Happy to be away from her large family for a while, Polly O''Keefe is spending the autumn with her maternal grandparents, Dr. Kate Murry and Dr. Alex Murry, getting a better education from them in science than she would have received at home. Soon, however, surprising things start to happen, including the unexpected arrival of Zachary Gray, a charming but troubled college student whom Polly met in Greece and dated on Cyprus the year before (in A House Like a Lotus). Then, while walking near her grandparents'' Connecticut home, Polly meets druids Karralys and Anaral and a warrior named Tav, all of whom lived in the area some three thousand years ago. She soon learns that she is not the first person from her time to meet the Murrys'' Pre-Columbian neighbors. Bishop Nason Colubra, the brother of a family friend, Dr. Louise Colubra, has been investigating the hieroglyphs found on rocks in nearby, relics of Karralys'' time. In doing so, he has also come into repeated contact with Anaral''s tribe, the People of the Wind (a tribe that previously appeared in A Swiftly Tilting Planet). The retired bishop is initially reluctant to discuss this, having been met with his sister''s skepticism in previous attempts. However, he feels responsible for exposing Polly to the potential dangers of a tesseract of intersecting periods of time. The Murrys and the Colubras try to protect Polly from being drawn into the past, but although she tries to obey their restrictions on her movements, she continues to encounter Anaral and the others. Karralys and Tav formerly lived in ancient Britain, but have since crossed the ocean and made their home with the People of the Wind. On Samhain, Polly feels a compulsion to visit the Murrys'' indoor swimming pool, the modern location of a site considered sacred by Karralys and Anaral. Polly is suddenly transported to the past, where she learns that Tav wants to offer Polly in blood sacrifice in order to avert a drought. Already the People Across the Lake are conducting raids due to the privations of drought, and Tav wants to protect his adopted people. Karralys sends Polly home. Zachary, however, is intrigued when he learns that the odd people he has seen are from the ancient past. His heart, previously seen as damaged by rheumatic fever in the Austin family novel The Moon by Night, is now so weak that he does not expect to live much longer. On the slight possibility that the solution to his problem lies with the ancient druids, Zach rashly leads Polly back to the star-watching rock, a place where Polly found herself in the past once before. Polly and Zach are drawn through a time gate and trapped in ancient Connecticut, with neither the Murrys nor Louise Colubra there to help Polly out of a potentially fatal situation. Tav soon changes his mind about whether his goddess wants Polly to be sacrificed. Her primary danger is not from the People of the Wind, but from their neighbors across the lake, where the drought is more severe. The People Across the Lake conduct another raid, and leave behind two of their injured members as they withdraw. One of them, Klep, is expected to be his tribe''s future leader. He develops an attachment to his healer, Anaral, and learns from Polly the concept of love. The other injured man, Brown Earth, persuades Zachary to cross the lake with him during the night. Tynak, the current leader of the People Across the Lake, promises to let the tribe''s medicine man heal Zachary''s heart if he helps bring Polly to them. Zach agrees. He participates in another raid, with Polly''s capture as the goal. Polly tries to convince Zach that the People Across the Lake intend to sacrifice her for her blood, but he refuses to admit this. Polly escapes, but returns for Zachary''s sake. Ultimately, Polly''s spirit of self-sacrifice and love, accompanied by the timely return of rain on her captors'' side of the lake, wins out as a better way to interact with the Divine than an offering of death. The two tribes agree to unite and help each other. Zachary repents his betrayal of Polly, and his heart is physically healed (at least in part) before they return to their own time. When they return Polly tells Zachary they shouldn''t see each other any more.

