Five extraterrestrials from the fictitious planet Zigma B, Candy H. Caramella, Etno Polino, Bud Budiovitch, Gorgious Klatoo and Stereo Monovici go on a picnic together in space. However, their spaceship crashes into an asteroid, and they fall to planet Earth. They realize that if any human finds out that they are aliens, they could be captured and experimented on by scientists, so they take shelter in the attic of a house that is up for rent.

The aliens have two goals: return to their home planet, and chase away anybody who tries to establish themselves in the house. To remain unknown from humans, the aliens use a device called the SMTV that lets them transform into almost any entity of their choosing, but always cycles through three other unrelated transformations (as a running gag) when used.

In the second season, Stereo is now no longer part of the main cast, with said character only being bought back for one episode. An explanation in the show itself was provided, where Stereo has somehow managed to get back to Zigma B, so Candy, Etno, Bud and Gorgious continue to find a way back home.

In this version of Charlotte Brontë's novel, Jane Eyre (Sorcha Cusack) is an independent and strong-minded young woman who is hired by Mr. Rochester (Michael Jayston) to work as a governess. What she does not realize is that she must share the estate (and ultimately Mr. Rochester) with his wife, Bertha (Brenda Kempner), who is, by this point in her life, mentally ill and kept locked away in an upstairs attic.

For a full-length summary see: ''Jane Eyre'' plot summary.

''Rebel Planet'' is a science fiction adventure set in the year 2453. In this fictional representation of the future, human colonisation of the galaxy began in 2070 with the settlement of Tropos a few light-years from Earth. Earth and her colonies were conquered by an alien race known as the Arcadians in a twelve-year war around 2300. Humans have become slaves, and are kept alive only to serve their alien masters.

However, a human organization known as SAROS ("Search And Research Of Space") has discovered that the Arcadians rely on a powerful super-computer to keep themselves networked together. Without this computer, they are merely zombies, incapable of acting on their own. SAROS has limited resources, but a secret plot is hatched to infiltrate Arcadion and destroy the queen computer. The reader plays the role of the last hope of humanity, an undercover agent posing as a space merchant.

878 – 881: Uhtred of Bebbanburg makes his way back to his native Northumbria seeking revenge against his uncle Ælfric and childhood enemies Sven the One-Eyed and Kjartan the Cruel. He travels by ship with his lover and former nun, Hild. They make landfall near Eoferwic (York) to find the region in chaos. Ivarr Ivarsson, the most powerful Danish lord in Northumbria, has led his army against the Scots in the north. The formerly Danish-held Eoferwic has been conquered by Saxons, who, under the fanatical Father Hrothweard, have begun a massacre of Danes. The central lands of Dunholm are ravaged by Kjartan and Sven, and Bebbanburg remains under the control of Ælfric.

Uhtred is hired to escort a Danish merchant's family north, through Dunholm. Their path leads to a slave trading station belonging to Sven. In order to avoid being recognised, Uhtred hides his face and calls himself Thorkild the Leper, Dark Swordsman of Niflheim. When the situation spirals out of control, he convinces Sven he was returned from the dead to haunt him and his father. He frees the Dane Guthred of Cumbraland from the slave pens; the amiable Guthred claims to be the king of Northumbria.

In Cumbraland, Guthred converts to Christianity and is hailed as king of Northumbria by the Saxon Abbot Eadred, who believes Guthred has been anointed by Saint Cuthbert and claims to have dreamed of Guthred, though he initially mistakes Uhtred for him. Uhtred becomes the commander of Guthred's household troops, as well as his closest advisor. He trains a band of thirty new warriors and foils an attempt by Kjartan's infiltrators to capture him and Guthred. Uhtred is smitten with Guthred's sister, Gisela. He marches east with Guthred. With Ivarr Ivarsson away fighting the Scots, they capture Eoferwic easily. There Father Hrothweard joins them. As they march north to Dunholm, Guthred betrays Uhtred. He makes a deal with Uhtred's treacherous uncle, Ælfric, for his support against Kjartan. In return, Ælfric wants Uhtred dead, but Guthred gets him to accept something less. He pays Danish trader Sverri to take the unsuspecting Uhtred as a slave.

For two years, Uhtred is a rower on Sverri's trading ship. During that time, he befriends a fellow slave, Finan the Agile, an Irish warrior. Then a mysterious red Danish longship pursues their ship. During a trading venture to England, Uhtred is confronted by Sven, who recognises him, but is scared away when the red ship appears, and warriors debark and attack. Uhtred is overjoyed to be reunited with his foster brother and close friend, Ragnar. Uhtred returns to Wessex to learn that Hild convinced Alfred to send Ragnar (and Steapa) to his rescue, promising to use Uhtred's hoard of silver to build an abbey and recommit herself to Christ. Upon meeting with a Mercian traveling entertainer and spy, Offa, Uhtred learns that Guthred, Ivarr and Ælfric besieged Kjartan at Dunholm, but failed.

Alfred despatches Father Beocca as his ambassador to Guthred, supposedly to make peace in Northumbria, but also sends along Uhtred, Steappa and Ragnar, which convinces Uhtred that Alfred has other intentions. They arrive in Guthred's court to find that Gisela was married to Ælfric by proxy in return for support in another attack against Kjartan, and that Ivarr has abandoned Guthred and is raising an army to fight him. Uhtred is certain his uncle will send no men to support Guthred. He fends off Ælfric's men and kills Brother Jænberht when he insists that Gisela is still married to Ælfric. Intimidated, Brother Ida agrees that Gisela is not married, as the marriage has not been consummated. Uhtred then forgives Guthred for betraying him into slavery and declares his intention to marry Gisela. Despite the calls of many churchmen to instead execute Uhtred for the killing of Jænberht, Guthred agrees to the marriage.

Uhtred takes command of Guthred's troops for the attack on Dunholm. His plan is to once again become a ''sceadugengan'', a shadow-walker. In the darkness, he and eleven of his best men climb the hill and sneak into the fort through a gate used to fetch well water. Although they are discovered, they are assisted by Ragnar's sister Thyra, who has been held by Sven and Kjartan since the events of ''The Last Kingdom''. Thyra turns Kjartan's own hounds against their masters, allowing Uhtred and his men to open the gate for Ragnar and Guthred's army to enter the stronghold and beat Kjartan's men. Sven is defeated by Finan and then savaged to death by the hounds at Thyra's behest. Kjartan himself is killed in single combat by Ragnar, who refuses to allow him to die with a sword in his hand, thus denying him entry into Valhalla. After the battle, Guthred transfers control of Dunholm to Ragnar.

Guthred's army meets Ivarr's stronger force in the field. Uhtred provokes Ivarr into single combat and defeats him.

In this book, Lone Wolf is charged by the King of Sommerlund to investigate the disappearance of a troop of cavalry. The cavalry, led by a man named Captain D'Val, themselves disappeared under mysterious circumstances while investigating a disruption in the flow of mined resources from the province of Ruanon. Lone Wolf, along with the fifty Sommlending soldiers who accompany him, must uncover the truth surrounding the missing men and stop the resurrection of an ancient and terrible evil.

The platoon are parading out in the yard. Mainwaring is appalled by the lack of attention taken in their appearance: Jones is standing with his legs apart, Walker has his pockets stuffed with sugar and sultanas and Godfrey is wearing his cap like George Formby, a slipper and carrying a walking stick. Mainwaring mentions that he received a message from his CO the other day: he came through and didn't receive a single salute, and Jones had his hands plunged into his trouser pockets. Jones admits that it was because he forgot his braces, and didn't want to cause any embarrassment.

Mainwaring decides to dedicate the rest of the parade to practising saluting. However, the Vicar disrupts the practice, and informs Mainwaring of some illicit graffiti on the back of his spare harmonium. Mainwaring's men sleep in the tower room when on fire watch, so they are the prime suspects. Mainwaring instantly denies this, so he and Wilson decide to go up to the tower room to see for themselves. When Mainwaring and the Vicar reach the top, Mainwaring decides to bring up Jones' section to compare the handwriting. An exhausted Wilson has only just reached the top before he is asked to go down again and bring up Jones' section.

Leaving Wilson at the bottom of the stairs, each man writes the same word next to the graffiti, much to the Vicar's annoyance. Suddenly, Jones notices something: the Verger passes the window – hanging on the cable of a barrage balloon. They all rush downstairs, just as Wilson reaches the top. Before they can pull it down, they notice that its rope is caught around the church tower, so Mainwaring tells Wilson (who has just come down again) to run up to the top and get it free. Since Wilson is too tired, they simply pull it free and manage to get the Verger and the balloon down safely, but they are left hanging onto the ropes for dear life. ARP Warden Hodges arrives and tries to take charge of the situation. He and Mainwaring phone the RAF, but they won't be available until nightfall, leaving the platoon with a dilemma.

It is Walker who suggests taking the balloon to Pinner Woods and tying it to a tree. Jones decides to take his van to prevent it being carried away by the wind. They find a fallen tree just outside the woods. Unfortunately, while Mainwaring is securing one of the ropes, Jones and the platoon release their ropes too soon, and the balloon floats away, taking Mainwaring with it. The platoon, Vicar and the Verger follow it in the van, while Hodges, after his motorbike fails to start, borrows a tricycle from Mr Blewitt, and later, a tandem from a young couple. Jones suggests shooting holes in the balloon to make it descend, but Walker and the others fail to hit it. Meanwhile, the RAF have also spotted the balloon, as well as Mainwaring, which an air patrol mistakes for "a little fat round thing" on the end of the rope. Mainwaring gets entangled in haystacks, topiaries and washing lines before the balloon finally comes to rest on a railway bridge. Walker notices a train coming, so they quickly drag Mainwaring and the balloon off the bridge, and Mainwaring collapses as the platoon secure the balloon.

Unfortunately, when an RAF Squadron Leader turns up, Jones orders the platoon to salute, therefore releasing the balloon, and starting the chase all over again.

Once more, the reader (Lone Wolf) must set out on a mission bestowed upon him by the king. This time, the mission is a diplomatic one, in which a crucial peace treaty must be signed in the far away desert empire of Vassagonia.

But as always, things are more complex than they seem, and peace is elusive. Lone Wolf walks into a trap from which he barely escapes, and he must fight the prime Darklord (Haakon) to regain a secret Kai artefact which will determine the fate of the Kai Order. This artifact is called the 'Book of the Magnakai'.

In the spring of 1811, the Peninsular War appears to have been won by the French. Cádiz is the only major Spanish town still holding out. From their overwintering strongholds in Portugal, the British sally forth to the River Guadiana with a small force seeking to destroy a key bridge across the river. The mission is commanded by the young Brigadier General Moon, a man with no love for Sharpe. Sharpe and the men with him encounter French Colonel Henri Vandal, commander of the 8th Regiment of the Line. Sharpe succeeds in blowing up the bridge. Sharpe, Harper, Moon and some the 95 are stranded on a plontoon which sails down stream. Once they have landed further down stream they meet up with some of Connaught rangers who help Sharpe keep the French at bay for the time being. After resting for a while Sharpe and the others try and find a way to get to the Anglo-Portuguese armies again. After walking for a while they find a house and take shelter. Sharpe is able to find a boat that could lead the small company to the British in Lisbon. The marquesa that takes them in is an afrancesada, Sharpe realising this gets the company to the boat and is able to set off but is pursued by the French which have travelled down stream using the rest of the plontoons. The French and Sharpes men have brief skirmish but the men are able to set off. A stray musket ball bits Sharpe in the head seriously injuring him. His men manage to get him to Cádiz, which is besieged by a French army led by Marshal Victor.

In Cadiz, British ambassador Henry Wellesley, younger brother to the Duke of Wellington, seeks Sharpe's help. Wellesley has fallen in love with a beautiful woman named Caterina Blazquez. Unfortunately, she turns out to be a whore, and her pimp tries to blackmail Wellesley using Wellesley's love letters. Worse, virulently anti-British Catholic priest Father Salvador Montseny learns of this and murders the pimp to obtain the letters. British spymaster Lord Pumphrey assures Wellesley he can pay for the letters and that will be the end of the affair, but Sharpe believes otherwise. Sharpe is proved correct, but eventually manages to steal the letters (and make the acquaintance of Blazquez) with the assistance of Patrick Harper and his trusted riflemen.

Then a joint Spanish-British army is transported by boat south of the city to attack Victor's forces from the rear and lift the siege. Because the Spanish provide more troops, timid Spanish General Lapena is given command, rather than British General Thomas Graham. Lapena squanders opportunity after opportunity, leading his men toward disaster and Victor's trap. Fortunately, Graham and the British, fighting desperately while the Spanish do nothing, defeat the French in the Battle of Barrosa. In the battle, Sharpe captures Colonel Vandal.

In order to fulfill his pledge to restore the Kai, Lone Wolf must first himself become a Kai Grand Master. To accomplish this monumental task, he must retrieve the Lore Stones led only by the wisdom of Sun Eagle, the First Kai Grandmaster. As the last of the Kai, there is little to guide Lone Wolf in his studies, except for a faded inscription in the Book of the Magnakai directing him to seek the Lorestone of Varetta. And so, Lone Wolf sets off for Varetta in the Stornlands, far to the south of Sommerlund, to find this ancient relic and revive the glory of the Kai.

In his quest to attain Kai Grand Master status, Lone Wolf must seek out and find 7 Lorestones. After obtaining the Lorestone of Varetta in the previous book and absorbing its wisdom and power, the location of the next Lorestone is revealed as the remote township of Herdos. Here, Lone Wolf is directed by friendly Elder Magi to search within the accursed fortress of Kazan-Oud, otherwise known as "Castle Death".

After surviving the perils of Castle Death and being tutored by the Elder Magi, Lone Wolf and the reader now seek out the third Lorestone. The location of this Lorestone is thought to be hidden in a temple deep within a jungle-swamp known as the Danarg. Over the years, this fetid swamp has become the home for any number of evil creatures who seek to protect the jungle and its treasures. To make matters worse, news is delivered that the Darklords have united behind a new leader, and may soon again bring war to Magnamund, increasing Lone Wolf's sense of urgency.

