At dinner at the Birlings'' home in 1912, Arthur Birling, a wealthy mill owner and local politician, and his family are celebrating the engagement of daughter Sheila to Gerald Croft, son of a competitor of Birling''s. In attendance are Sybil Birling, Arthur''s wife and Sheila and Eric''s mother, and Eric Birling, Sheila''s younger brother, who has a drinking problem that is discreetly ignored. After dinner, Arthur speaks about the importance of self-reliance. A man, he says, must "make his own way" and protect his own interests. Inspector Goole arrives and explains that a woman called Eva Smith killed herself by drinking strong disinfectant. He implies that she has left a diary naming names, including members of the Birling family. Goole produces a photograph of Eva and shows it to Arthur, who acknowledges that she worked in one of his mills. He admits that he dismissed her 18 months ago for her involvement in an abortive workers'' strike. He denies responsibility for her death. Sheila enters the room and is drawn into the discussion. After prompting from Goole, she admits to recognizing Eva as well. She confesses that Eva served her in a department store and Sheila contrived to have her fired for an imagined slight. She admits that Eva''s behaviour had been blameless and that the firing was motivated solely by Sheila''s jealousy and spite towards a pretty working-class woman. Sybil enters the room and Goole continues his interrogation, revealing that Eva was also known as Daisy Renton. Gerald starts at the mention of the name and Sheila becomes suspicious. Gerald admits that he met a woman by that name in a theatre bar. He gave her money and arranged to see her again. Goole reveals that Gerald had installed Eva as his mistress, and gave her money and promises of continued support before ending the relationship. Arthur and Sybil are horrified. As an ashamed Gerald exits the room, Sheila acknowledges his nature and credits him for speaking truthfully but also signals that their engagement is over. Goole identifies Sybil as the head of a women''s charity to which Eva/Daisy had turned for help. Despite Sybil''s haughty responses, she eventually admits that Eva, pregnant and destitute, had asked the committee for financial aid. Sybil had convinced the committee that the girl was a liar and that her application should be denied. Despite vigorous cross-examination from Goole, Sybil denies any wrongdoing. Sheila begs her mother not to continue, but Goole plays his final card, making Sybil admit that the "drunken young man" should give a ''public confession, accepting all the blame''. Eric enters the room, and after brief questioning from Goole, he breaks down, admitting that he drunkenly forced Eva to have sex and stole £50 from his father''s business to pay her off when she became pregnant. Arthur and Sybil break down, and the family dissolves into screaming recriminations. Goole accuses them of contributing to Eva''s death. He reminds the Birlings (and the audience) that actions have consequences. "If men will not learn that lesson, then they will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish." Gerald returns, telling the family that there may be no ''Inspector Goole'' on the police force. Arthur makes a call to the Chief Constable, who confirms this. Gerald points out that as Goole was lying about being a policeman, there may be no dead girl. Placing a second call to the local infirmary, Gerald determines that no recent cases of suicide have been reported. The elder Birlings and Gerald celebrate, with Arthur dismissing the evening''s events as "moonshine" and "bluffing". The younger Birlings, however, realise the error of their ways and promise to change. Gerald is keen to resume his engagement to Sheila, but she is reluctant, since with or without a dead girl he still admitted to having had an affair. The play ends abruptly with a telephone call, taken by Arthur, who reports that the body of a young woman has been found, a suspected case of suicide by disinfectant, and that the local police are on their way to question the Birlings. The true identity of Goole is never explained, but it is clear that the family''s confessions over the course of the evening are true, and that they will be disgraced publicly when news of their involvement in Eva''s demise is revealed.

