Somebody dies. A young mother is recuperating in a San Francisco hospital when she is suddenly gasping for breath. The call button fails to bring help in time. The hospital''s doctors, some of the best in the nation, are completely mystified by her death. How did this happen? Apocalypse nears. This is not the first such case at the hospital. Just as patients are about to be released with a clean bill of health, their conditions take a devastating turn for the worse. Accompanied by the newest member of the Women''s Murder Club, Yuki Castellano, Lieutenant Lindsay Boxer probes deeper into the incidents. Could these cases just be appalling coincidences? Or is a maniac playing God with people''s lives? When someone close to the Women''s Murder Club begins to exhibit the same frightening symptoms, Lindsay fears no one is safe. The 5th horseman rides. It is a wild race against time as Lindsay''s investigation reveals a hospital administration determined to shield its reputation at all costs. And while the hospital wages an explosive court battle that grips the entire nation, Lindsay and the Women''s Murder Club hunt for a merciless killer among its esteemed medical staff.

The 5th Horseman

The story is set in a post-disaster, dystopic future city, called the Urb, which has been disturbed by an earthquake known as "The Big Shake". The Urb is plagued by poverty, thieves, gang warfare, and the use of mindprobes (such as trendies, and shooters), which are analogous to hard drugs and which enable users to temporarily escape their harsh lives through images like movies being played in their heads. Genetically improved people, called "proovs," live across the "Forbidden Zone," a minefield separating the Urb from a city called Eden, with a beautiful society, food and water. Spaz is a 14-year-old boy who can''t use mindprobes because of his epilepsy and whose adoptive family has abandoned him because they feared the symptoms of his epilepsy. Spaz runs errands for Billy Bizmo, the latch-boss (leader) of his gang, the "Bully Bangers," in a section of the Urb. On one of his errands, Spaz is sent to rob Ryter, a very little man who possesses the lost arts of literature. Spaz soon meets Little Face, a five-year-old orphan who, throughout the book, only says the word "chox," because he doesn''t know how to speak, and Lanaya, a proov who charitably gives out food. At first, Spaz is very hostile towards Ryter, but Ryter understands Spaz''s situation and does his best to help him, offering no resistance when Spaz arrives to steal Ryter''s meager possessions . Eventually Spaz learns that Bean, his beloved stepsister , is dying of a sickness. Ryter and Little Face accompany Spaz on a journey to find Bean. The trio starts by traveling through a large, broken water pipe that leads to other latches. Along the way, they pass through latches controlled by various other bosses, having adventures along the way. One of the latches, which is ruled by the "Monkey Boys," they find that the leader Mongo the Magnificent is dying and Ryter convinces the Tek boss to take his place. At the next latch the group sees the entire latch burning and finds Lanaya being attacked. She is rescued by Spaz and Ryter and she joins them on their journey. They start traveling towards the latch where Bean lives. Eventually the story''s heroes find Bean, who is dying of leukemia. Lanaya decides to take Bean to Eden, along with Spaz, Ryter, and Little Face, and soon they arrive at Lanaya''s contributors'', or parents'', house. At this point in the novel, it is shown that Lanaya is a special proov who has been bred to eventually lead Eden, and so she has rights and privileges that other proovs do not. They take Bean to a proov hospital and she is cured of her sickness using genetic surgery. Ryter and Spaz, and Little Face enjoy the paradise of Eden, being unfamiliar with grass, a blue sky, fish in a stream, and apples, among other things. Some time later Ryter, Spaz, and Bean are thrown out of Eden because the elders who rule over Eden decide they are unacceptable, even though Bean is extremely smart, having beaten one of Lanaya''s contributors in chess. The elders of Eden refuse to accept that someone from the Urb could naturally be better than a proov in any way. Little Face is secretly adopted by Lanaya''s contributors. Lanaya reveals to the elders that the mindprobes, which cause so much damage to the people who use them, come from Eden, and so all the mindprobes throughout the Urb are deactivated, causing rioting and anarchy outside Eden. Bean is deposited at her home, and Ryter and Spaz are returned to theirs. Back at Spaz''s home latch Ryter is blamed for the deactivation of the mindprobes and is wheeled and killed, while Spaz has an epileptic seizure. Before his death, Ryter tells Spaz that he is the last book in the universe. Billy Bizmo, the leader of Spaz''s latch, tells him that he is his father and that his mother died at his birth. The story ends with Lanaya sending Spaz a message about how it''s getting better in Eden and how she believes they can fix it all in time. Spaz takes on the name Ryter, continuing his work, writing the last book in the universe using a device that writes while he talks. The book was denied use in a California school because the area had been having gang problems.