As Lone Wolf races against time to recover the remaining Lorestones, he learns that the next one resides deep underground, beneath the streets of the city of Tahou. Unfortunately, the war against the Darklords has not been going at all well for the freeland nations, and Tahou is now in danger of falling before Lone Wolf even reaches it. If it falls to the Darklords and their Vassagonian allies before the Lorestone is recovered, the hopes of Lone Wolf completing the Magnakai quest will be thwarted forever.

After discovering that the three remaining Lorestones have fallen into the hands of the Darklords, Lone Wolf and his allies must formulate a daring plan to recover them. It is rumored that the stones are being kept in the grim Drakkarim fortress-city of Torgar, where the darklords' evil sorcerers (the Nadziranim) are searching for the means to destroy them. Once more, Lone Wolf must make haste in an attempt to recover the Lorestones before the Nadziranim can bring about their destruction. The adventure ends with an exciting twist, which threatens to banish Lone Wolf from Magnamund for all time.

Pike is cleaning Mainwaring's bank office and singing love songs when Mainwaring interrupts him. He changes the subject by telling him how much he is looking forward to the Home Guard dance Mainwaring is organising. When Pike leaves, Mainwaring confides in Wilson that he is not satisfied with Pike's work as of late, and that Pike seems to be constantly distracted. Wilson then mentions that Pike is probably dwelling on the ATS girl he is seeing, a girl by the name of Violet Gibbons. Mainwaring is shocked, as he knew Violet's mother (who used to do housecleaning for him and Mrs. Mainwaring), and when Wilson confirms that she used to work at "a fish and chip shop", he disapprovingly tells Wilson that a girl with "the wrong sort of background" could ruin Pike's whole career at the bank. He asks Wilson to have a word with him, as he is the closest thing to a father Pike has. Wilson tries to wriggle out of it, but Mainwaring goads him by calling him a Peter Pan and reminding him that tongues have been wagging about Frank's parentage (as both Wilson and Mrs. Pike "arrived here about the same time...both from Weston-super-Mare"). Wilson is frustrated but agrees to talk to Pike.

Later, Mainwaring and Jones' section hold a meeting to discuss the final arrangements for the dance. They are in a quandary over music; Jones suggests The Salvation Army, but Walker disagrees, and mentions to Mainwaring that Private Hastings can play the piano, and he will have a word with a band at an RAF unit in Gaulshead. Mainwaring agrees, and announces that his wife will provide sausage rolls.

When preparations are in progress, Wilson continues trying to avoid his intended conversation with Pike, but after being called "Peter Pan" once more by Mainwaring (prompting an exasperated Wilson to reply "My God, Mainwaring, you can hit pretty low when it suits you!"), he finally goes to speak with Pike in the vicar's office. Meanwhile, Jones suggests doing a cabaret act, consisting of his own "humorous monologues and various forms of mimicry", along with a Highland sword dance to be performed by Frazer. Mainwaring says he will mention Jones' idea to the dance committee; shortly afterwards, Frazer enters and tells Jones that he's "gone right off the idea", before limping away with the aid of a cane (with the implication being that he has injured himself while practising the sword dance).

During the conversation with Pike, Wilson awkwardly tries to present himself as a father figure by suggesting they address each other by their first names, and eventually he gets around to the subject of Pike taking Violet to the dance, and tries to gently dissuade him from doing so. Pike then drops the bombshell that he intends to announce their engagement in the middle of the dance, like Jack Oakie and ZaSu Pitts. Wilson's pleas for him to reconsider fall on deaf ears, as do Walker's (who tells Wilson that he used to date Violet previously, but broke it off with her after she started working at the fish and chip shop, as he could not take the lingering smell of fish that she gave off even when they were out on dates).

The initial phase of the dance goes well, apart from a confrontation with Jones and the Verger about the rude word on the harmonium (see ''The Day the Balloon Went Up''). Walker arrives with two twins, Doris and Dora, Godfrey brings along his sister, Cissy, and Frazer brings his niece, Blodwen, who is a Land Girl. Mainwaring turns up with a black eye, and confesses to Jones that the sausage rolls are ruined and Elizabeth would not be coming. At last Jones' partner, Mrs Prosser, arrives and the dance can begin.

However, it is not long before things turn pear-shaped after Pike arrives with Violet. Just as the band take a break, Pike attempts to make his announcement, but Walker manages to prevent it by persuading Jones to do his cabaret act. Jones proceeds to do impressions of actors such as Arthur Askey and George Arliss. At the end of Jones' act, Walker desperately tries to persuade him to impersonate some more actors like Charles Laughton and Freddie Bartholomew; but unfortunately Pike manages to make his way to the microphone, drags a disinterested-looking Violet onto the stage, and announces their engagement. His mother responds to this news by screaming and then fainting.

Later, a drunken Mainwaring stumbles into the vicar's office where Wilson is attempting to sleep, as the both of them have been locked out of their houses (by Elizabeth and Mrs Pike respectively). Pike also comes in, wrapped in a blanket and soaked to the skin. He tells the other two men that not only was he also locked out, but that his mum threw a bucket of water over him as well ("to cool that ardour", as Wilson puts it). Then, Pike announces that he will not get married after all, much to Wilson's relief. The men then discuss the end of the dance (which had degenerated into a rowdy drunken brawl at the end), agreeing that overall it was still a "good dance".

Although Lone Wolf is successful in rescuing one of the captive Lorestones from Torgar, both he and the remaining two Lorestones are blasted through a dimensional portal (Shadow Gate) by Darklord Gnaag. After plummeting through the Shadow Gate, Lone Wolf finds himself trapped on the Daziarn Plane and must join strange allies and face old enemies if he hopes to make his way back from the Daziarn in time to save his homeland from destruction at the hands of the Darklords and their powerful new armies.

After his struggles in the plane of Daziarn, Lone Wolf finally recovers the last of the Lorestones and finds a Shadow Gate back to his home. Unfortunately, upon his return, he finds that considerable time has passed and that, in his absence, the Darklords have conquered much of Magnamund. Now with all of the Lorestones' wisdom absorbed within him, and the hopes of Sommerlund and all the free peoples of Magnamund on his shoulders, Lone Wolf must travel to the very heart of the Darklords' foul realm, to the infernal city of Helgedad, and confront Archlord Gnaag himself. The adventure culminates with a spectacular battle in Helgedad and the destruction of the Darklords' principal city.

Living peacefully on a faraway planet, the LocoRoco and their friends, the Mui Mui, help grow vegetation and look after nature, making the planet a pleasant place to be, playing and singing the days away. When the Moja Troop comes to the planet to take it over, the LocoRoco do not know how to fight against these invaders from outer space. As such, the player assumes the role of "the planet" that is capable of guiding the LocoRoco around to defeat the Moja Troop and rescue the remaining LocoRoco, returning the planet to its peaceful ways.

After cynical New York advertising copywriter Roger Swanson (Campbell Scott) is dumped by his on-again/off-again girlfriend, Joyce (Isabella Rossellini) — who is also his boss — his painful workday is further complicated by the unexpected arrival of his 16-year-old nephew, Nick (Jesse Eisenberg). After asking to spend the night at Roger's, Nick reveals that he has come to ask for help—in hopes of ditching his virginal status, Nick begs Roger for a lesson in the art of seduction. Embittered Roger then takes on the role of a nocturnal drill sergeant in an imaginary war between the sexes, starting Nick's training at an upscale singles bar. There they meet two beautiful women (Elizabeth Berkley and Jennifer Beals) who turn out to be less malleable than Roger expects.

Although this first attempt to seduce women is unsuccessful, Nick chooses to continue the quest, which takes them to a party at Joyce's. There they find Joyce's secretary drunk and attempt to capitalize. Once in the bedroom Nick's conscience gets the better of him and he allows her to fall asleep untouched.

With Roger spinning out of control and Nick's window of opportunity closing rapidly, they agree to go with the "Fail Safe" plan. This turns out to be an underground brothel. At the underground location Roger finds he cannot let Nick lose his virginity in such an emotionally barren atmosphere, and drags him back to his apartment to sleep things off. The following day, Roger hears his sister's message from his answering machine saying that no one has seen her son Nick for two days, so Roger tells Nick to call Nick's mom. Nick travels back to Ohio, but a while later, Roger shows up unexpectedly to tutor Nick and his classmates on their home turf, bonding with the younger men in a more potent way in an atmosphere populated by adolescent peers.

At the closing, it is left open which way Nick will go.

After the events of the previous series of books, Lone Wolf has taken up training new Kai recruits, and under his tutelage, the Kai have been re-founded. Even though peace reigns for the moment, chaos is once again poised to unfold, as a group of Cenerese druids plot to unleash a massive plague upon all of Magnamund. Lone Wolf and the reader must find the source of this plague and destroy it before it can be released.

Three months after the events of ''The Plague Lords of Ruel'', Lone Wolf learns that his friend, Guildmaster Banedon, has been abducted by a band of Giaks under the command of Nadziranim sorcerers. It is theorized that they are planning to torture him to extract magical techniques which can be united with their own dark sorcery. Lone Wolf and the reader must venture to Kaag, where Banedon is held, and attempt a rescue before he meets his demise, or worse, yields the coveted magical secrets of left-handed magic.

Once more, Lone Wolf's help is sought by a monarch, this time King Sarnac of Lencia. While battling the Drakkarim under control of Magnaarn, the High Warlord of Darke, the Lencians have discovered that Magnaarn seeks an ancient artifact, the Doomstone of Darke. It is feared that he is close to discovering this artifact, and with it, the power to rally the Nadziranim sorcerers and other Darklord allies against Lencia. Lone Wolf and the reader take up the cause of Lencia to thwart Magnaarn's aims.

The opening panels of the story are set in the Duckburg museum, where Scrooge McDuck is opening a museum exhibit featuring the greatest wonders he has collected during his travels around the world (most of them direct tributes to classic Barks stories).

As Scrooge is bragging to his nephews (who are all familiar with the artifacts, having taken part in the expeditions for them), Flintheart Glomgold, who is about to open his own exhibit, overhears Scrooge and the conversation between the two rivals turns into a bragging match as to who is the greatest adventurer and treasure-seeker. Scrooge challenges Glomgold to think of something he couldn't find; Glomgold is momentarily nonplussed, then catches sight of Scrooge's exhibit of Inca artifacts and points out that while Scrooge found the original gold mines of the Incas, he never found the golden artifacts that had been extracted from the mines. Soon, Scrooge and his nephews are off on a race with Glomgold to see who can find, ''and'' claim the "greater Incan treasure".

The first clue comes as soon as Glomgold has left, as Donald picks up an Incan vase that was knocked over during the bragging match. They find a metal plaque baked inside, providing a map to a temple of Manco Capac in the Andes mountains. Unfortunately, Glomgold is eavesdropping on them.

Arriving at a village near Cuzco, Scrooge hires a plane to fly them to its location. The pilot of the plane turns out to be Glomgold, who relieves them of the plaque at gunpoint and then parachutes out. Scrooge tries to regain control of the plane and, in a comic episode, inadvertently rips out the belly of the plane while flying too low, dumping his nephews onto the valley floor, still in their seats. As the plane flies off, Glomgold approaches and informs the ducks that Scrooge has frightened away the porters he hired, so they will have to do.

A week later, Glomgold and his reluctant helpers reach a remote mountain, on the summit of which is the temple built around a large volcanic fumarole (hence, the plaque's description, the "life breath" of Manco Capac). Glomgold enters the temple's treasure chamber and is beside himself with glee to discover an enormous store of golden Inca artifacts. Then Scrooge appears, calmly informing Glomgold that he crash-landed the plane on the mountain top several days ago, and has already filed his claim on the gold using the plane's radio.

It seems that Scrooge has won, but Huey, Dewey, and Louie are confused about one thing: the plaque makes reference to an Incan "treasure" being moved to the temple, but it actually predates the time of the conquistadors, which is naturally when the gold would have been moved there. Realizing there must be another Incan treasure in the temple, Glomgold investigates further and discovers the "Eye" of Manco Capac: an enormous, disc-shaped sunburst festooned with enormous gemstones. Since Scrooge claimed the gold, and not the temple, and there's no gold on the sunburst, this makes it Glomgold's property.

As Scrooge and Glomgold begin to argue about whose treasure is of greater value, Glomgold begins taking the sunburst down from its wall mounting, but it falls and rolls down the temple steps and into the fumarole. It wedges into the hole convex side down, creating a perfect seal. As the volcanic gases build up an enormous pressure, Scrooge notices that the back of the sunburst is sheathed in gold, starting another furious argument between him and Glomgold, before causing them to wedge the sunburst down even more firmly. Before the others can stop them, the pressure mounts and the entire mountaintop, temple and all, is suddenly blown into the sky like a cork from a bottle. The ducks are able to use a tapestry as a makeshift parachute before the temple lands squarely in a nearly bottomless volcanic lake, next to the village they originally started from. The massive splash of water irrigates the villagers’ crop fields, relieving them from the effects of recent drought.

All of the treasure is now completely irretrievable. As the dispirited ducks begin their journey back to civilization, Scrooge is seen emerging from the village and mentions that he has agreed to build a pumping station for the village so that they will never be troubled by drought again. Glomgold scorns Scrooge's generosity, until Scrooge reveals that in return, the villagers have agreed to sell him the lake for one peso—which makes Scrooge the rightful owner of both the temple and all of the treasure inside it. Even though he cannot retrieve it, Scrooge is now the clear legal owner of '''all''' of the treasure—and thus the winner of the contest.

The plot concerns a group of international scientists working for the project of towing an iceberg to be used as relief for droughts. It is headed up by the husband and wife team of Rita and Harold (Harry) Carpenter. Rita secretly suffers from the fear of cold, ice and snow. Due to an unexpected storm, the scientists become stranded on the iceberg with bombs ticking under them. If they do not find a way out, they will perish. A Russian submarine is trying to rescue them, but the rescue is complicated by the ice. Meanwhile, another problem arises. One of the crew members is secretly an assassin with an agenda of his own.

In this book you (in the guise of the heroic Lone Wolf) again travel to the Plane of Darkness. Your quest involves rescuing an artifact crafted by the Lords of Light - the Moonstone - from the Dark God's clutches. The Plane of Darkness is a predictably nasty place, and even a being as powerful as a Kai Grand Master may shrink from the challenge. Dare you face up to the Dark God Naar himself?