An Acceptable Time

This romance novel is set in the period of World War II at a military hospital during nightly blackouts and bomb raids. The story''s young male protagonist, Laurie Odell, is a wounded soldier from the Dunkirk evacuation (Renault herself worked as a nurse treating Dunkirk evacuees during the war), who must decide if his affections lie with a conscientious objector or a naval officer. The conscientious objector, a Quaker, has not come to terms with his own homosexuality, whereas the naval officer, a friend of Laurie''s from school, is sexually experienced and established in the homosexual subculture of the British military. Laurie''s confused romantic feelings for the two very different young men are compounded by his own discomfort with the gay lifestyle (dramatized in an extended scene at a gay party, regarded by some critics as a literary tour de force). Through this conflict, Renault explored her own ambivalence about whether homosexuals truly constituted what would come to be seen as a gay and lesbian community. She also explored a religious theme, contrasting the pacifist Christianity of the young conscientious objector with the "exalted paganism" (as one character describes it) of ancient Greece. The novel derives its title from the Chariot Allegory employed by Plato in his dialogue Phaedrus; Renault also alludes to Plato''s Symposium, in which a character philosophizes about an army composed of male lovers. The story''s wartime setting is crucial to the ethical issues the novel explores. In a sense, The Charioteer is a warm-up for Renault''s historical novels. By turning away from the 20th century and focusing on stories about male lovers in the warrior societies of ancient Greece, Renault no longer had to deal with homosexuality and antigay prejudice as social "problems"; instead she was free to focus on larger ethical and philosophical concerns while examining the nature of love and leadership.

The Charioteer

The book begins with the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 where Elizabeth Stewart is prosecuted on suspicions of being a witch. This occurs on the insistence of witnesses who see children acting strangely after eating rye bread. Despite the pleas of her husband who happens to be a wealthy shipbuilder, she is executed at the insistence of Reverend Increase Mather, who convinces her husband with a mysterious evidence. Three hundred years later, the Stewart family fortune is inherited by Kimberly Stewart(a nurse). Kim is introduced to the brilliant scientist Edward Armstrong by their mutual friend Stanton Lewis. The two immediately fall in love. A casual visit to her old family house in Salem proves to be a turning point in the story. In the basement of the old house, Edward finds a new strain of Claviceps purpurea which induces a great sense of calmness, sexual drive, confidence, etc. Edward immediately assembles a team and begin working on developing the new drug with help from Stanton.To save time Edward and his team starts taking the drug themselves. During this time Kim is working on finding out about the evidence that was used to convict her ancestor. Finding out that the evidence is in the possession of Harvard University, she makes enquiries in that direction. Soon strange things begin happening in Salem Town. The town begins experiencing acts of vandalism, and even murder. Meanwhile Kim finally locates the evidence mentioned in the letter. It turns out to be the fetus of a deformed baby which was given birth by Elizabeth. The fetus is taken as evidence by the clergy of her covenant with devil. Kim rushes home to inform Edward that the drug they are taking has teratogenic effects. However at home she is attacked by Edward and his team who are in a kind of trance. In the ensuing pursuit the house is set ablaze killing all but two of the researchers.

Acceptable Risk

The plot concerns the children of the Duke of Omnium, Plantagenet Palliser, and his late wife, Lady Glencora. When Lady Glencora dies unexpectedly, the Duke is left to deal with his grownup children, with whom he has a somewhat distant relationship. As the government in which he is Prime Minister has also fallen, the Duke is left bereft of both his beloved wife and his political position. Before her death, Lady Glencora had imprudently given her secret blessing to her daughter Mary''s courtship by a poor gentleman, Frank Tregear, a friend of Lord Silverbridge, the Duke''s older son and heir. Mrs. Finn, Lady Glencora''s dearest confidante, somewhat uneasily remains after the funeral as a companion and unofficial chaperone for Mary at the Duke''s request. Once she becomes aware of the seriousness of the relationship between Mary and Frank, Mrs. Finn insists that the Duke be informed. The Duke''s two sons also prove burdensome. Lord Silverbridge follows the wishes of his father by entering Parliament. He had proposed to Lady Mabel Grex, whom he has known all his life. She had turned him down, although with an indication of a more welcoming answer another time. However, Lord Silverbridge becomes enamoured with American heiress Isabel Boncassen. She agrees to marry him, but only if the Duke is willing to welcome her into the family. At first, the Duke disapproves; and he disapproves even more of his daughter''s suitor. To add to his troubles, Gerald, the younger son, gets himself expelled from Cambridge after attending The Derby without permission. However, by the end of the book, the Duke grows closer to all three of his children; he allows the engagements of both son and daughter, and as the book ends, he is invited once more to take a part in the government.

