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The novel is divided into three volumes. Part One (Chapters 1 to 15): Gilbert Markham narrates how a mysterious widow, Mrs Helen Graham, arrives at Wildfell Hall, a nearby mansion. A source of curiosity for the small community, the reticent Mrs Graham and her young son, Arthur, are slowly drawn into the social circles of the village. Initially Gilbert Markham casually courts Eliza Millward, despite his mother's belief that he can do better. His interest in Eliza wanes as he comes to know Mrs Graham. In retribution, Eliza spreads (and perhaps creates) scandalous rumours about Helen. With gossip flying, Gilbert is led to believe that his friend Mr Lawrence is courting Mrs Graham. At a chance meeting on a road Gilbert strikes the mounted Lawrence with a whip handle, causing him to fall from his horse. Though she is unaware of this confrontation, Helen Graham still refuses to marry Gilbert, but when he accuses her of loving Lawrence she gives him her diaries. Helen and Gilbert by Walter L. Colls Part two (Chapters 16 to 44) is taken from Helen's diaries, in which she describes her marriage to Arthur Huntingdon. The handsome, witty Huntingdon is also spoilt, selfish and self-indulgent. Before marrying Helen, he flirts with Annabella, and uses this to manipulate Helen and convince her to marry him. Helen, blinded by love, marries him, and resolves to reform him with gentle persuasion and good example. After the birth of their only child, however, Huntingdon becomes increasingly jealous of their son (also called Arthur), and his claims on Helen's attentions and affections. Huntingdon's pack of dissolute friends frequently engage in drunken revels at the family's home, Grassdale, oppressing those of finer character. Both men and women are portrayed as degraded. In particular, Annabella, now Lady Lowborough, is shown to be unfaithful to her melancholy but devoted husband. Walter Hargrave, the brother of Helen's friend Milicent Hargrave, vies for Helen's affections. While he is not as wild as his peers, he is an unwelcome admirer: Helen senses his predatory nature when they play chess. Walter informs Helen of Arthur's affair with Lady Lowborough. When his friends depart, Arthur pines openly for his paramour and derides his wife, but will not grant her a divorce. Arthur's corruption of their son – encouraging him to drink and swear at his tender age – is the last straw for Helen. She plans to flee to save her son, but her husband learns of her plans from her diary and burns the artist's tools with which she had hoped to support herself. Eventually, with help from her brother, Mr Lawrence, Helen finds a secret refuge at Wildfell Hall. Part Three (Chapters 45 to 53) begins after Gilbert's reading of the diaries. Helen bids Gilbert to leave her because she is not free to marry. He complies and soon learns that she has returned to Grassdale because her husband is gravely ill. Helen's ministrations are in vain, and Huntingdon's death is painful since he is fraught with terror at what awaits him. Helen cannot comfort him, for he rejects responsibility for his actions and wishes instead for her to come with him to plead for his salvation. A year passes. Gilbert pursues a rumour of Helen's impending wedding, only to find that Mr Lawrence, with whom he has reconciled, is marrying Helen's friend Esther Hargrave. Gilbert goes to Grassdale, and discovers that Helen is now wealthy and lives at her estate in Staningley. He travels there, but is plagued by anxiety that she is now far above his station. By chance he encounters Helen, her aunt and young Arthur. The two lovers reconcile and marry. 

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The series revolves around a hamster named Hamtaro, who is owned by a 10-year-old girl named Hiroko Haruna (Laura Haruna in the English dub). Curious by nature, he ventures out each day to make friends and go on adventures with a clan of fellow hamster friends known as The Ham-Hams. The Ham-Hams meet at a special clubhouse built by Boss ("Taisho"). 

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In the late hours of the night at the forested garden of Gethsemane, at the height of his cause, Jesus prays while his disciples Saint Peter, James, son of Zebedee James, and John the Evangelist sleep. While he prays in seclusion, Satan appears to Jesus in an androgynous form, and tempts him, stating that no one can bear the burden that God asks of him: to suffer and die for humanity's sins. Jesus' sweat turns into blood and drips to the ground while a serpent emerges from Satan's guise. Jesus hears his disciples call for him, and rebukes Satan by crushing the snake's head. Judas Iscariot, another of Jesus' disciples, having received a bribe of 30 pieces of silver, leads a group of temple guards to the forest and betrays Jesus' identity. As the guards arrest Jesus, a fight erupts wherein Peter draws his dagger and slashes the ear of Malchus, one of the guards and a servant of the high priest Caiaphas. Jesus heals Malchus' injury while reprimanding Peter. As the disciples flee, the guards secure Jesus, and beat him during the journey to the Sanhedrin. John informs Mary, mother of Jesus and Mary Magdalene of the arrest, while Peter follows Jesus and his captors. Magdalene begs a passing Roman patrol to intervene, but a temple guard assures them that she is insane. Caiaphas holds trial over the objection of some of the other priests, who are expelled from the court. False accusations and witnesses are brought against him. When asked by Caiaphas whether he is the Son of God, Jesus answers "I am". Caiaphas tears his robes in outrage and Jesus is condemned to death for blasphemy. Peter is confronted by the surrounding mob for being a follower of Jesus. After cursing at the mob during the third denial, Peter flees when he recalls Jesus's forewarning of his defense. A guilt-ridden Judas attempts to return the money he was paid in order to have Jesus freed, but is refused by the priests. Tormented by ghosts and demons, he flees the city and hangs himself. Caiaphas brings Jesus before Pontius Pilate to be condemned to death. At the urging of his wife Claudia, who knows of Jesus' status as a man of God, and after questioning Jesus and finding no fault, Pilate transfers him to the court of Herod Antipas (as Jesus is from Antipas' ruling town of Nazareth). After Jesus is found not guilty and returned, Pilate offers the crowd the choice of chastising Jesus or releasing him. He attempts to have Jesus freed by the peoples' choice between Jesus and violent criminal Barabbas. The crowd demands Barabbas be freed and Jesus crucified. Attempting to appease the crowd, Pilate orders that Jesus be severely flogged. Jesus is then scourged, abused, and mocked by the Roman guards. They take him to a barn where they place a crown of thorns on his head and tease him saying "Hail, king of the Jews". A bleeding Jesus is presented before Pilate, but Caiaphas, with the crowds' encouragement, continues demanding that Jesus be crucified. Pilate washes his hands of the affair, and reluctantly orders Jesus' crucifixion. Satan observes Jesus' suffering with sadistic pleasure. As Jesus carries a heavy wooden cross along the Via Dolorosa to Calvary, Saint Veronica a woman avoids the escort of soldiers and requests that Jesus wipe his face with her cloth, to which he consents. She offers Jesus a pot of water to drink but the guard hurls it away and dispels her. During the journey to Golgotha, Jesus is beaten by the guards until the unwilling Simon of Cyrene is forced into carrying the cross with him. At the end of their journey, with his mother Mary, Mary Magdalene, and others witnessing, Jesus is crucified. Hanging from the cross, Jesus prays to God the Father asking forgiveness for the people who tormented him, and provides salvation to a penitent thief crucified beside him. Jesus surrenders his spirit to the Father and dies. A single droplet of rain falls from the sky to the ground, triggering an earthquake which destroys the temple and rips the veil covering the Holy of Holies in two. Satan screams in defeat from the depths of Hell. Jesus' body is taken down from the cross and entombed. Jesus rises from the dead and exits the tomb resurrected, with wound holes visible on his palms. 

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Youngblood Priest (Ron O'Neal), an African-American drug dealer of cocaine, enjoys a luxurious lifestyle in Harlem. He yearns to go straight, despite the money he makes. One day, Priest confronts Fat Freddie, one of his clients, about money that Freddie owes and threatens to force Freddie's wife into prostitution unless he robs a competitor. Although the timid Freddie abhors violence, he agrees and accompanies a member of Priest's "family" of lower-level dealers to commit the robbery. Priest discusses his plan to buy thirty kilos of high-quality cocaine with the $300,000 he and his partner Eddie have, which they can sell for $1,000,000 within four months. With such a big score, they can retire comfortably. Eddie argues that crime is the only option left to them by "The Man." That night, Eddie and Priest approach Scatter, a retired dealer who started Priest in the business. Scatter initially refuses to help Priest. Eddie threatens Scatter, demanding that he reveal his source if he will not supply them, but Scatter holds him at gunpoint. Priest diffuses the situation and persuades Scatter to help them, although Scatter warns that it will be the last time. Priest and Eddie are joined by Freddie, who turns over the money he stole. The next day, Freddie is picked up for fighting, and when he is beaten by the police, he reveals when and where Priest and Eddie are to pick up the first kilo of cocaine from Scatter. Freddie attempts to escape and is killed when he runs in front of a car. That night, after picking up the kilo from Scatter, Priest and Eddie are apprehended by several policemen. The lieutenant reveals that he is Scatter's supplier and that they can have as much "weight," as they want, and will be extended both credit and protection. Eddie is elated by the new situation, claiming that they are set for life, although Priest is still determined to quit after selling the thirty kilos. Soon after, the drugs are sold by Priest and Eddie's "family." Priest's white mistress, Cynthia is dismayed to learn that Priest does not return her love and is planning on quitting the business. Their argument is interrupted by the sudden arrival of Scatter who reveals that the real head of the operation is Deputy Commissioner Reardon, who is trying to kill him for quitting. Scatter gives Priest a packet of information on Reardon and his family. Scatter is captured by the corrupt policemen, who give him a fatal overdose of drugs. Both enraged and scared, Priest gives the information on Reardon and an envelope of cash to two mafia men and takes out a $100,000 contract on "the Man's" life. Priest demands his half of their profits from Eddie. After Priest leaves with the cash, Eddie betrays him by phoning the lieutenant. Priest has anticipated Eddie's duplicity, however, and gives the briefcase carrying the money to a disguised Georgia in exchange for one full of rags. Priest is then picked up by the lieutenant and taken to the waterfront, where he is confronted by Reardon. Reardon threatens Priest that he must continue selling drugs as long as he is ordered to, but when Priest refuses, the policemen begin to beat him. Priest overcomes his foes using karate, then reveals that he knows exactly who Reardon is. Priest explains that he hired contract killers to murder Reardon and his entire family should anything happen to him. The powerless Reardon then watches as Priest stalks off, giving the policemen one final glare before driving off to join Georgia. 

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Illustration by Harry Clarke, 1919 "The Tell-Tale Heart" is told from a first-person narrative of an unnamed narrator, who insists on being sane, but is suffering from a disease (nervousness) which causes "over- acuteness of the senses". The old man with whom the narrator lives has a clouded, pale, blue "vulture-like" eye, which distresses and manipulates the narrator so much that the narrator plots to murder the old man, despite also insisting that the narrator loves the old man. The narrator insists that this careful precision in committing the murder proves that the narrator cannot possibly be insane. For seven nights, the narrator opens the door of the old man's room in order to shine a sliver of light onto the "evil eye". However, the old man's vulture-eye is always closed, making it impossible to "do the work", thus making the narrator go further into distress. On the eighth night, the old man awakens after the narrator's hand slips and makes a noise, interrupting the narrator's nightly ritual. The narrator does not draw back and, after some time, decides to open the lantern. A single thin ray of light shines out and lands precisely on the "evil eye", revealing that it is wide open. The narrator hears the old man's heart beating, which only gets louder and louder. This increases the narrator’s anxiety to the point where the narrator decides to strike; jumping out with a loud yell and smothering the old man with his own bed. The narrator then dismembers the body and conceals the pieces under the floorboards, and ensures the concealment of all signs of the crime. Even so, the old man's scream during the night causes a neighbor to report to the police, who the narrator invites in to look around. The narrator claims that the scream heard was the narrator's own in a nightmare and that the man is absent in the country. Confident that they will not find any evidence of the murder, the narrator brings chairs for them and they sit in the old man's room. The chairs are placed on the very spot where the body is concealed; the police suspect nothing and the narrator has a pleasant and easy manner. The narrator begins to feel uncomfortable and notices a ringing in the narrator's ears. As the ringing grows louder, the narrator comes to the conclusion that it is the heartbeat of the old man coming from under the floorboards. The sound increases steadily to the narrator, though the officers seem to pay no attention to it. Terrified by the violent beating of the heart, and convinced that the officers are aware not only of the heartbeat but also of the narrator's guilt, the narrator breaks down and confesses. The narrator tells them to tear up the floorboards to reveal the remains of the old man's body. 

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In the following years, Beck lived in retirement in his Berlin apartment and ceased to have any meaningful influence on German military affairs. His opposition to Hitler had brought him in contact with a small number of senior officers intent on deposing the dictator, and his home became the headquarters of the small circle of opposition. He increasingly came to rely upon contacts with the British in the hope that London would successfully exert its influence on Hitler through threats and warnings, but he failed. Beck and his conspirators knew that Germany faced certain and rapid defeat if France and Britain helped Czechoslovakia in 1938. Accordingly, they contacted the British Foreign Office, informed Britain of their plot and asked for a firm British warning to deter Hitler from attacking Czechoslovakia. In September 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini signed the Munich Agreement, handing the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia to Germany. That ended the crisis and hence Beck's efforts at a putsch. In the autumn of 1939, Beck was in contact with certain Germany Army officers, politicians, and civil servants, including General Halder, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, Carl Goerdeler, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris and Colonel Hans Oster about the possibility of staging a putsch to overthrow the Nazi regime. By then, Beck had come to accept that it was not possible to overthrow the Nazi regime and to keep Hitler in power. After a successful putsch, Germany was to be governed by a triumvirate of Beck, Goerdeler and Schacht who would negotiate a peace with Britain and France that would allow Germany to keep most of the Nazi conquests made, including Austria, all of western Poland and the Reich Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia. In the early stages of the war, with Poland overrun but before France and the Low Countries had been attacked, the German Resistance sought the assistance of Pope Pius XII in preparations for a coup to oust Hitler. Josef Müller was despatched on a clandestine mission to Rome.Peter Hoffmann; The History of the German Resistance 1933–1945; 3rd Edn (First English Edn); McDonald & Jane's; London; 1977; p.161 & 294 The Vatican considered Müller to be a representative of Beck and agreed to offer the machinery for mediation between the plotters and the Allies.Peter Hoffmann; The History of the German Resistance 1933–1945; 3rd Edn (First English Edn); McDonald & Jane's; London; 1977; p.160William L. Shirer; The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich; Secker & Warburg; London; 1960; p648-9 The Pope, communicating with Britain's Francis d'Arcy Osborne, channelled communications back and forth in secrecy. The British were noncommittal, but the Resistance were encouraged by the talks.Peter Hoffmann; The History of the German Resistance 1933–1945; 3rd Edn (First English Edn); McDonald & Jane's; London; 1977; p.160-163 In January–February 1940, a series of meetings between Goerdeler, Beck, Ulrich von Hassell and Johannes Popitz produced agreement that when the Nazi regime was overthrown, Beck was to head the Council of Regency, which would govern Germany. In 1940 and 1941, Beck spent much time discussing together with Goerdeler, Hassell and Erwin von Witzleben certain aspects of the new proposed state after the successful overthrowing of the regime. 

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After securing a grant to study stellar structures, American applied mathematician David Sumner moves with his glamorous young English wife Amy to her home village of Wakely in the Cornish countryside. Amy's ex-boyfriend Charlie Venner, along with his cronies Norman Scutt, Chris Cawsey, and Phil Riddaway, immediately resent that the meek outsider has married one of their own. Scutt, a former convict, confides in Cawsey his jealousy of Venner's past relationship with Amy. David meets Venner's uncle, Tom Hedden, a violent drunkard whose flirtatious teenage daughter Janice seems attracted to Henry Niles, a mentally deficient man despised by the entire town. The Sumners have taken an isolated farmhouse, Trenchers Farm, that once belonged to Amy's father, and still contains his furniture. They hire Scutt and Cawsey to re- roof its garage, and when impatient with lack of progress add Venner and his cousin Bobby. Tensions in their marriage soon become apparent. Amy criticizes David's condescension towards her and his escape from the volatile, politicized campus, suggesting that cowardice was his true reason for leaving America. He responds by withdrawing deeper into his studies, ignoring both the hostility of the locals and Amy's dissatisfaction. His aloofness results in Amy's attention-gathering pranks and provocative demeanor towards the workmen, particularly Venner. David even struggles to be accepted by the educated locals, as shown in conversation with the vicar, Reverend Barney Hood, and the local magistrate, Major John Scott. When David finds their missing cat hanging dead in their bedroom closet, Amy reckons Cawsey or Scutt is responsible. She presses David to confront the workmen, but he is too intimidated to accuse them. The men invite David to go hunting the following day. They take him to a remote location and leave him there with the promise of driving birds towards him. With David away, Venner goes to Trenchers Farm where he attempts to initiate sex with Amy. She resists at first, then submits. After, Scutt enters silently, motions Venner to move away at gunpoint and rapes Amy while Venner reluctantly holds her down. David returns much later, smarting from the practical joke the men pulled on him. Amy, though clearly upset, says nothing about the intruders and what they did to her, apart from a cryptic comment that escapes his attention. The next day, David fires the workmen, ostensibly for their slow progress. Later, the Sumners attend a church social where Amy becomes distraught on seeing her rapists. At the social, Janice invites Niles to leave with her and she begins to seduce him away from the crowd. When it is discovered that Janice is missing, a boy is sent to search for her, and as he calls out for her, Niles panics and strangles Janice to death. The Sumners leave early, driving through thick fog, and accidentally hit Henry Niles as he is escaping the scene of the crime. They take him to their home and David phones the local pub to report the accident. The locals, who in the meantime have learned that Janice was last seen with Niles, are thereby alerted to Niles's whereabouts. Soon, Hedden, Scutt, Venner, Cawsey and Riddaway are drunkenly pounding on the Sumners' door. Inferring their intention to lynch Niles, David refuses to let them take him, despite Amy's pleas. The standoff seems to unlock a territorial instinct in David: "I will not allow violence against this house." Scott arrives to defuse the situation, but is accidentally shot dead by Hedden during a struggle. Realizing the danger to him in witnessing this homicide, David improvises various traps and weapons, including boiling oil, to fend off the attackers. He inadvertently forces Hedden to shoot himself in the foot, knocks Riddaway unconscious and bludgeons Cawsey to death with a poker. Venner holds him at gunpoint, but Amy's screams alert both men when Scutt assaults her again. Scutt suggests Venner join him in another gang rape, but Venner shoots him dead. David disarms Venner and in the ensuing fight snaps a displayed mantrap around Venner's neck, killing him. Reviewing the resulting carnage and surprised by his own violence, David mutters to himself, "Jesus, I got 'em all." A recovering Riddaway then brutally attacks him, but is shot by Amy as he tries to break David's spine. David gets into his car to drive Niles back to the village. Niles says he does not know his way home. David says he does not either. 