Lt. David Bradley (Tom Hanks) is an American pilot who joins the Royal Air Force (RAF) before the United States enters World War II. After his North American P-51 Mustang is shot down in North Africa, he recovers from a leg injury in Jerusalem.

During his recovery, David meets Sarah Perrara (Cristina Marsillach), a serene girl of Spanish Jewish descent. The two young people are attracted to each other but she is convinced that their diverse backgrounds mean it could never work. Her family's disapproval and the fact that he is a gentile son of a Protestant minister, stand in their way.

Although they keep running into each other in the small community, they find themselves parting as frequently as they find each other.

Following a disappointment in love, Lord Brereton assumes the name of Charles Fownes, arranges passage to the American Colonies as a bondservant, and finds a place with Squire Meredith, a wealthy New Jersey landowner. When Charles falls in love with the squire's daughter, Janice, she is sent to live with an aunt in Boston. Janice learns of the planned British troop movement to the Lexington arsenal and gives the warning that results in Paul Revere's ride. Charles reveals his true station and becomes an aide to Washington. When he is captured by the British, Janice arranges his escape and later helps him learn the disposition of the British troops at Trenton. Janice returns to her home and agrees to marry Philemon Hennion, an aristocrat of her father's choosing. Charles and some Continental troops halt the wedding and confiscate the Meredith lands. Janice flees to Philadelphia, and Charles follows her. He is arrested but is freed when the British general, Howe, recognizes Charles as his old friend, Lord Brereton. Janice and her father retire with the British to Yorktown. During the bombardment by Washington's forces, Lord Clowes binds Janice and abducts her in his coach. Charles rescues her. With peace restored, Janice and Charles meet at Mount Vernon, where they are to be married in the presence of President Washington.

In 1755, the father of 12-year-old Matt Howard (Dickie Jones) joins the Braddock Expedition against the French in the Ohio Country after being promised of land. Matt learns that his father died during the military expedition, and is consoled by his schoolmate and friend Thomas Jefferson (Buster Phelps).

Matt (Cary Grant), now an adult and accomplished backwoodsman, sells the family farm in order to settle in Ohio. When saying farewell to Jefferson (played as an adult by Richard Carlson), Matt is tricked into meeting several members of high society, including the snobbish, wealthy royalist Fleetwood Peyton (Sir Cedric Hardwicke) and his beautiful sister, Jane (Martha Scott). The Peytons snub him when they discover he's a common farmer and not a landed gentlemen (as Jefferson had implied). Matt falls in love with Jane. Fleetwood, certain Jane will turn Matt down, permits Howard to propose to her in order to humiliate the farmer. Matt buys a farm in the Shenandoah Valley and erects a home there. When Matt returns, Jane (thrilled by Matt's republicanism and colonial spirit) shocks her family by accepting his proposal of marriage. Fleetwood repairs his relationship with Jane by giving her the diamond-encrusted Peyton family necklace.

Matt and Jane take up residence at Matt's new farm. Jane is shocked at the crude manners of the settlers, but Matt's vision of the future overcomes her worries. Jane and Matt work together, and the Howard's Albemarle Plantation takes shape. Their first child, Peyton, is born with a clubfoot (like his namesake uncle). Matt is ashamed of Peyton's disability. Jane has a daughter, Mary, and a second son, James. Despite her frontier spirit, Jane remains something of a snob. Jefferson visits Albemarle and shows Matt how unhappy Jane is living on the frontier. In order to justify returning to Williamsburg for several months without sacrificing his pride, Matt agrees to run for the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1765. He easily wins the election. Matt feuds with Fleetwood in the legislature, and is exposed to anti-British feeling and thought for the first time.

Revolutionary fervor strikes the American colonies, and Matt spends more and more time away from Albemarle to join Jefferson in Williamsburg in resisting the British crown. Fearing Indian attack, Jane moves from Albemarle to Williamsburg to be near Matt. When Matt decides to go to Philadelphia to fight for independence, Jane demands that he stay in Virginia and confronts Matt regarding his rejection of Peyton. Matt leaves, causing a rupture in his marriage. Jane and her children move in with Fleetwood. The American Revolutionary War breaks out, and Matt becomes a captain in the Continental Army. Unable to pay his taxes with credit, Fleetwood is forced to sell much of his land. He turns to drink, and throws Peyton and James out of his house when they support their father and Jefferson. Peyton and James find their father near-starvation in winter camp, and join the army.

Fleetwood embraces the royalist cause. His health declines and he becomes mentally ill. Matt discovers that James' allegiance to the revolutionary cause is weak, and realizes how much he has neglected Peyton. James wins leave and goes home to Williamsburg. Peyton remains with his father and the army. While acting as a courier for the army, Peyton is wounded. Matt and the Continental Army march to Williamsburg in order to surround Cornwallis at Yorktown. Matt learns Peyton was taken to Fleetwood's home to recuperate. He rushes to his son's side, reunites with his family, and reconciles with Jane after confessing how he mistreated Peyton.

Maxwell Broadbent, an eccentric rich man with terminal cancer, has spent his entire life collecting valuable art and treasures from around the world. One day, he writes a letter to his three sons telling them to go to his New Mexico house. Upon their arrival, they find Maxwell and all of the valuables missing, with only a cryptic message left behind hinting at his location. The message explains that his final test for them is to find his tomb, promising that the son that finds his tomb will receive all his treasures—worth approximately $300 million. The three sons—Philip the eldest, Vernon the middle son, and Tom the youngest—each go their separate ways after figuring out that their father is somewhere in Central America. Philip recruits Marcus Hauser, a private investigator who briefly served as his father's partner in their earliest treasure hunting endeavors, and Hauser subsequently hires a group of Central American mercenaries to aid and protect them. Vernon approaches the greedy leader of his San Francisco-based cult, and the two of them find three Central American guides.

Tom is the only one who is not interested in the treasure at all, until he is approached by a beautiful ethnopharmacologist named Sally Colorado, who informs Tom that his father tried to present an ancient Mayan Codex to a museum for translation years back, only to be rejected since no one knew ancient Mayan at the time. Years later, after ancient Mayan has been deciphered, Sally and her fiancé, Yale professor Julian Clyve, have deduced from a single surviving photograph that the Codex may contain many ancient Mayan herbal remedies that, if studied and reproduced in present times, could revolutionize medicine and cure many diseases. Tom reluctantly agrees to help her, and they eventually recruit a witty tribal elder named Don Alfonso, accompanied by the brother trackers Pingo and Chori.

However, Hauser has also discovered the existence of the Codex, and decides to find it specifically so that he can sell it to Lewis Skiba, the CEO of the failing company Lampe-Denison Pharmaceuticals. Similarly, Professor Clyve also plans to sell the Codex to a Swiss pharmaceutical company as well, having lied to his fiancé.

Over the course of the novel, the brothers' paths eventually cross nearly simultaneously in Honduras, after Vernon's teacher and three guides have all died from disease. Philip escapes from Hauser and his men after discovering their secret brutal nature (including an attempt, through bribery, to have the corrupt military kill Tom and Sally), and is found by his brothers nearly dead. Later, Hauser's men kill Pingo and Chori, and Don Alfonso himself succumbs to wounds sustained in a firefight. The three brothers and Sally are all nearly dead when they are rescued and nursed back to health by a lonely native named Borabay, who is revealed to be the true eldest son of Maxwell Broadbent, and the fourth brother, having been conceived when Maxwell had an affair with a native woman. Borabay leads them to a village inhabited by the Tara tribe. The Tara chief recalls how, decades earlier, Maxwell Broadbent had raided a large, mountaintop temple known as the White City (accessible only by a single rope bridge), and taking all of the treasure back to America with him. The chief reveals that after Maxwell returned to Honduras with the treasure, he requested to be buried with his treasure in the very White City that he raided. However, at his early funeral, the chief tricked him; instead of giving him poison to kill him, he gave him a drink that rendered him unconscious long enough for the treasure to be buried with him, before he eventually awoke inside the tomb. Thus, the Broadbents now have to recover the treasure ''and'' save their father.

Hauser and his men have already converged on the White City and begin dynamiting the area to find the right tomb. The Broadbents manage to find the right tomb, with a barely-alive Maxwell still inside. Hauser attacks them and fatally shoots Maxwell, but the five of them manage to escape to the rope bridge before being blocked in on both sides by Hauser's men. As Hauser himself approaches to kill them, Tom holds up a canteen full of gasoline and reveals that Sally is on a ridge hundreds of yards away with a sniper rifle, prepared to shoot the canteen and blow up the bridge. Hauser calls their bluff, but when he attempts to throw the canteen over the bridge, Sally successfully shoots it, setting Hauser on fire and eventually causing him to plummet to his death. The Broadbents all make it back across the bridge while the soldiers panic, with Sally and the Broadbent brothers killing half of the soldiers while the other half is trapped in the White City after the bridge breaks. All the surviving soldiers eventually starve to death.

Back in the Tara village, Maxwell is tended to as he dies of his injury, admitting that he would've died of the cancer even if he had survived the attack. He spends his final days reconciling with his sons, who all forgive him in return. He then agrees to the deal and splits the treasure between the sons, with each receiving roughly $100 million. Borabay is the one dissenter who does not wish to receive any of the treasure, instead simply asking for American citizenship and Maxwell's New Mexico estate to live in. Maxwell happily obliges his request, and then dies in peace. He is given a proper funeral by the Tara people, who have finally forgiven him.

In the epilogue, Lewis Skiba's company has gone bankrupt since the Codex was never brought to him, but Skiba finds himself strangely at peace since he was aware of Hauser's brutal methods, and is glad that Hauser failed. Similarly, Sally finds out about Clyve's deception, as Clyve is now being sued by the Swiss pharmaceutical company, claiming that he scammed them. The Codex, which was eventually found among the treasure, is studied by Sally and eventually published openly to the world, bringing in a new era of medicine and revolutionizing several disease treatments. Tom and Sally have fallen in love, and are eventually married. Tom starts his own veterinarian business, while Borabay begins enjoying the privileges of living in America.

Prologue

'''55 BC''': During the first Roman invasion of Britain, a group of legionaries lose the army's pay chest in a marsh while retreating to their ships. Harried by the British tribes, they can only mark the location of the marsh, while their commander, Julius Caesar, swears to return one day.

Part One

'''AD 43''': On the Rhine frontier in Germania, a new draft of recruits arrive at the base of the Second Legion. One young recruit, Cato, bears a letter from Emperor Claudius appointing him to the rank of Centurion, however, since Cato is barely seventeen, the Legion's commander, Vespasian, proposes a compromise by appointing him optio, the centurion's second-in-command. The letter also contains another message, written in code, warning the legate that someone on his staff has been implicated in Scribonianus's failed coup attempt, and the Emperor has sent an unnamed Imperial agent to identify the person.

Cato, the son of a freed slave at the Imperial Palace, is unused to the harsh life of a Roman Legion, and is resented by his fellow recruits for being promoted ahead of them. He sticks through basic training through determination, earning Centurion Macro's grudging approval.

When a Roman tax collector is mutilated by the chief of a local German town, Vespasian sends the Third Cohort, under tribune Vitellius, which includes Macro's Sixth Century. Because Macro's regular optio is laid up by an injury, he conscripts Cato to replace him. No one is expecting any trouble, but once the Cohort is inside the village, they are ambushed by a much larger force of Germans hiding in the woods. The Cohort barricades itself behind the village's walls, with no option except to hold out until they are reported overdue at the base and Vespasian arrives with reinforcements.

At Cato's suggestion, the embattled legionaries set fire to the attacking Germans' rudimentary battering ram, but the flames unfortunately spread to the gate, then the rest of the village, forcing the century to fall back from the walls. Whilst in retreat to the main village square, Macro and Cato are cut off from their comrades and the former is hit by a javelin. Ignoring Macro's command to leave him behind, Cato charges alone at the attacking Germans, driving them away with the Century's Standard (Vexillum), long enough to help Macro to his feet and drag him into a nearby building. With a combination of guile, improvisation, and sheer bravery, Cato manages to get himself, Macro and the standard through the fire and back to the Roman lines. The Germans fall back when Vespasian arrives unexpectedly early, leading reinforcements. Macro later nominates Cato for a Grass Crown, and, to their shared embarrassment, both are invited to dine at Vespasian's house after the Cohort returns to base.

Whilst recovering from his wounds, Macro asks Cato to teach him to read and write; all centurions are required to process paperwork, but Macro has, until then, been concealing his illiteracy by delegating his work to a wizened clerk, Piso.

The Legion soon receives new orders, to march into Gaul to join the force mustering for Claudius's invasion of Britain.

Part Two

While en route to the invasion force's muster point at Gesoriacum, Macro and Cato's century is detailed to escort Imperial Secretary Narcissus, but they are attacked on the road by a group of Syrian mercenaries intending to kill Narcissus. Fighting them off, the convoy successfully reaches Gesoriacum.

While trying to sneak into Vespasian's tent to meet Lavinia, Cato surprises a thief in the act of trying to burgle the legate's safe; the thief attacks Cato and receives a near-fatal wound, and gets away with a private message from Narcissus to Vespasian. Cato is unable to say anything without revealing that he was there and being suspected of the theft himself.

When the legionaries refuse to invade Britannia, Narcissus deals with the problem. On the one hand, he stages a comic performance in Gesoriacum's amphitheatre, pretending to challenge the legionaries to a fight, and provoking amused cries of "Io Saturnalia!" (a Roman festival when slaves and masters switch places for the day). On the other, he has the ringleaders secretly rounded up and executed. With the mutiny suppressed, the invasion is ready to proceed.

In private conference with Vespasian, Narcissus orders him to detail a small detachment of men to infiltrate British territory and retrieve the lost pay chest. Vespasian chooses Macro and Cato to lead the detachment. Several days after the initial landings, somewhere in the Isle of Thanet, Macro and Cato's mission is a success, but before they can return with the pay chest, Vitellius appears with a small band of mercenaries, attempting to kill them and steal the chest for himself. He is repulsed and escapes on his horse, inadvertently discovering a British force led by the warlord Togodumnus, setting up an ambush along the legion's line of march. Attempting to get back to the 2nd Legion and save his own skin, Vitellius panics and mistakes the Legion's cavalry scouts for the British, and flees in the opposite direction.

