The story involves a multinational oil company's attempts to gain oil rights in Vietnam by supporting an arms deal.

The novel is split into three parts.

The novel begins with Michael K, a poor man with a cleft lip who has spent his childhood in institutions and works as a gardener in Cape Town. Michael tends to his mother who works as a domestic servant to a wealthy family. The country descends into civil war and martial law is imposed, and Michael's mother becomes very sick. Michael decides to quit his job and escape the city to return his mother to her birthplace, which she says was Prince Albert.

Michael finds himself unable to obtain the proper permits for travel out of the city so he builds a shoddy rickshaw to carry his mother, and they go on their way. Soon after escaping, Michael's mother dies in a hospital. He lingers for some time, carrying his mother's ashes around with him in a box. Finally, Michael decides to continue on his journey to Prince Albert to deliver his mother's ashes. Along the way, though, he is detained for not having the required travel papers, thus being assigned to work detail on a railway track.

After his job on the railway track is finished, Michael makes his way to the farm his mother spoke of on Prince Albert. The farm is abandoned and desolate. Soon, Michael discovers how to live off the land. However, when one of the relatives of the legal owners of the farm arrives, he treats Michael like a servant. Michael dislikes this treatment so he escapes up into the mountains.

In the mountains, Michael goes through a period of starvation while he becomes aware of his surroundings. In his malnourished state he finds his way down to a town where he is picked up by the police and is sent to a work camp. Here, Michael meets a man named Robert. Robert explains that the workers in the camp are exploited for cheap labor by the townspeople. Eventually, there is an attack on Prince Albert and the workers of the camp are blamed. The local police captain takes over and Michael escapes.

Michael finds his way back to the farm but soon feels claustrophobic within the house. Therefore, he builds a shelter in the open where he is able to watch his garden. Rebels come out of the mountains and use his garden. Although Michael is angered by this he stays in hiding. Michael becomes malnourished and delirious again because he has not come out of hiding. He is found by some soldiers and is taken to a rehabilitation camp in Cape Town. It is here that Michael is identified as "CM," an abbreviation most likely signifying "colored male."

At the rehabilitation camp, a doctor becomes interested in Michael. He finds Michael's simple nature extremely fascinating and finds him to be unfairly accused of aiding rebels. Michael becomes very sick and delirious because he refuses to eat. The doctor tries to understand Michael's stubborn ways while attempting to get Michael released. However, Michael escapes on his own.

Upon his escape, Michael meets with a group of nomadic people who feed him and introduce him to a woman who has sex with him. He returns to the apartment where he and his mother lived in Cape Town, the same apartment and city he had tried to escape some time ago. Michael reflects on the garden he made in Prince Albert.

Some commentators notice a connection between the character Michael K and the protagonist Josef K. in ''The Trial'' by Franz Kafka. The book also bears many references to Kafka, and it is believed, "K" is a tribute to Kafka. Comparisons have also been drawn between the novel and Heinrich von Kleist's novella ''Michael Kohlhaas,'' based upon the protagonist's name and similarities of plot, though it is often suggested that Coetzee's work is an antithetical response.

It is 1808 on Donghwa Island, a small island with a technologically advanced paper mill. The presence of the mill has spawned a bustling village, and given its townspeople a certain degree of wealth. With climate and trees perfectly suited for papermaking—and a location remote enough to ensure both privacy and secrecy—the island has established a profitable business in high quality paper, with trade routes stretching as far away as China.

This isolated and largely autonomous island begins to be plagued by a string of gruesome murders. However, it's not just the mounting death toll that is causing residents to worry, but the sadistic, methodical way in which the victims were killed. With the killer still on the loose, the government sends in special investigator Wonkyu to crack the case. While conducting his dogged investigation, he soon uncovers myriad hidden secrets, tracing the murders back to an incident that occurred some seven years earlier, in which the former owner of the mill was executed for practicing Catholicism. The townspeople, for their part, are convinced that the dead man's ghost has come back for revenge. As the young officer digs deeper into the island's dark past, Wonkyu discovers that there may be something even more frightening than the murders or the murderer—a truth that will make him question the depths of human nature.

The residents living in the South Korean countryside around a U.S. military base are affected by its presence. These include an unstable, near psychotic American soldier (Mitch Malem) who survives on a diet of LSD and rage, Eun-ok, a girl with one defective eye, Jihum a lonesome boy and Chang-guk, who lives in an old abandoned U.S. Air Force bus with his mother. She has taught Chang-guk English in an attempt to prepare him for their new life in the United States, reunited with his father whom she mails regularly, although the letters are always returned "address unknown".

In the beginning of the movie the Scissor gang are fighting some unknown gang on the rooftop. The other gang starts to get the upper hand and are about to kill Robocop but he is saved by Eun-jin (Shin Eun-kyung), the Scissor gang's boss also known as 'Silverfish'. However, during the fight she falls from the top of the building. Due to a lucky break, the fall doesn't kill her, but it does cause her to suffer amnesia. Luckily for Eun-jin, she's found by Choi Yoon-jae (Park Jun-gyu), the kindly owner of a small-scale Chinese restaurant. She worked as a delivery girl under the name of Tsu Tsu. She tries several times to regain her memory but fails in each attempt.

During one of her deliveries, she happens to be at the bank which is being put under heist when one of the robber starts kicking a pregnant woman. Regaining a part of her memory about she getting kicked by Nanman, she then beats up all three of the robbers and prevents the bank robbery.

Meanwhile, the White Shark from earlier movie along with his several henchmen has survived the fire and have returned to the neighborhood. He plans to demolish the buildings from the neighborhood of Yoon-jae's restaurant and build a big mall there, but he happens to see Eun-jin as she is being awarded for her bravery of preventing a bank robbery. He inquires about her and learns from a local hoodlum that she is working as a delivery girl. He asks the hoodlum to make an order so that they may get to know her. But when she appears with the delivery he immediately recognizes her as the 'Silverfish' and hires Jun-man, brother of Nanman, to kill her.

Once, in a feud with Ji-hyun, Tsu Tsu fell from the roof and recovered her past memories with White Shark, who had recruited Jun-man to kill her. Jun-man became impotent when Yoon-jae's motorbike accidentally hit him in the groin. Ji-hyun was later kidnapped by the White Shark gang and they call Yoon-jae and threaten him to sell his daughter to brothel if he doesn't tell them about Eun-jin's whereabouts. When Eun-jin hears of these events she goes to save Ji-hyun but while she was being rescued by Eun-jin, Yoon-jae gets stabbed in the stomach and killed. Eun-jin was saved by the 132-members of the Scissor gang. Ji-hyun later joined Eun-jin's gang to fight against some Chinese illegal drug dealers. (Zhang Ziyi appears in cameo in a short fight scene at the end of the film.)

At age 34, Army Air Force pilot Major Robert Lee Scott Jr. (Dennis Morgan) is considered too old to fly in combat, but he is recruited and volunteers to fly in a secret bombing mission from the Philippines against Tokyo, the Japanese capital. When the mission is cancelled after his arrival in India, due to the fall of the Philippines, Scott is promoted to Colonel and assigned to fly transport aircraft on dangerous, unescorted missions over The Hump from Burma to China. These flights supply aviation gasoline and other much-needed supplies to the three squadrons of the American Volunteer Group, the Flying Tigers.

Over time, Scott persuades General Claire Chennault (Raymond Massey), the commander of the Tigers, to let him fly with his experienced airmen, like "Tex" Hill (John Ridgely), who have been fighting the Japanese as mercenaries while technically being members of the Chinese Air Force. Scott gets his chance to finally fly one of their Curtiss P-40B/C Tomahawks, engaging in aerial combat missions and becoming a double-ace while flying with the AVG.

On Independence Day, the 4th of July, during a surprise bombing and fighter raid on Japanese-occupied Hong Kong, Scott once again engages in a combat duel with the infamous Japanese fighter ace nicknamed "Tokyo Joe" (Richard Loo). Although Scott's engine is hit and losing power, he suddenly drops his landing flaps, which quickly reduces his airspeed. "Joe" flies past and Scott sights him in his cross-hairs, firing nearly point blank at the Zero with his six .50 caliber machine-guns, setting "Joe" s fighter aflame. Scott says in triumph over his radio, "There's your six-feet of China, Joe, now go fill it up". The burning Zero fighter spins out of control and crashes, as Scott's damaged P-40 continues to smoke and lose altitude. When Scott doesn't return to base, and no further word of him is heard after several days, he is presumed killed in combat. As Chennault begins to write a letter to Scott's widow, he hears a growing commotion outside. A nighttime, torch-lit, gong-playing Chinese procession enters the Tigers' compound, carrying the injured Scott, who is bearing "Tokyo Joe" s Samurai sword.

After a physical examination, despite Scott's assurances that he is fine, the doctor grounds him due to his age, combat fatigue, and recurring Malaria. He has to sit-out the largest air-raid against the Japanese ever planned in China. As Scott listens through an open window to the mission briefing, Chennault arrives at a personal command decision. He tells Scott that a new, larger P-40 fighter, with a more powerful engine and additional firepower, is his to fly for one final mission, a gift from "the old man". Elated, Scott goes to the plane, fires up the engine, and rapidly gets airborne. He quickly climbs skyward to join the squadrons of fighters and bombers formed-up and heading east toward certain victory.

The plot concerns a spiritual battle within Tokyo during the early 20th century.

Episode 1: "The Haunting of Tokyo"

The story begins in contemporary Tokyo, with a voiceover narrative concerning the expanding city’s state. The narrator tells the tale of how Taira no Masakado went against the Emperor and was executed for his crimes. However, his hatred for the new capital of Edo has left a dangerous onryo that persists in the city to this day. Throughout the years, Masakado's spirit was placated through the worship of the citizens of Tokyo, and he became deified as the city's guardian spirit. If his powerful spirit were to be awoken and/or disturbed though, his suppressed anger against the Japanese Empire would be unleashed and would cause havoc on a national level.

The setting moves backward to 1908. Two figures appear in Tokyo at exactly the same time. One is Yasumasa Hirai, a master onmyoji, direct descendant of Abe no Seimei and leader of the Tsuchimikado Family; who has come to give advice to Baron Eiichi Shibusawa on how to make Tokyo the most blessed and successful city in the East. The other figure is Yasunori Kato, an evil Onmyoji who wishes to destroy Tokyo completely to appease his ancestors, the indigenous tribes of Japan who fought against the Imperial court in ancient times. Kato plans to do this by awakening the raging spirit of Taira no Masakado as a weapon to demolish the city. To do this, he kidnaps a young woman (Yukari Tatsumiya), who is blessed with psychic powers, to use as a medium for Masakado's spirit. Hirai discovers this and attempts to stop Kato and save Yukari with his own magic. Hirai takes Yukari to the Tsuchimikado temple to perform the monoimi ceremony (recreating the events of one of Abe no Seimei's famous tales from the ''Uji Shūi Monogatari''). In the meantime, Yukari's friends fight Kato's shikigami outside the temple so Hirai can complete the ceremony. But Kato still infiltrates Hirai's protective circle with a magical intruder, stopping the ceremony. In a final act of desperation Hirai grabs a sacred hamaya and fires it at Kato; but Kato magically reflects it back, mortally injuring Hirai. With Hirai defeated, Kato escapes with Yukari.

Episode 2: "The Fall of Tokyo"

Kato uses Yukari as a medium to communicate with Masakado's spirit. However, Masakado still refuses to awaken. In response, Kato uses the magic of En on Yukari to impregnate her with the determination to conceive a child with even more spiritual power. Believing his magic has succeeded, Kato leaves Tokyo, planning to return when the child is of suitable age to use as a medium. Hirai's followers find Yukari and deliver her back to her brother's home. Tragedy strikes the nation as the Emperor Meiji passes away thus ending the Meiji period. In a display of devotion to the Meiji Emperor Hirai commits seppuku, an act which also serves to divine the year of Tokyo's destruction—the year of the Pig.

The story then moves ten years forward to 1923 where Yukari's daughter, Yukiko Tatsumiya, is now a young girl. In Dalian, China Kato creates artificial earthquake waves which will be amplified out to Tokyo. Then he returns to Japan to kidnap Yukiko. Upon crossing Nihonbashi Bridge, Kato runs into several defense measures set by Tsuchimikado Clan, including a Kimon Tonkou spell set by Hirai's follower and Koda Rohan. Despite all this resistance, he still successfully makes his way to Masakado's grave and tries to invoke its spirit through the body of Yukiko. Furious, Masakado's spirit reacts by summoning a lightning bolt down upon Kato. However Kato's previous attempts to create an artificial earthquake were successful to disturb the Underground Dragon, whose violent undulations result in the Great Kantō earthquake of 1923.

Episode 3: "The Gods of Tokyo"

The plot shifts to 1927, a year in the Showa Period. While rebuilding Tokyo, plans are put forth by Noritsugu Hayakawa to erect a subway system which will modernize the city. Hayakawa employs the talents of Torahiko Terada, a physicist and scientist in the field of earthquake studies, to oversee construction. Kato infiltrates the construction sites for the subway tunnel, and utilizes shikigami to hold the workers at bay while he focuses on a second awakening of the Underground Dragon, trying to create an earthquake larger than the Great Kanto one. Shibusawa calls in a Feng Shui expert (Shigemaru Kuroda), who pinpoints the source of these disturbances to foreign magic that is undermining the balance of the earth's spiritual energy veins. Since the construction workers are too frightened to continue their work, Terada decides that different action must be taken to complete the excavation. He enlists the help of Dr. Makoto Nishimura to use his robot Gakutensoku to finish the work. Terada reasons that since Gakutensoku is inhuman, he can't be tricked by psychic apparitions that would terrify normal men.

Meanwhile, a young shrine maiden by the name of Keiko Mekata appears near the Ministry of Finance. She is a powerful and skilled miko who has been summoned by Masakado's spirit to oppose Kato. While praying at Masakado's shrine one day, she catches the eye of Yoichiro Tatsumiya, who courts her. The two eventually marry, and Keiko is initiated into the Tatsumiya household. As a member of the Tatsumiya household, Keiko provides spiritual protection for the family from the inside. Kato, prevented from rousing the Underground Dragon by Masakado, decides to kidnap Yukiko and use her as a sacrifice to amplify the Dragon's energy. After a battle at the Tatsumiya household, Kato escapes with Yukiko and Keiko pursues him underground. While contending with Keiko, Kato is distracted and doesn't notice the efforts of Gakutensoku, who drilling deep underground, has arrived at the "heart" of the Underground Dragon and self-destructs. This throws the chi veins into disarray, releasing Yukiko and foiling Kato's plan. Finally, Keiko uses Masakado's power to banish Kato.

Episode 4: "The Battle for Tokyo"

Wounded by Keiko, Kato has retreated to a small, desecrated temple on the outskirts of Tokyo. The dark onmyoji employs all his powers to shift the path of the moon so that it will rebound violently off the earth and disturb the Firmament Dragon, who will destroy Tokyo. Keiko receives spiritual aid from Kuroda and Masakado's spirit and sets off to stop Kato once and for all. Instead of fighting him however, she channels the power of the bodhisattva Kannon, against whom Kato, an oni, is powerless. Bathed in the limitless compassion of the bodhisattva, the curse that had been fueling Kato for so long is appeased and he dissipates. The story ends in 1927 with Japan's first underground railroad system being opened and a quote by Koda Rohan, who hopes Tokyo will find peace for the time being.

The crew celebrates Freedom Day, a day where one can do anything they want, regardless of the consequences. Dr. Zoidberg seems passionate about the holiday, as he loves the idea of freedom, something he did not have on his home planet Decapod 10. At the big Freedom Day celebration in Washington, D.C., Earth President Richard Nixon's head unveils the Earth flag "Old Freebie" to celebrate the spirit of the holiday but the flag is eaten by Zoidberg. Zoidberg feels this is an expression of his freedom on Freedom Day; however, the rest of the crowd sees him as a traitor. Zoidberg is chased around town and takes cover in his planet's embassy.

Zoidberg is put on trial and the crew hires lawyer Old Man Waterfall to represent him. Zoidberg is found guilty and sentenced to death when he refuses to apologize publicly. After Earth's army storms the Decapodian embassy to seize Zoidberg, the Decapodian ambassador to Earth summons the Decapodian military to retaliate. The Decapodian army easily defeats Earth's defense forces and Earth is enslaved by the crustacean extraterrestrials.

Later, Fry, Leela, Bender, Zapp Brannigan, and Kif, deciding the time has come to fight back, steal a heat-seeking missile from a museum exhibit and launch it toward the Decopodians’ newly constructed Mobile Oppression Palace. However, the palace is "cold-blooded", like the Decapodians themselves, and the palace continues its destructive rampage. It eventually crushes Old Man Waterfall for standing in its way, whom Zoidberg respected for defending him when no one else would. Zoidberg then lights a flag on fire. This shocks and angers the other citizens, but Zoidberg explains that he does so in order to preserve the freedom that the flag represents and throws it toward the Mobile Oppression Palace, attracting the missile and thus destroying the palace. Zoidberg is declared a hero and is honored by Nixon at a ceremony, where he unveils a new Earth flag, out of which Zoidberg is allowed to take a bite. Zoidberg concludes that Earth, not Decapod 10, is now his true home planet.

Mexican rebels hire the "Dutchman" to rob a train carrying $500,000 in gold on behalf of Victoriano Huerta to finance the Mexican Revolution. Dutchman then enlists four other men to assist him, promising to pay each of them a thousand dollars. They are Mesito, a strong man on the run for cattle rustling; Luis, a circus acrobat turned outlaw; Augustus, a former army officer and explosives specialist who had served in the same unit as Dutchman; and a samurai warrior (referred to only as Samurai), earning a living in a sideshow.

Immediately after they assemble, their first undertaking is to save the rebel leader who hired them from being executed. After rescuing him and causing a riot in the village, the five men are forced to flee, along with all the villagers, in order to prevent reprisals. Nevertheless, some soldiers still manage to find the Five and bring them to the local Army commandant. A Mexican woman slips Samurai a knife and the men manage to escape, killing the soldiers and dynamiting the fort's magazine. They are tracked by a large group of mounted pursuers and escape capture after coming upon a small group of rebels, who are there to cover the Five's escape. Though they know that they will be unable to stop the soldiers, the rebels are willing to sacrifice themselves for the Five in the cause of the revolution.

The train carrying the gold is heavily defended by a cannon, machine guns, and dozens of soldiers. The Dutchman's plan is to board the train and uncouple the car carrying the gold without stopping it. The difficult robbery succeeds, despite Samurai falling off the train and having to run across country after it, as well as Augustus dropping a key piece of equipment and having to improvise. When the Five return to their hideout, conflict arises amongst them. Luis, Augustus, Mesito, and Samurai had all assumed they were going to take the gold for themselves, while the Dutchman is set on keeping his promise to the rebels. He disarms the other four and explains to them that his motivation for supporting the revolution is because his wife had been executed by soldiers since other members of her family were rebels.

The Dutchman is about to leave with the gold, but he is stopped by the arrival of a mounted squad of soldiers. He therefore has to rearm the other four, who are able to ambush and quickly kill all of their opponents. Now armed again, Augustus, Mesito, and Samurai seem set on taking back the gold, but they are stopped at gunpoint by Luis, who has decided that he will join the Revolution too. At this point, hundreds of rebels arrive to collect the gold and treat the Five Man Army like heroes. Augustus, Mesito and Samurai start laughing and acquiesce in the logic of the situation.

The series follows the adventures of Gary Wallace (John Mallory Asher) and Wyatt Donnelly (Michael Manasseri), two socially inept high-school students in a fictional California town. Together, using Wyatt's computer, they try to create a computer simulation of a perfect woman in order to practice communicating with girls. However, a freak lightning storm brings her to life, creating Lisa (Vanessa Angel), a gorgeous genius with the powers of a "magic genie".

In the pilot episode, Gary claims that creating Lisa is possible because he "saw it in a John Hughes movie", referring to the original ''Weird Science'' film.

The ''Perilous Gard'' takes place in England during the 1550s. The lead character, Kate Sutton, is a lady-in-waiting to Princess Elizabeth (the later Queen Elizabeth I of England). Her sister, Alicia, inadvertently gets her exiled to a castle named Elvenwood Hall, also known as the Perilous Gard, where she finds that the daughter of Sir Geoffrey Heron, the master of the hall, vanished under mysterious circumstances that implicate his brother, Christopher Heron. Kate soon discovers that, although the seeming death of little Cecily was an accident, Christopher is still so overwhelmed with grief that he has exiled himself from castle life. When Kate learns of the local villagers' fears that the "Fairy Folk" will kidnap their children, she guesses that Cecily might not be dead after all. She tells Christopher of her suspicions, and he, unbeknownst to Kate, comes up with a desperate plan to save Cecily. Meanwhile, Kate stumbles into the underground world of the Fairy Folk, who intend to use Christopher's desperation to their own advantage. The Fairy Folk are ruled by the Lady in Green, who believes that only a sacrifice can help her people hold their own against the advancing modern world.

Kate detests the Lady in Green at first, but the two of them have much in common. Both are strong-willed, highly independent, and capable of enormous self-discipline. Kate's refusal to be drugged or manipulated in other ways soon gains her a measure of respect among the Fairy Folk. Little by little she gains knowledge of their underground kingdom, while her view of the Lady in Green gradually changes. Kate begins to understand and even to respect the Lady in Green. In the end, however, Kate chooses to leave the Fairy Folk in order to save Christopher, destroying the fairy kingdom in the process. Christopher then takes Cecily to London to live with his sister Jennifer. When Christopher returns he proposes to Kate, and she accepts. Kate is granted freedom when Queen Elizabeth I ascends the throne.

Set in 1870, Hardy plays Dr. Henry Tibbett, a Mississippi country doctor who is called on by a travelling circus trainer to cure his sick elephant. After the doctor heals the grateful beast, the elephant becomes so attached to him that it starts to follow him everywhere. This leads to the trainer suing Dr. Tibbett for alienation of affection.

Yun Jin-sung (Song Ji-hyo) and Kim So-hee (Park Han-byul) are best friends studying ballet at an all-girls art school. However, their friendship turns sour when they find themselves competing for a single spot in a Russian ballet school. Jin-sung learns from an odd student named Eom Hye-ju (Jo An) of an old legend that if a person climbs the twenty eight steps leading up to the school's dormitory and finds a twenty ninth step, then a fox spirit will grant that person's wish. Curious, Jin-sung climbs the stairs and comes across the twenty ninth, happily wishing to gain the spot. To her surprise and anger, So-hee is selected instead. Jin-sung declares her hatred toward her and accidentally sends So-hee down a flight of stairs during a scuffle. So-hee is left unconscious and hospitalized.

Jin-sung learns that So-hee is no longer able to study ballet due to her injuries from the fall. She tries to apologize, but receives no reply and leaves guilty. The next day, she learns that So-hee has committed suicide. As the fight between the two was witnessed by several others, Jin-sung is now looked down upon by the students, who believe that she intentionally pushed So-hee out of jealousy. Jin-sung's wish comes true and she gets the spot for the ballet school but her fellow students treat her coldly.

Affected by So-hee's death, as she was the only one to treat her with kindness, Hye-ju attempts to keep So-hee's belongings for herself, but is ridiculed for it, mainly by Han Yun-ji. She climbs the steps and wishes for So-hee to come back. So-hee returns as a twisted spirit who possesses Hye-ju. The possessed Hye-ju confronts Yun-ji for bullying her and stabs her to death. Jin-Sung encounters Hye-ju, who tries to convince her that she is So-hee. The spirit of So-hee makes Hye-ju light a match, leaving the troubled girl to perish in flames.

While Jin-sung is preparing to leave for the ballet school, she is haunted by So-hee. Unable to endure it, she tries to climb the stairs again in order to wish her away. Before she can reach the top, So-hee appears and holds her as Jin-sung confesses that she didn't hate her and simply wanted to be happy. Believing that Jin-sung does not love her as much she does, So-hee crushes Jin-sung's stomach with her arms, killing her, then vanishes.

Some time later, a new girl moves into the dorm room that Jin-sung once occupied. A picture with Jin-sung and So-hee on it is seen on the floor. In the photo, So-hee's irises disappear, implying that she still remains.

An American reporter, Sara Scott (Turner) is working in London during the last year of the Second World War and begins an affair with a British reporter named Mark Trevor (Connery). Sara is conflicted on whether to marry her rich American boss Carter Reynolds (Sullivan) or the charming young reporter she is having an affair with. Finally, she chooses Mark, only to find that he is married and has a son back in his hometown. The two separate shortly thereafter, then decide to stay together and work out their problems.

As the war in Europe is ending, Mark is killed in a plane crash, sending Sara into mourning and into a mental sanatorium for a few months. After her release, Carter convinces her to catch a ship back to New York and work for him. However, before her departure, she goes to Trevor's very scenic seaside hometown in Cornwall and lives for a time with his young widow Kay (Johns) and son as she works to fashion Mark's war reporting into a book. She is conflicted about telling Kay the truth about her relationship with Mark, but finally does so, causing Kay to emotionally break down and order Sara to leave. However, she makes amends with Sara at the station.

At the tail-end of World War II, Choi Bae-dal is a young Korean man who longs to be able to fly fighter planes. Stowing away to Japan in order to join their air force, Bae-dal's first experience of the country is when a con-man tries to steal his money. Bae-dal discovers that the man is a fellow Korean called Chun-bae (Jung Tae-woo), who has survived the harsh treatment of Koreans in Japan by turning to petty crime. With their different motives: Bae-dal driven by desire for action and Chun-bae needing to escape from some gangsters, the two Koreans stow away in a truck to the air force training camp.

The commander in charge of the camp is a pompous imperialist called Kato (Masaya Kato). Having mistreated the two Koreans, he is amused by Bae-dal's fighting spirit and says that if Bae-dal can beat him with his inferior "foreign" fighting style (Taekkyon), he will release them. The two men fight with Kato easily defeating Bae-dal, but an American attack on the airforce base allows Bae-dal and Chun-bae to escape.

Later, Bae-dal is found helping Chun-bae to run a pachinko stall in a Japanese market place. When local gangsters try to take protection money from Chun-bae, Bae-dal tries to defend him but is beaten up and humiliated by the gangsters. His ordeal is ended by the intervention of Bum-soo (Jung Doo-hong), a martial arts expert from his home town who had also emigrated to Japan. Bum-soo invites Bae-dal back to the circus where he, and many fellow Korean immigrants, work and where he is attempting to build a decent standard of living for his countrymen. After some persuasion, he agrees to teach Bae-dal some of his more sophisticated fighting style.

Meanwhile, Bae-dal has taken to working as a rickshaw driver, honing his fighting skills by defending Japanese women from the rapacious advances of American servicemen. His success at protecting the women makes him something of a local hero, although his real identity is not known. One of the women he protects is the beautiful Yoko (Aya Hirayama), with whom he strikes up a romantic relationship.

When Bum-soo is killed by local gangsters, the Koreans from the compound vow revenge and attack the Japanese gangs. The fight ends abruptly for Bae-dal when he is knocked unconscious by a blow to the head. Bae-dal, vowing to never again lose a fight, retreats to the mountains where, living in his karate gi, he trains day and night; running in the mountains, lifting tree trunks and using makeshift training equipment to harden his body and fighting spirit through austerity.

Returning from the mountains, Bae-dal takes a Japanese name: Masutatsu Oyama, and sets about challenging the best fighters Japan has to offer. Wearing his ragged karate gi and looking like a cave-man with his unkempt appearance, Oyama challenges the first dojo he passes. He defeats every fighter in the dojo - often with only a single strike.

As word of his notoriety spreads, Oyama's actions come to the attention of the head of the Japan Karate Association - the former Air Force camp commander Kato. Kato is hugely offended that a foreigner would not only try to learn Japanese martial arts, but would consider himself worthy to beat Japanese fighters. Nevertheless, Oyama continues to defeat every fighter that Japan has to offer, including competitors in karate, judo, ninjutsu, aikido, and kobudo, becoming a sensation in the Japanese media. Oyama explains to Yoko that, although he is scared of dying, he is more scared of living as a cripple, and this is why he is willing to sacrifice anything to win.

When the organization sends one of his followers to challenge and kill Oyama, the agent is instead killed by Oyama. Learning that the man he killed had a wife and son, Oyama feels a great deal of guilt for his actions and tracks down the family to apologise and offer to work for them to make up for killing the father of the household. Oyama surrenders his uniform to the wife, vowing to never again fight in martial art duels. Although initially angry and unaccepting of Oyama's offer, after fulfilling the son's wish of being carried to the top of the nearby mountain to view the sunrise, he eventually convinces them that he is a man of honour and not a violent thug. The wife asks Oyama to take back his uniform and become the best fighter in Japan.

Returning to the city, Oyama finds that Kato's martial arts association has threatened his own family (Kato is not involved) and demanded a challenge between Kato and Oyama. Dressing in his weathered gi once again, Oyama treks out to the countryside location where Kato is waiting for him. Easily defeating Kato's henchmen, Oyama then faces a final showdown with Kato himself. Although it is clear that Kato would like to see Oyama dead, Kato's ankle is broken after receiving a kick in the fight sequence. When Kato stands up, he falls to a one-knee-down position, Oyama shows mercy to Kato, by stopping 2 cm short of punching him squarely between the eyes, defeating him in combat but not killing him.

At the end of the movie, Oyama is shown fighting with a bull, grasping the horns and digging into the ground to stop him, and finally delivering a bone-shattering chop to the center of the top of the head.

In 1899, Dr. Alexander Hartdegen is an inventor teaching at Columbia University in New York City. Unlike his friend David Philby, Alexander would rather do pure research than work in the world of business. After a mugger kills his fiancée Emma, he devotes himself to building a time machine that will allow him to travel back in time to save her. When he completes the machine four years later, he travels back to 1899 and prevents her murder, only to see her killed again when a horseless carriage frightens the horses of a horse-drawn vehicle.

Alexander realizes that any attempt to save Emma will result in her death through other circumstances. He travels to 2030 to discover whether science has been able to solve his question of how to change the past. At the New York Public Library, a holographic librarian called Vox 114 insists time travel to the past is impossible. Alexander travels to 2037, when the accidental destruction of the Moon by lunar colonists has begun rendering the Earth virtually uninhabitable. While restarting the time machine to avoid debris, he is knocked unconscious and travels forward to the date 16 July 802701 before reawakening.

The human race has reverted to a primitive lifestyle and the Earth has healed. Some survivors, called "Eloi", live on the sides of cliffs of what was once Manhattan. Alexander is nursed back to health by a virtuous young woman named Mara, one of the few Eloi who speak English. He observes the broken moon and realises that maybe his teachings led to this future. One night, Alexander and Mara's younger brother, Kalen, dream of a frightening, jagged-toothed face and a creature calling their name. Alexander informs Mara of the dream and she tells him they all have that dream, and she notices that his watch is missing. The next day, the Eloi are attacked and Mara is dragged underground by ape-like monsters. The creatures are called "Morlocks" and they hunt the Eloi for food. In order to rescue Mara, Kalen leads Alexander to Vox 114, which is still functional after 800,000 years.

After learning from Vox how to find the Morlocks, Alexander enters their underground lair through an opening that resembles the face in his nightmare. He is captured and thrown into an area where Mara sits in a cage. Alexander meets an intelligent, humanoid Über-Morlock, who explains that Morlocks are the evolutionary descendants of the humans who went underground after the Moon broke apart, while the Eloi are evolved from those who remained on the surface. The Über-Morlocks are a caste of telepaths who rule the other Morlocks.

The Über-Morlock explains that Alexander cannot alter Emma's fate, because her death is what drove him to build the time machine in the first place: saving her would be a virtual impossibility due to temporal paradox. The Über-Morlock shows Alexander and tells him to go home, having given him the answer he had been searching for. Alexander gets into the machine but pulls the Über-Morlock in with him, carrying them into the future as they fight. The Über-Morlock dies by rapidly aging when Alexander pushes him outside of the machine's temporal bubble. Alexander stops in 635,427,810, revealing a harsh, rust-colored sky over a wasteland of Morlock caves.

Accepting that he cannot save Emma, Alexander travels back to rescue Mara. After freeing her, he starts the time machine and jams its gears, creating a violent distortion in time. Pursued by the Morlocks, Alexander and Mara escape to the surface as the time distortion explodes, killing the Morlocks and destroying their caves along with the time machine. Alexander begins a new life with Mara and the Eloi.

In 1903, Philby and Mrs. Watchit, Alexander's housekeeper, are in his laboratory discussing his absence. Philby tells Mrs. Watchit he is glad that Alexander has gone to a place where he can find peace, then tells her that he would like to hire her as a housekeeper, which she accepts until Alexander returns. Mrs. Watchit bids Alexander farewell and Philby leaves, looking toward the laboratory affectionately, then throws his bowler hat away in tribute to Alexander's objection to conformity.

Miners Trevor Bowman and Nina meet in an abandoned warehouse in Colorado. At the same time, military roadblocks seal the city off for a 24-hour quarantine exercise. Corporal Sarah Bowman leaves her barricade and drives with Private Bud Crain to visit her sick mother. There, Trevor and Nina reveal that the local populace got infected by an influenza-like virus and that their friend Kyle gushed blood from the nose that morning. Sarah and Bud head to Kyle's house to investigate and uncover his parents' mauled corpses. She radios Captain Rhodes about the situation and heads homeward to bring her family and Nina to the Medical Center.

As the CDC's Dr. Logan questions Sara in the crowded hospital, the infected become catatonic and reanimate as zombies. As carnage ensues, Nina and Trevor seek refuge at the local radio station, and Captain Rhodes is mauled. Dr. Logan, Sarah and Bud rush to a storage room, but Bud inadvertently drops the car keys before entering. Sarah and Bud resolve to reach the room Captain Rhodes was mauled in through the air ducts to retrieve his Humvee keys. When they land on the floor, Private Salazar appears. During their return to the storeroom, Rhodes rises to pursue them and bites Bud's hand as he replaces the ceiling grille. The group jumps from the window into the undead-infested parking lot. Dr. Logan deliberately pushes a woman toward a zombie and departs in a vehicle.

The remaining members set off in the Humvee. They stop at a gun store and restrain Bud with plastic wrist-ties inside the vehicle. Upon reentering, Bud has transformed. Sarah insists that he is harmless and should not get shot. Meanwhile, they hear Trevor over the radio and dash to his location. They collect the couple and attempt to exit the city but collide near the abandoned warehouse. They access an underground bunker and encounter Dr. Logan, who divulges his involvement in the government project under Dr. Engel. Engel intended to produce a bioweapon to paralyze enemy combatants by temporarily affecting their nervous system, but the virus mutated, zombifying the scientists. As the group traverses the bunker, Dr. Engel stealthily kills Logan. Zombies encircle Salazar and he sacrifices himself to enable Sarah to escape and reunite with Trevor and Nina. They find a bundle of gas cylinders and modify them into flamethrowers. While Sarah lures the zombie crowd, Dr. Engel descends from the ceiling and grabs her. When Bud shoots at him, Engel decapitates him. Sarah directs the undead to the cylinders, and they incinerate them. The group sets out in Dr. Logan's car, and as they proceed towards the distance, a zombie screams at the camera.

In the opening scene, Grendel briefly fights with a ram when frustrated with its stupidity. He then mockingly asks the sky why animals lack sense and dignity; the sky does not reply, adding to his frustration. Grendel then passes through his cave and encounters his mute mother before venturing out into the night where he attacks Hrothgar's mead hall, called "Hart" in ''Grendel''. Later, Grendel reminisces about his early experiences in life, beginning with his childhood days of exploring the caves inhabited by him, his mother and other creatures with which he is unable to speak. One day, however, he arrives at a pool filled with firesnakes, which he enters. Upon exiting, he eventually becomes wedged and trapped in a tree. Helpless, he eventually falls asleep, only to wake surrounded by humans. Although Grendel can understand the humans, they cannot understand him and they become frightened, which leads to a fight between Grendel and the Danish warriors, including Hrothgar. Grendel is barely saved from death at the hands of the humans by the appearance of his mother.

During Hrothgar's rise to prominence, a blind poet appears at the doors of Hart, whom Grendel calls "the Shaper". He tells the story of the ancient warrior Scyld Shefing, which enraptures and seduces Grendel. The monster reacts violently to the power the beautiful myth has on him and flees. Grendel continues to be enraptured by the tales. After seeing a corpse and two lovers juxtaposed, he drags the corpse to Hart, bursting into the hall and begging for mercy and peace. The thegns do not comprehend his actions and see this as an attack, driving him from the hall. While fleeing the men, he curses them, yet still returns later to hear the rest of the Shaper's songs, half enraptured and half enraged.

When Grendel returns to his cave, he attempts and fails to communicate with his mother, thus leaving him with a sense of total loneliness. He becomes filled with despair and falls through the sea, finding himself in an enormous cave filled with riches and a dragon. The omniscient dragon reveals to Grendel that the power of the Shaper is simply the ability to make the logic of humans seem real, despite the fact his lore possesses no factual basis. The dragon and Grendel cannot agree about the dragon's statements that existence is a chain reaction of accidents, and Grendel exits the cave in a mixed state of confusion, anger, and denial.

While listening to the Shaper, he is spotted by sentries, who try to fight him off again, but he discovers that the dragon has enchanted him, leaving him impervious to weapons. Realizing his power, he begins attacking Hart, viewing his attacks as a perpetual battle. Grendel is challenged by a thane named Unferth, to which he responds mockingly. Grendel awakens a few days later to realize that Unferth has followed him to his cave in an act of heroic desperation. He continues to mock Unferth until the Dane passes out from exhaustion, then takes him back to Hart to live out his days in frustrated mediocrity, stopping him from having a heroic death.

In the second year of the war, Grendel notes that his raids have destroyed the esteem of Hrothgar, allowing a rival noble named Hygmod to gain power. Fearing deposition, Hrothgar assembles an army to attack Hygmod and his people, the Helmings. Instead of a fight, Hygmod offers his sister Wealtheow to Hrothgar as a wife after a series of negotiations. The beauty of Wealtheow moves Grendel as the Shaper had once before, keeping the monster from attacking Hart just as she prevents internal conflicts among the Danes. Eventually, Grendel decides to kill Wealtheow, since she threatens the ideas explained by the dragon. Upon capturing her, he realizes that killing and not killing are equally meaningless, and he retreats, knowing that by not killing Wealtheow, he has once again confounded the logic of humanity and religion.

Later, Grendel watches as Hrothgar's nephew Hrothulf develops his understanding of the two classes in Danish society: thegns and peasants, then further explores them with a peasant named Red Horse, who teaches Hrothulf that government exists only for the protection of those in power.

Grendel watches a religious ceremony and is approached by an old priest named Ork, who thinks that Grendel is their main deity, the Destroyer, and engages him in conversation. When three other priests approach and chastise Ork, Grendel flees, overwhelmed with a vague dread.

Watching the Danes, Grendel hears a woman predict the coming of an illustrious thegn and then witnesses the death of the Shaper. Returning to his cave, his mother seems agitated. She manages to make one unusual unintelligible word, which Grendel discounts, and then goes to the Shaper's funeral. Later, in the cave, he wakes up with his mother still making word-like noises, and once again feels a terrible foreboding.

Grendel reveals that fifteen travellers have come to Denmark from over the sea, almost as though the way was set before them. The visitors, who reveal themselves to be Geats ruled by Hygelac, have an uneasy relationship with the Danes. Upon their arrival, Grendel notices the firm nature of their leader, Beowulf, and the fact that his lips do not move in accordance with his words, and sees a great lust for violence in Beowulf's eyes, convincing Grendel he is insane.

At nightfall, Grendel attacks. When he believes that all the men are asleep, he breaks into the hall and eats one man. Grabbing the wrist of another, he realizes that it is an alert Beowulf, and that he has grabbed his arm. They wrestle furiously, during which Beowulf appears to become a flaming, dragon-like figure and repeats many of the ideas that the dragon revealed to Grendel. The Geat slams Grendel into the walls of the hall, then rips off Grendel's arm, causing the monster to flee in pain and fear. Grendel proceeds to toss himself into an abyss (whether or not Grendel jumps is left up to the perception of the reader), and dies wondering if what he is feeling is joy, understanding what the dragon meant by the accident statement, and cursing existence.

The film opens up with an assassination attempt on the king of Joseon Dynasty at some sort of reception. The attempt is foiled by a special security squad, and specifically by its leader, Gyu-yup. A series of deaths of prominent politicians leads to a nighttime battle in which one member, a female, of what is apparently an assassin duo, is captured. Gyu-yup recognizes this female, and after her torture in prison (of which Gyu-yup is left in charge when she refuses to divulge any information), the film flashes back to Gyu-yup's past.

Shortly after the Japanese invasions of Korea in the middle of the Joseon Dynasty, a military unit of elite soldiers (made up of students of the Clear Wind Shining Moon sword school) is created to ensure the peace and the security/safety of the country. In its center, the two best swordsmen, Ji-hwan and Gyu-yup, are also two inseparable friends. But a political ''coup d'etat'' plot (it is referred to as a "rebellion" in the film) forces Gyu-yup, threatened with the death of his entire unit of elite soldiers, to not only kill his fencing master, but also Ji-hwan, who is seeing the female assassin from the night battle, Shi-young (who was also a warrior at the time, and the daughter of the school's fencing master). Having had to behead his master, kill his best friend and his best friend's lover, and lead his troops against members of their own training school (as one character protests, "we have killed the brothers with whom we shed blood"), we are led to understand that Gyu-yup loses some part of himself.

The film returns to the present, five years after the events in the flashback. Gyu-yup is known as a cold and cruel commander, nicknamed "the human butcher." The discovery of a sword during the night battle that carries the seal of Gyu-yup's old unit (such swords, with the exception of Gyu-yup's, were apparently destroyed and at least not in use by this time, so the only other person who could be wielding one is Ji-hwan) confirms the fact that Ji-hwan is back as well (and not dead as Gyu-yup had thought). The current king (the usurper general who, in Gyu-yup's flashback, is the commander who forces him to choose between the deaths of his men and leading his men against Ji-hwan, Shi-young, and the training master) himself becomes embroiled in what amount to attempts to cover up his tracks and betrays at least one of his foremost commanders by ordering his assassination. The king then plans an excursion aimed at drawing out Ji-hwan and Shi-young (who we are made to understand was allowed to be freed by Ji-hwan in disguise under Gyu-yup's watch) into the open where they are meant to be killed.

The excursion (of which Ji-hwan and Shi-young become aware) takes place, and the king is almost killed by Ji-hwan, but he is momentarily distracted by the death of Shi-young at the hands of the king's elite bodyguard and troops. The king, stabbing Ji-hwan with a heretofore hidden dagger, pushes Ji-hwan away; and the king continues to look on as Ji-hwan battles more troops. Almost defeated, Gyu-yup, finally moved by compassion and his past relationship with Shi-young and Ji-hwan, comes to Ji-hwan's rescue. He pleads for his and Ji-hwan's freedom (Gyu-yup had promised his neck to the current king during the rebellion in order to save his own troops from execution, and the now-king took this to mean this promise was binding in perpetuity), and when that is met with silence, he and Ji-hwan engage the troops that have surrounded them. The movie ends by freezing the old friends, united in battle again, in action against the usurper king's troops.

On Earth, the days are getting hotter and hotter. The crew, looking for an explanation, watch an old movie about global warming. The film explains a temporary solution for global warming was found by dropping a mountainous slab of ice into the ocean on a regular basis to cool it. The Planet Express crew is assigned the task of gathering a new slab of ice to drop in the ocean.

The crew goes to Halley's Comet, but finds that it is out of ice. With no ice left, the world's top scientists are called to a conference in Kyoto, Japan. Ogden Wernstrom uses a giant mirror to deflect 40% of the sun's rays, but a stray asteroid causes it to reflect the rays into a highly destructive beam. Professor Farnsworth reveals that robots, with their high-pollution emissions, are the cause of the crisis. The scientists, led by Wernstrom, decide to destroy all the robots on Earth.

Meanwhile, Bender is moved to tears after witnessing a news report on the migration of turtles due to the heat and decides to rescue one from Holland. When questioned by the crew Bender says he has many things in common with the turtle. He claims that both have a tough outer shell but a rich inner life. More importantly, he also confides the inability to get up if he falls directly on his back. Earth President Richard Nixon's head organizes a party for the unsuspecting robots on the remote Galapagos Islands, where he plans to destroy the entire robot population with an electromagnetic blast from an orbiting EMP cannon made from Wernstrom's mirror. Bender, who was at the meeting of scientists and thus knows of the plan, decides, for the sake of the turtles, that he will accept his fate and attend the party.

At the party, Bender is overheard saying that all the robots are doomed, causing panic. Farnsworth arrives with Fry and Leela and delivers a solution to the robots; every last one needs to blast their exhaust vents at the same time, straight up in the sky, in order to push the Earth farther from the Sun, thus cooling the Earth and causing the EMP cannon to miss its target. During the panic Bender and the turtle are knocked onto their backs and cannot get up, leaving not enough exhaust to move the Earth. As Bender is lamenting his fate, the turtle rocks from side to side and rolls to its feet. Shocked and inspired, but not to be shown up, Bender does the same, allowing him to release his massive exhaust, just barely saving the robots from the EMP. Farnsworth receives a medal of pollution for his work, and the extra week caused by the new orbit of the Earth is declared Robot Party Week.

Pangbourne Village is an estate for the upper middle class, protected by security fences and discreet guards. Its ten families are wealthy, respectable, 40-something couples with adolescent children on whom they lavish everything money can buy.

One morning it is discovered that all the adult residents have been killed and the children have disappeared without trace. Dr Richard Greville of Scotland Yard puzzles over the scanty evidence: it gives no leads to the identity of the murderers and kidnappers. No demands for ransom are received. No terrorist group claims responsibility.

The reader soon realizes that the missing children are also the missing murderers. Their controlled upbringing has left them no way to establish their own identities except by rebelling into criminal savagery. However, in a tradition of obtuse policemen going back to Inspector Lestrade in the Sherlock Holmes stories, Greville resists drawing this obvious conclusion - until the children strike again.

Terry (Steve Guttenberg) asks his boss' wife Sylvia (Isabelle Huppert) to his apartment after an office party and the two go to bed. Later, while he is in the bathroom, she hears screams outside and goes naked to the window. Seeing a man attacking a young woman, she opens the window and the assailant runs away. When the media report the murder of a young woman near Terry's flat that night, he thinks the police should know what Sylvia saw but, to protect her, claims that it was he who was at the bedroom window.

At a police lineup, neither he nor the victim Denise (Elizabeth McGovern) is able to pick out the attacker, Chris. Despite the feeble evidence against him, Chris is put on trial for the assault and during the proceedings his lawyer proves that since Terry is short-sighted he could not have witnessed the incident. Chris goes free, leaving not only the police and the prosecution but also Denise and Sylvia aghast at Terry's ineptness.

In the courtroom, Chris recognised Sylvia as the woman at the window. Desperate to warn her, Terry finds her at a ballet performance and tells her she must go to the police, but she refuses all further involvement. As he leaves, he sees Chris's distinctive truck parked outside and rushes in again. He is too late, however, for in the dark she has been stabbed fatally and dies in Terry's arms.

He takes refuge with Denise, who first seduces him and then offers him a chance to redeem himself. She wants revenge, and with him devises a plot to provoke Chris into another attack. Disguising herself, she goes to a bar where Chris is drinking and signals her availability. Terry follows her as she leaves to go home and, when Chris attacks, the two are able to repel him. He escapes, only to be caught by the police who Terry forewarned.

Roland, a 7th former who has been caught shoplifting, is given an unusual assignment: to spy on a mysterious girl in his class who is studying alchemy. Jess Ferret is an eccentric girl who likes playing with words. However, an enemy from the boy's past wants the girl's power and is using him for information. Roland eventually finds out that he is not unlike Jess and her abilities, but gets them both into a situation which endangers their lives.

''Alchemy'' has similar themes to two other books by Mahy, ''The Changeover'' and ''The Haunting''.

The book won the senior fiction section of the 2003 New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards.

Having massacred an Indian village with his gang, scalp hunter Duncan rides to the nearest town to discover that he is now an outlaw, as scalp hunting is now illegal. Duncan murders the sheriff and begins burning the town. In the town, Duncan meets Lynne, the town doctor, who conspires with Duncan to steal a train full of the bank's money. Three female entertainers and their manager overhear talk of the plot and ride to the next town of Esperanza to warn people. Several of Duncan's gang attempt to kill them, but their scheme is thwarted by Navajo Joe.

Joe steals the train back from Duncan's gang. He asks the townspeople of Esperanza to pay him to protect them from Duncan, demanding, "I want a dollar a head from every man in this town for every bandit I kill." The townspeople reject him, as they "don't make bargains with Indians." Lynne's wife Hannah persuades them otherwise. Joe sets a trap for Duncan, but is caught and tortured, and Lynne and Hannah are killed. Rescued by an old man who leads the female entertainers, Joe again steals the train and wipes out Duncan's gang.

A showdown occurs in an Indian cemetery, where Joe reclaims the pendant that Duncan had stolen from his wife when he murdered her. As Joe turns, Duncan shoots him with a hidden gun. Injured, Joe grabs a tomahawk and throws it, hitting Duncan square in the forehead. With Duncan dead, Joe sends his horse back to town, carrying the bank's money. The townspeople are surprised that Joe has kept his word and are relieved that their money has been returned. Estella, disappointed in the attitudes of the townspeople and grateful for what Joe has done for them, sends the horse back to be reunited with him, leaving Joe's final fate ambiguous.

Mr. Duffy, a middle-aged bank cashier, deliberately lives in an isolated suburb of Dublin. He is characterized as very meticulous and ordered and has little social contact. At a concert one night, Duffy makes the acquaintance of Mrs. Emily Sinico, a married mother. They start up a relationship that is innocent enough to be condoned by Mrs. Sinico's husband, who believes the two's discussions revolve mostly around his daughter and the possibility of a relationship between her and Duffy. The two draw closer together, and one night Mrs. Sinico impulsively takes his hand and presses it to her cheek, but Duffy is not pleased at the development and ends their meetings. Four years later, he reads that Mrs. Sinico has been struck by a train and killed. The newspaper article, the title of which provides the title of the story, contains an account by her husband, who states that she began drinking two years earlier. The details of the accident suggest that she may have caused her own death. He reacts at first with revulsion, concluding that some inherent weakness led to her drinking and the accident, but he slowly comes to believe that it was his rejection that condemned her to solitude and death. He reflects on his own loneliness: "No one wanted him; he was outcast from life's feast." The story ends with Duffy listening to the silence of the surrounding night atop a hill overlooking Dublin where he and Sinico used to sit down and talk, where he realizes just how lonely he really is.

The story focuses on Kaley Markowic, a young snowboarder who suffers a career-ending head injury during a competition, and loses part of her memory. While trying to recuperate from her head trauma, she discovers that the memories of others are being consumed by an ancient monster known as the Mnemovore. Kaley's amnesia leaves her immune to the monster's attacks, and the only one who can stop it.

The maid of the title is red-haired, dog-loving Wilhelmina "Billie" Bennett, and the three men are:

• Bream Mortimer, a long-time and long-suffering suitor of Billie;
• Eustace Hignett, a shy poet who is cowed by his domineering mother but secretly engaged to Billie at the opening of the tale;
• Sam Marlowe, Eustace's dashing cousin, who falls in love with Billie "at first sight".

The four of them find themselves together on a White Star ocean liner called the ''Atlantic'', sailing for England. Also on board is a capable young woman, Jane Hubbard, who is in love with Eustace. Wodehousian funny stuff ensues, with happy endings for all except Bream Mortimer.

Duke Davis (Cooper) is a stage-show promoter in love with Ethel Andrews (Horne), a popular singer in his company dubbed "the Bronze Venus". Duke finds out that big-time promoters from New York City want to propel Ethel into the big leagues, but Ethel, out of loyalty and love for Duke, refuses to leave his small-time show. Duke, in a selfless act, orchestrates a deception to force Ethel to leave his show in order to better her career. However, the loss of the Bronze Venus causes Duke's own career to collapse and he soon finds himself working on a travelling medicine show where he goes from town to town, introducing a series of specialty musical acts and helping to sell Doc Dorando's all-purpose elixir. But when he hears that Ethel's New York gig is a flop, Duke goes to New York, where he is reunited with her. Soon after, Duke combines his stage show, the medicine show and Ethel's singing into a top nightclub act.