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Andrew Crocker-Harris is a classics teacher at an English boys' school. After eighteen years of teaching there, today is his last day before moving on to a position at another school. The students speculate on why he is leaving, but do not much care since despite being academically brilliant, he is generally despised as being strict, stern and humourless. They have nicknamed him "The Crock". Even the school administrators treat him poorly regardless of his long tenure. Millie Crocker-Harris, his wife, is younger and vivacious and quite different from her husband. She no longer loves him but rather loves Frank Hunter, another teacher, yet despite having an affair with him she knows he is not in love with her. On this last day, one student named Taplow, who does not hate Crocker-Harris but feels sorry for him, gives him a small going-away gift – a copy of the translation by Robert Browning of Aeschylus's ancient play Agamemnon. The gift brings about a series of actions which make Crocker-Harris reflect on his past, contemplate his future, and evaluate how he is going to finish his tenure at the school. 

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The scenario of the film as originally written by Gance was published in 1927 by Librairie Plon. Much of the scenario describes scenes that were rejected during initial editing, and do not appear in any known version of the film. The following plot includes only those scenes that are known to have been included in some version of the film. Not every scene described below can be viewed today.Brownlow 1983, p. 264 

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Bean is a homeless child living on the hellish streets of Rotterdam roughly around 2170 after escaping as an infant from an illegal genetic engineering laboratory. Highly intelligent and extremely young, he is on the brink of dying from starvation, but manages to convince a nine-year-old girl named Poke to let him join her band of children by offering her an idea. He tells Poke she should recruit a bully to help fend off other bullies who prevent them from eating at a local soup kitchen. She chooses Achilles; Bean realizes that Achilles is too dangerous a choice, but is unable to change Poke's mind. Bean's incredible intelligence, creativity and determination bring him to the attention of Sister Carlotta, a nun who is recruiting children for the International Fleet (IF) for a war of survival against the alien Buggers. She gets him admitted to Battle School, despite official resistance and skepticism (they cannot believe that Bean scored the highest in all the tests). Bean has to overcome being so much younger and smaller than the other child recruits. Eventually, after the others see how well he performs, they begin to compare him to Ender Wiggin, another prodigy who preceded him. Bean begins to ferret out secrets and truths about the school. Meanwhile, Sister Carlotta uncovers Bean's past. Ender has been chosen as the best chance to save humanity from the Buggers; Bean is the backup in case Ender breaks down. Bean is assigned to draw up the roster for Ender's army. At first, Ender does not appear to recognize Bean's brilliance, but time shows that he was grooming Bean. He finally puts Bean in charge of a special new platoon to handle extraordinary missions. Ender wins combat games against the other, more established school armies; as time goes on, the other side is given more and more unfair advantages, but Ender never loses. Eventually, Ender commands one side in electronically simulated battles; he is told that his foe is Mazer Rackham, the legendary hero who saved humanity from the Second Invasion. However, Bean deduces from various clues that the "simulations" are in fact real battles. Ender and his subordinates command (via the ansible, an instantaneous communications device) human fleets attacking Bugger planets. The pace increases and the enemy forces become stronger and stronger; through it all, Ender keeps on winning, but he begins to break down under the pressure. In the final battle at the Buggers' home planet, Ender faces seemingly impossible odds: his antiquated twenty ships and eighty fighters against thousands of enemy vessels. His only edge is a weapon - "Dr Device" - that can start a chain reaction that destroys matter, but only if the matter is concentrated enough. Ender freezes, unable to come up with a plan, until Bean's prompt (inadvertently) shows him how they can win. With the victory, the alien threat is ended. Throughout the book, the main theme rests on Bean's struggle against the IF administration, which seems bent on breaking Ender, even if it means murder. Throughout all of this, Bean has to contend with the reappearance of Achilles and his own struggle to understand what makes Ender human. He also makes friends with an older boy named Nikolai who is drawn to Bean because of their similar looks. It is soon discovered, through Sister Carlotta's research, that the two boys are genetic twins, except for Bean's genetic enhancements. Back in the lab, the scientist Volescu had turned Anton's Key, which meant that Bean's body would never stop growing - including his brain - until a premature death between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five. Sister Carlotta ensures that Bean will get to live with Nikolai and his parents after the war. In addition, the book depicts the first of Bean's encounters with Achilles. At the end of the story, after they defeat the buggers, Bean is united with his real parents and Nikolai. Ender's Shadow is the first of a series that includes Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow Puppets, Shadow of the Giant, Shadows in Flight, and Shadows Alive. 

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The city of Monstropolis in the monster world is powered by energy from the screams of human children. At the Monsters, Inc., factory, skilled monsters employed as "scarers" venture into the human world to scare children and harvest their screams, through doors that activate portals to children's bedroom closets. It is considered dangerous work, as human children are believed to be toxic. Energy production is falling because children are becoming less easily scared, and Henry J. Waternoose III, the company's CEO, is determined to find a solution to the problem. James P. "Sulley" Sullivan and his best friend, Michael "Mike" Wazowski, are the organization's top employees, but their chief rival, Randall Boggs, is close behind. One evening after work, Sulley discovers that someone has left a door activated on the scare floor. He opens it and a small girl has entered the factory. After several failed attempts by Sulley to put her back, Randall sends the door back into the factory's door vault and Sulley conceals her and takes her out of the factory. He inadvertently interrupts Mike's date with his receptionist girlfriend, Celia Mae, at a Japanese sushi restaurant called Harryhausen's, and chaos erupts when the child is discovered. Sulley and Mike manage to escape with the child before the Child Detection Agency (CDA) is called by the Sushi Chief and quarantines the restaurant. They soon discover that she is not toxic after all; Sulley grows attached to her and calls her "Boo", while Mike is just anxious to be rid of her. The duo smuggle her back into the factory disguised as a baby monster and attempt to send her home. Randall discovers Boo and tries to kidnap her with help from his long-suffering assistant, Jeff Fungus, but mistakenly kidnaps Mike instead. He straps Mike to a large machine called "The Scream Extractor", which he intends to use to revolutionize the scaring industry and solve the monster world's energy problems by forcefully extracting screams from kidnapped human children. Before Randall can use the machine on Mike, Sulley intervenes and takes Mike and Boo to the simulator where scare recruits do their training. But Waternoose was expecting Sulley to give the recruits a demonstration and forces him to roar, which scares Boo. Mike tells Waternoose about Randall’s plan. But Waternoose, who is secretly in league with Randall, exiles Mike and Sulley to the Himalayas instead. The two meet the Abominable Snowman, who tells them about a nearby village, which Sulley realizes he can use to return to the factory. Sulley (who by this time, has realized the true effects of scaring on children) prepares to return, but Mike refuses to go with him, caring more about their dream of breaking the all-time scare record and feeling betrayed when he decides it no longer matters. Meanwhile, Randall and Waternoose are preparing to use the Scream Extractor on Boo, but Sulley suddenly arrives and saves her, destroying the machine in the process. Randall and Sulley battle, and after Mike returns and helps Sulley overpower Randall, the two reconcile, take Boo, and flee. Randall pursues them to the door vault, and a wild chase ensues among the millions of doors as they move in and out of the storage vault on rails to the factory floor. Boo's laughter causes all the doors to activate at once, allowing the monsters to freely pass in and out of the human world. Randall attempts to kill Sulley, but Boo overcomes her fear of Randall and attacks him, enabling Sulley to catch him. Sulley and Mike then trap Randall in the human world, where two residents at a trailer park mistake him for an alligator and beat him with a shovel. Waternoose brings Boo's door back with the CDA. Mike distracts the CDA while Sulley and Boo take her door to the simulator. Waternoose reveals his plan, but it’s revealed that Mike secretly recorded his confession and plays it to the CDA, who arrests Waternoose. As he is being dragged away, he furiously blames them for destroying the company and worsening the energy crisis. Sulley and Mike meet the leader of the CDA, who is revealed to be Roz, who was working undercover. Roz thanks them for their help and allows Sulley to return Boo home, but she has Boo's door demolished to prevent any monsters from making further contact with her. With the factory temporarily shut down, Sulley is named the new CEO of Monsters, Inc. Under his leadership, the energy crisis is solved by harvesting children's laughter instead of screams, as laughter has been found to be ten times more potent. Mike takes Sulley aside, revealing he has rebuilt Boo's door. It needs one final piece, which Sulley took as a memento, in order to work. Sulley puts the door chip into place, enters and joyfully reunites with Boo. 

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The mysterious Mr Shaitana hosts an unusual dinner party. His guests include four sleuths – Hercule Poirot, secret agent Colonel Race, mystery writer Mrs Ariadne Oliver, and Superintendent Battle of Scotland Yard – and four people suspected to have murdered in their past – Dr Roberts, Mrs Lorrimer, young Anne Meredith, and Major Despard. After dinner, the guests retire to play bridge – the sleuths play in one room, while the others play in another room that Shaitana relaxes in. After the sleuths end their game, Poirot and Race find that Shaitana had been stabbed in the chest, with a weapon from his collection. As he made a veiled accusation about how murder could be committed within one's profession, the sleuths suspect one of the other four guests as his murderer. Each denies this when interviewed. To help his investigation, Poirot takes the score sheets they made in their bridge game. Seeking the motive and psychology behind the murder, each sleuth finds out about a death connected to each suspect – a female client of Dr Roberts, Mrs Craddock, lost her husband to anthrax, while she herself died afterwards from a blood infection while abroad; the botanist Luxmore died suddenly from a fever, while Despard guided him through the Amazon; an elderly woman died of accidental poisoning when Meredith worked for her; the husband of Mrs Lorrimer was poisoned. During the investigation, tensions among the suspects rise, with Meredith becoming skittish and afraid, despite offers of support from Oliver, Lorrimer and Despard. Sometime later, Poirot visits Lorrimer, who reveals to him that she killed her husband and that she has a terminal condition. She then confesses to the murder, but Poirot refuses to believe this, suspecting she wishes to protect Meredith. The next morning, Lorrimer is found dead by Roberts – she committed suicide, leaving a note admitting to the murder. That same morning, Meredith decides to take her flatmate, Rhoda Dawes, for a punt in the nearby river, as they await a visit from Despard. Suspecting another death, Poirot and Battle race to her cottage, arriving after Despard to watch Meredith attempt to drown Dawes. After she falls in, both are rescued; Dawes survives, but Meredith dies in the aftermath. Poirot invites Dawes, the sleuths, and the surviving suspects of the dinner party to his apartment, whereupon he accuses Dr Roberts of killing the Craddocks – the husband's shaving brush was contaminated with anthrax during a house call, while Mrs Craddock was given a viral infection during her anti-typhoid inoculations for her trip abroad. Shaitana was killed because Roberts believed his words at dinner hinted to his crime, while Lorrimer was murdered by him to create a scapegoat – she died from a fatal injection of anaesthesia. Although Roberts protests, he eventually confesses when Poirot reveals a window washer who witnessed Lorrimer's murder and Battle makes clear that the police have a strong case against him. Poirot later explains that his theory was based upon Roberts' recollection of the bridge game – he could remember little of it, except for the grand slam that he made, but could remember much about the layout of the room they played in. This was in direct contrast to what the other suspects recalled. In addition, Lorrimer's body was found to have the mark of a hypodermic needle. To elicit a confession from Roberts, Poirot hired an actor to pose as the witness he provided. A police investigation later reveals that Meredith killed her employer when she found out about her petty thievery and that she intended to murder Dawes, while Poirot reveals that Despard did not kill Luxmore – both he and Luxmore's wife revealed that the botanist contracted fever, but died from a shooting accident. With the murder solved, Despard courts Rhoda. 

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The plot of the film is drawn from the 1926 play Chicago by Maurine Dallas Watkins which was in turn based on the true story of Beulah Annan, fictionalized as Roxie Hart (Phyllis Haver), and her spectacular murder of her boyfriend. The silent film adds considerably to the material in Watkins' play, some additions based on the original murder, and some for Hollywood considerations. The murder, which occurs in a very brief vignette before the play begins, is fleshed out considerably. Also, Roxie's husband Amos Hart (played by Victor Varconi) has a much more sympathetic and active role in the film than he does either in the play or in the subsequent musical. The ending is crueler to Roxie, in keeping with Hollywood values of not allowing criminals to profit too much from their crimes (although she does get away with murder). 

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When a prophecy states that a female child with a special birthmark will herald the downfall of the evil sorceress Queen Bavmorda, she imprisons all pregnant women in her realm to prevent its fulfillment. When the child is born, the mother begs the midwife to smuggle the infant to safety. The midwife reluctantly accepts and leaves Nockmaar Castle unnoticed. The mother is executed; the midwife is hunted down and eventually found. Knowing she cannot escape, the midwife sets the baby on a makeshift raft of grass and sends her down a river before being killed by Nockmaar hounds. Bavmorda, furious about the escape, sends her daughter Sorsha and her army's commander, General Kael, to find the baby. The baby drifts downriver to a village of Nelwyn and comes into the care of Willow Ufgood, a kind farmer and conjurer with hopes to become a real sorcerer. Willow's wife Kiaya and his children fall in love with the baby immediately, and Willow, after some resistance, quickly grows to love her as well. The next day the village is attacked by a lone Nockmaar hound; after the village warriors kill it, they deduce it was after a baby. Willow reveals the baby to the High Aldwin, the village sorcerer, who declares the child is special and that she must be taken back to the Daikini (humans). Willow, due to his love for the child, is selected to accompany the party of volunteers in returning the baby. At the Daikini Crossroads, they find a human warrior named Madmartigan trapped in a crow's cage. While the rest of the party wants to give the baby to Madmartigan and go home immediately, Willow and his friend Meegosh refuse, so the others leave. After spending the night at the crossroads and meeting an army led by Airk Thaughbaer, an old friend of Madmartigan's marching against Bavmorda, Willow reluctantly decides to free Madmartigan and hand the baby over to him. As Meegosh and Willow are headed home, they find the baby was stolen by a group of Brownies. They chase the Brownies and are trapped, but are rescued by the Fairy Queen Cherlindrea. Cherlindrea tells Willow that the baby is Elora Danan, the future empress of Tir Asleen, and Bavmorda's bane. She gives Willow her wand and assigns him the task of helping Elora fulfill her destiny. Willow sends Meegosh home, and two of the Brownies, Franjean and Rool, are assigned to help Willow find the sorceress Fin Raziel. The three of them find Madmartigan at a tavern, where he is disguised as a woman to hide from Llug, a cuckolded husband. Sorsha arrives and reveals his identity; Llug, furious upon the realization that Madmartigan is not a woman, starts a brawl, allowing Willow, Madmartigan, and the brownies to escape. The companions find Raziel, but discover she has been transformed into a brushtail possum by Bavmorda. Then they're taken captive by Sorsha and her soldiers. Willow tries to restore Raziel, but turns her into a rook instead. They escape from the soldiers, but in the process Madmartigan is accidentally dosed with love dust by the Brownies and ends up declaring his undying love for Sorsha, much to her disbelief. They hide in a village at the foot of the mountain, where they find Airk and what remains of his army, recently defeated by Bavmorda's forces. Sorsha and her soldiers attack them again. Willow and Madmartigan take Sorsha hostage and flee, but Sorsha escapes to tell Kael where they are going. They arrive at the castle of Tir Asleen only to discover that it is now overrun by trolls and the inhabitants have all been cursed by Bavmorda. Madmartigan gathers armor and weapons to prepare for the assault from Kael and Sorsha. During the fighting, Sorsha realizes she has fallen in love with Madmartigan and joins him and Willow in opposing her mother. Willow accidentally turns a troll into an "Eborsisk", a massive, fire-breathing, two-headed dragon-like monster that begins attacking everything it sees until Madmartigan kills it. Airk arrives with his army, turning the tide of battle. Kael kidnaps Elora and escapes to Nockmaar where he reports Sorsha's betrayal to Bavmorda. She orders the preparation of the ritual to banish Elora's soul. Airk's army, Willow, and the others arrive at Nockmaar to lay siege, but Bavmorda turns most of them into pigs. Willow escapes when Raziel has him use a protective spell. He succeeds in turning Raziel human again, and she removes Bavmorda's spell from the army. They trick their way into the castle and, in the ensuing battle, Airk is killed by Kael, who is in turn slain by Madmartigan. Sorsha leads Willow and Raziel to the ritual chamber, interrupting Elora's sacrifice. Bavmorda incapacitates Sorsha and then duels magically with Raziel, rendering her unconscious. Willow apparently teleports Elora to safety - in reality, it is the simplest of sleight of hand tricks - but it fools Bavmorda, who comes after him in a rage and accidentally spills some of the ritual blood, causing her to be the recipient of the spell and be banished from the world forever. After the victory celebration, Willow is rewarded with a magic book to aid him in becoming a sorcerer, and Sorsha and Madmartigan remain in a restored Tir Asleen to raise Elora together. Willow returns home to a hero's welcome and is happily reunited with his family. 