The Duke''s Children

The book opens with the narrator visiting a close friend after his fortieth suicide-by-birdplane. Offended by his insensitivity, she kills herself, then, in a new body, embarks on a series of mundane attempts to amuse herself, including stealing a white fluffy desert animal that she keeps as a pet, programming elaborate dreams for herself, having unsatisfying sex with her peers, and employing a wide variety of legal drugs. Incapable of making emotional connections with anyone, she finds her life increasingly unsatisfying, though her demanding and difficult pet does interest her. Soon after going through the mundane rituals of her life the narrator feels like she should not be a Jang teenager anymore. However, the quasi-robots who run the city determine that she is not ready to become an older person. Soon she tries looking for a useful job, but to no avail: robots and computers perform every useful task. She then attempts to have a child, but is unable to find a suitable partner, tries to have a child with herself, and ends up causing the child to die. Unable to fill the emptiness she feels, she joins an expedition to explore the deserts outside the city. During this expedition, the narrator realizes the beauty of life outside of the domes and she gains a strong emotional connection with her stolen pet. However, it is then accidentally killed, devastating her. Upon returning to the city, she is still unable to make lasting emotional connections with her peers. She considers death and wonders if she really belongs in the city or somewhere else.

Biting the Sun

Sally J. Freedman is moving from New Jersey to Miami, Florida with her brother and their mother and grandmother at the end of World War II. This is because of her brother Douglas''s health, for he caught nephritis from staying in wet clothes in the cold. The novel first touches on racism when, on the train to Florida, Sally meets a black woman traveling with her young son about Sally''s age and her infant daughter whom Sally gets to hold. The next day, Sally goes back to visit the black family and discovers that laws requiring racial segregation in the 1940s in the Southern United States force the family to move to another car on the train. Sally is infuriated and does not understand why her mother is not upset as well. Before Sally can be admitted to her new school, she must undergo a physical examination in which the school nurse discovers nits (head louse eggs) in Sally''s hair. The school nurse tries to calm Sally''s mother, who is insulted and taking the news personally, by saying, "Look Mrs. Freedman, don''t take this personally. You''ve been traveling, she could have picked them up anywhere." In her new school, she meets new friends, the first being Barbara, who teaches Sally all about the new school. Later, she meets Andrea, a sixth grader, and Shelby, a girl in a different class than Sally. She has a difficult first day at school, but after a while, she begins to make more friends. There, she meets Peter Hornstein, a so called ''Latin Lover'', who seem to like Sally, but Peter ignores Sally when Jackie, a new girl, arrives at the school. It troubles Sally that Peter is going after a different girl, and she begins to like Peter back. A central part in the story is when Sally meets a man named Mr. Zavodsky, who lives in her building in Miami. He offers Andrea and her candy. Sally refuses the candy even though Andrea accepts it, which makes Sally upset. Sally, who is Jewish, notices that Mr. Zavodsky looks similar to Adolf Hitler and comes to believe (because of her active imagination) that he is actually Hitler, in disguise and retiring in Miami. Another important plotline is when Sally finds out that her father, who had just turned 42, was exactly the same age as his two brothers had been when they died. Sally, who is superstitious, is worried that her father may die in his 42nd year, because of the well-known superstition ''all bad things happen in threes''. Sally writes (but never mails) a lot of letters to Mr. Zavodsky, always saying she will get him someday. She spies on him, secretly listens to their phone conversations on a party line. She worries at one point Mr. Zavodsky killed her friend Shelby, and she believes the rock candy he offers is actually poison. In the end, Mr. Zavodsky dies of a heart attack. In the one year Sally spends at Miami, she learns how babies are made, attends but loses a contest, drinks whisky, kisses Peter at their teacher''s wedding, and in the end, strengthens her relationship with her family members. At the very end, Sally and her family return to New Jersey.

Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself

The novel tells the story of the Rainbow catastrophe of 2156. It starts very simple, as a Wave observer Robert Sklyarov notices an unusually persistent Wave and reports it to the Capital (the only city on the scientists'' planet). Simultaneously, Camill (the last remaining of "the Baker''s Dozen") appears at his observation tower and tells him to leave it and fly south immediately. Sklyarov refuses to leave precious ulmotrons behind and urges Camill for help but when the wind front preceding the Wave strikes, the falling machinery seemingly kills Camill. Terrified Sklyarov flees south. Back in the Capital, everything is still quiet. Leonid Gorbovsky, whose Tariel II has delivered scientific equipment to Rainbow, pays a visit to Matvei Vyazanitsyn, the general director of the planet, then returns to his ship, when the ominous news come. Camill contacts (via videophone) the nearest scientist village and issues a warning that the Wave Sklyarov saw is closely followed by another one of a new type. According to him, it cannot be stopped like the ones before and therefore the Rainbow world council must begin the evacuation of the planet immediately. At this moment the Wave reaches Camill''s observation tower and he dies once again. Soon enough it becomes clear that humans cannot hold the new Wave back and an order to gather the entire population in the Capital is issued. Robert Sklyarov witnesses the Wave destroying semi-automatic charybdis and tries to pilot one manually to give his friends time to flee. In the end, his charybdis is destroyed, too, but Sklyarov manages to escape and sets off (on a flier) for the Children Village, where his fiancée, Tatiana Turchina, works as a governess. He finds the Village already empty but on the way to the Capital, he locates a crashed aerobus that was carrying some of the children from the Village as well as Turchina herself. Having to choose whom to take with him (his flier can only carry two people), Sklyarov decides for his fiancée even though he knows that she would hate him for leaving the children behind. Meanwhile in the Capital, the situation is close to panic. Everyone knows by now that Gorbovsky''s Tariel II cannot take them all to space and that the nearest to Rainbow spaceship that can won''t make it in time. Plans like burrowing a huge underground cave under the Capital to hide from the Wave, or jumping over it, or diving under it (in the southern ocean) are desperately developed. At this time, Gorbovsky announces that only the children will we transported onto the orbit on Tariel II, but everyone agrees that this is the best choice. Afterwards a crowd of scientists approaches him and asks to take some of their documentation on board, since they consider it too valuable to be sent directly into space with mini-rockets. And in the very last moment, Gorbovsky refuses to board his ship, leaving his first mate in charge and making even more space for the children and documentation. Tariel lifts off when the Waves (both northern and southern) are a few kilometers away from the Capital. Shortly before the two reach it, Gorbovsky, Camill, Sklyarov and Turchina sit on the beach not far from the city and watch a team of null-T-testers float their blind team-mate toward the southern Wave, while he is playing a song on the banjo.

Far Rainbow

In the first part of the book, Jakob Beer is a 13 year old child of a Jewish family living in Poland. His house is stormed by Nazis; he escapes the fate of his parents and his sister, Bella, by hiding behind the wallpaper in a cabinet. He hides in the forest, burying himself up to the neck in soil. After some time, he runs into an archaeologist, Athos, working on Biskupin. Athos secretly takes him to Zakynthos in Greece. Athos is also a geologist, and is fascinated with ancient wood and stones. Jakob learns Greek and English, but finds that learning new languages erases his memory of the past. After the war, Athos and Jakob move to Toronto, where after several years Jakob meets Alexandra in a music library. Alex is a fast-paced, outspokenly philosophical master of wordplay. Jakob and Alex fall in love and marry, but the relationship fails because Alex expects Jakob to change too fast and abandon his past. Jakob dwells constantly on his memories of Bella, especially her piano-playing, and they end up divorcing. Jakob meets and marries Michaela, a much younger woman but one who seems to understand him, and with Michaela''s help he is able to let go of Bella. Together they move to Greece into the former home of several generations of the Roussos family. The second part of the book is told from the perspective of Ben, a Canadian professor of Jewish descent who was born in Canada to survivors of the Holocaust. In 1954 the family home in Weston, Ontario is destroyed by Hurricane Hazel. Ben becomes an expert on the history of weather, and marries a girl named Naomi. He is a big admirer of Jakob''s poetry and respects the way he deals with the Holocaust, when Ben himself has trouble coping with the horrors his parents must have endured. At the end of the novel, Ben is sent to retrieve Jakob''s journals from his home in Greece, where Ben spends hours swimming in Jakob''s past.