After a painful breakup with his girlfriend Suzy, art student Ben Willis develops insomnia. To take his mind off Suzy and to occupy the extra waking hours he has recently gained, Ben begins working at a local Sainsbury's supermarket, where he meets colorful co-workers. Among them is his colleague Sharon, with whom he soon develops a mutual crush. As his personal means to escape the boredom inherent in the night shift, Ben lets his imagination run wild. In particular, he imagines that he can stop time so that he can walk around in a world that is "frozen" like the pause of a film. He imagines female patrons of the supermarket stopped in time, allowing him to undress and draw them. Finally the ability to stop time becomes real.

A series of flashbacks occur with each progression of the plot, accompanied by Ben's narration and an examination of the effect the situation had had upon him. He explains how he always has been impressed by the beauty of the female body: how he, as a young boy, witnessed a Swedish boarder walk naked from the shower to her room. In another flashback, the young Ben and his best friend Sean share Sean's discovery of his parents' adult magazines, and Sean pays a neighborhood girl called Natalie fifty pence to show him her vulva. Other neighborhood boys repeat this trade.

Ben's boss, Alan Jenkins, recruits the staff for a weekend football game and, after an embarrassing defeat, 26-Nil, Ben freezes time again. This time he discovers that he is not alone when he sees a mysterious stranger who is able to move inside the frozen world as he can. When Jenkins throws a party to honor his own birthday and as a consolation for their defeat, Sharon asks Ben to be her date, to which he eagerly but nervously agrees. While there, Ben encounters Natalie, who is now a stripper, as well as his ex-girlfriend Suzy, who implores him to try their relationship again. Ben refuses her advance but she kisses him, just as Sharon witnesses from afar. Sharon angrily leaves the party. Ben realizes Sharon has seen the kiss, and freezes time. After spending several days "frozen", Ben concludes that although he can stop time, he cannot reverse it to correct the mistake. He eventually seeks to explain himself to Sharon at her apartment, and a confrontation similar to the film-opening breakup occurs. Sharon henceforth does not show up to work at the supermarket.

As a practical joke, colleagues Barry and Matt phone Ben; Matt poses as an art gallery owner who is interested in displaying Ben's drawings, and schedules an appointment for Ben to present more to him. When Ben arrives as agreed, the reaction of the owner quickly reveals that he has been pranked. However, the gallery owner is nonetheless interested in Ben's work and decides to exhibit Ben's drawings. Sharon receives an invitation to the exhibition and visits. She is moved as most of the pieces depict her and she happily greets Ben, congratulating him on his success. The finale occurs as Ben shares his ability to stop time with her and the two step outside into a time-frozen snowfall.

The novel's protagonist tells the story of his life lived back and forth between Chile and California. He focuses first on his early youth spent in California, using the films that he saw as a way to characterize this time in his life. He rather suddenly has to return to Chile in his early teens, coming home to live under Augusto Pinochet's regime, a major culture shock for him.

The plot primarily follows Colonel Vorotyntsev, a General Staff officer sent by the Grand Duke's (supreme commander, Russian Army) headquarters to the Russian Second Army invading East Prussia under command of General Alexander Samsonov. Vorotyntsev has been sent to find out exactly what is happening with the Second Army; a second General Staff colonel has been sent to the First Army with the same mission. Distances were so great, communications so poor, and the Russian Army so badly prepared for war, Vorotyntsev was sent to find out all he could about conditions at the front and then report back to the Grand Duke. By August 26, the opening day of the 4-day Battle of Tannenberg, Vorotyntsev comes to realize that he cannot return to his headquarters in time to make any difference in the outcome of the battle, and stays with the Second Army to help out where he is able to. Numerous side plots involving other characters, both on the battlefield and elsewhere, fill out the novel. The unprepared army's failures mirror those of the Tsarist regime. A famous episode in the earlier version of the novel narrates the state of mind of General Samsonov, the Russian commander, after his disastrous defeat in what came to be known as the Battle of Tannenberg. Samsonov, tormented by the scale of the defeat and his fear of reporting this failure to the Tsar, eventually commits suicide. His body is found by a German search party, a bullet wound in his head and a revolver in his hand.

Kepesh is fascinated by the beautiful young Consuela Castillo, a student in one of his courses. An erotic liaison is formed between the two; Kepesh becomes obsessively enamored of his lover's breasts, a fetish developed in the previous novels. Despite his fevered devotion to Consuela, the sexually promiscuous professor maintains a concurrent affair with a previous lover, now divorced. He is also reluctant to expose himself to the scrutiny or ridicule that might follow from an introduction to Consuela's family. It is implied that he fears such a meeting would expose the implausible age gap in their relationship. Ultimately, Kepesh limits their relationship to the physical instead of embarking upon any deeper arrangement.

In the end, Kepesh is destroyed by his indecisiveness, the fear of senescence, his lust and jealousy. Consuela never subsequently finds a lover who can show the same level of devotion to her body as Kepesh had. After some years of estrangement, she asks him to take nude photographs of her because she will be losing one of her breasts to a life-saving mastectomy.

Most editions display a cover picture, ''Le grand nu'' (1919) by Amedeo Modigliani. In the novel, Consuela sends Kepesh a postcard depicting ''Le grand nu'', and Kepesh surmises that the figure in the painting is her alter ego.

Naoto Tamura, a new detective in Central City, is killed by a Bionoid Monster in the line of duty. Doctor Kenzo Igarashi, a man whose experiments had been responsible for the Bioron syndicate's existence, brought the man back to life as a cyborg detective, Jiban. Eventually Madogarbo and Rhinonoid killed Jiban, who returned to life again as '''Perfect Jiban''' (basically the same design as the original, but with a blue-colored metal body and three new weapons). In the finale, Biolon destroyed Jiban's base and transformed Madogarbo into false Jiban. Jiban defeated his duplicate and ultimately Gibanoid, the true form of Biolon's leader Doctor Giba. The victorious Jiban then learned that Mayumi Igarashi, the one civilian that knew his secret, had been his missing younger sister all along.

The Waodani people of the tropical rain forest along the Curaray River in a remote and mostly undeveloped the Amazonian region of Ecuador live with a traditional animist worldview.. In a conflict with her family, Dayumae—who, in part, has been blamed for the death of her sister—decides to leave the tribe for her safety, and runs to the "foreigners" around her: foreigners who speak Spanish and dress very differently.

Nate Saint is a missionary jungle pilot and aircraft mechanic, living with his family at a mission outpost where his job includes flying various missionaries and supplies into remote locations. He builds a small airplane out of wood with his 8-year-old son, Steve Saint. Nate becomes obsessed with making contact with a jungle tribe who have resisted contact with the outside world before, often violently: the Waodani. Rachel Saint, Nate's older sister has had extensive contact with the now much older Dayumae, and has learned some of the Waodani language from her. Nate does not want to tell his sister of his and others plans to attempt contact with the Waodani, for fear she would pass the information along to her superiors, and the planned contact would be forbidden. Young Steve learns a few words of Waodani—"I am your sincere friend"—from Rachel, and ultimately begs his father to teach them before his father and several others land their airplane on a sandbar in the Curaray, and attempt to make peaceful contact with the Waodani, who they know people that area of the forest that surrounds the sandbar.

Mincayani is now a much older and developed warrior, exhibiting great leadership in the tribe. After some days, one Waodani man and two women approach the missionaries who have camped on the sandbar, and have a reasonably friendly, although difficult to communicate, first encounter. Subsequently, misinformation about the meeting is shared with the other Waodani tribal members, and a group of Waodani warriors decide to attack and spear the foreigners. They do so, and all five men associated with the airplane at the sandbar camp are killed with spears; the airplane—which the Waodani refer to as the large wood bee—is destroyed with punctures and slashing by spears. Authorities from Ecuador and the US military come up river in canoes in a large party, protected by many rifles, and recover four of the five bodies.

Years later, Steve Saint flies from the US to attend the funeral of Rachel Saint, and comes into contact again with Mincayani. Mincayani asks Steve to live in Ecuador, and become family to the Waodani, like Rachel had. Steve says that would be "impossible;" but does do so a year or so later.

Later, Mincayani tells Steve he needs to show him something, with no other detail, and takes Steve on the Curaray river in a canoe to the sandbar where his father had been killed many years earlier. Mincayani digs furiously in the bank of the river, and uncovers a bit of the metal frame and fabric of Nate's airplane that the Waodani had buried; tells Steve this is where his father died; and that he had speared his father. Mincayani gives Steve his spear, with the point at his own chest, and tells Steve to kill him. Steve struggles emotionally; but does not do so. He tells Mincayani that his father did not lose his life, but he gave his life. It is, as it has been for the Waodani people for some decades now, truly the "end of the spear."

Born in France, from which her parents fled because of religious persecution, Roxana grew to adolescence in England. At the age of fifteen, she married a handsome but conceited man. After eight years of marriage, during which time her husband went through all of their money, Roxana is left penniless with five children. She appeals for aid to her husband's relatives, all of whom refuse her except one old aunt, who is in no position to help her materially. Amy, Roxana's maid, refuses to leave her mistress although she receives no wages for her work. Another poor old woman whom Roxana had aided during her former prosperity adds her efforts to those of the old aunt and Amy. Finally, Amy plots to force the five children at the house of the sister of Roxana's fled husband, which she does. The cruel sister-in-law will raise the five children, with the help of her kinder husband.

Roxana is penniless and at the point of despair when Mr. ——, her landlord, after expressing his admiration for her, praises her fortitude under all of her difficulties and offers to set her up in housekeeping. He returns all the furniture he had confiscated, gives her food and money, and generally conducts himself with such kindness and candor that Amy urges Roxana to become the gentleman's mistress should he ask it. Roxana, however, clings to her virtuous independence. Fearing that the gentleman's kindness will go unrewarded, Amy, because she loves her mistress, offers to lie with the landlord in Roxana's place. This offer, however, Roxana refuses to consider. The two women talk much about the merits of the landlord, his motive in befriending Roxana, and the moral implications of his attentions.

When the landlord comes to take residence as a boarder in Roxana's house, he proposes, since his wife has deserted him, that he and Roxana live as husband and wife. To show his good faith, he offers to share his wealth with her, bequeathing her five hundred pounds in his will and promising seven thousand pounds if he leaves her. There is a festive celebration that evening and a little joking about Amy's offer to lie with the gentleman. Finally Roxana, her conscience still bothering her, yields to his protestations of love and has sex with him.

After a year and a half has passed and Roxana has not conceived a child, Amy chides her mistress for her barrenness. Feeling that Mr. —— is not her true husband, Roxana sends Amy to him to beget a child. Amy does bear a child, which Roxana takes as her own to save the maid embarrassment. Two years later, Roxana has a daughter, who dies within six weeks. A year later, she pleases her lover with a son.

Mr. —— takes Roxana with him to Paris on business. There they live in great style until Roxana has a vision in which Mr. —— dies and tries to convince him to stay. To reassure her he gives the case of valuable jewels he carries with him to her, should he be robbed. This ominous assertion proves true and was murdered by thieves after the case of jewels which he was rumored to always carry. Roxana manages to retain the gentleman's wealth and secure it against the possible claims of his wife or any of his living relatives.

Roxana moves up through the social spectrum by becoming the mistress of a German prince who came to pay his respects to her following the jeweler's murder. After carrying on the affair for some time, she becomes pregnant with his child, so he sets her up in a country house just outside of Paris where she can give birth to the child without bringing any scandal down upon the Prince. Their relationship is an affectionate one, with the Prince seeming to spend a great deal of time with Roxana despite having a wife. Nevertheless, Roxana has some regrets about the situation her newest son has been born into; destined to be marked by the low status of his mother, and the illegitimacy of the relationship between her and his father. Later, Roxana and the Prince travel to Italy where he has business to attend to, and there they live together for two years. During this time she is gifted a Turkish slave who teaches her the Turkish language and Turkish customs, and a Turkish dress which will become central to her later character development. Also in Italy, Roxana gives birth to another son, however this child does not survive long. Upon their return to Paris, the Prince's wife (the Princess) become ill and dies. The prince, humbled and repentant, decides to no longer keep Roxana as a mistress and live a life closer to God.

As a result, Roxana decides to return to England, but being considerably richer than when she arrived thanks to the jeweler and the Prince, she gets in contact with a Dutch merchant who could help her to move her considerable wealth back to England. Roxana wishes to sell the jewels in the case the jeweler had left her the day he died, and the Dutch merchant arranges for them to be appraised by a Jew. The Jew recognized the jewels as being the ones which had been allegedly stolen from an English jeweler many years prior. The Jew demands that she should be brought to the police, for she was surely the thief, and plots to keep the jewels for himself. The Dutch merchant alerts Roxana of the Jew's scheme and they devise a plan to get her out of France and secure her passage to England through Holland.

Roxana successfully evades the Jew and the law and ends up safely in Holland where the Dutch merchant joins her. The merchant courts her and manages to bed her, hoping she would then agree to marry him. Roxana makes her intentions to remain single clear, to the merchant's astonishment. Roxana ends up becoming pregnant, which makes the Merchant plead for her to marry him so that the child should not be a bastard, which she still refuses. Roxana returns to England on a ship which nearly founders in a storm, on which Amy is stricken with guilt for her sins and wicked ways, but Roxana believes there is no truth in sea storm repentance and promises, so she herself does not feel the need to repent as Amy does: but she realizes that anything Amy is guilty of, she is much more guilty of. Upon arriving in England Amy sets Roxana's estate up in London as Roxana returns to get the other half of her money in Holland.

Roxana sets herself up in Pall Mall, invests her money, and becomes a great hostess in England where she becomes famous for her parties and the Turkish dress she wears and the Turkish dance the slave taught her. This exotic display earns her the name of Roxana (prior to this moment, Roxana is never named, we only know she is called Roxana through this incident, but that her true name is Susan, according to a comment she makes later about her daughter.) She quickly gains a lot of attention, and a three-year gap is announced, and implies she even became mistress to the King, who saw her at one of her parties. Following this she becomes an old man's mistress, which she becomes quickly sick of. Her reputation as a mistress and a whore tires her, and she wishes to lead a more simple life.

Roxana moves to the outskirts of London and takes board in a Quaker woman's house, with whom she quickly becomes friends. This modest house allows her to become a new person and hide from those who may want to harm her. One day she comes across the Dutch merchant who had helped her return to England, and marriage is envisaged. Roxana finally relents on her wish to remain independent and they marry. Hoping to avoid the children from her first marriage should they come looking for her, she moves to Holland with the Dutch merchant where she becomes a countess to her great pleasure.

However, her new life is threatened by the reappearance of her oldest daughter, Susan (which Roxana admits to be named after her, unveiling possibly her true name). Susan's motives to have her mother recognize her as her daughter are unclear. Nevertheless, Roxana feels threatened, and Amy proposes to murder her. The novel ends on ambiguity as to whether Amy actually kills Susan. Roxana only laments the crime that has tainted her life, strongly suggesting Susan was murdered for Roxana to retain her status and reputation.

The text ends on an "unfinished" note, with Roxana living in wealth with her husband in Holland, but assuring the reader that events eventually bring her low and she repents for her actions and experiences a downturn in fortune.

The film centers on a Spanish tapas bar and the love lives of the loosely interconnected people in the neighborhood surrounding the bar. The pairs of lovers include a middle aged woman and a young man; an elderly, drug dealing woman and her terminally ill husband in poor health; the tapas bar owner and his estranged wife; and two Chinese immigrants.

Stephanie is infuriated to learn that her boss/cousin, Vinnie, has hired her arch-rival Joyce Barnhardt as another bounty hunter. Vinnie tells her to "be professional" and focus on tracking down her latest FTA: Maxine Nowicki, a waitress accused of stealing her ex-boyfriend's car and jumping bail.

Eddie gives Stephanie a coded message from Maxine, that references some "property", and explains that Maxine has some embarrassing love letters he once wrote to her, and promises Stephanie an extra $1,000 to let him talk to Maxine before she delivers her to the cops, which Stephanie agrees to. Looking for help cracking the codes from her neighbors, one of them steers her to a nephew, Salvatore Sweet, who has a knack for such things. "Sally" is an aspiring rock musician who made his big breakthrough performing in drag.

With Sally's help, Stephanie decodes the message, which leads her to the second, and third, and so on. Maxine's trail takes Stephanie and her hangers-on—Sally, former-prostitute-turned-backup Lula, and even Stephanie's Grandma Mazur—all over Trenton, to Point Pleasant, and even to Atlantic City. Stephanie encounters Maxine several times, but never manages to capture her. Along the way she interviews Maxine's mother and her friend Margie, learning that someone else has been visiting them and demanding Maxine's whereabouts, going so far as to scalp Mrs. Nowicki and cut off one of Margie's fingers.

Alarmingly, someone is stalking Stephanie, leaving threatening notes warning her to stay away from their boyfriend. When the stalker throws a firebomb through Stephanie's bedroom window, Stephanie is thankfully not home, but her apartment is almost entirely destroyed. In fright, she takes her hamster, Rex, and goes to stay with Morelli at his house, and she and Morelli finally resume their intimate relationship.

The stalker is found to be Sugar, who Stephanie and Morelli apprehend at a nightclub. One of Eddie's friends confides to Stephanie that Eddie passed him a counterfeit $20 bill, and Morelli admits that he has been working with the U.S. Treasury, monitoring a suspected counterfeiter in the area.

When Eddie Kuntz disappears, Stephanie talks to his Uncle Leo and Aunt Betty, who appear unconcerned and refuse to answer any questions. A bit later Stephanie goes snooping through Leo and Betty's basement, and finds a corpse wrapped in a garbage bag. Leo and Betty catch her and are about to kill her, when Lula distracts them with a gunshot through the window, allowing Stephanie to run and call for help. At the same time the police arrive to arrest Betty and Leo, Eddie Kuntz appears, having been kidnapped by Maxine and released after being tattooed with derogatory slogans.

A tip from Eddie's friend sends Stephanie and Lula to the airport, intercepting Maxine before she can leave the country. Joyce Barnhardt actually makes the apprehension first, but Stephanie and Lula, deciding they have earned the "collar", tase Joyce and leave her unconscious behind the wheel of her car. Mrs. Nowicki and Margie are also waiting at the airport, but Stephanie lets them go, since she has no authority to detain them.

Morelli reports that the investigation has turned out very well for the police: Leo is a retired enforcer for the mob in Detroit; twenty years ago, he stole a set of well-made counterfeiting plates and later decided to set up business in Trenton, washing the money through a dry cleaner's owned by another ex-Mafioso. Eddie helped with the counterfeiting, and couldn't resist bragging to Maxine about what a "big shot" he was. Maxine was once in love with Eddie, but he was abusive and unfaithful, and she planned the perfect revenge: after she was bailed out of jail for stealing his car, she pretended to make up with Eddie, persuaded him to show her the plates, then stole them.

The coded messages were a game to torment Eddie, who was desperate to get the plates back, but Maxine did not anticipate that Leo would go hunting for her himself, including mutilating her mother and Margie. He also killed his partner, the dry cleaner (the body Stephanie found in his basement).

Eventually, Maxine demanded $1 million in genuine money in exchange for the plates, and Leo complied. Maxine was planning to leave the country with her mother and Margie when Stephanie caught up with her. Stephanie and Morelli's sympathies are firmly with Maxine, and Morelli adds that no additional charges will likely be pressed against Maxine—there is no evidence of the blackmail, and Eddie is too humiliated to prosecute her for kidnapping—so Maxine will likely serve a short jail sentence for the original auto theft charge, and then be free to join Mrs. Nowicki and Margie and enjoy her million dollars.

Morelli invites Stephanie for a celebratory ride on his Ducati motorcycle. Stephanie, afraid of being relegated to the "helpless female" role in their burgeoning relationship, demands that he make the ultimate concession and let her drive. Morelli concedes, but says she will owe him later.

The only Failure-to-Appear (F.T.A.) Vinnie has for Stephanie is so minor league (Briggs), that she focuses her attention on the mysterious disappearance of her Uncle Fred instead. Mabel gives Stephanie some photos she found in Fred's desk of half-opened garbage bags, containing dismembered human body parts. She insists the photos are recent, and very unusual for Fred. Stephanie sees enough to identify the body as a woman's, and gives duplicates of them to her on-again/off-again boyfriend, Detective Joe Morelli, who passes them on to the sergeant in charge of the case. Mabel tells Stephanie that Fred had been furiously pursuing RCG Waste Haulers to get his $2 back because they skipped picking up garbage at his house one time. RCG (Ruben, Grizolli, and Cotell) had refused to refund him, because his payment wasn't in the system - they demanded to see his cancelled check. He was on his way to bring a copy of that to RCG when he disappeared.

While Stephanie is starting to look into Fred's activities, Bunchy shows up, mysteriously demanding that Stephanie find Fred for him. Since the Fred mystery is on her own personal time, Stephanie is facing financial hardship and out of desperation she takes a job with Ranger's security company to make ends meet. Ranger assures her the jobs are morally justifiable, if not entirely legal, but Stephanie is (again) over her head while tagging along with Ranger's men. The activities start with "Interior decorating" -forcibly evicting the occupants of a drug den in a slum apartment building - which ends up in an explosion when the main being evicted is shot by an old lady in a pink nightgown, and the explosives he has attached to himself go off. Further activities include chauffeuring a sheikh; and distracting a deadbeat in a bar while his car is repossessed.

To add to all of Stephanie's problems, Morelli informs her that Benito Ramirez, the psychopathic boxer who attacked Lula and threatened her in ''One for the Money'' has been released from prison thanks to the work of expensive lawyers. Ramirez begins stalking her again, playing his game of psychological torture with her. Meanwhile, Ranger lets her use a Porsche Turbo as a "company car" while working for him, which is both exciting and nerve-wracking. On the Morelli front, she is trying to keep her distance because of their relationship goals mismatch, but seeing him with Terry Gilman makes her see red.

Fred's disappearance looks increasingly serious when RCG's receptionist Martha is found shot to death. The next day another employee, Larry Lipinski, apparently commits suicide, leaving behind a note confessing to the Martha's murder. John Curly - an employee at the cable company accused of ripping off customers - was hit by a truck. Stephanie matched the gruesome garbage photos partially to the picture of Larry and his wife used at his memorial, especially since she had 'mysteriously disappeared' around the same time. Stephanie, Grandma Mazur and Bunchy question the wife of the guy being cheated by the cable company, and found out John Curly had taken all the related cancelled checks. Further investigating reveals that both the cable company and RCG are routing a small percentage of customer payments to a different bank - skimming funds for personal use.

While she is investigating, a bomb blows up the Porsche, thankfully without hurting anyone. She shares her suspicions with Morelli, who confirms that the Trenton Police and federal authorities are investigating the same crimes. Vito Grizzoli is co-owner of the garbage company, so at first the police suspected money laundering, then they realized that someone is skimming from Vito's profits. Vito is cooperating with the investigation, but prefers to keep the police at arm's length, so he uses Terry (his niece) and Morelli as intermediaries. "Bunchy" is actually a federal agent named Bronfman, who thinks that Fred somehow stumbled on the scam, and that is why he disappeared.

As the information starts to fall in to place, Allen Shempsky - the bank manager - breaks into Stephanie's apartment, ties up Briggs and ambushes Stephanie, holding her at gunpoint. He says he and Tipp started small, skimming a modest amount just for occasional gambling stakes, but started taking more and more. Larry and Curly got involved, and it started to unravel when Larry's estranged wife, Laura, found out and demanded part of the money. Allen and Larry killed her, Fred happened to see them dumping her body and so Allen killed Fred. Allen also killed Martha, then Larry, and then Curly. He had set the explosives in the car Stephanie was driving when he realized she was close to figuring things out.

Allen is about to kill Stephanie, when Ramirez jumps into the window from her fire escape. Allen empties his gun at Ramirez, killing him, and allowing Stephanie to flee outside and borrow her neighbor's gun. Before she can return to her apartment, Allen escapes.

Stephanie had already promised Ranger to chauffeur Ahmed back to the airport. While she is en route, with Grandma Mazur in the front seat, Briggs calls, having hacked the bank's records and found out that Allen was booked to fly out of the airport within the hour. With Grandma and Ahmed's help, Stephanie apprehends Allen, who confesses where he buried Fred. Stephanie learns Allen was actually stealing from Larry and Curly (who were skimming from Vito).

Returning home from Fred's memorial service, Stephanie decides it is time to make a choice; she dresses in a slinky cocktail dress, then calls one of the two men in her life and asks him to come over. The novel ends without saying which one she called.

Stephanie's latest quarry is Eddie DeChooch, a septuagenarian semi-retired mobster who was arrested for smuggling cigarettes into New Jersey from Richmond, Virginia. Stephanie finds him in a state of abject depression at his home, but he eludes her and, while searching the house for clues, Stephanie finds a dead body in his shed, an elderly woman named Loretta Ricci, shot multiple times.

Stephanie soon learns that she is not the only one searching for DeChooch; two Mafia types, Benny and Ziggy, are following her around and making themselves at home in her apartment, while her boyfriend, police detective Joe Morelli, wants to question DeChooch about the dead woman in his home. At the same time, Stephanie's friend "Mooner" is worried because his friend and roommate, Dougie Kruper, has disappeared.

At home, Stephanie's dinner with her family is interrupted by the surprise appearance of her older sister, Valerie, with her two young daughters, whose "perfect" life in California came to an abrupt end when her husband abandoned her for their teenage babysitter. Over the next few days, Valerie proposes a number of radical schemes to get her life back under control, ranging from following Stephane's example as a bounty hunter to becoming a lesbian.

Stephanie learns that DeChooch is searching for something, and tries to tempt him into the open by claiming to have whatever "it" is. Connie Rosoli, the office manager for Stephanie's boss, finds out from her Mafia-affiliated family members that DeChooch is looking desperately for a human heart!

When DeChooch was in Richmond, the Mafioso he was collecting the cigarettes from, Louis "Louie D." DiStephano, died of a sudden heart attack. DeChooch telephoned his boss back in Trenton, but misheard his boss's instructions to escort the body back to Trenton for burial (''"bring the fart to me"'') as instructions to bring Louie D's ''heart'' back. DeChooch cut out Louie D's heart and brought it back to Trenton, but now he's lost it, and Louie's widow, Sophia, is demanding that he get it back.

DeChooch kidnaps Stephanie's Grandma Mazur and demands the heart in exchange for her. Stephanie manages to rescue her by swapping her for a pig's heart from the butcher shop.

When Mooner also disappears, Stephanie tracks him and Dougie down, with Ranger's help, in the basement of Sophia DiStephano's home in Richmond, where she has been torturing them for the location of the heart. Ranger and Stephanie free Mooner and Dougie, though Sophia manages to escape. Mooner and Dougie confess that DeChooch tasked them to take an ice cooler to Richmond, but they had no idea what was in it, and it turns out that a neighborhood dog ate the heart from the cooler while it was unattended, and Dougie inadvertently delivered an empty cooler to Sophia.

The only thing left is to arrest DeChooch. Stephanie confronts him at his home, and asks him if he killed Loretta Ricci. He says no; Loretta gave herself a fatal heart attack while trying, over-enthusiastically, to rouse him from impotence. He shot her body in frustration, and also to conceal the real cause of death (because it was too embarrassing). Sophia appears, holding both of them at gunpoint, and demanding that Stephanie cut out DeChooch's heart, as "an Eye for an eye". Stephanie manages to subdue Sophia, who is arrested by the police. DeChooch admits that he is too tired to keep running, but insists, for the sake of his pride, that he be brought in by Ranger, not a woman.

The novel ends with Ranger approaching Stephanie in her apartment, reminding her that they have "unfinished business" - specifically, she promised to spend a night with him if he helped her capture DeChooch.

FTAs

Eddie DeChooch Roseanne Kreiner *Melvin Baylor

Car deaths

Stephanie's Honda CRV Mary Mason's Cadillac Seville - hit by a train.

Category:2001 American novels Category:Stephanie Plum books Category:St. Martin's Press books

The prologue begins at the point where ''High Five'' ended, revealing who Stephanie picked: Ranger or Joe Morelli.

'''Five months later...''' Stephanie's latest FTA, Carol Zabo, is attempting to avoid jail-time by jumping off a bridge to drown herself. Stephanie talks her down by promising to persuade the man who reported her not to press charges.

Returning to the bonds office, Stephanie is handed a nightmare assignment: Ranger has gone FTA, and Stephanie has to track him down. Apart from her attraction to and respect for Ranger, Stephanie knows that his skills as a bounty hunter are far beyond hers. Ranger was scheduled to appear in court for a minor charge of carrying a concealed weapon, but he is also wanted for questioning related to a fire in an office park, where Homer Ramos, the son of notorious international arms dealer Alexander Ramos, was killed. Stephanie is afraid Ranger might be suspected of murdering Homer, and even more afraid that he might have actually done it.

To complicate matters, Stephanie also has to deal with: Being followed by two hit men, waiting for Ranger to make contact with her; Being followed by her nemesis, Joyce Barnhardt, expecting the same; her eccentric Grandma Mazur moving into her apartment after an argument with Stephanie's father; being saddled with a giant, voracious dog named Bob; Stephanie initially agrees to dog-sit Bob as a favor to the police officer who arrested Carol Zabo, in exchange for him dropping the charges, but then realizes that the move is meant to be permanent; *having to track down the high-bond FTAs normally given to Ranger, including a psychopathic killer/rapist, Morris Munson.

Ranger makes contact with her (without giving her the opportunity to capture him) and asks her to do surveillance on the Ramos family's properties in Jersey. When she drives past the Ramos compound in Deal, she is surprised when Alexander, the Ramos patriarch himself, jumps into her car alone and offers her $20 to drive him to a bar so he can smoke without interference. Over drinks, Stephanie pretends to recognize Alexander from news coverage and expresses her condolences over Homer's death. Alexander is dismissive, saying Homer was "stupid and greedy", and caused his own death.

Breaking into the Trenton home of Alexander's eldest son, Hannibal, Stephanie and Lula find Homer's ex-girlfriend, Cynthia Lotte, searching the house for the jewelry and the silver Porsche that Homer gave her as gifts. They find the Porsche, with a dead man sitting behind the wheel, shot through the head. Cynthia insists on driving away with her Porsche, so Stephanie and Lula are forced to help her shove the corpse out the door, before Stephanie reports the crime. A short time later, Cynthia is also found shot to death, behind the wheel of the Porsche.

Growing impatient, the two hit men, Mitchell and Habib, kidnap Stephanie and bring her before their boss, Arturo Stolle. Stolle says she is to act as the bait for Ranger, but she escapes through the window of the warehouse room they lock her in. Needing to make contact with Ranger again, she asks Carol Zabo to ambush Joyce Barnhardt and ensure that Stephanie is not followed to her meeting. However, this backfires when Joyce orders Stephanie to deliver Ranger to her, or else she will press charges against Carol and likely prompt her to attempt suicide again. Stephanie and Lula manage to trick Joyce into kidnapping an old acquaintance of Lula's who marginally resembles Ranger.

Stephanie confers separately with Morelli and Ranger, and she figures out the mystery. Ranger explains that Arturo Stolle's normal "slice of the Trenton crime pie" is human trafficking, but recently has diversified into drug dealing. He recruited Homer Ramos to be the bagman for his operation, believing that the other Jersey crime factions would be hesitant to cross Alexander. But instead, Homer's actions upset the boundaries between the factions, where previously the Ramos family has restricted their illegal activities to arms, while the mob has enjoyed a monopoly on drugs. Ranger has been acting as an intermediary between the factions, hoping to prevent a crime war. Eventually, the mob decided to have Homer assassinated. Stephanie shrewdly guesses that Homer's death was faked, and Alexander and Hannibal have been hiding him in their houses until he can be slipped out of the country.

When she returns home, Stephanie is confronted and held at gunpoint by Homer, who has been searching frantically for the bag of money he was carrying to the meeting with Ranger. It was originally in the trunk of the Porsche, and he first thought that Cynthia had taken it, but now believes that only Stephanie could have it. Before Homer can shoot her, Ranger appears and subdues him. Later, Morelli gleefully reports to her that Homer has given the police and the FBI enough evidence to indict both Alexander and Hannibal, and that Mitchell and Habib, arrested for kidnapping, have likewise turned evidence on Stolle. In secret, Stephanie learns that, after she drove away in the Porsche, Cynthia unwittingly threw the gym bag filled with money out of the trunk while cleaning it, and it was picked up by Stephanie's friend and sometime-FTA, "Mooner" and his friend Dougie. She decides to let them enjoy it.

After Stephanie spends the night at Morelli's house, they are confronted the next morning by his mother and grandmother, who scold her for taking advantage of him. To her surprise, Morelli assures them that he plans to marry Stephanie.

Car deaths

This is a list of cars destroyed or abandoned by Stephanie Plum during the course of the novel.

Honda Civic, burned up by reefer from Mooner

"Rollswagon", not dead, just abandoned for being junk

Lincoln Town Car, hit by Morris Munson

Carpet Car, set on fire by flaming dog poop bag

FTAs

Carol Zabo: shoplifting, destruction of police property

Morris Munson: vehicular manslaughter

Lenny Dale: domestic violence

Walter "Moon Man" Dunphy: drunk and disorderly, urinating in public

Category:2000 American novels Category:Stephanie Plum books

Stephanie is asked by her parents' next-door neighbor, Mabel Markowitz, to find her granddaughter, Evelyn and great-granddaughter, Annie, who have disappeared. During a messy divorce with her ex-husband, Steven Soter, Evelyn was forced to post a child custody bond, and Mabel used her house as collateral. If Evelyn is not found, then the bond company will foreclose on her house, and the money will be forfeited to Steven. Mabel asks for Stephanie's help, since as a bounty hunter she is the closest thing Mabel knows to a detective. Stephanie is unable to refuse, even though she is not a private investigator.

After interviewing Evelyn's bondsman, Les Sebring, and Steven Soter, Stephanie is baffled; Steven was domineering and abusive, and Evelyn had no friends or other family members she might go to in an emergency, and no one has any idea where she might have gone. Steven seems to be less concerned about Annie's well-being than he is eager to get his hands on the bond money.

While snooping through Evelyn's apartment, Stephanie encounters her landlord, a local crime boss named Eddie Abruzzi. He warns Stephanie that if she knows where Evelyn is, she should tell him, or else he will "declare war" and she will be "the enemy." Stephanie's mentor, Ranger Manoso, explains to her that Abruzzi is an avid wargamer, and tends to frame everything in quasi-military terms.

At the Plum home, a new crisis arises when Stephanie's "perfect" sister, Valerie, gets fired from her job at the bank. Stephanie's mother turns to her in desperation, and Stephanie improvises, setting Valerie up with Albert Kloughn, Evelyn's hapless divorce lawyer. Kloughn's practice has been slow in taking off, so he soon becomes attached to Stephanie, following her and Lula around in trying to apprehend fugitives and investigate Evelyn's whereabouts.

As she is trying to track down Evelyn, Stephanie is unnerved to realize that she is being stalked. First, someone leaves a bag of wild snakes attached to her apartment door, then a large tarantula on the seat of her car. Worse, men dressed in animal costumes are following her around. An attack by one of the men destroys Stephanie's car, then a second. When the men try to kidnap her, her mother sees them and impulsively runs over one with her car.

Finally, Stephanie comes home one night and finds Steven Soter on her living room couch, shot through the head. The police investigate, and when she asks Joe Morelli how the body got into her apartment without any of her neighbors noticing, she is horrified by his answer: Soter's body was sawed in half at the waist, and the pieces were carried in with two large bags, then taped back together.

Stephanie realizes that Abruzzi is "conducting psychological warfare" against her, believing that she knows where Evelyn is. Ranger asks around and finds out that Abruzzi is searching obsessively for his most prized possession: a medal that once belonged to Napoleon. Abruzzi, besides being a wargamer, is an avid collector of military memorabilia, and believes the medal is a lucky talisman. Ranger admits he doesn't know why Abruzzi would think Evelyn has the medal, but obviously he does.

Then Ranger informs her that he is collecting on her "debt" to him, and, since Stephanie is on a "break" from her relationship with Morelli, she consents to have sex with Ranger.

With Soter's death, the child custody bond is no longer necessary, and Mabel is relieved to be told that her house is safe, but Evelyn does not resurface. Stephanie eventually tracks her to the airport, before she is about to leave for Miami with Annie. Evelyn explains that Steven was in debt to Abruzzi, and was scared of him, but Abruzzi considered Steven a member of his "command", and so invited Steven and all of his "troops" with small children to Abruzzi's daughter's birthday party. While she was there, Annie wandered into Abruzzi's office and palmed the medal, thinking it was a party favor.

Now that Evelyn is finally free of Steven, she has arranged to sell the medal to a collector in Miami for enough money to start a new life. She knew Abruzzi was threatening Mabel, but she couldn't come out of hiding or go to the police, knowing that ''"the law moves too slowly for a guy like Abruzzi."'' Stephanie, seeing how scared and desperate Evelyn is, lets her and Annie go.

When Stephanie returns to her apartment, Abruzzi's men appear in a van, holding Valerie at gunpoint, telling Stephanie to come with them or they'll kill her sister. Stephanie complies, and Valerie is released. Stephanie is brought to Abruzzi at a safe house, and he begins torturing her - searing her arm with a hot poker - for Evelyn's exact location in Miami, which she doesn't know. Before he can do more, Valerie, who has followed them, jumps into the van and drives it through the wall of the house, allowing both her and Stephanie to escape.

Running home, Stephanie calls both Morelli and Ranger. After listening to her story, Ranger excuses himself, and a short time later, Abruzzi is found dead in his car, with a note saying that he has killed himself over some recent business failures. Stephanie is unnerved to know that Ranger has killed Abruzzi to keep her and Evelyn safe, but she and Morelli silently agree not to pursue it any further.

Car deaths

Honda CR-V - Fire bombed by a rabbit-costumed man

Honda CR-V - Doused with lighter fluid and lit up with a match

Ranger's truck - Set on fire when a package was thrown in the bed

FTAs

Andy Bender Martin Paulson *Laura Minello

Stephanie's cousin and boss, Vinnie, has written the visa bond for Samuel Singh, an Indian immigrant working temporarily in New Jersey. Now he has gone missing, and his landlord, Mrs. Apusenja, insists that Vinnie track him down. She claims Singh is engaged to her daughter, Nonnie, but Nonnie appears more concerned for her dog, "Boo," who went missing at the same time.

Partnered with Ranger, Stephanie begins with TriBro, Singh's workplace, owned by three brothers, Andrew, Bart and Clyde Cone. While Andrew is helpful and Clyde is very enthusiastic about the case, Bart Cone gives Stephanie the creeps. Her boyfriend, Joe Morelli, does a background check and finds that Bart Cone was a suspect in the unsolved murder of a woman named Lillian Paressi. Circumstantial evidence tied him to the crime scene, but the indictment was dismissed when the DNA evidence proved negative.

After returning home from TriBro, Stephanie is unnerved to find a bouquet of white carnations and red roses, accompanied by photographs of a murdered woman. She also receives some rather creepy emails.

Based on the Apusenjas' description of his habits, Stephanie identifies Singh's only friend, an Indian man named Howie that works at a nearby McDonald's. While she is questioning him outside the restaurant, a passing motorist shoots him between the eyes.

Stephanie only gets more nervous when she questions Lillian Paressi's friend, who remembers that Lillian also received a bouquet of carnations and roses.

Andrew Cone excitedly calls Stephanie to tell her that Singh has applied for a job in Las Vegas, and his prospective employer called TriBro for a reference. Stephanie sets out for Vegas, accompanied by her sidekick Lula and Vinnie's secretary, Connie Rossoli. They rescue Boo from the home of a woman Singh was living with, but Stephanie gets a call from Morelli, who was informed by the Vegas police that Singh's body was found in a car at the airport, shot execution style. Afraid that the "Roses and Carnations Killer" has followed them to Nevada, Stephanie and Connie quickly return to New Jersey; Lula, afraid to fly again, decides to drive cross-country with Boo for company.

Drafted to attend a birthday dinner for Morelli's uncle, Stephanie is even more unnerved when Morelli's spooky Grandma Bella claims to have "visions" of Morelli being married with many children, but losing his wife to a violent death.

Ranger assigns his security company's employees to keep Stephanie safe, but two of them are badly injured while following her around: Tank, Ranger's right-hand man, suffers a broken leg when a fugitive jumps out his window and lands on him; later, when Stephanie's pregnant sister Valerie goes into labor, her water breaks over the second man, Cal, who faints dead away and suffers a concussion hitting his head on the floor. Stephanie's new niece, her older sister Valerie's daughter with Albert Kloughn, is born. She is named Lisa.

Stepping outside the hospital to get some air, Stephanie is accosted by a teenager with a gun, who calls himself "Fisher Cat" and tells her she is the prize of a "game" - the winner is the one who succeeds in killing her. Stephanie disarms Fisher Cat with a groin kick, but is knocked unconscious by his stun gun. When she regains consciousness, Fisher Cat is dead beside her, shot twice through the head. Morelli examines Fisher Cat's laptop and finds that the game is run through an online chat room, by "The Webmaster."

Unwilling to let go of her suspicion that Bart Cone is the Roses and Carnations Killer, Stephanie goes back to the TriBro factory to confront him, only to discover that the Webmaster is the youngest brother, Clyde (his "Webmaster" appellation has less to do with his online role in masterminding the game than with his lifelong passion for Spider-Man comics). Clyde killed Lillian Paressi, which is why Bart was circumstantially linked to the crime, but the DNA evidence was inconclusive. Clyde also killed Howie, Samuel Singh, and Fisher Cat. He has also kidnapped Lula and Albert and wired them to a bomb in another part of the factory. Still playing his "game", Clyde draws a gun and stalks Stephanie through the factory floor, but Stephanie manages to find a gun concealed in Bart's desk and return fire, killing Clyde. Ranger and Morelli arrive and defuse the bomb, freeing Lula and Albert.

After spending the night with Morelli, Stephanie is greeted the following morning by his mother and Grandma Bella, who admits that the woman in her vision was someone else's wife, but "maybe she was just sleeping."

Stephanie and Lula happen to be waiting outside a deli when a young man in a red Devil mask runs outside after robbing it, only to find that his getaway bicycle's tire is flat, Lula having shot it while trying to disprove Stephanie's doubts about her marksmanship. "Red Devil" throws a Molotov cocktail into the store, but the owner throws it back before it explodes, accidentally destroying Stephanie's latest car. Her boyfriend, police detective Joe Morelli, warns her that gang activity in Trenton is worsening, and "Red Devil"'s gang, the "Comstock Street Slayers", may decide to target her, especially if he believes Stephanie can identify him without his mask.

By coincidence, Stephanie is driving her latest FTA, Salvatore "Sally" Sweet, and her Grandma Mazur, to the police station, when she notices Red Devil and several gang cohorts at a fast food drive-through. She calls the police, but the gang opens fire with automatic weapons, wounding her friend, Officer Eddie Gazzara, though not seriously. Furious and terrified in equal measure, Stephanie tries to think of a way to neutralize the gang, especially since she refuses Morelli's attempts to keep her under house arrest at his home.

Stephanie's mentor, former Special Forces soldier and bounty hunter Carlos "Ranger" Manoso, loans Stephanie the use of a truck from his security company's fleet. On a whim, she follows the truck's GPS system to its previous location, which turns out to be a high-security office building with a luxurious apartment on the top floor, where Stephanie decides to wait out the crisis, at least until Ranger returns from his out-of-state trip. Although she feels that she and her family members are safe for the time being, she can't relax until the gang is no longer a threat to her.

Stephanie catches a break when she recognizes her latest FTA, Anton Ward, as the Red Devil. She, Connie Rosoli and Lula bail Ward out of jail and spirit him to their boss, Vincent Plum's second home in Point Pleasant, intending to interrogate him about the gang's intentions, but none of them can sufficiently intimidate him. When Ranger returns from his trip, Stephanie takes him to Ward, who quickly confesses: after the Slayers' Trenton "captain" was killed, the gang brought "Junkman", a ranking member of the gang's Los Angeles branch, to fill the vacancy, but to prove himself to the gang, he is required to kill a list of targets, including two rival gang members and one police officer (which he already has), and finally Stephanie. As a bounty hunter, Stephanie has apprehended several members of the gang in the past, all of whom consider it humiliating to be brought to jail by a woman. Stephanie is sickened to hear that the Slayers' plan is to kidnap and gang-rape her before Junkman kills her.

Ranger offers Stephanie the continued use of his apartment, but when Morelli tells her that someone tentatively identified as Junkman has been arrested, Stephanie considers the threat over and rushes out to attend her sister Valerie's bridal shower. Stepping outside the hall, she is kidnapped without warning and brought to a children's playground where the Slayers hold court at night. Before she is attacked, however, Sally Sweet, whose band was playing at the shower and saw her being abducted, drives his school bus onto the scene and opens fire on the gang members with a fully automatic Uzi, killing several, including Junkman, and causing the rest to flee. Before the police and Ranger's men arrive, Stephanie places dropped guns into the hands of the dead Slayers to ensure that it appears they fired first and Sally acted in defense of himself and her. Morelli and Ranger, amused at having been "upstaged by a man in a strapless dress," congratulate Sally for his heroism and mention that the city has posted a $10,000 reward ("ten big ones") for Junkman's capture.

Car deaths

Stephanie's Ford Escape - Fire bombed by the Red Devil Stephanie's $200 Lincoln Town Car - Sprayed with graffiti and shot to bits by The Slayers.

Almost car death

*"Big Blue" - sprayed with graffiti, but somehow spared being destroyed; recovered by Morelli and detailed back to normal

FTAs

Roger Banker Harold Pancek Carol Cantell Salvatore "Sally" Sweet Anton Ward Shoshanna Brown *Jamil Rodriguez

Stephanie Plum has had enough - enough of grappling with fugitives in garbage piles, enough of being constantly shot at, and enough of having her cars blown up on a semi-regular basis. So she quits her job as a bail enforcement agent and resolves to get a normal job and a normal life. However, events conspire against her. Her three attempts at a normal job - working at a button factory, the Kan-Kleen Dry-Cleaning Service, and serving fast-food chicken at Cluck-in-a-Bucket - all end in disaster, partly because someone is, once again, attempting to kill her. It's someone she knows, and someone who knows her too well, but, as her on-again/off-again boyfriend, cop Joe Morelli points out, she's made a lot of enemies.

At the same time, Stephanie is trying to avoid having to wear an eggplant-colored gown as maid of honor at her sister Valerie's upcoming wedding. The wedding itself hits a snag when Valerie's hapless fiancé, lawyer Albert Kloughn, makes an insensitive remark about her weight at a family dinner, and she vows not to get married unless she can lose at least sixty pounds in less than ten days.

Stephanie becomes convinced that the man stalking her is Spiro Stiva, the fugitive son of the Burg's favorite undertaker, Constantine. Spiro disappeared when Stephanie and her Grandma Mazur inadvertently burned down the Stiva funeral home in ''Two for the Dough'', and now it looks like Spiro is back for revenge. A car bomb claims Stephanie's Saturn as her ex-boss, Mama Macaroni, is trying to drive away in it; Stephanie's last customer at Cluck-in-a-Bucket heaves a bomb through the drive-through window, and Stephanie catches a glimpse of a heavily scarred face before he drives off. *While escorting Grandma Mazur at a funeral viewing at Stiva's parlor, the same scarred man runs over Morelli with a car, breaking his leg.

Stephanie's mentor, ex-Special Forces mercenary Ranger Manoso, offers her a job with his security firm, running background checks on persons of interest. Despite her trepidation at being too close to Ranger, and the friction it causes with Morelli, she accepts for the security it offers her.

While running information searches, Stephanie discovers evidence linking Spiro's reappearance with the disappearance of four older men from the Burg, all of whom disappeared on the same day and were later found shot to death in a shallow grave outside Trenton. All four men were United States Army veterans, stationed at Fort Dix at the same time as Constantine Stiva.

In a fit of depression, Stephanie confides to Morelli that she quit her job as a bounty hunter because she feels "stupid and boring" - she has no career path, no hobbies, no strong interests, and nothing she's really good at. Morelli smiles and says that, while "stupid" is sometimes "a tough call," he finds her anything but boring.

While Stephanie's mother was complaining about Stephanie's lack of direction, Stephanie recklessly told her family a small lie, claiming that she can play the cello - and before she knew it, her mother has rented one for her to play at Valerie's wedding. Now she has to find a way out of that predicament as well. Fortunately for her, two events intervene on her behalf: a bomb blows up Morelli's garage (with the cello inside) on the night of the wedding reception; the next day, Valerie calls from the airport to cancel the wedding, as she, her three children, and Albert are all leaving for Disney World, and may not come back.

After driving Grandma Mazur to another viewing at the funeral home, Stephanie goes snooping through Constantine Stiva's attached house, looking for signs that Spiro is hiding out there. Then she is tazed unconscious and wakes up in a coffin, being wheeled into an abandoned house in Spiro's name. Her kidnapper turns out to be Constantine himself.

Spiro, he confides, died in the fire, but makes a convenient scapegoat for what Constantine had to do. Thirty-six years ago, he masterminded an armored car hijacking at Fort Dix; he and four Army buddies stole $7 million and hid it in a vault in the basement of the funeral home, doling out shares at 10-year intervals. It was arranged that all five of them were needed to open the vault, but Constantine eventually figured out the combination and "borrowed" from the stash from time to time, then had to take it all to rebuild his business after the funeral home burned down. A month ago, one of his accomplices was diagnosed with cancer and requested his entire remaining share of the money. Constantine called all of them to a meeting, ostensibly to vote on the distribution, and Constantine shot and buried them all. Now he has to kill Stephanie in order to complete the illusion that Spiro is the one responsible. He locks her in the basement and heads out to do one last Spiro impersonation.

Before he returns, Stephanie is rescued from the basement by Ranger and his crew, who have been looking non-stop for her in the six hours since she disappeared. Ranger pleads with Stephanie to go home and stay safe while he and his men stay behind to apprehend Constantine. He goes so far as to handcuff her to his right-hand man, Tank, who escorts her to Morelli's house before releasing her.

On the pretext of taking Morelli's dog, Bob, for a walk, Stephanie borrows her family's Buick and stakes out the Stiva house, while Ranger is lying in wait for him. When Constantine pulls into the garage, Stephanie rear-ends his car with the Buick, crushing the car and trapping Constantine behind the air bag. Stephanie tells Ranger she feels much better, and decides that, while learning to play the cello might be fun, she doesn't ''need'' to, as her life is already plenty interesting.

A Caribbean coastal resort, Hotel Elysium, is menaced by a series of vicious marine animal attacks originating from a nearby sunken shipwreck. Diving instructor Anne Kimbrough's student is one of the victims, but her estranged police officer husband Steve refuses to let her see the corpse. Soon after, two women and a man are killed by piranha which has developed the ability to fly.

Concerned, Anne finds that she is being frequently bothered by tourist Tyler Sherman, and decides to take him with her to the morgue to get a look at the body. A nurse comes in and kicks them out, unaware that a piranha was hiding in the body. It kills the nurse and escapes through a window.

In her hurry, Anne left her credit card behind at the scene. Anne and Tyler have a one-night stand. In the morning she begins to study the pictures of the corpse, and is horrified by what she discovers. Steve arrives, throwing the card at her, angry that she went to the morgue and that she has a man in her bed. She tries to warn him of what she has discovered, but he ignores her.

Anne then tries to cancel the diving sessions, leading to her getting fired by her manager. Attempting to capture one as proof of the incoming threat, she is intercepted by Tyler, who informs her that he is a biochemist and member of a team which has developed the ultimate weapon: a specimen of genetically modified piranha, capable of flying. He explains that his team lost a cylinder full of these fish in the water earlier.

Gabby provides the proof Anne needs to Steve, showing him that they are a serious danger, as they are now eating each other. At a meeting, Anne tries her best to reason with the manager, to no avail. Steve provides a piranha wing as evidence. Steve tells her that she cannot trust Tyler, because the army says he is crazy.

Later, a piranha attacks Gabby's son and kills him, leaving Gabby to vow revenge. Anne tries to dissuade him, but fails. Having ignored Anne's advice, the manager, Raoul, hosts a nighttime fish party to capture grunion. Unfortunately for the residents, the piranha join the hunt. Anne gets a man named Aaron to patrol the beach but he is lured to the sea where the piranha kill him. During the fishing party promoted by the resort, the piranhas fly out of the water and attack the guests. Anne leads the survivors into the hotel, where they shut the doors and windows. Gabby tries to attack the flying piranha, but they easily overwhelm and kill him.

In the morning, the piranha leave as they do not like the light. Tyler and Anne decide to undertake Gabby's plan, and blow up the ship to kill the predators. Meanwhile, Anne and Steve's son Chris has been hired, against their wishes, by a local ship 'Captain' Dumont and his daughter Allison. They sail away and strand themselves on an island. They get lost at sea and try to set sail again, heading straight toward the wreck.