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GoldenEye 007 starts in Arkhangelsk in the Soviet Union in 1986, where MI6 has uncovered a secret chemical weapons facility at the Byelomorye Dam. James Bond and fellow 00-agent Alec Trevelyan are sent to infiltrate the facility and plant explosive charges. During the mission, Trevelyan is shot by Colonel Arkady Ourumov, while Bond escapes by commandeering an aeroplane. Five years later in 1991, Bond is sent to investigate a satellite control station in Severnaya, Russia, where programmer Boris Grishenko works. Two years after the Severnaya mission, Bond investigates an unscheduled test firing of a missile in Kyrgyzstan, believed to be a cover for the launch of a satellite known as GoldenEye. This space-based weapon works by firing a concentrated electromagnetic pulse at any Earth target to disable any electrical circuit within range. As Bond leaves the silo, he is ambushed by Ourumov and a squad of Russian troops. Ourumov manages to escape during the encounter. The remainder of the game takes place in 1995. Bond visits Monte Carlo to investigate the frigate La Fayette, where he rescues several hostages and plants a tracker bug on the Pirate helicopter before it is stolen by the Janus crime syndicate. Bond is then sent a second time to Severnaya, but during the mission he is captured and locked up in the bunker's cells along with Natalya Simonova, a captive computer programmer unwilling to work with Janus. They both escape the complex seconds before it is destroyed, on the orders of Ourumov, by the GoldenEye satellite's EMP. Bond next travels to Saint Petersburg, where he arranges with ex-KGB agent Valentin Zukovsky to meet the chief of the Janus organisation. This is revealed to be Alec Trevelyan – his execution by Ourumov in the Arkhangelsk facility was faked. Bond and Natalya escape from Trevelyan, but are arrested by the Russian police and taken to the military archives for interrogation. Bond eventually manages to escape the interrogation room, rescue Natalya, and communicate with Defence Minister Dimitri Mishkin, who has verified Bond's claim of Ourumov's treachery. Natalya is recaptured by General Ourumov, and Bond gives chase through the streets of St. Petersburg, eventually reaching an arms depot used by Janus. There, Bond destroys its weaponry stores and then hitches a ride on Trevelyan's ex-Soviet missile train, where he kills Ourumov and rescues Natalya. However, Alec Trevelyan and his ally Xenia Onatopp escape to their secret base in Cuba. Natalya accompanies Bond to the Caribbean. Surveying the Cuban jungle aerially, their light aircraft is shot down. Unscathed, Bond and Natalya perform a ground search of the area's heavily guarded jungle terrain, but are ambushed by Xenia, who is quickly killed by Bond. Bond sneaks Natalya into the control centre to disrupt transmissions to the GoldenEye satellite and force it to burn up in the Earth's atmosphere. He then follows the fleeing Trevelyan through a series of flooded caverns, eventually arriving at the antenna of the control centre's radio telescope. Trevelyan attempts to re-align it in a final attempt to restore contact with the GoldenEye, but Bond ultimately destroys machinery vital to controlling the antenna and defeats Trevelyan in a gunfight on a platform above the dish. 

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Perfect Dark is set in 2023 against the backdrop of an interstellar war between two alien races: the Maians, who resemble the archetypal Grey alien, and the Skedar, reptile-like creatures who use a cloaking device to appear as Nordic men. Using this device, they can interact with humans on Earth without appearing overly suspicious. Meanwhile, on Earth, there is an ongoing rivalry between two factions: The Carrington Institute, a research centre founded by Daniel Carrington that secretly operates an espionage group in league with the Maians, and dataDyne, a defence contractor corporation headed by Cassandra de Vries. In exchange for creating an AI capable of cracking an ancient alien spacecraft buried on the bed of the Pacific Ocean, the Skedar have agreed to supply dataDyne with enough alien technology to become the biggest corporation on Earth. The player is cast as Joanna Dark, an agent of the Carrington Institute whose excellent scores in training have earned her the codename "Perfect Dark." On her first mission, she is sent to extract a defector known as Dr. Caroll from a dataDyne laboratory. Dr. Caroll is revealed to be the AI created by dataDyne, and is worried about the mission for which it had been designed. After the extraction, Carrington is held captive at his private villa by dataDyne soldiers. When Joanna rescues him, she is informed that Dr. Caroll has been taken to a dataDyne front in Chicago. There, Joanna learns that Cassandra, NSA director Trent Easton, and a mysterious Nordic man known as Mr. Blonde plan to kidnap the President of the United States to get access to a deep sea research vessel called the Pelagic II. Although the President is in danger, Carrington alerts Joanna that a Maian craft was shot down near Area 51 and sends her to rescue a Maian protector named Elvis. Because the President of the United States refuses to loan dataDyne the Pelagic II, the NSA sends a strike team to kill and replace him with a dataDyne-grown clone. The strike team invades the air base from which the Air Force One will depart. When Joanna foils this strike, the NSA and a group of cloaked Skedar take over the plane itself, which crashes after Joanna attempts to detach a craft attached to it. Having survived the crash, Joanna eliminates the President's clone and rescues the real President. Trent's incompetence angers Mr. Blonde, who kills him after disabling his cloaking device. Without permission from the President, dataDyne decides to hijack the Pelagic II and reach the ancient spacecraft. However, unbeknownst to dataDyne, the spacecraft contains a powerful weapon capable of destroying a planet and the Skedar intend to test it on Earth before using it against the Maian homeworld. Joanna and Elvis follow dataDyne to the ancient spacecraft, where they find a reprogrammed Dr. Caroll cracking the weapon. Joanna replaces its current personality with a backup of the original, and the restored Dr. Carroll sets the weapon to self-destruct. As Carrington and Joanna prepare for a Presidential reception, the Skedar assault the Carrington Institute and capture Joanna. In space, aboard an alien spaceship on course to the Skedar homeworld, Joanna finds herself in a holding cell with Cassandra. Feeling that she has been used, Cassandra redeems herself by making a distraction and sacrificing herself, freeing Joanna and therefore giving herself a chance for revenge. With the help of Elvis, Joanna takes control of the spaceship and lands on the Skedar homeworld, where she ultimately defeats the Skedar leader, leaving the Skedar in disarray. The game ends with Elvis and Joanna leaving the planet just prior to an orbital bombardment from the Maian navy. 

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The first-person narrative is told from the point of view of Alexei Ivanovich, a tutor working for a Russian family living in a suite at a German hotel. The patriarch of the family, The General, is indebted to the Frenchman de Grieux and has mortgaged his property in Russia to pay only a small amount of his debt. Upon learning of the illness of his wealthy aunt, "Grandmother", he sends streams of telegrams to Moscow and awaits the news of her demise. His expected inheritance will pay his debts and gain Mademoiselle Blanche de Cominges's hand in marriage. Alexei is hopelessly in love with Polina, the General's niece. She asks him to go to the town's casino and place a bet for her. After hesitations, he succumbs and ends up winning at the roulette table. He returns to her the winnings but she will not tell him the reason she needs money. She only laughs in his face (as she does when he professes his love) and treats him with cold indifference, if not downright malice. He only learns the details of the General's and Polina's financial state later in the story through his long-time acquaintance, Mr. Astley. Astley is a shy Englishman who seems to share Alexei's fondness of Polina. He comes from English nobility and has a good deal of money. One day while Polina and Alexei are on a walk he swears an oath of servitude to her. He tells her while on a walk on the Schlangenberg (a mountain in the German town) that all she had to do was give the word and he would gladly walk off the edge and plummet to his death. Thereafter, they see Baron and Baroness Wurmerhelm. Polina dares him to insult the aristocratic couple and he does so with little hesitation. This sets off a chain of events that details Mademoiselle Blanche's interest in the General and gets Alexei fired as tutor of the General's children. Shortly after this, Grandmother shows up and surprises the whole party of debtors and indebted. She tells them all that she knows all about the General's debt and why the Frenchman and woman are waiting around the suite day after day. She leaves the party of death-profiteers by saying that none of them are getting any of her money. She then asks Alexei to be her guide around the town famous for its healing waters and infamous for its casino where the tables are stacked with piles of gold; she wants to gamble. After being ushered to the roulette table, she plays and wins 13,000 Friedrichs d'ors (7000–8000 roubles), a significant amount of money. After a short return to the hotel, she comes back to roulette tables and she starts to get the bug; before she leaves the town, she's lost over a hundred thousand roubles in three days. When Alexei gets back to his room after sending Grandmother off at the railway station, he's greeted by Polina. She shows him a letter where des Grieux says he has started legal proceedings to sell Generals' properties mortgaged to him, but he is returning properties worth fifty thousand roubles to General for Polina's benefit. des Grieux says he feels he had fulfilled all his obligations that way. Polina tells Alexei she is des Grieux's mistress and she wishes she had fifty thousand to fling at des Grieux's face. Upon hearing this, Alexei runs out of the room and to the casino where he in a feverish rush of excitement wins in few hours two hundred thousand florins (100,000 francs) and becomes a rich man. When he gets back to his room and the waiting Polina, he empties his pockets full of gold (Alexei estimates the weight to some ) and bank notes onto the bed. At first she accuses him of trying to buy her like des Grieux, but then she embraces him. They fall asleep on the couch. Next day, she asks for fifty thousand roubles (25,000 francs) and when he gives it to her, she flings that money at Alexei's face and runs off to Mr. Astley (Polina and Mr. Astley had been secretly meeting and exchanging notes; she was supposed to meet Astley the night before, but had come by mistake to Alexei's room). Alexei doesn't see her again. After learning that the General wouldn't be getting his inheritance and that Prince Nilski is penniless, Mademoiselle Blanche leaves the hotel with her mother/chaperone for Paris and seduces Alexei to follow her. Alexei goes with them, and they stay together for almost a month, he allowing Mlle Blanche to spend his entire fortune on Mlle Blanche's personal expenses, carriages and horses, dinner dances, and a wedding-party. After getting herself financially secured, in order to get an accepted status in the societies, Mlle Blanche unexpectedly marries the General, who has followed her to Paris. Alexei starts to gamble to survive. One day he passes Mr. Astley on a park bench in Bad Homburg and has a talk with him. He finds out from Astley that Polina is in Switzerland and actually does love Alexei. Astley tells that Grandmother has died and left Polina and the children financially secured. The General has died in Paris. Astley gives him some money but shows little hope that he will not use it for gambling. Alexei goes home dreaming of going to Switzerland the next day and recollects what made him win at the roulette tables in the past. 

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Scrooge McDuck, in his second appearance, recruits his nephews to search for a family treasure back in Dismal Downs, the old castle of Clan McDuck, built in the middle of a swamp in Scotland. The treasure once belonged to Sir Quackly McDuck, but both the treasure and its owner disappeared during the siege of 1057. The Clan has been searching for the treasure for centuries but Scrooge, the last McDuck, believes he can locate it thanks to an X-Ray machine that can examine through the castle's walls. Finding the treasure proves to be the easy part of the mission, but they have to face a mysterious ghost who steals the treasure from them and repeatedly tries to dispose of any pursuers. They can't see it but they can see its shadow, that of a skeleton. During this, Scottie, the caretaker of the castle, seems to have been murdered by Sir Quackly, while Scrooge, Donald, and the Nephews find themselves trapped in a locked battlement. The Nephews escape by swinging across into the surrounding moat, but can't get in. However, remembering the tale of Sir Swamphole McDuck who sealed the dungeons (due to the high cost of running a dungeon), they locate a secret passageway into the castle's dungeons through his fake grave site (his skeleton was inside his armor). Scrooge and Donald remain on the battlement, until Scrooge reveals he has a gun which can shoot the lock and unlock the door. Scrooge, embarrassed, tells Donald to give him "a good, swift kick!". While in the dungeon, the Nephews find the treasure box, but are nearly attacked by the ghost and discover another way out of the dungeon; the pillar upon which Sir Swamphole's armor is resting is actually a door. Scrooge, Donald, and the nephews find an invisibility spray before giving chase to the ghost, now covered in mud and no longer invisible, through the swamp. The nephews and Donald tackle him to the ground and retrieve the treasure box. The ghost is revealed to be a thief who was impersonating Scottie (who had died of old age years before) using a special spray-like formula that made him invisible, but didn't prevent his skeleton from casting a shadow. Donald then takes all the nephews' credit, claiming they hadn't known the invisibility spray even existed. Enraged, the nephews then trick Donald into thinking the spray is a mosquito repellent, where they then make him completely invisible save for his tail and legs. 

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The story features Donald and his three nephews as members of a museum sponsored expedition searching for the source of a number of square "artifacts" held in the Duckburg museum, recently revealed to be square eggs when Donald drops one and it cracks open. There is a rising interest, both scientific and financial, to find the source of these eggs and the chicken that gave birth to them. However, the only thing known about them is that they came from Peru and were found somewhere in the Andes. During their journey to South America, the nephews use some of the old square eggs from the museum to make an omelette. This causes the members of the expedition to come down with food poisoning. By the time their boat reaches Peru, the only ones that have recovered enough to continue the expedition are the youngest in the group and the lowest in hierarchy — Donald and his nephews. Their search for the square eggs in the Andes seems hopeless, as the local population sees them either as insane or as suckers to be fooled into buying artificial eggs. Finally, they meet a very old man who tells them of how his father once came into possession of square stones similar to their own. The father had found them on the body of an American explorer who had emerged from a neighboring valley, which is covered in perpetual mist. The explorer, who had wandered the valley to the point of exhaustion, died soon afterwards. The old man's father later sold some of the "stones" in a local village and these ended up as the square eggs at the museum. The Ducks follow the dead man's path into the mists and after days of effort they find a populated valley in the Mountains, hidden by the mists. The inhabitants are entirely cubical with square heads and noses. They speak with an old Southern American accent taught to them by their previous visitor, the dead man, Professor Rhutt Betlah (a wordplay on Rhett Butler) from Birmingham, Alabama, who had discovered their valley during the late 19th century. During their stay in the valley, which the professor has named "Plain Awful", Huey, Dewey, and Louie blow some bubble gum bubbles, which is against the law in Plain Awful: It's forbidden to produce any round objects in the valley. The only way to get out of the valley and avoid capital punishment is for Huey, Dewey, and Louie to produce square bubbles. They manage to do that by teaching the square chickens to chew gum and blow bubbles. The nephews hid the chickens under their shirts and pretend they made the bubbles themselves. The Ducks convince the very hospitable locals to let them go. The latter are sad to see them go, because they were a source of information from the outside world to their small and isolated civilization. They give the Ducks a compass that the professor had left in Plain Awful, having been placed in a museum as a piece of art and, in return, they teach them square dancing. When they leave the valley, in one of Barks' scarce moralizing moments, Donald remarks that the people in Plain Awful "had so little of anything, yet they were the happiest people we've ever known." Bringing two square chickens and eggs with them, the Ducks again struggle to escape from the mists. Finally, when they do manage it, they are nearly exhausted. The two chickens are still alive, but they had to eat the eggs. It's only when they return to Duckburg, that they realize the entire expedition was a failure: both of the chickens are male and naturally can't reproduce. The story ends with Donald now giving an angry response to whoever mentions eggs and chicken to his face. 