An Inspector Calls

Susannah ''Suze'' Simon is a mediator, which means she can see and talk to ghosts and, when necessary, kick some ghost butt. Suze spends a lot of time directing the usually unhappy dead to the afterlife. However, her job is not easy, as not all ghosts want to be guided. Every day, she is haunted by the fact that they will not leave her alone until she helps them resolve their unfinished business with the living. At the beginning of the story Suze moves from New York to Carmel, California, because her mom remarries to Andy Ackerman after Suze''s father dies ten years prior. She gets three stepbrothers in the deal, whom she nicknames Sleepy (a senior), Dopey (a sophomore like Suze), and Doc (12, and, according to Suze, going on 40, as he knows more than an encyclopedia), but to the rest of the world they''re Jake, Brad, and David. When Suze gets to California and tries to get settled into her new room, she finds Jesse de Silva sitting on her window seat. She describes him as an exceedingly hot ghost who happens to be already living in their house, and he doesn''t seem to need her help. Suze at first is annoyed with the living arrangements and tells Jesse to move on or find some other house to haunt, because now she is living there. Suze feels that now that she is in California and she can start fresh, with trips to the mall instead of the cemetery and surfing instead of tending to lost souls. But she has hardly settled in when her skills are put to the test. There is a ghost with revenge on her mind in Suze''s new school (the Junipero Serra Mission Academy) and Suze plans to stop her. The ghost, Heather, died because she shot herself over Bryce Martinson when he broke up with her due to a scare of possible marriage. When Bryce and Heather''s old friends begin to show interest in Suze, Heather claims Susannah is taking over the life she had. Father Dominic (the Priest of the church and principal of the school, who happens to be another mediator) tries helping Suze with Heather. Father Dominic insists that Susannah should try a more friendly way to deal with the ghosts she meets. She argues with him, saying she has done this job all her life and is not going to change. He often calls her into his office to talk about how to get rid of Heather, and many other ghost related things throughout the series. One night, after Heather had put Bryce Martinson in the hospital, Suze decides to go down to the Mission and put an end to it all. The idea was to talk Heather into moving on, but Suze slips up in her wording and Heather misconstrues her meaning, giving Heather the false hope that she might get her life back. Suze tries to carefully explain this isn''t so, but Heather throws a fit, going into such a rage that she attempts to kill Susannah. She uses her abilities to boil water and to snap off of and levitate the bronze head of a statue of Junipero Serra, the man of whom the mission was named after. Just as the statue''s head is about to collide with Suze, Jesse appears and knocks her aside. Having followed her from the house to watch over her, he helps her flee the building, the head pursuing them the whole way. Once outside he says that they are safe, not because Heather can''t reach them there, but because she is too young a ghost to know she can. The next day, Father Dominic is very unhappy with Susannah. She tries to explain that it was going to work - she just didn''t expect Heather''s strength. Days later, Heather puts Bryce in hospital again in her attempts to kill him. By now Susannah is furious and despite Father Dominic telling Susannah not to handle it alone, she does a special Voodoo exorcism. It works and Heather is sent on to the afterlife. Father Dominic is pretty mad but very pleased that Heather is gone and that all the suffering will go away. Unfortunately for Susannah, Bryce got sent to another school since Father Dominic thought this would be best for him, therefore deleting their very small love life that didn''t even consist of one date due to Heather and her envy.