The Last Book in the Universe

Whitaker begins by showing that the antipsychotics, benzodiazepines and antidepressants were discovered as side effects during research for antihistamines (specifically promethazine), gram negative antibiotics (specifically mephenesin) and the anti-tuberculosis agents isoniazid and iproniazid respectively. The psychiatric mechanisms of action of these drugs were not known at the time and these were initially called major tranquilizers (now typical antipsychotics) due to their induction of "euphoric quietiude"; minor tranquilizers (now benzodiazepines) and psychic energizers (now antidepressants) due to patients "dancing in the wards." These compounds were developed during a period of growth for the pharmaceutical industry bolstered by the 1951 Durham-Humphrey Amendment, giving physicians monopolistic prescribing rights thus aligning the interests of physicians and pharmaceutical companies. This also followed the industry''s development of "magic bullets" that treat people with, for example, diabetes, which provided an analogy to sell the idea of these drugs to the public. It was not until many years later, after the mechanisms of these drugs were determined, that the serotonergic hypothesis of depression and dopaminergic hypothesis of schizophrenia were developed to fall in line with the drug''s mechanisms. According to Whitaker''s analysis of the primary literature lower levels of serotonin and higher levels of dopmine "have proved to be true in patients WITH prior exposure to antidepressants or antipsychotics (ie as homeostatic mechanisms) but NOT in patients without prior exposure." Another means by which he undermines the magic bullet theory is that he shows that the historical notion that the "invention of the antipsychotic Thorazine" having emptied the asylums is a myth. His case begins by showing that during the late 1940s and 1950s ~75% of cases admitted for first episode schizophrenia recovered to the community by approximately 3 years (Thorazine was not released until 1955). He then notes that the arrival of Thorazine did not improve discharge rates in the 1950s for people newly diagnosed with schizophrenia. In fact, based on the only large scale first episode schizophrenia study of this era, 88% of those who were not treated were discharged within eighteen months compared to 74% of neuroleptic treated. This is additionally evidenced by the fact that when Thorazine was introduced in 1955 there were 267 thousand schizophrenia patients in state and county mental hospitals, and eight years later, there were 253 thousand, thus indicating that the advent of neuroleptics barely budged the number of hospitalized patients. What he argues actually cleared the asylums was the beginning of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. These programs provided federal subsidies for nursing home care but no such subsidy for care in state mental hospitals, and so the states, seeking to save money, naturally began shipping their chronic patients to nursing homes. Whitaker favors psychiatric medications but believes that they must be used in a "selective, cautious manner. It should be understood that they’re not fixing any chemical imbalances. And honestly, they should be used on a short-term basis." Whitaker traces the effects of what looks like an iatrogenic epidemic: the drugs that patients receive can perturb their normal brain function. Whitaker suggests that the "wonder drug" glow around the second generation psychotropics has long since disappeared. He views the "hyping" of the top-selling atypical antipsychotics as "one of the more embarrassing episodes in psychiatry''s history, as one government study after another failed to find that they were any better than the first-generation anti-psychotics." One of Whitaker''s solutions is the style of care documented by professor Jaakko Seikkula at Keropudas Hospital in Tornio in Lapland where drugs are given to patients only on a limited basis, with good outcomes. According to Whitaker, the district has the lowest per capita spending on mental health of all health districts in Finland. He also advocates that those with depression engage in exercise. Exercise for depression is so successful that in the UK the doctor may write a prescription for exercise. In fact, studies have shown that exercise produces a "substantial improvement" within six weeks, that its effect size is "large," and that 70% of all depressed patients respond to an exercise program. "These success rates are quite remarkable," German investigators wrote in 2008. Whitaker sees that children are vulnerable to being prescribed a lifetime of drugs. As the author says, a psychiatrist and parents may give a child a "cocktail" to force him or her to behave. Then when this child grows up to eighteen, Whitaker says he or she becomes a disabled adult.