Spotting the British ambush, Cato attempts to warn the column, and while the ambush succeeds in killing a great deal of legionaries, it is fought off when the 14th Legion, whom Vitellius stumbled on and warned, arrives to reinforce them. Macro and Cato fight heroically in defense of their comrades, and Macro kills Togodumnus in single combat.

Vitellius manages to claim credit for discovering the British ambush and bringing up the 14th as reinforcement, making him a hero in the Roman camp. In private conference with Vespasian, Vitellius admits that he is Narcissus's agent inside the army, and that is how he learned of the mission to retrieve the chest, and freely admits that he decided to steal it for himself to advance his own ambitions. Yet he is confident that Vespasian can do nothing against him, since Vitellius has evidence that Vespasian's own wife, Flavia Domitillia, is the suspected traitor that Vespasian was warned about. She switched out the confidential letter from Narcissus that Vitellius's hired thief attempted to steal with a decoy, and she, not Vitellius, arranged the attempted assassination of Narcissus on the road to Gesoriacum, attempting to abort the British invasion and fatally discredit the Emperor. Stricken, Vespasian can do nothing except agree that Vitellius is, for the moment, untouchable.

Macro and Cato succeed in returning the chest to Narcissus, but they are likewise powerless to take action against Vitellius. Cato also senses from the hostility of the British captives that the Roman conquest of Britain will be much longer and more difficult than the Emperor's propaganda claims.

The film is set in 2025, and centers on a sport called "Futuresport" (a combination of basketball, baseball and hockey that uses hoverboards and rollerblades) created as a non-lethal way to reduce gang warfare. Tre Ramzey (Dean Cain) along with his ex-girlfriend Alex Torres (Vanessa Williams) and his old coach Obike Fixx (Wesley Snipes) must prevent an all out war between the North American Alliance and the Pan-Pacific Commonwealth (The Com). At stake is who rules over the Hawaiian Islands—which are being terrorized by Eric Sythe (JR Bourne) and his gang the Hawaiian Liberation Organization (Hilo). It takes a revolutionary sport to stop a revolution.

Michael Scofield and Fernando Sucre (Amaury Nolasco) face a lockdown in order for the guards to search cells for contraband, when they're about to throw away a knife, they were stopped by Bellick (Wade Williams), who sends Sucre to SHU. Warden Pope (Stacy Keach) calls off the search for Michael's cell, but Bellick feels determined to, and sneaks into his cell when the prisoners are away, and finds the name "Allen Schweitzer". Bellick runs the name on the database, only to find no one matching it.

Meanwhile, Sucre urges Stolte to let him call Maricruz (Camille Guaty), but is refused. Veronica (Robin Tunney) investigates who is framing Lincoln Burrows. She finds a tape, where she sees Lincoln shoot Terrence Steadman dead. Lincoln claims that he is being framed, stating the man was already dead and Lincoln never pulled the trigger. She attempts to talk to Crab Simmons (Tab Baker), who didn't testify in his case, only to find out that he was killed of an apparent drug overdose. She is contacted by Leticia Barris (Adina Porter), Crab's girlfriend, but as they meet, she is spooked as Kellerman (Paul Adelstein) and Hale (Danny McCarthy) are watching.

Back in Fox River, Michael attempts to get to a bolt from a bleacher belonging to T-Bag (Robert Knepper), but is stopped. He doesn't want Scofield on the bleacher unless he will join in the racist battle between the whites and blacks, but he declines. On his second attempt, T-Bag's gang take the bolt off him, so eventually, he decides to join in to get at the bolt. However, C-Note (Rockmond Dunbar) sees this, and when he confronts Scofield regarding the PUGNAc, he refuses to give the pills. Soon, everyone comes out of their cell for count, when the riot starts. Michael decides to get the bolt back from T-Bag's cellmate (Brian Hamman), and does so after a struggle. C-Note sees this and a black inmate stabs the cellmate several times; the wounded man dies in Michael's arms. T-Bag believes Michael killed the cellmate, and plans to get back at him. The fight stops through lockdown. Michael rubs the bolt until the end forms a hexagon shape key, big enough to unscrew the cell's toilet. It is explained that "Allen" is the screw, and "Schweitzer" is the lavatory.

After the lockdown is finished, C-Note decides to give him the PUGNAc due to his take in the riot, and tells him he will eventually find out what he's up to. Michael takes it, where Dr. Tancredi (Sarah Wayne Callies) gives him the test and finds out he is diabetic. Afterwards, Bellick takes Michael to an area, where Abruzzi (Peter Stormare) attempts to extract information regarding Fibonacci's whereabouts, but refuses to answer. Abruzzi has his men cut off two of Michael's toes to try to get him to talk.

Michael Scofield tells the team in his escape plan, now consisting of Sucre (Amaury Nolasco), Lincoln (Dominic Purcell), and John Abruzzi (Peter Stormare), that they have to take out either English, Fitz or Percy, the three names on his forearm from the tattoo. Meanwhile, Secret Service Agent Kellerman (Paul Adelstein) and Hale pay a visit to Warden Pope regarding Scofield's transfer. Pope denies the request, where the agents proceed in blackmailing him concerning the affair he had from Toledo, and threaten to tell his wife about this. Pope tells the agents that his wife already knows about the affair, but the agents know he did not tell her the whole truth. She knows nothing of the son he had there. Michael returns to his cell to find Pope, who tells him that some higher power wants him transferred out of Fox River. Michael plans to take the advice from Charles Westmoreland and get a transfer block letter, telling Pope he has sinusitis, to keep him in at least a month yet. However, Kellerman and Hale continue blackmailing him, and tells him to drop the paperwork, which he reluctantly does. Nick Savrinn and Veronica Donovan continue to try to find legal grounds to exonerate Lincoln. From the copy of the videotape of the murder, an expert believes that the bomb sound was faked, but needs the original. However, they find it was destroyed in a "freak accident". When they return to Veronica's home, they find the copy has been stolen, and she suspects Nick may be involved.

Michael tells Abruzzi to get him a key to the warden's office. Abruzzi does this by melting toothbrushes into a stolen mold. Towards the end of the day, Michael, while constructing the model of the Taj Mahal, tells Pope that the structure will collapse if he does not remain there to hold the piece as the glue sets. Warden Pope leaves for the day and Michael immediately uses the replica key to leave the office through the back door and reach the roof. However, during count, Bellik realises a missing Scofield, and alerts the authorities. However, that was Michael's plan all along. English, Fitz and Percy are the names of the only three streets that lead to the prison and when the police cars come in response to the alarm, he learns that the cops only take English and Percy, leaving Fitz wide open. Now that he knows which road to take, he returns to the Warden's office, where he is found with the replica of the Taj Mahal. Nobody suspects anything. However, Pope says that Michael will be transferred, to Michael's dismay. The next morning, Michael is about to be transferred, but Pope decides to cancel it. Before Kellerman could get there, Pope admits to his wife the son he had during his affair. In another place, a mysterious woman tells the secret service to deal with Lincoln rather than Michael as he is Lincoln's weakness.

Larry Cook (Jason Robards), a prosperous farmer in Iowa, decides to retire and split his acres of land among his three daughters, Ginny (Jessica Lange), Rose (Michelle Pfeiffer) and Caroline (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Ginny and Rose happily accept the lucrative agreement to live and work on the farm but Caroline abandons farming for a law career in Des Moines and refuses to take part in the deal.

Larry is consumed with rage and rejects Caroline, leaving Rose and Ginny to go about running the farm with their husbands (Keith Carradine and Kevin Anderson). However, as Larry loses touch with farming life, he begins to lose touch with reality, and his painful descent into senility leaves him bitterly opposed to his daughters' ways of running the farm.

As she struggles to maintain the farm, Ginny encounters a rift in her relationship with Rose, who reveals that Larry had sexually abused her when she was a child, and insists that he had done the same thing to Ginny. The two women also develop a strong extra-marital attachment to Jess (Colin Firth), the handsome son of a neighboring farmer who is loyal to Larry.

Paranoid and disillusioned, Larry decides to sue Rose and Ginny in an effort to regain his patriarchal control, and seeks Caroline's help. The lawsuit divides the family forever, leaving Rose and Ginny to suffer alone while realizing painful truths about their childhood. As Rose and Ginny discover their own individual strengths in the face of adversity, they learn how to survive on their own, without the protection of the farm and the suffocating presence of their father.

Clinical psychologist Dr. Chris Kelvin is approached by emissaries for DBA, a corporation operating a space station orbiting the planet Solaris, who relay a message sent from his scientist friend Dr. Gibarian. Gibarian requests that Kelvin come to the station to help understand an unusual phenomenon but is unwilling to explain more. DBA is unsure how to proceed, as the mission to study Solaris has been sidetracked and none of the astronauts want to return home. In addition, DBA has lost contact with the security patrol recently dispatched to the station. Kelvin agrees to a solo mission to Solaris as a last attempt to bring the crew home safely.

Upon arriving at Solaris Station, Kelvin learns that Gibarian has committed suicide and most of the crew have either died or disappeared under bizarre circumstances. Both surviving crew members, Snow and Dr. Gordon, are reluctant to explain the situation at hand. The situation is further complicated when Kelvin sees a young boy running through the station. Once alone in his quarters, Kelvin dreams about his long dead wife Rheya, reliving when they first met and some of their most romantic and intimate moments. He awakens shocked and terrified to encounter Rheya, apparently alive again beside him in bed. Kelvin leads this "Rheya" into an escape pod and jettisons the pod into space. Afterward, he confides his actions to Snow and comes to understand that replicas of the crew's loved ones have been mysteriously appearing (the little boy he saw earlier is apparently a replica of Gibarian's son). Rheya manifests a second time, but this time Kelvin lets her stay. Gradually, this version of Rheya comes to realize that she does not feel human; her memories feel artificial, in that she lacks the emotional attachment that comes with actually having lived them.

Through numerous flashbacks, Kelvin and Rheya's meeting and courtship are explored, with hints as to her disturbed upbringing and emotional difficulties. It is also gradually revealed through these flashbacks that Rheya once terminated a pregnancy but did not tell Kelvin about it. When he discovered her choice, Kelvin was so distraught that he walked out on her. Rheya then committed suicide and was later found by Kelvin when he returned to her.

Kelvin, the replica of Rheya, Snow and Gordon meet to discuss the situation. In frustration at Kelvin's apparent attachment to the virtual Rheya, Gordon blurts out what Kelvin did to the previous Rheya replica. An appalled Rheya abandons the meeting. Kelvin confronts Gordon, who in turn chastises him for getting emotionally involved with something that is not really human and may eventually pose a threat to human beings on the station as well as on Earth. Later, apparently during a dream, Kelvin has a vision of Gibarian, and asks him what Solaris wants. Gibarian balks at the idea of knowing an alien entity's motivations, or even that it might have motivations, and tells Kelvin simply that "there are no answers, only choices". Kelvin wakes to find that Rheya has killed herself. Soon afterward, she self-resurrects, and it is revealed that other manifestations who have "died" had done the same.

Gordon develops an apparatus which can permanently destroy a replica but Kelvin objects to using it on Rheya. Driven by his own grief and guilt over the "real" Rheya's death on Earth, he begins ingesting a chemical stimulant to stay awake in order to monitor Rheya, trying to avoid repeating the past and essentially abandoning her to suicide. Kelvin eventually falls asleep and Rheya successfully petitions Gordon to destroy her with the apparatus as she has done for her own replica(s). Traumatized, Kelvin confronts Dr. Gordon who maintains she merely facilitated an assisted suicide and only strives for the preservation of the humans on the station.

Kelvin and Gordon then discover a dead body stashed away in a ceiling vent in the station's cold room – Snow. The Snow they have been interacting with is a replica. Confronted by Gordon and Kelvin, the Snow replica explains that upon being dreamed into existence, he was attacked by the real Snow and thus killed him in self-defense. He goes on to tell them that repeat usage of the apparatus has drained the ship's fuel cell reactor, making a return trip to Earth impossible. Furthermore, Solaris has begun to exponentially increase its mass, thereby gravitationally pulling the space station inexorably toward the planet. Gordon and Kelvin begin prepping a smaller space vehicle called ''Athena'' to escape.

Back on Earth, Kelvin struggles to return to normal life, haunted by the idea that he "remembered her wrong"—that is, Rheya as being invariably suicidal. When he accidentally cuts his finger in his kitchen, the wound immediately heals, and it is then that Kelvin realizes that he never returned to Earth. In a flashback, Kelvin gives up the idea of boarding the lifeboat, and Doctor Gordon leaves him behind. As the plummeting space station rattles itself to pieces around him, the replica of Gibarian's young son appears and offers his hand in assistance. In the kitchen, Rheya appears to Kelvin yet again. This time, however, she is tranquil, and assures Kelvin that they no longer have to think in terms like "life" and "death," and that all they have ever done is forgiven.

In 1949 young cowboy John Grady Cole is rendered homeless after his family's ranch is sold. He asks his best friend Lacey Rawlins to leave his family ranch in San Angelo, Texas and join him to travel on horseback to cross the border 150 miles south, to seek work in Mexico. They encounter a peculiar boy named Jimmy Blevins on the trail to Mexico, whom they befriend but from whom they then separate. Later on, they meet a young aristocrat's daughter, Alejandra Villarreal, with whom Cole falls in love.

Cole and Rawlins become hired hands for Alejandra's father, who likes their work, but Cole's romantic interest in Alejandra is not welcomed by her wealthy aunt. After Alejandra's father takes her away, Cole and Rawlins are arrested by Mexican police and taken to prison, where they visit Blevins, who has been accused of stealing a horse and of murder, and is killed by a corrupt police captain. Cole and Rawlins are sent to a Mexican prison for abetting Blevins' crimes, where they must defend themselves against dangerous inmates. The pair are both nearly killed.

Alejandra's aunt frees Cole and Rawlins, on the condition that she never sees them again. While Rawlins returns to his parents' ranch in Texas, Cole attempts to reunite with Alejandra over her family's objections. Her aunt is confident that Alejandra will keep her word and not get back together with Cole–so much so that she even gives Cole her niece's phone number. Cole urges Alejandra to come to Texas with him. She, however, decides she must keep her word and though she loves him, she will not go with him.