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Donald Duck and his three nephews are on a holiday in California, heading to Los Angeles. They take a small narrow road that seems deserted and discuss California's history as they travel. Donald Duck opines that the turning point in California's history was the California Gold Rush. As he speaks passionately on this topic, Donald Duck is momentarily distracted from his driving. The car crashes in a rock besides the road. When Donald Duck and his three nephews regain consciousness, they find they are visitors of a local tribe of Native Americans. The tribe kindly offer to help the foursome recover. The exhausted Ducks are offered a drink, and they fall asleep. When they wake again, they find themselves in Alta California, 1848. They quickly manage to befriend a local Spanish-speaking family of Californios, owners of a cattle ranch, together with the ranch workers. As visitors, Donald Duck and his nephews observe the family's life and moreover, they attempt to help with the family problems. They visit San Francisco and acquire land cheaply, but soon are swindled out of them by American settlers. Afterwards, the Ducks become involved in the Gold Rush and as goldminers partner with a friend from the ranch. The Ducks do the digging, while their partner's fists and guns make sure that nobody swindles them out of their gold. After their friend departs, the Ducks start to experience an odd fading of their environment. It seems to them that all their acquaintances from this era are now only distant memories. It's at this point that the Duck family truly regain consciousness to discover the truth. They were in a coma in a hospital bed for weeks. The drink they had accepted had kept them sleeping for this long. The Ducks all have the same memory of their apparent experiences in time travel. Despite this, the Ducks believe themselves fully recovered, take possession of their car (which has been completely repaired) and continue on their way as if nothing had happened. However, the Ducks do make a stop first at an abandoned old house where they had stayed as visitors in 1848. They admit that they don't know if it was all a dream or if they really experienced the events they recall from 1848, but nevertheless they choose to keep the memory of Old California. 

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The story begins with Donald's nephews passing through Shacktown, the most impoverished area of Duckburg. They progressively get more depressed as they see the living conditions there, children of their age dressed in rags and having tired expressions, hunger and sickness evident in many of them. They feel responsible for it and want to help those poor children find some happiness. The Ducks have the idea of organizing a Christmas celebration. They ask for the help of Daisy Duck, president of a local ladies' society, and their friends in the Junior Woodchucks. Soon, however, it becomes evident that raising enough money is harder than it sounds. With all their efforts, they are still fifty dollars short. Donald Duck has the idea to ask his Uncle Scrooge for the money. Scrooge refuses his nephew's request for a donation, but nevertheless offers to match Donald's own twenty-five dollars, if he can manage to raise that much. Donald soon learns that asking for charity during the holidays, when every family struggles with its own increased expenses, is extremely difficult. He tries to trick his Uncle into making the donation, but he is unable to do so. Only when he swallows his pride and asks for his cousin Gladstone Gander's help does he finally succeed in raising his twenty-five dollars. When he arrives at his uncle's money bin, an apparently shocked Scrooge tells him it is too late. Enraged, Donald opens the vault door and discovers that inside, the overloaded floor had collapsed, and the money has been lost in the caverns below Duckburg. Now Donald still is twenty-five dollars short and has to take care of a shocked and depressed uncle. Dewey, Huey and Louie remember that they once explored Shacktown district and learned about a cavern that might lead to the lost money. In the cavern Ducks find a beaver hole that leads to the money, but it can't be expanded as the vibration would collapse the bottom of the cavern, making it impossible to retrieve the money. Boys bring a toy train to retrieve the money and Scrooge promises that they can keep the first load of money, no matter how much it is. They manage to get a hefty pile of bills and Scrooge faints, and using the bills, the residents of Shacktown receives a grand Christmas party. Scrooge, however, resides in the cavern and complains how he must wait for 272 years for the toy train to bring out all the money from the bottom. 

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Donald is seen working as a guard at the Duckburg Museum (as seen in Lost in the Andes!), but he finds his duties unsatisfying. The relics of the glorious past in the halls of the museum are all but forgotten, as the crowds are more interested in the butterfly, lace, and tatting collections. Donald laments his luck for being stuck there, while he thirst for an adventure like the Vikings. Donald's wish is soon answered when he becomes involved in a relic hunt of great importance. According to an old Viking saga and a map discovered in the museum, Olaf the Blue, a Viking explorer, had reached the coast of North America in the early 10th century and had claimed this land as his property -- a claim that was indeed valid according to an international treaty drafted in 792 during the reign of Charlemagne. Accompanied by an attorney named Sharky, Azure Blue, a man who claims to be Olaf's distant descendant, sets out to find the evidence that his ancestor left behind as proof of his claim -- a Golden Helmet, whose possessor will be the owner of North America. The museum's director enlists Donald and his nephews in a rival attempt to find the helmet first. Its location is estimated to be somewhere on the coast of Labrador, Canada. During their search, both rival expeditions lose all modern equipment, and by the time they find the helmet they must try to reach Labrador's coast traveling like the Vikings did. This is the least of their problems as the helmet changes hands between Azure Blue, the museum's director, Donald, and Lawyer Sharky. The helmet, an object of power, has the same effect on each of its successive owners: A cold glitter in their eyes betrays awakening greed and ambitions, as they become more ruthless, each of them in turn revealing the dreams of a would-be tyrant. Donald goes so far as to suggest charging for oxygen, with people wearing meters on their chests to keep track of how much they breathe. The idealistic museum director isn't interested in personal wealth, but changing North American culture and education to his own ideals, to the "benefit" of society. Finally, Donald's nephews manage to throw the helmet into the sea and end the madness, but not before Louie gets the same glitter in his eyes. Back at the museum after the adventure, Donald is again working as a guard, after all he decides to get acquainted with contemporary times and interest himself of the current exhibits that appeal to the masses. 

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The Goose Egg Nugget, painting by Barks said to have been a personal favorite (c. 1973)The Goose Egg Nugget At the beginning of the story, Scrooge McDuck seems to be suffering from memory lapses to the point he cannot even recognize Donald. Donald drags him to a doctor and Scrooge is given some pills supposed to help recover his memory. As his memory returns, Scrooge suddenly starts planning to return to the Klondike, Yukon, the place of his youth where he earned his wealth. He tells Donald and his nephews, who accompany him, he has left a cargo of gold buried near his old hut. Scrooge also begins to make references to "Glittering Goldie", a person of his past. As Scrooge seems to relive his past, but feeling his age, they arrive in Dawson, where Scrooge explains how he and Goldie met. Scrooge tells his nephews how Goldie stole his gold from him in the past, and how he kidnapped her and forced Goldie to work for him at his mining claim, up until the point where we see -in a flashback scène- Goldie shouting at Scrooge while crying for her ruined dress. The journey continues till they reach his old lodge and to their surprise it's occupied. Also, the current occupant forcibly resists any of their attempts to approach. Finally the nephews manage to surprise and disarm the old lady behind the attack, Goldie herself. As Scrooge and Goldie meet again, both a rivalry and an attraction to each other seem to resurface. But Scrooge demands an old debt that Goldie cannot pay. She gives her last jewelry to Scrooge and just leaves, apparently quitting. But Scrooge calls her back and challenges her to a contest. A contest of who can find gold first. Goldie succeeds in finding Scrooge's old cache that is now worth a fortune. After more than fifty years she succeeded. Scrooge leaves seemingly defeated and pretending that because he hadn't taken his pills, he had forgotten where the gold was. But behind his back, Donald reveals to his nephews that Scrooge had indeed taken the pills and practically offered this gold to Goldie. In the end, his nephews realize that Scrooge is more emotional than he would like to appear. 

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"Tralla La" begins with Uncle Scrooge having a hard day at his office, and it doesn't get better when he attempts to walk along the street to relax. He is followed by someone who wants some of his money for whatever reason. The stress of this way of life gets to him and he suffers a nervous breakdown. Though he improves, he can't stand to see or hear about money, as he now associates it with all the troubles that got him to this point. In order to heal, he searches for a place where money has no influence. Tralla La may be such a place, where a peaceful society without a monetary system is rumored to exist. Scrooge and his nephews, who are there to support his healing, finally locate the mythical place in a deep valley high in the Himalayas and arrive by parachute. There, they get acquainted with a more peaceful existence than to which they were accustomed. However, as Scrooge seems to be healing, he doesn't realize he brought his troubles with him. He brought bottles of his medication along. The bottle caps he discards are considered rare treasures in Tralla La and become the basis of a new monetary system. The inhabitants of Tralla La become obsessed with these new treasures. To solve the issue, Scrooge has planes drop one billion bottle caps, but this becomes too many, and the inhabitants become angry, as their fields are now covered with caps. The Ducks must flee, as they apparently cannot find peace even in an Earthly paradise. 

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Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr, a widowed brain surgeon, is renowned for inventing a method of "cranial screw-top" brain surgery. He saves the life of Dolores Benedict, a gold-digging femme fatale who is accidentally run over by Michael when fleeing the scene of her latest husband's fatal coronary, caused by her malicious mind-games and scheming. As she recovers, Michael falls in love and they marry. Dolores torments Michael by pretending to be too ill to consummate the marriage, citing a continuing headache. On a honeymoon and business trip to a medical conference in Vienna, a city living in fear of the serial "Elevator Killer", Hfuhruhurr meets mad scientist Dr. Alfred Necessiter, who has created a technique enabling him to store living brains in liquid-filled jars using the Elevator Killer's victims. Michael discovers he can communicate telepathically with one of Necessiter's brains, that of Anne Uumellmahaye. Michael and the disembodied brain fall in love, with Michael taking the brain away to spend more time with it. Dolores—having learned that Michael has received an inheritance from an aunt—attempts to reignite their relationship, but catches on to his relationship with Anne when she spots him in a rowboat with the jar. She attempts to kill Anne by putting the brain in an oven, causing Michael to literally toss Dolores out of his house. Michael consults with Dr. Necessiter, who informs him that brains in tanks do not survive long, with Anne being his longest-living one to date. Necessiter recommends transplanting Anne's brain into a new body, revealing that he has perfected a process that could allow him to implant the brain into a gorilla. After considering this idea for several seconds, Michael replies, "I couldn't fuck a gorilla!" Michael's only other option is to place Anne's brain in the body of a recently-deceased woman. Filling a syringe with window cleaner, the substance used by the Elevator Killer, Michael sees a crowd gathering around an attractive woman hit by a car, and is seen as odd for hoping she will expire, only to see her regain consciousness. Michael next selects a prostitute with an annoying voice, but his conscience prevents him from killing her. Stepping into an elevator, he finds that Dolores has just been murdered by the Elevator Killer, who turns out to be Merv Griffin. Michael takes Dolores' corpse, and Griffin promises to turn himself in to the police. Michael hurriedly takes Dolores's body to Necessiter's lab. He is stopped by the Austrian police, who suspect him of drunk driving. After a series of unusual sobriety tests, the police permit him to leave. However, as Dolores' body flails, the police realize that she was not drunk, but dead, and pursue his car. Michael makes it to the lab, where Necessiter transfers Anne's consciousness to Dolores's body, which is viewed by the stunned policemen. In the process, Michael is electrically shocked by the equipment and falls into a coma. Waking up six weeks later, Michael meets Anne in Dolores's body. Anne is a compulsive eater, and has gained considerable weight in her new body. Michael loves Anne for who she is, and they are married. A note in the credits requests that the audience to report the whereabouts of Merv Griffin if they see him. 

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In 1953, Esther Greenwood, a young woman from the suburbs of Boston, gains a summer internship at a prominent magazine in New York City, under editor Jay Cee; however, Esther is neither stimulated nor excited by the big city, nor by the glamorous culture and lifestyle that girls her age are expected to idolize and emulate. She instead finds her experience to be frightening and disorienting; appreciating the witty sarcasm and adventurousness of her friend Doreen, but also identifying with the piety of Betsy (dubbed "Pollyanna Cowgirl"), a "goody-goody" sorority girl who always does the right thing. She has a benefactress in Philomena Guinea, a formerly successful fiction writer (based on Olive Higgins Prouty). Esther describes in detail several seriocomic incidents that occur during her internship, kicked off by an unfortunate but amusing experience at a banquet for the girls held by the staff of Ladies' Day magazine. She reminisces about her friend Buddy, whom she has dated more or less seriously, and who considers himself her de facto fiancé. She also muses about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who are scheduled for execution. Soon before the internship ends, she attends a country club party with Doreen and is set up with a man who treats her roughly and nearly rapes her, before she breaks his nose and leaves. That night, after returning to the hotel, she throws all of her clothes off the roof. The day after, she returns to her Massachusetts home in borrowed clothes from Betsy and still bloodied from the night before. She has been hoping for another scholarly opportunity once she is back in Massachusetts, a writing course taught by a world-famous author, but on her return she is immediately told by her mother that she was not accepted for the course and finds her plans derailed. She decides to spend the summer potentially writing a novel, although she feels she lacks enough life experience to write convincingly. All of her identity has been centered upon doing well academically; she is unsure of what to make of her life once she leaves school, and none of the choices presented to her (motherhood, as exemplified by the prolific child-bearer Dodo Conway, or stereotypical female careers such as stenography) appeal to her. Esther becomes increasingly depressed, and finds herself unable to sleep. Her mother encourages, or perhaps forces, her to see a psychiatrist, Dr. Gordon, whom Esther mistrusts because he is attractive and seems to be showing off a picture of his charming family rather than listening to her. He prescribes electroconvulsive therapy (ECT); and afterward, she tells her mother that she will not go back. Esther's mental state worsens. She makes several half- hearted attempts at suicide, including swimming far out to sea, before making a serious attempt. She leaves a note saying she is taking a long walk, then crawls into a hole in the cellar and swallows about 50 sleeping pills that had been prescribed for her insomnia. In a very dramatic episode, the newspapers presume her kidnapping and death, but she is discovered under her house after an indeterminate amount of time. She survives and is sent to several different mental hospitals until her college benefactress, Philomena Guinea, supports her stay at an elite treatment center where she meets Dr. Nolan, a female therapist. Along with regular psychotherapy sessions, Esther is given huge amounts of insulin to produce a "reaction," and again receives shock treatments, with Dr. Nolan ensuring that they are properly administered. While there, she describes her depression as a feeling of being trapped under a bell jar, struggling for breath. Eventually, Esther describes the ECT as beneficial in that it has a sort of antidepressant effect; it lifts the metaphorical bell jar in which she has felt trapped and stifled. While there, she also becomes reacquainted with Joan Gilling, who also used to date Buddy. Esther tells Dr. Nolan how she envies the freedom that men have and how she, as a woman, worries about getting pregnant. Dr. Nolan refers her to a doctor who fits her for a diaphragm. Esther now feels free from her fears about the consequences of sex; free from previous pressures to get married, potentially to the wrong man. Under Dr. Nolan, Esther improves and various life-changing events, such as losing her virginity and Joan's suicide, help her to regain her sanity. The novel ends with her entering the room for an interview, which will decide whether she can leave the hospital and return to school. It is suggested near the beginning of the novel that, in later years, Esther goes on to have a baby. 

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The novel tells the story of Jude Fawley, who lives in a village in southern England (part of Hardy's fictional county of Wessex), who yearns to be a scholar at "Christminster", a city modelled on Oxford. As a youth, Jude teaches himself Classical Greek and Latin in his spare time, while working first in his great-aunt's bakery, with the hope of entering university. But before he can try to do this the naïve Jude is seduced by Arabella Donn, a rather coarse, morally lax and superficial local girl who traps him into marriage by pretending to be pregnant. The marriage is a failure, and Arabella leaves Jude and later emigrates to Australia, where she enters into a bigamous marriage. By this time, Jude has abandoned his classical studies. After Arabella leaves him, Jude moves to Christminster and supports himself as a mason while studying alone, hoping to be able to enter the university later. There, he meets and falls in love with his free-spirited cousin, Sue Bridehead. But, shortly after this, Jude introduces Sue to his former schoolteacher, Mr. Phillotson, whom she eventually is persuaded to marry, despite the fact that he is some twenty years her senior. However, she soon regrets this, because in addition to being in love with Jude, she is horrified by the notion of sex with her husband. Sue soon asks Phillotson for permission to leave him for Jude, which he grants, once he realizes how unwilling she is to fulfill what he believes are her marital duties to him. Because of this scandal—the fact Phillotson willingly allows his wife to leave for another man—Phillotson has to give up his career as a schoolmaster. Photochrom of the High Street, Oxford, 1890–1900 Sue and Jude spend some time living together without any sexual relationship. This is because of Sue's dislike both of sex and the institution of marriage. Soon after, Arabella reappears having fled her Australian husband, who managed a hotel in Sydney, and this complicates matters. Arabella and Jude divorce and she legally marries her bigamous husband, and Sue also is divorced. However, following this, Arabella reveals that she had a child of Jude's, eight months after they separated, and subsequently sends this child to his father. He is named Jude and nicknamed "Little Father Time" because of his intense seriousness and lack of humour. Jude eventually convinces Sue to sleep with him and, over the years, they have two children together and expect a third. But Jude and Sue are socially ostracised for living together unmarried, especially after the children are born. Jude's employers dismiss him because of the illicit relationship, and the family is forced into a nomadic lifestyle, moving from town to town across Wessex seeking employment and housing before eventually returning to Christminster. Their socially troubled boy, "Little Father Time", comes to believe that he and his half-siblings are the source of the family's woes. The morning after their arrival in Christminster, he murders Sue's two children and kills himself by hanging. He leaves behind a note that simply reads, "Done because we are too menny." Shortly thereafter, Sue has a miscarriage. Beside herself with grief and blaming herself for "Little Father Time"'s actions, Sue turns to the church that she has rebelled against and comes to believe that the children's deaths were divine retribution for her relationship with Jude. Although horrified at the thought of resuming her marriage with Phillotson, she becomes convinced that, for religious reasons, she should never have left him. Arabella discovers Sue's feelings and informs Phillotson, who soon proposes they remarry. This results in Sue leaving Jude once again for Phillotson, and she punishes herself by allowing herself sex with her husband. Jude is devastated and remarries Arabella after she plies him with alcohol to once again trick him into marriage. After one final, desperate visit to Sue in freezing weather, Jude becomes seriously ill and dies within the year in Christminster, thwarted in his ambition to achieve fame in his studies as well as in his love. It is revealed that Sue has grown "staid and worn" with Phillotson. Arabella fails to mourn Jude's passing, instead setting the stage to ensnare her next suitor. The events of Jude the Obscure occur over a 19-year period, but no dates are specifically given in the novel.There is reference to Sue Bridehead reading B. H. Cowper's Apocryphal Gospels, published in 1867 when she was younger. Penguin edition, 1978, p. 263 and note 35, p.507. Aged 11 at the beginning of the novel, by the time of his death Jude seems much older than his thirty years – for he has experienced so much disappointment and grief in his total life experience. It would seem that his burdens exceeded his sheer ability to survive, much less to triumph. 