Anatomy of an Epidemic

The Gate House is the sequel to The Gold Coast, released by the aforementioned publisher. The book begins when John Sutter, former Wall Street tax attorney, returns to the Gold Coast of Long Island, NY for the imminent funeral of a family servant; Ethel Allard. On John''s return to the United States he realizes that he has no standing line of credit, no money, no home, no friends and no family – that which he wants to speak to – and has therefore taken up residence in the gate house of Stanhope Hall, the ancestral manor of his ex-wife Susan Sutter. The mansion itself is huge and sits on 323 acres and has since been seized by the government after the former owner, Frank Bellarosa – the original antagonist from The Gold Coast – is charged with tax evasion and has his assets seized by the I.R.S.; therefore the government has sold the mansion to an Amir Nasim, an Iranian businessman and devout Muslim. John, realizing that Ethel has a life tenancy until she dies, takes up residence without notifying Mr. Nasim, for the purpose of both having a life tenancy and the fact that since the book takes place after 9/11, the relations between Muslims and Americans have become "frosty" at best. John had started a new life in London, after a 3-year sail around the world that finally landed him in London, England where he became a partner of a prestigious tax law firm in Britain and even got a new girlfriend named Samantha.

The Gate House

After being forcibly divorced from his wife for political reasons, Spencer tries to force his way on board the ship she’s on. After being ejected, he gets drunk and implanted with a "feelgood" device that stimulates the pleasure centers of the brain. Spencer is saved from this addictive and lethal fate by an unknown Kona Tatsu (secret police) agent. They clean and care for him, then send him on a mission to the Daltgeld system. Working with Agent Suss Nanahbuc, Spencer is given command of a task force and told that Kona Tatsu (KT) agents are disappearing from the planet. Upon arrival, the ``Duncan`` splashes down to dock for repairs, and Nanahbuc heads out to learn the fate of the other agents. While docked, Spencer gets a visit from McCain, a KT agent hiding from the enemy. However, the enemy is aboard and kills McCain before they can analyze the data she found. The enemy turns out to be a small mercury-like blob that seems to react to its environment, weighs 16 tons, and can control the devices it infects. Spencer leaves the ship and closes it down tight, but it’s already too late. In the end, it turns out an alien artifact was recently discovered in an asteroid, and the captain of the mining freighter was "convinced" to take the artifact to the head of a local conglomerate, Jameson. The device, a helmet made of a mercury-like substance, takes over Jameson and uses him as a control center for taking over the system, with plans to leave it and spread throughout the galaxy. After losing his flagship to prevent an alien from leaving the system, Spencer and Nanahbuc locate the main asteroid of the enemy and head in with the task force to put an end to it for good.

The War Machine

Sixteen-year-old Connor is on his way home from school when he is run down by an ice-cream truck. He is sent to hell with his dog, Scrote, who choked on an ice cream cone which rolled off the truck. There he is sentenced to spending all eternity reading intellectual books and listening to classical music with his personal devil tormentor, Clarence, and a transvestite Viking, Olaf. Eventually he meets a beautiful naked angel called Francessa who tells him that one person''s hell could be his heaven. He sets out to swap hells with an elderly, classical music loving, homosexual gentlemen whose hell is to constantly play the PlayStation and have his penis fondled by nude women. He, Clarence, Scrote and Olaf set out on a long journey, of which if they are caught means they will be annihilated and be gone forever. On their travels, Olaf is captured and annihilated. Eventually they reach Connor''s heaven, but he finds that Clarence has betrayed him. Olaf also betrayed him and is not dead, but then tries to help Connor and is this time killed for good. Connor and Scrote are sentenced to their ideal heaven, which has now became their worst nightmare as their tastes have changed. Connor notices a lever on the annihilator which has a plus and a minus. Figuring that it will reincarnate him if he changes it to plus and jumps in, he does so. It is left to the reader to decide whether Connor and Scrote were reincarnated or were fully annihilated.