Cole sets out to get revenge on the captain who took Blevins' life, as well as to get back his, Lacey's and Blevins' horses. After making the captain his prisoner, he turns him over to a group of Mexican men, including one with whom Cole had previously shared a cell when they were imprisoned by the captain. Cole is spared the decision to kill the captain, but it is implied the men to whom the captain was turned over will do that.

Returning to the United States and riding through a small town in Texas, stringing two horses behind the one he is riding, he stops to inquire what day it is. It is Thanksgiving. He asks a couple of men if they would be interested in buying a rifle, as he needs the money. One is a sheriff's deputy and arrests him because all three horses have different brands, and they suspect Cole is a horse thief.

In court, Cole tells the judge his story from the beginning. The judge believes him and orders Cole freed and the horses returned to him. Later that evening, Cole shows up at the judge's home, troubled. The judge had said good things about him in court, but Cole feels guilty that Blevins was killed, although there was nothing he could have done to prevent his death. He is upset with himself for not having spoken up at the time. The judge tells him he is being too hard on himself and it could not have been helped; he must go on and live his life. Cole rides to Rawlins' family's ranch, where he returns his friend's horse.

Widower Paul Annendale has taken his two children, Rya and Mark, on their annual camping vacation to the small New England town of Black Water. What no one there knows is that the town has become a testing ground for a new experiment involving techniques related to subliminal advertising. Developed by amoral scientist Ogden Salsbury and funded by multi-millionaire Leonard Dawson, this newly discovered technique was introduced into the town, with the aid of a chemical in the water supply and allows anyone with a special code phrase to gain total mind control of an exposed subject. Together with local store owner Sam Edison, Paul intends to put a stop to this illegal conspiracy.

After being raped and mutilated as a child by her family's gardener, Berton Mitchell, Mary Bergen exhibits clairvoyant abilities. With the help of her older brother Alan and husband Max, she aids the police in their murder investigations. Unfortunately, she can only sense pieces of a crime as they happen in real time.

A few days before Christmas, Mary thwarts a serial killer from claiming another victim. After the ordeal, Alan, who has always been jealous of Max for coming into his sister's life and taking over his role as her helper, tries to persuade her once again to divorce him. She refuses. He accepts her decision and leaves for a vacation.

Mary and Max travel home to spend the holidays at their mansion. However, she suddenly has a strong vision of four women being murdered sometime in the future. This has never happened before, as previously she could only have visions as they happen in real time. Max tries to tell her it was just a dream, but is unsure. The next morning, a news report comes on detailing the murder of four women who lived together by a single assailant. Mary thinks she recognizes one of the victims.

Mary attends her weekly meeting with her psychiatrist, who tries to help her get over the traumatic childhood attack by reliving it. She remembers beating wings and an awful voice whispering to her. However, before she can remember Mitchell's face, several glass figurines in the office fly off the shelves and begin pelting the two. After a few minutes, the commotion stops. That night, Mary has another vision of the same killer murdering three people at a hair salon. Just as she attempts to picture the killer's face, Max's gun animates and begins shooting at them. The couple become convinced they are being haunted by a poltergeist trying to hinder Mary's visions. The next morning, another news report comes out confirming the triple homicide took place. She calls Alan in a panic, who manages to calm her down.

Shortly afterwards, Mary gets another vision that the killer is going to climb a tower in the town of King's Point and snipe residents during a Christmas Eve boat parade. With the blessing of a police chief she knows, Percy Osterman, her and Max travel there to stop the attack. Residing in King's Point is Mary's longtime friend and journalist Lou Pasternak, who they stay with. The three try to figure out who the killer is. Berton Mitchell is brought up, but Mary knows he committed suicide in his jail cell shortly before the trial, always claiming he was innocent. They ask Osterman to investigate Mitchell's wife and son, who they assume to still be alive, as possible suspects.

The next day, Mary tries to envision the killer's face again. However, a flock of seagulls attack her and Max and don't let up until she stops trying. They then travel to the King's Point police station, where they manage to convince the skeptical sheriff, John Patmore, to place officers in every tower in the town. However, no attack takes place that night, much to Patmore's frustration. Afterwards, while eating dinner at Lou's, Mary has another vision of a woman she thinks she recognizes being murdered by the killer.

The next day, the three receive two pieces of bad news. The familiar woman Mary saw in her vision is found dead, and Osterman calls to reveal that Mitchell's wife and son died in an arson attack on their trailer decades previously. Convinced that the sniper killings will really happen, she gets Lou and Max to drive her to a closed fun center with a tower that night. Mary and Max break into the center while Lou waits in the car as a lookout.

Mary is wracked with more visions of flapping wings and memories of her childhood assault. She waits at the top of the tower while Max waits at the bottom of the stairs. The killer arrives and stabs Lou to death before proceeding inside, where he attacks and wounds Max. He manages to play dead while the killer, revealed to be Alan, climbs the stairs and shows himself to his sister.

Mary flashes back to her assault and realizes it was Alan who attacked her, not Berton Mitchell. He tied her to the floor of Mitchell's cottage before biting her, slashing her with a knife, and stuffing a live bat up her vagina, where her memory of flapping wings came from. While she was in a coma in the hospital, her brother managed to place false memories and a psychic hold on the incident by telling all the terrible things he would do to her if she ever spoke of what really happened. All the "poltergeist" incidents were Mary's own powers acting against her due to the hold. Alan also reveals that he was the one that murdered Mitchell's wife and son, and that all the victims Mary recognized were previous girlfriends of his.

Bleeding profusely, Max manages to exit the center and get the attention of arriving cops and Patmore, who mistakes him for the killer and shoots him in the shoulder. Mary, now knowing the truth, uses her psychic powers to make the bats that live in the tower attack Alan. He falls down the stairs and breaks his neck. A few weeks later, she attends Lou's funeral and goes to visit a recovering Max in the hospital. She happily reveals she is not afraid of the dark anymore.

Graham Harris was once one of the world's foremost mountain climbers, until a fall five years earlier left him with a lame leg, a fear of heights...and a frightening psychic ability in which he can see murders as they are happening. Harris lives in New York City, where a murderous madman known as the Butcher has been mutilating young women. While he is giving an interview on live television one night, Graham senses the Butcher claiming another victim. When the madman realizes that Graham poses a threat to him he formulates a plan to kill the clairvoyant. While working late one night in his office building, Graham senses that the Butcher is coming to his floor aboard an elevator. With his girlfriend Connie at his side, Graham begins a long night of playing hide and seek to try to avoid the psychopath's grip, during which, Connie and Graham gradually run out of places to hide, and are eventually faced with a horrific ultimatum: either stay and take their chances with the Butcher, or scale the face of the building in the midst of a blizzard. Graham is eventually talked into facing his fear with the latter, with the Butcher shooting at them all the while. Eventually, the Butcher is violently killed in an incident involving a piece of machinery. Graham and Connie escape, but they soon meet up with Anthony Prine, who is the other half of the Butcher. (It is revealed that he and Bollinger had a quasi-Leopold and Loeb relationship.) Prine confronts them, but he is wounded by detective Ira Preduski. In the epilogue, it is revealed that Connie and Graham are engaged.

Lisa Chelgrin is a US Senator's daughter. Her life has been erased and true past blocked. Her imposed, fake new identity is Joanna Rand. A detective, Alex Hunter, is hired to track Lisa down, but he finds nothing. Years later, during a vacation in Kyoto, Japan, he views a lounge act in which Lisa Chelgrin performs. Her name is different than it was before, and she is older, now working as the nightclub owner and singer. Nevertheless, the detective knows it is she. He sends for his dead-case file, and his privately employed messenger is almost killed delivering it. Someone is watching him and Lisa.

At the same time, a person known as The Doctor (Inamura) is trying to find a way around Lisa's memory block, and he assumes that, by removing a "password" or "pass-phrase," he can access Lisa's true memories. Under hypnosis, however, Lisa can only repeat the phrase "tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun," instead of answering the questions The Doctor asks her about her true past. After the first series of events, Lisa and Alex try to deal with their respective pasts so they can survive.

Hilary Thomas, a screenwriter living in Los Angeles, is attacked in her home by Bruno Frye, a mentally disturbed man whose vineyard in Napa Valley she recently visited. Frye tries to rape her, but she forces him to leave at gunpoint and calls the police. Detective Tony Clemenza tells her that Frye has an airtight alibi, as the police called his home and he answered, proving that he could not have been anywhere near Los Angeles that night.

The next day, Frye returns and attacks Hilary again, this time receiving several stab wounds before escaping. She calls the police and once again meets with Clemenza, who tells her that Frye's body has been found and takes her to the morgue to identify it. Afterward, Clemenza asks Hilary out, and the two begin a romantic relationship.

Hilary is once again attacked by a man who appears to be Frye. "Frye" escapes just before Clemenza arrives and Hilary tells him what happened. After some investigations, Frye's psychologist lets them listen to a tape recording of one of Frye's sessions. Frye talks about identical twins being born with cauls on their faces, and says he read somewhere that this was a mark of a demon.

Frye has been killing women he believes are possessed by the spirit of his dead mother, who abused him and said she would come back from the dead. He believes that Hilary is his mother's latest "host".

Hilary and Tony meet a retired madam who tells them that Leo, Frye's grandfather, brought his daughter, Katherine, there to be cared for after he got her pregnant. Shortly after Leo's death, Katherine gave birth to identical twin boys. The twins were born with cauls on their faces, leading the mentally unstable Katherine to believe they were demons. She raised her sons as if they were one person. They were both called Bruno, and both were rewarded or punished for anything either one of them did.

Finally, Hilary and Clemenza return to Frye's home, where he once again attacks them, before being killed during a struggle with Clemenza.

In the summer of 1980, introverted bookworm Colin Jacobs moves to Santa Leona, California, with his mother, and soon meets and becomes friends with another boy his age. Roy Borden is everything Colin has never been, but he secretly wishes he could be- brave, outgoing, muscular, athletically talented, and a consummate ladies' man. He is an instinctive fighter, ready to stand up to anyone or anything—a stark contrast to Colin, who "learned long ago that resistance causes pain" and avoids trouble and confrontations. Despite their differences, Roy appears glad to be friends with Colin, even remarking that the boys and girls who think they are his friends are really just acquaintances. Colin and Roy become close friends in a short period of time, and Roy declares them to be blood brothers after a brief ceremony. Roy displays some odd behavior, such as asking if Colin has ever killed anything and calling anything fun a ''popper'', but Colin does not think anything of it.

Colin meets a beautiful girl called Heather Lipschitz in a store one day, and he is overwhelmed but thrilled as he realizes the two are developing a romantic interest in each other. He does not tell Roy, but assumes that his association with Roy has indeed helped his own image and made girls more interested in him. Roy begins to confide more in Colin, revealing an extremely cynical worldview, and an obsession with sex, violence, and death. Colin treats it as a joke, even as Roy claims to have killed two other boys who refused his offer to be blood brothers. He leads Colin to an abandoned house by a railroad line, where he has set up an old pickup truck and prepared it to be pushed downhill to cause an approaching passenger train to wreck. He asks for Colin's help, but Colin, realizing it was never a joke, tries to stop him. Roy throws Colin aside and tries to push the truck down to the tracks on his own, but it needed two people to keep it on course, and Roy screams in rage as the train goes by unharmed.

Roy tries to kill Colin in the junkyard, but after narrowly escaping, Colin finds that no one believes him when he tries to reveal who Roy is. Colin turns to Heather, and the two of them work to uncover the secrets of Roy's hidden life. They learn that Roy is adopted, and that he accidentally killed his adoptive sister Belinda when he was eight years old and got behind the wheel of his adopted father's car while Belinda was playing behind it. Mrs. Borden, who came outside just in time to see it happen, went into shock and said over and over "Her little head...it just popped." Soon after, Mrs. Borden, who has always been obsessed with keeping her house spotlessly clean, savagely beat Roy with a metal dustpan when he came home and tracked dirt into the house. Severely traumatized by both incidents, Roy became deeply cynical and embraced the idea that he was a murderer, convincing himself over time that he did it all on purpose. Lonely and desperate for a real friend, Roy tried reaching out to two boys before Colin, and Colin and Heather confirm that the boys really did die when, where and how Roy said they did.

Colin calls Roy and convinces him that he got girls for both of them, and Roy reluctantly agrees to meet him at an abandoned mansion at the edge of town so they can take turns raping her. Despite her own fear of the situation, Heather agrees to be the bait, and Colin makes it look as if she was beaten up and then tied to a chair. Roy arrives ahead of time, and Colin manages to hide the revolver he stole from his mother's bedroom. Colin pretends that he sees things Roy's way, and that he wants to be blood brothers again. Roy initially doesn't believe him, but is amazed to see Heather there, just as Colin promised. Colin pretends to be eager to "share" her with Roy, impressing and delighting him. Roy declares they are brothers again, but Colin takes out the revolver and says he is taking Roy in. Roy realizes he has been tricked and attacks, and Colin is hopelessly outmatched as they fight. He manages to get the revolver back, and shoots Roy in the leg as they struggle. Roy looks up as Colin gets ready to fire again, this time at Roy's head, and his expression reveals something shocking: Roy is desperately unhappy, and wants to be put out of his misery. Colin fights down the urge to kill him, and goes outside to call the police. As he does, he realizes that the "voice of the night" is within him, too, and he must resist the urge to listen to it like Roy did.

In 1955, Ellen, a young woman tired of being oppressed by her meek father and psychotically religious mother, falls in love with a barker from a traveling carnival named Conrad. Despite her mother's pleas, she runs away with the carnival and marries him. However, it quickly becomes clear that Conrad is using Ellen to spawn the Antichrist, as she later finds out he is a Satan worshiper. Stuck at the fair as she cannot go back to her parents, she eventually gives birth to a hideously deformed infant.

One stormy night, the demonic baby attacks Ellen. She crushes it to death just as Conrad comes home. Enraged, he beats but does not kill her, stating that he will hunt her down one day and murder her own children. Ellen runs off into the night.

In 1980, a girl named Amy gets pregnant by her boyfriend. He refuses to raise the child or pay for an abortion. She tearfully runs home to her religious, alcoholic mother who is later revealed to be Ellen. Amy eventually tells her mother that she is pregnant, causing her to strike her. However, she agrees to pay for an abortion and takes her to the doctor, but only to stop Amy from "giving birth to the Antichrist".

