to cheat—attempting to hack the Hells directly as well as attacking various pro-Hell side simulations—and then to take the simulated war into the real world. He is also revealed to be the character Zakalwe from another of Banks'' Culture novels, Use of Weapons (or at least someone with the same last name). Prin and Chay belong to a species, the Pavuleans, which runs a Hell. While still alive, they enter the Pavulean Hell on a mission to reveal the existence and details of this Hell to the general population. Prin succeeds in getting out, but has to leave Chay behind, where she is subsequently tortured, restored to some semblance of sanity, and finally given an involuntary role in the pantheon of the afterlife. Prin, meanwhile, testifies to the Pavulean public of his experiences in Hell and attempts to convince them that it should be abolished. Veppers is a businessman and industrialist: the richest individual in his society, the multi-planet Sichultian Enablement. On the planet Sichult, Y''breq—an indentured slave owned by Veppers and a frequent victim of rape—is murdered by him as she attempts to escape. She is unexpectedly reincarnated aboard a Culture ship, having been secretly implanted with a neural lace some ten years previously by a visiting Culture ship super-AI known as a Mind. She immediately wants to return to her homeworld, to find and kill Veppers. The book hinges on Veppers'' involvement in the War in Heaven. He initially appears to be a bit-player, but his involvement is gradually revealed to be more and more critical. The final revelation is that he has made some of his fortune by providing the hardware to run the Hells of various species; over a century he has accumulated about 70% of all the Hells. The hardware is located on his country estate on the planet Sichult. He sets up a secret deal to have the Hells destroyed in an attack which is to be blamed upon the Culture. His motivation is that such an attack will release him from his contracts to run the Hells, which would have become worthless if the anti-Hell side won, but which he cannot wriggle out of in any other way. Y''breq travels back to Sichult on the Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints, an advanced Culture warship. In hot pursuit is Yime Nsokyi, a Culture agent tasked with preventing Y''breq from killing Veppers. As they and their ships arrive, things come to a head. The Culture agents conspire to arrange that the attack on Veppers'' estate successfully destroys the Hells, while simultaneously appearing to attempt to stop the attack. They also conspire to ensure that Veppers'' secret deal is revealed. Veppers himself is at the estate''s mansion during the attack, where Y''breq finds him for the final, personal, showdown.

Surface Detail

It is 9:01 pm on a cold November night, Dennis Milne and his friend Danny are waiting at the Traveler''s Rest Hotel car park to kill three unarmed men they think are drug dealers. A black Jeep Cherokee drives into the car park and comes to a halt. Dennis Milne goes up to the drivers side and shoots two of the men dead the third tries to get out the car and run, but does not make it. Dennis is then seen by a girl at the back door of the hotel, but Dennis just walks away. They drive away and when they are away from the scene they set the car on fire and go their separate ways. Dennis Milne then gets stopped at a road block by the police and he has to show his ID and it turns out he is a police officer. At home he acts normal and starts a new case on a murder of a prostitute. He then finds that he killed two customs officers and an accountant on the news. When he asks the guy who hired him to do the kill (Raymond Keen) he says they did something terrible and had to die for it, but does not say what it was. It gets worse when the police working on the hotel killing show a efit of Dennis. Danny then calls him to say he was being followed but Dennis does not think anything of it and says he should go on a holiday. While trying to question a woman on the prostitute case, thinking that it might be involved in what is going on, she runs away and he chases her but she gets away and he is left by himself, two people with hoodies walk up the street towards him and they have guns and try to kill him. After a chase, he kills one and hurts the other. He finds out who killed the hooker and wraps him up in a chair and tortures him to talk before setting him on fire. He goes up to Raymond Keen''s house and kills his guards after almost being killed by them and shoots Raymond Keen and makes him talk. At the end of the book he is flying off to the Philippines with a fake passport and a different appearance.