HellBent

The book begins with the death of Cass’s grandmother, whom she calls Bunty. Seemingly simple, the story starts to show the attitudes of the people around her, and is an introduction to the characters themselves. At the beginning of chapter one, the family is back in their home, going about their normal routine, when Cass mentions to her brother that Bishop Todd, Bishop of the One Church, is missing. Griffin, or Griff, being a seventeen year old cynic, shrugs it off, ignoring his little sister and continuing to play black market video games. Later, when they go to deal with their family, Griff creates a spark. The family argues and the father admits to more than he wants known publicly, leading to everyone going about their own ways. Cassandra decides to meet up with her boyfriend, Ming, despite the fact that she has homework due, but first overhears a revealing conversation between her parents. Things start to fall into place in her mind at that point. She hurries off to meet her boyfriend, and they discover a body. Neither wishes to be involved, so they do not report it. They hide the body in a cave, where they hope it will not be found. Ming makes a reference to Orpheus and Eurydice, begging her not to look back, but she does. The story continues with Cassandra''s father leading a church service, also making a reference to Orpheus and Eurydice. Cass asks for an explanation. She and her family then end up back at their home, with Ming appearing shortly. After seeing a press conference with Ma Baxter, they are all disgusted, but manage to go eat. The children end up parting ways after a run-in with an unpleasant acquaintance. Cassandra is mad at Ming because he has been using her as a pawn, as she describes it, in his little twisted games with Jeremiah. Cass ends up in the vestry searching around for things, where her brother finds her not long after she arrived. They then find their Aunt Abby, who has it in for Cass and is determined to give her a lesson in love.

Bad Faith

The story begins by detailing the creation story of Heaven. There is a substance of raw chaos: cacoastrum; and stuff of order: illiaster. From the illiaster came consciousness that resulted in the firstborn angels: Yaweh, Satan, Michael, Lucifer, Raphael, Leviathan and Belial. The firstborn create Heaven in order to protect themselves from the cacoastrum, which threatens to destroy them. This event is later referred to as the ''First Wave.'' The walls of heaven have collapsed two times since then, resulting in the Second and Third Waves, creating, respectively, the archangels and angels. After the third wave Heaven has been divided into four regencies named for the cardinal points of the compass. Belial, half-mad and trapped in the form of a dragon, rules the Northern Regency. Leviathan, a kindly woman in the shape of a sea serpent, oversees the Western Regency. Satan rules the South with his loyal servant Beelzebub, trapped in the body of a golden retriever. Lucifer rules the East, with his consort Lilith, who had previously been briefly involved with Satan. Yaweh oversees all of Heaven from the center, aided by his healer Raphael and warrior Michael. Other important angels include the blind musician Harut, the poetry-quoting Ariel, the craftsman Asmodai, the smirking Mephistopheles, the dour Uriel, the sneering Abdiel, the somewhat naive Gabriel and the coolly competent Zaphkiel. A mostly independent subplot involving two angels named Kyriel and Sith gives the viewpoints of two low-level angels who get swept up in the story''s events. Trouble arises when Yaweh, worried about the imminent Fourth Wave, devises The Plan: the blueprint for a new, larger Heaven (Earth), with walls that the cacoastrum cannot destroy. Unfortunately, at least a thousand angels will die during the construction of his new Paradise. Yaweh charges Satan with securing the cooperation of every angel in Heaven, and Satan finds himself wondering if they have the ethical right to coerce anyone into participating. Exacerbating matters is Abdiel, who craves Satan''s rank. Abdiel begins playing Satan against Yaweh, telling each of them that the other will no longer discuss matters. Step by step, the factions escalate. Abdiel attempts to wound Beelzebub and accidentally kills the innocent Ariel. When Satan and Beelzebub attempt to avenge this, Raphael and Michael misinterpret this as proof their opponents have abandoned all decency. Yaweh, attempting to rally his side, convinces his supporters that he is not only the eldest of the Firstborn, he is God. This announcement stuns not only his opponents, but even Michael, his closest supporter. Using the energy of his newfound worshipers, he creates a new angel, Yeshuah, who he proclaims his son and heir. As the war continues, Zaphkiel intercepts Satan and brings him directly to Yaweh, where the two discover that Abdiel has played them both for fools. However, Satan will not acknowledge Yaweh''s dishonest claim to Godhood, and neither will Yaweh abandon it, so the conflict continues. Abdiel, now on the run from both sides, begins digging a hole in the wall of Heaven, but Mephistopheles finds and strangles him before he can finish the work. Satan''s hosts gain the ascendency in the battle. Seeing that defeat is inevitable, Yaweh decides to destroy Heaven by expanding the hole that Abdiel had been deepening. Yet when the wall of Heaven is breached, flooding Heaven with cacoastrum, Yaweh finds that he cannot allow himself to be destroyed by the cacoastrum; it is not in his nature. Yeshuah, seeing an opportunity to triumph over Satan''s forces, sacrifices his life by leaping into the breach and directing the rupture towards the hosts of Satan, devastating them. Meanwhile, as the rebels fight for Heaven, Satan is captured but with the help of Beelzebub and Mephistopheles leaves Heaven; his followers join him in the abyss and create a third stronghold: Hell.