Meanwhile, Amy's younger brother, Joey, is secretly afraid of Ellen as she frequently comes into his room late at night, drunkenly ranting about how he may be a demon in disguise. He decides to run away with a traveling fair that is coming to town the following week.

The carnival is revealed to be Conrad's. After years of searching, the other carnies try to persuade the barker that he will never find Ellen, but he refuses to give up. That night, a young couple is lured to the carnival's funhouse where they are disemboweled and partially eaten by Gunther, the demonic, monstrous son that Conrad had with the carnival's fortune teller, Madame Zena. Conrad plans to use Gunther to kill Ellen's children.

Amy visits the diner where her promiscuous best friend, Liz, works. Liz reveals she is going to run away to Las Vegas and become a call girl. She invites Amy to come with her the morning after they go to the carnival. Joey visits the fair during the day and is recognized by Conrad as possibly being Ellen's child. When asked what his mother's name is, Joey is frightened and lies. Conrad is disappointed, but lets him go.

After running background checks on the town's residents through a private investigator, Conrad learns that Amy and Joey are Ellen's children. He reveals his plan to lure them the funhouse and kill them to a horrified Madame Zena. When she refuses to help with his scheme, he strangles her to death. That night, Amy, Liz, and their dates, Buzz and Ritchie, descend on the carnival. Joey escapes home and goes to the carnival as well, with the intent of running away with it. He finds Conrad and tells him his desire. The barker lures him to the funhouse and reveals that he knows he lied about his mother before tying him up.

The group arrive at the funhouse and board. Midway through the ride, Conrad shuts off the power, stranding the four teens inside. Richie is dragged away by Gunther through a trap door before having his head torn off. The three others attempt to find an exit. Amy arms herself with a knife from a display. Liz runs further into the funhouse alone before being found by Gunther and dismembered in the basement. Conrad appears and fatally shoots Buzz with a pistol. He has brought Joey with him, keeping him at the end of a rope leash. Amy manages to keep the knife hidden. She tricks Conrad into thinking she is approaching Joey to comfort him, before stabbing him in the throat and taking his gun.

Amy and Joey find the basement and travel down, where Gunther attacks. After Amy shoots him, he falls into the funhouse's machinery and is torn apart. They find the exit and Amy carries Joey out of the funhouse and into the morning light.

An amnesic blonde girl appears in the middle of traffic on a busy day. Carol and Paul, a married couple, are drawn to her, seeing her as the child they never had, they take her in. Then Carol begins to have nightmares about ghastly noises in the dead of night, a bloody face in a mirror, and a razor-sharp ax.

A year after her son Danny dies in an alleged accident on a camping trip, stage producer Tina Evans starts receiving paranormal signals insinuating that the boy is still alive. Having never seen Danny's deceased body, she plans to exhume his corpse to put her mind to rest. Assisting Tina is a newly acquainted lawyer Elliot Stryker, formerly working for Army Intelligence, with whom she is having an affair. They are soon targeted by assassins hired by Project Pandora and barely escape alive. Tina, strongly convinced that Danny is still alive, sets out to discover what really happened to her son and rescue him. Elliot accompanies her and the pair are chased by other agents instructed to kill them. Tina is telepathically guided by Danny to an underground lab in Sierra Nevada where her son has been subjected to horrific experiments by a top secret governmental organisation.

A fictionalized memoir set in both the United States and France during the 1960s American civil rights movement, ''White Dog'' focuses on the events that occur after Gary and his then-wife Jean Seberg, an actress and an activist, adopt a handsome and clearly well-trained German Shepherd dog who comes back to their home with one of their other dogs. At first, the dog, which they name Batka, is an ideal new member of the family: intelligent, devoted, and quickly befriending the couple's assortment of other animals. To their dismay, they discover that the dog, a former Alabama police dog, was trained to attack black people on sight. Although they are told the dog is too old to be retrained, they take him to a black dog trainer to try. Instead, the man trains the dog to attack white people, including Gary himself. Gary states that he changed the ending of the American version to be more optimistic.

Two sisters, both dedicated to women's civil rights, fight for it in very different ways. The story is interspersed with flashbacks into the sisters' childhood.

Juliane works as a feminist journalist campaigning for a woman's right to abortion while Marianne commits herself to a violent revolutionary terrorist group. The film quickly informs us that Marianne has abandoned her husband and child. Her husband arrives at Juliane's house and states that she must take Jan (their son) because he has to leave the country for work. Juliane is not supportive of her sister's choices because she feels that they are damaging to the women's movement and informs the husband that she does not have time to care for the child. The husband steps out to "go get something", promising to return, but instead takes his life, leaving Jan without a guardian.

Marianne meets with Juliane to discuss her political views with her sister and urge her to join the movement. Juliane informs her of her husband's suicide and of her intention to find a foster home for Jan. Marianne asks her sister to watch over Jan but Juliane replies "You would have me take on the life that you chose to leave", basically stating "so what's not good enough for you is good enough for me". Juliane's refusal does not stop Marianne from continuing in the movement. She is content to commit Jan to foster care because she believes that "any life he has in foster care will be better than the life many children have in third world countries." The sisters' paths continue to cross as Marianne regularly bursts in unannounced to her sister's life. On one occasion, Marianne wakes her and her long-term boyfriend up at 3 a.m., makes coffee for two of her comrades and goes through Juliane's clothes for anything she might like. Soon afterward, we discover that Marianne has been arrested and is being held in a high security prison. Juliane goes to visit her sister. When she arrives she is searched and, after being left in the waiting room, the guard returns and informs her that Marianne refuses to see her.

Juliane goes home agonizing over her inability to communicate with her sister and see how she is doing. Her boyfriend suggests that she writes to her sister telling her how she feels. The film goes into a flashback of their childhood where we see the closeness of the sisters. Juliane mails the letter and soon after is able to visit her sister. They argue often but Juliane continues to visit her sister. Following a bad argument when Marianne slaps her sister, Marianne is moved to a maximum-security prison where the two are separated by a pane of glass and must communicate through an intercom.

Juliane becomes so obsessed with her sister and her problems that her own relationships begin to fall apart. Her boyfriend suggests that they take a vacation. While on vacation they see Marianne on TV but cannot understand what has happened to her because of the language barrier. Juliane runs back to their hotel and calls her parents to find that Marianne has "committed suicide" which Juliane and her father do not accept. Juliane begins an obsessive journey to discover what really happened. This destroys her relationship with her boyfriend of ten years. She ultimately proves to herself that Marianne was murdered but, when she calls the papers with the news, she is informed that her sister's death is "old news" and nobody cares if it was murder or suicide. Juliane is left with the knowledge but cannot convince the papers to defend the name of a dead terrorist.

Later, Juliane is reunited with Jan because someone attempts to murder him by arson when they find out who his mother was. Juliane takes him back home with her after he has undergone extensive reconstructive surgery. He is aloof and has no interest in having a relationship with his aunt. He has nightmares of the fire that nearly killed him.

The film ends with him walking into Juliane's workroom and tearing up the picture of his mother that is on the wall. Juliane tells him "you are wrong, Jan. Your mother was a great woman. I'll tell you about her". Jan says that he wants to know everything and then yells "Start now! Start now!" The film fades out on Juliane's face looking at him.

A hiker finds a dead woman on the North York Moors. The victim had been strangled and is identified as Alice Ruber. Belgian detective Hercule Poirot (Peter Ustinov) is asked to examine a diamond ring belonging to millionaire industrialist Sir Horace Blatt (Colin Blakely). Poirot identifies it as a fake and assures that Sir Horace would have had given a real diamond to his mistress and that Arlena Stuart Marshall (Diana Rigg) had returned the fake, Poirot agrees to meet Sir Horace at an exclusive Adriatic Sea island and confront her. The hotel is the former summer palace of the reigning King of Tyrania, now owned by Daphne Castle (Maggie Smith), who had received the palace "for services rendered".

Sir Horace's former mistress is an actress on holiday with her husband Kenneth (Denis Quilley). Arlena is emotionally abusive to his daughter, Linda (Emily Hone) and flirts with Patrick Redfern (Nicholas Clay) who is married to Christine (Jane Birkin). Patrick is on the island only because Arlena arranged it. Kenneth turns to his old friend, Daphne, who reviles the way that Arlena treats both him and Linda. Arlena has also caused financial trouble for Odell and Myra Gardener (James Mason and Sylvia Miles) by walking out of a major play and refusing another. Writer Rex Brewster (Roddy McDowall) has already spent the royalties advanced to him for a tell-all biography of Arlena, but she refuses to give him a release, angering him. Early on the third morning, Arlena takes a paddle-boat to Ladder Bay. Patrick and Myra go for a boat trip around the island and see a body lying motionless on the beach. Patrick approaches the body and recognizes Arlena, announcing that she has been strangled. Poirot must determine which of his seven fellow guests, Sir Horace—or Daphne—is the murderer.

Daphne had heard Kenneth in his room typing at the time of the murder, and Christine was with Linda at Gull Cove and did not leave until 11:55 for a 12:30 tennis match. Sir Horace argued with Arlena about the diamond at Ladder Bay at 11:30, which is confirmed by his yacht crew and by Daphne. Arlena kept the diamond, promising an explanation that evening, and Poirot finds the fake jewel nearby in a grotto. Patrick left at 11:30 with Myra, seeing Sir Horace's yacht coming, and hearing the noon cannon. Rex met Linda entering Gull Cove at 12:00 and reports that a bottle flung from the top of a cliff nearly hit him. Odell was seen reading by Daphne and her staff. He claims low water pressure hindered his 12:15 wash before tennis, but nobody admits to bathing at that time.

Assembling the suspects together, Poirot accuses Christine and Patrick of the crime: Christine knocked out Arlena and hid her in the nearby grotto, and Patrick strangled the helpless Arlena later. Christine posed as Arlena with makeup to simulate a suntan, Arlena's swimsuit and large red hat, to be purposely mis-identified by Patrick in Myra's presence. But Poirot had smelled Arlena's perfume in the grotto. Christine set Linda's watch twenty minutes fast, suggested a swim cap to muffle the noon cannon, and corrected the watch afterwards. She tossed out the lotion bottle, almost hitting Rex, and bathed off her tan, thus depriving the hotel's poor water system of pressure. Poirot suspects that Patrick switched Sir Horace's jewel with a copy and that Patrick and Christine killed Arlena to protect the theft. The Redferns scoff at the detective's accusations, as he has no real evidence.

On leaving the hotel, Patrick pays by cheque, signing the "R" in "Redfern" in a distinctive way that Poirot recognizes as the same way "Felix Ruber", husband of the Yorkshire moor victim, signed his name. The hiker that found the body had been Christine, establishing Patrick's alibi. Poirot knows photos from the British police will show Patrick and Felix to be the same person. Patrick puts a pipe in his mouth that has never been lit during his stay; Poirot empties the pipe bowl to reveal the genuine diamond. Patrick sucker punches Poirot into unconsciousness. The closing scene shows Daphne feeding the now conscious Poirot and informing him that the king is awarding him the Order of St Goodwin The Inquisitive, First Class, as Kenneth and Linda look on smiling. Meanwhile, several members of Daphne's staff are shown holding the Redferns prisoner on the island's shuttle boat on the way to the mainland while Blatt, Brewster, and the Gardners gleefully taunt the murderous couple with a champagne toast from Blatt's yacht.

The setting of the story is the imaginary village of Quiquendone in West Flanders (now part of Belgium) whose citizens are described as "well-to-do folks, wise, prudent, sociable, with even tempers, hospitable, perhaps a bit heavy in conversation as in mind"; and where even "the dogs don't bite, and the cats don't scratch". Van Tricasse, the town's mayor, claims that "the man who dies without ever having decided upon anything in his life has very nearly attained to perfection."

A prosperous scientist Dr. Ox comes to the authorities and offers to build a novel gas lighting system, at no cost to the town. The offer is gladly accepted. Dr. Ox and his assistant Gédéon Ygène (whose surnames happen to form the word ''oxygène'', "oxygen") propose to use electrolysis to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen, and pump the two gases through separate pipes to the city.

The doctor's secret plan is however to conduct a large scale experiment on the effect of oxygen on plants, animals and humans, and so he pumps an excess of the invisible and odorless gas through all lamps. The enriched air has remarkable effects on the town. It accelerates the growth of plants, and causes excitement and aggressiveness in animals and humans.

Eventually the excited citizens of Quiquendone decide to go to war against the neighboring village of Virgamen, to avenge an old offense: in 1195, a cow belonging to that town had dared to step into a Quiquendonian field and eat some mouthfuls of their grass. However, as the army was on the way to battle, an accident at Dr. Ox's plant causes oxygen and hydrogen to mix, producing a huge explosion that destroys the plant.

The story ends with the town back to its traditional slow and quiet way of life. Dr. Ox and his assistant, who were not at the plant when the accident happened, disappeared without trace.

In a prologue sequence, fictitious executive producer of Paramount Pictures Jack E. Mulcher introduces the film, explaining that it has no story and no plot. The film simply shows a few weeks in the life of a person Mulcher calls "a real nut." Mulcher breaks into hysterical laughter as the story begins.

Stanley the hotel bellhop finds himself in one ridiculous situation after another (by a series of blackout gags) while working at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida. Stanley does not speak until the last scene of the film, as he is always interrupted or silenced by another character.