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Jonas, a 12-year-old boy, lives in a Community isolated from all except a few similar towns, where everyone from small infants to the Chief Elder has an assigned role. With the annual Ceremony of Twelve upcoming, he is nervous, for there he will be assigned his life's work. He seeks reassurance from his father, a Nurturer (who cares for the new babies, who are genetically engineered; thus, Jonas's parents are not biologically related to him), and his mother, an official in the Department of Justice. He is told that the Elders, who assign the children their careers, are always right. The day finally arrives, and Jonas is assembled with his classmates in order of birth. All of the Community is present, and the Chief Elder presides. Jonas is stunned when his turn is passed by, and he is increasingly conspicuous and agonized until he is alone. The Chief Elder then explains that Jonas has not been given a normal assignment, but instead has been selected as the next Receiver of Memory, to be trained by the current one, who sits among the Elders, staring at Jonas, and who shares with the boy unusual pale eyes.The position of Receiver has high status and responsibility, and Jonas quickly finds himself growing distant from his classmates, including his close friends Asher and Fiona. The rules Jonas receives further separate him, as they allow him no time to play with his friends, and require him to keep his training secret. They also allow him to lie and withhold his feelings from his family, things generally not allowed in the regimented Community. Once he begins it, Jonas's training makes clear his uniqueness, for the Receiver of Memory is just that—a person who bears the burden of the memories from all of history, and who is the only one allowed access to books beyond schoolbooks and the rulebook issued to every household. The current Receiver, who asks Jonas to call him the Giver, begins the process of transferring those memories to Jonas, for the ordinary person in the Community knows nothing of the past. These memories, and being the only Community member allowed access to books about the past, give the Receiver perspective to advise the Council of Elders. The first memory is of sliding down a snow-covered hill on a sled, pleasantness made shocking by the fact that Jonas has never seen a sled, or snow, or a hill—for the memories of even these things has been given up to assure security and conformity (called Sameness). Even color has been surrendered, and the Giver shows Jonas a rainbow. Less pleasantly, he gives Jonas memories of hunger and war, things alien to the boy. Hanging over Jonas's training is the fact that the Giver once before had an apprentice, named Rosemary, but the boy finds his parents and the Giver reluctant to discuss what happened to her. Jonas's father is concerned about an infant at the Nurturing Center who is failing to thrive, and has received special permission to bring him home at night. The baby's name will be Gabriel if he grows strong enough to be assigned to a family. He has pale eyes, like Jonas and the Giver, and Jonas becomes attached to him, especially when Jonas finds that he is capable of being given memories. If Gabriel does not increase in strength, he will be "released from the Community"—in common speech, taken Elsewhere. This has happened to an off- course air pilot, to chronic rule breakers, to elderly people, and to the apprentice Rosemary. After Jonas casually speculates as to life in Elsewhere, the Giver educates him by showing the boy hidden-camera video of Jonas's father doing his job: as two identical community members cannot be allowed, Jonas's father releases the smaller of identical twin newborns by injecting the baby with poison before putting its dead body in a trash chute. There is no Elsewhere for those not wanted by the Community—those said to have been "released" have been killed. Since he considers his father a murderer, Jonas initially refuses to return home, but the Giver convinces him that without the memories, the people of the Community cannot know that what they have been trained to do is wrong. Rosemary was unable to endure the darker memories of the past and instead killed herself with the poison. Together, Jonas and the Giver come to the understanding that the time for change is now—that the Community has lost its way and must have its memories returned. The only way to make this happen is for Jonas to leave the Community, at which time the memories he has been given will flood back into the people, as did the relatively few memories Rosemary had been given. Jonas wants the Giver to escape with him, but the Giver insists that he will be needed to help the people manage the memories, or they will destroy themselves. Once the Community is re-established along new lines, the Giver plans to join his daughter, Rosemary, in death. The Giver devises a plot in which Jonas will escape beyond the boundaries of the Communities. The Giver will make it appear as if Jonas drowned in the river so that the search for him will be limited. The plan is scuttled when Jonas learns that Gabriel will be "released" the following morning, and he feels he has no choice but to escape with the infant. Their escape is fraught with danger, and the two are near death from cold and starvation when they reach the border of what Jonas believes must be Elsewhere. Using his ability to "see beyond", a gift that he does not quite understand, he finds a sled waiting for him at the top of a snowy hill. He and Gabriel ride the sled down towards a house filled with colored lights and warmth and love and a Christmas tree, and for the first time he hears something he believes must be music. The ending is ambiguous, with Jonas depicted as experiencing symptoms of hypothermia. This leaves his and Gabriel's future unresolved. However, their fate is revealed in Gathering Blue and in Messenger, companion novels written much later. In 2009, at the National Book Festival, the author joked during a Q&A;, "Jonas is alive, by the way. You don't need to ask that question." 

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Vic, aged 15, was born in and scavenges throughout the wasteland of the former southwestern United States. Vic is most concerned with food and fornication; having lost both of his parents, he has no formal education and does not understand ethics or morality. He is accompanied by a well-read, misanthropic, telepathic dog named Blood, who helps him locate women, in return for food. Blood cannot forage for himself, due to the same genetic engineering that granted him telepathy. The two steal for a living, evading roverpaks and mutants. Blood and Vic have an occasionally antagonistic relationship, though they realize that they need each other. At a movie house, Blood claims to smell a woman, and the pair track her to an abandoned YMCA building. There, they meet Quilla June Holmes, a teenage girl from "Downunder”, a society located in a large underground nuclear vault. Before Vic can rape her, Blood informs the pair that a "roverpak" (a gang) has tracked them to the building and they have to fight them off. After killing a number of them, the trio hides in a boiler and set the structure on fire. Vic finally fornicates with Quilla June, and though she protests at first, she begins to come on to him. Blood takes an instant disliking to her, but Vic ignores him. Vic and Quilla June fornicate repeatedly, but eventually, Quilla June attacks him and takes off to return to her underground community. Vic, furious at her deception, follows her, despite Blood's warnings. Blood remains at the portal on the surface. Downunder has an artificial biosphere, complete with forests and underground cities, one of which, named Topeka, after the ruins of the city it lies beneath, is fashioned in a surreal mockery of 1950s rural innocence. Vic is captured by the ruling council (the Better Business Bureau). They confess that Quilla June was sent to the surface to lure a man to Downunder. The population of Topeka is becoming sterile, and the babies that are born are usually female. They feel that Vic, despite his crudeness and savage behavior, will be able to reinvigorate that male population. Vic is first elated to learn that he is to impregnate the female population, but he quickly grows jaded of his surroundings and plots his escape. Quilla June is reunited with Vic and they plan to escape together. Vic uses the fact that Quilla June's father secretly desires fornication with her as a distraction, incapacitating him, so that they can escape. On the surface, Vic and Quilla June discover that Blood is starving and near death, having been attacked by radioactive insects and other "things". Quilla June tries to get Vic to leave Blood and take off with her. Knowing he will never survive without Blood's guidance and, more importantly, knowing Blood will not survive without care and food, Vic faces a difficult situation. It is implied that he kills his new love and cooks her flesh to save Blood's life. The novella ends with Vic remembering her question as Blood eats: "Do you know what love is?" and he concludes, "Sure I know. A boy loves his dog." 

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The series is set mainly in Hell, and the plot usually centres on the relationships and conflicts between Satan, his various minions, and the damned with (occasionally) interventions by God and other denizens of Heaven. Satan himself is identified with the fallen angel in Christian mythology and portrayed as somewhat jaded from millennia in charge of Hell and the expectation that he will continue to be so for eternity. Although he enjoys some aspects of the job, such as the opportunity to play pranks in the world of the living, and devising ironic torments for those damned souls whom he believes deserve it, his greatest wish is to someday be accepted back into Heaven, and he often wistfully recalls his past as an archangel. The series regularly features famous historical figures and celebrities, most of whom are portrayed as being less likable than (or at least different from) the version recorded by history. This includes a foul- mouthed and extremely violent Jane Austen, a sexually predatory Florence Nightingale (who also ran a Victorian London opium cartel), a less-than-heroic Samson (who actually killed only one Philistine ... a schoolboy) and a vacuous Helen of Troy (accompanied by her plain-looking friend, Daphne). This subversive approach was also applied to God (first name Nigel), who makes the occasional appearance, originally played by David Swift, then in series 7 by Timothy West. God is usually portrayed as being quick-tempered and vengeful; in the series he says he created the universe accidentally, when he was messing about with some matter and energy. He put it down to have a sip of his drink and then, kaboom! he had a universe on his hands. Life on Earth was created for a bet, as Earth was dull viewing; God, for a bit of fun, sprinkled some mutating bacteria into the oceans and ran a book with the other Angels to see which one would evolve into a creature that would develop a language first; the Angel Gabriel's bacteria were doing very well until they randomly mutated into carrots, and it was one of the Seraphim whose bacteria eventually became Homo sapiens. God seems rather annoyed that things 'got out of hand'. In later series, we learn that God also has a mobile phone (although only the Angel Gabriel is supposed to have the number), and that God sends e-mails, but refuses to read any that he receives as he once got taken in by a scam from Nigeria. The Angels are also portrayed somewhat differently. The Angel who delivered the news that Mary was to give birth to the Messiah was in fact named Graham, while Gabriel is a separate entity who was credited with doing so due to a transcription error early in the making of the Bible. They are also presented as rather arrogant when dealing with Satan, but at the same time behaving as suck-ups around God. They are forbidden to indulge in physical pleasures, but are still tempted by them (which has been used against them). 

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The novel opens with psychiatrist Dr Alistair Crown's wife Virginia giving birth to the couple's first child. Crown, who is not present during birth, is informed immediately afterwards that their daughter Doris has Down's syndrome, a fact he is unable to accept. For the next five years, he avoids Doris's face: He never looks at her and he refuses to be shown photos of her. His idea of being close to his daughter consists in his nocturnal visits to her bedroom when she is fast asleep: Then he gropes around under the sheets -- in a harmless way, imagining what it would be like to have a normal child and envisaging the day when he will actually come face to face with her. However, he keeps postponing that day, telling himself and his wife that he is not ready for it yet. He leaves for work early in the morning and comes home at night when his daughter is already asleep. He does not tell his parents, who live abroad, that their granddaughter is handicapped and, for years, can persuade them not to visit. Although Virginia is a devoted mother and an understanding wife, the ensuing marital crisis is unavoidable. When Doris is of preschool age, Crown actually has to lock himself in his room so as to make sure that he does not accidentally see his daughter's face. After a brief fling with a former girlfriend he moves out of the house. His life takes a decisive turn when he meets a man who calls himself Esau. Esau, who has a very hairy body, is still suffering under his dominant father although the latter has been dead for some time. He has become a compulsive stripper, making appointments with doctors, dentists and masseurs only to perform his stripping routine in front of them and wait for their reaction. The two men strike up an asexual friendship, and Crown moves into Esau's large house. Although he realizes that Esau is in urgent need of psychiatric treatment, Crown just sees a friend in him and refuses to have any therapeutic influence on Esau. He is devastated when Esau commits suicide by hanging himself in the attic. Now Crown's life totally gets out of control. Early one morning a few days before Doris's fifth birthday he kidnaps her from the playground of her nursery school -- still without looking at her --, drives with her to Hyde Park, strangles her from behind and buries her face down under a tree in a shallow grave dug out with his bare hands. Back at his office, he is informed by his wife that Doris has gone missing. For a couple of days, the police search for the girl but then give up all hope of ever finding her alive and well. When soon afterwards her body is found, Crown has to accompany the police to the morgue to identify his daughter. This is when he comes face to face with her for the first -- and last -- time. The police never solve the crime. Some time later Crown hangs himself in the garage. Category:1991 British novels Category:Novels by Bernice Rubens Category:Novels set in London Category:Sinclair-Stevenson books 

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Tom Canty, youngest son of a poor family living in Offal Court located in London, has always aspired to have a better life, encouraged by the local priest, who has taught him to read and write. Loitering around the palace gates one day, he meets Edward Tudor, the Prince of Wales. Coming too close in his intense excitement, Tom is nearly caught and beaten by the Royal Guards. However, Edward stops them and invites Tom into his palace chamber. There, the two boys get to know one another. Fascinated by each other's life and their uncanny resemblance to each other and learning they were even born on the same day, they decide to switch places "temporarily". The Prince hides an item, which the reader later learns is the Great Seal of England, then goes outside; however, dressed as Tom, he is not recognized by the guards, who drive him from the palace. He eventually finds his way through the streets to the Canty home. There, he is subjected to the brutality of Tom's alcoholic and abusive father, from whom he manages to escape, and meets one Miles Hendon, a soldier and nobleman returning from war. Although Miles does not believe Edward's claims to royalty, he humors him and becomes his protector. Meanwhile, news reaches them that King Henry VIII has died and Edward is now the king. Tom, dressed as Edward, tries to cope with court customs and manners. His fellow nobles and palace staff think the prince has an illness, which has caused memory loss and fear he will go mad. They repeatedly ask him about the missing Great Seal of England, but he knows nothing about it. However, when Tom is asked to sit in on judgments, his common-sense observations reassure them his mind is sound. As Edward experiences the brutal life of a London pauper firsthand, he becomes aware of the stark class inequality in England. In particular, he sees the harsh, punitive nature of the English judicial system where people are burned at the stake, pilloried, and flogged. He realizes that the accused are convicted on flimsy evidence and branded or hanged for petty offenses, and vows to reign with mercy when he regains his rightful place. When Edward declares to a gang of thieves that he is the king and will put an end to unjust laws, they assume he is insane and hold a mock coronation. After a series of adventures, including a stint in prison, Edward interrupts the coronation as Tom is about to be crowned as king. The nobles are shocked at their resemblance, and refuse to believe that Edward is the rightful king wearing Tom's clothes until he produces the Great Seal of England that he hid before leaving the palace. Edward and Tom switch back to their original places and Edward is crowned King Edward VI of England. Miles is rewarded with the rank of earl and the family right to sit in the presence of the king. In gratitude for supporting the new king's claim to the throne, Edward names Tom the "King's Ward", a privileged position he holds for the rest of his life. The ending explains that though Edward died at the age of 15, he reigned mercifully due to his experiences, while Tom lived to be a very old man. 

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The self-loathing Charlie Kaufman is hired to write the screenplay adaptation of Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief. He is struggling with anxiety, social phobia, depression, and low self-esteem. His twin brother, Donald, has moved into his house and is freeloading there. Donald decides to become a screenwriter like Charlie and attends one of Robert McKee's famous seminars. Charlie, who rejects formulaic scriptwriting, wants to ensure that his script is a faithful adaptation of The Orchid Thief but comes to feel that the book does not have a usable narrative and is impossible to turn into a film, which leaves him with a serious case of writer's block. Already well past his deadline with Columbia Pictures and despairing of writing his script with self-reference, Charlie travels to New York City to discuss the screenplay with Orlean directly. Too shy and socially awkward to speak with her upon arriving at her office and after he received the surprising news that Donald's spec script for a cliché psychological thriller, The 3, is selling for six or seven figures, Charlie resorts to attending McKee's seminar in New York and asks him for advice. Charlie ends up asking Donald to join him in New York to assist with the story structure. Donald, who is confident socially, pretends to be Charlie and interviews Orlean but finds her responses suspicious. He and Charlie follow Orlean to Florida, where she meets John Laroche, the orchid-stealing protagonist of her book and her secret lover. It is revealed that the Seminole wanted the ghost orchid to manufacture a mind-altering drug that causes fascination. Laroche introduces the drug to Orlean. After Laroche and Orlean catch Charlie observing them taking the drug and having sex, Orlean decides that Charlie must be killed to prevent him from exposing her adultery and drug use. Orlean forces Charlie to drive to the swamp at gunpoint, intending to kill him. Charlie and Donald escape and hide in the swamp, where they resolve their differences. Laroche accidentally shoots Donald. Charlie and Donald drive off but collide head-on with a ranger's truck. Donald is ejected through the windshield and dies moments later, but Charlie is saved by the airbag and runs into the swamp to hide. There he is spotted by Laroche, who is killed by an alligator before he can kill Charlie. Orlean is arrested. Charlie reconciles with his mother as he calls to inform her of Donald's death. He later tells his former love interest, Amelia, that he loves her. She responds that she loves him too. Charlie finishes the script, which ends with him announcing in a voice-over that the script is finished and that for the first time, he is filled with hope. 