Fugitive Pieces

Theodolinda "Dol" Bonner is half of the Bonner and Raffray Detective Agency. She claims to have been "inoculated against" men and has no use for them, even her perennial suitor, newspaperman Len Chisholm. Her business partner, Sylvia Raffray, doesn''t know much about detection but is the firm''s financial backer. As the story begins, Len has just been fired from his job at the instigation of Sylvia''s guardian, financier P.L. Storrs, who also controls Sylvia''s money for the next six months and thus insists that she withdraw her financial support of the detective agency. Strangely, Storrs asks Dol Bonner to join a house party at his place in the country. Other family members present are Storrs'' wife Cleo, who "goes in for cults", and his daughter Janet, who is plain, quiet and writes poetry. Sylvia''s fiance Martin, who is a neighbor, and his friend Professor Zimmerman have joined the party, and George Ranth, of the "League of the Occidental Sakti", is Mrs. Storrs'' guest and financial parasite. Storrs'' problem is that Ranth is pressuring Mrs. Storrs to let him marry Janet and thus become Storrs'' heir. He hires Dol to discredit Ranth in Mrs. Storrs'' eyes, and proposes that she pretend to be investigating the killing of some pheasants at Martin''s estate as a cover story. Dol accepts the task and arrives at the Storrs estate, but before she gets too deeply involved in the task, she comes across the murdered body of her host and employer, who has been brutally strangled with wire and hung from a branch. She soon recognizes that in order to commit the murder, the murderer must have worn heavy gloves to avoid cutting his hands with the wire. She immediately searches the house for the gloves, dodging the police, and finds them -- bizarrely, concealed inside a watermelon in the garden. She continues to investigate Ranth but also learns more about the other guests and family members. Professor Zimmerman proposes marriage to Sylvia, regardless of the feelings of his friend Martin, and promptly becomes the second strangling victim. Dol rapidly collects enough information to identify the murderer of both men and forces a confession at gunpoint, foiling the police.

The Hand in the Glove

The story is set in rural Norway. The main character is a wild tempered young boy "Hans Trefothaugen", who gets involved in fights and a stabbing, and ends up as an outlaw living in the forests. While enjoying the independent way of life in the wilderness, he is also desperately longing for the woman "Ingrid Ødden", whom he knew from their childhood, and who later has married. After various conflicts with the village people Hans eventually ends up being caught and brought to prison. The legend about the Hedal Church is embedded in the story. During the Black Death, in the middle of the 14th century, the valley Hedal was depopulated, and the valley became a wilderness. A hunter, an outlaw living and hiding in the forest, one day shot an arrow after a capercaillie, but missed and instead struck the church bell, after which the hunter discovered the old church. Entering the church, there was bear at the altar, and the hunter shot and skinned the bear. The hunter subsequently settled at a deserted farm south of the church. The gathering Hedalsmessa, held at Michaelmas, is a central event in the novel.

Skoggangsmand

Horselover Fat believes his visions expose hidden facts about the reality of life on Earth, and a group of others join him in researching these matters. One of their theories is that there is some kind of alien space probe in orbit around Earth, and that it is aiding them in their quest. It also aided the United States in disclosing the Watergate scandal and the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974. There is a filmed account of an alternate universe Nixon, "Ferris Freemont" and his fall, engineered by a fictionalised Valis, which leads them to an estate owned by the Lamptons, popular musicians. Valis (the fictional film) contains obvious references to identical revelations to those that Horselover Fat has experienced. They decide the goal that they have been led toward is Sophia, who is two years old and the Messiah or incarnation of Holy Wisdom anticipated by some variants of Gnostic Christianity. She tells them that their conclusions are correct, but dies after a laser accident. Undeterred, Fat goes on a global search for the next incarnation of Sophia. Dick also offers a rationalist explanation of his apparent "theophany", acknowledging that it might have been visual and auditory hallucinations from either schizophrenia or drug addiction sequelae.

VALIS

The book tells the story of a teddy bear named Corduroy, displayed on a toy shelf in a department store. One day, a girl named Lisa arrives in the store with her mother and spots the bear. She is willing to buy him, however, her mother declines to spend more money and notes that a button is missing from his overalls. After they leave, Corduroy decides to find the missing button by himself and embarks on a trip around the department store after it closes in the evening. He goes upstairs and finds furniture he had never seen before, including beds and mattresses. Thinking that one of the mattress buttons is the one he is missing, he pulls it hard and eventually falls down from the bed, making noise. The store guard arrives, finds the bear and puts him back in place. The next day, Lisa comes back with the money she had found in her piggy bank and buys Corduroy. At home, she sews a button on his shoulder strap and the book ends with them saying that they had always wanted a friend and hugging each other.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

An Acceptable Time

By Madeleine L''Engle

The Charioteer

By Mary Renault

Acceptable Risk

By Robin Cook

The Duke's Children

By Anthony Trollope

Biting the Sun

By Tanith Lee

Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself

By Judy Blume

Far Rainbow

By Arkady Strugatsky

Fugitive Pieces

By Anne Michaels

The Hand in the Glove

By Rex Stout

Skoggangsmand

No Author Listed

VALIS

By Philip K. Dick

Corduroy

By Don Freeman