When Chris and Allison are stranded in a raft above the shipwreck, Anne and Tyler arrive in a motorboat and dive down to the wreck to plant the timer charges that Gabby left behind. With only 10 minutes to get out of the wreck before the bomb explodes, Anne and Tyler are trapped in one of the sunken ships rooms by the murderous piranha who all return to the wreck. Steve, piloting a police helicopter, ditches the chopper and swims to Anne and Tyler's motorboat where Chris and Allison are. Steve powers up the boat and takes off. Down in the wreck, Tyler gets stuck and is eaten by the piranhas. Anne escapes out of a porthole, then grabs the anchor, allowing herself to be pulled away by the motorboat on the surface. The bomb detonates, destroying the sunken ship and all the piranha with it. With all the piranhas dead, Anne swims to the surface and is picked up by Steve, Chris, and Allison in their boat.

During the night, Barbara (Lorissa McComas) and her boyfriend David (Richard Israel) sneak into a closed down US Army test site, and discovered a pool. They go swimming, but are attacked and killed by an unseen force in the pool. The next day, J.R. Randolph (Monte Markham) the uncle of Barbara, hires private investigator Maggie McNamara (Alexandra Paul), to investigate the incident, believing her to be a runaway.

Maggie searches the area for any possible witnesses, eventually stopping by local homeowner Paul Grogan (William Katt), asking for any knowledge of the girl's disappearance. He claims to have not seen her, but leads her to the army test site where they discover the pool. They enter to look for any clues, until Maggie thinks they should drain the pool. As she starts the draining, a scientist named Dr. Leticia Baines (Darleen Carr), encounters them and attacks Maggie and Paul to stop the draining, but is too late to do so. They investigate the bottom of the pool and discover a skeleton, which they believe is that of a dog. Baines steals the jeep, but crashes after losing consciousness. Later that night, she wakes up and informs them that a school of piranha lived in the pool that they had drained, and are assumed to be headed to the river.

Paul, knowing his daughter Susie (Mila Kunis) was at a scout camp just downstream of the river joins Maggie and Paul to visit Randolph and try to convince him to shut down a grand opening of a resort just downstream. They fail, and have to make many twists and turns to try and save people downstream. On the way to warn people of the piranha, Maggie and Paul are arrested after Randolph had claimed that they lied about the piranha, dismissing it as "nonsense". They eventually escape from custody to warn the people of Lost River.

The piranha first make their way to the camp, attacking the kids. Susie takes a raft and saves her friend Darlene. Darlene tries to save Laura (Soleil Moon Frye) but she falls in and the piranha kills her. Maggie and Paul make it to the camp. Paul grabs a canoe and saves his daughter and the kids. Maggie calls the resort to warn them of the danger but is ignored. She and Paul drive to the resort themselves but arrive too late; the school of piranha having killed most of the swimmers. Randolph now sees and realizes his mistake.

Maggie and Paul take a speedboat to the latter's old workplace, to open the valve containing toxins and spread them into the lake, in attempts to kill the piranha. Upon arrival, the control room is flooded, and Paul must swim under to it and release the valve while Maggie stays in the boat counting to 200 before pulling him out. The piranha attacks Paul but he successfully releases the valve, spreading the toxins. Maggie starts the boat's engines, pulling Paul away from the piranha school. As Maggie pulls out the rope, she discovers that it was cut loose, making her think that Paul did not make it. A badly wounded but alive Paul surfaces from the water. J.R. Randolph then commits suicide after he discovers that he will face legal action.

After the horrific incident, the Mayor of Lost River announcing that the piranha somehow are all dead, but then at the ocean the trilling sounds of the piranha are heard, and it turns out that half of the piranha have survived and made their way to the ocean.

Five year old Ben Archer watches silently as his father starts up his car and drives away with his secretary, and they both offer only a wave out the window in parting. His mother, Sandy, can only watch heartbroken from the window of their house as her ex-husband leaves them. Ben’s father promised to visit him, yet never comes back. They are both upset, but they decide to have a fresh start, so they move into a loft apartment in downtown Seattle to begin a new life with just the two of them. Sandy makes creative efforts to turn it into a home for them. They gradually overcome his father leaving and foster a very close bond with important rituals and routines, including making a collage with beach debris. Sandy develops an interest in dating, but her suitors never fit well and do not last long, which allows Ben’s ideal relationship with his mother to resume. Five years later, however, Sandy decides she is ready for marriage again, and begins seriously dating U.S. Federal Prosecutor, Attorney Jack Sturges.

In Federal Court, Jack successfully prosecutes mobster Frank Renda for drug trafficking. Before being sentenced to fifty years in federal prison at Sheridan, the elderly Frank makes a veiled threat of revenge towards Jack. After court is adjourned, Frank’s son Joey rephrases the threat in a more intimidating manner, but Jack does not back down and then dismisses him entirely. Sandy and Jack discuss his moving in, of which eleven year old Ben does not approve despite his mother’s reassurance that it is only a trial period. Jack is confident he can win him over, telling Sandy he has read every book on step parenting he could find.

The transition does not go smoothly for Ben, as he resentfully feels he is the one suffering all of the adjustments and that his mother is making the same mistake she made with his father, so he resorts to ensuring Jack is as uncomfortable and unwelcome as possible. Jack tries taking the subterfuge in stride, not realizing it is deliberate, but his efforts to connect with the boy are met with irritation as he only succeeds in disrupting Ben’s customary lifestyle. After meeting a boy named Norman Bronski at school, Ben feigns interest in joining the Indian Guides – a YMCA father son program – with Jack to secretly drive a wedge between them and get rid of him. Despite reluctance, Jack goes along with it at Sandy’s insistence, and he and Ben join Norman's "tribe," the Minotauks. Neither of them like the club, but Ben manages to effectively humiliate Jack at meetings.

Once it starts interfering with his job, Jack tells Sandy he can no longer be part of it. Ben fakes distress by this and compares it to his father leaving to turn Sandy against her boyfriend. Jack goes to apologize, and instead overhears Ben bragging about everything over the phone to his best friend Monroe. Although he is disheartened by this revelation, Jack does not tell Sandy about it and instead seeks advice from Indian Guides chief and fellow stepfather Chet Bronski. Chet tells Jack, the reason why Ben is doing this because he is afraid Jack will take his mother away from him. Chet was like Jack himself, Norman and Chet never got along, but the Indian Guides help them have a great relationship. That is what Jack will do. He then redoubles his efforts to bond with Ben by improving the Indian Guides. Meanwhile, Ben starts to connect with Norman and they become close friends after a sleepover. Just as Jack starts to strengthen his relationship with Ben, Joey’s threat catches up with him: the brakes on his Ford Explorer are cut, but Jack manages to avoid a more serious crash and ends up in Puget Sound. This causes him to miss an important canoe trip he promised to attend. Ben, having finally opened up, is genuinely hurt by this perceived betrayal to the point of tears, as it brings up bad memories of his father’s broken promises.

Ben returns home at the same time Jack does, he tells Ben that he had car trouble and was unable to get to the canoe trip on time and that he's sorry, but then Jack tells Ben that Chet had planned a camping trip for the Indian Guides on the 4th of July and that Jack promises Ben that they will go on the trip no matter what happens. Jack conceals the truth and refuses his boss Bob’s order to transfer to Portland, Oregon so he can redeem himself to go camping. His initial attempts are unsuccessful, and he feels the situation is hopeless. Joey and his two goons, Murray and Tony, are then discovered in the woods with rifles by Ben planning to kill Jack, and Jack confesses the truth behind his "car trouble" which garners Ben's forgiveness and understanding as he now knows Jack did not intentionally betray his trust like his father. Jack sends the rest of the Indian Guides to the ranger station while he and Ben (who returned to help him) improvise to distract the criminals.

The pair is eventually cornered in front of an abandoned mine shaft entrance rigged with dynamite, until they are rescued by the Minotauks and the crooks are disabled. Ben is impressed and finally gives his approval of Jack and consents to Jack proposing to Sandy. The two complete the beach collage, which symbolizes that the three of them are finally whole as a family. Jack and Sandy marry, with the Minotauks in attendance at the wedding, and despite nothing being perfect, all are happy.

Georges Saphir has spent his whole life trying to be the opposite of what his father was and has worked himself to the bone to become the perfect student, beloved by everyone in Saint Grollo Boys' School.

It works, until that Robert Jade a rebellious and attractive new student comes into the picture and begins to turn Georges' belief system upside-down. While Georges tries hard to get along with everyone, Robert doesn't care who he annoys. Compelled to shatter Georges' angelic image, Robert can't help but test the younger boy's faith and innocence, which he both hates and admires.

However, Georges and Robert are more similar than either realizes, and are soon berated by jealous and protective classmates, yet the two find themselves forming a friendship that will transform them both.

CIA dirty deeds man John Dresham (Luke Goss) and black ops organiser Anthony Chapel (Roger Guenveur Smith) hire mercenary John Seeger (Steven Seagal) and his crew for a mission in the French-controlled Galmoral Island in Southern Africa. Ostensibly, the purpose of the operation is to aid the local population, though in reality Dresham and Chapel plan to seize and profit off the island's rich oil and diamond reserves.

Seeger gets steamed when the mission goes wrong. Some of his soldiers, against Seeger's orders, take the French Ambassador (Rudiger Eberle) and his family hostage for leverage and later blow them all up. French troops arrive and attack the mercenaries, resulting in his best friend Radio Jones (Zaa Nkweta) being killed. Maxine Barnol, his spy posing as a journalist, suggests CIA involvement.

Seeger heads back to the United States and goes to the home of Radio's wife Shondra (Faye Peters), tells her the news, and then promises her that he'll take care of her and her young son Eddie (Tumi Mogoje). While there he kills two of Dresham's men sent to kill him and discovers Dresham's implication.

Chapel again hires the team of mercenaries, kidnapping Shondra and Eddie to force John into cooperating. The mission involves rescuing Kamal Dasan, the son of prominent gun runner Ahmet Dasan (Peter Butler), who has been arrested and thrown into the Randveld Prison outside of Cape Town, South Africa, and is due to be extradited to the United States.

Dresham discovers the job but not its object and when he bumps into Maxine he forces her to work for him instead of Chapel. Maxine leads him to believe that the target is the safe of a bank in Cape Town and Dresham uses his CIA influence to be shown round the security installation. Maxine listens attentively and takes photos.

Seeger leads Dresham in circles but when the mercenaries break into the prison they discover that Kamal isn't there any more. In the Cape Town bank, Seeger persuades the Greek government to arrest Kamal's father, then escapes making sure Dresham will be arrested too.

Finally, with a few loyal members of his team, John rescues Shondra and Eddie and kills Chapel and his guards.

Freddi Fish swims in the Mediterranean Sea on her way to school. She eventually waits for Luther, who brings his Codfish Commando Action Figure for show and tell. As they enter the classroom, they see that the guppies of their class are hiding. Mrs. Croaker explains that the guppies saw a ghost that steals their toys. While one of the students tells the story, the ghost appears and surprises everyone. While the class gets scared, the ghost swipes down and grabs Luther's action figure. After Luther shouts at the ghost, it gets away. Freddi thinks the ghost isn't real, and promises everyone that she and Luther will find it.

They eventually chase the ghost into the school basement. Freddi commands the ghost to stop, causing it to accidentally drop Luther's toy. Luther manages to retrieve the toy, and the ghost says that it will get it back and leaves, leaving behind a torn piece of sheet. Freddi believes that the ghost is really fake, and decides to build a trap in the basement. They are going to need five more parts in order to set up the trap. However, they need to search around the school to find more parts for their trap.

After they have everything, Freddi and Luther set up the trap and uses Luther's toy as bait. The ghost returns and gets the toy, but gets caught by Freddi and Luther. The ghost turns out to be the sharks from the first game. Freddi explains to the sharks that they should not steal things that belong to someone else. They give Freddi and Luther the guppies' toys, and Luther gives his toy to the sharks to give to the Squidfather, who never had any toys to play with. The two return the toys to the guppies and explains the solution to Mrs. Croaker. She and the guppies give a cheer to the two for saving the school.

Freddi and Luther are taking a summer vacation to the Founder's Day Festival in the Hawaiian Sea. As they enter the festival, they find that the Conch Shell which is used to signal the beginning of the festival has been stolen. The shell is vital to the festival as the festival cannot start without it. To make matters worse, Luther's Uncle Blenny, the "Grand Exalted Keeper of the Conch", is in jail for the mess. Now Freddi and Luther have to find the three golden pipes that fell out, and look for the real thief. They search and investigate the suspicious characters to find out who really "did it". Once the pipes are found, Old Soggy, Uncle Blenny's dogfish, will smell the scent and find the culprit. Freddi and Luther follow Old Soggy to an Aztec temple in the Sea off the Coast of Mexico.

In the Aztec temple, they spot the thief with a bag and the conch shell outside. Old Soggy swims off to catch the thief. When Luther starts losing control and grabs a jewel, the gate closes and he gets trapped in a cage. Freddi has to get the key to get it open. After Freddi frees Luther and he puts the jewel back in place, the gate opens and the bag drops into the temple. They catch the bag and tell everyone that Uncle Blenny is innocent. Inside the bag is one of six items: a microphone, a foreign language world map, a boxing glove, a cane, a spool of thread, or a toothbrush. One of the suspects is depending on the evidence from the item. When the suspect is chosen, he or she does not believe Freddi and Luther, but Old Soggy bites its tail or back. The culprit confesses and explains the whole situation to everyone.

After the culprit gives Uncle Blenny the conch shell, everyone apologizes to Uncle Blenny for blaming him. He forgives the town and has his title of "Grand Exalted Keeper of the Conch" reinstated. Luther places the pipes in the shell and Uncle Blenny blows out the signal to open the festival and everyone celebrates. The dialogue shows what will happen to the thief as the narrator mentions it, then he says "case closed", meaning the player finished the game.

There are six possible suspects, and each one has a different reason for stealing the Conch Shell.

As the game opens, Freddi and Luther are on their way to Calico Ranch in the Gulf of Mexico to meet Freddi's cousin, Calico Catfish, who agreed to teach them to raise hogfish. When they arrive, Cousin Calico tells them that her prized hogfish herd had been rustled (which in Calico's way means "someone came in and took them without asking", in other words stealing). Calico couldn't call the authorities as the Sheriff was possibly out of town. Freddi and Luther offer to help find the hogfish and catch the rustlers. After heading into Briny Gulch, the two detectives meet Saltwater Stella, the owner and operator of the local sodaloon. She tells them that two suspicious characters entered the sodaloon the other day. While investigating, Luther finds a note dropped by the rustlers. It mentions a meeting at the Rusty Rustler, a local shipwreck, at high tide. When they arrive at the wreck, they enter the combination code from the note to the hatch entrance and succeed to pry open the entrance. Freddi hears the hogfish grunting from inside. A rustler, the slim fish, stops them from entering and mentions that the hideout is for rustlers only. The rustlers are seriously fashion-cautious, so they won't accept Freddi and Luther until they have the proper attire. Using the magazine advertisement the rustler gave them, Freddi and Luther then set out to find materials for making rustler disguises.

Once they have the materials for the rustler disguise, they can get in the wreck and liberate the hogfish. Unfortunately, Luther pops out of the disguise and the rustlers capture Freddi and Luther and imprison them. The duo soon realise their cell is just above the hogfish. Going down and meeting the hogfish, they squeeze out of a tiny hole in the hogfish cell. Exploring around the wreck and finding a hook, the two detectives free the hogfish with the hook attached to an anchor's chain locking onto the window of the hogfish's cell. Luther engages the anchor to be lowered and the window is torn out, freeing the hogfish. Finally, Freddi and Luther need to find out who the mysterious Mr. Big is (Mr. Big could be anyone of the townfolk who had the idea of hog-napping). Freddi explains that she and Luther passed by one of the townfolk about the plan of rustling the hogfish when they reached the hogfish cell and found the evidence. After exposing, the thief who is Mr. Big explains the whole situation about capturing the hogfish. Freddi says to the culprit that "you shouldn't take things that don't belong to you, it hurts other people." and the culprit learned a valuable lesson. In the end, the rustlers get to have their dream job - hogfish ranching (they are now helping out at Cousin Calico's Ranch). Cousin Calico thank Freddi and Luther for helping everyone and gives a ten-gallon hat for Freddi and a five-gallon hat for Luther and teaches them how to lasso in order to be Hogfish Ranchers in the Wild West. During the credits, Freddi and Luther sing "Home on the Range". Sometimes, Luther adds on singing "Clementine".

Freddi and Luther visit Grandma Grouper and are on their way to Coral Cove in the West African Sea, but get run into a large mob of sea creatures and the park's developer Marty Sardini, who are both angry and yet terrified of the sea monster supposedly terrorizing the park. Freddi and Luther decide to investigate why this sea monster is scaring the six citizens (Earl, Donna, Laren, Kit Craftsman, Marge the Sarge, and Kipper). Firstly, they get into Coral Cove Park (after getting permission slip signed by the Mayor) and enter to find a chunk of green sea cheese with a large bite taken out of it. Freddi and Luther continue to examine it with the help of Casey, a smart friend of theirs's, and it becomes their first clue to locate the sea monster's whereabouts. After they get into the sea monster's cave and finding his to-do list, they discover he is lurking in the deepest crevice of the ocean. The sea monster, named Xamfear Duncan Dogberry Valentine, tells them he was driven out of Coral Cove Park by a certain greedy developer and was scaring the townspeople because they took his home. Luther figures this must mean Marty.

Just as Xamfear is about to show Freddi and Luther his deed for proof that he owns the park, Marty and the townsfolk arrive. Marty states that there is no such deed. Suddenly, Xamfear (after checking the place where he had the deed, under a piece of ground) comes to discover the deed has been stolen. Freddi and Luther find that Marty is missing as well. Together, Freddi and Luther slip into Marty's base and after dodging traps, find the hidden deed Marty has stolen. Marty catches them at his place and calls security right when the Mayor (after getting his picture taken) as well as the townsfolk show up (without Laren). Freddi and Luther reveal to everyone that Coral Cove rightfully belongs to Xamfear. Outraged, the mayor and the townsfolk turn on Marty and arrest him for theft and treason. In the end, Marty is stuck doing the dirty work, Freddi and Luther get the deed signed by Mayor Marlin, and the townsfolk celebrates when Xamfear allows them to play in the park. Freddi and Luther then swim out to the credits with Kipper with all characters on her computer.

Temple Caddy "T. C." Jeffords is an elderly, tyrannical, and arrogant cattle baron who owns a sprawling property in the New Mexico Territory, called The Furies. He harbors special contempt for the Herrera family, who are squatting on the property. T. C.'s beloved daughter, Vance, is as obsessed with wealth and every bit as ruthless as her father, though she has a secret, close bond with Juan Herrera, whom she has known since childhood. However, Vance seeks a suitor who can run the giant ranch with her once her father dies . She falls in love with Rip Darrow, who believes a portion of The Furies' land is rightfully his and holds a grudge against T. C.; meanwhile, Vance is shocked when Rip accepts a $50,000 bribe from T. C. to permanently get out of her life. In town, Rip owns a saloon he calls "The Legal Tender"; he subsequently opens a bank near it.

T. C. is so self-possessed, he pays bills with "T. C." notes rather than actual dollars. One day, he brings a woman home to The Furies: Flo Burnett, who plans to marry T. C. for his money. When Vance confronts Flo, Flo unabashedly admits she is seeking the marriage for financial security, and tells Vance that she and T. C. are soon to be married in San Francisco. Together, Flo and T. C. inform Vance that they have arranged for an outsider to take over the maintenance The Furies, so as to take pressure off of Vance, as well as oust the Herreras from the property. Furthermore, they have planned an extended trip to Europe for Vance. Enraged by this news, Vance hurls a pair of scissors at Flo's face, permanently disfiguring her.

Vance flees on horseback to the Herreras' home on The Furies. T. C. summons a number of his men to run the Herreras off the property. They arrive on horseback armed with guns, but the Herreras fight back by hurling boulders down the hill at them and returning fire. Vance stands by Juan's side as he fires back at her father's associates. The Herreras eventually surrender, and T. C. and his men execute Juan by hanging as Vance looks on. Before she departs, Vance proclaims her hatred for her father, and swears to him that she will ruin his life.

Seeking vengeance, Vance travels throughout the American west, buying up all of the "T. C." notes and dramatically eroding her father's wealth. At risk of losing his property, T. C. unsuccessfully seeks to borrow $50,000 from Flo to save The Furies. Meanwhile, Vance visits Rip, asking for assistance in her plot to ruin her father. Rip observes that Vance is consumed by hatred, but agrees to help her if she gives him a section of The Furies, to which she agrees. The two conspire to deceive T. C. by giving him false hope that a wealthy California investor is going to loan him the funds to save The Furies. When T. C. arrives at the bank to receive his "loan," he is met by Vance and Rip, and offered a crate of $140,000 of his own "T. C." notes, now worthless. Rather than lambasting his daughter, T. C. congratulates her on her cunning, and willingly relinquishes The Furies to her. He declares that he will start his life over elsewhere with the little means he has left. T. C. exits the bank, and burns his box of currency outside. As he walks down the street arm-in-arm with Vance and Rip, he is shot to death by Juan's bereaved mother. Vance and Rip return to The Furies with T. C.'s body, where they plan his burial.

The cartoon opens with a faux Walter Winchell-like voice discussing the end of the Third Reich, saying that "Germany has been battered into a fare-thee-well", and musing about where the high leadership, and "Fatso" Göring in particular has gone. The scene soon cuts to the Black Forest, where Hermann Göring—in bemedalled lederhosen—is "soothing his jangled nerves" marching while on a hunt. Nearby, a furrow in the ground appears, with a hole at the end.

Bugs pops out of the hole, and sees no sign of the Black Forest on his map (variants of this scene would be used in later cartoons as the lead-in to the joke that Bugs, while tunneling underground, did indeed turn wrong somewhere in New Mexico, usually by not taking a left turn at Albuquerque. This cartoon is the first time Bugs says the popular catchphrase: "I KNEW I 'shoulda' (should have) made 'dat' (that) left 'toin' (turn) at 'Albakoikie' (Albuquerque)"). The other is Bugs asks Göring about the directions to Las Vegas, oblivious to his location. Göring is almost tricked into going to Las Vegas, but then quickly realizes, "Las Veegas? Why, there is no Las Veegas in Germany!" before he fires his musket at Bugs. Genuinely alarmed by his mistaken destination ("Joimany?! Yipe!"), Bugs hightails it. Göring chases after the rabbit, trying to suck Bugs out of his hole with his musket as a plunger.

A few chase gags go by in which Bugs insults the integrity of Göring's medals by bending one with his teeth. Suckered into bending one himself, Göring declares them ersatz and mumbles all sorts of anti-Hitler sentiments ("Oh, do I hate that Hitler swine, that phony fuehrer, that…").Shull, Wilt (2004), p. 181–182 Bugs masquerades as Adolf Hitler after smearing on some mud, and faces the surprised Göring. Göring disappears off-screen in a flash to change into his Nazi uniform adorned with all sorts of medals. After the usual Nazi salute, Bugs berates him in faux German as he rips all of the medals off Göring's uniform ("''Klooten-flooten-blooten-pooten-meirooten-tooten!''"), quickly followed by his belt. Göring "kisses" in reverence, saying, "Look! I kiss mein Fuehrer's hand. I kiss right in Der Fuehrer's face!'" (the joke being a popular near-contemporary song with this title composed by Oliver Wallace and the subject of a Disney animated short in 1943). Afterwards, Göring exclaims "Oh, I’m a bad ''flooten-boy-glooten''!", a variant on Warner Bros. cartoons' frequently-cited Lou Costello-type catchphrase: "I'm a bad boy!".

Later, when the jig is up, Bugs rides in on a white horse, dressed as Brünhilde—from Wagnerian opera, to the tune of the "Pilgrims' Chorus" from ''Tannhäuser''. Entranced, Göring responds by dressing up as Siegfried. The two dance and the music changes to ''Wiener Blut'', before Bugs once again makes a fool of Göring and escapes (anticipating ''What's Opera, Doc?'' co-starring Elmer Fudd).Goldmark (2005), pp. 143–145.

Eventually, Göring gets a hawk to capture Bugs. Bugs, standing next to Göring asks, "Do you think he'll catch me, doc?" to which Göring replies, "Do I think he'll catch you? Why, he'll have you back here before you can say Schicklgruber." (Schicklgruber was the original surname of Hitler's father Alois.) Bugs runs off and jumps into his rabbit hole, but as he falls down the hole, the hawk, which imitates Jimmy Durante, catches Bugs in a bag, capturing him. Göring brings the bag to Hitler, who plays solitaire in front of a map depicting the decline of Fortress Europe. Göring identifies the captive in the bag as "Bugsenheimer Bunny" (as opposed to "Weisenheimer", or "wise guy") to ''Der Fuehrer''. As Herr Hitler talks of the great rewards he is going to pile upon Göring for this act of heroism, he peeks inside the bag and is shocked ("Ach!! Himmel!"). Göring goes and looks inside the bag as well, to be shocked as well (again, "Ach!! Himmel!"). Out of the bag comes Bugs dressed as Joseph Stalin—complete with an enormous pipe and a large moustache—staring back at them. As the cartoon ends, Bugs glances back at the camera and asks, in a Russian accent: "Does your tobacco taste different lately?", citing an ad slogan of that era for the Sir Walter Raleigh pipe tobacco manufactured by the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company.

Following the funeral of Simon Cordier (Vincent Price), a French magistrate and amateur sculptor, his secret diary is read out by Simon's pastor friend to a group of people gathered around the table, Simon's servants, and a police captain. The diary reveals that Simon has come into contact with a malevolent entity. The invisible yet corporeal being, called a ''horla'', is capable of limited psychokinesis and complete mind control. It is implied that Cordier's particular horla is one of a whole race of evil beings which devote themselves to driving humans insane.

Cordier first interacts with the horla when he meets a prisoner whom the entity drove to murder four people. The horla possesses the inmate and attempts to kill Cordier, who in self-defense accidentally kills the man. The magistrate inherits the prisoner's troubles as the horla turns its hauntings toward him.

As the horla begins to destroy Cordier's life, he fears he is going mad and seeks help from an alienist, who suggests that he take up a hobby. Cordier chooses to pick up his old interest in sculpture, meeting a model along the way. The model, a local tramp by the name Odette Malotte, is already married. Wanting a better life, she claims to love Cordier and he pledges his love to her in turn. The horla insists the model is not the charming jewel that Cordier sees, but instead a conniving gold-digger, and compels Cordier to treat her as such. This sets up a conflict in Cordier, that he might not be the astute judge of character that his title indicates.

In an episode of insanity, Cordier murders Odette with a knife. Her decapitated body is found in the river, but her husband (not Cordier) is blamed for the crime. As his and others' lives are put in jeopardy, he becomes convinced of the horla's existence and decides drastic measures are needed to end its evil. He lures the horla into his house at night. When his presence is felt, Simon hurls an oil lamp towards the curtains, setting the house ablaze. Simon succeeds in destroying the horla, but not without sacrificing himself as the house burns in flames.

The film concludes with the people seated around the table after reading Simon's diary. Some believe Simon was mad and that the horla does not exist, others are unsure and believe that the horla might have existed. The priest's opinion is that wherever evil exists, the horla exists.

The film is centered on the America's Cup series of yachting races and uses them as a backdrop for both an action/adventure and a romantic storyline.

Naïve mining engineer Mike Lambert (Glenn Ford) takes a temporary job driving a truck. When the brakes fail while coming down a steep highway, he steers his way through a small town and is lucky to just dent the pickup of Jeff Cunningham (Edgar Buchanan). Jeff demands Mike's employer pay for the damage, but the man refuses. Mike pays him himself. Later, the police find Mike in a bar and arrest him for reckless driving and having an expired license. A total stranger, barmaid and local tramp Paula Craig (Janis Carter), pays his $50 fine. When Mike gets drunk, Paula quits her job and finds him a hotel room. Then she meets with her conspirator, Steve Price (Barry Sullivan), and tells him, "I found him", a stranger with the same height and build as Steve.

The next day, Mike goes looking for a job. The clerk at the assay office puts him in touch with Jeff, a prospector who has found a rich vein in an old, abandoned silver mine. He offers to cut Mike in for 10%, a generous offer he quickly accepts. However, Mike makes the mistake of telling Paula all about it. When Jeff goes to get financing from Steve, the vice-president of the Empire Bank, Paula gets him to turn Jeff down.

An opportunist, Steve obtained his position through his wife Beth's father. He has embezzled $250,000 from the bank and hidden it in Paula's safety deposit box. The plan involves a fatal, fiery car crash, with Mike's body to be mistaken for Steve's.

Mike wins some money in a craps game and pays Paula back everything she spent on him. He saw her get in the car with Steve, and is very suspicious of a barmaid with much money. Paula tells him she persuaded Steve to reconsider Jeff's financing. And gullible Mike falls for the lie.

Mike, Steve and Paula drive out to see the mine. On the way back, Steve persuades Mike to stop for a drink at his place. However, when Mike goes to wash his hands, he notices a bath robe which oddly has "Paula" embroidered on it. Still not willing to open his eyes and figure out the danger he is in, Mike gets drunk and passes out. Steve drives him to the spot chosen for the accident, but Paula unexplainably knocks Steve out instead of Mike and sends the car - and Steve - over a cliff. She is able to convince Mike that he accidentally killed Steve in a drunken rage and that she staged the accident to cover for him. She begs him to run away with her. Mike then learns that the authorities know Steve was killed and Jeff has been accused of his murder. After going to see Jeff in jail, Mike suspects Paula, but has no proof. He goes to question Mrs. Woodworth, Steve's secretary, pretending to be a reporter. She confirms that a Helen Bailey called while Jeff was meeting Steve. Mrs Woodworth's suspicious husband calls the police, but Mike punches him and gets away.

He asks Paula if she knows Helen Bailey. She denies it, then heads to the bank to get the money. Mike follows her there and confronts her. She begs him to go with her, but he turns her down, and the police, tipped off by him, place her under arrest.

Newspaper editor and co-owner Jim Austin and his wife are fleeing Kennington, where they live and work, so that he may testify before a U.S. Senate Special Committee investigating crime in interstate commerce. They are being pursued by the criminal element from their town and pull off the highway in a place called Warren, where they take refuge in a police station. Austin requests an escort to ensure they arrive safely at the committee location. He also gets permission to use the station's tape recorder, on which he chronicles the events which have brought him to this point.

Austin began investigating bookmaking in town after the suspicious death of private detective Clyde Nelson, who discovered police complicity with illegal gambling while working a divorce case for a Mrs. Sirak. Her ex-husband, Murray Sirak, happened to be the major bookmaker in Kennington.

Austin questioned the police response to Nelson's death, then began an investigation himself after being goaded by the Chief of Police. Austin discovered that mafia-affiliated gangster Dominick Fabretti had moved into town, then Sirak attempted to squelch Austin's activity with a bribe, and Austin and his wife were continually harassed.

The city fathers, the police, and the respectable elements of the community all consented to the gambling, arguing that betting is inevitable, and that exposing it would injure the city's reputation. Mrs. Sirak was murdered after she agreed to disclose that Fabretti was responsible for Nelson's murder. Austin's partner at the newspaper dropped his support for Austin because they are losing advertisers and vendors due to his crusade.

To stop Fabretti and his activities, Austin's final recourse was an appeal for help from the local ministers. When even they declined to get involved, Austin decided to appeal to the Senate Crime Commission at the Capital. A grave threat from Sirak spurred Austin and his wife to flee in the middle of the night, followed by Fabretti's henchmen.

They do get the requested police escort, and safely make it to the commission hearing.

''Radetzky March'' relates the stories of three generations of the Trotta family, professional Austro-Hungarian soldiers and career bureaucrats of Slovenian origin — from their zenith during the empire to the nadir and breakup of that world during and after the First World War. In 1859, the Austrian Empire (1804–67) was fighting the Second War of Italian Independence (29 April – 11 July 1859), against French and Italian belligerents: Napoleon III of France, the Emperor of the French, and the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia.

In northern Italy, during the Battle of Solferino (24 June 1859), the well-intentioned, but blundering, Emperor Franz Joseph I, is almost killed. To thwart snipers, Infantry Lieutenant Trotta topples the Emperor from his horse. The Emperor awards Lt. Trotta the Order of Maria Theresa and ennobles him. Elevation to the nobility ultimately leads to the Trotta family's ruination, paralleling the imperial collapse of Austria-Hungary (1867–1918).

Following his social elevation Lt. Trotta, now Baron Trotta von Sipolje, is regarded by his family — including his father — as a man of superior quality. Although he does not assume the airs of a social superior, everyone from the new baron's old life perceives him as a changed person, as a nobleman. The perceptions and expectations of society eventually compel his reluctant integration into the aristocracy, a class amongst whom he feels temperamentally uncomfortable.

As a father, the first Baron von Trotta is disgusted by the historical revisionism that the national school system is teaching his son's generation. The school history textbook presents as fact a legend about his battlefield rescue of the Emperor. He finds especially galling the misrepresentation that infantry lieutenant Trotta was a cavalry officer.

The Baron appeals to the Emperor to have the school book corrected. The Emperor considers however that such a truth would yield an uninspiring, pedestrian history, useless to Austro-Hungarian patriotism. Therefore, whether or not history textbooks report Infantry Lt. Trotta's battlefield heroism as legend or as fact, he orders the story deleted from the official history of Austria-Hungary. The subsequent von Trotta family generations misunderstand the elder generation's reverence for the legend of Lt. Trotta's saving the life of the Emperor and consider themselves to be rightful aristocrats.

The disillusioned Baron Trotta opposes his son's aspirations to a military career, insisting he prepare to become a government official, the second most respected career in the Austrian Empire; by custom, the son was expected to obey. The son eventually becomes a district administrator in a Moravian town. As a father, the second Baron Trotta (still ignorant of why his war-hero father thwarted his military ambitions) sends his own son to become a cavalry officer; grandfather's legend determines grandson's life. The cavalry officer's career of the third Baron Trotta comprises postings throughout the Austro-Hungarian Empire and a dissipated life of wine, women, song, gambling, and dueling, off-duty pursuits characteristic of the military officer class in peace-time. Following a fatal duel the young Trotta transfers from the socially elite Uhlans to a less prestigious Jäger regiment. Baron Trotta's infantry unit then suppresses an industrial strike in a garrison town. Awareness of the aftermath of his professional brutality begins Lieutenant von Trotta's disillusionment with empire. He is killed, bravely but pointlessly, in a minor skirmish with Russian troops during the opening days of World War I. His lonely and grieving father, the District Commissioner, dies almost immediately after Franz Joseph two years later. Two mourners at the funeral conclude that neither the second von Trotta nor the old Emperor could have survived the dying Empire.

“The Butterfly that Stamped” is one of the stories that is about King Solomon, his lovely wife Balkis (she is the one he is in love with, and she loves him, in most versions the others are there just because he is king and has to have more wives than anyone else), his other nine-hundred ninety nine wives, and two charming but quarrelsome butterflies. Solomon (who mainly goes by Suleiman bin Daoud in the story) is a very wise man, but is very annoyed with his surplus wives and all their quarreling. He thinks they are very loud and ungrateful. He refuses to use his magic to do anything about it because he believes it is just showing off, something he swore to refrain from doing after an embarrassing moment when he provided a feast for all life only for it to be devoured by a sea monster named 'Small Porgies'.

One day, when walking in his forest, Suleiman bin Daoud stumbles upon two butterflies arguing. The male butterfly tells his wife he could stamp his foot and the huge palace garden would disappear in a bid to control her because she is quarreling with him, and as he tells the king ''you know how women are''. Suleiman bin Daoud finds the claim amusing and calls the butterfly over. After asking the butterfly why he lied, he tells the butterfly that if he has to, he will help him.

Meanwhile, Balkis has a talk with the butterfly's wife, who says she is only pretending to agree with him, because "''you know how men are.''" Balkis tells her she should dare her husband to stamp his foot, as he must be lying, and then she can argue with him again. Really, she is hoping the disappearance of the palace will shock the other wives into obedience.

The female butterfly dares her husband, and the butterfly prevaricates by telling her the king called him over to ask him not to, because he is afraid of the butterfly. The wife insists he stamps, and he goes to the king, who tells him he will make it happen to help control his wife, sympathizing with the butterfly's plight. The butterfly stamps and the palace disappears.

This makes the butterfly's wife scared, and she promises never to argue with him again as long as he brings it back, leaving Solomon in fits of laughter. But when the garden vanishes, Solomon's quarrelling wives are deathly afraid, believing that the king is dead and the heavens are mourning the news. Balkis claims it was the butterfly who was angry at his wife, and they realise that ''if the king will do this for the sake of a tiny butterfly, what will he do to us, we who have been making him miserable with our quarreling'', and they in turn become scared of Solomon's powers, and are nice and quiet from then on.

Balkis then explains to Solomon what had happened, and how it was all for his benefit, for if he will do all this for the sake of a butterfly, it cannot be wrong to help himself occasionally, and they return to the palace.

The player takes the role of an alien explorer from the star-system of Arcturus, called Slaatn, who has been drawn off-course by a beam of energy from Earth and has had to make a landing on the Moon. Slaatn must neutralise the box-like transmitters and thus eliminate the force field.

The film was based on the life story of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were convicted as spies and executed by the United States government in 1953 for giving nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. This story follows their fictionalized son as he attempts to find out the truth. They were both executed in the electric chair.

Inside a mine shaft, a female miner takes off her gear in front of another miner. When the woman performs a striptease, the miner pushes her onto a mining pickaxe, killing her.

Mayor Hanniger of Valentine Bluffs, a Canadian mining town, reinstates the traditional Valentine's Day dance, which has been suspended for twenty years. The dances stopped 20 years ago after an accident in which two supervisors left five miners in the mines to attend the dance. Because they forgot to check methane gas levels in the mining tunnels, there was an explosion that trapped the miners. Harry Warden, the only survivor, resorted to cannibalism to survive and went insane. The next year, he murdered the two supervisors who left their posts the previous year, cut out their hearts and placed them in Valentine candy boxes, with a note from Harry warning the town never to hold the Valentine's Day Dance ever again or he will commit more killings. Warden was placed into an asylum and the accident was forgotten, so the dance resumed. A group of young residents is excited about the dance: Gretchen, Dave, Hollis, Patty, Sylvia, Howard, Mike, John, Tommy, and Harriet. Sarah, Axel, and the mayor's son T.J. are involved in a tense love triangle.

Mayor Hanniger and the town's police chief Jake Newby receive an anonymous box of Valentine chocolates containing a human heart, and a note warning that murders will begin if the dance proceeds. That evening, resident Mabel is murdered by a mining-geared killer in a laundromat, and her heart is removed. Newby publicly reports that she died of a heart attack to prevent a panic. He contacts the mental institution where Harry Warden was incarcerated, but they have no record of him. Hanniger and Newby cancel the dance but the town's youngsters decide to hold their own party at the mine. A bartender warns them against it but is killed by the miner.

At the party, the miner brutally kills Dave; his heart is subsequently found boiling in a pot of hot dogs being prepared in the kitchen. Shortly after, Sylvia is impaled on a showerhead by the miner. When the others realize Dave and Sylvia have been murdered, they contact authorities, but several of the partygoers have already decided to enter the mines for fun. Newby rushes into the mines with police to rescue them. The miner impales a large drill into Mike and Harriet and shoots a nail gun into Hollis's head. Horrified, Howard flees. The remaining four try to climb to the top with a ladder but discover a dead beheaded Howard.

While finding their way out, Axel drowns and Patty is killed by the miner. The miner chases T.J. and Sarah and a fight ensues. The miner is revealed to be Axel, who faked his demise. A flashback shows that Axel's father was one of the supervisors killed by Harry Warden. As a child, Axel witnessed Harry Warden murdering his father, which traumatized him. T.J. hits Axel with a rock, resulting in the tunnel collapsing, which traps Axel as Newby and the police arrive to rescue T.J. and Sarah. The police explain to them that Harry Warden died five years earlier. T.J. and Sarah hear a rescuer shout that Axel is still alive, and they rush back to the scene. They watch as Axel frees himself from the debris by amputating his trapped arm. He runs deeper into the mine shouting threats that he and Harry Warden will return and murder everyone in town, and mumbling about Sarah being his "bloody valentine". The film ends with Axel laughing maniacally as a ballad for Harry Warden plays over the film's credits.

Humanity has spread out and colonised nearby star systems but a plague in 2150 led to the colonies being abandoned and left to their automated robotic maintenance systems. While several of these colonies have been successfully re-inhabited, the colony on the planet Tau Ceti III (orbiting the star Tau Ceti) has been uncontactable since a meteor smashed into the planet. A mission sent to Tau Ceti III in 2164 landed on the planet but broadcast a mayday message followed by silence. Experts decided that the planet's robots were running amok as a result of the meteorite impact. The only chance, it was decided, of successfully stopping the defence systems without destroying the cities already there is to send a single pilot in an armoured Gal-Corp skimmer to the planet's surface with the task of shutting down the central reactor in Tau Ceti III's capital, Centralis.

Having previously survived being riddled with bullets, the Gill-man is captured and sent to the Ocean Harbor Oceanarium in Florida, where he is studied by animal psychologist Professor Clete Ferguson (John Agar) and ichthyology student Helen Dobson (Lori Nelson).

Helen and Clete quickly begin to fall in love, much to the chagrin of Joe Hayes (John Bromfield), the Gill-man's keeper. The Gill-man takes an instant liking to Helen, which severely hampers Clete's efforts to communicate with him. Ultimately, the Gill-man escapes from his tank, killing Joe in the process, and flees to the open ocean.

Unable to stop thinking about Helen, the Gill-man soon begins to stalk her and Clete, ultimately abducting her from a seaside restaurant where the two are at a party. Clete tries to give chase, but the Gill-man escapes to the water with his captive. Clete and police arrive just in time and when the creature surfaces, police shoot him as Clete saves Helen.

Vitangelo Moscarda discovers by way of a completely irrelevant question that his wife poses to him that everyone he knows, everyone he has ever met, has constructed a Vitangelo ''persona'' in their own imagination and that none of these personas corresponds to the image of Vitangelo that he himself has constructed and believes himself to be. The reader is immediately immersed in a cruel game of falsifying projections, mirroring the reality of social existence itself, which imperiously dictate their rules. As a result, the first, ironic "awareness" of Vitangelo consists in the knowledge of that which he definitely is not; the preliminary operation must therefore consist in the spiteful destruction of all of these fictitious masks. Only after this radical step toward madness and folly in the eyes of the world can Vitangelo finally begin to follow the path toward his true self. He discovers, though, that if his body can be one, his spirit certainly is not. And this Faustian duplicity gradually develops into a disconcerting and extremely complex multiplicity. How can one come to know the true foundation, the substate of the self? Vitangelo seeks to catch it by surprise as it shows itself in a brief flash on the surface of consciousness. But this attempt at revealing the secret self, chasing after it as if it were an enemy that must be forced to surrender, does not give the desired results. Just as soon as it appears, the unknown self evaporates and recomposes itself into the familiar attitudes of the superficial self. In this extremely modern ''Secretum'' where there is no Saint Augustine to indicate, with the profound voice of conscience, the absolute truth to desire, where desperation is entrusted to a bitter humour, corrosive and healing at the same time, the unity of the self disintegrates into diverse stratifications. Vitangelo is one of those "...particularly intelligent souls ...who break through the illusion of the unity of the self and feel themselves to be multiform, a league of many Is..." as Hermann Hesse notes in the ''Dissertation'' chapter of ''Steppenwolf''.

Vitangelo's extremely lucid reflections seek out the possible objections, confine them into an increasingly restricted space and, finally, kill them with the weapons of rigorous and stringent argumentation. The imaginary interlocutors, ("Dear sirs, excuse me"..."Be honest now"..."You are shocked? Oh my God, you are turning pale"...), which incarnate these objections rather than opening up Vitangelo's monologue into a dialogue fracture it into two levels: one external and falsely reassuring, the other internal and disquieting, but surely more true. The plural you ("voi") which punctuates like a returning counterpoint all of the initial part of the novel is much different from the "tu" of Eugenio Montale, which is almost always charged with desperate expectations or improbable alternatives to existence; it represents, rather, the barrier of the conformist conceptions which the lengthy ratiocinations of Vitangelo nullify with the overwhelming evidence of implacable reflections.

Vitangelo's "thinking out loud", definitely intentional and rigorous, is, however, paradoxically projected toward a completely different epilogue in which the spiral of reasoning gives way to a liberating irrationalism. Liberation for Vitangelo cannot happen through instinct or Eros, as happens in the case of Harry Haller, the steppenwolf, who realises his metamorphosis through an encounter with the transgressively vital Hermine. Vitangelo's liberation must follow other avenues; he must realise his salvation and the salvation of his reason precisely through an excess of reason. He seems to say to us: "Even reason, dear sirs, if it is alleviated of its role as a faculty of good sense which counsels adaptation to historical, social and existential "reality", can become a precious instrument of liberation." This is not true because reason, when pushed to its ultimate limits, can open up to new metaphysical prospects, but because, having reached its limits, deliriously wandering around in cerebral labyrinths and in an atmosphere saturated with venom, it dies by its own hand. The total detachment of Vitangelo from false certainties is fully realised during a period of convalescence from illness. Sickness, in Pirandello as in many other great writers, is experienced as a situation in which all automatic behaviour is suspended and the perceptive faculties, outside of the normal rules, seem to expand and see "with other eyes." In this moment the ineptitude that Vitangelo shares with Mattia Pascal and other literary characters of the beginning of the 20th century demonstrates its positive potential and becomes a conscious rejection of any role, of any function, of any perspective based on a utilitarian vision. The episode of the woollen blanket signals the unbridgeable distance which now separates Vitangelo from the rules of reality in which the judge who has come to interrogate him appears to be completely enmeshed. While the scrupulous functionary, completely absorbed in his role, collects the useful elements for his sentencing, Vitangelo contemplates with "ineffable delight" the woollen blanket covering his legs: "I saw the countryside: as if it were all an endless carpet of wheat; and, hugging it, I was beatified, feeling myself truly, in the midst of all that wheat, with a sense of immemorial distance that almost cause me anguish, a sweet anguish. Ah, to lose oneself there, lay down and abandon oneself, just like that among the grass, in the silence of the skies: to fill one's soul with all that useless blue, sinking into it every thought, every memory!"

Once cured of his illness, Vitangelo has a completely new perspective, completely "foreign". He no longer desires anything and seeks to follow moment by moment the evolution of life in him and the things that surround him. He no longer has any history or past, he is no longer in himself but in everything around and outside of him.

It is a movie about three teen skaters, played by young Australian actors Richard Wilson, Sean Kennedy and Ho Thi Lu. Their characters Poker, Spasm and Blue Flame, are trying to escape the law, their school, their parents, their demons and a couple of low-life criminals (Brendan Cowell as Kurt and Mitchell McMahon as Pigeon) to realise their burning ambition – to meet world class skating champion, Tony Hawk and compete in his skating competition at the Beachbowl, a major skate competition at Maroubra Beach, in the hope he'll sponsor them. The movie details their skating journey across Sydney's half-pipes and suburbs.

Based on a children's book written by Živko Čingo in the 1970s, the movie is about the difficult transition in Macedonia after World War II. The film begins in the present as old Lem (Meto Jovanovski), Macedonian politician who is experiencing a heart attack and while he is being wheeled into a hospital and examined and wired, he has memory flashbacks to his childhood in 1945. He is brought to the 'orphanage' where orphans are children of the enemies of the new regime. There he learns how to adjust to the role of obedient brainwashing. He becomes mesmerized by a new kid, Isak, a beautiful and charismatic boy. The struggles quietly underplaying all of the camp surface activity are many: the dichotomy of a Communist ideology removing the Church from existence with a people dependent upon the spiritual values of religion, the Stalin/Tito issue, the adjustments to the policies of Communist regime in a country where fierce national pride had ruled, and the depersonalization of children into political pawns despite the need for role models and the luxury of growing up with friends and confidants.

Ririka Moriya is a bubbly, clumsy 4th grader who has a crush on Nozomu Kano, a transfer student from England. On her 10th birthday, Nozomu gives her a magical nurse cap, which allows Ririka to transform into the heavenly guardian, Nurse Angel. Nozomu later tells her that his real name is Kanon, and he comes from the planet Queen Earth, which has been overrun by the evil Dark Joker Organization, who has tarnished Nozomu's world through mass pollution. He was sent to find the legendary Nurse Angel, who would save both Earth and Queen Earth from destruction by finding the Flower of Life (命の花 ''Inochi no Hana''). With help from Nozomu and her friend and neighbor Seiya Uzaki, Ririka learns to fight as Nurse Angel to protect her friends.

In a committee room, Mat O'Connor, a canvasser for Richard Tierney, a candidate in an upcoming municipal election, discusses child-rearing with Old Jack, who tries to keep a fire going. Joe Hynes, another canvasser, arrives and needles O’Connor on whether he’s been paid for his work yet. He proceeds to defend rival candidate Colgan's working-class background and maintains that Tierney, although a Nationalist, will likely present a welcome address at the upcoming visit of King Edward VII. When Hynes points out that it is Ivy Day, a commemoration of Charles Stewart Parnell, a nostalgic silence fills the room. Another canvasser, John Henchy, enters and derides Tierney for not having paid him yet. When Hynes leaves, Henchy voices a suspicion that the man is a spy for Colgan. Henchy badmouths another canvasser, Crofton, just before Crofton himself enters with Bantam Lyons. Crofton had worked for the Conservative candidate until the party withdrew and gave their support to Tierney.

The talk of politics drifts to Charles Stewart Parnell, who has his defenders and detractors in the room. Hynes returns and is encouraged to read his sentimental poem dedicated to Parnell. The poem is highly critical of those who betrayed him, including the Catholic Church, and places Parnell among the ancient heroes of Ireland. All applaud the performance and seem to forget their differences for the moment.

The main character is a young man known as Austin Gilroy. He studies physiology and knows a professor who is studying the occult. The young man is introduced to a middle-aged woman known as Miss Penclosa, who has a crippled leg and psychic powers. She is a friend of the Professor's wife. The skeptical Gilroy's fiancée, Agatha, is put into a trance to prove Miss Penclosa's powers. This succeeds and Gilroy begins to go to the Professor's house where Miss Penclosa practices her powers on him. This is so Gilroy can look at the physical part of the powers.

Miss Penclosa 'falls in love' with the unfortunate Gilroy. She starts to use her powers on him to make him caress her, and utter sweet nothings to her. He loses his temper and rejects her love, and she begins to play tricks on him with her powers. The series of cruel tricks ends with him in Agatha's room carrying a small bottle of sulphuric acid. He notices that it is half-past three. He rushes to Miss Penclosa's home and demands her presence at the door. The nurse there answers in a frightened tone that she died at half-past three.

''I Left My Sneakers in Dimension X'' continues the adventures of Rod and the crew of the Galactic Patrol ship ''Ferkel''. When villainous BKR's friend Smorkus Flinders crosses over from Dimension X, he captures Rod and his bratty cousin Elspeth, taking them back to his home to use as bait for the crew of the ''Ferkel'' as revenge for them imprisoning BKR. Rod and Elspeth are rescued by Captain Grakker and his crew, but during the escape from Castle Chaos, the ''Ferkel'' is damaged enough that all must abandon ship. Without their spacecraft, our heroes are stranded.

Following the strange disappearance of their friend Snout, the seven remaining gain help in the form of Galuspa, one of the race of Shapeshifters that are native to Dimension X. With his help, they are taken to the Valley of the Shapeshifters to see the Ting Wongovia. During their journey, Rod gains a new companion: a furry little creature called a Chibling, which bonds to him. Also during this time, and the time spent waiting in the Valley, Rod sees that another of the crew, Tar Gibbons, is watching him. Later, the Tar asks Rod to become his "Krevlik", or apprentice. Rod accepts, and begins training under his new teacher in the ways of martial arts. During the wait, Rod learns that BKR was handed off to the ''Merkel'', one of the ''Ferkel's'' sister ships, to be delivered to prison, and that the crew of the ''Ferkel'' readily jumped in to save them despite knowledge that they were headed into a trap.