Vignettes and gags

• Stanley delivers an entire car engine to Room 664 after being told to "bring up everything out of the trunk."
• The bellhops stand in a line and trip over each other when Bob the Bell Captain points at them from afar to get their attention.
• Mr. Carter stays in Room 625 while Miss Winkley stays in Room 626. Stanley finds Miss Winkley's brassiere in Mr. Carter's luggage and leaves without hanging any of his clothes up.
• Mrs. Hartung loses a large amount of weight from extreme dieting, but when Stanley gives her a box of chocolates, she gains all of the weight back.
• Stanley randomly assigns the keys for all the suites, locking the guests out of their rooms.
• Bob sends Stanley to fill the hotel's empty auditorium with chairs. To Bob's shock, Stanley finishes in record time.
• Jerry Lewis (as himself) arrives at the hotel accompanied by an entourage. The other bellboys comment on Stanley's resemblance to Lewis.
• Stanley delivers a note to Milton Berle, who mistakes Stanley for Jerry Lewis. Lewis then mistakes Berle for a bellboy who looks identical to Berle.
• Stanley loses control over the hotel guests' dogs and they escape into the city streets. He visits the dog track, steals the racing dogs, and takes them back to the hotel.
• Stan Laurel attempts to strike up a conversation with Stanley to no avail.
• Bob puts Stanley in charge of the reception desk, and Stanley destroys the phones when they will not stop ringing.
• After the other bellboys accost a group of models staying at the hotel, Stanley is the only one allowed to handle the models' belongings.
• Stanley is assaulted by a middle-aged couple after they drag him into one of their arguments.
• Mr. Novak gives a lecture about being professionally dressed as he wears casual beach attire.
• A packed dining room forces Stanley to sit next to a gangster boss giving conflicting orders to his subordinates.
• An exhausted woman named Dottie falls asleep on Stanley's shoulder as he takes a break.
• Mr. Novak forbids his staff from going to a burlesque club. Bob is then shown drunk at the club but leaves before the main performer arrives.
• Stanley places a covering on a sleeping man's face to prevent sunburn, but the mesh pattern gives him an uneven tan.
• Stanley attempts to eat lunch by himself but is interrupted by hotel guests ogling at him from behind a window.
• Stanley fails to listen to Bob's instructions and hauls a heavy steamer trunk across the hotel lobby instead of the hat box that Bob wanted.
• A man eats an invisible apple and leaves some for Stanley to finish.
• Stanley overhears a telephone conversation in which a female voice says she that wants to marry someone who doesn't love her for her fortune but finds that the voice belongs to Stan Laurel.
• Stanley refuses to let go of a suitcase, and its owner drags Stanley through the hotel lobby and into a taxi before driving away.
• Newlyweds Mr. and Mrs. Manville wait in the lobby for their suite to be ready. Mr. Manville slips and injures his back as Stanley waxes the floor.
• Stanley is sent to acquire a pickup order from Mr. Weal, but the elevator door fails to open.
• Passing through the theater, Stanley picks up a drum mallet and uses it to conduct an imaginary orchestra. An imaginary audience gives him a round of applause.
• A malfunctioning trouser press leaves a hotel guest's pants as stiff as cardboard.
• Stanley disfigures a bust after failing to read a "wet paint" sign.
• At a golf tournament, the flashing bulb of Stanley's camera costs Cary Middlecoff the win and $25,000.
• At 3:30 a.m., Stanley goes outside to take a photo of the full moon, but the moon disappears and the night becomes daytime.
• After Stanley is sent to retrieve a briefcase from the cockpit of an airplane at the airport, he commandeers an airliner back to the hotel.
• Mr. Novak falsely accuses Stanley of being the organizer of an upcoming labor strike. Stanley speaks for the first time in the film, answering the question as to why he never talks: "Because no one ever asked me."

A voiceover narration states that while the film had no plot, it did have a moral: "You'll never know the next guy's story...unless you ask."

The book begins with Slim sneaking up on, and killing, a "goblin or beast" on the fair grounds of a local carnival. Goblins are monsters which can shape shift between human and bestial forms, genetically engineered super-predators which desire bloodshed and human misery. Created in an ancient, technologically superior era of human civilization, they exist to torment and ultimately murder humans. They can only be seen by a few people, including Slim himself, Rya Raines (his wife), and Joel Tuck (Slim's friend and fellow carnie). These goblins are superhuman and extremely dangerous and genocidal, at least as intelligent as us, and can mimic human behavior. While they appear and act as a normal person would, they experience only negative emotions like fear and hate. Their only pleasure is in torturing and murdering humans.

Slim's claim to fame is his "Twilight Eyes", which give him the ability to receive psychic, or prophetic, premonitions of the future. They also allow him to see through the human seeming disguise of the goblins. These eyes are named what they are because they are colored purple like the skyline at dusk.

After this encounter, Slim proceeds to join the carnival (one of many he has drifted from) as a way to support himself while killing goblins and hiding from his murderous past (in which he killed an uncle by marriage that was a goblin responsible for the deaths of several family members). One of the prominent members of the "carnies" is a young woman named Rya Raines, who quickly becomes his lover and confidant. As their relationship matures, Slim has several more run-ins with the goblins which leads to the revelation that his friend Joel, and even Rya herself, can see the goblins too, and that each of them in their own way has suffered terribly from the goblins' actions in their past. It is soon revealed that Rya had long before made a pact with the goblins to report to them whenever she found someone who could see through their disguise in exchange for safety from their predations. She wants him to make the same pact with them, but he refuses. This reality creates a gulf between her and Slim that comes to bloodshed between them. She regrets this later and after reconciling with Slim she becomes his wife. They decide to go on a mission to destroy any and all of the creatures they possibly can.

Together they set out on a personal mission to wage a secret war against the monsters in a small mining town named Yontsdown, Pennsylvania, the seeming center of their cruel and brutal version of civilization. There they would discover and face the ultimate, diabolical plans the goblins had for the world and all of mankind.

When a pair of renowned psychologists are brutally murdered from unexpected causes, Laura McCaffrey is called to assist in the case. Meeting with Dan Haldane, a police lieutenant, she is told that one of the victims was her divorced spouse, Dylan, who kidnapped their only daughter six years ago. While inside the crime scene, police notify Lieutenant Haldane of a naked young girl wandering the streets of Los Angeles in a daze. It turns out that the girl was Melanie McCaffrey, Laura's daughter. She was found in a catatonic, autistic state, and is sent to the hospital. It soon becomes apparent that Dylan was using his only child in a series of experiments that combined science and the occult. Unfortunately, it has resulted in unintended and deadly consequences.

Lasting about 30 minutes and subtitled "A dance of death in eight scenes," ''The Green Table'' is a commentary on the futility of war and the horrors it causes. It opens with a group of diplomats (the ''Gentlemen in Black'', portrayed by the other characters in the piece, with the exception of Death) having a discussion around a rectangular table covered with a green cloth. They end up pulling guns from their pockets and shooting in the air, thus symbolizing the declaration of war.
The next six scenes portray different aspects of wartime: the separation from loved ones in ''The Farewells'', war itself in ''The Battle'' and ''The Partisan'', loneliness and misery in ''The Refugees'', the emotional void and the atmosphere of forced entertainment in ''The Brothel'' and, finally, the psychologically beaten and wounded survivors in ''The Aftermath.'' The ballet then ends as it began, with the "Gentlemen in Black" around the green table.

Throughout these episodes the figure of Death is triumphant, portrayed as a skeleton moving in a forceful and robot-like way, relentlessly claiming its victims. The dance ends with a repeat of the opening scene, a device the choreographer uses to show his mistrust in the talks of the diplomats; completely indifferent to the ravages of war, they continue their hypocritical negotiations.

A group of people are brought together by their different and equally strange maladies. There is Dominick who suffers from somnambulism, Ginger has unexplained lapses into a fugue state, Father Brendan loses his faith and later gains a miraculous 'gift', and Ernie who suffers from nyctophobia.

Dominick receives Polaroids that lead him to the Tranquility Motel, situated in the middle of the Nevada 'high-desert', thirty miles west of Elko. Together with Ned and Sandy, who run the restaurant next door to the motel, they discover that their true memories from the summer of the previous year may have been suppressed.

Later Ginger, Jorja, and the other people who stayed at the Tranquility Motel are contacted and invited to join the group. Ginger shares that their memories are suppressed by Azrael Blocks - a means of brainwashing induced through drugs and hypnosis. She received hypnosis as a treatment to uncover a cause of her malady.

The Tranquility 'community' are unaware that those behind the suppression are watching them. They are joined by Jack Twist (who was led to the Tranquility Motel by a series of postcards placed there by an insider). The group finally comes up with a strategy to uncover the government secret that has been hidden at the Thunder Hill Depository in the hills.

Travis Cornell, a former Delta Force operator, feels that his life has become pointless, and is exploring a canyon near his home when he encounters two genetically engineered creatures that have escaped from a top-secret government laboratory. One, a Golden Retriever with enhanced intelligence, befriends Travis; the other, a creature known as the Outsider, appears to be trying to kill the dog. After eluding the Outsider, Travis takes the dog home. On discovering the dog's exceptional intelligence, he names him Einstein.

Later, he and Einstein find and rescue Nora Devon in a park, who was being pestered by a dangerous man, Arthur Streck. Together they form a trio.

Travis, Nora, and Einstein are soon on the run not only from the Outsider, but from federal agents, determined to track down the laboratory escapees, and Vince Nasco, a ruthless professional assassin, hired by Soviets to kill several human targets who carried knowledge of how to stop the Outsider, in order to further the destruction of the Outsider. He wants the dog to trade for a great sum of cash, alone, without any knowledge from the Soviets or others.

The protagonist of the story is a woman who is in the process of divorcing her abusive husband Eric, an intense scientist at a bio-research company, when he is killed in a traffic accident.

As it turns out, the husband was doing research into immortality, due to an obsession with cheating death stemming from sexual abuse he suffered as a child and the fear that his abuser is waiting for him in Hell. In fact, he experimented on himself using an untested serum designed to grant incredible regenerative abilities.

The husband wakes up in the morgue, but his "immortality" turns out to be flawed; it cannot properly repair brain damage, as the "mind" is made of electrical signals and not just flesh and protein. The trauma from the traffic accident has resulted in him suffering constant pain and a lack of mental clarity. The husband, now an unstoppable killing machine, proceeds to stalk his wife across the country while slowly descending into madness and the return from death causing him to mutate at a rapid pace.

Rachael and her boyfriend Ben Shadway track the reanimated Eric to his secret country hideaway in the hope of killing him before he can regenerate to a level where he would be able to find and kill Rachael. However, Eric outwits them and manages to hide in the trunk of Rachael's car after overhearing her and Ben in conversation discussing their plan to split up and meet in Las Vegas.

As Rachael Leben unwittingly transports Eric toward Las Vegas, she stops off along the way and witnesses Eric emerge from the trunk of her car, now hideously transformed into some kind of indescribable mutant and rapidly mutating. A chase ensues into the desert, but Rachael manages to escape from Eric's clutches while he's feeding on a den of rattlesnakes and finds her way back to her car, setting off again toward Vegas. Some time later Eric kills and eats the driver of a car then rapes, kills, and devours the female passenger before he too sets off to Vegas. Ben Shadway is also being chased by federal agent Anson Sharp, who harbours a 20-year-old grudge against Shadway after the two served in Vietnam together and Shadway exposed Sharp's corruption and illegal smuggling activities, culminating in Sharp being dishonourably discharged from the US army. Partners in Eric Leben's bio-research company are also on the tail of Shadway and Rachael Leben to try to prevent them from exposing the top-secret project that the company was working on to the media but are stopped by Sharp's forces. Sharp seeks to kill them both, to keep Project Wildcard secret and get revenge on Ben.

After a lengthy pursuit across Nevada to Las Vegas, the couple have their final confrontation with Eric at Ben's hotel. Eric's mutation finally stabilizes into a seemingly unstoppable and unrecognizable insectoid form incapable of being slain by the firearms they have. Thinking quickly they pour gasoline on Eric and set him on fire. Consumed by fire, the accelerated metabolism in Eric's mutated body devours itself in an attempt to regenerate and mutate further, reducing his body to ooze and finally killing the genetic abomination but not before Eric's shattered consciousness finally accepts death. Sharp attempts to kill them but one of his own men who realizes how insane Sharp had become shoots Sharp in the head and kills him. With both their enemies dead, Rachael and Ben finally prepare to get married as well as break the story to the press.

Single parent Christine Scavello and her young son Joey are confronted in a mall parking lot by a madwoman who claims that Joey is the Antichrist. After a distressing attack on the family home results in her dog being decapitated, Christine enlists the help of private detective Charlie Harrison. Harrison traces a van that is following Christine back to one Grace Spivey—a charismatic elderly woman who is the leader of a fanatical religious cult called The Servants Of Twilight.

Christine is provided with bodyguards for her protection; however, it is not long before one of them is killed in an attack by cult members. Christine, Charlie, Joey, and the new dog Chewbacca begin a tiresome cross country journey to escape the deluded members of "The Twilight". It seems that no matter how far they travel or where they go, Spivey's people find them. It is revealed that this is due to Spivey being a psychic who can see into the future, a gift that also plagues her with many sleepless nights.

After several more attacks (including a car bomb and an arson attack) the group tries to escape the growing threat of The Twilight by retreating to Charlie's lodge in the mountains. Here, Charlie finds himself falling in love with Christine, and the two end up sleeping together.

Spivey is certain that Joey is the Antichrist, and continually has visions of the apocalypse where the child is the cause. Rather than considering herself insane or unjust, Spivey sees her need to kill the boy (as well as anyone that may get in her way) as a service to mankind. Her faith is so strong that she is able to enlist the following of many key members of the community, including police officers and a man named Kyle Barlow - a sociopath Spivey had saved from a life of crime.

The Servants of Twilight eventually track the group to Charlie's mountain lodge. After a chase and more gun fights with heavily armed cult members in a treacherous blizzard, the family finds themselves in a cave in the side of a mountain. They are exhausted, Charlie has suffered a gunshot wound to the shoulder and Joey develops a serious illness, including hives to the face and a very pale complexion, both caused by exposure to the extreme cold.

Kyle Barlow knows he must finish the job, but finds he does not have the ability to kill a child, even if Grace believed him to be the Antichrist.

The story reaches its climax inside the cave when Spivey and her last standing helper, Kyle Barlow, begin their descent to kill the child and stop the supposed rise of the Antichrist. Christine has no energy left to fight, and Charlie is barely conscious from his gunshot wound. It all looks very bleak as Grace Spivey raises a gun to Joey's head. Just before she pulls the trigger, however, Spivey is attacked by a barrage of bats who attack her and leave her for dead. The strange behavior of the bats causes Christine to wonder if her son could have caused the attack.