Shadowland

Three things happen to Kinsey Millhone on her thirty-third birthday: she moves into her remodelled apartment, which has finally been finished; she is hired by Irene Gersh, a sickly Santa Theresa resident, to head out to the Slabs in the Mojave Desert and locate her mother; she gets the news that Tyrone Patty, a particularly dangerous criminal she helped the Carson City Police Department track down a few years back, has hired a hitman to kill her. After her first night in her new place, Kinsey heads out early the next day in search of Mrs Gersh''s mother, Agnes Grey, who lives in a trailer in the desert. Agnes isn''t home, and the trailer seems to be occupied by two teenage runaways, but Kinsey eventually tracks Agnes down at a local convalescent hospital, where she has been since being taken suddenly ill on a trip to a local town sometime before. Agnes, 83 years old, hasn''t exactly been a model patient, and the hospital staff are delighted to hear that she has relatives who can take responsibility for her. Irene makes plans to transfer Agnes to a facility in Santa Teresa, but Agnes seems terrified of going there, and tells Kinsey a confused story about a number of people from the past, including Lottie, and Emily who died. Kinsey makes plans to come home, but before she can do so, a man in a pick-up truck deliberately runs her off the road, seriously injuring Kinsey and totalling her treasured VW. Kinsey recognises the driver as a man she has seen travelling with his young son a couple of times on the journey to the Slabs, and realises she needs to take the death threat against her seriously. She hires Robert Dietz, the PI who helped her briefly by phone in A is for Alibi, as a bodyguard. His vigilance initially frustrates Kinsey, used to making her own decisions, but they soon begin an affair. Dietz discovers the hitman is Mark Messinger, who absconded with his son, Eric, eight months previously. He arranges a meeting with the child''s mother, Rochelle, who is desperate to get her son back, and offers to help her. Meanwhile Agnes goes missing only a few hours after getting to Santa Teresa, and although she is soon found, she is dead within a day - of fright, according to the pathologist - and they suspect she has been kept prisoner somewhere. Irene suffers a serious panic reaction when she sees a tea set Kinsey found amongst her mother''s possessions, and Kinsey suspects this has triggered a buried childhood memory. Further anomalies occur when Irene tries to fill in the paperwork relating to the death: Kinsey realises that Irene''s birth certificate is faked, and that Agnes Grey is a pseudonym. It''s Kinsey''s CFI colleague Darcy who points out Agnes Grey is the name of a novel by Anne Brontë, which seems to link to the names Emily and Lottie (Charlotte) Agnes had mentioned. She tracks down a family called Bronfen who match the circumstances Agnes described, and surmises that the surviving brother of the family, Patrick, murdered Lottie and Emily. She is convinced that Agnes Grey was Anne Bronfen, a third sister, who took off with Irene to protect her when Patrick killed Irene''s mother, Sheila, changing their identities and posing as her mother. The three daughters were presumably named for the Brontë sisters, which explains the alias Anne chose to use. Patrick faked Anne''s death in order to gain sole possession of the family property. Kinsey is convinced that Patrick is responsible for Agnes''s death, to cover his past crimes, and discovers evidence of further killings at his home. When she confronts Patrick, she is interrupted by Messinger, who kills Patrick. Dietz and Rochelle have managed to get Eric away from Messinger, and Messinger''s stated intention is to use Kinsey as a hostage to exchange for Eric. As she drives Messinger to the airport at gunpoint to intercept Rochelle, Kinsey is convinced Messinger will kill them all. However, Rochelle outsmarts Messinger and kills him first.

"G" Is for Gumshoe

The story centers on two characters Barker has used in his previous work: private investigator Harry D''Amour, a character seen in several previous stories such as the novel Everville and the short story "The Last Illusion" (later adapted into the film Lord of Illusions); and a being known only as "Pinhead", an extra-dimensional entity residing in a world bordering our own. Pinhead and Harry are depicted as adversaries. Their first meeting occurs in the past, when Harry is twelve or thirteen years old and in Catholic school, and this encounter with Pinhead is said to be a primary cause of Harry''s later disturbed psyche. In the present day, a friend of Harry''s is taken hostage by Pinhead, and Harry, accompanied by four mismatched companions (including the blind medium Norma Paine, who has appeared in earlier Barker stories) and an animal, must track his friend down into the lowest levels of Hell. Roughly two thirds of the story will take place in Hell itself, and much is expected to be learned about the nature of Hell, its creator, its inhabitants, about the Order of the Gash and Pinhead''s place within it.