Finally, the Ting Wongovia agrees to see them. They find out that he is actually the egg brother of their missing comrade Snout, and that Smorkus Flinders was once a good person, but, when he was slightly older than Rod, he was caught in a horrific Reality Quake that permanently transformed him into a monster. Banished to the Valley of the Monsters, he became their king, but the Reality Quake's effects also drove him partially insane. They then learn the plans of Smorkus Flinders and BKR: they intend to create a permanent hole between Dimension X, home of the dangerous Reality Quakes, and Dimension Q, home of the planet Earth and the Galactic Patrol. This would cause the Reality Quakes to leak over to our world, and the two dimensions would eventually fuse into a single dimension where reality can shift like sand; Smorkus Flinders sees this plan as an opportunity to get revenge on life for what it did to him, while the sadistic BKR simply wants to make others suffer, even with the knowledge that the Reality Quakes will affect him just as much as anyone else. To stop him, the crew of the ''Ferkel'' are joined by the Shapeshifters, the Ting Wongovia, and (to their dismay) Elspeth. Returning to Castle Chaos (in part with help from Spar Kellis, a gigantic blue monster who works for the Ting Wongovia by spying on Smorkus Flinders), they make their stand.

In the resulting confrontation, Rod is forced to grow to a gigantic height so he can defeat Smorkus Flinders. During the battle, he is contacted by Snout (by way of a direct telepathic link between the two), and learns that his old friend is being held captive by the "Ferkada". He also finds that Smorkus Flinders knows something about Rod's father. When Rod himself questions the monster, Smorkus Flinders cries out to ask BKR. About then, Rod blacks out. Soon after he wakes up, Rod learns that Smorkus Flinders is now their captive, and that when the ''Ferkel'' crashed into his room, they were really looking for another alien… his own father.

With these revelations on his mind, Rod prepares to go home. But first, he winds up giving his new sneakers to Spar Kellis as a gift. But with all that has happened, telling his mother that he left his sneakers in Dimension X is the least of his worries.

''The Search For Snout'' picks up where the previous book left off. Introducing the crew of the Galactic Patrol vessel ''Ferkel'' to his earthling mother proves to be as difficult as predicted, and explaining that he's going with them to find his semi-alien father is an even harder task. But the real trouble starts when they find out that BKR (the pain-loving alien psycho antagonist) is on the loose, having taken control of the ''Ferkel's'' sister ship ''Merkel'' while the ship was delivering him to prison. The crew of the ''Ferkel'' has been ordered to seek out their enemy and recapture him.

After they question Smorkus Flinders (a muscle-bound alien from Dimension X) and learn something of BKR's current plan, Rod is contacted again by his friend Snout, master of the mental arts. Partly inspired by this contact, Grakker (the ship's commander) decides to break off from the Galactic Patrol and head for the Mentat instead, the school where Snout became a master of the Mental Arts (incidentally, the building is one big PLANT). There, he hopes to find a clue that could lead them to their fallen friend. During the journey, Grakker reveals some of his past, including how he got to know both Snout and BKR. Smorkus Flinders, having escaped from his suspended animation pod, manages to capture the entire crew... except for Elspeth (Rod's all-human cousin), who stowed away and was also in suspended animation as punishment. She manages to stop Smorkus and rescue the others. Also as a result of the battle, Rod's chibling (a small furball from dimension X) is injured from being thrown into a wall.

Later that night, Rod learns that his friend was forced into his third stage of life: a two-part animal. The first half, which is then named Seymour, resembles a squashed, hairless blue cat with four (later six) legs, a long tail, and a similar neck with a gigantic eyeball at one end. The other half is named Edgar, and looks the same as before. While both appear to have separate minds, Seymour is the half that is truly sentient, holding their shared brain in his body.

Soon after, they arrive at the Mentat and meet with the 'Head' Council, who are unable to help. However, they do reveal that all the messages which came from Snout are, in part, due to a direct link between Rod's mind and Snout's, created by an incident involving direct brain-to-brain training in the first book. They also question Smorkus Flinders, and through him contact BKR. Though they cannot help in regard to the Ferkada that Snout mentioned, they do agree to try and cure Smorkus Flinders, reverting him from a monster to a Normal (the species he used to be until he was caught in a nasty Reality Quake and turned into a monster).

Later that day, the Mentat's security force (led by an insectoid woman named Arly Bung) arrests Rod, Elspeth and the crew after being contacted by the Galactic Patrol. Imprisoned in the lowest regions of the Mentat, they are soon rescued by Selima Khan, another of Snout's kind who also attended the Mentat in his year. During their escape into the caves below the Mentat, Rod sees an ancient carving of his father. Selima Khan also reveals the plans of BKR and Smorkus Flinders: they intend to use a black hole to detonate a bomb that will disrupt the space-time continuum and eventually bring the flow of time itself to a complete stop, but require Rod's brain to do so, for an unknown reason. Later, he is contacted again and leaves the group to follow the message. Along with Seymour and Edgar, Rod winds up in the belly of a gigantic stone beast, and the trio journey deep into its bowels. Finally, they reach a chamber where Snout is laying, fading away into nothingness. But he is not alone, as Rod is reunited with his father (alias the Ferkada, one of the ancient founders of the Mentat) at last.

Rod's father (Ah-Rit Alber Ite, or Arthur "Art" Albright) reveals the truth about where he came from (the lost civilization of Atlantis, circa 35,000 years ago), and his personal history with BKR. He also reveals that he once fled with the crucial bit of information that BKR needs for his current plans and stored them in a safe place: Rod's brain. During this last part, BKR arrives with Smorkus Flinders, revealing part of his side of the story. He also arrives to get the information that he needs. Just in time, the ''Ferkel'' arrives as well, and the resulting battle ends with a stalemate: BKR has Ah-Rit in his grasp, and threatens to kill him if Rod (and the crucial information) aren't handed over to him.

Fortunately, there's a solution. Ah-Rit is released to the ''Ferkel'', while Rod is handed over to BKR, and Snout transfers the contents of Rod's mind (including the crucial information) into Seymour, resulting in two minds living in one body. After the swap, BKR leaves with Rod's body. Afterward, Snout (now fully recovered from his coma-like state) reveals exactly what happened to him after he vanished from Dimension X. He was probing the dimension for something, and connected with something extenuatingly hostile, possibly Smorkus Flinders himself.

''Aliens Stole My Body'' concludes the four-book series. After the departure of Selima Khan, the group characters from ''The Search for Snout'' splits up into three groups, Rod and Seymour head for the planet Kryndamar, along with Snout, Elspeth, and Madam Pong (the Diplomatic Officer of the Ferkel). Meanwhile, Grakker and Phil (the sentient plant who serves as the Ferkel's science officer) leave to re-establish contact with the Galactic Patrol, and Ah-Rit heads off with Tar Gibbons in an attempt to reclaim Rod's body from BKR.

While on Kryndamar, Rod begins training his mind with Snout, and later gains a few new allies: the intergalactic pet trader Mir-Van; his family; and his business partner Grumbo. They also encounter one of BKR's henchmen; from him, they learn that BKR has already discovered their deception: Rod's brain is empty. BKR still plans to use it as bait, and he intends to capture Rod's mom and younger twin siblings from Earth, to serve as more bait.

After arriving on Earth and locating Rod's family, the entire group (sans Grumbo, Mir-Van, and his family) are captured by BKR and his gang (including the traitorous Arly Bung) in the Merkel. The captives, along with Grakker, Phil, and Selima Khan, who are captured shortly before they were to leave the solar system, are taken to BKR's headquarters. There, the entire group is joined by Ah-Rit and Tar Gibbons.

With all his enemies in one place, BKR delivers an ultimatum: reveal where they've hidden Rod's mind, or die. Rod tells Snout to send him back to his own body. Using the skills that he's learned from both Tar Gibbons and Snout, Rod is able to take out all of BKR's crew, and finally BKR himself.

Following the defeat and capture of their enemies, Rod and his family are returned to Earth, though Rod will be able to return to space in the future. BKR and his gang are locked up and await trial. After a final goodbye to his teacher and friends, Rod watches as the Ferkel and its crew depart for GP headquarters so they can deliver BKR and his gang to stand trial. Ferkel and its crew must also stand trial, since they did break the law by going renegade instead of following orders.

After escaping from prison, bank robber Luther Heggs (Duane Whitaker) is the subject of a manhunt led by Texas Ranger Otis Lawson. Luther contacts his reformed former accomplice Buck Bowers (Robert Patrick) and tells him to get their old gang back together. Buck starts rounding up the old team which consists of C.W. Niles (Muse Watson), Jesus Draven (Raymond Cruz) and Ray Bob (Brett Harrelson).

The team arrive at the motel, where they wait for Luther. Whilst on his way in his car, Luther hits a bat resulting in his car breaking down. When the car won't start, Luther walks to a nearby bar, the Titty Twister. He calls Buck from the bar to tell him about the breakdown. Luther in the meantime is offered a ride to the El Coyote by the bartender, Razor Eddie (Danny Trejo). However, when Razor discovers that Luther hit and then tried to kill a bat that was actually his friend Victor (Joe Virzi), he drives him back to his car, where Victor and Razor attack and turn Luther into a vampire.

Back at the motel, Jesus has sex with Lupe (Maria Checa), a woman he bumped into when he arrived at the motel. After they finish, Jesus sleeps while Lupe grabs a shower. Luther arrives in bat form and kills Lupe. Jesus awakes and starts to get dressed. The shower turns off, and he notices blood seeping from underneath the door of the bathroom. He goes to investigate and sees the body of Lupe lying lifeless in the bath. Luther then attacks Jesus before he hides in the bathroom. Lupe then reanimates as a vampire and attacks Jesus. He manages to kill Lupe by cutting her head off and then jumps out of the window in order to escape.

Luther catches up with Jesus, transforming him into a vampire. Hearing the noise, the owner of the motel goes to investigate and sees Luther killing Jesus. She panics and runs to the office and tries to call the police but is attacked and killed by Luther. While Buck is still in the room watching porn, somebody tries to get in through the locked door. Realizing it is Jesus, Buck opens the door where they find out that Luther has arrived. They then plan the heist which involves the robbery of the Banco Bravos bank.

The gang drive off to the bank, with Jesus and Luther covering the windows with black paper. Unbeknownst to the gang, this is to allow Jesus and Luther to have a place to escape to when the sun rises. Back at the Motel, after receiving the call from the Motel manager, Otis observes the crime scene. Upon arriving at the bank, Luther enters the building through the vents and proceeds to kill the security guard on duty and snatches the keys to let the others in.

Luther and C.W. proceed to the safe where they begin cracking it open. As they try to open the safe, they notice that the handle on the vault resembles a cross causing Luther to squeal before quickly covering it. While working with C.W. closely, Luther gets tempted to bite C.W.'s neck. C.W., feeling uncomfortable due to Luther's proximity tells him to back off, before removing Luther's coat from the handle. Luther reacts again and bites C.W, turning him into a vampire.

The police arrive at the bank. Buck encourages the others to escape, but they refuse. Buck and Ray Bob leave the bank but are forced back in by the police and SWAT team. With the bank surrounded by police and no escape in sight, Otis arrives and calls the bank. Otis asks to speak to the guard. With the guard dead, Buck tells Jesus to pretend to be the guard and tell Otis in Spanish that he is fine.

Otis then tells the SWAT team to enter the bank via the roof. Jesus rips the phone out of Buck's hand and tears it from the wall. Luther and C.W. unlock the vaults, before filling the bags with money. The SWAT team on the roof throw tear gas down the vent. Luther throws it back up to them before killing them in bat form. Luther returns and bites Ray Bob, turning him into a vampire as well. Back in the guard's room, Buck and Jesus are still waiting. Buck lights a cigarette and notices that Jesus has no reflection in the computer screen.

Luther then enters telling the two to help load the money. Buck holds a gun to Luther, Jesus and C.W. and tells Ray Bob to stand by his side. Ray Bob reveals that he too is now a vampire. The group attacks Buck but he escapes the bank and gets arrested by Otis. Otis sends in the SWAT team to clear out the bank, despite Buck's warning. The group of vampires brutally kills and feed on the SWAT Team.

Suddenly, sunlight appears and the vampires try to hide. However, an eclipse takes place and the Sun disappears. The vampire leave the bank and starts to kill the police and SWAT Teams in a full blown blood bath. Once all the police have been killed, only Buck, Otis, and the Sheriff remain. A face-off between the survivors and the vampires takes place. Just as all of the vampires appear to be defeated, a female police officer, who has been turned, attacks the survivors and succeeds in freeing the vampires. Buck kills the female vampire, just as Jesus kills the sheriff.

Jesus then attempts to take the money for himself before being caught by Luther. C.W. is then killed by Otis while Jesus is killed by Buck after being impaled by a horned hood ornament. Luther attacks Otis, as Ray Bob attacks Buck. Seeing that the eclipse is ending, Luther and Ray Bob try to escape to their car. Luther is killed by Buck, who had been hiding in the back seat. Ray Bob mistimes his retreat and the eclipse ends, revealing the Sun. Buck uses his sunglasses to reflect sunlight onto Ray Bob, killing him. Otis and Buck reunite and take in the events that have just occurred. As sirens are heard approaching, Buck flees with Otis giving him a head start.

Seo In-woo (Lee Byung-hun) unexpectedly falls in love with In Tae-hee (Lee Eun-ju), a fellow student at the same university, when she asks to share his umbrella in a rainstorm. It is love at first sight for In-woo, and they start dating after only a couple of weeks. Tae-hee dies suddenly when she is hit by a car.

17 years later, In-woo is a high school teacher, married with a child. He starts to notice similarities between a new student of his, Hyun-bin, and Tae-hee. In-woo struggles with the concept of falling in love with another man, and they get bullied by students at the school for appearing to be homosexual.

They overcome their fears with the realization that Hyun-bin is Tae-hee reincarnated, and they are eternal soulmates. The movie ends with a shot of them in New Zealand jumping off a bridge hand in hand. It is unclear whether they are bungee jumping or mean to end their lives together and be reincarnated again.

Early one morning, Fern Arable prevents her father John from slaughtering a piglet as the runt of the litter. Deciding to let Fern deal with nurturing the piglet, John allows Fern to raise it as a pet. She nurtures it lovingly, naming it Wilbur. Six weeks later, Wilbur, due to being a spring pig, has matured, and John tells Fern that Wilbur has to be sold (his siblings were already sold). Fern sadly says good-bye to Wilbur as he is sold down the street to her uncle, Homer Zuckerman. At Homer's farm, a goose coaxes a sullen Wilbur to speak his first words. Although delighted at this new ability, Wilbur still yearns for companionship. He attempts to get the goose to play with him, but she declines on the condition that she has to hatch her eggs. Wilbur also tries asking a rat named Templeton to play with him, but Templeton's only interests are spying, hiding, and eating. Wilbur then wants to play with a lamb, but the lamb's father says sheep do not play with pigs because it is only a matter of time before pigs are slaughtered and turned into smoked bacon and ham. Horrified at this depressing discovery, Wilbur reduces himself to tears until a mysterious voice tells him to "chin up", and waits until morning to reveal herself to him. The following morning, she reveals herself to be a spider named Charlotte A. Cavatica, living on a web on a corner of Homer's barn overlooking Wilbur's pig pen. She tells him that she will come up with a plan guaranteed to spare his life.

Later, the goose's goslings hatch. One of them, named Jeffrey, befriends Wilbur. Eventually, Charlotte reveals her plan to "play a trick on Zuckerman", and consoles Wilbur to sleep. Fern and Avery visit the barn that same day. Avery tries to capture Charlotte, but is foiled by the stench of a rotten egg. The next morning, Homer's farmhand, Lurvy, sees the words, SOME PIG, spun within Charlotte's web. The incident attracts publicity among Homer's neighbors who deem the praise to be a miracle. The publicity eventually dies down, and, after a hornet lands in Charlotte's web and ruins the SOME PIG message, Charlotte requests the barn animals to devise a new word to spin within her web. After several suggestions, the goose suggests the phrase, TERRIFIC! TERRIFIC! TERRIFIC!, though Charlotte decides to shorten it to one TERRIFIC. The incident becomes another media sensation, though Homer still desires to slaughter Wilbur. For the next message, Charlotte then employs Templeton to pull a word from a magazine clipping at the dump for inspiration, in which he returns the word RADIANT ripped from a soap box to spin within her web. Following this, Homer decides to enter Wilbur in the county fair for the summer. Charlotte reluctantly decides to accompany him, though Templeton at first has no interest in doing so until the goose tells him about all the food there. After one night there, Charlotte sends Templeton to the trash pile on another errand to gather another word for her next message, in which he returns with the word, HUMBLE. The next morning, Wilbur awakens to find Charlotte has spun an egg sac containing her unborn offspring, and the following afternoon, the word, HUMBLE, is spun. However, Fern's brother, Avery, discovers another pig named Uncle has won first place, though the county fair staff decides to hold a celebration in honor of Homer's miraculous pig, and rewards him $25 and an engraved, bronze medal. He then announces that he will allow Wilbur to "live to a ripe old age".

Exhausted from laying eggs and writing words, Charlotte tells Wilbur she will remain at the fair to die. Not willing to let her children be abandoned, Wilbur has Templeton retrieve her egg sac to take back to the farm, just before she dies. Once he returns to Homer's farm, he guards the egg sac through the winter. The next spring, Charlotte's 514 children are hatched, but leave the farm, causing Wilbur to become saddened to the point of wanting to run away. Just as he is about to do so, the ram points out that three of them did not fly away. Pleased at finding new friends, he names them Joy, Nellie, and Aranea, but as much as he loves them, they will never replace the memory of Charlotte.

In 1910 in Scotland, the ailing Doctor Hichcock (Elio Jotta), confined to his wheelchair, presides over seances in which his housekeeper, Catherine (Harriet Medin), acts as the medium. According to Hichcock's theory, shots of lethal poison followed by an antidote could cure his physical disability shortly after. The younger Doctor Livingstone (Peter Baldwin) stays with him in the house to regularly administer this dangerous treatment.

Hichcock's wife Margaret (Barbara Steele) finds living with her husband increasingly unbearable. Possibly suspected by her husband, she is having an affair with Livingstone. She implores him to murder Hichcock, which he eventually does by injecting the poison but not administering the antidote. During the distribution of Hichcock's estate, Margaret and Livingstone learn Hichcock only recently changed his last will and testament. Margaret gets the house and its contents, but only a third share of her husband's bonds, shares, currency, and jewels, kept in the doctor's safe.

Upon Catherine telling them that the key to the safe containing the valuables was in the jacket buried with him, they secretly visit his vault, open his coffin and retrieve it, intending to take a larger share of the valuables. Livingstone opens the safe while Margaret is out of the room with Catherine. It is empty. Later, they hear Hichcock's voice calling to them and experience other poltergeist phenomena, including the appearance of the ghost-like Hichcock himself. One night, Catherine, apparently possessed by Hichcock, speaks in his voice and tells Margaret that his valuables are buried beneath his coffin. She returns to the vault to find a golden box. Upon opening it, she cuts herself. The box contains nothing but a skull. Catherine then insinuates that Livingstone took the valuables for himself when he opened the safe in Margaret's absence. Margaret finds jewels in his bag, much to Livingstone's surprise. Margaret slashes him to death with a razor and drags him into the cellar, where she uses kerosene from a lamp to burn his body.

Margaret is drawn to Hichcock's study by the ringing of his handbell, where she contemplates suicide by poison, pours it into a glass of gin, but does not drink it. She starts feeling ill and sits down when Hichcock appears, alive and no longer disabled. He tells her that he poisoned the box with a non-lethal dose of curare, which is now quickly paralyzing her. Hichcock shoots his accomplice Catherine dead and makes Margaret touch the gun to incriminate her. Finally, he toasts Margaret's ill health with the glass of gin she poured for herself and drinks it. When he realizes it is poisoned, he begs Margaret for the antidote. She laughs and destroys the vial of antidote. Hichcock seals himself inside a secret room behind the bookshelf, locking himself in. The police arrive and arrest the laughing and paralyzed Margaret for Catherine's murder, carrying her out of the room.

When Canon Owens, the parish priest, arrives and hears muffled noises from behind the library bookshelf, he addresses Hichcock's portrait with the words, "I told you, Doctor Hichcock, the devil is a very real person." He then leaves the room.

''Phantom'' is an interactive (choose your own adventure) video game and its adaptations: a three-part OVA anime series, a 26-episode TV anime, and a three volume manga.

Video game

''Phantom of Inferno'' details the life of a 15-year-old Japanese boy who is kidnapped after witnessing the killing of a reporter. The memories of his past life are erased, and he is given the choice to join 'Inferno' or die. After joining the organization he is given the name 'Zwei' (German for number 'two') and will study under 'Ein' (From the German word "Eins" for 'one'). Ein is also known as 'Phantom', the title given to the organization's top assassin.

Inferno is said to be the 'United Nations of crime syndicates'. As Zwei makes his way through training and various missions, deceit and betrayal occur even within Inferno and slowly put Zwei in increasing danger. Along the way, Zwei meets a girl by the name of Cal Devens and, though he tries to protect her, she too is drawn into Inferno to become the assassin, Drei (German for 'three').

The game is divided into three chapters. The first chapter deals with Zwei being turned into a killer and has two main "routes" to follow, the Ein route and the Claudia route. No matter which route is chosen, the chapter ends with Scythe escaping and Ein presumably dead, unless one opts to escape back to Japan. The second chapter starts off one year after the events in the first chapter, and deals with Claudia's plan to bring the Godoh group into the organization, Scythe's revenge, and the introduction of a new character, Cal Devens. It contains the Cal route and the final Claudia route.

A DVD version with added voice acting, but with removed sex scenes was released on October 26, 2001. A port to the PlayStation 2, based on the DVD version was released on May 22, 2003. ''Phantom Integration'', an updated PC version with a new ending, but without voice acting, like the original PC release, was released on September 17, 2004. In 2010, Nitroplus announced the game will be remade for the Xbox 360 featuring the same scenario but based on the designs created for the anime series from Bee Train. Character designs from artists Minkao Shiba, Yoko Kikuchi, Tomoaki Kado, Yoshimitsu Yamashita, and Yoshiaki Tsubata were introduced into the 360 version. In addition to the design adaptations, the cast of the anime series also reprised their roles for the newer/updated version. It was originally planned for a Winter 2011 release, but was delayed due to unforeseen complications. The game was released on October 25, 2012 and ported on PC on August 30, 2013.

''Phantom - The Animation''

The OVA series follows Zwei as he makes a trip to America, only to witness an assassination that leads to his memory loss and indoctrination into Inferno. Though not as heavily as in the game, we see Zwei's training before he goes with Ein to help with an assassination. While a different path is taken, deceit and betrayal rip apart Inferno and place Ein and Zwei on opposite sides, which eventually leads to a climactic battle between them at the end of the anime.

Hannah Stern is a Jewish preteen girl living in the present day. She is bored by her relative's stories about the past, is not looking forward to the Passover Seder, and is tired of her religion. When Hannah symbolically opens the door for the prophet Elijah, she is transported back in time to a shtetl on the Polish/German border in 1942, during World War II. Hannah is not immediately aware of the time period.

At that time and place, the people believe she is Chaya Abramowicz, who is recovering from cholera, the fever that killed Chaya's parents a few months ago. The strange remarks Hannah/Chaya makes about the future and her inability to recognize Chaya's aunt Gitl and uncle Shmuel are blamed on the fever.

At Uncle Shmuel's wedding, the Nazis come to transport the entire population of the village to a death camp near Donavin, and only Hannah knows all the terrors they will face: starvation, mistreatment, forced labor, and finally execution.

Hannah and the other women are stripped, shaved, and tattooed with a number. Hannah and the other women are forced to dig trenches in the camp. Hannah struggles to survive at the camp, with the help of a girl named Rivka. Uncle Shmuel and some other men try to escape; the men are caught and then hanged as everyone watches. Fayge, who was going to be married to Shmuel, is killed because she runs to Shmuel when he is about to be shot with the men that were caught. Yitzchak escapes and lives in the forest with the partisans, fighting the Germans.

Later, when Hannah, Rivka, Esther, and Shifre are working, a guard overhears them talking instead of working. Shifre tries to reassure the guard they have been working, but he takes them anyway and leaves Hannah by herself. As the three are about to leave, Hannah takes Rivka's place by putting on her babushka. Since the guards don't know their faces, this goes unnoticed by the officer. The women are led to the gas chamber. She is then transported back to her family's Seder. Aunt Eva calls her over. Hannah looks at Aunt Eva's number; it is the same as Rivka's. Hannah (when she was Chaya) was really the woman she was named after, Rivka was Aunt Eva, and Rivka's brother, Wolfe, was Grandpa Will. (Aunt Eva said that they changed their names when they got to America.)

The epilogue at the end of the novel reveals that when the camp was liberated, the survivors were Gitl (weighing a mere seventy-three pounds), Yitzchak, Rivka, and Leye (a worker in the camp) and her baby. Gitl and Yitzchak immigrate to Israel where Yitzchak becomes a politician while Gitl organizes a rescue mission that is dedicated to salvaging the lives of young survivors and locating family members. The organization is named after Chaya, her niece that died a hero.

The film stars Jun Ji-hyun as Officer Yeo Kyung-jin, an ambitious young female police officer serving on the Seoul police department. One day while chasing a purse snatcher, she accidentally captures Go Myung-woo (played by Jang Hyuk), a physics teacher at an all-girls school, who was actually trying to catch the thief. Later, Myung-woo discovers the stolen purse, but just as he picks it up, Kyung-jin spots him and tries to arrest him again. Kyung-jin is then given the job of escorting Myung-woo through a dangerous district, only to be distracted when she tries to break up a meeting between Russian Mafia and Korean gangsters. With Myung-woo handcuffed to her, Kyung-jin almost single-handedly brings down the two rival gangs (although she is helped when she accidentally causes the groups to start shooting at each other).

The first half of the film, told from Myung-woo's point of view, details the couple's growing attraction and love for each other, which climaxes with a trip to the countryside where Myung-woo tells Kyung-jin that if he were ever to die, he wanted to come back to earth as the wind. Soon after, he is almost killed in a freak automobile accident, but Kyung-jin saves his life.

The film takes a turn into the fantasy genre in its second half after Myung-woo is accidentally shot and killed by another officer (although the situation is such that Kyung-jin thinks that it was her shot that killed him) as Kyung-jin chases after a criminal. Kyung-jin falls into a suicidal depression over his death and attempts to kill herself several times, almost succeeding when she throws herself off a building, only to be saved when a giant balloon floats under her. Soon after, she experiences visitations from Myung-woo, who appears as the wind, sending her messages and, at one point, he even appears in her dreams in order to give her the will to live after she is nearly shot to death by a criminal.

Ultimately the film follows a similar path set out by the American film ''Ghost'' with Myung-woo and Kyung-jin communicating and sharing one final gesture of love before he moves on to the afterlife. Myung-woo said that he will whisper, when she hears him whisper in the wind, she will meet someone with a soul like him. Myung-woo told Kyung-jin that he will always be beside her inside a book with a photo left by Myung-woo in the restaurant before he rushed to meet Kyung-jin who was chasing the insane criminal.

In the first half of the film, Myung-woo told that his only memory of high school was his high school trip. The book and the photo is found and returned to Kyung-jin in the police station. The photo showed that on Myung-woo's trip, Kyung-jin was nearby. This proved Myung-woo's "I'm always beside you" was true to Kyung-jin. Kyung-jin rushed out to locate the finder of the book, ultimately ending up in the train station, where she is saved by Cha Tae-hyun's character (credited as The Guy). Myung-woo whispered that The Guy is the one with the soul like him. Kyung-jin whispers that "he is always beside her."

In 1913 Mexico, an American author, Ambrose Bierce, experiences a nightmare in which he dies at the hands of Pancho Villa. Bierce wakes and talks to a local bartender about his intentions to join Pancho Villa's revolutionary army. He joins a stagecoach transporting a newlywed couple, John and Mary Newlie, who are traveling to Mexico to preach Christianity. Meanwhile, Johnny Madrid, a dangerous local outlaw, escapes from the gallows and kidnaps his hangman Mauricio's beautiful 19-year-old teenage daughter Esmeralda. Madrid receives assistance from Catherine Reece, a young woman who wants to become Madrid's apprentice as an outlaw. Madrid meets with his gang with Mauricio and a local posse on their trail. They later rob Bierce's stagecoach because of Reece's belief that Bierce possesses an invaluable object. The gang does not find anything of value, with Bierce claiming he is the invaluable object, as he intends to join with Pancho Villa. Annoyed by this, Madrid leaves Reece hanging in the desert. The posse finds her, using her to track the two.

As night falls, all the parties coincidentally seek shelter in an isolated inn called La Tetilla Del Diablo (the Titty Twister from the first film) that also serves as a brothel. They meet Ezra Traylor, a businessman heading to the U.S. Mauricio is the only one who knows that a group of vampires run the establishment, led by the high priestess, Quixtla, who is immediately drawn to Esmeralda. As night falls, John gets into a fight with one of Madrid's men, drawing blood. The vampires eventually reveal themselves, lock the exit and attack the patrons. They kill all of Mauricio's men and the remnants of Madrid's gang except for Joaquin and Madrid. Vampire women overcome and feed on Ezra and quickly becomes a vampire. He grabs the helpless Mary and hypnotizes and bites her. Madrid, Bierce, Reece, John, Esmeralda, Mauricio, and Joaquin manage to escape into the dungeons beneath the building and try to work together to find a way out.

Mary rises as a vampire and goes after the group, revealing that John is a fraud who only married Mary for her father's money. John eventually kills her. Joaquin, who escaped with them, hides a bite he received from a prostitute earlier. As they continue through the catacombs, he turns and bites John. John kills Joaquin. Doomed, he persuades Madrid to stake him to prevent him from turning. As the remaining survivors keep going, Bierce admits to reading in the papers that Reece is an outlaw who killed her entire family. The group eventually ends up back at the bar entrance, only to find Quixtla and the vampires waiting for them. She reveals that Esmeralda is the dhampir daughter of Quixtla and Mauricio and will become a full-fledged vampire princess named Santánico Pandemonium. Mauricio took her away, hoping to raise her as a normal human, and tried to kill her unsuccessfully. Thanks to his mistreatment and Madrid's kidnapping, she has been led back to Quixtla.

Madrid, Mauricio, Bierce, and Reece are hung upside-down to be fed on later as Quixtla and Esmeralda's vampire grandmother transform Esmeralda into a full-fledged vampire princess, renaming her Santánico Pandemonium. Madrid manages to break from his bonds and free the others. Reece is bitten in the scuffle while Madrid kills Ezra. Santánico kills her grandmother, then bites and turns her father into a vampire, but he manages to open the entranceway and kills Quixtla with sunlight before the change finishes, allowing Madrid and Bierce to escape while Santánico hides from the sunlight. Santánico screams for Madrid not to leave her as the entrance closes. Madrid looks away sadly and joins Ambrose's quest to join Pancho Villa's army. As they leave, the camera zooms out to show the Mayan temple behind the vampires' building, referencing the first film.

After the closing credits, Bierce's legendary disappearance has an answer. He survived into current times and has been telling a patron the story. As he leaves, Ambrose tells him that he has proof. He then reveals that Quixtla actually bit him as they fell outside the bar because he is now a vampire. He rips the patron's heart out and bites it as the film ends.

Berry-Berry Willart (Beatty) is a young, handsome hedonistic drifter who has no trouble living off the women of all ages he seduces. When the women become too attached to him, his charm turns sadistic and frequently lands him in jail for battery. Berry-Berry is always on the road far from home, rarely seen by his drunken father Ralph (Karl Malden), his adoring but controlling and manipulative mother, Annabel (Angela Lansbury), or his sixteen-year-old brother Clinton (Brandon deWilde).

The story follows Clinton, who idolizes Berry-Berry, despite having to bail him out of jail in Florida, and later accompanying Ralph to Western Union to wire bail money when Berry-Berry is arrested a second time for beating up a woman. Remarks by Ralph indicate this isn't the first time he's wired bail money for Berry-Berry.

Clinton is infatuated with Echo O'Brien (Eva Marie Saint), the 31-year-old daughter of a family friend who stays with them when she visits town. Though beautiful, Echo has never married, and is getting over the suicide of her troubled long-time boyfriend over a year before. She is friendly toward the much younger Clinton, referring to him affectionately as "my guy."

But when she meets Berry-Berry, there's an instant mutual attraction between them, and they abruptly leave a family backyard cookout that evening to be alone together.

Berry-Berry asks Clinton for permission to be with Echo, saying that he wants her and she wants him, but acknowledging that Clinton saw her first. He says he'll back off if Clinton doesn't give the okay. Clinton, knowing he has no real chance with Echo, tells Berry-Berry to treat her nice.

After this, Berry-Berry and Echo are constantly in each other's company.

When they return home after an evening out some time later, Berry-Berry finds out that Echo is pregnant. She tells him that she doesn't expect anything from him; that she took a gamble that someday he would love her, not that he'd marry her, and she lost. As she tells him he's free, he runs out of the house and drives off in the rain, leaving her in tears. Clinton, who had been eavesdropping, witnesses the whole exchange.

Echo decides she must leave the Willarts' house immediately. She assures Clinton, who's concerned about the rain and the late hour, that she loves driving at night. But the Willarts are awakened later by a call from a state trooper, reporting that Echo had driven off the road and been killed in the ensuing crash.

Ralph tells Annabel and Clinton that Echo was too good a driver for her crash to have been an accident, and that Berry-Berry must have had something to do with it. Clinton suddenly throws Berry-Berry's framed portrait to the floor and stomps on it. Annabel pushes him away, picks up the portrait and holds it closely, shrieking that she doesn't care what Berry-Berry's done, she'll love him always.

Clinton sneaks into Berry-Berry's room when his brother is out, and gets the latter's pistol (which Berry-Berry had shown him earlier) and waits behind the curtains for Berry-Berry to return. But he's surprised to see Berry-Berry, when he finally returns, collapse onto the bed, sobbing. Clinton returns the pistol where he found it and leaves, seeing Berry-Berry as someone to be pitied.

The show was anchored by three young Muppet monsters: Tug (performed by Richard Hunt), Molly (performed by Camille Bonora), and Boo (performed by David Rudman). The three have started their own basement show following an incident where Scooter has them put in the basement after Molly and Boo played water polo in the living room. They are joined by Nicky Napoleon (performed by James Kroupa) and his Emperor Penguins as their music act.

It revolves around a fictional bar named Lil's in Central Florida, known as the birthplace of karaoke in the United States. For as long as anyone can remember, one man named Eddie Bowman has won the weekly Wednesday night karaoke competition. The film follows one fateful night where Eddie battles between his long-time girlfriend, Nikki, and his long-time nemesis, Rupert Goldfine to determine who is going to be the next reigning Karaoke King.

Main characters in the series include castellan Mirmił, hypochondriac ruler of the village of Mirmiłowo, where Kajko and Kokosz serve as warriors; Lubawa, dominating wife of Mirmił; small dragon Miluś; benevolent witch Jaga; her husband, the good robber Breakbone (Łamignat) and the antagonists of the series: military knight order of Knaveknights (''Zbójcerze''), based on the Teutonic Knights, led by Hegemon, with his second in command, Hitler-like Corporal and Schweik-like Loser (''Oferma'').[https://egmont.pl/Kayko-and-Kokosh-Flying-School,6668298,p.html Kayko and Kokosh: Flying School] The stories are written in a tongue-in-cheek manner and contain light satirical elements, usually puns concerning the reality of living in Communist-ruled Poland with characters sometimes mentioning labour unions, bureaucracy, commodity shortages, and similar themes.

The characters

• ''Kayko'' (''Kajko'') – A small but clever, brave and very resourceful warrior. He has a kind nature and always stands for justice. He lives with his best friend Kokosz.
• ''Kokosh'' (''Kokosz'') – Best friend of Kajko. Almost the complete opposite of Kajko, he is large, fat and bald, and usually is shown to represent the worst habits – he always goes with his gut, appears to be self-centered and sometimes either aggressive or cowardly. He is however incredibly strong. In the first book, Kokosz is shown to believe that he is as strong as his shadow is long (depending on the time at that moment).
• ''Mirmił'' – The castellan of Mirmiłowo, the village where Kajko and Kokosz live. He is a small man with a large red moustache. While good hearted, he occasionally appears to be pompous and melancholic – as a running gag, Mirmił often openly considers committing suicide whenever a problem appears to be unsolvable.
• ''Lubawa'' – Mirmił's large and somehow more assertive wife. She often appears to be in control of her husband.
• ''Jaga'' (known as Zielacha in ''Złoty puchar'') — a good witch and also Kokosz's aunt, originally an ugly old hag who makes herself young-looking again through magic. Her name is a reference to Baba Jaga a witch from Polish fairy tales and folklore. She has a talking pet raven named "Gdaś".
• ''Łamignat'' (Breakbone) – Jaga's husband. As a good natured and softhearted bandit who robs the rich and gives to the poor, some may believe this is a reference to Robin Hood, whereas Łamignat is in fact a parody of Robin Hood's Polish counterpart named Juraj Jánošík. He is incredibly strong, much stronger than Kokosz, and has a gigantic club which only he can lift. Łamignat's strength sometimes drives Kokosz furious with envy, yet they are still friends. Due to Łamignat's shy nature, Jaga encourages him by giving him a flute and telling him it will make Łamignat stronger whenever he plays it (the flute is in fact normal but gives a placebo effect to Łamignat, making him more confident). Łamignat's catch-phrase is "Lelum Polelum".
• ''Miluś'' – A dragon that Kajko and Kokosz found (at first as an egg) and adopted in the book "Zamach na Milusia". Miluś appears to be afraid of small animals (mice for example) and only eats vegetables. In his second appearance in "Skarby Mirmiła" Miluś grew bigger and developed wings – he however could only fly if he could start and land on water – and in "Cudowny lek" Miluś met a female dragon and left Kajko and Kokosz to live in the land of dragons (which was actually a good thing, as there were many dragon hunters attempting to hunt him down). After that, Miluś appeared in some short stories (all collected in a special comic book "Urodziny Milusia") – all set before the events in "Cudowny lek".
• ''Woj Wit'' (Wit the Warrior) – Kajko and Kokosz first meet Wit on their adventures in the second book "Szranki I konkury" and during their adventures in "Na wczasach". After the second one, however, Wit ends up living in Mirmiłowo and did not get to play an important part (apart from some background cameo appearances) until the very last book "Mirmił w Opałach". In the first book Wit is a romantic, adventure-seeking knight who only spoke in rhyme (he however lost the tendency to do so in the middle of the story as he got broken hearted). In his second appearance in "Na wczasach" Wit is shown as more of a Don Quixote figure, always looking for a challenge to a duel and often singing romantic songs (unlike his first appearance). In his third main appearance Wit was back to talking in rhyme and had become interested in science which led him to inventing exploding powder causing much more mayhem in the village. In his first two appearances Wit has a clever horse who was always trying to keep his master out of trouble.
• ''The Knaveknights'' (''Zbójcerze'') – a group of evil knights wanting to take over Mirmiłowo loosely based on the Teutonic Knights. They are led by a powerful warrior ''Cruel Hegemon'' who is the main villain of the series. His right-hand man, a Hitler-like Kapral (''Corporal'') often appears to attempt to rebel. One more notable "Zbójcerz" is Oferma (''Loser'') who appears to be based on Schweik and while being the "idiot of the group" is often chosen for special missions.

In 1939, Anne Frank (:Hannah Taylor-Gordon) realizes her world is beginning to change around her. Eventually, the Nazis invade the Netherlands. Anne becomes increasingly distressed as her rights are taken away, and her family is ominously being forced to register as Jews with the government and to wear yellow stars. She is then forced to leave her school and attend a Jewish lyceum, where she meets her new best friend, :Jacqueline van Maarsen (Victoria Anne Brown), who is only half-Jewish. Anne also meets Hello Silberberg (Nicky Cantor), on whom she develops a crush; it is implied that Hello also reciprocates her feelings. On her 13th birthday, she receives the famous checkered-patterned diary and immediately goes to her room to write her first entry.

A few weeks later, on a normal Sunday in July 1942, Margot (:Jessica Manley), Anne's sister, receives a call-up from the :Germans to be deported to a "labor camp" in the :East. :Otto Frank (Ben Kingsley) moves his family into the now-renowned "Secret Annex", followed soon by Hermann and Auguste van Pels (:Joachim Krol and :Brenda Blethyn), their son Peter (:Nicholas Audsley), and Fritz Pfeffer (:Jan Niklas), the Frank family's :dentist. During their stay in the annex, the Van Pels family members are noted for their constant bickering. Fritz becomes Anne's antagonist, and Anne has her first serious relationship with Peter, from whom she receives her first kiss. All the while, she wishes for an end to the war. Anne also gets her first period while in the annex - an occasion that she had been anxiously awaiting. One night a thief breaks into the building below the annex, leaving the eight refugees in terror.

Eventually, on August 4, 1944, the Franks are denounced by Lena Hartog (Veronica Nowag-Jones), the cleaning lady of the :business in which the annex resides. The eight people in the hiding are arrested and Anne's diary is dumped onto the floor while SS man Karl Silberbauer (Holger Daemgen) searches for hoarded money. Two of the helpers (of those in the Secret Annex) are also arrested. In conversation with Otto, Silberbauer is stunned to learn that he served as an officer in the Imperial German Army during World War I. Silberbauer laments that, if they had not gone into hiding, Otto and his family would have received decent treatment.

Afterwards, the Franks are sent on a train to Westerbork, a transit camp, where Anne, her family and friends are held in the criminal "S Barracks". There, Anne meets a woman, Janny Brandes-Brilleslijper (Klára Issová) and her sister Lientje (Zdeňka Volencová), who are later seen with Anne in Bergen-Belsen. Anne also befriends the camp's schoolteacher (Jaroslava Siktancova), who often invites Anne to the camp school to tell the students stories. (One of them is Mrs. Quackenbush, a story that Anne had written before going into hiding, and had been assigned to write by her math teacher as punishment for repeatedly talking in class)

Anne and her family are soon transported to Auschwitz, where the women are stripped of their clothing and their hair is shorn. She is separated from her father and the other men. During a selection for women in the camp to go to a safer place to work in a munitions factory, Anne's mother and sister are chosen, but Anne is not. Therefore, Edith and Margot choose to remain behind. Anne and Margot are sent to a scabies barracks and later deported to Bergen-Belsen, which is no more than many large tents on a muddy ground surrounded by an electric fence. Mrs. Van Pels eventually arrives at the camp to find Anne very thin and Margot sick with typhus. One night Anne sees her old friend, Hannah (Jade Williams), through the fence. Hannah is a privileged prisoner and tells Anne that her father is dying but her sister is alive. She throws a package with bread and socks over to Anne.

In the last scene with Anne, a fevered Margot and Anne speak of the days before they went to Bergen-Belsen. They go to sleep. The next morning, Anne opens her eyes, and hears birds outside. She nudges Margot to show her, but Margot doesn't wake up, and instead falls out of bed onto the ground. Anne realizes that Margot is dead, and lifts her eyes to the sky in defeat.

After the war in 1945, it is revealed that Otto is, in fact, alive. He looks for information about his daughters, but has no luck in doing so until he is directed to find Janny Brandes, who survived the camp. Otto is told that Anne died a few days after Margot. Miep Gies (:Lili Taylor), who helped the Franks hide, gives Anne's preserved diary to Otto. Otto reads it all. He then goes up to the now empty annex and photos. He collapses in a crying heap in front of Anne's wall, which is still plastered with movie stars. An epilogue is then shown which describes what happened to everyone mentioned in the story.

In 1946, several friends gather in the house of James Conover in Washington, DC. James is about 60; with him are Spike MacManus, a long-time political reporter and Grant Matthews, in his 40s, a businessman and Katherine (Kay) Thorndike, late 30s.

The Republicans have chosen Grant Matthews to run for President. Grant is estranged from his wife Mary, and he has become romantically involved with Kay Thorndike, a newspaper publisher.

Background

According to journalist-playwright Sidney Blumenthal "The play's events... allude to Wendell Willkie, the utility company head who became the surprise Republican candidate for president in 1940. 'This is a play about a businessman who is a dark-horse candidate.' " According to Gerald Bordman, "Many critics and playgoers saw more than a touch of the late Wendell Willkie in Matthews".

She becomes obsessed with her uncle, Danny Farrell, who has always been a black sheep of sorts in the family. Danny is believed to have died in an airplane flying over China while working for the CIA. Roger's mother, Brigid, is a powerful widow with a lot of dirty secrets. The family is an example of an Irish Catholic family's ascent into the upper middle class, perhaps even the upper class, after a few generations, reflecting a common theme of sociologist Greeley. However, aside from Danny, there have been other mysterious deaths in this family, and Noelle courageously probes this dark side of her ancestry, leading to the truth about who she really is.

Noele is clearly the most significant character in the book. Greeley has said that she is meant to embody the Church. She is a spunky girl who once takes over a church service with her guitar-playing rendition of the hymn "Lord of the Dance", much to the dismay of her folk group leader, and gives a spontaneous, powerful homily about life being a dance where God chooses the partners. Sometimes, however, God wants to dance alone, with just us.

Republican newspaper magnate Kay Thorndyke (Angela Lansbury) intends to make her lover, aircraft tycoon Grant Matthews (Spencer Tracy), president with her as the power behind the throne. Thorndyke plans to use her newspaper chain's influence to deadlock the 1948 Republican National Convention, so it will choose Matthews as a compromise dark horse candidate, instead of Thomas E. Dewey, Robert A. Taft, or former Governor of Minnesota, Harold Stassen.

Matthews is skeptical of the idea of running for president, but Thorndyke, Republican strategist Jim Conover (Adolphe Menjou), and campaign manager Spike McManus (Van Johnson) persuade him to test the waters by going on a speaking tour. Thorndyke believes that ambition and success will soon convince him. Matthews reunites with his estranged wife, Mary (Katharine Hepburn), for the campaign. Despite knowing about Thorndyke and her husband's affair, Mary agrees to support him in public because of his idealism and honesty, and because she is unaware of the extent of Thorndyke's role in the campaign. Thorndyke tells Matthews that scandal will ruin his chances, so they must no longer meet as lovers.

Wherever Matthews speaks, he appeals to the regular people; floods of telegrams from “ordinary” citizens pour in, thanking him for his message. But the powers and would-be influencers behind the political scenes are very unhappy. Matthews makes a controversial speech in Wichita, calling big labor to account. Before he makes another speech in Detroit giving big business the same treatment, Thorndyke comes to the hotel secretly and persuades him to use a prepared speech to help his chances for the nomination. Again, there are floods of telegrams, this time from people who can deliver votes in the primaries. Matthews becomes obsessed with becoming president and surrenders completely to anything Conover wants him to do. Thorndyke remains in the background, because knowledge of their affair would destroy Matthews’s chances for the nomination, all the more for the Presidency. Matthews makes deals with various repugnant special interests for their support.

A nationwide fireside chat, broadcast live on radio and television from the Matthews's home, is intended to officially launch Grant’s candidacy. Mary is supposed to give a speech introducing her husband. At the last minute, she learns that Thorndyke intervened in Detroit to sway her husband and witnesses Thorndyke telling a group of influence peddlers that she is the power behind Matthews and will continue in that role. If they have questions or further deals, they are not to bother Matthews; they are to come to her—or she will destroy them in her newspapers. Mary knew about the moral compromises Grant had made, but not the extent of Thorndyke’s role. Confronted with this evidence that she has lost him forever, she refuses to give the speech and runs from the room in tears. McManus, who has grown genuinely fond of her, follows and tries to persuade her to come back and help Grant become President because the White House is the one place Thorndyke cannot follow him.

Mary begins to read the speech prepared for her. Grant, who came to the broadcast from a meeting (off camera) of local people where his one-time friends, neighbors and supporters let him have it, sees Mary succumbing to the corruption. He realizes that he has betrayed his and Mary's ideals. He steps to the microphone before the cameras, and confesses to the American people. While promising to seek bipartisan reform—and challenging the voters to vote—he denounces as frauds both his backers and himself and withdraws as a candidate. He also asks for his wife's forgiveness, and they embrace.

Thorndyke fires Spike, but Conover immediately hires him.

Rebecca ("Becca") Warner (Carla Gugino) moves from her small South Dakota farm town to attend college at the fictional University of Los Angeles. On her first day, she and her parents Walter (Lane Smith) and Connie (Cindy Pickett) meet Crawl (Pauly Shore), the resident advisor of Becca's coed dormitory. After they leave, the clash of cultures causes Becca to consider returning home, but Crawl convinces her to give the college a chance. She soon begins to acclimate, cutting and dyeing her hair, dressing in a Californian style, and even getting a tattoo of a butterfly on her ankle. Becca invites Crawl to spend the Thanksgiving break with her family back home.

When Becca and Crawl arrive in South Dakota, the Warners and Becca's boyfriend Travis (Dan Gauthier) are shocked by the changes in Becca. At dinner, Becca realizes that Travis wants to propose marriage to her and she urges Crawl to speak. Unable to come up with anything off the cuff, Crawl tells them that he has already proposed and she had accepted. This upsets Becca's family, who begin to disdain Crawl, and Travis, who punches Crawl in the face.

Now acting as a future son-in-law, Crawl expresses an interest in farming but bumbles his way through daily chores, to the amusement of Walter and his farmhand Theo (Dennis Burkley). However, Crawl begins to prove himself as an avid farmer, quickly learning how to perform each task he's given. He also begins to endear himself to the rest of the family. He impresses Becca's little brother Zack (Patrick Renna) with his computer skills, and Zack begins to see him as a big brother. He compliments Connie's appearance and helps to bring her out of her shell for Walter. When Walter's father has a heart attack, Crawl performs CPR and earns Walter's trust for aiding his father.

While shopping for clothes, Crawl meets Becca's friend Tracy (Tiffani Thiessen). Travis apologizes to Crawl for hitting him and invites him to a bachelor party, where Tracy dances for Crawl.

The next morning, Becca finds Crawl and Tracy waking up in the barn and furiously calls off the wedding, but Crawl and Tracy cannot remember what happened. Crawl leaves to head back to L.A. while Travis, who had been seeing Tracy on the side, berates her for behavior the previous night. Tracy finds her car seat suspiciously left all the way back and discovers a bottle of pills underneath it.

After picking up Crawl, who was attempting to hitchhike, Tracy visits the Warner house to confront Travis and Theo while the Warners are sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner. Theo confesses that they drugged them and that he set them up in the barn. Walter immediately fires Theo despite his honesty. Becca stands up to Travis and Crawl knocks him down, revealing that he had majored in karate for two semesters.

After Travis and Theo leave, Tracy is invited to sit with the Warners while Walter asks his son-in-law to cut the turkey. Becca tries to speak the truth about Crawl's proposal, but he stops her, saying that they have not yet decided on a wedding date and need wait a while before making the decision, hinting that he intends to legitimately propose to Rebecca and have a proper relationship that the Warners will respect.

Marshall (Mario Yedidia) is a monster movie-obsessed preteen, and though his friends Amy (Clara Bryant) and Gilbert (Adam Wylie) aren't as enthusiastic about his interest, the three friends are still very close. They discover an Egyptian mummy in the basement of a "dead" man's house. Because of an ancient amulet and the moonlight being in the right place at the right time, the mummy rises from the dead. The kids are initially afraid, but with time they discover he means them no harm; he's simply clumsy and confused. Marshall in particular bonds with the mummy, naming him "Harold" (explaining that the mummy reminds him of his Uncle Harold). The group decides they need to hide Harold, and attempt to find a way to help him now that they are becoming friends. After paying a visit to Bruce, a local shop owner who has a vast collection of monster-related items and knowledge of mythological/supernatural facts, they discover that if the mummy is not put back in his sarcophagus before midnight on Halloween, the mummy will cease to exist.

However, the sarcophagus is in the hands of the "dead" man, known as Mr. Kubat, who feigned his death to avoid paying his taxes. He's also involved with several illegal schemes, some involving ancient Egyptian artifacts- which is why he had a mummy hidden in his basement. Upon finding out that the mummy has "escaped" from the coffin, he orders his henchmen to look for it and bring it back in time, as he is selling it to an interested buyer. The children now have to keep Harold safe from attracting attention of local people in town, as well as protect him from the henchmen. As the Halloween deadline draws closer, the children also discover that in his previous life, Harold was in love, and wishes to be reunited with his lover. At a Halloween party, Harold can at least hide in the open since most people assume he is a normal person in costume. But when some of his bandages are pulled back from his face, it reveals he's not alive. Harold is captured, and his friends get Bruce to help them in their rescue plan (using some creative Halloween props, and Gilbert making both a dangerous and daring attempt by driving a car through a wall). After several incidents, the group finally figures out how to work together, foiling the plans of Mr. Kubat, as well as bringing Harold and his beloved back together before they return to their rest peacefully.

Seventeen-year-old Lonnie lives on a Texas ranch with his grandfather Homer Bannon, Homer's wife Jewel, and her adult son Hud. While a good cowboy, Hud does whatever he wants, regardless of others. They also have a new worker, Jesse, and a cook Halmea, a friendly African-American woman who is treated respectfully by Homer. Hud is nasty towards her, and Lonnie tries to be nice to her; both of them are attracted to her but she is uninterested.