The Business of Dying

Boyer''s multifaceted book explains the genesis of religious concepts through the mind''s cognitive inference systems, comparable to pareidolia and perceptions of religious imagery in natural phenomena resulting from face perception processes within the human brain. Boyer supports this naturalistic origin of religion with evidence from many specialized disciplines including biological anthropology, cultural anthropology, cognitive science, linguistics, evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology, evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, and information processing. Religion Explained frames religious practices and beliefs in terms of recent cognitive neuroscience research in the modularity of mind. This theory involves cognitive "modules" ("devices" or "subroutines") underlying inference systems and intuitions. For instance, Boyer suggests culturally-widespread beliefs in "supernatural agents" (e.g., gods, ancestors, spirits, and witches) result from agent detection: the intuitive modular process of assuming intervention by conscious agents, regardless of whether they are present. "When we see branches moving in a tree or when we hear an unexpected sound behind us, we immediately infer that some agent is the cause of this salient event. We can do that without any specific description of what the agent actually is." Boyer cites E. E. Evans-Pritchard''s classic Zande story about a termite-infested roof collapsing. For the anthropologist, the house caved in because of the termites. For the Zande, it was quite clear that witchcraft was involved. However, the Zande were also aware that the termites were the proximate cause of the incident. But what they wanted to know was why it happened at that particular time, when particular people were gathered in the house. Within Boyer&#39;s hypothesis, religion is a &#34;parasite&#34; (or &#34;spandrel&#34;) offshoot from cognitive modules, comparable to the way the reading process is parasitic upon language modules. As I have pointed out repeatedly the building of religious concepts requires mental systems and capacities that are there anyway, religious concepts or not. Religious morality uses moral intuitions, religious notions of supernatural agents recruit our intuitions about agency in general, and so on. This is why I said that religious concepts are parasitic upon other mental capacities. Our capacities to play music, paint pictures or even make sense of printed ink-patterns on a page are also parasitic in this sense. This means that we can explain how people play music, paint pictures and learn to read by examining how mental capacities are recruited by these activities. The same goes for religion. Because the concepts require all sorts of specific human capacities (an intuitive psychology, a tendency to attend to some counterintuitive concepts, as well as various social mind adaptations), we can explain religion by describing how these various capacities get recruited, how they contribute to the features of religion that we find in so many different cultures. We do not need to assume that there is a special way of functioning that occurs only when processing religious thoughts. Boyer admits his explanation of religion is not a quick, shoot-from-the-hip solution of the kind that many people, either religious or not, seem to favor. There cannot be a magic bullet to explain the existence and common features of religion, as the phenomenon is the result of aggregate relevance – that is, of successful activation of a whole variety of mental systems.

Religion Explained

Strange things are happening at Fablehaven. The book begins where the second book left off, during the same summer of their second year at Fablehaven. Kendra and Seth helped save Fablehaven from the Society of the Evening Star, but new troubles present themselves almost immediately. Seth discovers that someone, or something, has released a plague throughout Fablehaven. As the disease spreads throughout the preserve, it is clear they can no longer protect the preserve. Creatures of light are transformed into creatures of darkness. As light creatures can enter most places throughout the preserve, the same rules apply to the darkened form of them. The exception is the shrine of the Fairy Queen, where only Creatures of Light can enter. Sometime throughout the summer, Kendra is requested by the captain of ''The Knights of Dawn'' that she should be recruited. For the first time, Kendra and Warren must visit another magical preserve, called Lost Mesa, located in the central state of Arizona. With Lieutenant Dougan Fisk, and dragon tamer Gavin Rose, another hidden artifact must be recovered from Lost Mesa before The Society unveils it. However, the artifact, as told in the secret fairy language Silvian, had a new residence at Fablehaven. Meanwhile, back at Fablehaven, Seth discovers that he has gained new abilities with destroying Fablehaven''s revenant and pulling out the nail. With the help of Graulas the dying demon, he is made a shadow-charmer, a person who is able to shadow-walk, hear the voices of prisoners from the dungeon that dwell underneath the main house, and speak the language of many creatures such as giants, goblins, trolls, and demons. Graulas explains how three dark creatures created the plague with the nail. The prisoner from the Quiet Box was never seen to leave the preserve, so this helps prove Vanessa''s accusation correct. New friends are introduced and trusted as new magical creatures of light and darkness are confronted. Coulter and Tanu get changed by the plague first, followed by Grandpa and Grandma Sorenson. Then Dale, and finally Warren. Humans are changed to 3D shadows. Will the plague go so far that Kendra and Seth will be contaminated? Seth recovers the Chronometer and brings Patton Burgess forward in time. Patton made artifacts more difficult to recover and also was a famous caretaker of Fablehaven. The Fairy Queen destroys her shrine to make a pebble filled with light energy to help save the plague. Someone must touch the pebble to the nail and the plague will be reversed. One problem though — whoever touches the pebble to the nail dies. When pebble and nail are united by Lena, Lena dies. The plague stops.