The Scarlet Gospels

On Isabella "Bella" Swan''s 18th birthday, Edward Cullen, the vampire she loves, and his family throw her a birthday party. While unwrapping a gift, she gets a paper cut, which causes Edward''s adopted brother, Jasper, to be overwhelmed by her blood''s scent and attempt to kill Bella. To protect her, Edward tells Bella that he does not love her and the Cullens move away from Forks. This leaves Bella heartbroken and depressed. In the months that follow, Bella learns that thrill-seeking activities, such as motorcycle riding, allow her to "hear" Edward''s voice in her head. She also seeks comfort in her deepening friendship with Jacob Black, a cheerful companion who eases her pain over losing Edward. Bella later discovers that Jacob and other tribe members are werewolves. Jacob and his pack protect Bella from the vampire Laurent and also Victoria, who seeks revenge for her dead mate, James, whom the Cullens killed in Twilight. Meanwhile, a series of miscommunications leads Edward to believe that Bella has killed herself. Distraught over her supposed suicide, Edward flees to Volterra, Italy to provoke the Volturi, vampire royalty who are capable of killing him. Alice and Bella rush to Italy to save Edward, arriving just in time to stop him. Before leaving Italy, the Volturi tell Edward that Bella, a human who knows that vampires exist, must either be killed or transformed into a vampire. When they return to Forks, Edward tells Bella that he has always loved her and only left Forks to protect her. She forgives him, and the Cullens vote in favor of Bella being transformed into a vampire, to Edward''s dismay. However, Jacob reminds Edward about an important piece in the treaty: if the Cullens bite a human, the treaty is over.

New Moon

Rob Horton is 14 years old and lives with his father in a Florida motel called the Kentucky Star. The father and son have recently moved to Lister, Florida, after the death of Rob’s mother. In the woods near the motel Rob discovers a live tiger in a cage. On the same day he discovers the tiger, Rob meets Sistine Bailey a new girl in school with an angry temper. Rob, having an unnamed skin condition, is asked by the principal to stay home from school until his rash clears up. Rob’s rash is a visible display of his emotional denial as he packs away his difficult feelings in an imaginary suitcase. Rob sees his exile from school as a reprieve, for he is bullied constantly by the other kids at his middle school. Sistine visits Rob daily saying she is bringing him homework. Rob is given the duty of feeding the tiger by the unscrupulous motel manager, Beauchamp With the assistance of Rob, Sistine plots and attempts to set the tiger free. The act of setting the tiger free allows Rob to let go of the painful emotions related to his mother’s death that he has suppressed. However, Rob''s dad finds the tiger in the woods and kills it by shooting it. Rob, Sistine, Willie May and Rob''s father had a funeral for the tiger, which reminded rob of his mothers funeral. Theme:Their''s a lesson to everything Rob.

The Tiger Rising

Jimson''s father, based on a real person known to Cary, was an Academy artist who is heart-broken when Impressionism drives his style from popular taste. Jimson has put aside any consideration of acceptance by either academy or public and paints in fits of creative ecstasy. Although his work is known to collectors and has become valuable, Jimson himself is forced to live from one scam or petty theft to the next. Cadging enough money to buy paints and supplies, he spends much of the novel seeking surfaces, such as walls, to serve as ground for his paintings. When the novel opens, Jimson has just been released from jail. He seeks money from Hickson, his sometime patron. Later in the book, he tracks down Sara Monday, his ex-wife, and tries to obtain an early painting from her that is worth a great deal. Sara is reluctant to give up the picture, which serves as a reminder of her youth. In the struggle that follows, Sara falls and suffers a fatal injury. Jimson is unsentimental about his life and work and sees himself as someone who has given over to a destructive passion. Yet he regrets nothing. At the novel''s end, Jimson reflects on his life and the home and family that he has missed. But he recognizes that he himself made the decision to sacrifice those possibilities in order to pursue his art. It is only clear at the end that Jimson has suffered a paralysing stroke, and can no longer paint. As he is being taken to hospital, a nun who is nursing him remarks that he should be praying instead of laughing, "Same thing, Mother." replies Jimson, his last words.