The prologue briefly explains life on the ranch and the backstories of everyone there.

One day, one of Homer's young heifers dies suddenly. The dead animal is found to have foot-and-mouth disease, and it has spread to the rest of the herd. All cattle on the ranch are led into a deep pit dug by bulldozers. They are shot and buried.

During this time, Hud rapes Halmea, the cook who fed them, causing her to leave. Lonnie and Halmea shoot at him but miss. Halmea tries to kill him, but Lonnie just wants to scare him, to no avail. Lonnie goes to the town rodeo, only to see his friend Hermy get seriously hurt in a bull riding accident when a bull stomps on and shatters his chest. Lonnie heads back to the ranch with Hud in a car behind him.

Lonnie spots Homer on the side of the highway and stops without warning, causing Hud to rear-end him. Homer is injured and bloody, with the tip of a bone protruding from his chest. Hud sends Lonnie to flag down a car, but Lonnie is unsuccessful. Hud shoots Homer while he is gone. Lonnie is very upset by this, but Hud says it is the best thing he could do due to the physical pain he was in and would most likely never fully recover. The book ends with Homer's funeral. When Hud tells Lonnie he must come along with them to the graveyard, Lonnie pulls away and runs behind the church. He thinks about his grandfather and the fact that he now gets to stay with his land forever, a thought that makes him feel better about probably losing the ranch. He stands outside the church "thinking of the horseman that had passed."

An epilogue is quickly narrated by Lonnie. He explains how he left Homer's funeral to see his injured friend, Hermy. He hitches a ride with a truck driver who knew Homer. When he asks how he is doing all Lonnie says is, "Mean as ever". The driver tells numerous stories about bulls, his wife, and his kids. Lonnie says to the reader how he reminds him of everyone he knows.

In the late 1920s in Shanghai during the Chinese Civil War, as throngs of refugees flee the rainswept city, a couple of elderly Christian missionaries welcome guests to their home for the wedding of Dr. Robert Strike, a fellow missionary, and Megan Davis, his childhood sweetheart whom he has not seen in three years. Some of the missionaries have a cynical view of the Chinese people they have come to save. Shortly after Megan arrives, her fiancé Bob rushes in and postpones the wedding so he can rescue a group of orphans who are in danger from the spreading civil war. Megan insists on accompanying him on his mission.

On the way they stop at the headquarters of General Yen, a powerful Chinese warlord who controls the Shanghai region. While Megan waits in the car, Bob pleads with the general for a safe passage pass so he can save the orphans. Contemptuous of Bob's missionary zeal, General Yen gives him a worthless paper that describes Bob's foolishness. Bob and Megan reach St. Andrews orphanage safely, but the pass only makes the soldiers laugh and steal their car when they try to leave with the children. The missionaries and children eventually reach the train station, but in the chaos, Bob and Megan are both knocked unconscious and are separated.

Sometime later, Megan regains consciousness in the private troop train of General Yen, attended by his concubine, Mah-Li. When they arrive at the general's summer palace, they are greeted by a man, Jones, Yen's American financial advisor, who tells him that he has succeeded in raising six million dollars, hidden in a nearby boxcar, for General Yen's war chest. Megan is shocked by the brutality of the executions conducted outside her window. Fascinated and attracted by the young beautiful missionary, the general has his men move the executions out of earshot and assures her that he will send her back to Shanghai as soon as it is safe.

One evening, Megan drifts off to sleep and has an unsettling erotic dream about the general coming to her rescue and kissing her passionately. Soon after, she accepts the general's invitation to dinner. While they are dining, the general learns that his concubine Mah-Li has betrayed him with Captain Li, one of his soldiers. Later, after General Yen arrests Mah-Li for being a spy, Megan tries to intervene, appealing to his better nature. The general challenges her to prove her Christian ideals by forfeiting her own life if Mah-Li proves unfaithful again. Megan naively accepts and ends up unwittingly helping Mah-Li betray the general by passing information to his enemies about the location of his hidden fortune.

With the information provided by Mah-Li, the general's enemies steal his fortune, leaving him financially ruined and deserted by his soldiers and servants. General Yen is unable to take Megan's life—it is too precious to him. When she leaves his room in tears, he prepares a cup of poisoned tea for himself. Megan returns, dressed in the fine Chinese garments he gave her. She waits on him in the gentle manner of a concubine. When she says she could never leave him, he only smiles, then drinks the poisoned tea.

Sometime later, Megan and Jones are on a boat headed back to Shanghai. While discussing the beauty and tragedy of the general's life, Jones comforts Megan by saying that one day she will be with him again in another life.

Johnny O'Clock (Dick Powell) is a junior partner in a posh casino with Guido Marchettis (Thomas Gomez). Complicating their longtime working relationship is Guido's wife Nelle (Ellen Drew), who is still in love with former boyfriend Johnny. She gives Johnny an expensive custom pocket watch, the twin of a birthday present she gave her husband, except Johnny's has a romantic inscription engraved on the back.

Johnny gives the watch, along with a rejection note, to Harriet Hobson (Nina Foch), a hat-check girl at the casino, to return to Nelle. Harriet, however, apparently commits suicide using gas. Her sister Nancy (Evelyn Keyes) shows up to find out what happened. She becomes attracted to Johnny. They eventually learn from Police Inspector Koch (Lee J. Cobb) that Harriet was killed by poison.

Harriet was dating Chuck Blayden (Jim Bannon), a crooked cop who is trying to persuade Guido to let him take Johnny's place. When Blayden also turns up dead, Koch suspects that either Johnny or Marchettis is responsible.

Though Johnny tries to resist, little by little, he falls for Nancy. When Koch shows both Johnny and Marchettis Johnny's watch and note, Johnny tells Nancy their relationship is through and takes her to the airport. As he is driving away, however, he narrowly survives a drive-by shooting, and Nancy realizes he was only trying to protect her. She refuses to leave him.

Johnny decides to flee to South America with Nancy, but not before brazenly cashing in his share of the casino. Marchettis pulls out a gun when Johnny's back is turned. They shoot it out; Marchettis is killed and Johnny wounded. Afterward, Nelle offers to testify it was self-defense, but only if he will come back to her. He refuses, so she tells Koch it was cold-blooded murder. Johnny's first instinct is to run away, but Nancy convinces him to give himself up.

As a young girl, Kim Jeong-min (Jun Ji-hyun) hated writing letters to soldiers because they never write her back once they learn her age. So instead, she pretends to be a teacher, and becomes pen pals with Park Hyun-jun (Park Shin-yang). They plan to meet in person at a train station, but Jeong-min never shows up, and thus their correspondence ends.

Later when Jeong-min reaches the age of twenty (though when this movie was shot Jun was only 17), Hyun-jun moves into her hometown. Since her parents died when she was little, Jeong-min has been living with her grandfather who owns the bookstore Somang Books. She also works at this bookstore but dreams of becoming a painter. Hyun-jun has become the owner of a pet shop for birds, and grieving over the death of his girlfriend in a car accident, he keeps sending her letters via carrier pigeon. While painting outdoors, Jeong-min sees Hyun-jun feeding some pigeons. As she watches him care for one wounded pigeon then give an apple to a child playing nearby, she falls in love with him at first sight. But the apple reminds her of the same apple painted on the envelopes from her yet unknown pen pal.

During a bank robbery a bank guard, in attempting to wrest a pistol from one of the two robbers, is shot and killed by the robber, Harry Wheeler (Paul Richards).

Lona McLane (Kim Novak), an unaccompanied young woman in a mink coat, leaves a movie theatre and walks to her car. When she tries to start it, it will not turn over, but almost immediately Paul Sheridan (Fred MacMurray) appears at her window to offer his assistance. He spends the evening with her as they call a mechanic, stop for a drink at a bar, and repair to his apartment.

In the morning, Sheridan appears at his office, a police precinct, where we discover he is a cop who has been dispatched to see what he can find out from Miss McLane, the erstwhile girlfriend of Harry Wheeler, who has now been identified as the principal bank robber. Sheridan is presented as an honest cop who, along with his partner Rick McAllister (Phillip Carey) and a number of his other associates, has been tasked by his boss, Police Lieutenant Karl Eckstrom (E.G. Marshall), to recover the stolen $250,000 and to capture Wheeler alive so the police will be able to find out from him who his accomplice is. Among Sheridan's other associates is Paddy Dolan (Allen Nourse), who has a drinking problem but is well-liked and nearing retirement. As such he is in danger of losing his pension if he screws up again, and Lt. Eckstrom has asked Sheridan to watch out for him so that he does not screw up. He and other officers maintain 24-hour surveillance on Lona McLane in her apartment from a stakeout apartment they rent, conveniently, across the courtyard and from the driver's seat of a car parked outside the apartment building.

Sheridan is falling for Lona, who has now figured out that he is a cop, as the mechanic fixing her car, tells her it was tampered with. She is at first furious, but quickly melts in Sheridan's arms, professing her love for him. She then tries to persuade him to kill Wheeler so the two can take off with the loot. At first he seems insulted and angrily resists—he has been an honest cop— but also because he now believes he is the one being used. He orders her to leave his apartment where they have met for an assignation.

Sheridan then is shown to brood, in hallways and in his apartment stakeout, smoking cigarette after cigarette, as he mulls over the proposition Lona has made him. Eventually, he caves and they meet on the roof of the apartment building where he agrees to mastermind Wheeler's murder and the theft of the bank's money.

Meanwhile, Sheridan's associate, Rick McAllister, has been watching through his binoculars not only Lona in her apartment but also a woman in the apartment next door, who turns out to be a nurse, Ann Stewart (Dorothy Malone). Rick has become fascinated and infatuated with her as she bustles about her apartment hanging drapes and doing calisthenics. He later saves her from an unwanted advance, and she becomes interested in him.

As Sheridan's plot unfolds, things go awry. He is unable to find Lona when he goes into her apartment to look for her. Miss Stewart, who is having a party next door, goes to Lona's apartment to ask to borrow some ice. As she is about to knock, Sheridan opens the door to leave, and encounters her. He rudely refuses her request and quickly closes the door.

As planned, Wheeler shows up, betrayed by Lona, and is nabbed by Sheridan. Because Paddy was not at his post as he should have been, Sheridan, who has agreed to hide Paddy's dereliction of duty, now has Paddy in tow. Sheridan and Paddy force Wheeler to take them to Wheeler's car where he has stowed the bag of money in the trunk. As Paddy leans in the trunk to inspect the bag, Sheridan pushes Wheeler onto Paddy and shoots Wheeler dead, claiming to Paddy that he had no choice since Wheeler had jumped Paddy and swift action was necessary.

Meanwhile, Rick has spoken to Miss Stewart, who has told him about the man she saw in Lona's apartment. Rick believes this man to be Wheeler, and tells her to call the police if she sees the man again.

Paddy figures out that Sheridan is not protecting him just because he wants to save his pension but because he wants the $250,000. Paddy, though a screw-up, is an honest man and vows to tell the lieutenant what has transpired. This means Sheridan would not get the money. When Sheridan moves across the front seat to prevent Paddy from opening the car door, Paddy pulls his pistol. There is a struggle and Paddy is shot in the stomach and killed with his own gun.

Not long thereafter Miss Stewart, taking out the garbage, has another chance encounter in the hall with Sheridan, whom she recognizes as having been in Lona's apartment. She goes back to her apartment to call the police. Sheridan, watching from the stakeout apartment, enters her apartment and forces her and Lona, who has now returned, to accompany him to Wheeler's car where he believes the money is still located.

They walk to an alley across from where the car is parked, but a police car is parked behind it. He tells Miss Stewart to cross the street to retrieve the money from the trunk of the car. As she reaches the car, Rick, who has reached the police car unseen by Sheridan, tells her to get down when he fires his gun. He shoots towards the alleyway where Sheridan and Lona are standing. Sheridan tells Lona to leave, and runs out to Wheeler's car, in a misguided attempt to flee the scene. A detective fatally shoots Sheridan. More police arrive as Lona walks towards the dying Sheridan, and she is gently guided to the back of the police car. Rick takes Miss Stewart's arm to walk her home, and they walk away together into the night.

John Conroy is a Special Prosecutor, given extraordinary powers to break up the crime syndicate in a large midwestern town; his investigation will focus on Neil Eichelberger and his criminal operation. A local journalist, Jerry McKibbon, is sympathetic to this but feels Conroy isn't experienced enough to handle the task. Matt Conroy, John Conroy's father, is a local policeman and is assigned to be his chief investigator.

McKibbon discovers that Matt Conroy is a crooked cop who works for Eichelberger. McKibbon demands that Matt break with the mobster or he'll inform his son, John Conroy, of the duplicity. To vindicate himself, it is decided that Matt Conroy will procure a damning file from the D.A.'s office that Eichelberger has requested, but he will retain a copy.

Even before this double-cross is exposed, Eichelberger decides to have Matt Conroy murdered in order to instill fear in his operation and show that Eichelberger is in control of the situation, since John Conroy's investigation is more serious than expected. Matt Conroy is killed during a phony robbery, and his assassin, Monty LaRue, is immediately killed in turn.

John Conroy's investigation is systematically uncovering Eichelberger's crimes, and in anticipation of having their books subpoenaed, Eichelberger has the building housing them burned. He has callous disregard for the people renting there, and all are killed. An expose of Matt Conroy's murder reveals that Eichelberger had LaRue killed also.

His widow Carmelina LaRue can prove this, and contacts McKibbon in order to exact revenge, but is chased away by Eichelberger's henchmen. Since McKibbon is the only one that can identify Carmelina LaRue, her husband's murderer, Roy Ackerman, demands that McKibbon be killed, but Eichelberger refuses. Ackerman hires a hit man himself, and McKibbon is lured to a boxing match where he can be shot.

Meanwhile, Carmelina manages to reach John Conroy and her testimony is sufficient, along with already acquired information, to topple Eichelberger. The hired gun shoots McKibbon, and as he lies dying, Eichelberger and his crew are arrested. McKibbon dies before John Conroy can arrive.

John Conroy's epitaph for McKibbon is something McKibbon himself has previously said: "Sometimes someone has to pay an exorbitant price to uphold the majesty of the law."

A peasant girl named Karen is adopted while still very young, by a rich old lady after her mother's death and, as such, grows up vain and spoiled. Before her adoption, Karen had a roughly-made pair of red shoes; after, she has her foster mother buy her a pair of red shoes fit for a princess. Karen is so enamoured of her new shoes that she wears them to church, but the old lady tells her, "This is highly improper: you must only wear black shoes in church". But the following Sunday, Karen is unable to resist putting the red shoes on again. As she is about to enter the church, she meets a mysterious old soldier with a red beard. "Oh, what beautiful shoes for dancing," the soldier says. "Never come off when you dance," he tells the shoes, and he taps each of the shoes with his hand. After church, Karen cannot resist taking a few dance steps, and off she goes, as though the shoes controlled her, but she finally manages to stop them after a few minutes.

After her adoptive mother becomes ill and passes away, Karen doesn't attend her funeral, choosing to go to a dance instead. Once again her shoes take control and this time she is unable to stop dancing. An angel appears to her, bearing a sword, and condemns her to dance even after she dies, as a warning to vain children everywhere. Karen begs for mercy but the red shoes take her away before she hears the angel's reply.

Karen finds an executioner and asks him to chop off her feet. He does so but the shoes continue to dance, even with Karen's amputated feet inside them. The executioner gives her a pair of wooden feet and crutches. Thinking that she has suffered enough for the red shoes, Karen decides to go to church so people can see her. Yet her amputated feet, still in the red shoes, dance before her, barring the way. The following Sunday she tries again, thinking she is at least as good as the others in church, but again the dancing red shoes bar the way.

When Sunday comes again Karen dares not go to church. Instead she sits alone at home and prays to God for help. The angel reappears, now bearing a spray of roses, and gives Karen the mercy she asked for: her heart becomes so filled with peace and joy that it bursts. Her soul flies on to Heaven, where no one mentions the red shoes.

The plot revolves around four +Anima children: Cooro, Husky, Senri, and Nana. Brought together by their +Anima powers, they search for others like themselves and a place to belong. Along the way, they encounter villains and friends alike, as well as other +Anima. Like many episodic adventure manga, there is not a big overarching story, rather the group travels from town to town, and at each stop over, they get wrapped up in local events. Examples of these adventures include Cooro helping a man fix and use a hang glider (man-lifting kite) to acquire medicine for his village, the group learning the secret of a monstrous +Anima that has been terrorizing another village, and Husky rescuing a man who has fallen in love with the legend of a mermaid. As the series progresses, more is learned about the characters' backstory, and about the setting of +Anima.

The world takes place on a fictional island continent, split between two nations: Astaria and Sailand. Both are mostly desert countries, but Astaria has more varied environments, with some steppes and forest. Between them is the great Moss Mountain range that keeps the two nations separate. On this range live the independent Kim-un-kur tribes. The majority of the series takes place in Astaria, with some later adventures taking place in the Moss Mountains and Sailand.

+Anima

In the +Anima fantasy world, some humans have an unusual gift that grants them the ability to morph one or more of their body parts, such as their limbs, into an animal's body part. Some are capable of even more radical changes, such as growing wings or full-body transformation. The transformation processes are very fast, and occur at the user's will. When inactive, the morphed areas revert to normal, leaving the person's clothing and body completely untouched. The only visual mark of this ability appears on the body of the person, in the form of a black, tattoo-like marking that determines their +Anima. Occasionally, the user bears some behavioral characteristics of their animal.

+Anima are not treated kindly by "normal" humans. When some are treated poorly enough, they can be taken over by their +Anima. Usually, a full-body transformation results in a berserker or otherwise dangerous creature.

+Anima are not born naturally, and the children of +Anima are human. A human gains their +Anima during times of extreme stress or danger. For example, Husky gained his fish +Anima when he nearly died by drowning. It is unknown if the children of +Anima are more likely to become +Anima themselves, or if they will naturally gain the same powers. Senri's brother and father both had bear-related powers, but this is the only example of a "family" of +Anima, and their similar abilities could be entirely circumstantial.

On the other hand, it has been shown that a +Anima who lives a content and happy life eventually lose their +Anima powers, provided those abilities aren't still necessary for their survival. For example, an injured +Anima was rescued by, and eventually married, to a blacksmith, and the two lived happily for decades, resulting in the eventual loss of her powers.

The story is set on a colonized Mars at some unspecified point in the future. The majority of the human population is divided up into a number of small domed city-states. Those who live outside the domes in the harsh wildernesses of the planet are known as Barbaroi. Resources are scarce, and supplies are divided out between cities based on the outcome of gladiatorial battles between representative fighters from each. Adding to the problems of the colonists, no children have been born on Mars for a decade. The cause of the infertility is unknown, but people have turned to robots called dolls as a substitute for the presence of children in their lives. And a red moon, Earth's moon, hangs over Mars, drawn towards the red planet after the destruction of Earth and ravaging it with lunar storms caused by gravitational fluctuations between Mars and its unwelcome satellite.

The protagonist of the story is Layla, a barbaroi gladiator with a mysterious past and follows her quest to defeat Volk, the ruler of Mars. She is accompanied on her journey by Nei, a strange "doll", and Speedy, a doll breeder (or repairman).

In 1917, Stan (Stan Laurel) and Ollie (Oliver Hardy) are drafted into the American Expeditionary Force to fight in World War I. Their ineptitude during basic training antagonizes the drill sergeant and they are assigned to kitchen duties. When they ask the cook where they should put the garbage cans he sarcastically tells them to take them to the general. They take him at his word and put them in the general's private dining room. The cook (George Marshall), who is thrown in the stockade with them, curses their "snitching" and threatens them with violence after they are released. They escape his wrath when they are shipped to the trenches in France.

Serving close to the front line, they befriend soldier Eddie Smith, who receives a Dear John letter from his wife. When Eddie is killed in action, the boys determine to rescue Eddie's daughter (Jacquie Lyn) from her brutal foster father and deliver her to Eddie's parents, with whom he was estranged. They distinguish themselves in combat by losing control of a tank and accidentally forcing a German platoon into the open.

After the Armistice, Stan and Ollie venture to New York City to retrieve the girl and look for Eddie's parents. Using the city telephone directory, the task proves both monumental and problematic (Smith being the most common surname) as the boys blindly attempt to visit each Smith until they find the grandparents. After taking punches from an annoyed prizefighter and disrupting a society wedding, they resort to telephoning first.

While operating their lunch wagon, the boys are approached by an unpleasant civil servant (Charles Middleton) who demands Eddie's child so that she can be placed in an orphanage. The boys refuse, and the man says he will return with the police to have the boys arrested.

They try to secure a loan with their lunch wagon to finance their escape to another city, but the banker smirks that he'd have to be unconscious to make such a deal. While laughing, he topples a bust onto his own head and knocks himself out. Taking this as approval, the boys take what they need from the bank vault.

Tailed to their apartment by the police, the boys unsuccessfully try to hide Eddie's daughter in a dumbwaiter. The police bring the three of them to the banker for identification, but when they turn out their pockets the banker's wife finds a photograph of Stan and Ollie with Eddie and recognizes him as her own son. The banker is the Smith they have been seeking all along! On learning that the little girl is his granddaughter, the banker drops the charges and invites them as his guests for dinner. The cook storms out of the kitchen to tell his boss that he will not adjust the service on a moment's notice, and recognizes Laurel and Hardy as the "snitches". The cook chases them away with a large kitchen knife.

On the way to the museum with his niece and nephew, Whopper tells them the origin of Puppy Power, the ability of humankind to understand the Pound Puppies and Purries.

In the Dark Ages (specifically 958 AD), a boy named Arthur and his dog Digalot came across a stone which contained both the mythical sword Excalibur and the magical Bone of Scone. While Arthur pulled the sword from the stone, Digalot pulled the Bone of Scone from the same stone, and soon afterward Arthur discovered that the dog could talk. Sir McNasty, who had witnessed the withdrawals and Arthur's coronation as King of England, planned to conquer the world by retrieving the Bone. However, it was kept hidden by the giant guardian, Big Paw.

In 1958, the Bone of Scone is in a museum in an unnamed American city. Pound owners Tammy and Jeff hold a press conference and announce that the pound will be holding an adoption bazaar. A McNasty descendant arrives, wishing to adopt the puppies. One pup discovers McNasty's true intentions: with his Mean Machine, McNasty will transform them and the rest of the Pound into vicious guard dogs, steal the Bone of Scone, and use its power and his army of dogs to conquer the world.

Collette and Whopper escape from their cage inside McNasty's lab, and briefly reunite with the rest of the Puppies. However, Lumpy and Bones snatch them back. The Puppies give chase, but nearly all of them end up in a rat-infested cave, hanging on a rope, before the Purries pull them up to safety. The Puppies and Purries continue looking for their friends. When they get caught in a patch of mire, they are saved by the legendary Big Paw, who agrees to find the Bone with them.

Later, McNasty's henchmen transform the Puppies into guard dogs, save for Cooler. Big Paw brings him and the Purries back to town to stop the evil trio, as the trio's truck heads to the Pound. Big Paw and Cooler chase McNasty and his henchmen back to the museum and their Mean Machine, which not only turns them into good men, but the Puppies back to normal. Big Paw and Nose Marie finally get back the Bone of Scone.

Whopper and his Puplings find themselves in the museum. The Bone of Scone has returned for another visit, and Whopper introduces Big Paw as a surprise for the young ones, who did not believe before that he was real. As long as he is here to protect the Bone, Whopper says, Puppy Power will never be lost again.

A terrified young girl runs through the forest and into her house to escape from an unseen threat. When she sees the Bell Witch, a ghost that takes the form of a girl, she awakens with a scream. Her mother dismisses it as a dream and reminds her that this is her week to visit her father. The mother goes to her desk and picks up a binder full of old letters, with a note from someone who claims to be an ancestor. The letters appear written in 19th-century script.

The story goes back to the early 19th-century to show the Bell Witch's story. John Bell is taken to church court and found guilty of theft of a woman's land. The church releases him with the verdict that his loss of honor is sufficient punishment. The offended party, Kate Batts, is infamous in the village due to claims of witchcraft.

Strange events begin to occur and John believes that Batts cursed him. Betsy starts to look very sick and the haunting worsens. Her young teacher, Richard Powell, notices the change in Betsy's behavior. The Bell family tells him they fear that the cause is paranormal. Powell attempts to prove that this is impossible because spirits don't exist. It is implied that Richard is in love with Betsy.

Richard stays in the Bell home to observe Betsy's behavior. His theory is proven wrong when he witnesses Betsy dangling in the air, as if someone is holding her up by her hair. Betsy is sexually assaulted by the spirit. John loses his sanity and sees many forms of the Bell Witch. John asks Kate Batts to kill him and remove her curse. She refuses and tells him that he cursed himself. John tries to kill himself, but the spirit stops him.

Betsy is struck with a revelation that the attacks on her and her father are caused by a supernatural being who was born out of her innocence. She needed to "remember" that the true cause of her pain is her father's child sexual abuse of her. Lucy, Betsy's mother, has the same revelation because she witnessed the sexual assault, which she and Betsy repressed. Betsy poisons her now bed-ridden father with medicine while her mother watches. Betsy is then seen at her father's grave, and she is never haunted again.

In present day, the mother's daughter says her father has come to take her for their weekend stay. She sends her daughter to her ex-husband, who is waiting outside. Betsy's ghost suddenly appears and looks ominous. The mother realizes Betsy is trying to warn her that something is amiss between her daughter and her ex-husband.

She runs out of her house and catches a glimpse of her daughter's worried face peering out from the car window as it drives away; the implication is that the father is sexually abusing her. She runs after her ex-husband's car, frantically yelling his name.

In 1974, during the final days of the Vietnam War, Mark Lee arrives in Saigon, intending to bring his uncle and cousin Michael Cheung Chi-mun back to Hong Kong with him. After arriving at the airport, Mark is confined by corrupt security guards who strip and attempt to rob him, but he is saved by Chow Ying-kit, who seems to have some measure of influence.

Mark and Michael later encounter Kit in a nightclub, where they discover the woman is a criminal and gun runner. Kit takes an interest in the cousins and invites them to accompany her on a deal with a local Vietnamese warlord. The deal goes bad, but the three escape. Kit is impressed with the way Mark and Michael handled themselves and helps them escape Vietnam, taking them under her wing.

Over the next few months, Kit trains the cousins in her business and marksmanship. Mark and Michael develop an attraction to her and Kit is attracted to Mark. Despite his feelings, Mark does not reciprocate Kit's affections to avoid hurting Michael, who thinks Kit is in love with him.

Kit manages to secure safe passage for Mark, Michael, and Michael's father back to Hong Kong. The three return and start a new business there.

The leader of the arms smuggling company (and Kit's former lover), Sam Ho Cheung-ching, returns after a three-year absence when he was presumed dead. Jealous of Kit's relationship with Mark and Michael, he plots to kill the cousins. Ho sends a bomb to the business, which kills Michael's father. Ho and his men capture and beat Mark and Mun, warning them to stay away from Kit.

Kit expresses her regret for Michael's father's death and to share her feelings with Mark, which he reciprocates. Ho returns to Vietnam, taking Kit with him, to complete the deal with the Vietnamese warlord encountered earlier in the film.

Mark and Michael follow Ho back to Saigon, intending to kill him. Mark steps off the plane attired in his iconic outfit as seen in the first ''A Better Tomorrow'': black duster, sunglasses, and matchstick in his mouth.

At an abandoned temple, where Kit meets Michael to give him two plane tickets to leave Saigon with Mark they are unexpectedly surrounded by Việt Cộng troops. They engage in a shootout with them. While trying to escape from them in a jeep driven by Pat, due to the bumpy ride, Michael falls off the jeep and gets caught in an explosion. Mark confronts Kit in her hotel concerning Michael's assumed death accusing her of betrayal and keeping secrets from him. Then enraged by her answers to his accusations he slaps her a few times. Before he leaves her room, he tells her he wants nothing to do with her.

Ho and Kit head to their deal with the Vietnamese warlord. The warlord attempts to double-cross Ho. A shootout ensues. Mark came in the room dual wielding two M-16 rifles, intending to take his revenge on Ho after the shootout between the warlord and Ho died down. During the shootout between Ho and Mark, Kit is severely wounded by one of Ho's men and Ho is killed by the warlord.

Michael, who survived the explosion, arrives with Pat to help Mark make his getaway with the wounded Kit. The four are pursued by the warlord in a tank, but Mark manages to destroy the tank with explosives, killing the warlord.

With Kit dying, Mark and Michael rush Kit to the embassy, where a mass evacuation is taking place due to the Fall of Saigon. Showing Kit's travel pass to the guards, the three are granted aboard on the last chopper leaving the embassy, which lifts off just as the crowds rush in past the gate and the North Vietnamese flag is raised.

Succumbing to her severe injury, Kit dies in Mark's arms. Cradling Kit's lifeless body, Mark contemplates as the chopper flies off into the sunset.

Professor Farnsworth is chasing his escaped gargoyle, Pazuzu, but soon forgets the search and goes to Florida to have a discounted early dinner. Annoyed with the Professor's crankiness, the Planet Express employees take the 161-year-old to an age-reducing spa, where he is given a massage, then bathed in blistering hot tar. An accident causes the entire crew to fall into the tar pit, reverting the Professor to his mid-fifties and everyone else to teenagers. Leela departs to live with her parents in the sewers so that she can have a new chance at the normal teenage life she never had. A teenage Fry and Leela begin dating while Amy is the subject of jokes back on Mars due to her childhood obesity.

The Professor searches for a way to undo the de-aging effects by removing time-altering chronitons that have become stuck to their DNA. However, his plan backfires and causes everyone (except for Leela, who refused the treatment) to start growing even younger. Leela sneaks out of her house after being grounded to help the others find the mythical Fountain of Aging. The fountain's current proves too strong for the young crew, so Leela jumps in to save them, giving up her chance at being a teenager again. She pulls everyone except the Professor to safety, but Pazuzu returns to save him. Everyone has returned to their original ages, and the Professor is delighted to find that he is actually a few years older than before and sets Pazuzu free to thank him. The episode ends with a jump to a later time in which Pazuzu finishes telling the story to his child as they perch on the roof of the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris.

Jiang Hu tells two stories simultaneously. The first is about a gang leader, Mr. Hung (played by Andy Lau), and the tensions that arise between him and his old friend and second-in-command, Lefty (played by Jacky Cheung), due to Mr. Hung's wife's recent childbirth. Now that Hung is with a child, Lefty feels that Hung should leave the gang business as he is now burdened with family and that will appear weak in character to their own under-bosses. Lefty also believes that it is his own turn to run the business in his own direction. However, Hung is unhappy with Lefty's leadership style of fear and brutality to keep his underlings in line, and is hesitant to cede power to Lefty. To further complicate matters, news of Hung becoming a father has spread unrest amongst his under-bosses, and there are rumours that someone has placed a hit on Mr. Hung. Suspicion as to who is plotting against Mr. Hung has been placed on three leading underbosses, resulting in Lefty sending loyal henchmen going on a hunt to locate and kill the bosses; one is killed and Mr Hung's henchmen save the other two on Mr Hung's orders. In the end, it is alluded that the guilty party attempts to call off the hit under the guise of checking on his family, however he was unable to follow through with the action after he was assured by Hung's henchman that his family is safe and untouched.

The second story is about two teenage low ranking gang members named Yik and Turbo, who are hoping to gain respect and rank in the gangs by performing a hit on a gang leader. The gang leader is not displayed in the movie, and the audience is led to believe that Yik and Turbo are planning to murder Mr. Hung. Yik frequents a brothel whom he has a crush on one of the prostitutes that work there while Turbo starts trouble with other gang members which results in him losing the function of his right hand. He was about to be forced into an act of bestiality with a dog but before this can occur Yik rescues Turbo. However the traumatic experience leads Turbo to begin to act in a merciless fashion. Finally, Yik and Turbo proceed to perform the hit on the unnamed gang leader. This story-line details their journey together up until the assassination, and displays the friendship between the two.

The film ends with Mr. Hung confronting Lefty in a restaurant and revealing that it was Lefty that leaked the news of Hung being a father. It is now revealed that Yik and Turbo are in fact Hung and Lefty during their youth. After they reconcile their differences, they realize they have been surrounded by assassins. In a final act of friendship, Hung and Lefty proceed to fend off hordes of assassins before eventually collapsing to their wounds and finished off by a group of grunts. It then shows the killing of the gang leader by Yik and Turbo. The final scene show Yik explaining how he managed to gain power and respect by completing the assassination of the gang leader and then showing the complete transition of Yik into Hung; suggesting that the cycle will continue with the pair of assassins that had successfully killed Hung and Lefty and is on their way to power and respect.

~Brief summary of the plot~

In a working-class South London district live Raymond; his wife, Valerie; her brother, Billy; Valerie and Billy's mother, Janet; and their grandmother, Kathy. Billy is a drug addict, and Raymond kicks him out when he steals drugs from him. Billy hangs out with his heroin addict friends and they shoot up together. The family is dysfunctional, mostly because of Raymond's fiery temper and violent outbursts. When Valerie gets pregnant again, she continues to smoke and drink.

Valerie goes out on the town, and when Ray sees an attractive male friend of hers, he flies into a jealous rage, ordering her out of the pub and into the car. Back home, he accuses her of sleeping with the male friend, and pummels her severely, causing her to miscarry. He tries to win her back, but she leaves him and prepares to start a new life without him. In an alcohol-fuelled rage, he angrily tears their flat apart. He tells Mark, his friend, that the reason for his horrible behavior is his own abusive father, who was the same way with him and his mother. Later, he tries to reconcile with Valerie; however, she is outraged, and says that when she reaches 70, she wants to look back on this part of her life, as she is now 30, as a time when she had some fun. What she has instead is people feeling sorry for her.

Valerie doesn't want to return to Ray, pointing out they haven't got a home to go back to because he's smashed it all up. She will try to find someone to be with that will love her and treat her kindly. Ray goes to see Valerie and asks her if she still loves him. Ray and Valerie are eventually back together again, and Ray has fixed up the apartment. Ray speaks as crudely as ever but begins to restrain himself from his usual angry outbursts. Billy, and his friend Danny, rob a man to support their drug habit and wind up going to prison. This not only reunites Ray with Valerie but reunites the whole family. They go off to visit Billy.

The story itself is set in a small village in Sicily. The protagonist Marta Ajala feels "excluded" from the society in which she lives because of having catastrophically lost the position and status that she had been assigned in the order of things: the position of a submissive and bored housewife who never quite felt at ease in her role, but who had achieved respect in society because of it. It is a role which she does not regret losing, but whose sudden and violent loss has thrown her into a dramatic situation: she has been kicked out of her home by her husband who caught her by surprise in the act of reading a letter from someone who has been courting her but whose advances she has always rejected.

The precipitous decision of the husband overwhelmed with rage; the attitude of Marta's father who, even while knowing that his daughter is innocent, totally supports her husband's decision out of a misbegotten sense of masculine spiritual solidarity and ends up dying of shame; the submissive suffering of the mother and sister, constantly ready, in order to conform to traditional convictions, to counsel her surrender and obedience; the choral malevolence of the villagers, taking advantage of a religious procession that is passing by under their windows to publicly jeer and shout names at her, are the elements of a minutely described painting, in the manner of realism, which illustrate the closed mentality of the village.

But Marta's reaction is only partly similar to that of the typical characters of the naturalistic novel. She reveals a much more complex psychology which begins with a petit bourgeoisie self-satisfaction for the letters of Gregorio Alvignani and gradually develops into an obstinate struggle against all of society for a moral and economic revenge which she will finally end up obtaining, but joylessly.

The cruel game of chance prevails over the objectivity of the narrative, according to an unexpected logic, expressed in a series of coincidences which betray their own hidden meaning. The father dies at the same time that Marta's baby, which she had been carrying in her womb with so much repulsion, is born, as if to signify a repudiation and detachment from the past. Meanwhile, in the streets of the village, the people are celebrating the victory of Alvignani in the elections, a premonitory sign of Marta's eventual redemption and revenge. The singularity of circumstances bursts wide open in the final scene: Marta's husband, after kicking her out of her home, making her suffer, and compromising the birth of his own son, now takes her back when she has actually become guilty of the sin of which she was falsely accused and is carrying her lover's baby in her womb.

In giving herself to Alvignani, who helped her in dealing with the injustices of the scholastic authorities, she seems to adapt herself to the role of his lover which has been imposed on her by society. But her state of mind is never one of passive surrender, even if her restless struggle against circumstances dominated by an unfathomable force will turn out to be in vain. In the end what defeats her is not the society by which she is rehabilitated, but life itself which brings with it a suffering which no success can cancel.

It is significant, in fact, that the author uses the word ''l'esclusa'' precisely at the opening of the second part of the novel, where, in an atmosphere redolent of spring, Marta seems to be on the verge of resurrection. Her tenacious struggle against everyone and against resignation has allowed her to obtain the much-desired teaching position that has permitted her to rescue her mother and sister from extreme poverty. But the happiness of these two women, of which she is secretly proud, is what forces her to recognize her own spiritual isolation and her inability to reinsert herself into society. "She alone was the excluded one, she alone would never again find her place."

The story starts with a brief description of Mr. Holohan, who works for an Irish cultural society and has been arranging a series of concerts. Holohan’s bad leg is a prominent feature. We are then introduced to Mrs. Kearney, who was very accomplished at a young age but found that the young men of her class were intimidated by her, which prompted her to marry the working class Mr. Kearney “out of spite.” Her daughter Kathleen goes to good schools and learns to play the piano. Mrs. Kearney decides to use the Irish Revival as a means of improving the family’s social position. She is successful enough that Kathleen gets the attention of Holohan, who hires the girl as an accompanist at four vocal concerts put on by his society. Holohan and Mrs. Kearney develop a flirtatious relationship as Mrs. Kearney takes on the planning of the performances due to Holohan's inability.

The first concert is sparsely attended after the society decides it has got in over its head and shuffled around Mrs. Kearney's plan so that all the talent will perform at the final concert only. The second one has more patrons, but Mrs. Kearney is bothered by the behaviour of the audience and the casual attitude of the society’s secretary, Mr. Fitzpatrick. The third concert is cancelled. Mrs. Kearney is concerned that her daughter will not be paid the full contracted price but is unable to get a straight answer on the matter from Holohan or Fitzpatrick. She brings her husband to the final concert, anticipating a confrontation.

On the night of the final concert, Mrs. Kearney is unable to get a proper answer on her request for full payment and insists her daughter will not play until paid. The dispute holds up the beginning of the performance until Fitzpatrick pays Mrs. Kearney less than half the agreed amount, promising the rest at the interval. Although the first half of the concert is successful, the description of the performers, either too immature or past their prime, is not flattering. At the interval, Mrs. Kearney is told the rest of the money will be paid in three days. An indignant Mrs. Kearney refuses to let her daughter play. Another accompanist is found, and Mrs. Kearney and her family, roundly condemned by all at this point, leave. The story presents the mother’s briefly rekindled romantic ideals dashed by the ineptitude and condescension of the society’s members.

Based on real events, it tells the story of Max Stuart (Ngoombujarra), a young aboriginal man who was sentenced to death after being found guilty of the murder of a nine-year-old girl on what was considered questionable evidence. It follows the fight by his lawyers David O'Sullivan (Carlyle) and Helen Devaney (Fox) to save Stuart from execution, as well as Crown Prosecutor, Roderic Chamberlain's (Dance) efforts to convict Stuart. Rohan Rivett editor of an Adelaide paper, ''The News'', and its publisher, Rupert Murdoch (Ben Mendelsohn) also feature as leading the public response in the campaign to save Stuart.

In the final scene of the film, Max Stuart appeared as himself as an older man, driving along a dirt highway near Alice Springs where he lived at the time, and saying: "Yeah, some people think I'm guilty and some people think I'm not. Some people think Elvis is still alive, but most of us think he's dead and gone."

The bulk of the book focuses on a British writer, Nathan, who is attempting to sell an idea for a claustrosphere commercial to Plastic Tolstoy, owner and chief marketer of the company which builds them. The commercial represents a change in emphasis for the advertising campaign; up to now claustropheres have been sold as a kind of fall-back insurance, just in case the environment collapses. However, now that virtually everybody owns at least a basic model, sales are falling and the company is having to try and sell upgrade and improvement packages instead. The new advertising, therefore, attempts to convince people for the first time that the environment truly is doomed and they are inevitably going to have to live in their claustrospheres.

Tolstoy accepts Nathan's idea and assigns him to work with Max, a shallow and pretentious young actor. During a subsequent meeting with Tolstoy, Nathan makes a joking suggestion that it would be ironic if his company actually covertly sponsored the eco-terrorism movement led by Jurgen Thor, which despises the claustrosphere company since it represents, in their eyes, an abrogation of mankind's responsibility to care for the environment. Nathan is subsequently murdered as he plays a virtual reality game with Max. Max sets out to investigate the murder, falling in with Rosalie Connolly, an eco-terrorist working for Thor's organization.

Max ultimately discovers that Thor and Tolstoy are in fact partners. The eco-terrorists raids, whilst highly successful, never present more than a minor problem to the vast claustrosphere company, but do grab headlines and bring awareness of the looming eco-disaster into the public mind - prompting them to buy more claustrospheres. Tolstoy confesses that he has even geared his advertising campaign to work in perfect sync with the terrorists, with new commercials ready to roll out instantly after each attack.

After a confrontation between Max, Rosalie and Jurgen in which Jurgen is killed, Tolstoy decides to evade justice by leaking news indicating that the ecology is finally collapsing. The news is suddenly full of stories of environmental catastrophe, and people are told that they need to lock themselves in their claustrospheres for several decades. The "rat run", as it is termed, removes the large bulk of humanity from the world, effectively ending the current civilization. Ironically, one of the by-products of the vanishing of global society is that all industry ceases, ending further pollution of the environment. Freed of this burden, Earth begins to gradually recover from the damage inflicted to it.

Category:1993 British novels Category:Dystopian novels Category:Satirical novels Category:Environmental fiction books Category:Novels by Ben Elton Category:Novels about writers Category:Simon & Schuster books

The Bones Brigade embark on a quest to find the first skateboarder, the mythological Won Ton "Animal" Chin who had gone missing. Their journey takes them to different locations including Hawaii, California, Nevada, and Mexico where they meet friends and skate different spots along the way. It culminates in the discovery of the secret Chin Ramp, a back-to-back double half pipe featuring a spine and a tunnel. They never find the actual Animal Chin, but come to realize that in their search they discover the true meaning of their journey, the pure fun of skateboarding.

Gateway is an asteroid hollowed out by the Heechee, a long-vanished alien race. Humans have had limited success understanding the left-behind bits of Heechee technology found there and elsewhere. The Gateway Corporation administers the asteroid on behalf of the governments of the United States, the Soviet Union, the New People's Asia, the Venusian Confederation, and the United States of Brazil.

There are nearly a thousand small, abandoned starships at Gateway. By extremely dangerous trial and error, humans have partially learned how to operate them. The controls for selecting a destination have been identified, but nobody knows where a particular setting will take the ship, how long the trip will last or even if there is enough fuel to get back. Those who choose to risk their lives cram the limited space with equipment and hopefully enough food for the trip, but sometimes it is not enough, and they have to resort first to cannibalism, and if that is not enough, to suicide. Attempts at reverse engineering to find out how the ships work have ended only in disaster, as has changing the settings in mid-flight. Most settings lead to useless or lethal places. A few, however, result in the discovery of new Heechee artifacts and habitable planets in other star systems, making the crews extremely wealthy. The vessels come in three standard sizes, which can hold a maximum of one, three, or five people. Some "threes" and many "fives" are armored. Each ship includes a lander to visit a planet or other object if one is found.

Despite the risks, many people on impoverished, overcrowded Earth dream of going to Gateway. Robinette Stetley Broadhead is a young food shale miner who wins a lottery, giving him enough money to purchase a one-way ticket to Gateway. Once there, he is frightened of the danger and puts off going on a mission as long as he can. In the meantime, he becomes romantically involved with two different women, eventually settling on Gelle-Klara Moynlin, his co-enabler in fearful delaying. Eventually he starts running out of money, and although still terrified, he goes out on three trips. The first, with Klara and three others, is unsuccessful, and afterwards tension rises between them until he gives her a vicious beating. On the second trip, he goes by himself and inadvertently makes a discovery through unauthorized experimentation when he becomes infuriated after reaching Gateway Two, a smaller version of Gateway with only about 150 ships. He is awarded a sizable bonus because his route saves about 100 days of travel time; the windfall is partially offset by the large penalty for incapacitating his ship. On his third trip, the Gateway Corporation tries something different: sending two armored fives, one slightly behind the other, to the same destination, one rejected by most ships' computers; each crewmember is promised a million dollar bonus. Bob signs up in desperation, along with Klara, with whom he has reconciled.

When the ships arrive, their crews find to their horror that they are in the gravitational grip of a black hole without enough power to break free. One person devises a desperate escape plan: Move everyone into one ship and thrust the other toward the black hole with an explosion in a lander, thus gaining enough of a boost to escape. They work frantically to transfer unnecessary equipment to make room for everyone in one ship, but Broadhead finds himself alone in the wrong ship when time runs out. He closes the hatch so that the plan can proceed. However, his ship is the one that breaks free.

Broadhead returns to Gateway and is awarded all the mission bonuses. He feels such enormous survivor guilt for dooming his crewmates, especially Klara, that he suppresses his memories of what happened. However, he is very disturbed and miserable, though he does not understand why, so back on Earth as a wealthy man, he seeks therapy from an artificial intelligence Freudian therapist program which he names Sigfrid von Shrink.

The narrative alternates in time between Broadhead's experiences on Gateway and his sessions with Sigfrid, converging on the traumatic events near the black hole and Broadhead finally remembering them so that he can begin to heal. Sigfrid helps him realize that, due to the gravitational time dilation of the black hole's immense gravity field, time is passing much more slowly for his former crewmates and none of them have actually died yet. Broadhead, however, concludes that this means that they will still be alive when he dies, with Klara still believing that he betrayed them to save himself.

Also embedded in the narrative are various mission reports (usually with fatalities), roster openings, technical bulletins, and other documents Broadhead might have read on Gateway, adding to the verisimilitude. The economic side of living at Gateway is presented in detail, commencing with the contract all explorers must enter into with the Gateway Corporation, and including how some awards are determined.

July 16, 1988 a night train (or "red eye") to Yeosu leaves Seoul station and crashes killing 250 people. 15 years later to the day, a train is running the same line for the last time. But it has incorporated some of the coaches from the old crashed train.

A stewardess named OH Mi-sun (Jang Shin-young) has just started the job and is working on said train. Her father was a guard who died on the crashed train 15 years ago, and some blamed him for it. Mi-sun has psychic powers that were previously unknown to her, and starts getting glimpses of the spirits of those who died in the crash fifteen years prior.

Unsettling incidents occur and two passengers are murdered by supernatural means. With two dead bodies the train is supposed to stop at a station for the police, but it goes through the station because of a crazy young couple who are intent on crashing the train. They were the two tiny children (brother and sister) who were in the first train crash with their parents.

Increasingly strange incidents occur as the lights go out in some carriages and the carriages suddenly look old and in another, lights shatter and glass falls on the passengers. The passengers do not know where to go to escape the coming crash since the back of the train is no longer safe. Mi-Sun tries to stop them from crashing the train.

Mi-sun has gained knowledge from contact with a dead form which rose from a black puddle in one of the carriages and tells them that they are both dead, and that they now inhabit the bodies of other people. Also that their father and his wife planned to kill themselves and the children on that train 15 years ago but the poison he was going to use was ruined by a stewardess JUNG Jin-sook (Kim Hyeon-suk) when she accidentally kicked the jar it was in, so he got into the driver's cabin and put the train on a collision course with another train, causing the terrible wreck over a decade ago.

In anger the brother smashes Mi-sun's head hard four times against the window causing her to collapse with bleeding to the head but he knows it is true as his sister regresses to a little girl again. The spirit of Mi-sun's father enters the driver's cabin and pilots the train harmlessly through the train that it was on a collision with and the crazy man reverts to a scared child comforting his sister. As the trains, natural and supernatural begin to part, things start getting back to normal on the train with the ghosts disassembling, the old carriages becoming normal again and the human passengers start coming out of hiding.

Mi-sun's father comforts her as she dies from her injuries. The train is finally stopped and it is daylight and the bewildered people get off.

The scene changes to night again and the train for Yeosu arrives in Seoul station for its last run. We see Mi-sun on the platform, and she is again a stewardess on this train on its unnatural journey.

The white end titles are rolled up against a night background that a driver would see from the cabin of the train.

Slacker Donny's (Eric Ericson) life is turned upside-down when Lova (Eva Rose) enters his life possessing a mysterious box which may hold answers to eternal and dangerous questions. But evil forces want to possess the box, and Donny and Lova must travel through time to ensure the future of mankind.

Tommy Spinelli (Joe Pesci) is a wiseguy hired by Benny and Rico, a pair of dimwitted hitmen, to transport a duffel bag full of severed heads across the United States to a crime boss (as proof of the deaths). While on a commercial flight, his bag is accidentally switched with that of Charlie Pritchett (Andy Comeau), a friendly, talkative, young American tourist who is going to Mexico to see his girlfriend Laurie (Kristy Swanson) and her parents (George Hamilton and Dyan Cannon).

Spinelli harasses Charlie's friends Ernie (David Spade) and Steve (Todd Louiso) for information, while Charlie and Laurie attempt to get rid of their rather unfortunate luggage.

After Charlie meets with Laurie and her parents at the airport with the wrong bag, they go to their rooms at the resort in Acapulco, Mexico. Soon, Annette, Laurie's mom, mistakenly thinks that Charlie might be a serial killer on the run once she sees a head in his bag while hiding a gift for him inside the bag. Her husband thinks it's all a delusion brought on by her alcoholism.

At first, Charlie and Laurie try to bury the heads in the desert, but a group of thugs steals their car. Then Charlie comes up with an idea that he will give back the heads without anyone noticing, by pretending he forgot to turn in his report back at his college. In turn, everyone packs up for the airport. At the airport, Charlie accidentally puts a severed head in Dick's carry-on bag, causing him to get arrested. They never leave Acapulco since they have to come up with a new plan to save Dick.

Meanwhile, Tommy, Ernie, and Steve start to look for replacement heads, after Charlie tells Tommy he lost one. They start to look in a cryonics lab, where they store bodies and severed heads, much to Tommy's approval. After getting the replacement heads, Tommy and the others get on a plane and head to Mexico. Tommy threatens Charlie that if he loses more heads, he'll replace them with Charlie's friends and family. After hearing of the airport incident, Benny and Rico decide to collect the heads for themselves.

When Fern, Dick's mother, arrives in Mexico, Tommy takes her and the others hostage as he helps Charlie find more heads. They find out that a coyote took one of the heads from the stolen car. Tommy also realizes that Benny and Rico are going to kill him if he doesn't get the heads across the border in time. Charlie comes up with a plan to save both their lives.

Charlie and Laurie take a severed head to the airport to prove her father's innocence. Benny and Rico try to intervene, but end up getting arrested. It is revealed that Tommy and Charlie set them up. Charlie thanks him for his help, as Tommy departs to Hawaii. Steve goes insane and starts running around the airport, telling security guards that a severed head is his "best friend".

Charlie and Laurie get married, with her mother and father present, Steve is in a straitjacket, Ernie is a brain surgeon, Fern is also present after being thrown out of a moving van when she started to bad-mouth Tommy, and Tommy is enjoying his retirement.

The story begins with an unconscious man who has fallen down the stairs in a pub after heavy drinking. A friend of his, Mr. Power, finds him, reveals him to be named Tom Kernan, and takes him home to his wife. Kernan is a salesman who once possessed an easy charm and manner but has since descended into alcoholism. An injury to his tongue sustained during the fall keeps Kernan in bed.

Two days later, he is visited by his friends Power, M’Coy, and Cunningham. The friends have concocted a plan to get Kernan to attend a Catholic retreat with them. The four discuss many matters and finally settle upon religion. The friends mention going to a confessional retreat at a Jesuit church and invite Kernan along. He does not respond to the idea at first. The conversation shows a superficial understanding of faith, and the friends make many comical errors about the church.

The scene shifts to the Jesuit church in Gardiner Street where all are listening to a priest’s sermonizing.

The book begins just after Kelric has escaped the planet of Coba, where he had been held prisoner for over 18 years. Forced to land because of his ships short fuel supply, Kelric takes up a lucrative job as the spaceship Corona's tactical officer under the command of Jafe Maccar, only to be captured by his people's enemies, the Eubians. An Aristo Taratus sells Kelric in an auction to Tarquine Iquar, Minister of Finance. Kelric discovers his mixed feelings for Tarquine, even though he is made to be her slave and provider. Not long after his enslavement, Kelric makes a bold escape, which although successful, cripples his health significantly.