Fablehaven: Grip of the Shadow Plague

The first book in the Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone series. The Born Queen, Virgenya Dare, defeats the evil Skasloi with magic and frees humanity from slavery. The Skasloi king tells Virgenya humanity is cursed. About 2300 years later, Dare''s grave is found by her descendant, rebellious Princess Anne. The forester Aspar White rescues a novice monk, Stephen Darige, from a kidnapping. Aspar is warned about the mythical Briar King by the strange Sefry travellers. Evil Prince Robert murders his sister and tricks his brother into war with nearby Hansa. Queen Muriele secretly sends Anne and her friend Austra to a convent to be trained as an assassin. Muriele and her two other daughters evacuate to the country, aided by loyal knight Neil MeqVren who is in love with Princess Fastia. At the monastery, Stephen finds corruption within the church, and prophecies concerning the terrifying Briar King. Beneath the castle, the captive last Skasloi (known as "the Kept") makes evil predictions. Anne''s training takes a strange turn as she finds herself in a magical realm. On her return, Anne is warned she must be Queen to save the world. The other princesses are murdered as Neil and Muriele watch helplessly - themselves saved only by the appearance of the Briar King. As the assassins aim for their final target, Anne and Austra escape the mass slaughter at the convent, aided by swordsman Cazio and his mentor z''Acatto. Prince Robert murders the king who deals a fatal wound as he dies. Muriele, back in Eslen, consults the Kept from whom she gets the most terrible curse imaginable to cast on the murderer of her husband. She does not know that it was Robert and that he is also dead. The curse, however, is more powerful even than death and by casting this on Robert, Muriele inadvertently and unintentionally breaks the Law of Death. The Briar King ends with the awakening of Robert, now a form of undead, which also explains the title of the next volume, The Charnel Prince.

The Briar King

Life is not easy for any thirteen-year-old, but when your mother was a human and your father was a vampire, and they were both killed in a fire, it''s especially hard. The school bullies harass Vlad, the principal seems to have it in for him, and his dream girl, Meredith, seems to prefer his friend, Henry. Vlad''s mother''s long-time friend, Nelly, is raising him, and she understands his problems and helps him to hide the fact that he is a vampire and must have blood to survive. Vlad''s best friend, Henry is the only other person who knows his secret, and Vlad bit Henry once when they were eight years old, making Henry his drudge (someone who is forced to the will of a vampire). Vladimir has real rapport with one teacher, but that teacher has disappeared and no one knows where he is. Vlad and Henry are determined to find out what happened to him. But the substitute teacher begins to question Vlad too closely ... and there is just something strange about Mr. Otis. Vlad worries that Otis might suspect the truth. Then when Otis assigns Vampires as Vlad''s research project, and the teacher scribbles "I know your secret" across the bottom of his essay, he is really frightened. Vlad discovers his father''s journal and is learning about the reality of being a vampire and the powers that he may possess. He also becomes convinced that there is a Vampire slayer in town, and that he is searching for Vlad. Things go from bad to worse when Nelly invites Otis to dinner and he confronts Vlad with what he knows.

Eighth Grade Bites

One day, Tom, one of the main characters, is playing an early morning baseball game with his friends. However, he doesn''t know that one of his classmates -- Jane Hennessey -- is going to play. He desperately tries to strike her out by hitting the ball. It lands towards the Grrlzillas and it rolls under Margaret''s skirt. He gets tangled in the skirt and tries to convince the Grrlzillas that he just didn''t want to be beat by a girl (which was true). The girls dismiss him as pathetic and go back to school calling him a "skirt perv". The chemistry between him and Emma is now really not good. Later on in the novel, Emma and Tom both try to jump onto the same school trampoline, but they have a serious collision and unknowingly switch bodies and souls. Emma is now Tom, and Tom Emma. The next morning, Emma wakes up with an erection (as she calls it, a "boner"). At first she thought it was a chipmunk in the bed with her. Tom discovers he''s having Emma''s menstruating period, and he has to wear Emma''s bras. Eventually in the end, they have another collision and become themselves again.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

Black Oceans

By Jacek Dukaj

A Feast Unknown

By Philip José Farmer

Games People Play

No Author Listed

The Gingerbread Girl

By Stephen King

Michelle Remembers

No Author Listed

Surface Detail

By Iain Banks

The Business of Dying

By Simon Kernick

Religion Explained

By Pascal Boyer

Fablehaven: Grip of the Shadow Plague

By Brandon Mull

The Briar King

By Gregory Keyes

Eighth Grade Bites

By Heather Brewer

Gender Blender

No Author Listed