The Horse''s Mouth

Once a learned man from the northern regions of Europe went on a voyage south. One night, he sat on his terrace, while the fire behind him cast his shadow on the opposite balcony. As he was sitting there, resting, the man was amused to observe how the shadow followed his every movement, as if he really did sit upon the opposing balcony. When he finally grew tired and went to sleep, he imagined the shadow would likewise retire in the house across the street. The next morning however, the man found to his surprise that he in fact had lost his shadow overnight. As a new shadow slowly grew back from the tip of his toes, the man did not give the incident another thought, returned to northern Europe, and took up writing again. Several years passed by until one night there was a knock at his door. To his surprise, it was his shadow, the one he lost years before in Africa, and now stood upon his doorstep, almost completely human in appearance. Astonished by his sudden reappearance, the learned man invited him into his house, and soon the two sat by the fireplace, as the shadow related how he had come to be man. The learned man was calm and gentle by nature. His main object of interest lay with the good, the beautiful and the true, a subject of which he wrote often but was of no interest to anyone else. The shadow said his master did not understand the world, that he had seen it as truly was, and how evil some men really were. The shadow then grew richer and fatter over the years, while the writer grew poorer and paler. Finally he had become so ill that his former shadow proposed a trip to a health resort at his expense, but on condition that he could act as the master now, and the writer would pretend to be his shadow. As absurd as this suggestion sounded, the learned man eventually agreed and together they took the trip, the shadow now as his master. At the resort, the shadow met with a beautiful princess, and as they danced and talked with each other each night, the princess fell in love with him. When they were about to be married, the shadow offered his former master a luxurious position at the palace, on condition that he now became his own shadow permanently. The writer immediately refused and threatened to tell the princess everything, but the shadow had him arrested. Feigning his distraught, he met with the princess and told her: {| | :"I have gone through the most terrible affair that could possibly happen; only imagine, my shadow has gone mad; I suppose such a poor, shallow brain, could not bear much; he fancies that he has become a real man, and that I am his shadow." :"How very terrible,” cried the princess; "is he locked up?" :"Oh yes, certainly; for I fear he will never recover." :"Poor shadow!" said the princess; "it is very unfortunate for him; it would really be a good deed to free him from his frail existence; and, indeed, when I think how often people take the part of the lower class against the higher, in these days, it would be policy to put him out of the way quietly." | :"Jeg har oplevet det Grueligste, der kan opleves!" sagde Skyggen, "tænk Dig - ja, saadan en stakkels Skyggehjerne kan ikke holde meget ud! - Tænk Dig, min Skygge er blevet gal, han troer at han er Mennesket og at jeg - tænk dig bare, - at jeg er hans Skygge!" :"Det er frygteligt!" sagde Prinsessen, "han er dog spærret inde?" :"Det er han! Jeg er bange han kommer sig aldrig." :"Stakkels Skygge!" sagde Prinsessen, "han er meget ulykkelig; det er en sand Velgjerning at frie ham fra den Smule Liv han har, og naar jeg rigtig tænker over det, saa troer jeg det bliver nødvendigt at det bliver gjort af med ham i al Stilhed!" |} When the shadow wed the princess later that night, the learned man was already executed.

The Shadow

In 1942, a young Scot, Charlotte Gray, travels to London to take a job as a medical receptionist for a Harley Street doctor. On the train she talks to two men sharing her compartment, and one of them - who works for the secret service - gives her his card. Despite the war, social life in London is in full swing and the attractive, intelligent girl soon meets up with an airman, Peter Gregory. The temporary nature of life at the time is epitomised when she quickly loses her virginity and then her heart to him. The romance is heightened when Gregory is sent on a mission over France and news comes back to Charlotte that he is missing In action. Charlotte spent much of her childhood in France and speaks the language fluently - a talent that the secret service wishes to exploit in its effort to support the French Resistance. Charlotte decides to throw in her job - which she has no talent for anyway as the doctor informs her - and joins a Special Operations Executive (SOE)* training course. Once it has grilled her on methods of interrogation, dyed her hair a mousy brown and replaced her fillings, Charlotte is parachuted into France to complete a specified mission. But instead of doing her job and heading home, she sets out to find Gregory''s whereabouts. When he speaks of fidelity and conflicting passions, he is not just referring to Charlotte''s love of her missing man but of the Occupation by the Nazis that turned Frenchmen against each other as well as against Jews.