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Dante Hicks, a young man who works as a retail clerk at Quick Stop Groceries in Leonardo, New Jersey, is called into work on his day off to cover another employee's morning shift. Arriving at the store, he finds that the locks to the security shutters are jammed closed with chewing gum, so he hangs a sheet over them with a message written in shoe polish: "I ASSURE YOU; WE'RE OPEN!". Soon after opening, Dante's best friend, wisecracking slacker Randal Graves, arrives for his own workday at the video rental store next door. The two prepare for another ordinary day immersed in their tedious customer service jobs. Dante repeatedly laments that he is "not even supposed to be here today," while Randal neglects his job at the video store to keep Dante company at the Quick Stop. They pass the time engaging in philosophical discussions on a wide variety of topics, including movies, sex, relationships, and difficult customers. Some of the customers they encounter during the day are angry and demanding; others, clueless and impolite; still others prove unexpectedly wise. After several hours, Dante discovers that his boss has left on a trip to Vermont, leaving him to run the store alone for the rest of the day. Dante and Randal find a number of reasons to leave the store and slack off, from a rooftop hockey game with Dante's friends to an ill-fated wake for one of Dante's ex-lovers. Dante is torn between two women: his current girlfriend Veronica Loughran and his ex-girlfriend Caitlin Bree, with whom he still secretly communicates. Dante is distressed when he learns Veronica has given oral sex to 36 other men before him, and engaged in snowballing with at least one. Despite Veronica's doting on him, Dante chooses to rekindle his relationship with Caitlin. However, Caitlin is traumatized by an incident in the Quick Stop bathroom; in the dark, she has sex with a person she thought was Dante, but who was actually a customer who had died of a heart attack while masturbating to a pornographic magazine Dante provided him. Caitlin leaves catatonic in an ambulance. Jay and Silent Bob, a pair of drug dealers who have spent the day loitering outside the store, invite Dante to party with them after hours, but Dante declines, considering the various seedy characters the two have been attracting all day. Aware of Dante's problems, Silent Bob tersely convinces him that he really loves Veronica, but Randal has already confessed the previous events to her, prompting Veronica to dramatically dump Dante. Dante fights with Randal, trashing the Quick Stop. Dante and Randal have a crucial moment of clarity after their fight. Randal hears Dante repeat his refrain that he's "not even supposed to be here today" and points out that Dante could have left at any time and prevented the day's events; furthermore, he says they are not as "advanced" as they think they are, or else they would not be stuck in such lowly jobs. After the two make amends, Dante plans to visit Caitlin in the hospital and try to reconcile with Veronica. Randal leaves, but not before tossing Dante's shoe-polish sign in his face and declaring, "You're closed!"Kevin Smith. Clerks and Chasing Amy : Two Screenplays. Miramax Books. 1997. 

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On Lusitania, Ender finds a world where humans and pequeninos and the Hive Queen could all live together. However, Lusitania also harbors the descolada, a virus that kills all humans it infects, but which the pequeninos require in order to become adults. The Starways Congress so fears the effects of the descolada, should it escape from Lusitania, that they have ordered the destruction of the entire planet, and all who live there. With the Fleet on its way, a second xenocide seems inevitable.https://www.amazon.com/Xenocide-3-Ender-Quintet- ebook/dp/B003H4I41S/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid;=1381799311&sr;=8-2&keywords;=Xenocide 

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Death comes to collect the soul of Ipslore the Red, a wizard who was banished from Unseen University for marrying and having children, something forbidden for wizards. Bitter over this fate, Ipslore vows to take revenge upon the wizards through his eighth son, Coin. As the eighth son of a wizard, Coin is born a sourcerer, a wizard who generates new magic rather than drawing it from the world, effectively making him the most powerful wizard on the Disc. At the moment of his death, Ipslore transfers his essential being into the infant Coin's staff, preventing Death from collecting his soul and allowing him to influence his son. Eight years later, Virrid Wayzygoose, the next Archchancellor of Unseen University, is murdered by Coin, who then forces his way into the university's Great Hall. After Coin bests one of the top wizards in the University, he is welcomed by the majority of the wizards. Rincewind, The Luggage and the Librarian miss Coin's arrival, having fled the University shortly beforehand. While they are at the Mended Drum, Conina, a professional thief and a daughter of Discworld legend Cohen the Barbarian, arrives holding a box containing the Archchancellor's hat, which she has procured from the room of Wayzygoose, and possesses a kind of sentience as a result of being worn by hundreds of Archchancellors. Under the direction of the hat, which sees Coin as a threat to wizardry and the very world, Conina forces Rincewind to come with her and take a boat to the city of Al Khali, where the hat claims there is someone fit to wear it. In Ankh-Morpork, the wizards are made more powerful due to Coin's presence drawing more magic into the Discworld. Under Coin's direction, the wizards take over Ankh-Morpork, transforming it into a pristine city, and make plans to take over the world. Elsewhere, Rincewind, Conina and the Luggage end up in the company of Creosote, the seriph of Al Khali, and Abrim, his treacherous vizier. The trio are eventually separated; Rincewind is thrown into the snake pit, where he meets Nijel the Destroyer, a barbarian hero in training. Conina is taken to Creosote's harem, where the Seriph has his concubines tell him stories. The Luggage, having been scorned by Conina, runs away and gets drunk, before killing and eating several creatures in the deserts. Coin eventually declares Unseen University and the various wizarding orders obsolete and orders the Library to be burnt down, claiming that Wizardry no longer requires such things. A group of wizards then attack Al Khali, the sheer amount of magic created by their arrival temporarily putting Rincewind into a trance and enabling him to use magic, allowing him and Nijel to escape the snake pit. They join up with Creosote and Conina, the latter immediately falling in love with Nijel, and they encounter Abrim, who had put on the Archchancellor's hat hoping to gain power from it, only to be possessed instead. Having the experience of many previous Archchancellors, the hat proves an even match for Sourcery empowered wizards, fighting off a group of them and enlisting others to its cause. As this takes place, Rincewind, Conina, Nijel and Creosote find a magical flying carpet in the palace's treasury, and use it to escape the palace as it gets destroyed by the possessed Abrim building his own tower. With the orders no longer around to keep the wizards in check, wizards across the Discworld go to war with one another, threatening to destroy the world completely. Upon hearing Creosote express anti-wizard sentiments, an angry and humiliated Rincewind abandons the group, taking the flying carpet and making his way to the University, where he learns that the Librarian has saved the library books by hiding them in the ancient Tower of Art. The Librarian convinces Rincewind to stop Coin, and he goes off to face the Sourcerer with a sock containing a half-brick. Back in Al Khali, the Luggage, blaming the Archchancellor's hat for everything it has endured, forces its way into Abrim's tower. Distracted by the Luggage, the possessed vizier is killed by the Ankh-Morpork wizards, with the tower and the Archchancellor's hat getting destroyed in the process. Despite his victory, Coin becomes concerned when he is told that wizards rule under the Discworld Gods. He traps the gods in an alternate reality, which shrinks to become a large pearl, unknowingly causing the Ice Giants, a race of beings who had been imprisoned by the gods, to escape their prison, whereupon they begin strolling across the Discworld, freezing everything in their path. Rincewind confronts Coin soon after this. The Sourcerer is amused, but unthreatened, by Rincewind attempting to fight him, prompting Ipslore to try and force Coin to kill him. Rincewind eventually convinces Coin to throw the staff away, but Ipslore's power is channelled against that of his son. The other wizards leave the tower as Rincewind rushes forward, grabbing the child and sending both of them to the Dungeon Dimensions while Death strikes the staff and takes Ipslore's soul. Rincewind orders Coin to return to the University and, using his other sock filled with sand, attacks the Creatures from the Dungeon Dimensions as a distraction to ensure Coin's escape. The Gods are subsequently set free, stopping the march of the Ice Giants. As the Librarian helps Coin escape, the Luggage charges into the Dungeon Dimensions after Rincewind. Coin returns the University and Ankh-Morpork to the way they were before he came. After Conina and Nijel travel to the University looking for Rincewind, Coin uses his magic to make them forget him and live happily ever after together. Recognising that he is too powerful to remain in the world, Coin steps into a dimension of his own making, and is not seen on the Discworld again. The Librarian takes Rincewind's battered hat, which got left behind when he went into the Dungeon Dimensions, and places it on a pedestal in the Library. 

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In 1936, Senator Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, a charismatic and power-hungry politician, wins the 1936 United States presidential election on a populist platform, promising to restore the country to prosperity and greatness, and promising each citizen $5,000 a year. Portraying himself as a champion of traditional American values, Windrip defeats President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the Democratic convention, and then easily beats his Republican opponent, Senator Walt Trowbridge, in the November election. Although having previously foreshadowed some authoritarian measures to reorganize the United States government, Windrip rapidly outlaws dissent, incarcerates political enemies in concentration camps, and trains and arms a paramilitary force called the Minute Men (named after the Revolutionary War militias of the same name), who terrorize citizens and enforce the policies of Windrip and his "corporatist" regime. One of Windrip's first acts as president is to eliminate the influence of the United States Congress, which draws the ire of many citizens as well as the legislators themselves. The Minute Men respond to protests against Windrip's decisions harshly, attacking demonstrators with bayonets. In addition to these actions, Windrip's administration, known as the "Corpo" government, curtails women's and minority rights, and eliminates individual states by subdividing the country into administrative sectors. The government of these sectors is managed by "Corpo" authorities, usually prominent businessmen or Minute Men officers. Those accused of crimes against the government appear before kangaroo courts presided over by military judges. Despite these dictatorial (and "quasi- draconian") measures, a majority of Americans approve of them, seeing them as painful but necessary steps to restore U.S. power. One of Windrip's cronies brings up the matter of fascism in America, but Francis Tasbrough, the wealthy owner of the quarry, dismisses it with the remark that it simply "can't happen here" (hence the novel's title). Open opponents of Windrip, led by Senator Trowbridge, form an organization called the New Underground (named after the Underground Railroad), helping dissidents escape to Canada and distributing anti-Windrip propaganda. One recruit to the New Underground is Doremus Jessup, the novel's protagonist, a traditional liberal and an opponent of both corporatist and communist theories, the latter of which Windrip's administration suppresses. Jessup's participation in the organization results in the publication of a periodical called The Vermont Vigilance, in which he writes editorials decrying Windrip's abuses of power. Shad Ledue, the local district commissioner and Jessup's former hired man, resents his old employer. Ledue eventually discovers Jessup's actions and has him sent to a concentration camp. Ledue subsequently terrorizes Jessup's family and particularly his daughter Sissy, whom he unsuccessfully attempts to seduce. Sissy discovers evidence of corrupt dealings on the part of Ledue, which she exposes to Francis Tasbrough, a one-time friend of Jessup and Ledue's superior in the administrative hierarchy. Tasbrough has Ledue imprisoned in the same camp as Jessup, where inmates Ledue had sent there organize Ledue's murder. After a relatively brief incarceration, Jessup escapes when his friends bribe one of the camp guards. He flees to Canada, where he rejoins the New Underground. He later serves the organization as a spy, passing along information and urging locals to resist Windrip. In time, Windrip's hold on power weakens as the economic prosperity he promised does not materialize, and increased numbers of disillusioned Americans, including Vice President Perley Beecroft, flee to both Canada and Mexico. Windrip also angers his Secretary of State, Lee Sarason, who had served earlier as his chief political operative and adviser. Sarason and Windrip's other lieutenants, including General Dewey Haik, seize power and exile the president to France. Sarason succeeds Windrip, but his extravagant and relatively weak rule creates a power vacuum in which Haik and others vie for power. In a bloody putsch, Haik leads a party of military supporters into the White House, kills Sarason and his associates, and proclaims himself president. The two coups cause a slow erosion of Corpo power, and Haik's government desperately tries to arouse patriotism by launching an unjustified invasion of Mexico. After slandering Mexico in state- run newspapers, Haik orders a mass conscription of young American men for the invasion of that country, infuriating many who had until then been staunch Corpo loyalists. Riots and rebellions break out across the country, with many realizing the Corpos have misled them. General Emmanuel Coon, among Haik's senior officers, defects to the opposition with a large portion of his army, giving strength to the resistance movement. Although Haik remains in control of much of the country, civil war soon breaks out as the resistance tries to consolidate its grasp on the Midwest. The novel ends after the beginning of the conflict, with Jessup working as an agent for the New Underground in Corpo-occupied portions of southern Minnesota. 

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The heroine, Sybylla Melvyn, is an imaginative, headstrong girl growing up in rural Australia in the 1890s. Drought and a series of poor business decisions reduce her family to subsistence level, her father begins to drink excessively, and Sybylla struggles to deal with the monotony of her life. To her relief, she is sent to live on her grandmother's property, where life is more comfortable. There she meets wealthy young Harold Beecham, who loves her and proposes marriage; convinced of her ugliness and aware of her tomboyish ways, Sybylla is unable to believe that he could really love her. By this time, her father's drinking has plunged the family into debt, and she is sent to work as governess/housekeeper for the family of an almost illiterate neighbour to whom her father owes money. She finds life there unbearable and eventually suffers a physical breakdown which leads to her return to the family home. When Harold Beecham returns to ask Sybylla to marry him, she concludes that she would only make him unhappy and sends him away, determined never to marry. The novel ends with no suggestion that she will ever have the "brilliant career" as a writer that she desires. 

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In an abandoned river boat in Devil's Bayou, a young orphan named Penny drops a message in a bottle, containing a plea for help into the river. The bottle washes up in New York City, where it is found by the Rescue Aid Society, an international mouse organization inside the United Nations. The Hungarian representative, Miss Bianca, volunteers to accept the case and chooses Bernard, a stammering janitor, as her co-agent. The two visit Morningside Orphanage, where Penny lived, and meet an old cat named Rufus. He tells them about a woman named Madame Medusa who once tried to lure Penny into her car and may have succeeded in abducting Penny this time. The mice travel to Medusa's pawn shop, where they discover that she and her partner, Mr. Snoops, are on a quest to find the world's largest diamond, the Devil's Eye. The mice learn that Medusa and Mr. Snoops are currently at the Devil's Bayou with Penny, whom they have indeed kidnapped and placed under the guard of two trained crocodiles, Brutus and Nero. With the help of an albatross named Orville and a dragonfly named Evinrude, the mice follow Medusa to the bayou. There, they learn that Medusa plans to force Penny to enter a small hole that leads down into a pirates' cave where the Devil's Eye is located. Bernard and Miss Bianca find Penny and devise a plan of escape. They send Evinrude to alert the local animals, who loathe Medusa, but Evinrude is delayed when he is forced to take shelter from a flock of bats. The following morning, Medusa and Mr. Snoops send Penny down into the cave to find the gem. Unbeknownst to Medusa, Miss Bianca and Bernard are hiding in Penny's skirt pocket. The three soon find the Devil's Eye within a pirate skull. As Penny pries the mouth open with a sword, the mice push it out from within, but soon the oceanic tide rises and floods the cave. The three barely manage to retrieve the diamond and escape. Medusa breaks her promise to Snoops that he can have half the diamond, and hides it in Penny's teddy bear while holding Penny and Snoops at gunpoint. When she trips over a cable set as a trap by Bernard and Bianca, Medusa loses the bear to Penny, who runs away with it. The local animals arrive at the riverboat and aid Bernard and Bianca in trapping Brutus and Nero, then set off Snoops's fireworks to create more chaos. Meanwhile, Penny and the mice commandeer Medusa's swamp- mobile, a makeshift airboat. Medusa unsuccessfully pursues them, using Brutus and Nero as water-skis, and is left clinging to the boat's smoke stacks as Snoops escapes on a raft and laughs at her, while the irritated Brutus and Nero turn on her and circle below. Back in New York City, the Rescue Aid Society watch a news report of how Penny found the Devil's Eye, which has been given to the Smithsonian Institution, and how she has been adopted. The meeting is interrupted when Evinrude arrives with a call for help, sending Bernard and Bianca on a new adventure. 