To Reign in Hell

Granite is born on a snowy April day in Alaska. For the first weeks of his life, he lives in the kennels, playing with his siblings Digger, Cricket, and Nugget. Even though their mother Seppala gets sick, life is good there. His owners, Tim and Kate, take good care of him. Granite differs from the other pups. He is not eager to train to be a sled dog. One day, when the pups are ten-weeks-old, a man shows up to buy Granite and his sister Cricket. Even though Cricket is bought and does not mind going to a new home, Granite does not want to leave his mother and runs away from where he grew up. He runs away into the Alaskan wilderness. After days wandering alone, hungry and injured, the Siberian husky puppy meets a wolf pack, led by a black wolf named Ebony and his mate, Snowdrift the white wolf, whose pups were kidnapped weeks before. She takes Granite in. Snowdrift raises the dog as a foster son and teaches him to hunt mice. That seems to help her get over some pain in losing her pups. It is mentioned that her pups were stolen by humans who wanted to breed young wolves to huskies, for wolfdogs are worth a lot of money. Even though he protects Granite, Ebony does not like him, and neither do Strider (Ebony''s brother, Granite''s chief tormentor), Roamer (Ebony and Snowdrift''s two-year-old son), and Breeze (a female wolf who came to them from a pack in the west). The other wolf who likes Granite is Snowdrift''s yearling son, Climber. Granite and Climber become fast friends. Granite is less afraid of Climber because the young wolf had a "husky face", and Climber was pleased to have a younger member (so his rank rises) regardless of Granite being a dog. Another reason the pair play together is that Climber is still young, and was a pup not a long time ago. Ebony pretends the dog is not there, and Breeze feeds Granite only to humor Ebony. Roamer and Strider feed him just to show Snowdrift. When she is not there, they take back what they fed Granite. Strider, later on, pretends to give Granite a lesson and lures the young dog into attacking a porcupine. Granite got tricked and a face full of quills. Granite hopes to please Ebony by trying to catch a fox but nearly loses his life. He nearly runs into a trap, but Breeze stops him just in time. He is, again, scorned by the others for his lousiness. However, later on, Climber is killed during a moose hunt, and Granite must try to earn his place in the pack, while dodging Roamer and Strider and other dangers of the Alaskan wilderness. Granite then runs away, overwhelmed by the torments from Roamer and Strider. Granite proves to be no longer a puppy who cannot fill his own stomach. He does fine save for the dark cloud of loneliness that grows bigger each day. He meets another pack of wolves when he intrudes into their territory. They welcome the dog with slashing teeth. Granite returns to Ebony''s country, and the black wolf, though angry, lets him rejoin the pack. Meanwhile, Snowdrift attempts to search for her lost pups but is shot by hunters. The rest of the pack finds her, though she is blind and wounded. While Snowdrift recovers, Breeze is almost kind to the dog and teaches him how to hunt salmon. In the fall, Granite kills a marmot, but Roamer tries to take it away. Granite fights the young black wolf and wins, and Roamer dares not to challenge him again. In the end, Granite saves Snowdrift''s life. Ebony lets the dog hunt alongside him, making Granite''s dream come true. Even Strider is friendly and no longer challenges the dog. Granite, now more than two years old, realizes that he is home.