Instead of immediately heading home, Kelric heads to the captured Lock, an ancient device made by the original Ruby Empire some 6000 years ago which fell into the Eubians possession during the Radiance War. There, he deactivates the mechanism and meets Jaibriol III, new emperor of the Eubian Empire, whom he immediately suspects to be a psion. Jaibriol proposes peace talks between Eube and Skolia.

He manages to make it to another planet, where he meets his future wife Jeejon. Together, they are able to gain passage off world, to Earth. The book's climax is Kelric reuniting with his parents on Earth.

Emory Leeson is an advertising executive who experiences a nervous breakdown. He designs a series of "truthful" advertisements, blunt and bawdy and of no use to his boss Drucker's firm.

One of his colleagues, Stephen Bachman, checks him into a psychiatric hospital. Emory goes into group therapy under the care of Dr. Liz Baylor and meets other voluntary patients, such as the lovely and vulnerable Kathy Burgess. There is also George, who can speak only one word: "Hello."

By mistake, Emory's advertisements get printed and the new campaign turns out to be a tremendous success. Campaigns like: "Jaguar — For men who'd like hand jobs from beautiful women they hardly know." and "Volvo — they're boxy but they're good."

Drucker grabs credit for the ads. He assigns Stephen and the rest of his employees to design similar new ad campaigns featuring so-called honesty in advertising, but nothing works.

Emory is approached in the sanitarium about creating new ads himself. He insists that his fellow mental patients also be involved and suitably rewarded for their work, transforming the sanitarium into a branch of the advertising industry.

They come up with wild advertising slogans, like one for a Greek travel agency that goes: "Forget Paris. The French can be annoying. Come to Greece. We're nicer." And another one called "Come... IN the Bahamas" for the islands' national tourism board.

The patients experience happiness at being needed and improve from their various illnesses. The evil Drucker and the doctor in charge of the hospital get greedy and try to separate the team. But it doesn't work. Dr. Baylor defies her boss and Emory negotiates to get new automobiles for all of the patients. Emory and Kathy, who have fallen in love, leave the hospital in an army helicopter piloted by Kathy's long-lost brother, stopping to take the rest of the patients with them. They then open their own advertising agency, with Sony ("Sony - Because Caucasians are just too damn tall") as their first client.

Several months after solving the Lula Landry case, Cormoran Strike is asked by Leonora Quine to locate her novelist husband Owen, a former literary genius whose attempts to recreate his past success have failed. Owen disappeared around the same time his latest book, ''Bombyx Mori'', was leaked. The book has been deemed unpublishable due to its mixture of sexual assault, torture, and cannibalism as well as its slanderous depiction of the people in Owen's life. In addition to Leonora, Strike sets out interviewing the other people portrayed in the manuscript: Owen's lover Kathryn Kent, protégée Pippa Midgley, agent Elizabeth Tassel, editor Jerry Waldegrave, publisher Daniel Chard and former friend Michael Fancourt. The suspects, however, soon turn on one another, accusing and counter-accusing each other of killing Owen and ghostwriting ''Bombyx Mori''.

As the investigation commences, Strike's relationship with Robin Ellacott gradually deteriorates, as she feels neglected by him and he feels unwilling to put her in a position where she is forced to choose between her job and her fiancé Matthew. The animosity is tempered when Strike finds Owen's body, which has been mutilated, doused in acid and posed to resemble the ending of ''Bombyx Mori''. Metropolitan Police later arrest Leonora for the murder, prompting Strike to set out clearing her name. Robin, meanwhile, strains her relationship with Matthew after she almost misses his mother's funeral to help Strike and gets caught telling a lie. She later confronts Strike about his intentions only to be warned that she will be asked to do things Matthew will not like if she becomes an investigator.

With the case against Leonora piling up, Strike focuses on Fancourt, whose character in the manuscript is inconsistent with his relationship to Owen. Several years earlier, after Fancourt's wife Elspeth wrote a novel that was panned by critics, an anonymous parody's release prompted her to kill herself. Fancourt accused Owen of authoring the parody and Tassel of enabling him. Strike soon deduces ''Bombyx Mori'' is a metaphor for someone else's life and Owen was intended to be the antagonist rather than the hero. Realizing the manuscript was penned by a ghostwriter, he creates a plan to confront the killer. He later approaches Fancourt at a party and asks to speak to him in private. When Tassel, who is also in attendance, joins them, Strike accuses Tassel of being Owen's killer and the ghostwriter.

Tassel, a failed author herself, wrote the parody of Elspeth's novel, which Owen used to blackmail her for twenty years. When he approached her with the original concept for ''Bombyx Mori'', Tassel concocted an elaborate plan. She conspired with Owen to stage his disappearance, rewrote ''Bombyx Mori'', killed Owen and framed Leonora. Tassel attempts to flee, only to be caught and arrested, which Strike and Robin planned in advance. Sometime later, Leonora is released from prison, Fancourt acknowledges the original ''Bombyx Mori'' manuscript's literary value, and Strike tells Robin that he enrolled her in investigative training courses as a Christmas gift.

Agent 006½ is one of the top agents for the Bureau. The Diabolical Villain Society—or D.V.S. -- has stolen the blueprints to an orbital ruby laser weapon, code-named "Red Rock Rover." The blueprints have been secured at three island strongholds of D.V.S. Agent 006½'s current mission: recover the blueprints. Each island stronghold contains 15 radar installations...all fifteen must be taken down before Agent 006½ can make his way into the D.V.S. fortress on the island, where the blueprints are held.

'''Mission 1: The Hunt for Red Rock Rover.''' The first island stronghold. Agent 006½ parachutes in, and after a successful mission, takes a hidden boat to the second island.

'''Mission 2: Kill Again Island.''' The second island stronghold. After a successful mission, Agent 006½ slips away in scuba gear.

'''Mission 3: Dr. No Body.''' The third island stronghold, where Agent 006½ will have to do battle with Dr. No Body, the head of the D.V.S.

''The Sacred Flame'' is the story about the misfortune of Maurice Tabret, previously a soldier of World War I who had returned home unscathed to marry his sweetheart Stella. Unfortunately, after only a year of marriage, Maurice is involved in a plane crash and left crippled from the waist down. The play commences some years later in Gatley House near London, home of Maurice's mother, Mrs. Tabret.

Mrs. Tabret's home has been set up to care for her son and a young Nurse Wayland has been Maurice's constant aid throughout. She is extremely professional and devoted to her job. Maurice's wife Stella lives with them also and remains his cheerful companion and support. Maurice's brother Colin Tabret has returned from a time in Guatemala to spend the previous 11 months before the play's start with his brother and the family. The local practitioner Dr. Harvester visits frequently to check on Maurice's condition and to prescribe appropriate treatments. Mrs. Tabret's own husband has passed on some time ago and whilst she does not have a close relationship with anyone else, her old friend retired Major Liconda visits often.

All is as well as can be expected until Maurice is found dead in his bed one morning. Not altogether unexpected, Dr. Harvester is prepared to write the death certificate but then Nurse Wayland cries foul and indicates that she believes Maurice was murdered by being given an overdose of his sleeping draught. The play then works through a series of Agatha Christie-style "whodunnit" scenes as the audience attempt to figure out whether Maurice was killed, took his own life, or else if the whole thing is no more than an imagining and false accusation by the Nurse.

For the majority of the second and third act the main suspect is Stella, who it transpires is having an affair with Colin and is pregnant by him. It looks as if the matter will be brought to the coroner and the police, which is likely to mean Stella going on trial for Maurice's murder. At the end of the third act, Mrs. Tabret reveals that it was she that killed Maurice. She had realised that Stella was pregnant, and because Stella's love was all that Maurice lived for, she couldn't bear to see Stella's betrayal exposed. Mrs. Tabret therefore sees her act as a mercy killing.

After this revelation, the play ends as Nurse Wayland asks Dr. Harvester to sign the death certificate indicating that Maurice died of natural causes, meaning there will be no police investigation.

Violette Nozière (Isabelle Huppert) is a French teen in the 1930s who secretly works as a prostitute while living with her unsuspecting parents, father Baptiste Nozière (Jean Carmet) and mother Germaine Nozière (Stéphane Audran). Rebelling against her "mean and petty" petit-bourgeois parents, she falls in love with a spendthrift young man, whom she virtually supports with thefts from her parents as well as her prostitution earnings.

Meanwhile, her parents are informed by Violette's doctor that she has syphilis. Violette manages to half-persuade her suspicious mother and indulgent father that she has somehow inherited the disease from them. On this pretext, she tricks them into taking "medicine" that is actually poison, killing her father; her mother, however, survives, and Violette is arrested and charged with murder. She defends herself by alleging that her father had molested her; Chabrol's abrupt use of flashbacks makes it uncertain whether Violette is simply lying or telling a half-truth. She is convicted of murder and sentenced to die by guillotine, but a voiceover at the end tells us that her sentence was commuted by degrees to the point that she ultimately left prison, married, and had five children.

''The Quantum Rose'' is a retelling of the ''Beauty and the Beast'' folktale in a science fiction setting. In the novel, Kamoj Argali, the governor of an impoverished province on the backward planet Balumil, is betrothed to Jax Ironbridge, ruler of a wealthy neighboring province, an arrangement made for political purposes to save her province from starvation and death. Havyrl (Vyrl) Lionstar, a prince of the titular Ruby Dynasty, comes to Balimul as part of a governmental plan to deal with the aftermath of an interstellar war. Masked and enigmatic, he has a reputation as a monster with Kamoj's people.

Lionstar interferes with Kamoj's culture and destabilizes their government by pushing her into marriage with himself. In the traditional fairy tale, Belle must save her father from the prince transformed into a beast; in ''The Quantum Rose'', Kamoj must save her province from the prince in exile. The book deals with themes about the physical and emotional scars left on the survivors of a war with no clear victor. As such, it is also a story of healing for the characters Kamoj and Lionstar.

The second half of ''The Quantum Rose'' involves Lionstar's return to his home world with Kamoj, where he becomes the central figure in a planet wide act of civil disobedience designed to eject an occupying military force that has taken control of his planet. Both the world Balimul in the first half of the novel and the world Lyshriol in the second half fall into the lost colony genre of literature in science fiction.

Adelina of Naples

Set in a working-class Naples neighborhood in 1954, this is the story of Adelina (Sophia Loren), who supports her unemployed husband Carmine (Marcello Mastroianni) and child by selling black market cigarettes. When she doesn't pay a fine, her furniture is to be repossessed. However her neighbors assist her by hiding the furniture. A lawyer who lives in the neighborhood advises Carmine that, as the fine and furniture are in Adelina's name, she will be imprisoned. However, Italian law stipulates that women cannot be imprisoned when pregnant or within six months after a pregnancy. As a result, Adelina schemes to stay pregnant continuously. After seven children in eight years, Carmine is seriously exhausted and Adelina must make the choice of being impregnated by their mutual friend Pasquale (Aldo Giuffrè) or be incarcerated.

She finally chooses to be incarcerated, and the whole neighborhood gathers money to free her and petition for her pardon, which finally comes and she is reunited with her husband Carmine and their children.

Anna of Milan

Anna (Sophia Loren dressed by Christian Dior), the wife of a mega-rich industrialist, has a lover named Renzo (Marcello Mastroianni). Whilst driving together in her husband's Rolls-Royce, Anna must determine which is the most important to her happiness – Renzo or the Rolls. Renzo rethinks his infatuation with Anna when she expresses no concern when they nearly run over a child, and end up crashing the Rolls-Royce.

She is infuriated by the damage to her Rolls-Royce, and ends up getting another passing driver to take her home, leaving Renzo on the road.

Mara of Rome

Mara (Sophia Loren) works as a prostitute from her apartment, servicing a variety of high class clients including Augusto (Marcello Mastroianni), the wealthy, powerful and neurotic son of a Bologna industrialist.

Mara's elderly neighbor's grandson Umberto (Gianni Ridolfi) is a handsome and callow young man studying for the priesthood but not yet ordained. Umberto and Mara talk one night asking each other about their occupations. Embarrassed, Mara tells him she does manicures. Umberto's grandmother (Tina Pica) sees them talking and, knowing that Mara is a prostitute, interrupts their conversation telling Mara that she'll go to hell. Umberto protests, but Mara defends herself. Umberto falls in love with her. To the shrieking dismay of his grandmother, the young man wishes to leave his vocation to be with Mara, or to join the French Foreign Legion, if Mara rejects him. Mara vows to set the young man on the path of righteousness back to the seminary and vows celibacy for a week, if she succeeds. For this, she enlists the reluctant Augusto. Umberto finally agrees to return to the seminary. Mara rewards Augusto with a striptease, but remembering her vow, refuses to go to bed with him.

Zinnia "Zinny" Taylor, an initially quiet, yet sometimes outrageous thirteen-year-old girl. She enjoys the care of her aunt and uncle, Jessie and Nate, as her parents are preoccupied with her siblings, and she enjoys spending time outdoors. Jessie and Nate live in a home that fits snug against the Taylor home, and Zinny prefers to spend her time with her aunt and uncle, while they mostly go on nature walks. They once had a daughter, Rose, around Zinny's age who died (of whooping cough). Aunt Jessie prefers not to talk about her daughter. Because Rose caught the cough from Zinny, she has always, in some way, blamed herself for Rose's death.

Years later, Zinny accidentally rediscovers a large overgrown trail that is over two hundred years old. When her aunt unexpectedly dies, Zinny blames herself. Soon afterwards she begins to try to clear the trail. In her grief, the trail becomes an obsession, as she decides to clear and travel the entire length of it. Thinking clearing the trail is the only way to be forgiven by God, Zinny camps out on the trail to clear the trail before the end of the summer. At the same time Zinny learns to cope with her grief, her guilt, and a boy named Jake Boone, who she starts to have feelings for.

Throughout the story she must attempt to get over the death of Rose and Aunt Jessie. She also tries to find out whether Jake returns her feelings or is just using her to get to her older sister, May. Through all this Zinny finally finds something to call her very own, the trail that she cleared.

Throughout the story Creech uses flashbacks as a literary device, showing snippets of what Zinny's life was like before her aunt's death, and how her life changed after her dear aunt Jessie died.

Cantinflas is the boyfriend of Paz, the household maid of Cayetano Lastre. It is dinnertime and Cantinflas is waiting outside the mansion for Paz's whistle: a sign for Cantinflas to enter the kitchen to eat. This is because there is a dog in the front yard named "Bobby", and Paz's boss is unaware of Cantinflas's forays into the house. While waiting, another man also arrives to do the same, pulling out a cigarette and dropping his wallet in the process, which Cantinflas picks up when entering the house. Though like other times Cantinflas goes straight in to eat, this time his girlfriend has a favor to ask him: to kill the dog "Bobby" who has suffered a sudden onset of rabies and doesn't let Cayetano leave for an appointment. Seeing his hesitation, Paz is adamant: if he does not kill the dog, he does not get to eat. Cantinflas is nervous about the idea, but eventually kills the dog with a gun.

Meanwhile, inside the house, after Cayetano leaves, his wife Dolores del Paso has given entrance to the other man: her ex-boyfriend Bobby Lechuga, a con artist who plans to blackmail her with some undated letters with a new date unless she does as he says. However, Cayetano suddenly returns to the house, as his over-bearing jealousy has led him to think that his wife cheats on him and has plotted a scheme to expose her supposed "adultery" red-handed. Hearing his arrival, Paz hides Cantlinflas and later does the same with Bobby. Cayetano finds and catches Cantinflas, assuming he is his wife's lover, but Dolores pretends that Cantinflas is her long-estranged brother, Leonardo del Paso. Being that his father-in-law (Dolores and Leonardo's father) needed the presence of all heirs to read and distribute their inheritance, Cayetano (whose business have been slow lately) begins treating Cantinflas like a king in order to gain his trust. Naturally, Cantinflas takes advantage of the situation.

Things get complicated when Clotilde Regalado, Leonardo's partner, reads a newspaper clip mentioning Leonardo and the reading of the will, and makes her presence in the company of all of the couple's sons (and then some). Cantinflas tries to tell the truth about his identity to Cayetano, but as Dolores needs "Leonardo" to conceal the blackmail and Clotilde needs him to recognize and support her children, he continues to play along with the charade. Fully aware that Cantinflas is not the real Leonardo, she still moves over to Cayetano's house with the rest of her family, who are as much freeloaders as Cantinflas is. Intending for "Leonardo" to settle down, as well as to prevent him running away from "his" family and, by extension, further delay the reading of the will, Cayetano arranges for "Leonardo" to marry Clotilde.

Cantinflas understandably hesitates and tries as much as he can to avoid being married, and when he is about to be forced to do so by using his fingerprints, policemen arrive at the house, looking for Leonardo. Confusion arises, as Bobby Lechuga has been killed and Cantinflas admits to killing "Bobby" (the dog, not the gangster), exacerbate by the fact that Bobby's wallet (which he picked up at the beginning) is found among his clothes, so he is arrested and put on trial. In a prolonged courtroom sequence, Cantinflas again confesses to killing "Bobby" the rabid dog, but as almost everyone in court sees him as Leonardo confessing to the murder of Bobby the con-artist, he is inevitably found guilty. Fortunately for him, the real Leonardo appears and explains about Bobby's blackmailing and the fact that he killed the extorter in self-defense. Cantinflas is fully acquitted and returns to his old antics, waiting outside Cayetano's mansion for Paz's whistle at dinnertime and then entering the kitchen to eat.

MSgt Mike Takashima (Yul Brynner), Col Glenn Stevenson (Richard Widmark) and 1st Lt John Gregg (George Chakiris), all members of the U. S. Air Force Air Rescue Service at Ashiya Air Base, Japan, set out to rescue the survivors of a Japanese ship wrecked in a still-raging storm. As they fly to the site of the wreck, each man recalls a part of his past: Gregg remembers the avalanche caused in Europe when his Sikorsky H-19 Chickasaw helicopter came too close to a mountain. The avalanche subsequently buried alive the group of people whom he was attempting to rescue.

The accident has since caused him to fear flying solo. Stevenson, deeply prejudiced against the Japanese, recalls the reason for his hatred: as a civilian pilot in the Philippines prior to World War II, he met and married Caroline Gordon (Shirley Knight). She and their infant son later died in a Japanese prison camp when they were refused medical supplies which were being saved for Japanese soldiers. Takashima, half-Polish (mother), half-Japanese (father), reminisces about his tragic love affair with Leila (Danièle Gaubert), an Algerian girl, when he was an Army paratrooper during World War II. He was unable to stop a bridge from being blown up, a bridge where Leila had run to look for him after learning that his unit was being withdrawn from town.

Stevenson, Gregg and Takashima are the crew of the lead aircraft of a flight of two Grumman HU-16 Albatross seaplanes dispatched to rescue the Japanese civilians at sea. When one HU-16 crashes in the rough seas, Stevenson refuses to jeopardize his aircraft for Japanese lives. At the last minute, however, he recalls Caroline's dying plea not to hate; he overcomes his prejudice.

Takashima volunteered to parachute to the life rafts with rescue equipment. Stevenson and Gregg then land the aircraft at sea and rescue the survivors, but when Stevenson is injured in the landing, Gregg is forced to overcome his fear and handle the dangerous takeoff and the flight back to Ashiya.

At birth, three children are abandoned in a convent. They are Polito Sol and his siblings, Adriana and Carmelo Águila and they grow up to become the "Águila o Sol" trio. Many years later, Don Hipólito, Polito's father becomes rich and decides to search for his son. In the end he finds Polito and the Aguila siblings.

Major Dan Kirby arrives at VMF-247 ("Wildcats") as the new commander when everybody in the unit was expecting Captain Carl "Grif" Griffin to take over. Kirby is strict and makes this understood from day one. Assigned to the Cactus Air Force during the Guadalcanal campaign, Kirby has few planes available and a lot to accomplish with a field attacked daily by the Japanese. His pilots are young and behave like "kids", sometimes disobeying orders and foolishly losing precious pilots and precious planes. Kirby is requiring maximum effort, and Captain Griffin is not as tough as Kirby wants. Griffin stays closer to his young pilots, one of them his own brother-in-law, Vern "Cowboy" Blithe.

Kirby for his part hates the decisions he has to make, knowing that he is sending pilots to their death, but the success of his missions is the most important thing to him. He keeps this secret from the rest of his squadron. The hard conditions of the war force Kirby to get even stricter with his exhausted pilots. He even refuses sick leave to men with malaria or to allow planes with problems to return to base. Tension between Griffin and Kirby soon peaks. Griffin recognizes the hardships Kirby faces, but he is often more driven by his sentimental side.

Kirby is a fan of low-level ground attacks to support the Marine units, but HQ does not approve of his tactics until Marines are dangerously imperiled by the Japanese. Kirby then adjusts squadron tactics, despite losing a number of pilots while trying to prove his point. In his most successful operation, he leads his squadron in an attack on a huge Japanese convoy – a scene likely based on the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal.

Promoted to Lt. Colonel, Kirby is given the chance to organize low-level attack tactics in the US. Kirby then returns to the front, to the same unit and aircrew, now equipped with F4U Corsair fighters. Kirby leads his men against Japanese troops and Kamikaze attacks during the Battle of Okinawa. During a crucial moment in the battle, to avoid splitting his formation, Griffin denies assistance to his brother-in-law Blithe, and as a result Blithe is killed. Kirby is shot down and injured but is picked up by a Navy launch. Since he is now to leave the squadron, he has to appoint a successor. He appoints Griffin CO of VMF-247, as he understands that Griffin now can place the lives of his pilots second. They split with a friendly promise to meet again. Kirby admits that every moment in which he is required to make a decision is a nightmare, but that comes with the territory of being a leader under these circumstances.

Throughout the film, MSgt. Clancy, an old Marine veteran and comrade-in-arms of Kirby, provides comic relief. To the consternation of other units on the island, Clancy uses unorthodox creative methods to obtain provisions for his unit. His improvising helps the poorly equipped VMF-247, but at the end of the film, Clancy loses some stripes.

Lee Majors, in his first lead acting role, stars as Andy Crocker, a soldier who is wounded in a firefight in Vietnam and awarded the Purple Heart. After leaving his best friend David (Marvin Gaye), he meets a young hippie girl (Jill Haworth) who invites him to a party. The men at the party (Peter Haskell, Stuart Margolin) do not want him present; Crocker leaves and returns their hospitality by stealing one of their motorcycles that he rides home to Dallas, Texas where he reunites with his parents (played by Pat Hingle and Claudia Bryar). Crocker says that all that kept him going during the trials of Vietnam was his dreams of running a motorcycle racing track and repair shop and marrying his sweetheart, Lisa (Joey Heatherton).

Crocker, however, soon discovers that his friends and loved ones have moved on while he was in Vietnam and away for three years. Lisa has married another man (her "Dear John" letter to Andy apparently never received), and a friend entrusted to take care of the unsuccessful motorcycle track business and repair shop (Mack, played by Jimmy Dean) has made arrangements to sell it out from under Andy. An attempt at rekindling his relationship with Lisa ends in disaster.

Ultimately, Andy finds himself running afoul of Lisa's family (particularly her rich mother, played by Agnes Moorehead, who offers Andy a loan to help save the racetrack as long as he leaves town), and the law after he punches Mack for betraying him. Fleeing from the Dallas area, Andy eventually finds himself in San Francisco where he briefly reunites with his old army friend David. Afterwards, realizing he has nowhere else to go, he sits down in front of a U.S. Army Recruiting Office and waits for the doors to open.

Also appearing in the film is Bobby Hatfield of The Righteous Brothers as a restaurant owner.

The title of the film refers to a song (co-written by Margolin) that recurs throughout the film as "Greek chorus" to the events unfolding. Singer/songwriter Murray MacLeod sang the title song and wrote the music.

The game begins with Jaster foraging in the desert outside his home town of Salgin on the planet Rosa. Meanwhile, Simon and Steve arrive in Salgin looking for Desert Claw. As Jaster returns, he complains to his adopted father, Raul, about the presence of the Longardian Federation on the planet, who are ostensibly there to protect it from the Draxian Empire. As they talk, a beast attacks the town. Jaster rushes outside and is attacked by a group of smaller beasts. With the help of a stranger, he fights them off, and they head to face the main beast. Upon seeing Steve and Simon, the stranger leaves Jaster, giving him his sword. Steve recognizes the sword as Desert Claw's sword, "Desert Seeker - one of the Seven Sacred Galactic Swords" and concludes that Jaster is Desert Claw. As such, they join him in fighting the beast. They defeat it, and Steve tells Jaster their boss wants to hire him. When Jaster learns they are space pirates working for the legendary Dorgengoa, he decides to join, maintaining the ruse that he is Desert Claw.

On board, he meets Kisala, Zegram and the chief mate, Monsha (Quinton Flynn). While passing the Rose Nebula on their way to Zerard, the ''Dorgenark'' is attacked by beasts and crashes on the jungle planet Juraika, where they meet Lilika, a member of the local Burkaqua tribe, who joins the crew. They resume their journey to Zerard, where they renew the ship's galactic travel visa from the Galaxy Corporation, after a stint in Rosencaster Prison, and the inadvertent recruitment of Jupis to the ship's crew.

Meanwhile, Dorgengoa sees Jaster for the first time, immediately recognizing he is not Desert Claw. He orders Jaster be thrown overboard, but Kisala refuses to allow it. Dorgengoa decides to test Jaster's ability. First, he reveals he is seeking the lost planet of Eden, which is said to have disappeared 10,000 years ago. The key to finding Eden is the "Great Tablets", which are also lost, and for which Dorgengoa is searching. A tablet is believed to have been recently excavated on the planet Vedan. The crew head to the Vedanian mining town of Myna. There they meet Deego and his girlfriend Angela (Heather Halley). Deego helps the group get into the mines, but not in time to save the tablet from Daytron, who take it to Rosa. Deego decides to join the crew of the ''Dorgenark'', and Angela promises to wait for him to return.

The party arrives on Rosa and heads to the ruins in the Sylvazard Desert. The Tablet arrives and three pedestals are revealed, on which must be set three "Key Pieces". Meanwhile, Daytron president Valkog Drazer (David Lodge) and his assistant, Norma Kissleigh (Michelle Ruff), arrive with Seed (Jason Spisak), a masked servant, who engages the crew in battle. They are unable to defeat him but are rescued by Desert Claw, who promptly leaves again. On the ''Dorgenark'', they tell Dorgengoa about the pedestals, and Deego guesses the Key Pieces are probably located within the three Ruins of the Ancient Kings.

The party manages to acquire the three Key Pieces, and Jaster places them on the pedestals, transforming the Tablet into a massive three-dimensional puzzle structure. Seed begins an incantation and sets about manipulating the structure. However, he proves unable to solve the puzzle and transforms into a massive beast. He attacks the party, but Jaster unleashes a ferocious power, defeating him. Jaster then uses his power to solve the puzzle, opening the gates to a labyrinth. Deego speculates Jaster may be a descendant of the Star King, an ancient king who ruled the entire galaxy 50,000 years ago. After opening the labyrinth, a confused Jaster returns to normal, and the crew enter.

Inside, they encounter Ragnar (Chris Edgerly), a robot who explains Kisala is actually Princess Irieth of Mariglenn, the planet also known as Eden. He gives her the key to open the Gates of Eden. Meanwhile, the Daytron flagship, the ''Emperor'' attacks Salgin. Valkog demands the key from Jaster who is about to acquiesce, when Raul fires an electromagnetic pulse at the ''Emperor'', partially disabling it. The ship fires on Raul's church before retreating. Raul dies in Jaster's arms after giving him an artifact that points to the apparently deserted Kuje Desert. In the middle of Kuje, the party finds a village, Joannasburg. There, they meet the spirit of the long-dead Joanna (C. C. Seymour). She explains she is a descendant of the Star King, as is her son; Jaster. Desert Claw arrives, telling Jaster he is his father. He gave Jaster to Raul while he prepared for the day when Jaster would awaken the power of the Star King and open the Gates of Eden.

Jaster uses the key and a space portal appears above Rosa. After passing through, the crew Mariglenn, where they are greeted by Queen Freidias (Wendee Lee), who tells Kisala she is her mother. Freidias then tells the story of Mariglenn; tens of thousands of years ago, the planet was attacked by evil energy known as Rune, which possesses the power to turn living beings into beasts. Mother, the essence of Rune, took control of the planet, and the people realized that once Mariglenn was destroyed, Mother would move onto another planet, eventually destroying the entire galaxy. As such, Freidias sealed Mariglenn into a "space-time cleft". Only one person can defeat Mother – the Star King.

The crew travel to Ti'atha Forest where they encounter the spirit of Kisala's father, King Albioth (Fred Tatasciore). Albioth had faced Mother, but lost and had turned into a beast. He tells them the only way she can be defeated is by neutralizing the power of her Rune, using Drigellum energy; which can only be found in the hearts of good people. Each of the party's hearts generates Drigellum, which is forged into a sword. The party enter Mother's lair and fight her. Jaster again releases the power of the Star King. He reveals Mother as being a sorceress named Ilzarbella (Wendee Lee) who served the Star King until she was seduced by the power of Rune. Using the Drigellum sword, the Star King/Jaster kills her. As soon as the battle ends, the ''Emperor'' arrives with the intention of collecting the Rune energy to create beasts so as to continue the war, but Rune takes over the ship, killing Valkog and Norma, and integrating them into an organic vessel which it uses to attack Jaster and his group. The group split up, with each member attacking a separate part of the ship, eventually defeating it.

Mariglenn returns to its former self, and Kisala says goodbye to Freidias. When they return to their own galaxy, the group finds Mariglenn has reappeared. They visit and the Mariglenndians appoint Kisala as their new queen, much to the disappointment of Dorgengoa and Jaster. As Jaster and Monsha discuss the newly established galactic peace, Kisala is inaugurated as the new queen. Meanwhile, Simon returns to his family, Lilika returns to Bukaqua, Deego reunites with Angela, Steve returns to work with Dr. Pocacchio, Jupis resumes his scientific research, and Zegram remains on the ''Dorgenark''. Later, Dorgenoa tells Jaster they are returning to Mariglenn to get back Kisala. The game ends with a narration saying the crew made off with their "ultimate treasure" in what was their very last heist, implying that they succeeded in getting Kisala, but are on the run from Mariglenn.

Soon after the funeral of her husband (who died 'suspiciously' – he 'jumped' out of a plane without a parachute), Cornish housewife Grace Trevethyn discovers that she has been left with his massive debts. Unless she can raise a large amount of money, she will lose both her home and all of her possessions. Her loyal gardener Matthew offers to continue working without pay if she were to care for his dying cannabis plants, so Grace agrees. The plants flourish under her care so, talking with Matthew she realises they could grow and produce lots of cannabis in a short time.

With no other options and a creditor calling her home, Grace agrees to transform her greenhouse for the project. Matthew's girlfriend Nicky disapproves of the plan, particularly as she has recently learned from the town doctor and friend Martin Bamford that she is pregnant. While the plants are growing Grace meets her dead husband's mistress, Honey, but sends her away after realizing that her husband was more sexual with Honey than with her. As she's never tried it, Grace asks Matthew to hook her up. They sit on the edge of the sea and share a spliff.

Grace eventually learns that Nicky is pregnant and decides to seek out a buyer on her own to protect Matthew. When this proves to be more difficult than she expected, she has Honey introduce her to a drug dealer, Vince, only for him to lack the capital to purchase such a large crop. He introduces her to French businessman Jacques Chevalier, who Grace manages to impress with her knowledge of fly fishing and French. After initial disruptions, Chevalier and Grace negotiate a deal for the cannabis, and Grace, Vince, and Dr Bamford (who, with Matthew, had followed Grace to London) head back home; Chevalier secretly instructs his bodyguard to take Vince and follow them to Grace's home.

Once home, Grace discovers that the Women's Institute is preparing to hold a luncheon in her garden, and that the creditors are coming to remove her furniture and possessions. Matthew reconciles with Nicky and to his joy, learns that she's pregnant. Together the two stall Vince and the bodyguard by telling the local Police Sergeant Alfred Mabely that they are poachers. Meanwhile some of the Women's Institute members consume cannabis in liquid form, thinking that it was actually tea.

As Grace and her friends try to dismantle the grow operation, chaos breaks loose as the police (called by Mabely on the purported poachers), Jacques's people, and the creditors all arrive at the house. Grace chooses to burn the cannabis so no one can have it. Unable to resist, Martin opens the doors to the greenhouse and sends out a cloud of cannabis smoke that envelops the crowd. Meanwhile in her home, Grace has discovered Jacques, who tells her that he only wanted his bodyguard to protect her, as he has fallen for her.

Several months later the town's residents gather in the pub to watch a television special about Grace's seemingly overnight transition from an unknown widow to a millionaire after the success of her novel ''Joint Venture''. The special also covers Grace's marriage to Chevalier, as well as the large riot at her house in which "nobody could remember anything."

In the year 2027, after 18 years of total human infertility, war and global depression have pushed society to the point of collapse as humanity faces extinction. The United Kingdom, one of the few remaining nations with a functioning government, is deluged by refugees fleeing from chaos in their own countries. In response to this mass influx, the UK has become a police state, and the British government arrests, imprisons or executes illegal immigrants.

Theo Faron, a former activist turned cynical bureaucrat, is kidnapped by the Fishes. They are a militant immigrant-rights group led by Theo's estranged wife, Julian Taylor. The pair separated after their son's death during a 2008 flu pandemic. Julian offers Theo money to acquire transit papers for a young refugee woman named Kee. Theo obtains the papers from his cousin, a government minister who runs a state-sponsored collection of salvaged art, and agrees to escort Kee in exchange for a larger sum of money. Luke, a Fishes member, drives Theo, Kee, Julian, and former midwife Miriam towards Canterbury. An armed gang ambushes them and kills Julian. Two police officers later stop their car; Luke kills them and the group hides Julian's body before heading to a Fish's safehouse.

While there, Kee reveals to Theo that she is pregnant. This makes her the only known pregnant woman in the world. Julian had intended to hand her to the Human Project, a secretive scientific group in the Azores dedicated to curing humanity's infertility. Luke persuades Kee to stay, and he is voted the new leader of the Fishes. That night, Theo eavesdrops on a discussion and learns that Julian's death was orchestrated by the Fishes so that Luke could become their leader. Theo also hears that they intend to kill him and use the baby as a political tool to support the coming revolution. Theo wakes Kee and Miriam, and they escape to the secluded hideaway of Theo's aging friend Jasper Palmer. Palmer was once a political cartoonist, but has since turned into a pot dealer.

The group make plans to board the Human Project ship, the ''Tomorrow'', which will arrive offshore at Bexhill-on-Sea disguised as a fishing vessel. Jasper suggests they get Syd, an immigration cop to whom Jasper frequently sells drugs, to smuggle them into Bexhill as refugees. The next day, the Fishes discover Jasper's house and the group is forced to flee. Jasper stays behind to stall the Fishes; Luke shoots and kills him while a hidden Theo watches. Theo, Kee and Miriam meet with Syd, who helps them board a bus headed to Bexhill, now converted into a refugee camp. When Kee begins experiencing contractions, Miriam distracts a guard by feigning religious mania, and is taken away.

Inside the camp, Theo and Kee meet a Romani woman, Marichka, who provides a room where Kee gives birth to a baby girl. The next day, Syd tells Theo and Kee that war has broken out between the British military and the refugees. The refugees are being led by the Fishes. Syd learns that Theo and Kee have a bounty on their heads and attempts to capture them. Theo subdues Syd with Marichka's help, and they all escape. The group head to a hidden rowboat under cover of the fighting, but the Fishes capture Kee and the baby. Theo tracks them to an apartment building that is under heavy fire. Theo confronts Luke, who is then killed in an explosion, and Theo escorts Kee and the baby out. Awed by the baby, the British soldiers and Fishes temporarily stop fighting, and allow the trio to leave. Marichka then leads them to the boat, but chooses to stay behind as they depart.

British fighter jets conduct airstrikes on Bexhill, and Theo and Kee row to the rendezvous point. Theo reveals that he was shot and wounded by Luke earlier. He teaches Kee how to burp her baby which prompts Kee to name her daughter Dylan, after Theo's and Julian's lost son. Theo then loses consciousness and presumably dies as the ''Tomorrow'' approaches. As the screen cuts to black, children's laughter is heard.

Two scholars are sent to a region known as the "Tibet of Japan" to study rare butterflies, but they are killed by a landslide triggered by a massive creature. Reporter Yuriko, sister to one of the late scholars, travels to Iwaya Village with scientist Kenji and another colleague to investigate the deaths, after the media blames a local spirit named “Baradagi” as the culprit. The trio reach the village but are ordered by the village priest to turn back before invoking Baradagi’s wrath. However, against the priest’s demands, the trio chase after a boy pursuing his dog in the forest.

After finding the boy, a giant reptilian monster surfaces from a nearby lake and attacks the village, crushing the priest in the process. Kenji identifies the beast as "Varan". Back in Tokyo, Dr. Sugimoto adds that Varan is a Varanopode, a creature that lived during the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods. Sugimoto is then asked by the Defense Agency to accompany them to the area. Varan is driven out of the lake with chemicals and engages the military. Kenji and Yuriko are chased by the monster, but take refuge in a cave where Varan attempts to reach them. At Sugimoto’s suggestion, flares are used to distract Varan. However, Varan sprouts wings and flees into the sea.

While the Air Force and Navy search for Varan, Sugimoto joins Dr. Fujimura and other scientists to discuss how to defeat the monster. After attacking a fishing boat, the Air Force and Navy proceed to attack Varan. When Varan heads towards Haneda Airport, the military convince Fujimura to use his new explosive intended for dam construction. As the Defense Force bombards Varan, Kenji drives a truck carrying the explosives towards the beast. He escapes before the truck detonates beneath Varan but the explosives prove useless. After noticing Varan devouring flares, Sugimoto suggests attaching the explosives onto the flares in the hopes that Varan would swallow them. A helicopter drops the explosive-laced flares into Varan’s mouth, successfully imploding its organs. Varan retreats into the sea, and is killed by the final explosive.

A plane crashes in the Amazon rainforest, leaving young Daisuke Yamamoto stranded without his parents. Soon adopted by an Incan tribe under the name "Amazon", he becomes a wild child, living off the land. However, his village is massacred by the Ten-Faced Demon Gorgos, who searches for the powerful GiGi Armlet to take over the world with it. The last Inca, Elder Bago, gives Daisuke the GiGi Armlet for safekeeping and uses his knowledge of Incan science and magic to perform a mystic ritual on Daisuke and transform him into the powerful "Kamen Rider Amazon" before dying. Now in Japan, Daisuke battles the evil organization Gedon, unaware of why they pursue him. Befriending Professor Kousaka's nephew and niece, Daisuke learns of the GiGi Armlet's true nature and ultimately defeats Gedon, then the Garanda Empire.

Police psychiatrist Dr. Andrew Collins (Lee J. Cobb) tells a detective that he believes that he can help to turn a young suspect away from crime. Through an extended flashback he illustrates his claim with the story of how he came to work for the police.

While Collins (at the time a college professor), his wife, and son head to their vacation cabin, prison escapee and convicted murderer Al Walker (William Holden) and his small gang flee towards the very same secluded cove. Along the way Walker gratuitously shoots the warden he had held hostage in the back, raising eyebrows around him.

Collins is entertaining three guests when Walker, his girlfriend Betty (Nina Foch), and two gunmen break in and hold everyone hostage while waiting for a pickup by boat. With the servants tied in the basement and the others upstairs guarded by Betty and the gangmen, Collins observes Walker's behavior downstairs closely, explaining that his profession has trained him to cure.

When Fred Linder (Steven Geray), a colleague of Collins, comes to deliver a hunting rifle, he tells Collins about the prison escape but notices that someone is hiding behind a curtain. Pretending to leave, Linder grabs the rifle, but Walker struggles with him, wounding Linder. Throughout, Collins has repeatedly noticed that Walker, an extremely unintelligent, volatile man, is nonetheless drawn to some of his books on psychoanalysis and the subconscious. Betty, who is told to watch Collins while Walker fitfully sleeps, tells the professor that Walker is prone to nightmares (visualized in negative film images) where he is standing under a leaking umbrella with a paralyzed hand and trapped behind bars.

Walker awakens Collins to suggest analyzing his dreams, and Walker agrees. With Collins' guidance, Walker remembers a scene from his childhood where he hid under a table in a bar and witnessed his father being shot to death by police. The trauma was intensified because the young Walker had told the police where to find him, and because the boy’s hand was covered with his father's blood, which leaked through the table above him. Collins tells Walker that recovering the lost memory means that his nightmares will not return and that he will no longer be able to kill.

Meanwhile, one of the servants managed to escape and notify the police. The cabin is surrounded. Walker seems ready to shoot it out, but finds that he cannot pull the trigger, even though his fingers are no longer paralyzed.

The flashback ends and the police detective agrees to let Collins analyze the young suspect they had been discussing.

''Grande Sertão: Veredas'' is the complex story of '''Riobaldo''', a former jagunço (mercenary or bandit) of the poor and steppe-like inland of the Rio São Francisco, known as Sertão, of the states of Minas Gerais and Bahia in the dawn of the 20th century. Now an old man and a rancher, Riobaldo tells his long story to an anonymous and silent listener coming from the city. The book is written in one long section, with no section or chapter breaks.

. Riobaldo is born into a middle-class family and, unlike most of his contemporaries, receives an education. This enables him to begin his career as a tutor to a prominent local rancher, '''Zé Bebelo''', and he watches as Zé Bebelo raises an army of his own jagunços to stamp out several of the local bandit gangs. Instead, for reasons that are never fully clear—apparently a desire for adventure—he disappears from the ranch and defects to the side of the bandits under the leadership of Joca Ramiro. Due to his excellent aim, Riobaldo becomes a valued member of the band and begins to rise in stature. In the course of the events Riobaldo gets acquainted with Diadorim, revealed later to be someone from his past who used the name, ''Reinaldo''. Diadorim is a young, pleasant and ambivalent fellow jagunço. The two start a profound friendship, with Diodorim exerting an unusual attraction in Riobaldo. Throughout the book it is hinted that Diadorim is Joca Ramiro's nephew or illegitimate son.

Ramiro's men defeat and capture Zé Bebelo, but after a short trial, Bebelo is released. The war is temporarily over, but news later comes that two of Ramiro's lieutenants, Ricardão and '''Hermogenes''', have betrayed and murdered him. As a result, the victorious army splits in two, Riobaldo staying with the current leader, Medeiro Vaz. When Vaz dies of illness, Zé Bebelo returns from exile and takes ownership of the band (this is actually where the book begins; the previous part is told in a very lengthy retrospective). They survive a lengthy siege by Hermogenes' men, but Zé Bebelo loses the taste for fighting, and the band is idled for nearly a month in a plague-ridden village. When this happens, Riobaldo mounts a challenge and takes command of the band, sending Zé Bebelo away.

Riobaldo, who has mused on the nature of the devil intermittently since the beginning of the book, tries to make a pact with the devil. He goes to a crossroads at midnight, but is uncertain as to whether the deal has been made or not, and he remains unsure for the rest of the story. He leads his band across a hostile desert and successfully ambushes and destroys Ricardão's men and kills Ricardão. He then moves against Hermogenes but is surprised; with difficulty and heavy casualties, his army defeats Hermogenes. The climax of the book is a knife fight between the two opposing armies. In the fight, Diadorim kills Hermogenes, but is in turn killed. Riobaldo resigns command of the jagunços and settles down to a more conventional life. The final musings of the book are regarded as some of the most beautiful fragments of Portuguese language literature.

The stories are interwoven in the film version, though their stories are completely unconnected. In the television version, each story constitutes one episode and works as an independent television film, varying in length between 40 and 60 minutes.

;Landins (''The Landins'') Christer Landin, the father in a family living in a community in Scania, southern Sweden, tries to motivate his son who is falling behind in school by bringing him to his workplace as a pet cremator. Accidentally, the son turns on the crematory oven just in the wrong moment and the father is severely burned. Life still has to go on, and while the son is feeling guilty, the father goes through rehabilitation where he learns to speak again and befriends other local people also suffering from speech disabilities.

;En dålig idé (''A bad idea'') Richard Brunn, a man with a lifetime subscription to the magazine ''Wallpaper*'', is together with his wife opening a top designed beachside hotel. They are visited by Richard's parents who work as stage magicians. The parents bring an easy-going Dane and a wooden statuette representing a former minister, which Richard finds to be extremely tasteless, and which triggers a mental breakdown.

;Min sista vilja (''My last will'') The deceased Sören H. Lindberg, an equally eccentric as successful harness racing driver and trainer from Dalarna, has left a bizarre will demanding various acts and arrangements to be performed at his funeral. As his three sons and countless mistresses are gathered, the sorrow and confusion is processed, and everybody is curious of who will inherit which part of his wealth. Eventually it turns out that all money has been spent on a hologram of Lindberg telling them that he used the money to create the hologram. Furthermore, his best horse is given away to the National Estonian Trotting Association without any explanation.

;Pappas lilla tjockis (''Dad's little fatso'') A cooking class in Gothenburg develops into a therapy session for lost souls. Johan is unable to get really close to anyone, including his wife, and keeps telling lies about his progress to the group. Ernst is dysfunctional and unable to get a job, and shifts between feeling very charismatic and like a total misfit. Jenny feels bad about not being able to keep herself from using irony and sarcasm to hurt people who don't understand when she's serious and when she's not. Olle is troubled by the breakup of his marriage.

Carter "Doc" McCoy, an expert criminal who was recently released from prison on a pardon, plans to commit a bank robbery with three accomplices. One is his wife Carol, a former librarian who was charmed by Doc's ruthlessness and immorality and thus became his partner-in-crime; she is waiting with their getaway car. The other two are the thuggish Rudy Torrento and the naive Jackson, both of whom are discussing the group's planned escape route: they intend to travel first to California, where they are to stay at a tourist camp Rudy knows while the heat dies down, and then intend to sneak across the Mexican border to go to a mysterious sanctuary for criminals run by a man called El Rey ("The King").

The bank's guard opens the door to prepare for the day, at which point Doc shoots and kills him from across the street. Rudy and Jackson hide the guard's body, then lie in wait as the other three members of the bank staff arrive for work, tying up each in turn. They steal about $250,000 ($ million today), at which point Rudy kills Jackson in order to increase his share of the proceeds. Doc starts a fire so they can escape while everyone is distracted. Rudy, guessing that Doc will try to kill him, pulls a gun, but Doc shoots first, seemingly killing Rudy, then meets up with Carol.

Doc and Carol drive to the rural home of Beynon, the politician who sold Doc his pardon. Doc still owes Beynon some money, and wants to pay him off before fleeing the country. Meanwhile, Rudy regains consciousness and realizes that he may still survive if he can get medical treatment. He remembers a former cellmate and friend, Dr. Vonderschied, and imagines him advising that a veterinarian can treat him. A patrol of two police officers stumble across his position, but Rudy kills both and flees.

Doc and Carol find Beynon drunk and despondent; the news has reported the deaths of the bank guard and two policemen and he feels morally responsible. He then tries to convince Doc that Carol, who was the one who actually met with him and negotiated Doc's pardon, had agreed to betray and ultimately kill Doc so that she and Beynon could take the money and run. Carol storms in and shoots Beynon dead, then insists that Beynon was lying. Doc is troubled but accepts this.

The couple decide to drive to Kansas City, take a train to California, and then cross the border. Carol wonders if they can hole up in California with the help of the Santis criminal family, whose ancient matriarch Ma Santis is always willing to hide her friends and associates from the police. Doc dismisses the idea, doubting that Ma Santis is still alive.

They drive Beynon's car to the Kansas City train station. Carol enters first while Doc disposes of the car, but a con artist manages to steal Carol's suitcase containing all the money. The con artist sneaks onto a train, pockets a sheaf of bills from the suitcase, and hides in an otherwise empty car. However, Carol and Doc find and kill the con artist shortly after the train leaves the station. After disembarking, Doc and Carol steal a vehicle by killing the driver.

The con artist's body is discovered, and when authorities realize that the sheaf of bills in his pocket came from the bank, they conclude that Doc and Carol were the killers. A police bulletin is broadcast, forcing Doc and Carol to change plans once again.

Rudy compels a rural veterinarian named Harold Clinton to treat and bandage his wound. Upon learning that his bandages will need to be changed a few times every day, Rudy forces Harold and his wife Fran to travel with him to California. From the news updates, Rudy deduces that Doc and Carol will need to move quietly and slowly. This allows Rudy to take the trip slowly and he begins to sleep with Fran, who is charmed by Rudy's brutish nature. Though Harold sleeps in the same bed, he cannot bring himself to do anything about his wife's infidelity. He soon kills himself in despair, at which point Rudy begins beating Fran, but she continues to slavishly love and obey him.

Doc and Carol pay a migrant family to travel in the bed of their truck. After several days they arrive in California and make their way to the tourist court, where they are ambushed by Rudy and Fran. Doc manages to shoot and kill both before commandeering a taxi. The cabbie radios his dispatch before Doc and Carol throw him out, so the police are able to set up a roadblock. Doc spots Ma Santis on the side of the road, and she waves them in to her hidden refuge.

Escape

Santis needs time to arrange Doc and Carol's passage across the border and to El Rey's kingdom, so she hides them in partially-submerged caves for two days. Santis then has her son Earl take the couple to his farm while he negotiates their passage with the captain of a fishing boat. Doc and Carol are forced to wait inside a hollowed-out pile of manure for another three days. The two are finally smuggled into the fishing boat. As they are leaving American waters, a small Coast Guard cutter stops it, but Doc and Carol kill all three officers.

Doc and Carol finally reach the kingdom of El Rey, which is indeed a sanctuary where criminals can live openly without fear of being extradited. However, all the goods for sale are luxury or first-class, so the cost of living is quite high. Furthermore, El Rey dictates that all residents must spend a certain amount of money per month. This means that, no matter how wealthy a criminal is upon arriving, he quickly gives all his money to El Rey. Fearing banishment to an outlying village with no food or drink, rife with cannibalism and suicide, the criminals kill each other in an attempt to accumulate money to pay El Rey.

During the annual ball, the one night every year in which El Rey hosts a big party in his palace and disallows any "accidents", Doc despairs that he will have to kill Carol in order to make their money last longer and avoid the cannibal village. He wanders through El Rey's palace and comes across Dr. Vonderschied, Rudy's friend. Doc tries to convince Vonderschied to talk Carol into some kind of surgery, then kill her during the process. Vonderschied reveals that Carol tried to pay him to enact the same plan against Doc. He denounces both for squandering their many talents and luck in pursuit of a monstrously bloody life of crime. Vonderschied directs Doc to Carol, hiding in the room. The couple acknowledge that they love each other, but neither denies that it will end with murder so one can avoid the cannibal village for a little while longer. As the clock strikes midnight, they sardonically toast their "successful getaway".

This erotic tale centers on the alluring Anita, whose search for love leads to an empty life of nymphomania. Anita's self-destructive path takes a new turn when she meets college student Erik, who tries to help her overcome her addiction. Erik plays the role of counselor as Anita slowly reveals her troubled past, but will his prescription of ultimate ecstasy really cure her?

The novel is set in present-day West Virginia. The protagonist is Summer, an orphaned child who has been passed from one apathetic relative to another. At age six, she meets her Aunt May and Uncle Ob. The kindly old couple notices that, although Summer is not mistreated, she is virtually ignored by her caretakers and decide to take Summer home to their rickety trailer home in the hills of the Appalachian mountains. Summer thrives under their care, feeling that she finally has a home.

Six years after Summer moves in, Aunt May dies suddenly in the garden. Summer must cope with her own grief while worrying about Uncle Ob, who is overwhelmed by the thought of living without his beloved wife. Uncle Ob decides to try contacting May's spirit, after he experiences the sensation that she has tried to communicate with him. He is assisted in this endeavor by Cletus Underwood, a classmate of Summer's, who provides information on a supposed spirit medium of some renown. Summer views his ideas with some skepticism, but is willing to try anything that might alleviate her uncle's sorrow. The three take a roadtrip to meet with the medium, only to discover that she had recently died. Uncle Ob is initially crushed by this news, and Summer fears that this disappointment was the last blow to his will to live. However, on the return trip, Uncle Ob suddenly snaps out of his depression, deciding to continue living on for Summer's sake.