Charlotte Gray

In order to save the future, undercover SpecOps investigator Thursday Next attempts to convince her son Friday to join the ChronoGuard. To complicate matters, she''ll have to deal with renegade apprentices, ruthless corporations, and a sting operation from the Cheese Enforcement Agency. The title First Among Sequels was met with stiff resistance from Fforde''s publishers because it had ''sequel'' in the title, and it was felt that telegraphing the ''sequelness'' of the book might be a bad move. It was decided, however, to capitalise on the fact that this was a series - a sort of ''Have you discovered Thursday Next yet?'' approach to marketing. First Among Sequels is the first part of a new four-part Thursday Next series, which is reported to be continued with One of our Thursdays is Missing in 2011. The title is a parody of First Among Equals, which is the title of a best-selling Jeffrey Archer novel, but also comes from the English translation of the Latin phrase primus inter pares. It is traditionally used to describe the position of the British Prime Minister, since in the British Constitution the position of prime minister has no official existence, and the office holder is simply the ''most powerful'' of the Queen''s advisors in Cabinet.

First Amoung Sequels

Dorinda Oakley, daughter of a land‐poor farmer in Virginia, at 20 goes to work in Nathan Pedlar''s store. She falls in love with Jason Greylock, weak‐willed son of the village doctor, and forgets her purpose of helping her father to rebuild the farm, but the day before their planned wedding Jason is forced to marry a former fiancée. Bitterly disillusioned and pregnant, Dorinda seeks work in New York, where she is injured and miscarries in a street accident. She is attended by Dr. Faraday, who later employs her as a nurse for his children. A young doctor proposes to her, but she refuses him, determined to “find something else in life.” After her father''s death, Dorinda returns to the family farm, which is impoverished and overgrown with broomsedge. Having studied scientific agriculture in New York, she introduces progressive methods, gradually returning the “barren ground” to fertility and creating a prosperous dairy farm. Her mother becomes an invalid, after her brother Rufus is questioned for murder, so that Dorinda must carry on with only the aid of a few farm laborer. After her mother''s death she marries Nathan Pedlar, to provide a home for his children, and after he dies she shelters Jason, now penniless and ill from excessive drinking. He soon dies.

Barren Ground

The story takes place in the 1840s up to 1850. The first part of the novel describes the hardships faced by rural families in Sweden. Karl Oskar Nilsson and his wife, Kristina, own a farm in Ljuder Socken in Småland. They have four children and work hard to make a living, but the poor harvests lead to famine, a catalyst for the beginnings of emigration to the United States in search of a better life. Karl Oskar and his brother Robert want to go, but Kristina doesn''t want to leave her home country, knowing that she will never see the rest of their family again. But after the death of their oldest child, she accepts her husband''s plans when she realizes that they are in just as much danger from their lives in Sweden as on the big sea and in a New World. They pack up all their belongings and book passage in a group with others from their parish. The characters illustrate some of the motives that prompted people to leave Sweden in the 19th century. The travelers include: * Karl-Oskar, Kristina and their four children - seeking to escape poverty and famine and finding a place where their work pays off. * Robert, Karl Oskar''s adventurous brother - landless, as the second son of a farmer whose holding is too small to sub-divide. He seeks escape from the harsh conditions of hired farm help. * Danjel Andreasson with family, Kristina''s uncle, who had been banished from the country due to his religious "delusions". The state Lutheran church was very powerful, and dissent, even in the simple form of home Bible study, was not tolerated. They bring their farmhand Arvid, who is a friend of Robert. * Jonas Petter Albrektsson, who seeks to escape from an unhappy marriage at a time when divorce was not possible. * Ulrika of Västergöhl, a former prostitute, looking to leave her past behind and start afresh with her daughter Elin. The second part of the book tells how they board the ship in Karlshamn, and then how the life goes on during the ten weeks they spend on board - battling sea-sickness and scurvy, before finally reaching New York City in midsummer of 1850. sv:Utvandrarna (bok)

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

An Inspector Calls

By John Boynton Priestley

Shadowland

By Meg Cabot

"G" Is for Gumshoe

By Sue Grafton

The Scarlet Gospels

By Clive Barker

New Moon

By Stephenie Meyer

The Tiger Rising

By Kate DiCamillo

The Horse's Mouth

By Joyce Cary

The Shadow

By Hans Christian Andersen

Charlotte Gray

By Sebastian Faulks

First Amoung Sequels

By Jasper Fforde

Barren Ground

No Author Listed

The Emigrants

By Vilhelm Moberg