Child of the Wolves

Caith mac Sliabhin, condemned by the Sidhe in The Brothers for committing patricide, wanders along the river Guagach, accompanied and tormented by Dubhain, a mischievous pooka. Their journey takes them to Gleann Fiain where a beast from the river chases Caith up a hill to an isolated cottage. The occupants, twins Ceannann and Firinne, let Caith and Dubhain in and allow them to spend the night. Unbeknown to Caith, the birth of the twins 21 years ago set in motion a sequence of events that damned Gleann Fiain and cast a shadow over Faery. The twins were born to Fianna, queen of Gleann Fiain in Dun Glas. But unbeknown to her husband, Ceannann mac Ceannann, Fianna was unable to conceive and had sought help from a wise-women, Moragacht. Moragacht struck a bargain with her, promising her twins if she lay down with a selkie, in exchange for one of the twins when they were born. But when the twins arrived (a human and a selkie) and Moragacht came to claim one of them, Fianna denied any knowledge of her, and mac Ceannann turned Moragacht away. From that day onwards, grief and misery struck the family, and mac Ceannann and Fianna were forced to vacate Dun Glas and flee with the twins to an abandoned hilltop fortress. But the loch beast, under Moragacht''s control, found them there and killed them all, except the twins, now aged 14, who escaped to the cottage. The witch then seized control of Dun Glas from where she damned all of Gleann Fiain. But the wards that had protected the cottage from Moragacht fall when Caith and Dubhain arrive. Riders from Dun Glas come and capture the twins. Caith and Dubhain (as a horse) give chase, but as they approach the riders, Dubhain is overcome by the witch''s magic and falls into the loch, abandoning Caith. Caith and the twins are taken to Dun Glas where they are locked in cells bordering the loch. Caith lapses into a dream where he enters the loch to find Dubhain duelling with the loch beast. He draws Dubhain back to his cell, who in turn calls Nuallan from Faery, the bright Sidhe controlling their destinies. Nuallan gives Caith a silver key to unlock the iron cells and so lifts a spell enabling Nuallan to cast Caith, Dubhain and the twins out of Dun Glas. Moragacht allows her prisoners to escape because with her magic she now holds Nuallan, a bigger catch and her means to controlling Faery. The twins lead Caith and Dubhain to the ruins of the hilltop fortress, their former home. There they make a fire with the remains of a staircase, but a ghost appears out of the smoke that transports Caith back to the night of the fall of the fortress and into the body of Padraic, head of mac Ceannann''s household. There he relives the last few hours of the family until he is killed by the beast. Firinne retrieves one of the burning timbers from the fire as a keepsake, and the twins set off for the sea to search for their selkie father, with Caith and Dubhain in pursuit. Caith finds the selkie first, a whale floundering on the beach. But when the selkie shapeshifts to a man, he is killed by one of Moragacht''s pursuing riders. In the ensuing confusion, Caith accidentally kills Ceannann. Firinne is devastated by the loss of her twin brother and gives Caith her keepsake from the fortress. Then, revealing her selkie birth, she changes into a whale and heads out to sea. Caith rides Dubhain back to Dun Glas to free Nuallan. Once again Dubhain is weakened by the witch''s spells and Caith has to enter the keep on his own. He sees Nuallan helpless in his cell, but Nuallan asks him to unlock it with the silver key Caith unknowingly still had all this time, the key that would have given Moragacht access to Faery. Nuallan takes the key and flees the keep, leaving Caith to fend for himself. Moragacht, furious at the loss of the Sidhe, prepares to deal with Caith, but he throws the charred piece of wood Firinne gave him into the fireplace which releases Padraic, the ghost from the hilltop fortress. In an act of revenge, it begins destroying Dun Glas and all in it. With the witch''s spell now diminishing, Dubhain rescues Caith from the keep, while in the loch a whale from the sea turns on the beast. The shadow over Faery lifts and Caith and Dubhain resume their travels.