It is the story of Daniel, whose parents have died; he goes to live with his grandfather on a remote gray island off British Columbia. Together they live an extremely lonely life, hardly talking to anyone. That loneliness soon lifts from Daniel when he meets a mermaid. He returns to the shore later, hoping to meet her again, but instead finds a sea otter, who then tosses him a seashell which contains a key. As he explores the mysteries of the key he soon grows closer with his grandfather. The novel will touch and is a quick read

To Kraków

After seeing a spy lurking around his house in Ukraine, Andrew Charnetski hastily removes his family to a safe location. While away, Peter of the Button Face, acting under the orders of Ivan III of Russia, burns the Charnetskis' village to the ground in search of the "Great Tarnov Crystal", a mysterious Tarnov crystal that has caused many wars over the millennia and had, a few centuries previously, been entrusted by the city of Tarnów to the Charnetski family for safeguarding until its discovery by others, at which time it was to be given to the current king of Poland.

Realizing that someone must have been after the crystal, and finding himself homeless, Andrew takes his family to Kraków, where his cousin Andrew Tenczynski lives, in order to give the crystal to King Kazimír Jagiełło. However, upon his arrival he finds that Tenczynski has been murdered and that his estate is under the control of Elizabeth of Austria, the queen of Poland. Destitute, Charnetski camps his family in the middle of the city for the day.

Charnetski's fifteen-year-old son Joseph explores the city, passing the Church of Our Lady St. Mary, from which a trumpeter plays an unfinished song called "the Heynal" [in Polish: ''Hejnał mariacki''] four times every hour, once to each direction (north, east, south, and west). Joseph ends up saving an alchemist named Nicholas Kreutz and his niece, Elżbietka, from a wolfdog (even though the book said a dog). Kreutz offers Joseph and his family an apartment just below his on the unsavory Street of the Pigeons, a street near Kraków University where scientists and magicians often live.

Meanwhile, Andrew Charnetski and his wife (who is never named) have been found by Peter of the Button Face, who has pursued them from Ukraine. Surrounded by bandits and a jeering crowd, Andrew, his wife, and Joseph (who joins them) are only saved by the appearance of Jan Kanty, a respected scholar and priest. Kanty offers Andrew the position of night trumpeter in the Church of Our Lady St. Mary. Delighted at the prospect of a job and home on such short notice, Andrew accepts both offers.

The following night Andrew takes Joseph with him to the tower of the Church of Our Lady St. Mary, leaving his wife behind with Elżbietka. In the tower Andrew explains to his son the story of the trumpeter of Kraków — a trumpeter who, in 1241, was pierced by a Tartar arrow before he could finish the Heynał. Accordingly, the song has always been abruptly cut short.

The Alchemist

Nicholas Kreutz, meanwhile, teaches a German student named Johann Tring chemistry in the loft above his apartment every evening. Tring, however, is obsessed with the idea of obtaining the philosopher's stone, and finally convinces Kreutz to go through sessions of hypnosis, which Tring believes will open Kreutz's "Greater Mind", revealing the secret of the creation of a chrysopoeia. All Tring can glean from Kreutz's trances, however, is that the chrysopoeia is at hand (which Tring takes to mean that they have nearly discovered how to make it).

When unhypnotized, Kreutz reasons that there cannot be one stone that automatically changes brass into gold, but that there must be a process by which such a change could occur. He believes that all things are subject to change, and wishes to change the bad things in the world to good things through the use of alchemy. An example he gives is the landlady's deformed son, Stas, whom Kreutz believes could be saved through alchemical transmutation.

In the meantime, Peter of the Button Face hears Stas, the landlady's son, discussing the Charnetskis and pays him a fortune to learn of their whereabouts. He leads a burglary on the Charnetski's apartment while Andrew is up in the church tower, and discovers the Tarnov Crystal hidden in Andrew's mattress. He and his men are surprised, however, by the appearance of Nicholas Kreutz, clad in clothes covered in phosphorus and burning resin, and take him for a demon. The bandits flee and are caught by the night watchmen, but Peter stays to reclaim the Crystal. When Kreutz asks the mercenary why he has come, Peter realizes the alchemist is not a demon and stops being afraid. He directs Kreutz's attention to the Crystal, then trips the alchemist and grabs the gem, heading for the door. Kreutz throws some explosive powder at Peter, who drops the Crystal in agony and escapes over the rooftops of Kraków.

Tempted by the realization that the Crystal is the chrysopoeia he and Tring have been ardently seeking, Kreutz steals the Tarnov Crystal before anyone figures what has happened. When he tries to use the Crystal, however, Kreutz realized that it only makes him think of his own desires. He realized, then, that it can only reflect back the gazer's own subconscious knowledge, and therefore will not reveal the secret of chrysopoeia unless he himself has all the pieces stored somewhere in his head.

The Broken Note

Andrew teaches Joseph the Heynał, realizing that he may be attacked by seekers of the Crystal and that someone must be left to trumpet the song on the hour. While in the tower one evening, Andrew and Joseph are attacked and held captive by Peter and his band. Peter demands to be led to the location of the Crystal (which neither Andrew nor Joseph knows), but first orders Joseph to trumpet the Heynał since it is two o'clock and its absence will be noticed. Thinking quickly, Joseph plays the Hejnał the entire way through, not stopping at the broken note. Elżbietka, lying awake in her apartment waiting to hear the Heynał, realizes the finished tune is a sign and rushes to Jan Kanty's cell. Kanty calls the night watchmen to his aid and heads for the church tower, where they surprise the bandits and free Andrew. Peter, meanwhile, notices the troop of watchmen and flees the city.

The Great Tarnov Crystal

Much later, Kreutz finally gives in to temptation and reveals the Great Tarnov Crystal to Johann Tring. Tring is giddy with excitement and instructs Kreutz to gaze into the crystal. The alchemist, however, is tired from his numerous trances. Despite his faint protests, Tring makes him go into a trance by making him stare into the depths of the gemstone. In it his thoughts arrange themselves into a strange order, and he reads in the stone what Tring believes to be the formula for the changing brass into gold, but what is in actuality the formula for a niter-based explosive. When Tring mixes the ingredients together, the loft explodes into flames and Tring flees for cover. Kreutz grabs the stone and, still crazed, heads off into the streets of Kraków. After that, he is dragged to the tower by Jan Kanty and the Great Tarnov Crystal is given back to Pan Andrew.

The fire starts to spread through the Street of the Pigeons, and during the tumult the king's royal guards catch Peter of the Button Face skulking around the scene and haul him off to the prison. Joseph, his mother, and Elżbietka escape from their home to the church tower, and Joseph replaces his father as the trumpeter while Andrew goes to work stopping the flames, which have spread throughout the city. The fire is extinguished by the morning and Jan Kanty finds Nicholas Kreutz wandering aimlessly about in the rubble with the Tarnov Crystal in his hands.

Jan Kanty, Nicholas Kreutz, and Andrew and Joseph Charnetski all seek an audience with King Kazimír. Once granted, they present to him the Tarnov Crystal and tell them its story and theirs. The king then summons Peter of the Button Face, who bargains for his life by promising to tell the king why there have been disturbances in Ukraine. He tells the king that Ivan III, the king of Russia, wished to have Makhmud Khan invade Ukraine and capture it for Russia. Makhmud agreed under the condition that Ivan would procure for him the Great Tarnov Crystal. It was thus that Ivan hired the mercenary Bogdan Grozny, called Peter, to steal the Crystal.

After hearing Peter's story, Kazimír banishes the mercenary from Poland for life. As they begin to depart, the king gazes into the Crystal and becomes transfixed. Kreutz, still entranced, grabs the Crystal and runs out the door down to the banks of the Vistula, into which he throws the Tarnov Crystal. Jan Kanty and the king decide not to retrieve the crystal, deeming it safely protected in the grounds of the castle. Andrew Charnetski's house in Ukraine is rebuilt and he is rewarded by the king. Kreutz and Elżbietka come to Ukraine as well, the alchemist having regained his sanity, and six years later Joseph marries Elżbietka.

Christoffer (Ulrich Thomsen) is called back from his life as a restaurant manager in Sweden when his father commits suicide. His mother, Annelise (Ghita Nørby) puts pressure on him to take over management of the family business, a steelworks factory.

Although his heart is not in it, he feels obligated to take up the task. The decision is met with frustration and anger from his wife Maria (Lisa Werlinder), who eventually accepts his decision and moves back to Denmark along with him.

The management task is slowly taking over Christoffer's time and life, and as a consequence, he ignores the needs of himself and his wife. As the managerial dilemmas include some of his personal relations, he is forced to give up his personal morals in order to meet the company needs.

Slowly, but surely, his altered life style pushes him away from Maria, who moves back to pursue her career as an actress in Sweden, which pushes him further towards a nervous breakdown.

The movie ends with the acceptance of his fate, indicating that he is following closely in the footsteps of his father, which led to the suicide in the beginning.

At a robot expo, Mom's Friendly Robot Company introduces a new robot: Robot 1-X. Professor Farnsworth buys one to help out around the office. Feeling obsolete after witnessing 1-X outperform him at every assigned task, Bender decides to get an upgrade so he can be compatible with Robot 1-X. After witnessing another robot display a complete personality change after receiving the upgrade, Bender begins to have second thoughts, and mid-upgrade he changes his mind and leaps out the window.

Too scared to get the upgrade but unable to face the others without it, he heads out to sea, only to wash up on an uncharted island. Bender finds four outdated robots living on the island and befriends them. The outdated robots gradually convert Bender to their rejection of technology, and he orders them to "downgrade" his metal robotics to a wooden body. Bender leads his friends to New New York, where they wage war on technology. The band of five destroy most technology in the city, including Mom's factory, and head to Planet Express to destroy Robot 1-X.

After destroying the power lines, Bender breaks into the hangar, where he confronts his former crew. Bender has his robotic friends throw boulders at Robot 1-X, but they miss and hit the Planet Express ship, which falls and pins the crew down to the floor. A candle falls onto the leaking fuel from the ship, forming a ring of fire around the crew. Bender tries to use the extinguisher, but his wooden body collapses from termite damage and catches fire. Bender resorts to asking Robot 1-X to save the crew. Once 1-X saves them, Bender is overcome with feelings of gratitude and friendship for 1-X.

It is then revealed that Bender never left the upgrade factory in the first place, and his experience on the island and everything after was an illusion triggered by the upgrade process. Amazed at how real the vision was, Bender begins wondering if life itself is just the product of his or someone else's imagination, but comes to the conclusion that "Reality is what you make of it," and walks off into a fantasy world with moonshine-bearing unicorns and cigar-lighting fairies.

Rodriguez and Dauden play sisters and Arenas and Marzan best friends who go abroad to Italy for work. Arenas becomes angry when Rodriguez sends a letter that she is pregnant.

The tasks of the Cobra 11 team consist primarily in solving crimes and catching the perpetrators. Typical elements of the action genre are mixed, so that there are regular car crashes, shootouts, explosions and fistfights. These action scenes are elaborately produced in most cases, and appropriately presented in a spectacular way. The high number of unrealistic scenes is a common criticism of the series; for example, large explosions often happen after small collisions while people emerge unharmed out of cars which have sustained catastrophic damage.

After an experiment nearly kills him, Professor Farnsworth plans to destroy a yellow box containing said experiment by ejecting it into the sun. He forbids the Planet Express staff to open it, and Hermes assigns Leela to guard it, after she makes excuses not to go out on a date with Fry. While she keeps the others from looking in, she finds herself tempted and flips a coin to decide whether or not to look inside; after getting a positive answer, she falls into the box and finds herself in a parallel universe with other versions of the Planet Express crew.

The parallel Leela orders everyone in the original universe to come into their universe, as the parallel Professor believes that the original universe members are all evil. The two Farnsworths discover that, just as the original Farnsworth accidentally invented a box containing a parallel universe, the parallel universe Farnsworth accidentally invented a box containing the original universe. They also discover the major difference between the two realities: namely, coin flips have opposite outcomes, which explains why the parallel Leela did not open the box that she was guarding. Fry and Leela are also surprised to discover that their doppelgangers are happily married, because at one point the two Leelas each flipped a coin to decide whether or not accept a date from Fry.

The Professors eventually decide that nobody is evil and the members of both universes spend time befriending one another. However, just before the original Planet Express crew returns home, parallel Hermes comes in to destroy the box containing the original universe. The crew realize that this means the original-universe Hermes must be doing the same thing to the box containing the parallel universe (i.e., the universe that they are all in). They plan to go back through the box to stop Hermes but discover that the box is missing, having been stolen by the two Zoidbergs. The two Farnsworths try to recreate the original box, but end up creating a large number of boxes containing different universes. The Zoidbergs flee into the boxes, leading to a chase across multiple odd dimensions. They are eventually caught, however, and everyone jumps into the box containing the original universe just in time to save it from Hermes.

The two crews say goodbye before returning to their respective universes. To ensure the safety of both, the Farnsworths exchange their universe-boxes by pulling each through the other, meaning that each now paradoxically has a box containing their own universe. Meanwhile, Fry asks Leela on a date again; she flips a coin, then decides to accept without looking at it.

There are five chapters with 4 levels in which players eliminate the Helghast resistance (the fifth and final chapter was made available to download).

In ''Killzone: Liberation'', two months after the events of ''Killzone'', the Helghast have been dealt a hefty blow from the last game, but the war is far from over. The enemy still controls large parts of the planet Vekta, and though the ISA armies are fighting hard, they are losing ground. The rules of war have been cast aside with the sadistic Helghast General Armin Metrac, employed by the Helghast Emperor Scolar Visari to use brutal measures in order to seize the initiative after their past defeat and strengthen his position further. Metrac and his right-hand man, Colonel Cobar, are planning to capture three key figures of ISA, and their plan ends up successful.

Returning as Jan Templar, players are sent on a covert operation to save hostages captured by Metrac, while ISA troops continue the fight for liberty. Rico Velasquez, Jan's friend on the battlefield, often assists him on his way through the enemy lines. Shadow Marshall Luger, another of Jan's partners, also helps him.

As Metrac captures ISA Minister of War Heff Milcher, scientist Evelyn Batton, and ISA General Dwight Stratson, Jan is sent on the rescue mission. After a set of military operations, Templar is closely following the trail of hostages and pursues Cobar, who has taken Milcher and Stratson. Milcher is then killed by Cobar, but Jan is nevertheless successful in defeating him, even though Cobar was piloting a personal walking tank. Cobar reveals that there is a traitor in ISA command who is helping the Helghast, but is finished off by Stratson before he can say who the traitor is.

The next step for Templar is to assault Metrac's mountain fortress and rescue Batton. Luger aids him on the mission. There, he fights many of Helghan's elite warriors (including a giant cybernetic unit) before encountering and killing Metrac in a final showdown. Afterwards, Templar locates Evelyn and escapes with her just before the fortress is destroyed. The game's outro marks the beginning of ''Killzone 2'', as we hear Visari speaking of nuclear weapons which he intends to use on ISA forces.

In the fifth, downloadable chapter, Jan is sent on a mission to the Vektan capital city. Even though Metrac is no more, the enemy forces are still coordinated and fighting well. ISA believes that the unknown traitor is supplying Helghan with information. The only suspect is Rico, Jan's friend. Battling his way through the war-ravaged city, Jan finally finds Rico, who reveals that the traitor is, in fact, Stratson, who not only sold the planet to Helghast, but has become the shadow commander of the remaining Helghan forces. Jan proceeds to the capital building of Vekta, where Stratson is located, battling hordes of Helghast and even Stratson's personal elite guard on his way. There, he engages the general in combat. However, Stratson is well-prepared and uses his armored mecha against Jan, but is ultimately defeated. He, wounded, is then arrested by ISA forces.

Early in 1979, the Interstellar Exploration Agency launches Japanese rocket ship, the ''JX-1 Hawk'', into space on a nine month journey to investigate Saturn. At its conclusion however, the crew is given a new mission after scientists discover a runaway "planet", which the International Astronomical Union nicknamed "Gorath", is somehow running amok. Upon encountering and while investigating Gorath's rapid movement through the Solar System, the ''JX-1 Hawk'' crew discover it is smaller than Earth, yet has 6,000 times its gravity. They manage to transmit their data back to Earth before an enormous gravity well destroys the ship, killing the crew.

A month later in 1980, astronomers and astrophysicists throughout the international community announce that Gorath will collide with the Earth in two years time. At the United Nations, a gathering of Earth's top scientists attempt to resolve the situation by pooling together large amounts of technical advancements they made in the past two decades. After a debriefing, the scientific community reveals the South Pole Operation, which involves a base in Antarctica designed to house a large international team of engineers and scientists and the construction of huge "mega-thrusters" which will propel the Earth out of Gorath's path within 100 days and move Earth back once the danger has passed. The U.N. approves and sends the prototype sub-light spacecraft ''JX-2 Eagle'' into space to obtain further data on Gorath.

Construction on the South Pole Operation base goes underway as ships and helicopters from several nations bring in building material and powerful, mobile heat-generating devices known as atomic burrowers are quickly cobbled together to assist in creating the caverns required to house the mega-thrusters. Meanwhile, the ''JX-2 Eagle'' crew succeeds in its mission, learning that Gorath is absorbing space debris within its gravity well to continuously add to its mass, and transmit the data to U.N. space stations. On Earth, the mega-thrusters are activated for a test run while citizens from around the world watch on a live broadcast. As the Earth gently moves, the South Pole Operation is hailed as a success. The ''JX-2 Eagle'' and space stations learn of this development and are ordered to return to deny Gorath more mass.

However, the heat generated by the mega-thrusters causes a giant, walrus-like monster later dubbed "Maguma" to emerge from the tundra and attack the South Pole Operation base in response to their intrusion. In response, a small VTOL aircraft is equipped with a powerful laser to stop Maguma. Determined to do so without killing the monster, the pilot uses the laser to create an avalanche and bury it. However, Maguma easily escapes and resumes its attack, leaving the crew with little choice but to kill it. As Gorath absorbs Saturn's rings, the ''JX-2 Eagle'' crew successfully return to Earth.

As the enormous celestial body becomes visible to the naked eye, Earth's tides begin to rise and a state of emergency is declared. Gorath absorbs and obliterates the Moon. It also floods Tokyo and the mega-thrusters and causes an earthquake that destroys the ''JX-2 Eagle'' and the Interstellar Exploration Agency's Mount Fuji facility. Even in spite of these disasters, Earth is successfully moved out of Gorath's path before returning to its original orbit.

Sergeant First Class Buck McGriff (Willem Dafoe) and Sergeant First Class Albaby Perkins (Gregory Hines) are two joint services Criminal Investigation Division (CID) agents on duty in war torn Saigon. When a prostitute is found murdered they discover that the prime suspects are high ranking U.S. Army officers. As they investigate they find that there have been a string of at least six murders in the last year, but the previous inquiry was shut down from higher up the chain of command. Investigations lead them to Colonel Dexter Armstrong (Scott Glenn), but Armstrong rules himself out of inquiries by committing suicide. With the help of a French nun Sister Nicole (Amanda Pays) and their non-commissioned officer in charge, Master Sergeant Dix (Fred Ward), they finally close in on their target. As their investigation leads them closer and closer to the murderer, they find their lives are in danger and they end up nearly being sent home. The movie ends with an unexpected twist when they rule out all their suspects by conducting an interview in a Viet Cong tunnel base, and their NCO is the killer.

Set on Earth, it tells the story of the Governors, a series of state-of-the-art administrative robots. Each Governor is physically composed of six smaller units and is responsible for single-handedly directing the operations of a human-inhabited city. When the Governor robots begin to fail mysteriously, Mojave Center (MC) Governor acts to protect his own existence by separating into his components and traveling into the remote past to escape disassembly.

MC Governor is not aware, however, that the time travel method used alters its molecular structure, with the result that his components explode via nuclear blasts when they reach the moment in which they were originally altered. A team composed of three humans and one robot embarks on a series of missions to the past to retrieve the robots before they can alter history. Opposing their efforts are a renegade roboticist and his robot companion, who seek to track down the Governors in order to solve the problem of their mysterious failure before their team can.

Storyline

According to the fictional game lore, Firebrand is a gargoyle predestined to carry on the namesake and identity of the Red Blaze – the powerful force that fought back the Destroyers long before this game takes place. As his destiny foretold, Firebrand saves the Ghoul Realm from brutal conquest by traversing the Ghoul Realm, building his powers, and preparing to fight against the Destroyers' king, Breager, so as to ensure the protection of the Ghoul Realm once more.

Characters

'''Firebrand''' (playable, main character) - a gargoyle predestined to become the Red Blaze and take down King Breager. '''Red Blaze''' - savior of the Ghoul Realm who was a gargoyle. He defeated then locked underground the King of Destruction years before. Rushifell believes he is actually the Red Blaze until Firebrand defeats him and rightfully earns the title.

Allies

:'''King Darkoan''' - a king of the Ghoul Realm. Usurped by King Breager and imprisoned in his own tower, unable to move from his throne. :'''Barone Jark''' - baron of the first city on Firebrand's path; bears a striking similarity to Astaroth from ''Ghosts 'n Goblins''. He asks Firebrand to obtain his Gremlin Stick, which was given to him by King Darkoan, by using the Fingernail of the Spectre. He can predict the future when in possession of the Gremlin Stick. :'''Majorita''' - female historian who lives in the Cave of Darkness and tells Firebrand the legend of the Red Blaze. Possibly immortal and hundreds of years old. :'''Barone Bymon''' - has the Candle of Darkness, which is needed to find Majorita in the Cave of Darkness.

Enemies

:*'''King Breager''' (final boss) - known as the King of Destruction. He wants to destroy the Ghoul Realm but had failed once on a previous occasion when he was stopped by the Red Blaze. He is the commander of The Destroyers, an invading army.

:'''Zundo Druer''' (first boss) - fought in the burning town. It guards the portal to the Ghoul Realm and looks like a giant blowfish who spews forth living flames. :'''Four-Eyes''' (second boss) - this collective creature is the boss at the top of the Tower and guards the Gremlin Stick. The four eyes cling to its walls: two on one side of the room, two on the opposite. They shoot sparks from their irises. :'''Bellzemos''' (third boss) - the demon that holds King Darkoan prisoner in Darkoan's palace. He or she is a skeletal demon that flies and can break his or her body down into beelike creatures before reconstructing somewhere else. :'''Zakku Druzer''' (fourth boss) - he appears in the Desert of Destitution. Resembles a giant skeletal snail with two smaller demon heads below his main head; these shoot projectiles at Firebrand. He guards the Candle of Darkness. :*'''Rushifell''' (fifth boss) - a demon who believes himself to be the Red Blaze and keeper of the Eternal Candle. Once he is defeated, he gladly hands over the candle to the true Red Blaze. His name appears to be a deliberate miss-transliteration of Lucifer and is the same character as Lucifer from ''Ghouls 'n Ghosts'' (who was renamed Loki in the Genesis version).

Zapp Brannigan leads an attack on Tarantulon VI, claiming numerous silken artworks for Earth. Earth President Richard Nixon considers this a windfall, and gives every citizen a $300 tax rebate. Brannigan later invites Leela and her friends to an exhibit of the silk treasures.

The Planet Express crew each contemplate how to spend their funds. Leela uses it to swim with a whale; Fry uses the money to buy and drink one hundred cups of coffee over the course of the episode, and Bender spends his on burglary tools to steal a $10,000 cigar. Bender refuses to smoke it until the exhibition. Others find their expenditures less thrilling: Professor Farnsworth uses the money to buy stem cells to give him a youthful appearance but discovers they only last temporarily, while Hermes buys a set of mechanical stilts for his son Dwight that inadvertently go haywire and drag the two off, rampaging through New New York. Kif buys a watch for his girlfriend Amy but accidentally loses it to the same whale that Leela was swimming with, though he eventually recovers it after a brief accusation of ambergris theft.

Eventually, they all gather for the exhibition. Just as Bender lights up the cigar, Hermes and Dwight, still stuck on the stilts, smash through the side of the building, causing the cigar to ignite the silk artworks. At the same time, Fry finishes the hundredth cup of coffee and enters a caffeine-induced state of hyperspeed, moving much faster than anyone else. Fry easily gathers all the guests onto a trolley, wheels them into an alley behind the museum, and extinguishes the fire before the hyperspeed ends. As they all recover from what just happened, they find that Zoidberg, who had been debating on how to spend his tax rebate for something that would make him happy, opted to spend it on a nice meal for a number of hobos. The guests join them for the meal, though Bender is soon caught by the cops and beaten up for the earlier robbery.

According to the video game's content, a long, long time ago before humans started appearing in the fictional place called the Ghoul Realm, there was a fictional, young ghoul warrior, a gargoyle named Firebrand from the town of Etruria. One day, while Firebrand was out partaking in his daily routine of training in a small, alternate dimension, The Black Light appeared unexpectedly and destroyed his home. When he returns from his training, he was told to hurry to the local King by another ghoul just before it collapsed and died before him.

Firebrand then made his way there. After defeating Nagus (the Spaulder-wearing monster as seen in the distance on the European box art), Firebrand was able to meet with King Morock, who informed Firebrand that he, himself, was on the brink of death. Before dying, he gave Firebrand the Spectre's Fingernail and Firebrand set off on a journey to unravel the mystery of The Black Light, facing off against an invading army the whole way.Capcom. ''Gargoyle's Quest II.'' Capcom, 1992-2014. 3DS Virtual Console. Retrieved 2017-02-18.

The strangulation of four children in the vicinity of San Francisco leads the police force to appoint inspectors Al Hawkin and Kate ("Casey") Martinelli to discover the criminal. Suspicion falls on renowned artist Vaun Adams, convicted of murdering a young girl years before.

When someone attempts to murder Vaun herself, the police are forced to conclude that someone else must be behind the murders, and they discover that Vaun's ex-boyfriend, maniacally egotistical Andy Lewis, must be the perpetrator.

Hawkin convinces a reluctant Kate to set the trap for Lewis in her home by letting Vaun recover there. He arrives and declares that he will kill Kate and her lover Lee and leave Vaun to take the blame. Lee alerts the police to his presence, but the sniper who kills Lewis does not do so in time to prevent him from shooting and permanently disabling her.

Caffery gets involved in the frightening case of five murdered women whose mutilated corpses are found in the outskirts of London. His investigation yields a treasure trove of abominations. Caffery knows his department is looking in the wrong place for the perpetrator, but he cannot guess at the forces he is up against, or the true darkness of a killer's heart. The manhunt builds as a killer is cornered. The sequel is ''The Treatment''.

While traveling in Sweden, Olympic skater Diane Wilson meets up with her uncle, famous geologist Dr. Vance Wilson (Robert Burton), who has come there to help investigate the recent landing of what appears to be a large meteorite. Diane is courted by her uncle's associate, Dr. Erik Engstrom (Sten Gester), though she aggressively plays hard-to-get while they are skiing, at one point grabbing his skis and leaving him to walk back all the way to the hotel. A romance slowly begins, and eventually they are interrupted by the news of a large herd of mutilated reindeer in Lapland. Both scientists immediately fly there, far north in the Arctic mountains of Lapland, near the site of the meteorite crash. To the irritation of both scientists, they discover Diane has stowed away aboard their aircraft. When they arrive, the meteorite is actually determined to be a round alien spaceship, and she suddenly realizes just how dangerous a decision she has made.

An enormously tall, hairy biped creature, with powerful jaws, tusks, and large round feet, under the control of three humanoid aliens in the spaceship, comes out of nowhere and begins menacing the scientists and the native Laplanders. The tall beast destroys the scientists' aircraft, killing the soldier guarding it, and begins tearing apart Laplander houses with its bare hands. As Dr. Engstrom and Diane are trying to ski away to safety, the hairy monster attacks again and is able to capture Diane. She screams and faints.

Meanwhile, a search party has been formed, now carrying torches as night begins to fall. They hear Diane's screams and go toward the sound. Dr. Engstrom arrives and watches as the hairy monster carries her off. He hurries toward the torch-carrying Laplanders and tries to alert Dr. Wilson, who is with them, that the creature now has Diane. Carrying her to the snow-buried alien spaceship, the extraterrestrial monster suddenly begins displaying tenderness toward his captive, a result of mind control exerted over the creature by the humanoid aliens. She runs into an adjoining ice cave and screams and faints again when the aliens come near. The aliens leave the cave and see the mass of lighted torches coming their way. The hairy monster picks up Diane and heads away from the buried spaceship.

The Laplanders give chase and are finally able to confront the huge creature, who is now standing with its back to the edge of a deep snow cliff. Angry villagers begin throwing their fire torches, and the tall monster carefully places Diane on the ground, where she is able to roll several feet away. More torches are thrown and the hairy creature catches on fire, falling backward fully engulfed over the cliff to a fiery death down below. The aliens take off in their spaceship, returning the very way they came. Diane and Erik walk off into the midnight sun together.

The film takes place in an office staffed by wolves who hand-copy documents using pencils. One of them passes out because of overwork. The bulldog boss pushes a button that carries him through a trapdoor below the worker's desk, and replaces him with a robot that writes faster. Another yawns, and is also dropped through a trapdoor under his desk and replaced by a robot. Three more are eliminating for drinking water, sneezing and injury (one of them desperately plugs his nose with two pencils, but is unable to keep from sneezing, propelling the pencils into another's head). They are replaced by more robots. The remaining worker, madly scribbling away, is shocked to discover that his boss has been replaced by a boss robot. When the latter leaves, the last worker decides to take action, and begins destroying the robots in various cartoony ways (blowing one up with a stick of dynamite, dropping another through its desk trapdoor, yet another by hitting it with different objects, and electrically shocking another into a pile of cinders). As the worker and the one remaining robot are locked in a life-or-death struggle, they see the boss robot threatening to push the trapdoor button. In a sudden instance of cooperating, they shove the trapdoor beneath the boss robot, who falls in. As the two workers peer down the open trapdoor, the remaining worker becomes aware of the opportunity being presented and shoves the robot in thus ending the film with a cigar in his hand and eventually pushing the trapdoor button on the viewer.

The game takes place on the Inner Sphere planet Kentares IV and its moon. Players take control of Ian Dresari, son of famed Clan War hero Duke Eric Dresari and heir to the throne of Kentares IV.

A civil war erupts on Kentares IV after William Dresari, Ian's cousin, betrays the family and seizes the throne under the banner of Katherine "Katrina" Steiner. Steiner is the ruler of the Lyran Alliance and responsible for the annihilation of loyalists to Victor Steiner-Davion, Katrina's brother. After a surprise attack by Steiner forces on the Dresari royal palace, leaving Eric Dresari and the majority of the royal family dead, Ian meets up with his uncle, Sir Peter Dresari, on the moon orbiting Kentares IV to launch a guerrilla campaign against Steiner. Ian fights alongside fellow Resistance MechWarriors, Casey Nolan, Jen McQuarrie, Jules Gonzales, and their commander Elise Rathburn, in various missions. The Resistance eventually leaves the moon and sets up camp on Kentares IV's arctic regions. At one point during the campaign, Ian's uncle Peter is murdered by Duncan Burke, a high-ranking officer in Katrina's forces. Ian and the Resistance are devastated by the loss and debate over whether or not to continue the fight for Kentares' freedom. They decide to push forward, capturing a satellite network from Steiner. The rebel group moves into the mountains.

After destroying a disabled but heavily guarded Steiner dropship, Ian and the Resistance move to the Hadra Peninsula, a remote desert region. Rumors of an abandoned prison camp reach the Resistance and efforts are made to locate and liberate it in order to enlist more personnel for the Resistance. Ian is shocked to find that one member of his family survived Steiner's siege of the Dresari palace: his sister Joanna. After a short reunion, Ian and Joanna are separated again as the Resistance mobilizes to assault Steiner's stronghold. They make a brief detour to save the coastal town of Vale after Steiner threatens to bomb the town due to allegations of links to the Resistance. Not only does the Resistance save the population, but Ian defeats his uncle's murderer, Duncan Burke, in a heated duel.

Pushing into the cities, the fighting heats up and Resistance casualties mount. Joanna informs Ian of an old armory cache hidden somewhere in the city, invaluable for assaulting the Dresari palace, now the headquarters for the Steiner occupation. Right before the Resistance prepares to locate the armory, Joanna and her Lance are ambushed by Steiner forces, leaving her wounded and in mortal danger. Ian makes a choice, between rescuing his sister from certain death or securing the weapons cache. Whatever the player chooses, Ian and the Resistance fight one last battle against House Steiner at the palace, putting an end to the war. However, the fight is not yet over for Ian, as William shows up in a modified Daishi, challenging Ian to a duel. Ian defeats William and finally frees the planet from Steiner's grasp.

Depending on the player's choice before the penultimate mission, either Joanna or Ian will ascend the throne as Duchess/Duke.

Black Knight

Mechwarrior's expansion, ''Black Knight'', takes place several years after ''Vengeance'', and gets its name from the organization of mercenaries the plot revolves around. The Black Knight Legion fall under the employ of the Lyran Alliance, who wish to reclaim Kentares IV from Ian Dresari. Ian chose to find the weapons cache, leading to his sister's death, resulting in many of his allies abandoning him. House Steiner, unwilling to pay the Legion mercenaries for their fulfilled contracts, decides it would be much cheaper to betray the Legion, and nearly wipes it out in a surprise attack. Legion remnants seek justice against Maj. Clarissa Dupree, mastermind of the Lyran attack against the legion, while also continuing with their mission to overthrow Dresari. They eventually find and kill Ian on Kentares, then travel to Voltrat III to find Steiner liaison Clarissa Dupree. Eric McClair, CO of the Legion, defeats Maj. Dupree in single combat, destroying her Mad Cat MkII, then proceeds to shooting her ejection pod, killing her instantly. The final cutscene is a commercial advertising the Black Knight Legion, citing their success against both Steiner and Dresari.

Mona Hibbard (Minnie Driver) is a young woman from a troubled home who has one overarching goal: to become the winner of the Miss American Miss pageant. Her mother is an alcoholic who graduates from berating her young daughter for not doing well in kids' pageants to declaring she will not provide any money or support for Mona if she keeps competing. Mona becomes best friends with Ruby Stilwell (Joey Lauren Adams), and Ruby's kind grandmother (Herta Ware) joins her sweet granddaughter to support Mona as she begins her steady rise through the beauty pageant ranks.

Mona becomes pregnant, but, as women with children are ineligible for the MAM crown, Ruby selflessly agrees to raise Mona's daughter Vanessa (Hallie Kate Eisenberg) as her own daughter. Mona becomes colder and meaner as she gets closer to achieving her goal, whether she's sabotaging fellow contestant Joyce Perkins (Leslie Stefanson) on her routine and earning a lifelong enemy of an aspiring newscaster, or pawning all of her inconveniences onto Ruby while ignoring how obvious it is that Vanessa looks exactly like her – a path that leads to her victory in the Miss Illinois pageant. When Mona goes to tell her mom about it, she fends off the mom's gross, leering husband and is left hurt when she's told that it would take too much effort to attend the MAM pageant, at which point Vanessa defends Mona and Mona is bitterly relieved to be ejected from the unloving home she grew up in.

When Ruby is falsely accused of euthanasia and jailed, Mona is forced to care for Vanessa, a task at which she is neither qualified nor appreciative, as she is afraid that her MAM crown bid will be taken away. Vanessa reacts to the situation by being angry and difficult to handle, making it clear she knows Mona is her mother and leaving Mona sad and angry with herself for not being able to just be honest. Mona heads to the MAM showcase, where one of the other contestants is nice to her and another cattily asks Mona for extra tickets for her large and loving family (Mona smiles and says "No"), while Joyce has the lead on breaking the story about Vanessa's parentage. She only later matures after seeking guidance from jailed Ruby, when Ruby refuses to fill her usual supportive role and bluntly tell Mona she needs to take care of her responsibilities in general and her daughter most of all. Mona comes to see that the pursuit of pageant fame is empty next to taking care of her family, and when she makes the MAM Final 3 she announces that she will be a role model to one little girl instead of a hero to countless strangers, confirming that she is Vanessa's mom and is withdrawing from the pageant. The judges see that the crowd is 100% in her favor, and change their rules so Mona becomes the new Miss American Miss. Joyce is left humiliated as her anti-Mona efforts, and chance to become a star TV personality, are both in ruins. Mona and Vanessa end the film having re-united with a fully exonerated Ruby and heading off to happier times.

Larry Verdansky, a repair technician assigned alone on Station Five, is interested in "siliconies", the silicon-based life forms found on some asteroids. The creatures typically grow to a maximum size of by absorbing gamma rays from radioactive ores. Some are telepathic.

When the space freighter ''Robert Q'' appears at the station with a giant of a "silicony" in diameter, Verdansky deduces that the crew has found an incredibly rich source of uranium. Verdansky contacts the authorities, but before a patrol ship can reach her, the ''Robert Q'' is hit by a meteor, killing the three human crew members. The silicony itself is fatally injured from the explosive decompression.

When questioned, the dying silicony states that the coordinates of its home are written on "the asteroid". Dr. Wendell Urth deduces that the silicony meant that the numbers were actually engraved on the hull of the ''Robert Q'', disguised as serial and registration numbers, since the ship fit the definition of an asteroid (a small body orbiting the Sun) the ship's crew had read to it from an ancient astronomy book.

Ryan is a tough-minded British businessman appalled by the breakdown of society at the end of the 20th century. He feels that he is one of the few sane men in a world of paranoiacs.

With a small group of family and friends, he has stolen a spaceship and set out for Munich 15040 (Barnard's Star), a planet believed to be suitable for colonisation. Now he keeps watch alone, with his 13 companions sealed in cabinets designed to keep them in suspended animation for the many years of the journey. He makes a daily report on each one: it is always 'Condition Steady'.

Ryan is tormented by nightmares and memories of the violence on Earth; he starts to fear he is losing his grip on reality. The shipboard computer urges him to take a drug that eliminates all delusions and hallucinations; but he is strangely reluctant to use this drug.

In the novel's prologue, during the Late Cretaceous Period, a ''Tyrannosaurus rex'' stumbles into the ocean while pursuing a herd of ''Shantungosaurus'' and is promptly attacked and devoured by a megalodon. The sequence is later revealed to be part of a slideshow by Jonas Taylor, a paleontologist and marine biologist, for his presentation on megalodon.

In 1997, Jonas was working deep in the Mariana Trench with the United States Navy. His mission is top secret and involves the study of hydrogen nodules to solve any future energy crises using nuclear fission, but unfortunately, it was his third dive in eight days, and he was exhausted yet was checked out by the Navy's top medical officer Doctor Heller. While on the dive, Jonas watches in horror as a megalodon rises from the depths. Jonas panics and surfaces as fast as possible and escapes, but causes the death of the scientists as a result; unfortunately, the Navy does not believe his claims, labeling him a madman and ruining his career while simultaneously covering up the misjudgment of the medical officer. Years later, Jonas continues to try to prove that what he saw was real. His actions have also led Jonas to push away his estranged and separated wife, Maggie, and lead to her having an affair with his billionaire friend Bud Harris. He is later approached by an old friend, marine biologist Masao Tanaka, who lost a remote submersible that monitors seismic activity in the Mariana Trench and hopes to retrieve it. Seeing this as an opportunity to prove that the megalodon still exists, Jonas agrees to help Tanaka over the objection of Tanaka's daughter, Terry.

Jonas and Tanaka's son, DJ, dive in small submersibles when they arrive at the Trench. A male megalodon rises from the depths and, despite Jonas' attempts to distract the creature, kills DJ. Jonas watches in horror as the megalodon is trapped in the steel cables connecting DJ's sub to the ship. As the megalodon is pulled to the surface, having its organs and flesh ripped apart by the cables, Jonas watches a second megalodon, a much larger female attracted by the struggles of her dying mate, rise out of the Trench. She attacks the male and feeds on him as he is pulled to the surface, his heated blood protecting her from the cold water layer that has previously kept them from entering the ocean.

Jonas and Tanaka are worried about the imbalance in the ocean's ecosystem that might result from the re-introduction of a megalodon after an absence of millions of years as Jonas and Tanaka try to track down the megalodon. The female surfaces off the coast of Maui and kills several surfers. She also attacks a helicopter that Jonas uses to try and track her at night after discovering that thousands of years of living in the depths of the Trench has led the sharks to develop bioluminescent white hides and destroys a military submarine led by Taylor's commanding officer from his time in the Navy.

Jonas and Tanaka realize that the female megalodon is pregnant and are determined to capture her before she gives birth. Maggie seizes this opportunity to advance her career and decides to film the shark from within a shark cage as she swims to California to give birth. During her sojourn north, the shark gives birth to three pups, one of which she devours and the second of which is killed by orcas. At the Farallon Islands, Maggie uses a dead whale to attract the shark, succeeding in filming it, but inadvertently causes it to attack her cage. Despite his best efforts, Jonas cannot stop the shark and rescue Maggie, leading to the creature devouring her as she tries to escape.

Jonas and Tanaka track down the female after she attacks a whale-watching boat shortly after. After tranquilizing the shark and capturing her, Taylor's vengeful superiors and Maggie's lover try to kill the shark with a homemade depth charge, causing the shark to awaken and rampage, killing dozens of witnesses and bystanders, including Taylor's superiors themselves. While the megalodon is rampaging, Jonas pilots a submersible down her throat and into her stomach, where he uses the hydrogen supply from his sub to ignite the whale blubber inside the shark's stomach, burning it from the inside out, and after escaping from his pod, Jonas is rescued by Terry and a passing tourist vessel. The survivors in Jonas and Tanaka's crew capture the last surviving Megalodon pup as Jonas is taken away to be treated for decompression sickness from his fight with the adult shark and are excited about the opportunity to study this believed-extinct creature in the flesh. The young megalodon is later named Angel: The Angel of death.

In an unidentified locale, art student and model Daisy leaves a club alone after having an argument with her beatnik boyfriend Max. Walking through the deserted streets, she stops to admire some gruesome paintings in a gallery window painted by artist Antonio Sordi, who coincidentally also comes by to look in on his "lost children." After a friendly conversation, they return to Sordi's studio in a room beneath an old bell tower, where Sordi convinces the young woman to pose for him. There, however, Sordi is possessed by the spirit of a long-dead ancestor and suddenly transforms into a vampiric monster who hacks the screaming Daisy to death with a cleaver, then lowers her mutilated corpse into a vat of boiling substance.

In his vampiric form, Sordi has already killed a lone woman in the town square, then takes her to a nearby car and feigns kissing her so that a pair of oncoming pedestrians assume they are just lovers sharing an intimate moment. Another victim is approached at a party, chased into a swimming pool, and drowned there after the other guests have moved into the house. The murdered women are carried back to Sordi's studio and painted by the artist, their bodies then covered in wax. Because his vampiric self looks nothing like Sordi, facially, no one connects him with the rash of murders.

Max wants to make up with Daisy but cannot find her anywhere. After recognizing her as the model in Sordi's painting of her, which is now on display at a local beatnik cafe, he goes to see her sister, Donna. Donna tells Max she hasn't seen Daisy for days, and is concerned about the recent rash of disappearances. She reads Max the legend of Sordi's 15th-century ancestor Erno, a painter condemned to be burned at the stake for capturing his subjects' souls on canvas and being a vampire. Unable to convince Max that Antonio Sordi might also be a vampire, she confronts the artist at his studio and asks him if he has seen Daisy. He angrily brushes her off. That night, he later follows her through the streets and murders her as she tries to escape from him on a carousel.

The "human" Sordi is in love with Dorian, an avant-garde ballerina, Daisy's former roommate and a lookalike for both Donna and a former love, Meliza, the loss of whom may have driven him mad. At first he tries to protect her from his vampiric tendencies, warning her his studio is a cheerless place and at one point breaking a date with her to spend time gaining control of himself after murdering Daisy. But one day at the beach, she reveals her attraction to him and asks him to make love to her. He tries, but panics and runs away. As Dorian leaves the beach, she then is approached by the vampiric Sordi, who chases her back to town, where she is rescued by Max and two of his beatnik friends. They pursue the vampire while Dorian, shaken, and unaware the vampire is really Sordi, proceeds to the bell tower to try to get understanding why he fled from her.

Sordi returns and finds Dorian in his studio. He madly enmeshes her in some netting, then comes at her with a knife, apparently believing she is really Meliza. But before he can harm her, numerous wax figures on the floor of the studio begin to move, come alive, and kill him. Max and his friends arrive, break in, and free Dorian.

Takumi Fujiwara is a high school student who has been delivering tofu to the resorts in Mount Akina in his father Bunta's Toyota Sprinter Trueno AE86. He also works part-time at a gas station where his friend Itsuki, the owner's son and a high school dropout, aspires to be a street racer. Natsuki Mogi, an attractive classmate, smiles as she walks by Takumi, but she has been secretly going on dates with a sugar daddy who drives a Mercedes.

Street racers Takeshi Nakazato of the NightKids, who drives a Nissan Skyline GT-R, and Ryousuke Takahashi of the RedSuns, who drives a Mazda RX-7 (FC), talk about racing each other after they defeat the competition at Akina. When Takeshi visits the gas station to issue a challenge to the racing god of Mt. Akina, Itsuki (with Takumi riding along) arrives to defend that title, but in the ensuing race, Itsuki is embarrassed thoroughly and damages his Nissan Silvia. However, Takeshi is later beaten in an unofficial race by the AE86. Takeshi returns to the gas station to ask who owns the AE86. Yuichi asks Bunta if he has been racing again; he learns that Takumi has been driving the AE86 for the past five years and has been steadily improving his racing skills. Natsuki wants to go on a beach date with Takumi, so Bunta agrees to loan him the car and fill the gas tank provided that he wins the race at Akina.

Takumi defeats Takeshi in the downhill race in front of Ryousuke, Itsuki, and the other RedSuns and NightKids. Natsuki and Takumi enjoy a beach date. Takumi teaches Itsuki how to race a Trueno he has purchased. Halfway down the mountain, Seiji Iwaki of the Emperor Team in his Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IV, taunts them and angers Takumi to the point that he races and defeats Seiji, causing the latter to spin out and damage the side of his Evo.

Takumi discovers that Itsuki's car does not perform like his father's car, which Ryousuke tells him it has been custom-tuned and modified. Takumi agrees to race Ryousuke in three weeks, but on the way downhill, Emperor team leader Kyouichi Sudo in his Lancer Evo III (E3) overtakes Takumi; in the ensuing race, the AE86's engine breaks down. Ryousuke tells Takumi that he will challenge Kyouichi, and offers to lend him one of his cars, but Takumi declines. Bunta tells Takumi that Natsuki is visiting her hometown for two weeks. Bunta and Yuuichi have the AE86 outfitted with a new racing engine. Takumi struggles with the modified car well until Bunta shows him how to take advantage of its new mechanics.

After seeing Natsuki with the Mercedes guy coming from a love hotel, Itsuki tells Takumi that Natsuki is a prostitute, which angers Takumi and they fight. The afternoon before the race he thinks he sees Natsuki in the Mercedes at a railroad crossing but is unable to catch up to them. He later calls Natsuki, who tells him she is coming back tonight but is with the Mercedes guy whom she tells they cannot see each other anymore.

At the showdown, Ryousuke offers to team with Takumi on defeating Kyouichi, but Takumi declines. During the race, Ryousuke lets Kyouichi pass him and then follows closely. Ryousuke and Takumi use the gutter trick to overtake Kyouichi. Despite the warning messages of a driver going up the hill, Kyouichi's E3 tries to overtake the two but is forced to swerve off the road from the oncoming car and flips off the cliffside, totaling his Lancer Evo III. Ryousuke overtakes Takumi at the five hairpin turns. Bunta explains to the watchers that the FC's tires are losing their grip and that it is up to Takumi to compete against himself and not his opponent. Takumi undertakes Ryousuke on the last hairpin turn to win the race.

Ryousuke offers Takumi to join his new racing team, but Takumi goes to see Natsuki. However, he sees the Mercedes guy drop off Natsuki with a hug. Takumi and Natsuki see each other but Takumi runs away, while Natsuki falls to the ground crying. Takumi tearfully drives away. Takumi calls Itsuki to apologize and then calls Ryousuke to accept his offer to join Ryousuke's team (Project D).

Francisco Alcazar is a wealthy landowner, who owns sugar cane fields. Francisco is married to Sofia, a severe and uncompassionate woman, with whom he has a son named Andres. Before his marriage to Sofia, Francisco had an affair with a married woman who was physically abused by her husband. The woman became pregnant and died when the child was 3 years old.

This love-child is, in fact, Francisco's true firstborn. When this woman became pregnant, her husband refused to recognize the boy as his son. He also did not allow Francisco to recognize the child as his own. Thus, the boy named "Juan", became known as "Juan del Diablo" (Juan of the Devil) because he had no last name. Juan's mother eventually died of the shame and from the physical abuse she had received from her husband.

Juan was raised with no love or instruction, in poverty and neglect. In his early teens, Juan's stepfather dies. Francisco, hiding the fact that Juan is his son, decides to invite him to live at his estate with his family, on the pretext of being a playmate for Andrés. Sofia finds out the truth and tries to send Juan away, to which Francisco objects.

Finally, Francisco has an accident while riding his horse before he could legally recognize Juan as his son. Francisco leaves a letter with his intentions addressed to his friend and lawyer Noel Mancera. Sofia seizes the letter and hides it. On his deathbed, Francisco sends for his son Andrés, and while not telling the truth, asks him to care for Juan as a brother. After his death, Sofía sends Juan away without saying anything to Andrés.

Eventually, Sofia decides to send Andrés to boarding school in Spain. Juan grows up among the sailors and pirates of the port-city, earning a shocking reputation for dirty business (contraband of liquor), ruthlessness, and harboring unbound loyalty from his men. Juan is also a womanizer, his heart is still untaken. He has learned the identity of his biological father because Noel Mancera has told him.

Through the years, Mancera has given Juan some education, and even offered to give him his last name. However, Juan refuses the offer because he feels that a last name is unwarranted in his chosen occupation. Meanwhile, Mónica and Aimée are two beautiful young countesses, daughters of the deceased Count of Altamira, a distant cousin of Sofia de Alcazar. The Altamira family are very respectable in high society, but they now find themselves in bankruptcy.

Their only asset is their nobility and beauty, and the long promise of betrothal between Monica and Andrés. Unfortunately for Mónica, Andres has forgotten about their engagement. While visiting Mexico City, Andres meets Mónica's younger sister. Aimee is beautiful, flirty and selfish. She shows interest in Andrés because he has wealth, influence, and power. Andrés falls completely in love with Aimée, a fact he later shares with his mother when she comes to visit him.

When Sofia returns home, she informs Catalina de Altamira that Andres has broken the engagement with Monica because he is now intent on marrying Aimee. Catalina is mortified at the thought of Monica's heartbreak. With her family's financial ruin in mind, Catalina reluctantly agrees to an engagement between Aimee and Andres. When Monica discovers that Andres has broken their engagement in order to marry her sister, she is immediately heartbroken.

Monica decides to enter a convent to become a nun. Monica denies her feelings for Andres and tells everyone that becoming a nun is her true calling. Meanwhile, Aimée returns to her hometown with her mother. One day, while walking along the beach, she spies Juan taking a bath in his beach house. Aimee had never met Juan and is unaware of his past or his connection to the Alcazar family.

She watches him from a distance, but Juan sees her. Over the next few days, Aimee returns several times to spy on Juan. He decides to confront her and catches her while she's hiding. Soon after, Juan and Aimée fall in love and become lovers. Juan goes away on a business trip and Aimee promises to wait for his return and marry him. When Andres arrives in his hometown, Aimée ignores her promise to Juan and agrees to marry Andres.

Juan returns from his business trip several weeks later as a millionaire. Juan discovers that Aimee is now married to his half-brother and decides to kidnap her so that she carries out her promise. Andres, who knows nothing about his kinship to Juan and the affair between him and his wife, decides to employ him as the steward of Campo Real, his country estate.

Meanwhile, Monica leaves the convent to spend some time in the countryside with her family. Monica quickly discovers the affair between Juan and Aimee. Monica confronts her sister, but Aimee refuses to end her affair with Juan. Since Monica decides to leave the convent, Andres attempts to redeem himself by proposing an engagement between Monica and his friend Alberto de la Serna. Meanwhile, Andres learns that Juan is actually his brother and that he had an unseemly affair with a young lady in his household.

Andres immediately assumes that the lady in question is Monica. Because of this misunderstanding, Monica is pressured to get married immediately. Monica agrees to get married in an attempt to protect Andres and her sister from the impending scandal, but she refuses to marry Alberto. Instead, Monica decides to marry Juan because she believes this is the only way to prevent Aimee to continue her affair with him. In an unexpected turn of events, Juan accepts to marry Monica.

Aimee is filled with jealousy and rage at the thought of Juan being married to her sister. Aimee spends all her time plotting and scheming to destroy Monica's engagement to Juan. Unfortunately for Aimee, Juan is no longer interested in her. He is now captivated by Monica's beauty and her kind demeanor. At the same time, Monica discovers a whole different side to Juan's personality.