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Fighting for military and political power on Rubi-Ka are the Omni-Tek corporation (owners of the planet's one thousand-year lease), the separatist clans, terrorist groups, extraterrestrial life, and ancient civilizations. The narrative was developed to be played out as a series of virtual "role-play" events over the course of four years, influenced by the actions of those taking part in the game. According to the game's back story, the "Source" of all life deep inside the planet created the first forms of life, who called themselves the Xan. They began as a small, perfect, immortal civilization, living in peace and harmony. The Xans' eventual discovery and research of the Source's power lead them to create powerful technology. They built a great civilization, but this made them greedy and arrogant. Two factions formed within the Xan, calling themselves the Redeemed and the Unredeemed. These groups fought over how best to use the Source — now strained and unstable from their tampering. They tried in vain to fix the problem, but discovered it was too late - the Source would soon destroy the planet. Rubi-Ka was ripped apart in a cataclysm, leaving it a barren rock. The Source, and small fragments of the Xans' dead civilization, were thrown into another dimension known as the Shadowlands. The survivors left in search of other habitable planets, where they planted versions of their species; they hoped that one would prosper and eventually return to Rubi-Ka. Earth was one of their destinations. In the year 28,708 AD, a mining survey ship from the mega-corporation Omni-Tek rediscovered Rubi-Ka. The Interstellar Confederation of Corporations (ICC) granted Omni-Tek a one thousand-year lease on the planet shortly after. It was a seemingly useless, arid landscape far from civilization, until the discovery of the mineral Notum, unique to Rubi-Ka. Research of Notum and its properties led to major leaps forward in nanotechnology, making possible the creation of powerful new technology, as well as the resurrection of the dead. After terraforming a portion of Rubi-Ka and constructing several cities, outposts, and transportation infrastructure, the company began importing colonists under contract as miners and other professions. The first five hundred years of Omni-Tek's control of Rubi-Ka were marked with an exemplary worker treatment record. However, as time passed, their policies degraded. Their scientists' tinkering with the mutating effects of Notum on the colonists in a quest for efficiency lead to large numbers of failed experiments. Survivors of these experiments became the game's four playable races, or Breeds, each designed by Omni-Tek to specialize in a type of work. Together with the original "Solitus" race, the genetically engineered Herculean "Atrox," the intelligent "Nanomages," and the nimble "Opifexes," they continued their labor in the midst of an increasingly hostile and totalitarian culture. This caused a significant number of workers to rebel, and begin to trade stolen Notum to a rival corporation. These rebel groups, collectively calling themselves the Clans, fought a series of wars with Omni-Tek over the next several centuries. 

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In 1924, Roxie Hart watches lead role Velma Kelly perform ("Overture/All That Jazz") at a Chicago theater. Wanting stardom for herself, she begins an affair with Fred Casely, who claims to know the manager. After the show, Velma is arrested for killing her husband Charlie and sister Veronica, after finding them in bed together. A month later, Casely admits to Roxie that he has no showbiz connections and just wanted to sleep with her. Enraged, she shoots him dead. She convinces her husband, Amos, to take the blame, telling him she killed a burglar in self- defense. As Amos confesses to the detective, Roxie fantasizes that she is singing a song devoted to her husband ("Funny Honey"). However, when the detective brings up evidence that Roxie and Casely were having an affair, Amos recants; Roxie furiously admits what really happened and is arrested. Ambitious District Attorney Harrison announces he will seek the death penalty. At Cook County Jail, Roxie is sent to Murderess' Row, under the care of the corrupt Matron "Mama" Morton ("When You're Good to Mama"). Roxie meets her idol Velma, but her friendship is rudely rebuffed. She learns the backstories of the other women there, including Velma ("Cell Block Tango"). On Morton's advice, Roxie engages Velma's lawyer, the brilliant Billy Flynn ("All I Care About"). Flynn and Roxie manipulate the press, reinventing Roxie's identity as an originally virtuous woman turned bad by the fast life of the city; she claims she had the affair with Casely because Amos was always working, but repented and dumped him for Amos, and Casely jealously attacked her ("We Both Reached for the Gun"). The press believe the story; praised by the public as a tragic heroine, Roxie becomes an overnight sensation ("Roxie"). Velma, unhappy at losing the public's attention, tries to convince Roxie to join her act, replacing the sister that she murdered ("I Can't Do It Alone"), but Roxie, now the more popular of the two rivals, snubs her just as Velma originally snubbed Roxie. Meanwhile, Kitty "Go-To-Hell Kitty" Baxter, a wealthy heiress, is arrested for murdering her husband and his two lovers, and the press and Flynn pay more attention to her. To Velma's surprise, Roxie quickly steals back the fame by claiming to be pregnant. Amos is ignored by the press ("Mister Cellophane"), and Flynn, to create more sympathy for Roxie, convinces him that the child is Casely's, and that he should divorce Roxie in the middle of her predicament. Roxie over-confidently fires Flynn, believing she can now win on her own. However, when Katalin Helinszki, a Hungarian woman on Murderess' Row (who happens to be the only inmate to protest and insist on her own innocence), becomes the first woman in Cook County history to be executed by hanging, Roxie realizes the gravity of the situation and rehires Flynn. Roxie's trial begins, and Billy turns it into a media spectacle ("Razzle Dazzle") with the help of the sensationalist newspaper reporters and radio personality Mary Sunshine. Billy discredits witnesses, manipulates evidence, and even stages a public reconciliation between Amos and Roxie when she says the child is his. The trial seems to be going Roxie's way until Velma appears with Roxie's diary: she reads incriminating entries in exchange for amnesty in her own case. Billy discredits the diary, implying that Harrison was the one who planted the evidence ("A Tap Dance"). Roxie is acquitted, but her fame is eclipsed moments later when another woman, who had also shot her own husband, shoots her lawyer just outside the courthouse. Flynn tells her to accept it, and admits that he tampered with her diary himself, in order to incriminate the district attorney and also free two clients at once. Amos remains loyal and excited to be a father, but Roxie cruelly rejects him, revealing that she is not pregnant, and he finally leaves her. Roxie does become a vaudeville performer, but is very unsuccessful ("Nowadays"). Velma is just as unsuccessful, and again approaches Roxie to suggest performing together: a double act consisting of two murderers. Roxie initially refuses, but later accepts when Velma points out that they can perform together despite their resentment for each other. The two stage a spectacular performance that earns them the love of the audience and the press ("Nowadays / Hot Honey Rag"). The film concludes with Roxie and Velma receiving a standing ovation from an enthusiastic audience (which includes Flynn, Morton, the jurors and other acquitted murderesses), and proclaiming that, "We couldn't have done it without you". 

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Romy White and Michele Weinberger (Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow) live together in Los Angeles, California. Romy works as a cashier at a car dealership and Michele is unemployed. They are single, unambitious, and enjoy a casual lifestyle. Romy encounters former high school classmate, Heather Mooney (Janeane Garofalo), who informs Romy about their upcoming ten- year high school reunion in Tucson, Arizona. Romy realizes their lack of achievements will not make a good impression at the reunion. Desperate to impress their former classmates, Romy and Michele make last-ditch attempts to improve themselves, hoping to avoid being bullied again. As high school students in 1987, they were picked on by the "A-Group", led by cheerleader Christie Masters (Julia Campbell), who humiliates them repeatedly. Finally, at the prom, Christie tricks Romy into believing that her boyfriend Billy Christensen (Vincent Ventresca) was in love with Romy, and had dumped Christie to be with Romy. Romy waits all night to dance with Billy, who had already left with Christie. Michele dances with her instead. Having failed to secure jobs and boyfriends, Romy and Michele decide to fake success by showing up in an expensive car and business suits. Romy borrows a nice car from her workplace, and Michele makes their outfits. En route to the reunion, they decide to claim to have invented Post-it notes, believing no one will know better. They argue over the details of their lie, which escalates into an argument about their friendship. They decide to go their separate ways once they reach the reunion. At the reunion, Michele hears Romy claiming she invented Post-its by herself. Michele convinces the A-Group she invented a special kind of glue. Sandy Frink (Alan Cumming), the nerd who had a crush on Michele in high school, has become wealthy and attractive since high school, and hits on Michele. Billy and Romy reunite and hit it off. Both Romy and Michele win awards as the "Most Changed For the Better" members of their graduating class, but still refuse to speak with each other. Seventy years later, an elderly Michele learns Romy is on her deathbed, and calls her to make amends. However, they rehash the same argument and Romy dies without resolving their issues. Michele wakes up alone in the car, realizing she was dreaming. At the reunion, Romy has begun to spread the Post-it story, but Heather Mooney spoils the lie by revealing the real inventor's name. Christie and her friends taunt Romy and Michele ineptly defends her. Romy runs out, and Michele chases after her. They reconcile and decide to have fun as themselves instead of trying to impress other people. They change into brightly colored homemade outfits and return to the reunion. They confront Christie, who makes fun of their clothes. Former A-Group girl Lisa Luder (Elaine Hendrix), now a fashion editor, announces that the outfits are actually "not bad". Christie verbally attacks Lisa, who coolly dismisses her. The other A-Group girls abandon Christie, while everyone else congratulates Romy and Michele. Heather apologizes to Romy and Michele and admits she was miserable in high school because she was in love with Sandy, who was in love with Michele. Romy and Michele comfort her by reminding her that she was always successful at making classmate Toby Walters (Camryn Manheim) miserable. Sandy Frink, who turns out to be an actual billionaire, arrives via helicopter. He confesses that he still loves Michele and asks her to dance with him. Michele agrees, as long as Romy can dance with them too. After their interpretive dance to Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time" receives huge applause, Sandy escorts them to his helicopter. On their way out, they encounter Billy Christensen. Once a fit and handsome athlete, he is now an overweight alcoholic with a dead-end job and an unhappy marriage to Christie. He hits on Romy, who tells him to wait in his hotel room for her, who then leaves the reunion with Michele and Sandy in his helicopter saying “now he’ll know what it feels like to wait!.” As the helicopter flies off, the guests at the reunion come to see them off. Christie is screaming asking where Billy is and her dress flies above her head from the air of the helicopter. Six months later, back in Los Angeles, Romy and Michele use money loaned to them by Sandy to open a successful fashion boutique. 

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The story begins with the player character (PC), under the guidance of Lady Aribeth, being sent to recover four creatures (dryad, intellect devourer, yuan-ti, and cockatrice), known collectively as the Waterdhavian creatures. The Waterdhavian creatures are needed to make a cure for the Wailing Death, a plague that is sweeping the city of Neverwinter and forcing a quarantine. With the help of Fenthick Moss, Aribeth's love interest, and Desther, Fenthick's friend, the main character is able to retrieve the creatures. As they collect the creatures, they are attacked by mysterious assassins from a cult that is behind the spreading of the plague. As the cure is being made, Castle Neverwinter is attacked by the minions of Desther, who betrays the heroes. Desther takes the completed cure and escapes the castle, with the hero and Fenthick in pursuit. When they catch up to Desther, he surrenders after a short battle. Desther is sentenced to burn at the stake, and Fenthick, despite being unaware of Desther's true intentions, is sentenced to hang. The protagonist meets up with Aribeth and Neverwinter's spymaster, Aarin Gend, to begin searching for the cult responsible for the plague and the attack on Neverwinter. The main character retrieves the diaries of dead cultists and letters from a person named Maugrim, which convince Aribeth that the cult's headquarters are in Luskan. Aribeth goes ahead to Luskan, and the hero follows after speaking once more to Gend. After arriving in Luskan, the protagonist hears rumors that Aribeth is joining with the cultists. These fears are confirmed when she is found meeting with Maugrim and Morag, Queen of the Old Ones. They seek a group of magical relics called the Words of Power. The main character retrieves all of the Words of Power except for one held by the cult. The hero discovers that the Words open a portal to a pocket world inside the Source Stone, where Morag and the other Old Ones sealed themselves long ago to avoid extermination during a primordial ice age. The protagonist confronts Aribeth, and depending on how the meeting is handled, she either surrenders to the main character or they are forced to kill her. The hero battles Maugrim for the final Word, then uses the Words to enter the Source Stone and battle with Morag. After Morag's death, the protagonist escapes the Stone as the world inside it implodes. 

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The book covers the escape of Harrer and his companion, Peter Aufschnaiter, from a British internment camp in India. Harrer and Aufschnaiter then traveled across Tibet to Lhasa, the capital. Here they spent several years, and Harrer describes the contemporary Tibetan culture in detail. Harrer subsequently became a tutor and friend of the 14th Dalai Lama. It has been said that the book "provided the world with a final glimpse of life in an independent Tibetan state prior to the Chinese invasion." 

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Aviator André Jurieux lands at Le Bourget Airfield outside Paris after crossing the Atlantic in his plane. He is greeted by his friend Octave, who tells André that Christine the Austrian-French noblewoman André loveshas not come to greet him. André is heartbroken. When a radio reporter comes to broadcast André's first words upon landing, he explains his sorrow and denounces Christine. She is listening to the broadcast in her Paris apartment while attended by her maid, Lisette. Christine has been married to Robert, Marquis de la Chesnaye for three years. For two years, Lisette has been married to Schumacher the gamekeeper at Robert's country estate, La Colinière in Solognebut she is more devoted to Christine than to her husband. Christine's past relationship with André is openly known by her husband, her maid and their friend Octave. After Christine and Robert playfully discuss André's emotional display and pledge devotion to one another, Robert excuses himself to make a telephone call. He arranges to meet his mistress Geneviève the next morning. At Geneviève's apartment, Robert says he must end their relationship but invites her to join them for a weekend retreat to La Colinière. Christine also invites her niece, Jackie. Later, Octave induces Robert to invite André to the estate as well. They joke that André and Geneviève will begin a relationship, thereby solving everyone's problems. At the estate, Schumacher is policing the grounds and trying to eliminate rabbits. Marceau a poachersneaks onto the estate to retrieve a rabbit caught in a snare. Before Marceau can escape, Schumacher catches him and begins to escort him from the property when Robert demands to know what is happening. Marceau explains that he can catch rabbits and Robert hires him as a servant. Once inside the house, Marceau flirts with Lisette. The assembled guests go on a hunt led by Schumacher, who resents Marceau. On the way back to La Colinière’s castle, Robert tells Geneviève that he no longer loves her. Geneviève wants to pack up and leave but Christine persuades her to stay. At a masked ball, various romantic liaisons are made. André and Christine declare their love for each other and plan to run away together. Marceau pursues Lisette, and the jealous Schumacher is upset. Robert and André come to an argument over Christine. In the secluded greenhouse, Octave declares that he too loves Christinewho is now having doubts about Andréand they decide to run away together. Schumacher and Marceau, who have both been expelled from the estate by Robert after a fight over Lisette, watch Octave and Christine in the greenhouse. As in Beaumarchais’s Marriage of Figaro, the literary basis for Mozart’s opera, they mistake Christine for Lisette because Christine is wearing Lisette's cape and hood. Octave returns to the house for his coat and hat, where Lisette begs him not to leave with Christine. Breaking his promise to Christine, Octave meets André and sends him out to Christine in the greenhouse, lending him his overcoat, which causes André’s death. When André reaches the greenhouse wearing Octave's coat, Schumacher mistakes him for Octave, who he thinks is trying to run off with his wife, and shoots him dead. Robert and Octave turn out to have been the villains of the drama. They have jointly brought about André’s death. In the closing moments of the film, Octave and Marceau walk away into the night as Robert brings Schumacher back into the household and explains that he would report the killing to the authorities as nothing more than an unfortunate accident. 

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Antoine Doinel is a young boy growing up in Paris during the 1950s. Misunderstood by his parents for playing truant from school and stealing, and tormented in school for discipline problems by his teacher (such as writing on the classroom wall, and later falsely explaining his absence as having been due to his mother's death), Antoine frequently runs away from both places. He finally quits school after his teacher catches him plagiarizing Balzac. He steals a Royal typewriter from his stepfather's workplace to finance his plans to leave home, but, having been unable to sell it, is apprehended while trying to return it. Antoine Doinel in the final scene The stepfather turns Antoine over to the police and Antoine spends the night in jail, sharing a cell with sex workers and thieves. During an interview with the judge, Antoine's mother confesses that her husband is not Antoine's biological father. Antoine is placed in an observation center for troubled youths near the seashore (as his mother wished). A psychologist at the center probes reasons for Antoine's unhappiness, which the youth reveals in a fragmented series of monologues. While playing football with the other boys one day, Antoine escapes under a fence and runs away to the ocean, which he has always wanted to see. He reaches the shoreline of the sea and runs into it. The film concludes with a freeze-frame of Antoine, and the camera optically zooms in on his face, looking into the camera. 