Faery in Shadow

Abbadiah and Zebbidiah Jones are twins from Buffalo, New York; they prefer to go by their nicknames, Twink and Tom. The twins enjoy watching cowboy serials on the family TV set, customized by their scientist father with its own wall-sized projection screen. While the twins are watching the TV one afternoon, the normal picture changes into a strangely beautiful scene with a castle in the background. They are confronted by a living toy clown, a duplicate of the familiar toy they have named Twoffle. This living version, who calls himself Twiffle, persuades them to walk into the screen before them; the two children find themselves magically transported into the scene. Twiffle explains that he is a third cousin of the twins'' toy, Twoffle; the two have had long conversations about Twink and Tom while the children have slept. Twiffle serves a sorcerer named Conjo; they are on Conjo''s island in the Nonestic Ocean, and are heading toward Conjo''s castle. Meanwhile, a problem has arisen in the Emerald City in Oz; the love magnet (introduced by Baum in his fifth Oz book, The Road to Oz) had been hanging above the city''s entrance gate, but has now fallen from its nail and broken in two. Princess Ozma consults with the Shaggy Man, who first brought the talisman to Oz; they determine that the magnet can be repaired only by the magician who created it &mdash; none other than Conjo. In the Magic Picture, they watch Twink and Tom approach Conjo''s castle with Twiffle. Surprised at the presence of two human children, Ozma decides to send Shaggy there immediately to investigate. Ozma equips Shaggy with a magic compass that will return him to Oz whenever he chooses. (Ozma herself will be unavailable, sequestered with Glinda the Good as they work on deep magics.) Ozma transports Shaggy with her Magic Belt; he joins the children and Twiffle, much to their surprise. The four of them go to meet Conjo, who is short, fat, bald, and untrustworthy. Conjo agrees to repair the love magnet, though he wants Shaggy''s magic compass in payment. The visitors stay the night; but Shaggy is awakened from sleep by a slight disturbance in his guest bedroom. He discovers that Conjo has repaired and surreptitiously returned the love magnet, but also has taken the magic compass. Twiffle insists that Conjo is not overtly evil, merely "selfish, lazy, and foolishly vain." Yet Conjo has lured the twins to his island to rob them of their memories and use them as his servants, which is malicious enough. Shaggy, Twink, Tom, and Twiffle escape from the island in Conjo''s Airmobile. They reach a sky country called Hightown, and the Airmobile is inadvertently lost, stranding them. They learn they can leave Hightown merely by swimming and walking down through the air, since gravity does not function in the place''s vicinity. They next find their way to the Valley of Romance, where they stumble into a nightmare of incompetent amateur theater. Shaggy and Twink are bewitched into serving as cast members in an inept stage play. Tom and Twoffle manage to free them and break the spell of the place, by showing the love magnet to the Valley''s king, queen, and assembled lords and ladies. (In Snow''s narrative, the magnet has to be displayed to have its effect.) Traveling again, the four encounter the King of the Fairy Beavers. The King agrees to help them reach Oz, if they invite him for a visit &mdash; and Shaggy is happy to oblige. The protagonists and their beaver companions make their way under the Deadly Desert through the Nome King''s tunnel (see The Emerald City of Oz). They pass the barrier of invisibility that shields Oz from the outside world, and arrive in Oz &mdash; only to stumble into a crisis. Conjo has used the magic compass to reach Oz, where he grabs the Wizard''s black bag of magic and locks himself in the Wizard''s laboratory. Conjo wants to supplant the Wizard and gain control of Oz for himself. The Fairy Beaver King defeats Conjo with his water magic, squirting a jet of water from the Forbidden Fountain into Conjo''s mouth. The now amnesiac Conjo is easy to manage and reform; he is returned to his island in Twiffle''s care, for re-education. Twink and Tom enjoy a pleasant stay in Oz before Ozma sends them home once again.