Monica learns that despite Juan's rough exterior, he can also be kind, gentle, and noble. Against all odds, Monica and Juan slowly begin to fall in love. Their happiness is short lived when Andres finds out about Juan's affair with Aimée.

In the resort of Lake Waxapahachie, the swanky Wentworth Plaza is where the rich all congregate, and where the tips flow like wine. Handsome Dick Curtis (Dick Powell) is working his way through medical school as a desk clerk, and when rich, penny-pinching Mrs. Prentiss (Alice Brady) offers to pay him to escort her daughter Ann (Gloria Stuart) for the summer, Dick can't say no – even his fiancée, Arline Davis (Dorothy Dare) thinks he should do it. Mrs. Prentiss wants Ann to marry eccentric middle-aged millionaire T. Mosley Thorpe (Hugh Herbert), who's a world-renowned expert on snuffboxes, but Ann has other ideas. Meanwhile, her brother, Humbolt (Frank McHugh) has a weakness for a pretty face: he's been married and bought out of trouble by his mother several times.

Every summer, Mrs. Prentiss produces a charity show for the "Milk Fund", and this year she hires the flamboyant and conniving Russian dance director Nicolai Nicoleff (Adolphe Menjou) to direct the show. The parsimonious Mrs. Prentiss wants to spend the least amount possible, but Nicoleff and his set designer Schultz (Joseph Cawthorn) want to be as extravagant as they can, so they can rake off more money for themselves, and for the hotel manager (Grant Mitchell) and the hotel stenographer Betty Hawes (Glenda Farrell), who's blackmailing the hapless snuffbox fancier Thorpe.

Of course, Dick and Ann fall in love, Humbolt marries Arline, and the show ends up costing Mrs. Prentiss an arm and a leg, but in the end she realizes that having a doctor in the family will save money in the long run.

Monica, preparing the Friends' Thanksgiving Day dinner, receives a phone call from her parents, who are planning to join them. Chandler is astonished to discover that she has not told them yet that he has moved in with her: she has avoided it because they do not like him. Chandler promises to win them over as best he can. Joey's new roommate, Janine, invites Joey and Ross to celebrate Thanksgiving with her friends, most of whom are attractive female dancers like her. Monica refuses to let them go, as they had earlier promised to spend Thanksgiving in her apartment, and Joey mopes around the apartment for the rest of the episode.

When the Gellers arrive, Phoebe is disturbed to discover she has a crush on Monica's father, Jack. She dreamed about him several days ago and has just had him walk into her life. Chandler's attempts to charm Jack and Judy are less than effective, but Ross figures out the source of their dismay when Judy sneaks in a comment that Chandler is probably stoned again. During his college years, Ross once tried marijuana; when his parents walked in on him, he claimed that Chandler had been smoking, and had just jumped out the window. Chandler and Monica demand he set the situation right, but he keeps ducking out of it for most of the episode.

Rachel has been entrusted with the makings of a dessert this year, despite her lack of success at culinary endeavors. She has chosen to make a traditional English trifle, which involves many layers of ladyfingers, jam, custard (made from scratch), raspberries, and beef sauteed with peas and onions, topped with bananas and cream. The beef in the trifle concerns Ross and Joey, and it eventually transpires that two of the pages in Monica's cookbook are stuck together, and her English trifle is actually half shepherd's pie. Rachel does not realise her mistake when she confuses a minced meat pie for a mince pie. Not wanting Rachel to begin again and delay their date with Janine's friends, Ross and Joey decide to convince everyone to pretend her "beef-custard thing" is actually delicious so as not to hurt her feelings. In an attempt to distract Rachel with conversation, Ross is misconstrued with trying to get back together with her, and Joey offers acting advice, but actually turns out to like the dish. Phoebe is unable to eat the dessert because she is a vegetarian and heads to Rachel's old bedroom to take a nap, which forces up a new dream in which Jack cheats on her, and she is swept off her feet by Jacques Cousteau instead. The others all make excuses to eat their portions in locations that will allow them to dispose of the mess discreetly, while Ross devours his portion to stop Rachel realising how bad it is.

After Ross again tries to get out of telling his parents the truth, Monica takes things into her own hands. This leads to a barrage of shouted revelations, ranging from childhood grievances to the fact that Monica and Chandler are living together, that Ross was fired from the museum, then married Rachel and got another divorce. Phoebe loves Jacques Cousteau, Rachel has just discovered beef does not belong in a trifle, and Joey just wants to leave. After Judy acknowledges the three women and Joey about their revelations, she and Jack express their disappointment in Ross for his bad behavior then apologize to Chandler and thank him for not only making Monica happy, but for being Ross' best friend through three divorces and a drug problem.

During the closing credits, Rachel is incredulous that everyone ate the dessert she made just so she would not feel bad. However, each person confesses to not having eaten his or her portion of the trifle, only to find out that Joey polished off each abandoned serving of dessert.

Story and setting

''_Summer'''s story takes place in a small seaside town during the summer, where Takumi Kaizu is a normal high school student enjoying his final year in school with the rest of his friends. Over the years, he has made good memories with these friends of his, most of whom are girls, though apparently still have no overt feelings of attraction towards any of them. There are six main potential love interests presented to Takumi in ''_Summer''; they are Konami Hatano, Shino Ebizuka, Sana Kaizu, Chiwa Amano, Wakana Shimazu, and Hinako Nanao.

Konami is the kind and timid childhood friend of Takumi, and the main heroine. She will come to Takumi's house in the morning and prepare breakfast for him. As a contrast to Konami's gentle personality, her female friend Shino is rough and hot-tempered, but protective of Konami. Takumi has a younger stepsister called Sana, an energetic, fun-loving girl, if not a little lazy for being unable to wake up in the morning without Takumi. Sana has a best friend called Chiwa, a mysterious and very strange girl, who is known to be unpredictable. An upperclassman called Wakana has an immense crush on Takumi, despite her popularity with boys due to her beauty and elegant personality. The homeroom teacher of Takumi, named Hinako, will often be seen trying to find free food because of her money wasting.

When Takumi is asked by his best male friend Osamu Funada if he likes anyone, Takumi starts to think about it though is still confused on what to do next. With his last summer in high school quickly approaching, Takumi decides to find someone to like by the end of summer vacation. Takumi slowly starts to take a romantic interest in the girls around him, while his friend Osamu relentlessly searches for a girlfriend as well.

Characters

Main characters

; :''Voiced by:'' Takashi Kondo (OVA) :Takumi is the protagonist of the story. He is a high school student who enjoys the time he's been spending with his close friends and wants it to last as long as it can. Despite having many beautiful girls as good friends, Takumi still has no attraction towards any of them, though when his friend Osamu Funade asks him if there's anyone he likes, he decides to try to find an answer to that question by the end of the next summer vacation which is right around the corner. He has a younger step sister called Sana.

; : :Konami is the main heroine who usually has a quiet, timid personality, though is also very helping. She is the seagull-loving childhood friend of Takumi and even goes as far as to go over to Takumi's house every morning and make him breakfast. Konami is a close friend of Shino Ebizuka, though they are not alike personality wise.

; : :Shino is Konami's closest female friend who has a tough personality. She often acts in ways to defend Konami or react strongly on her behalf when she will not speak up over certain matters. She has shown herself to have a temper and often will get angry at Osamu's repeated perverted actions, which often earns him a beating on Shino's behalf.

; : :Sana is Takumi's younger step-sister by one year who lives with him, though there is no blood relation between them. She most often has an active personality when awake, though still has problems getting up for school during the week despite now being in high school. Her best friend is Chiwa Amano who hangs out with her constantly.

; : :Chiwa is Sana's best friend who has an odd personality. She always speaks with a silent tone and will often point the obvious during times relating to something perverted that either Takumi or Osamu have done. She will usually do certain things that give her a creepy visage and is known to be unpredictable.

; : (OVA) :Wakana is a very beautiful girl who is one year above Takumi. She seems to have a crush on Takumi, of which he is unaware of. At school, Yuno Kawakami will often follow her around either helping her out with simple things or by fending off pushy guys with a wooden sword.

; : :Hinako is Takumi's homeroom teacher. She is apparently hooked on buying strange and often useless mail-order products with the money she earns in her job. Since most of her money is spent in this fashion, she is usually found wandering the halls of the student cafeteria during lunchtime in hopes of getting free food. Hinako has a teacher friend called Kasumi.

Supporting characters

; : :Yuno is a second-year girl who will follow Wakana around school, protecting her with a wooden sword from pushy guys or just helping her with simple things like purchasing meal tickets at the cafeteria. She has a forceful personality which helps whenever she is protecting Wakana, whom she addresses while adding the Japanese honorific to the end of her name as a sign of intense respect.

; : :Kasumi is a teacher from another school and a friend of Hinako's. She has a cool, collected, and generally kind personality.

; : (game) :Chizuru is a young woman who is a Yamato nadeshiko, which means the "personification of an idealized Japanese woman". Chizuru is also the tea ceremony club adviser. Most of the time, she is a calm and composed person, however, she is scary when made angry.

; : (OVA) :Osamu is Takumi's best male friend who has a bold personality, often not turning up the chance to peek at a girl changing her clothes or is otherwise partially or completely naked. Shino will attempt to beat him to persuade him otherwise, though despite this he still finds some way to get around her onslaughts. Due to this personality, it can be said that he has perhaps a higher than average liking to the opposite sex, something Takumi himself has noted. His nickname is ''Funamushi'', meaning sea slater.

; : (OVA) :An old man who owns a cafe, where Takumi and the others will often visit. His real name and age are a mystery. He is often seen smoking tobacco, and likes to give advice to those who are in need.

The optimistic and inept Timothy Lea is freshly employed by his brother-in-law Sid as a window cleaner. With Sid an impending father to be, he looks to Timmy to fully 'satisfy' his customers, little realising that Timmy's accident prone ways often stretch to his sex life with his clients. Timmy bed hops from unsatisfied housewives to even a lesbian love tryst, all the while with his main eye on successful police officer, Elizabeth Radlett, who will have none of Timmy's sexual advances. He proposes as a result, much to his family's upset, unaware that Timmy's usual run of luck will affect the outcome.

Timothy joins his brother-in-law's driving school. Their school is soon in rivalry with a competing school, while Timothy finds himself involved in erotic adventures with his clients, secretary and landlady. His clients are a mix of the inept and the dangerous and, as usual, mayhem ensues. A rugby match is organised between the two schools, at which one of the rival school's instructors unknowingly swallows a powerful aphrodisiac and rampages around the field, an event that leads to the climactic car chase.

Having fallen foul of his erstwhile comrades in the Irish Republican Army (IRA), Henry escapes to America. In New York City, he becomes involved in advertising, pornography and bootlegging. After stepping on the toes of the Mob, Henry heads for Chicago, where he becomes the manager and partner-in-crime of Louis Armstrong. He becomes reunited with his wife and daughter, and, much to his dismay, the IRA.

Category:2004 Irish novels Category:Novels by Roddy Doyle Category:Jonathan Cape books

In 1879, a half-Native American bounty hunter known as "The Gunslinger" is hired by a travelling settler to rescue his son, Ben, who was kidnapped by supernatural raiders. Following the raiders' trail, the Gunslinger arrives in Silverload, a mysterious silver mining town that the settlers had previously visited. In the town's hotel, he meets Leo Remmington, an archeologist hired by the town; Leo explains that his partner, Carl Whitehead, believed the town to be cursed and has now disappeared. Meanwhile, the Sheriff is ordered by Silverload's Preacher to find Whitehead, and eliminate the Gunslinger.

The Gunslinger goes on to explore the town the next day, gathering items, meeting the townsfolk and having more strange encounters. In the tavern, he meets Sheila, the Sheriff's mistress, who offers her assistance in saving Ben. In an abandoned blacksmith's shop, he comes across Carl Whitehead, slowly losing his mind and undergoing transformation into a vampire. The Gunslinger manages to subdue Whitehead with a bucket of pig's blood, allowing him to flee; reading his journal, he learns that the archeologists were hired to remove the Native American remains underneath the hotel, before Whitehead was infected by one of the townsfolk while exploring.

Entering the town hall, the Gunslinger witnesses the Mayor's transformation into a werewolf. Reading his journal, he learns that the Mayor, Sheriff and Preacher orchestrated the massacre of a nearby Native American tribe. The sole survivor of the massacre, a Native shaman, then cursed the townsfolk to be unable to leave Silverload and transform into monstrous creatures harmed by silver; in response, the Preacher formed The Order, a satanic cult seeking the means by which to escape the town. By examining the remains underneath the hotel, the Gunslinger acquires a skull holding a Native spirit, which asks to be buried at a shrine. At the graveyard, the Gunslinger discovers the bodies of his adoptive parents; the spirit explains that they were killed by the Sheriff while they were visiting Silverload, and the Gunslinger swears vengeance.

Reuniting with Sheila, the Gunslinger learns that the Sheriff captured her father to force her compliance and sire her into a vampire. He agrees to help Sheila and spends the night with her; if not wearing the silver pendant, Sheila will sire him as well, forcing the Gunslinger to use a temporary cure to the transformation. The Gunslinger travels with Sheila to Silverload's mining camp, where captured humans are being forced to work, and rescues Sheila's father. Within the mines, he acquires dynamite and silver to use against the townsfolk. By burying the skull at the mountain shrine, he meets a powerful spirit named Wolfstar, and convinces him to destroy Silverload for good.

The Sheriff attempts to capture the Gunslinger by threatening Sheila and her father, but is deterred by dynamite. In response, he kills both Sheila and her father with silver bullets. Using a train boiler and a bullet mould, the Gunslinger fashions silver bullets of his own, and defeats the Sheriff in a final showdown. He then infiltrates Silverload's church, where the Preacher attempts to free himself from the town by offering Ben as a sacrifice. Instead, the Gunslinger rescues Ben, kills the Preacher and his minions, and demolishes the church using the leftover dynamite. Wolfstar destroys Silverload, while the Gunslinger and Ben escape.

Sean, Vincent, Jody and Lenny work graveyard shifts in various soul-killing jobs (the hospital, a supermarket, a factory and a call centre, respectively) and meet up in a cafe after work to kill time. Apart from this each has very little of a life. Sean hasn't met his girlfriend for three weeks and is beginning to wonder if she still lives in his apartment. Vincent is a serial womanizer. Lenny, formerly a writer of porn stories, can't pluck up the courage to ask out his attractive workmate Gail. Jody, unknown to the others, has been fired from her job, but still shows up after her "shift" every night to talk.

At the hospital, Sean strikes up a friendship with the girlfriend of a coma patient; she confides in him that at the time of the accident she was about to end the relationship. Later, the two sleep together.

Meanwhile, Vincent picks up an attractive young woman, who turns out to be Sean's girlfriend Madeline. Several days later Vincent's colleague Joe has a fatal heart attack; As he is taken to the hospital, Vincent accompanies him and runs into Sean. In a moment of humanity he confesses to have slept with Madeline; Sean reacts first with disbelief, then with violence. Returning to his flat, he discovers that Madeline has moved out.

Sean receives an anonymous phone call and tracing it discovers that it came from a small town where Madeline's friend has an aunt. Sean, Lenny and Jody decide to drive there to find Madeline. On the way there they spot Vincent on the side of the road; they pick him up, and Sean says they're even after crushing Vincent's favourite possession - a watch that belonged to Errol Flynn.

Unable to find Madeline the group gather in a cafe and Jody confesses that she lost her job. After Vincent and Lenny leave to play crazy golf, Jody runs into Madeline and sets up a meeting between her and Sean; the two of them discuss the issues in their relationship and come to the conclusion that everything is over.

On the way back the group stops at a motorway service station; Lenny asks Gail out and is turned down, but still sees this as progress. Madeline and Sean argue over who gets to keep the flat, but later kiss when taking photobooth pictures together.

The final scene has Gail finally manage to switch the irritating radio station; the radio plays a noticeably more modern and upbeat song.

Swampy, a crocodile whom Frogger jumped on in the past, gets revenge on Frogger by stealing the many baby frog siblings of his girlfriend, Lillie Frog. Frogger and Lillie pursue Swampy through various worlds rescuing the baby frogs along the way. Swampy travels to space, where he uses a satellite to broadcast a commercial for his own game, ''Swampy: The Game''. Frogger follows in a rocket that Lillie manages to activate, and corners Swampy in a space station, where a device transports them back to Earth during Halloween. Swampy attempts to create his game in a factory under a haunted house, by using the baby frogs. Frogger and Lillie attempt to stop him, but end up trapped in a cage being lowered towards a pit full of magma. Swampy's plan goes errant after one of the baby frogs, named Tad, escapes the conveyor belt and starts playing on the controls, in the process freeing Frogger and Lillie, releasing the other baby frogs, and severely damaging the machine, quickly building up into an earthquake. After the frogs escape, the factory and mansion explode from the malfunctioning machine, and Swampy is flung off into the distance.

Chicagoan Chester "Chet" Ripley, his wife Connie, and their two sons, Buckley "Buck" and Ben, are vacationing at a lake resort in Pechoggin, Wisconsin, for the summer. They get their cabin from its owner Wally. All goes as planned until Connie's sister Kate, her investment broker husband Roman Craig, and their twin daughters Mara and Cara unexpectedly arrive uninvited.

Ghost stories after the family BBQ include one of a man-eating grizzly bear that Chet met directly when he was younger. Chet says that while he and Connie were honeymooning at the same lake, he was attacked by a giant grizzly bear. When he fired at it with a shotgun, the buckshot shaved the hair off the top of the bear's head and from then on, it was known as the "Bald-Headed Bear" of Clare County.

After Roman pulls Chet around the lake on an impromptu water ski ride with his rented speedboat, tensions between the families erupt. Chet is ready to pack up and go home, even as his teenage son Buck tries to romance a local girl Cammie. The budding romance goes well until Chet is challenged to eat a 96-ounce steak called "the Old 96'er" at a family dinner which causes Buck to break their date. Buck tries to apologize to Cammie for being late, but Cammie refuses to speak to him.

Connie and Kate bond at a local bar when the conversation drifts to Kate's feelings of loneliness with Roman despite their wealth. Later, just at the peak of tension between families, Roman tells of the time at his and Kate's wedding when he overheard a conversation between Chet and their father-in-law describing how they think Roman is a crooked businessman. Roman then tells Chet why he came up to visit: to offer Chet a $25,000 investment opportunity. Feeling guilty from the wedding story, Chet is initially reluctant, but eventually agrees to write Roman a check for the whole amount. The families say their goodbyes and Roman and his family head back to Chicago. On the car ride home, Kate praises Roman for including Chet in the investment, noting that $25,000 is a lot of money for Chet's family to part with. Now feeling guilty himself, Roman halts the car and returns to the cabin.

Upon his return, Roman confesses that the story about the wedding conversation never happened and that he is broke from some failed investments. His true intention for coming up to the lake was to solicit money from Chet to financially recover. During a thunderstorm, Kate discovers the twins have gone missing. Chet and Roman find them at the bottom of an old mine shaft, but the claustrophobic Roman is reluctant to descend into the tiny space. After some encouragement from Chet, Roman reluctantly climbs down into the mine, while Chet searches for a rope to pull them out. Upon realizing that the mine is stocked with old dynamite, Roman takes his daughters and escapes the shaft on his own.

Upon returning with the rope, Chet is horrified to discover the "Bald-Headed Bear" lurking in the mine. It chases him back to the cabin, smashes through the door, and rampages through the house. Wally bursts in with a loaded shotgun lamp while Roman tries to hold off the animal with a fireplace poker and an oar. Chet takes the shotgun lamp and shoots the bear, blowing the fur off its rear. Roaring in pain, the bear runs out of the house making painful noises.

The next morning, the families part on amicable terms. Cammie accepts Buck's apologies and they end their brief romance. When Chet wonders what Roman meant by he'll see him soon, Connie states that she invited the Craigs to stay with them until they can recover. The Ripleys return to Chicago as Chet plans to beat the Craigs to their house first.

During the credits, Chet, Connie, Roman, and Kate are in a bar dancing to "Land of a Thousand Dances".

In a post-credits scene, two members of the raccoon family (who rummaged through the trash cans throughout the film) talk in their language about "Jody" sitting in the lake. One of them learns about what happened and states that she is now "bald on both ends".

The game starts with Red Team performing a HALO insertion into the Colombian jungle where they are captured and taken to a nearby town controlled by militia forces. Connors escapes and subsequently frees the rest of Red Team, whom then continue with their mission to destroy the drug factory. After completing the mission and capturing Mandel, Red Team head to the landing zone, however Foley stays behind to defend the rest of the team. He does not make it to the landing zone before Bradley decides to pull out and is captured by the militia. He reappears in ''Conflict: Denied Ops'' as a prisoner.

The team is given a replacement sniper, Carrie Sherman. They are then sent on a mission to protect senator Jack Maguire on his diplomatic mission to South Korea, then to Ukraine to secure a pesticide plant where sarin gas is being manufactured, then to Chechnya to capture some sarin gas tanks from Chechen rebels and help Orlov, a Russian agent, to take the tanks to the Russian lines, and then Egypt to a terrorist camp to disable all anti aircraft systems and laser designate the command bunker for an air strike, before the identity of the traitor who betrayed Red Team in the first mission is revealed.

The traitor is revealed to be Strachen. Red Team are then sent to the Philippines to meet up with Connors' brother Alan and locate Strachen. Red Team set up a safehouse near Hotel Mantki where Strachen is present as the information given by Alan Connors. The team are attacked by terrorists and escape, but fail to apprehend Strachen before retracting. Strachen is later tracked down to an estate where he has taken 4 hostages and is hiding with an army of highly-trained mercenaries led by Hans Klerbler. Red Team eliminates Klerbler in revenge for the brutal murder of Alan Connors. Strachen is captured and reveals Mandel to be in Kashmir.

The final mission is set in Kashmir, where Mandel plans to launch nuclear missile at Pakistan to trigger a war between them and India. Red Team disarms the missiles and Mandel is killed when his Mi-24 Hind is shot down by Red Team. The game ends with Red Team deciding to return to Colombia to find Foley. After agreeing with the idea, the game ends with a cut-scene of Red Team leaving in a helicopter.

The plot is largely the same as the plot of ''Porky's Badtime Story''.

When Porky Pig and Daffy Duck realize that they overslept to 10 a.m. after their alarm goes off at 6 a.m., they end up rushing to work at the Fly By Night Aircraft Company and sneaking in. When it came to clocking in, Daffy winds the clock backwards two hours and clocks in, only for the alarm to go off. Their boss (a caricature of Clampett's immediate boss, production manager Ray Katz) catches them and in a cheerful manner, states that if they were not going to make it, he would have sent their work to them. He then drops his friendly façade and angrily warns them that if they are late one more time they will be fired. He then orders them to get to work, to which they dash into their office and close the door so fast that the sign on the door shatters.

Later that night at 8 p.m., Porky sets the alarm clock as Daffy complains about having to go to bed so early, but Porky reminds Daffy about their boss' threat to fire them if they are late again. Porky climbs into bed and they both fall asleep until a bunch of cats and dogs next door wake them up. Later that night, the moon comes out and its light wakes up Porky. One of Porky's attempts to close the blind ends up wrecking his bed. This also disturbs Daffy who ends up grabbing a shotgun and shooting the moon, which then falls from the sky as a result. ("Unbelievable, isn't it?") As the night progresses, a thunderstorm occurs while Porky is sleeping in Daffy's bed. Porky closes the window only for a leak in the roof to disturb him and Daffy. Daffy opens an umbrella in the house with Porky warning him that it is bad luck. Daffy ignores Porky's statement until lightning destroys the umbrella. When Daffy shouts that he should "try sleeping under Niagara Falls", a torrent of water comes through the roof and rains down on them.

The next morning, Porky and Daffy are sleeping in the drawers when the alarm clock goes off at 6 a.m. They get themselves ready and drive to work to make sure they get there on time. When they arrive, a sign on the door reads "Closed Sunday". Porky states that they do not have to work today, to which Daffy boxes himself ("Now he tells me!") before they drive home. When they climb back into the drawers to sleep, the alarm clock goes off again at 6:15. Porky shoots the alarm clock, which falls over and dies.

The film is a collection of scenes from New York City recorded through special lenses, prisms and mirrors giving it a Cubist-Dadaist look.

Bill Saunders (Burt Lancaster) is a former prisoner of war now living in England, whose experiences have left him unstable and violent. He gets into a bar fight in which he kills a man and then flees. He hides out with the assistance of a nurse, Jane Wharton (Joan Fontaine), who believes his story that the killing was an accident.

Saunders is involved in another fight—this time with a police officer. He ends up behind bars, but Wharton, who is now in love with Saunders, gets him a job driving a truck delivering drugs for her medical clinic when he's released.

Meanwhile, hoodlum Harry Carter (Robert Newton), who witnessed the earlier bar fight, threatens to expose Saunders to the police. In return for his silence, Carter demands that Saunders cooperate with a planned robbery of his next drug shipment.

When Saunders does do the delivery, Wharton rides with him, forcing Saunders to make the delivery as planned to avoid getting his girlfriend involved in the possibly dangerous theft. This betrayal of Carter puts the lives of Saunders and Wharton in even greater danger.

An off-screen Italian television camera crew (voice enacted by Fellini) conducts documentarian-style 'roving eye' interviews with musicians preparing for a low-budget rehearsal in a run-down auditorium (formerly converted from a 13th-century church — presently slated for demolition, apparently). Speaking candidly and often cynically about their craft, interviewees are seen routinely interrupting one another as their artistic claims are contested or derided by orchestral peers, each self-importantly regarding his own instrument as the most vital to group performance, the most solitary in nature or spiritual in relation — these varied opinions reflecting each listener's intensely personal experience with music, one of the recurring themes of the film.

The conductor arrives (speaking Italian but with an affected German accent), proving theatrically critical of the ensuing performance quality and equally quarrelsome with trade union representatives on site, wearing down the orchestra members as he commands them to play with exceedingly particular nuances bordering on absurd abstraction, leading several musicians to strip away clothing under the strain of this taxing effort.

Protesting the conductor's authoritarian abuses, the union reps intervene, spitefully announcing that all musicians will be taking a 20-minute double break. While one camera follows the players to a local tavern to further catalog their ideological musings, in a backstage interview the defeated conductor expresses his frustrations regarding the impossible contradictions of his leadership role, opining on the subjective power of music just as a power outage in the building prompts his return to the auditorium hall.

There he discovers the darkened auditorium space has been thoroughly defaced with spray-painted revolutionary slogans and rubbish being flung about by the musicians who chant a discordant chorus of protest against their oppressive taskmaster and then against music itself ("The music in power, not the power of music!"). This increasingly anarchistic bacchanal culminates in a violent crescendo of gunshots and in-fighting, until finally an impossibly large wrecking ball — its presence going unexplained — smashes with God-like wrath through a wall of the building (at the altar of this former church), causing the death of the harpist beneath an avalanche of rubble.

As the silenced fellow musicians reflect on this tragedy in a cloud of settling dust, the conductor steps in to eulogize with a motivational speech declaring that music requires them to play through the pain of life, to find strength, identity and guidance in the fated notes of its composition. Amid the ruins, the newly inspired musicians accommodatingly take to their instruments to deliver a tour de force redemptive performance. At its conclusion, however, the conductor's former words of fleeting praise once again sour to perfectionist dissatisfaction, resuming his comically agitated critique at the dais as the picture fades to black, to the swelling accompaniment of a classical opus. As the credit roll commences, the conductor's continued Italian dialogue berating the orchestra is heard to slip into dictatorial German barking, suggesting a sharper political allegory at play in the movie's message all along.

Two people, who have been renamed Eiros and Charmion after death, discuss the manner in which the world ended. Eiros, who died in the apocalypse, explains the circumstances to Charmion, who died ten years previously:

A new comet is detected in the solar system; comets are well understood by astronomers, who believe that, being very tenuous, they could have no effect on the Earth, and are not related to ancient prophecies of the destruction of the world. Astronomers calculate that the comet is approaching the Earth; as it does so, they study it, and people increasingly take an interest.

When it is almost upon Earth, people experience exhilaration, which is at first assumed to be relief that the comet has no harmful effects; but this is followed by pain and delirium; it is as though the ancient prophecies, once dismissed by astronomers, have been confirmed. This effect on people's behavior is discovered to be caused by the loss of nitrogen from the atmosphere, leaving pure oxygen, which finally bursts into flame when the comet nucleus hits.

The short begins with a magical battle between two different stereotypes of sorcerers (a short Gandalf-like wizard that holds a large "Acme book of magic" in one hand and a staff in the other, and a tall Doctor Strange-like warlock with a black cat on his shoulder) where they zap each other until they zap each other in a final energy blast. Their possessions escape unharmed and fall on Wile E. Coyote, just as he was about to catch Road Runner, causing considerable pain to him (especially the cat, who viciously scratches to his face out of fear). Coyote notices the ACME book of magic and becomes delightfully happy (as his hare-like ears fall off), as he now has a new weapon against the Road Runner. * '''1:''' The first spell that Coyote tries is to turn the black cat into a giant feral beast to catch the Roadrunner. He succeeds, and the cat transforms into a huge black panther, but unfortunately, he proves to be too feral, and he quickly slices the coyote into strips, deflating Coyote like a balloon. * '''2:''' Coyote buys an ACME flying broomstick and, after some trial and error, begins to chase the Road Runner through the air. However, when he enters a gloomy tunnel, Coyote mistakes his beeps with a horn of an approaching truck and suddenly changes his direction to the sky, only to be hit by two meteorites and get his broom "out of gas". Wile E. starts to fall and dials the Acme Flying Broom Customer Service on his phone for help but gets a recording telling him all operators were busy. After a long drop, Coyote manages to stop his broomstick in mid-air and land safely, but as he feels relieved, he gets scared off a cliff by the Road Runner and becomes a victim to gravity as usual. * '''3:''' In his second spell, Coyote tries to turn himself in a giant, but much to his chagrin, the spell only affects his head, whose weight crushes his own body. * '''4:''' Coyote uses invisible ink to make a bomb transparent and disguise it as a crystal ball in order to lure an unsuspecting Road Runner to his death. However, the fake crystal ball actually works and the Road Runner sees Coyote's future where he's caught—a future that quickly turns into reality when the bomb rolls straight to him and explodes. * '''5:''' In his third spell, Coyote learns levitation and uses his classical "seeds trap" to temporarily stop the Road Runner and smash him with a large rock. Unfortunately, the rock does not fall under his command, giving enough time for the Road Runner to finish his lunch and leave. After several unsuccessful attempts to make the rock fall, Coyote leaves in disgust, only for the rock to follow and crush him. * '''6:''' In his last spell, Coyote once again tries to shape shift the cat into another creature, this time into a Pegasus, to once again chase the Road Runner though the air, but they inadvertently fly through a load of poisonous snakes (prompting the Pegasus to use the Coyote as a stick to get rid of them), and to make matters worse, the Pegasus quickly turns into a flying carpet, and much to Coyote's anguish, they fly straight to a reserve of scorpions and to a field of cacti. The carpet is then turned into a monitor lizard (who promptly devours his snout), a lawnmower, and then into a great white shark, and he and the Coyote land in a lake.

However, it turns out that the reason for the cat's uncontrollable transformations was the Road Runner, who found the book of magic and decided to test his powers. He turns a mailbox into a gracious and beautiful female roadrunner and the two leave, walking and holding hands, while the Coyote is last seen running for his life on the surface of the lake from the pursuing shark.

As a baby, Princess Sara (voiced by Georgi Irene) of Thurinia was saved from the clutches of the evil Lady Diabolyn (voiced by Jessica Walter) by a mystical talking horse named Wildfire (voiced by John Vernon) following the death of Sara's mother Queen Sarana (voiced by Amanda McBroom). Wildfire took her away from the planet Dar-Shan and deposited her in Montana where she is taken in by a farmer named John Cavanaugh (voiced by David Ackroyd). Lady Diabolyn was a stepsister to Queen Sarana, whom she always considered weak and unfit to rule. To gain her "rightful" throne, she learned dark magic and allied herself with the demonic Spectres.

Twelve years later when Sara was ready to fight evil, Wildfire brought her back to Dar-Shan to regain her kingdom. Wildfire summons Sara through her magic amulet and transports her across dimensions to her real home in Dar-Shan. Sara joins with her friends consisting of a sorcerer named Alvinar (voiced by René Auberjonois), a young boy named Dorin (voiced by Bobby Jacoby), and his cowardly colt Brutus (voiced by Susan Blu) in order to thwart her wicked step-aunt. John and Sara's Indian friend Ellen (voiced by Lilly Moon) provide moral support on Earth.

Lady Diabolyn is helped by the Goons, mischievous creatures consisting of Dweedle (voiced by Billy Barty), Nerts, Booper, Mudlusk (voiced by Frank Welker), and Thimble. They were formerly Diabolyn's personal guards until they gained their monstrous appearances by the Spectres upon opening the urn containing them when Diabolyn told them not to.

Each episode revealed more and more of the mythical world of Dar-Shan and gave its audience a new puzzle piece to help reason out the past events that led up to the current state of affairs. It was later revealed that Sara's adopted father John was actually her biological father Prince Cavan sent to Earth to protect him from the curse which Lady Diabolyn and the Spectres had placed on Dar-Shan. Sara and Wildfire are the only ones who know John's true identity which has been kept secret even from him.

Lee Hyun-min, who works reconstructing faces from skulls, quits his work in an institute to stay with his Beta-allergic daughter Jin that was submitted to a transplant of heart by the specialist Dr. Yoon. The newcomer researcher to the institute, Jung Sun-young, comes to his house with the skull of a victim of a serial-killer that had her whole body melted down with acid. At first, Hyun-min refuses the assignment, but he is haunted by the ghost of the victim, and scared, he decides to reconstruct the face of the woman. When Jin has trouble with the transplanted heart, Hyun-min requests the donor case history to Dr. Yoon, but the doctor refuses to give the information, claiming confidentiality issues. Dr. Yoon becomes the prime suspect of Detective Suh, who is in charge of the investigation of the murder cases, and he discloses the identity of the victim based on the reconstructed face. Meanwhile, Hyun-min has a premonition and finds another skull buried a long time ago below the sand in a field. He reconstructs the face, unraveling a supernatural secret.

Quiet, intelligent, solemn and recently dumped by his girlfriend, graduate student Lee Weon-san (Park Hae-il) takes a job at a literary magazine, ostensibly to supplement his income, but really to get close to the editor - the reason he's now single. The editor (Moon Sung-keun), unaware of who Lee is, takes a shine to him and makes him his personal assistant. He likes having him around as he's the only person he feels comfortable with, which means he often takes advantage of Lee's passive nature, making him run errands for him all over town.

The fiercely independent Lee, however, works without complaint, having started a new relationship with part-time photographer/part-time vet Park Seong-yeon (Bae Jong-ok). When she takes a full-time job at the magazine, however, Lee pleads with her not to get involved with the editor, a plea that goes unheeded and sets Lee thinking once again about vengeance. It's here that the film really starts to veer from the conventional path.

Kang Chul-joong (Sol Kyung-gu), a prosecutor for the Seoul District attorney's office, is a unique one. He prefers going directly to the crime scene to reading files, his intuition and guts to logic and reason, and using weapons of force to sitting back watching his men get stabbed by criminals. And now, once again, his gets one of his gut feelings about a particular case, and wastes no time in getting involved in the Myung-sun Foundation case, during which he opening declares war on Han Sang-woo (Jung Joon-ho), the Public Enemy.

The story focuses on Mrs. Dane's betrothal to Lionel, adopted son of Sir Daniel who is a famous judge.

Rumours have been spread in Sunningwater that young widow Mrs. Dane is actually Felicia Hindermarsh, involved in a tragic scandal following an affair with a married man in Vienna. Before Sir Daniel consents to the marriage, he attempts to put down the rumours and clear Mrs. Dane's reputation. With others, such as Lady Eastney, he starts looking into Mrs. Dane's past, guided by his experience as a judge.

Mrs. Dane produces plausible evidence of her identity and everyone involved is quite convinced of her innocence. Yet in the end Sir Daniel's professional approach exposes Mrs. Dane's real identity in a famous cross-examination scene.

Sir Daniel begins his examination convinced of her story, only wanting to get some final detail. A slip of the tongue by Mrs. Dane (when she says “We had governesses”) reveals the presence of a cousin she has tried to conceal. This sets Sir Daniel on the right track and he follows up skillfully and mercilessly, finally drawing the confession out of her that she is indeed Felicia Hindermarsh and has taken her late cousin's identity.

The truth is kept secret, though (mostly due to Lady Eastney's intervention), and Mrs. Dane's reputation in Sunningwater can be reinstated. Nevertheless, they all decide she should leave the village after her marriage with Lionel has become impossible and she complies.

Number Two interrogates a stubborn female prisoner, Number Seventy-Three, in the Village Hospital. Frustrated, he attacks her; she screams, and Number Six rushes to her aid. The commotion allows her to leap from her bed and kill herself by jumping out the first-floor window. Number Six swears to Number Two that he will pay for his cruelty.

Number Two forcibly has Number Six brought to the Green Dome and the two begin a war of nerves. Number Two quotes Goethe: ''Du mußt Amboß oder Hammer sein'' ("You must be Anvil or Hammer"). "And you see me as the anvil?" asks Number Six, to which Number Two answers "Precisely. I am going to hammer you." Already aware that he is being watched by the Village's hidden camera and spies at every turn, Number Six proceeds to act in a highly suspicious manner, as if he were some sort of spy or double agent. He takes six copies of the same record of Bizet's ''L'Arlésienne'' suite at the music store and plays them, eyeing his watch. He then writes out a message, that Number Fourteen retrieves a copy of, which claims to be from "D-6" to "XO4." Number Two is convinced that Number Six is a plant.

Number Two and Number Fourteen follow Number Six to where he drops a document in the cabin of the stone boat. They retrieve it, but the pages are all blank. After having them tested, Two suspects the technician of working with Number Six. Number Six then goes to place an ad (a quotation from Don Quixote) in the next issue of the ''Tally Ho.'' He then calls the head of Psychiatrics, posing as a superior who wants a report on Number Two's mental state. Two monitors the call and starts to become more paranoid at the behaviour of Number Six and those around him. Later, Six asks the town band to play the ''Farandole'' from the same Bizet piece, and when the band starts playing, he promptly leaves so that he is not around to hear it. He leaves a fake message in a dead drop that is from a deceased person, wishing him a happy birthday.

Number Two becomes increasingly agitated, wishing he could get away with killing Number Six. Number Fourteen offers to do so, making it appear an accident, and challenges Number Six to a game of "kosho" – a Japanese, trampoline-based contact sport – but is unable to "accidentally" drown his opponent. Number Six leaves a cuckoo clock in front of Number Two's door, causing him to panic and summon a bomb squad. Six captures a pigeon, attaches a message to its leg and sets it free in the woods. The bird is intercepted by Number Two's forces, and Two sees that the message states that Six will send a visual signal the next morning. Six goes to the beach and sends a visual signal (in light-flash Morse code) – a nursery rhyme with no apparent hidden meaning, all witnessed by Two.

Later, Number Six is able to trick Number Two into believing that Number Fourteen is conspiring against him. When the other keepers of the village cannot discern the hidden meaning in Number Six's messages, Number Two suspects everyone working for him of being part of a conspiracy. Number Fourteen fights with Number Six, who throws him out of a window. In the end, Number Six confronts an unnerved and agitated Number Two, who expresses the belief that Number Six is really "D-6", a man sent by "XO4" to test his security. Feeding on Number Two's paranoia, Number Six charges Number Two with treason: if Number Two's belief was true, then he would be duty-bound not to interfere. At Number Six's suggestion, Number Two calls the hotline to Number One to report his own failures and ask that he be replaced.

Racketeer Patsy Gargan is made deputy commissioner of a reform school as a reward from his corrupt political cronies. Initially, he has no interest in the school, but his sympathy for the boys, who are abused and battered by a brutal, heartless warden and his thuggish guards convince him to take the job seriously, as does an attractive resident nurse named Dorothy.

Gargan sends Thompson, the superintendent, on vacation and, while he is gone, puts Dorothy's reform ideas into action. The school is functioning well under a system of self-government when Patsy is called back to the city to take care of some political business. Patsy shoots another man during a fight and has to go into hiding. Thompson returns to the school and convinces the boys that Patsy has abandoned them. He then starts running things the old way and, when Dorothy protests over the poor quality of the food served, he fires her. Then one of the boys, Johnny "Skinny" Stone, dies while in solitary confinement and the boys rebel. Thompson is put on trial by the boys, who find him guilty. Thompson, in a panic, jumps out a window to escape. Pursued by the boys, many of whom carry torches, he scrambles up onto the roof of a barn. The boys immediately set fire to the barn. Dorothy, meanwhile, finds Patsy in his hideout and tells him the whole story. Patsy races back to the school to restore order, but Thompson is dead, having fallen from the roof of the barn. At the picture's end, Patsy decides to give up his political career and stay at the school permanently.

Following the Gill-man's escape from Ocean Harbor Oceanarium in Florida, a team of scientists led by the deranged and cold-hearted Dr. William Barton (Jeff Morrow) board the ''Vagabondia III'' to capture the creature in the Everglades. Barton is mentally unstable and apparently an abusive husband to his wife Marcia (Leigh Snowden), as he becomes very jealous and paranoid when Marcia is with other men. Their guide Jed Grant (Gregg Palmer) makes numerous passes on Marcia (which she constantly rebuffs), with Barton becoming paranoid about the two.

Marcia accompanies Jed and Dr. Tom Morgan (Rex Reason) on their initial dive to look for the Gill-man, despite her husband's fierce objections. During the dive, Marcia swims too deep and is overcome with the "raptures of the deep", temporarily losing her mind, removing all her scuba gear. This forces Jed and Tom to abandon their hunt for the Gill-man to swim back and save her.

When he is eventually captured, the Gill-man is badly burned in a fire leading to a surgical transformation performed by Barton, Tom and their colleagues Dr. Borg (Maurice Manson) and Dr. Johnson (James Rawley). While bandaging the Gill-man, the doctors notice that he is shedding his gills and even breathing using a kind of lung system. Now that the creature has more human-like skin, he is given clothing. The doctors attempt to get the Gill-man used to living among humans. Although his life is saved, he is apparently unhappy, staring despondently at the ocean.

Barton ruins the plans when, in a murderous rage, he kills Jed, jealous that he had made romantic advances towards his wife. Realizing what he has done, Barton then tries to put the blame on the Gill-man. The Gill-man, witnessing the killing, and apparently realizing that he is being blamed for the murder, goes on a rampage. After ripping down the confining electric fence, he kills Barton and then slowly walks back to the sea. He is last seen on a beach, advancing towards the ocean.

In 1856, Townsend Harris (John Wayne) is sent by President Franklin Pierce to serve as the first U.S. Consul General to Japan, following the treaty written by Commodore Matthew Perry two years before. Accompanied only by his translator-secretary, Huesken (Jaffe) and three Chinese servants, Townsend comes ashore at the town of Shimoda prefecture, as specified in the treaty as the location for an American consulate.

However, the Japanese governor (Sō Yamamura) refuses to accept his credentials, denying him any official status, due to a conflict between interpretations of the treaty terms. While Harris believes that the Consul shall be present whenever either country requires, the Japanese believe the terms to permit a consul only when both countries require. The governor holds to his interpretation, largely because of objections over the threats under which the treaty was forced upon them. Harris is permitted to remain in Shimoda, but only as a private citizen, with no recognition of his official status. He is provided the use of an abandoned home, adjacent to the town cemetery.

The governor explains that, in the two years following Perry's visit, various natural disasters had taken place. Some Japanese believed them to be warnings from the gods to avoid foreign influences. In the weeks that follow, Harris is the target of distrust and hostility, to the extent that Tamura orders townspeople to not even sell him food. Some in Japan wanted the country opened, but many others feared the corruption of foreign influences, and invasion by the barbarians of other lands. For this reason, Harris is not permitted to leave Shimoda, nor to go any closer to the capitol in Edo, 100 miles away.

For his own part, Harris does his best to cooperate with the Governor, even obeying orders to take down the American flag which had been raised to mark the location of the Consulate. His cooperation noted, after several months, Harris is eventually invited to dine with the Governor, a dinner following which Tamura sends a geisha named Okichi (Eiko Ando) to take care of Harris' needs.

The relationship between Harris and Okichi grows closer and more intimate, and she helps him understand Japanese culture.

Harris helps rid the village of a cholera epidemic and out of this comes Harris' opportunity to go to Edo, where he must then convince the Shogunate to open the country, while facing his greatest crisis.

The novel focuses on the lives of individuals aboard a luxury express making a three-day journey from Ostend to Istanbul (though Greene uses the old name for the city, Constantinople). The novel opens on board the ferry, on which several of the novel's major characters have travelled from England. Mabel Warren and Janet Pardoe join the train later in Cologne and Josef Grünlich joins it in Vienna. Although these characters are travelling for different purposes, their lives are intertwined in the course of the journey. Other scenes in places through which the train passes are also described, as well as Myatt's high-speed journey by car through the snow-laden countryside to and from the railway station at Subotica.

A major part of the plot focuses on Carleton Myatt, a shrewd and practical businessman who trades in currants and has business interests in Istanbul. He is travelling because he is concerned that the firm's agent in Turkey, Eckman, has been cheating him. As he crosses interwar Europe, Myatt has to face antisemitic attitudes, both on and off the train. Because he feels sorry for the sick dancer Coral Musker, who is travelling 2nd class to join a show in Turkey, he buys her a 1st class ticket. The grateful Coral falls in love with him and spends the night in his compartment, during which, to his surprise, he discovers that she is a virgin. After she disappears from the train at Subotica he travels back to rescue her, but fails and barely escapes after rescuing the crook Grünlich under gun fire.

Dr. Czinner is an escaped communist leader and former physician, travelling on a forged British passport after five years teaching in an English boys' school. He plans on leading a communist revolution in Belgrade, but discovers that the uprising has taken place too early and failed. Nonetheless, he decides to go back to Belgrade to stand trial as a political gesture. But he has been recognised by Mabel Warren, a lesbian journalist living in Cologne, who is travelling with her partner, Janet Pardoe. Warren now believes that she is onto a major news story. When the train arrives at Vienna, she leaves the carriage to phone her office but is stranded in the city when her bag is stolen. The thief is Grünlich, who has just killed a man during a failed robbery and now boards the train with Warren's money. Left behind, the angry Warren vows to get Czinner's story through other means.

At Subotica the train is stopped on the Yugoslav border and Czinner is arrested. Also arrested are Grünlich, for having a revolver, and Coral, to whom Czinner has given a letter to deliver for him. A court martial is held at which Czinner is allowed to give the pointless political speech he intended for his show trial. He is sentenced to be shot that evening, while Grünlich is to be imprisoned for a month and then deported back to Vienna, where the police will be looking for him. Coral is to be deported back to England the next day.

The three prisoners are kept in a waiting room, but when they realise that Myatt has returned in a car, the resourceful Grünlich breaks open the door and all three make a run for it. Only Grünlich escapes; Czinner is wounded and Coral hides him in a barn, where he dies. Next morning, Mabel Warren arrives at Subotica in pursuit of her news story and takes Coral back to Cologne. Mabel fancies Coral as a new partner but the account breaks off as Coral collapses in the back of the car with a heart condition and her ultimate fate is left open.

After the train arrives at Istanbul, Myatt discovers that Janet Pardoe is the niece of Stein, a rival businessman and potential business partner. He steals her from the proprietorship of the Cockney novelist Savory, who is travelling to the East in search of copy for his next book. Despite his own brief encounter with Coral, Myatt now considers marrying Janet and confirming the contract, signed by Eckman, to take over Stein's currant business.

Raymond "Ray" Joshua (played by Saul Williams) is a young man growing up in the Southeast, Washington, D.C. neighborhood of Dodge City, slang for a real Southeast D.C. neighborhood.^[A] Despite his innate gift for poetry and his aspiration to be a rapper, he finds it difficult to escape the pressures of his surroundings: violence and drug dealing. While participating in a drug deal gone wrong, Ray's close friend Big Mike is shot.

Ray is caught by the police and sent to the District of Columbia Department of Corrections' central detention facility. He is arraigned for possession of a controlled substance at the H. Carl Moultrie Courthouse and bail is set at $10,000. When his public defender explains his options ("cop out" and plead guilty), "rock" (stand trial), or "cooperate" (serve as an informant), Ray despairs, particularly as he is being pressured to participate in a drug culture "inside" very similar to what he was a part of "outside".

Ray takes no sides, unwilling to believe that his options are limited to the choices he is being presented with. When threatened with violence in the prison yard, he retaliates with words, speaking the truths that he's witnessed in the form of a poetic rap meant to show the other inmates how their power and energy is being diverted into petty struggles with each other, rather than being directed toward the system that is keeping them down. In prison, he participates in the writing class of teacher Lauren Bell (Sonja Sohn), whom he comes to respect and admire. She advises him to pay more attention to his talents.

When Ray is unexpectedly released on bail for a few days prior to his court date by an incarcerated drug dealer whom Ray had inspired with his revolutionary ideas, he is able to convince his friends and their Dodge City crew not to retaliate with more violence for the shooting — to break the cycle instead. He explains that the "projects" where they all live and die are a government experiment and that continuing to kill each other is exactly what those who set up the experiment want them to be doing.

On the outside, he also reunites with Bell, and is welcomed into her circle of friends at a poetry reading at her home. They wind up spending the night together, despite her reservations about the future. The next day, she urges him to settle his legal troubles by agreeing to serve a year or two of prison time, rather than fighting the charges and potentially being put away for much longer.

They quarrel, because Ray feels that Bell doesn't understand his situation. He leaves, but shows up that night at a poetry slam event in D.C.'s Cleveland Park neighborhood that Bell had invited him to, just in time to see her perform an extremely powerful and empathetic piece that was clearly written for him. When the crowd demands an encore, she invites Ray onto the stage to perform instead, and he delivers an impromptu dramatic poem — scrawled as he crossed the city on public transit on his way to the slam — an emotional piece about black males and the criminal justice system. When the crowd demands an encore, Ray tells Lauren he needs to get some air, then leaves again. He wanders the streets until he is drawn to the Washington Monument.

While out rowing in the middle of a lake after dark, John Haloran and his young wife Louise argue about his rich mother's will. Louise is upset that everything is designated to go to charity in the name of a mysterious "Kathleen." The argument, combined with the exertion of rowing the boat, causes John to have a heart attack. He informs Louise that, should he die before his mother, Louise will receive none of the inheritance, after which he dies. Louise dumps his corpse over the boat's side, where it sinks to the bottom of the lake. Her plan is to pretend that he is still alive so that she can ingratiate her way into the will. She types up a letter to her mother-in-law, Lady Haloran, inviting herself to the family's castle in Ireland while her husband is "away on business."

At the castle, John's two brothers, Billy and Richard, take part in a bizarre ceremony with their mother, part of a yearly tribute to their deceased younger sister Kathleen, who died years before in a freak drowning accident. Lady Haloran still mourns for her daughter, and during the ceremony, she faints dead away as she does every year. As Louise helps her mother-in-law into the castle, Lady Haloran tells her that she fainted because one of the fresh flowers she had thrown died as it touched Kathleen's grave.

Louise, realizing that Lady Haloran is emotionally overwrought and superstitious, devises a plan to convince the old woman that Kathleen is trying to communicate with her from beyond the grave. She steals some of Kathleen's old toys and places them at the bottom of the estate's pond, where they will float to the surface in a ghostly way during the middle of the day. She sees what appears to be Kathleen's perfectly preserved corpse at the bottom of the pond. Horrified, she surfaces and is attacked with an axe by an unknown assailant. Her killer drags Louise's corpse away.

Concerned family doctor Justin Caleb arrives and becomes determined to solve the mystery. He questions the family. The murderer decapitates a man named Simon, who has been poaching on the estate. Dr. Caleb has the pond drained, revealing a stone statue shrine, engraved with the words "Forgive Me, Kathleen." The following night, Lady Haloran is attacked by a shadowy figure, but she eludes him and collapses in the castle's courtyard.

Dr. Caleb uses an obscure nursery rhyme ("Fishy, fishy, in a brook, Daddy caught you on a hook"), recited by Billy under hypnosis, to help him discover Louise's frozen corpse hidden away in a meat locker. Next to the bloody body is a wax figure of Kathleen. Dr. Caleb places the figure in a public square to lure out the killer. Taking the bait, a gibbering Billy, who has gone insane with guilt over causing the death of his sister Kathleen, attempts to kill Richard's fiancée Kane with an axe. Dr. Caleb saves her life by shooting Billy to death with a pistol he was carrying in his pocket.