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The novel consists of two long letters (which appear as volumes I and II of the original edition) written by Frances 'Fanny' Hill, a rich Englishwoman in her middle age, who leads a life of contentment with her loving husband Charles and their children, to an unnamed acquaintance identified only as 'Madam.' Fanny has been prevailed upon by 'Madam' to recount the 'scandalous stages' of her earlier life, which she proceeds to do with 'stark naked truth' as her governing principle. The first letter begins with a short account of Fanny's impoverished childhood in a Lancashire village. At age 14, she loses her parents to smallpox, arrives in London to look for domestic work, and gets lured into a brothel. She sees a sexual encounter between an ugly older couple and another between a young attractive couple, and participates in a lesbian encounter with Phoebe, a bisexual prostitute. A customer, Charles, induces Fanny to escape. She loses her virginity to Charles and becomes his lover. Charles is sent away by deception to the South Seas, and Fanny is driven by desperation and poverty to become the kept woman of a rich merchant named Mr H—. After enjoying a brief period of stability, she sees Mr H— have a sexual encounter with her own maid, and goes on to seduce Will (the young footman of Mr H—) as an act of revenge. She is discovered by Mr H— as she is having a sexual encounter with Will. After being abandoned by Mr H—, Fanny becomes a prostitute for wealthy clients in a pleasure-house run by Mrs Cole. This marks the end of the first letter. The second letter begins with a rumination on the tedium of writing about sex and the difficulty of driving a middle course between vulgar language and "mincing metaphors and affected circumlocutions". Fanny then describes her adventures in the house of Mrs Cole, which include a public orgy, an elaborately orchestrated bogus sale of her "virginity" to a rich dupe called Mr Norbert, and a sado-masochistic session with a man involving mutual flagellation with birch-rods. These are interspersed with narratives which do not involve Fanny directly; for instance, three other girls in the house (Emily, Louisa and Harriett) describe their own losses of virginity, and the nyphomaniac Louisa seduces the immensely endowed but imbecilic "good-natured Dick". Fanny also describes anal intercourse between two older boys (removed from several later editions). Eventually Fanny retires from prostitution and becomes the lover of a rich and worldly-wise man of 60 (described by Fanny as a "rational pleasurist"). This phase of Fanny's life brings about her intellectual development, and leaves her wealthy when her lover dies of a sudden cold. Soon after, she has a chance encounter with Charles, who has returned as a poor man to England after being shipwrecked. Fanny offers her fortune to Charles unconditionally, but he insists on marrying her. The novel's developed characters include Charles, Mrs Jones (Fanny's landlady), Mrs Cole, Will, Mr H— and Mr Norbert. The prose includes long sentences with many subordinate clauses. Its morality is conventional for the time, in that it denounces sodomy, frowns upon vice and approves of only heterosexual unions based upon mutual love.Cleland John, Memoirs of a woman of pleasure, ed. Peter Sabor, Oxford University Press, 1985. 

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Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Trillian, and Zaphod Beeblebrox leave the planet Magrathea on the Heart of Gold. A Vogon ship attacks them, and Arthur's attempt to have the ship's computer make him a cup of tea leaves the Heart of Gold unable to fight it off. Zaphod calls up his ancestor Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth to rescue them. Zaphod and Marvin vanish, leaving the others on the ship in a black void. Zaphod and Marvin find themselves on Ursa Minor Beta, the home planet for the offices of the Hitchhiker's Guide. Zaphod goes looking for Zarniwoop, the Guide's lead editor, though his staff insist he has been out on a intergalactic cruise. A man named Roosta takes Zaphod to Zarniwoop's offices just as Frogstar fighters attack the building and tow it to their home planets, Frogstar World B. Following Roosta's instructions and escaping through Zarniwoop's office's windows, he is caught by Gargravarr and taken to be exposed to the Total Perspective Vortex, a device that drives those that experience it mad due to showing them their insignificant contributions to the infinite universe. However, Zaphod is unfazed by the Vortex, telling a perplexed Gargravarr that it showed him that he was the most important being in the universe. Left to his own, Zaphod eventually finds Zarniwoop on a long- abandoned spaceliner. Zarniwoop reveals that once Zaphod stepped into his offices, he has been in a virtual universe designed for Zaphod's benefit for purposes of bringing the Heart of Gold, which had been microscopically shrunk and in Zaphod's pocket, to Zarniwoop, so that Zarniwoop can use it to find the true ruler of the universe. However, Zaphod reunites with Ford, Arthur, and Trillian, and escape to the nearest restaurant. This turns out to be the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, built atop the ruins of Frogstar World B and existing in a time bubble near the end of the universe; they also find Marvin, now billions of years old, having been waiting for them as a parking attendant. Knowing Zarniwoop will track them down, Zaphod suggests they leave, stealing a sleek, all-black spacecraft. Too late they discover this is a special stunt ship for the band Disaster Area, which is programmed to fall into a local sun in time with the band's climax. Marvin reluctantly volunteers to stay behind and operate a teleporter so the others can escape. Zaphod and Trillian find themselves back aboard the Heart of Gold under Zarniwoop's control, and who forces them to use the ship's Improbability Drive to take them to The Ruler of the Universe. On an unpopulated planet, they find the Ruler is an old man that has no idea he is the ruler, and is even skeptical if anything around him exists. While Zarniwoop tries to reason with the Ruler, Zaphod and Trillian make their escape in the Heart of Gold, stranding Zarniwoop. Meanwhile, Arthur and Ford find themselves aboard the Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B, which they discover was a way for the Golgafrinchans to divest themselves of a useless portion of their population by claiming a planetary disaster is coming. The Ark crashes onto a planet, which Arthur and Ford determine is pre-historic Earth, and they fear that the Golgafrinchans, who have been killing the Neanderthals, will interfere with the machinations of the computer Deep Thought had built to determine the Ultimate Question to Life, the Universe and Everything, which the Answer is 42. Hoping that remnants of prehistoric humans are still under the programming, they use a make-shift Scrabble set and have Arthur pull out tiles at random, discovering that the Question is "What do you get if you multiply six by nine?" Ford thinks this explains why the universe is a giant "cock-up", and the two resign to make the best of their life on prehistoric Earth. 

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Earth is invaded by an interstellar terrorist group, Big Fire (the Gargoyle Gang in the American version), led by Emperor Guillotine. Guillotine spends most of his time in a multicolored space ship hidden at the bottom of Earth's ocean, from which he issues his orders. The group has been capturing scientists to create an army of monsters to help them conquer Earth. A boy named Daisaku Kusama (Johnny Sokko (acted out in the original series by Mitsunobu Kaneko, with actress Bobbie Byers providing his English-language dialogue)) and a young man named Jūrō Minami (Jerry Mano in the American version, a member of the secret peacekeeping organization Unicorn) are shipwrecked on an island after their ship is attacked by the sea monster Dakolar (Dracolon in the American version) and captured by Big Fire. They end up in an elevator leading to a complex where a Pharaoh-like giant robot is being built by captive scientist Lucius Guardian, who gives Daisaku and Jūrō its control device. Guardian helps them escape before he is shot to death; before he dies, he triggers an atomic bomb which destroys the base. The explosion activates the robot, which now obeys only Daisaku. The boy is invited by Jūrō and his chief, Azuma, to join Unicorn and fight Big Fire with Giant Robo (Giant Robot in the American version). 

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In Verona Beach, the Capulets and Montagues are two rival gangs. The animosity of the older generation—Fulgencio and Gloria Capulet and Ted and Caroline Montague—is felt by their younger relatives. A gunfight between Montagues led by Benvolio, Romeo's cousin, and Capulets led by Tybalt, Juliet's cousin, creates chaos in the city. The Chief of Police, Captain Prince, reprimands the families, warning them that their lives "shall pay the forfeit of the peace". Benvolio and Romeo learn of a Capulet party that evening which they decide to gate-crash. Romeo agrees on hearing that Rosaline, with whom he is in love, is attending. They meet their friend, Mercutio, who has tickets to the party, and Romeo takes ecstasy as they proceed to the Capulet mansion. The effects of the drug and the party overwhelm Romeo, who goes to the restroom. While admiring an aquarium, he sees Juliet on the other side, and the two instantly fall in love, both unaware who the other is. Tybalt spots Romeo and vows to kill him for invading his family's home. After Romeo leaves the party, he and Juliet each learn that they belong to feuding families, but Romeo sneaks back to see her. Juliet tells him that if he sends word by the following day, they will be betrothed. The next day, Romeo asks Father Laurence to marry them, and he agrees, hoping their marriage will end the feud. Romeo passes the word on via Juliet's nurse and the lovers are married. Tybalt encounters Mercutio and Romeo at the beach. Romeo attempts to make peace, but Tybalt assaults him. Mercutio intervenes and batters Tybalt, and is about to kill him when Romeo stops him. Tybalt uses the opportunity to inflict a deadly wound on Mercutio, who curses both houses before dying. Enraged, Romeo chases after a fleeing Tybalt and shoots him dead. Captain Prince banishes Romeo from the city, and he goes into hiding with Father Laurence. The nurse arrives and tells him that Juliet is waiting for him. Romeo climbs over Juliet's balcony, and they consummate their marriage. Meanwhile, Fulgencio decides Juliet will marry Dave Paris, the governor's son. The next morning, Gloria tells Juliet that she is to marry Paris. She refuses and Fulgencio threatens to disown her. Juliet runs away and seeks out Father Laurence, imploring him to help her and threatening to commit suicide. Father Laurence gives her a potion that will let her fake her own death and be put in the Capulet vault to awaken 24 hours later. Romeo will be informed of the plot, sneak into the vault, and once reunited the two can escape to Mantua. But Romeo learns of Juliet's apparent death from Balthasar and leaves for Verona before the message from Father Laurence arrives. Romeo enters the church where Juliet lies and bids her goodbye, and, thinking her dead, drinks a vial of poison. Juliet awakens just in time for them to share a final kiss before Romeo dies. A distraught Juliet picks up Romeo's gun and shoots herself in the head. The two lovers are soon discovered in each other's arms. Captain Prince condemns both families whose feuding led to such tragedy, while coroners quickly transport the two bodies to the morgue. 

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Due to lack of funds, a student studying metaphysics abroad is forced to take up lodging in a cheap apartment building on a street named the "Rue d'Auseil". The street is not far from his university and is bordered by a river, dark warehouses and a large wall, giving the street an appearance of being on a cliff. The student cannot see what lies on the other side of the wall, as only a single window on the top floor of his building looks over it. Along with the building's disabled landlord, Blandot, one of the few other tenants is an old German man named Erich Zann. The old man is mute and plays the viol with a local theater orchestra. He lives alone on the top floor and at night he plays strange melodies the student has never heard before. Despite Zann's reclusiveness, Blandot reveals his identity to the student, who approaches him in the hallway one evening and asks if he can listen to Zann's music. Zann relents and allows the student to enter his room. He plays for the student some of his unique melodies but not the same as the student had previously heard. The student asks him if he could play his music from the previous nights, awkwardly humming and whistling the notes he remembered. Zann is taken aback by the request and nervously glances at the window in his room, covered by curtains. The student recognizes the window as the only one that can oversee the wall at the end of the mysterious street. He approaches it to look outside but Zann angrily pulls him back. The student is fed up with Zann's eccentricities but Zann explains through writing that he is simply a lonely old man, and suffers from numerous phobias and nervous disorders. He is pleased that the student likes his music, but refuses to play the particular tunes that the student asked for. He persuades the student to move to a lower floor in the apartment as he would prefer the student not listen to them. The student sympathizes with Zann and agrees to move. Zann promises that he will invite the student to his room to hear his other music. After the student moves, however, Zann returns to his antisocial behavior and his health deteriorates, eventually not letting the student listen at all. The student's curiosity to hear the secret music and look out the window grows, and he begins eavesdropping on Zann while he plays at night. His melodies have an unearthly sound, and the student praises Zann as a musical genius. One night while secretly listening outside Zann’s room, the student hears a commotion and the old man scream inside. When the student bangs at the door, Zann lets him in and asks him to wait while he writes, promising to explain everything. More than an hour into writing, Zann is startled by a distant sound in the form of a low note, interrupts his writing and starts furiously playing his viol with a crescent terror. The music is horrific and the student surmises that Zann is playing wildly to drown out or keep something out of the room. Zann seemingly enters a stupor, doing nothing but playing his music. Another sound from outside the room, which the student perceives to be mocking them, is heard and a gust shatters the window. The unnatural wind sweeps through the room, blowing Zann's unread papers out the window, despite the student's attempts at catching them. The student remembers his curiosity and finally looks out the window. Instead of seeing the city lights, he only sees a terrible black void, an infinite abyss of chaos. The howling winds and cacophony of elements snuff out the candles in the room, leaving the student and Zann in complete darkness. He blindly moves through the dark with desperation, beginning to feel “chilling things” brush up against him. Determined to save Zann, the student reaches the musician and screams at him to run, but Zann only continues to play his music. Upon attempting to physically carry him to safety, he discovers Zann is dead, although his body is still playing. With this realization, the student bolts for the door, frantically fleeing the apartment and entire neighborhood. He only realizes afterward that the sky was calm and the city lights were shining. Writing an account of the incident years later, the student states that despite his best efforts, he has never again been able to find the Rue d'Auseil. It does not appear on any maps, and it seems no one else has even heard of it. But he feels a degree of relief that he cannot find the street, or the lost papers that could have explained the music of Erich Zann. 

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A strange old man, "so old that no one can remember when he was young, and so taciturn that few know his real name," lives alone in an ancient house on Water Street in the town of Kingsport. Even among the locals, few know the details of the old man's life, but it is believed that he once captained East Indian clipper ships in his youth and accumulated great riches throughout his life. Those who had visited the property had seen bizarre collections of stones in the front yard and observed the old man carrying on conversations with mysterious bottles on his table, which make "certain definite vibrations as if in answer." Most locals take care to avoid the man and his house. Angelo Ricci, Joe Czanek and Manuel Silva, three robbers, learn about the old man's supposed hoard of treasure and resolve to take it. Ricci and Silva go inside to "interview" the old man about the treasure, while Czanek waits outside in the getaway car. After waiting impatiently for a long time, Czanek is startled by an outburst of horrific screaming from the house but assumes that his colleagues have been too rough with the old man during their interrogation. However, the gate of the house opens, revealing the old man "smiling hideously" at him. For the first time, Czanek takes note of the man's unsettling yellow eyes. The mutilated bodies of the three robbers are later found by the seaside, "horribly slashed as with many cutlasses, and horribly mangled as by the tread of many cruel boot-heels." The people of Kingsport talk about the discovery, as well as about the abandoned car and the screams heard in the night, but the old man shows no interest in their gossip. 

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Lizzie McGuire prepares for her junior-high graduation with one of her two closest friends, David "Gordo" Gordon. Her other best friend, Miranda, has chosen to skip the graduation ceremony in favor of a trip to Mexico City to visit her relatives. During the ceremony, Lizzie trips onstage and accidentally brings the curtain down on her fellow graduates; this causes her to be teased by her younger brother Matt and her former best friend Kate Sanders. After graduation, Lizzie and some of her class embark on a trip to Rome, chaperoned by their future high school principal, the rude and stern Angela Ungermeyer. To their dismay, Lizzie and Kate are assigned to the same hotel room. Their class visits the Trevi Fountain, where Lizzie is approached by an Italian pop star named Paolo, who mistakes her for his singing partner, Isabella. Paolo asks Lizzie to meet him at the fountain the next day, and she feigns illness to sneak away. He explains that he and Isabella are booked for the Italian Music Awards, but she left Italy after their breakup. Paolo tells Lizzie that Isabella lip syncs, and begs her to pose as Isabella for the concert. Lizzie reluctantly agrees but soon begins to enjoy the experience and to fall in love with Paolo. Lizzie continues to fake being ill to prepare for the concert, but Kate quickly figures out her secret. To Lizzie's surprise, Kate agrees to help her and the two become friends again. Meanwhile, Ms. Ungermeyer interrogates the students to learn who has been sneaking out. Gordo takes the blame and is sent back home as punishment. Lizzie is shocked when Kate says that Gordo sacrificed himself to protect her. Back home, Matt browses the Internet and finds Italian gossip sites with pictures of Lizzie as Isabella. When he tells his parents, the family flies to Rome. At the airport, Gordo meets Isabella, who is upset that someone is impersonating her. She and Gordo realize that Paolo is planning to have a nervous Lizzie unknowingly sing live at the concert (as Isabella actually does), creating the impression that Isabella is a fake, which would damage Isabella's career and embarrass Lizzie. Gordo and Isabella rush to the concert to stop him. When Lizzie's parents arrive in Rome, Ms. Ungermeyer learns that Lizzie is missing. Ethan reveals that she is performing at the Italian Music Awards, and Lizzie's family and the class also rush to the concert. Backstage, Gordo and Isabella find Lizzie preparing for the show and warn her about Paolo's scheme. Lizzie refuses to believe them at first, but Isabella convinces her that Paolo is using her. Ms. Ungermeyer gets the class (and Lizzie's family) into the concert by pushing her way through the bouncers. During the performance, Isabella and Gordo expose Paolo (who is actually the one who lip syncs) by turning on his microphone, revealing his real voice. Embarrassed, Paolo runs off stage and is ambushed outside by paparazzi. Isabella introduces Lizzie to the crowd, and the two of them sing "What Dreams Are Made Of". When Isabella leaves the stage, Lizzie finishes the song solo, displaying a newfound confidence. Later, they all celebrate at the hotel's after party, where Ms. Ungermeyer rescinds Gordo's punishment. Lizzie's parents tell her she is grounded for the summer, but they still are proud of her. Lizzie and Gordo sneak away from the party to go up to the roof, where they promise to never let things change between them. The two kiss and then rejoin the party before they get into more trouble. The film ends with fireworks spelling "The End" and the animated Lizzie, doing a parody of Tinker Bell, winking at the audience. 

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