The Shaggy Man of Oz

Dr. Peter has succeeded in enhancing the psychic abilities of a group of men in the Special Forces. These men, called Ghostwalkers, have the ability to move objects, control animals, even walk in dreams. Despite the resounding success, there are problems. Some of the men suffer great pain due to psychic overload, unable to block or filter the thoughts and feelings of others, and need to have anchors (someone to draw the overwhelming emotions away) in order to function. A year into the experiment, some of the men began to die, supposedly from side effects of the process. To help find the answers, Dr. Whitney brings in his daughter, Lily, who is psychic. Lily is at first reluctant to join, but her father is insistent. She is stunned by her immediate and powerful attraction to Captain Ryland Miller, the leader of the Ghostwalker team. He thinks that Peter has betrayed him and his men, separating them from their anchors. He is sure that the men have been murdered and suspects that he’s next. She is also jarred by the evident animosity between her father and Colonel Frank Higgens, Miller’s immediate commanding officer. He and Whitney argue over Whitney’s denying Higgens access to his notes about the enhancing process. Higgens even admits to breaking into Whitney’s computer. Peter Whitney asks Lily to meet him for dinner after leaving the lab, but he doesn’t show. Despite his lack of psychic ability, he somehow telepathically contacts his daughter. He’s dying; someone at Donovan’s is responsible for his murder. He tells her that believes that someone is trying to sabotage the experiment and that that person is within the project itself. He also tells her that there’s a secret laboratory with all his notes on the project. The then begs her forgiveness, and that she has to help the remaining men and find “the others”. Before he can say anything more, she feels him being dumped into the ocean. Stunningly, someone forces her to break contact with her father, Ryland Miller. Several days after her father’s murder, she meets with Ryland Miller again and confronts him. She asks him if he was involved Peter’s death. He denies it; he felt that Dr. Whitney was the only man who could help his men. Realizing that the men cannot stay at Donovans, Lily agrees to help Captain Ryland Miller and the others escape. In her large home, the men can hide while she teaches them the techniques and exercises to help them rebuild their mental barriers. She also finds her father’s hidden lab. Once she does, she’s hit with several brutal shocks. She is not Peter Whitney’s biological daughter. She, along with eleven other psychic girls, all under the age of three, were taken from European orphanages by him and experimented on, just like Ryland and his men. He chose girls because there was an abundance of female children abandoned by their families. Even more alarming, he experienced the same complications with the girls as he had with the men: painful headaches, brain bleeds, seizures. Just like the men, they had lost their natural barriers and Whitney couldn’t undo what he had done. So, he stopped the experiment; he had the other girls adopted and kept Lily. He tried the experiment again because he thought that he had gone wrong by choosing such young subjects. He felt that adult, well-trained subjects wouldn’t have the same problems, but he was wrong. Once the men escape to Lily''s home, she discovers that one of the men had electrodes planted in his head. This could only be done for one reason, to induce brain bleeds and kill him. Now it all become clear to Lily; someone is trying to steal the process and sell it on the open market. When they were unable to break into Whitney''s computer and get his notes, they resorted to killing the men to dissect them in order to discover how process worked. When Dr. Whitney became suspecious of the deaths, he too was murdered. The situation is even more complicated by Ryland and Lily''s powerful attraction to one another. Lily fears that it''s the result of her father''s manipulation, and doesn''t trust it. Ryland knows he''s in love with Lily and doesn''t care it is because of what Whitney has done. Lily thinks that Higgins and Philip Thornton, CEO of Donovans are responsible but she has no real proof. Luckily she finds a recording of Higgins (secretly made by her father) plotting not only Ryland''s death, but also of General Ranier, Higgins'' commanding officer. With the tape, they stop Higgins and restore the reputations of the Ghostwalkers. Now Lily and Ryland begin to search for the young women Peter put up for adoption.

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