The book closes with the end of the ordeal and with Christine and Charlie in a stable relationship. Charlie’s curiosity about Joey grows, as the boy's illness cleared up very quickly and mysteriously. The story ends with Charlie trying to find evidence in the buried remains of the family's original dog. The grave does not hold the remains of Christine's dog but a dog of a different breed, which Charlie finds humorous and concludes that Joey could not be the Antichrist.

Janice Capshaw, a nighttime jogger, is pursued and killed by a pack of mysterious, nightmarish beasts while she is jogging along the beach of her northern California home town, Moonlight Cove. Sam Booker, an undercover FBI agent, arrives in Moonlight Cove to investigate the recent rash of suspicious deaths, including that of Janice Capshaw. Tessa Jane Lockland, sister of Janice Capshaw, also arrives in Moonlight Cove, to investigate her sister's unexplained death.

Chrissie Foster, an eleven-year-old girl who lives on a farm north of town, accidentally witnesses her parents in a physically altered state - part human and part beast - and is forced to flee for her life. She heads towards town to seek help.

Sam, Tessa, and Chrissie are all hunted, albeit separately, by the mysterious beasts. Sam and Tessa meet by chance in a laundromat where they have both retreated after being stalked by the beasts. Mistrustful of one another at first, they realize that in order to survive they must work together.

Sam discovers that Thomas Shaddack, a brilliant computer scientist, is ''converting'' the citizens of Moonlight Cove into something unexplained. Sam also learns that the local police are aiding Shaddack in the conversions and that their state-of-the-art computer system, given to them by Shaddack’s company, is unnecessarily sophisticated for the needs of a small town police force.

Because of a letter sent to the FBI by Moonlight Cove resident, Harry Talbot, offering information about the recent disturbing events, Sam and Tessa decide to go to Harry at his place of residence. Harry is a Vietnam vet, who was badly injured in the war and now uses a wheelchair. He has not yet been ‘converted’. Because he spends most of his time watching the people of Moonlight Cove through his telescope, Harry has learned a great deal about what is going on and also learns that the local police are involved.

Chrissie also ends up at Harry Talbot’s, after her attempt to approach the local church ends with her having to evade the beasts again, and she makes the reasoned guess that Harry may be a safe person to approach.

Together, the four protagonists are able to piece together more fully the story behind the happenings of Moonlight Cove. Thomas Shaddack has created a means whereby a person can be converted into a super-human - no longer susceptible to illness, injury, fatigue, or emotion. But the conversion has an unforeseen side-effect. Stripped of the capacity to feel human emotion, life becomes intolerably meaningless, and most of the newly converted townspeople regress irresistibly into a beast state, concerned only with hunting, killing and consuming their prey.

As events unfold, Shaddack descends further into madness. He refuses to acknowledge that his plans have gone terribly wrong and that the conversions should be stopped. Seeing that nothing can stop the town's descent into chaos, the Chief of Police, Loman Watkins, vows to kill Shaddack, which will instantly kill every converted person in the community. As part of the 'conversions', Shaddack has placed a microchip inside each person that will kill them along with Shaddack if his heart ceases to beat.

The final showdown takes place at the local high school, after Sam heads there to use a school computer terminal to get a warning to the outside world and request assistance. Shaddack is killed in the confrontation, which kills most of the populace with him. Sam, Tessa, and Chrissie survive and the FBI arrive to clean up the mess.

Recently retired teacher Jim Ironheart (aptly named) risks his life to save lives. In Portland he saves a young boy from an oblivious drunk driver in a van. In Boston he rescues a child from an underground explosion. In Houston he disarms a man who was trying to shoot his own wife – and he is not just lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. He gets “inspirations” and knows he must hurry to wherever prompted. He rushes off to hail a cab or catch a plane, dropping whatever he's doing at the moment, much to the surprise of those around him. He has no idea where these visions come from or why, but he believes that he must be some sort of God-sent guardian angel with a heavenly gift.

Reporter Holly Thorne was in Portland to write a less than exciting piece on a school teacher who has recently published a book of poetry full of poems which Holly finds are pure transcendental garbage – but such is Holly's lot in life. She is a fine writer but is failing at her job because she is filled with too much integrity and compassion to be a good reporter. As she is leaving she witnesses Jim rescuing the child from the drunk driver and felt there was something fishy in Jim's explanations of how he started running for the child before seeing or hearing the van coming. She discovers there have been 12 last-minute rescues reported over the last three months in other newspapers by a mysterious Good Samaritan named Jim with blue eyes.

Holly is intrigued by Jim and his intense but cold blue eyes – eyes which burn with a passionate, cold fire, hence the novel's title.

Holly decides to follow this humble yet elusive savior on his next “mission.” Unbeknownst to Jim, she rapidly follows him to the airport and boards a United Airlines DC-10 plane bound for Chicago. She decides to confront him and learns about Jim's strange but extraordinary powers. Jim tells her that he has been sent by God to save a mother and a child on the plane – he does not know why God has chosen these two in particular, but he does know that they must change seats or they will die in the horrific plane crash about which he has been sent a vision. Holly is struck by Jim's belief that he has some magical power, sent by God no less.

Holly takes a more cynical view on things and decidedly argues how ridiculous such thoughts are. She questions why “God” would choose to let these two people live, and allow 151 other passengers to die, as Jim has foreseen. Surely there are much more worthy people aboard, and why would God even have the plane crash at all? Holly presses Jim to do much more than just tell the couple to move, but that he should warn the pilot and maybe save everyone aboard. Jim initially refuses, and decidedly refuses to question his visions. He tells Holly simply that God sends him, and he only follows the instructions – to do anything beyond that would be to somehow go outside God's will. Who else, he asks, could be sending him visions to save lives precisely at the right time? Holly reasons with him, and convinces him that there is no good reason for Jim (or God) to let anyone die needlessly. The plane, however, is damaged beyond saving and still crashes, but the number of fatalities reduces from 151 to 47.

After the crash, Holly manages to gain Jim's confidence. They are attracted to each other, but Holly cannot help but be curious about Jim's mysterious visions. She decides to discover exactly how, why, and who, just as any reporter would naturally want to know. Yet the more she pries, the stranger things get. Nearly all Jim's childhood memories are completely missing, except that he knows his parents died when he was 9 at his grandparents’ ranch. He only knows very vague details about everything from his childhood, and gets angry when Holly questions him. She begins to see that his strange abilities are linked to his childhood and lack of memories from then. She hears him whisper in his sleep continuously for several nights, “There is an Enemy. It is coming. It’ll kill us all. It is relentless.” She and Jim start to have identical terrifying nightmares surrounding the old mill from his grandparents’ ranch, and during one of these “nightmares” they are both completely conscious and experience violence while fighting some eerie force coming at them from the walls and ceiling – needless to say, they are convinced the force behind it all is definitely not God, nor is it benign.

Holly unquestionably decides they must go back to the ranch to find the source of everything, though she is fearful of what they will find. Jim is at first reluctant, but as they near the ranch, he becomes more and more convinced that the being is something wholly great and powerful – something not of this world.

Once inside the windmill's creepy tower room, the alien reveals itself from the adjacent pond, at first through sounds analogous to church bells and then an entrancing display of dancing colors and exploding lights. The being then starts to magically use a pen and paper to make words appear, and later manifests as a voice. It calls itself THE FRIEND who has come to them from ANOTHER WORLD. When asked why, it says, “TO OBSERVE, TO STUDY, TO HELP MANKIND.” Holly asks why, then, it attacked them the previous night, to which THE FRIEND replies that that was the work of its other half: THE ENEMY. When asked about the bells and lights, it says that it does that “FOR DRAMA?” Holly asks why the certain individuals are chosen over others, and THE FRIEND gives replies that one will cure all cancers, one will become a great president, one will become a great spiritual leader, et cetera. While Jim is wholly enthusiastic and pleased, Holly cannot believe the answers, for it does not make any logical sense and the answers seem trite, fantastical and childish to her.

Holly questions THE FRIEND far and deep about Jim while he is out of the room. All the answers continue to be too predictable to believe, and it finally answers her nagging with threats and then, most shockingly, with the words “I,” “MY,” and, “ME.” At that moment, it is discovered that Jim is actually himself the source of both THE FRIEND and THE ENEMY, that it is he who is causing the nightmares and not God or some alien force. After Jim's parents died, the 9 year old became obsessed with a book about an alien in a pond next to a windmill – he became so obsessed that the child never grew up until one day an adult-in-body Jim ran away and started a presumably normal life. Holly helps Jim deal with his past and the two begin a new life together.

Harry Lyon is a cop who embraces tradition and order. His partner, Connie Gulliver, is Harry's exact opposite. Harry does not like the messiness of her desk, her lack of social polish or her sometimes casual attitude towards the law. Connie often urges him to surrender to the chaos of life that is the 1990s. "Look, Harry, it's the Age of Chaos," she tells him. "Get with the times." And when Harry and Connie have to take out a hopped-up gunman in a restaurant, the chase and shootout swiftly degenerate into a surreal nightmare that seems to justify Connie's view of the modern world. Shortly after, Harry encounters a filthy, rag-clad denizen of the streets, who says ominously, "Ticktock, ticktock. You'll be dead in sixteen hours." Struggling to regain the orderly life he cherishes, Harry is trapped in an undertow of terror and violence. For reasons he does not understand, someone is after him, Connie Gulliver and the people he loves.

The story begins with a thirty-two-year-old Los Angeles police officer named Jack McGarvey. Jack is caught in a shootout at a gas station. He kills the gunman but is badly injured and spends months recovering in a hospital. When Jack returns home, the McGarveys receive a letter stating that Jack has inherited the Quartermass Ranch in Eagles Roost, Montana from his late partner's father, Eduardo Fernandez.

While Jack was recovering from his injuries, Eduardo was experiencing strange events in Montana. He sees glowing lights in the trees and hears strange sounds. One night he discovers a massive black circle and suspects it is a portal opened by an alien. Soon after, he notices wild raccoons watching him and intruding in his house. The raccoons all perish strangely, and Eduardo contacts the local veterinarian, Travis Potter. The veterinarian performs an autopsy which does not reveal anything conclusive as to the cause of death. Squirrels and birds now spy on him. Although frightened, Eduardo eventually challenges the traveler to come to him in its true form instead of using animals. One night he hears a shambling on his porch. With shotgun in hand, he opens the door and sees the traveler piggybacking on his late wife's corpse, taken from the family plot on the ranch. Travis Potter discovers Eduardo's body and an autopsy determines he suffered a heart attack.

Jack moves into Eduardo's ranch with his wife, Heather, and son, Toby. They are looking forward to a quiet life in Montana, away from big city crime and a safe place for Toby to attend school. The family adopts a golden retriever named Falstaff, who adores Toby.

The McGarveys soon experience strange things. Both Travis Potter and attorney Paul Youngblood hint that something unusual may have occurred just before Eduardo's death. All three McGarveys have similar recurring dreams of an entity offering promises of happiness if they would let it into their minds, but each senses the promises are false and vehemently refuses the offer. Heather thinks of it as the Giver. The Giver hypnotizes Toby through electronic devices and attempts to communicate with Jack through Toby. The family eventually reveals to one another the similarity of their dreams and different baffling events.

The Giver becomes impatient and bolder, having never previously met resistance with any species. It attempts to trap the family during a blizzard by disabling their vehicles and phone lines. Jack leaves on foot to ask a neighbor to drive his wife and son away from the house, while Heather and Toby remain at the house armed with gasoline cans and guns. Although they barricaded the house, the Giver is able to break in. It appears in two separate forms, each riding a corpse from the ranch's family plot. Heather discovers that bullets do not damage the Giver riding Eduardo's corpse, so she sets the house on fire, hoping the flames will destroy the creature. She shoots at the second corpse, damaging it, and realizes the Givers cannot move easily without their mounts. The first Giver has walked its corpse through the fire, and although it continues to pursue them, Heather sees that the fire has consumed part of it, allowing her some hope. Toby traps the Giver in his mind by tricking it into thinking he accepts its offer, while actually immobilizing the Giver and allowing him, his mother, and Falstaff to escape the house.

Jack is picked up by a snowplow driver, Harlan Moffit, and sees the house on fire when they pull in the driveway. Heather and Toby are carrying gas cans up the back stairs, and Harlan assists the family when Jack tells him of an alien invasion. Toby states that he cannot continue to hold the Giver captive for long, and that the Giver is actually in the caretaker's house. They carry the gasoline cans to the caretaker's house and see a third entity, riding another corpse, held immobile by Toby's imagination. The main body of the Giver is further back in the house and is a massive being which sprouted off the three smaller extensions of itself. Toby continues to hold the being's will in place, and the adults pour gasoline and set the building on fire.

After the authorities have taken everyone's statement, Toby tells his father that, at the very end, the Giver sprouted off a few small worms that tried to escape by boring into the wood. He is not sure if any of them survived, and Jack says that they will leave that to the scientists and authorities to handle. A few weeks later, the family moves back to Los Angeles.

Spencer Grant is a man with a tainted, yet shadowy past with a lovable dog, Rocky, who together embark on a quest to find a life in a woman named Valerie Keene, whom he meets in a nightclub. Grant and his dog come back to the club later to find out that the woman is late for work.

When Grant attempts to find her at her home, a SWAT-like team bombards the place, sending Grant into confusion. Grant is now determined to find Valerie.

He searches for her in Las Vegas and is pursued by a secret government agency who are also looking for Valerie. He gets caught in a storm in the Nevada desert and is injured. He is rescued by Valerie and she helps Spencer's injuries.

Meanwhile, Roy Miro, a high-ranking official in the agency, is the main antagonist who has been looking for Valerie for months. He and the agency use a satellite to find Spencer and Valerie's location in the desert. Roy and some agents get into a helicopter and corner them into a shopping center.

Spencer and Valerie take hostage a helicopter and fly out of Nevada to Colorado to visit the house Spencer had his childhood in. When Spencer was 14 years old he heard a noise in the night and went out to the barn in the backyard to investigate. Inside the barn he found his father torturing a woman and Spencer found a gun but only wounds his father. His father was later sent to a mental hospital. Roy takes Spencer's father out of the hospital and flies to the Colorado house to confront Spencer and Valerie.

Spencer's father shoots Roy in the barn, which only paralyzes Roy. Spencer then fatally shoots his father while he and Valerie leave the barn. They use a satellite heat beam to disable the other agents while leaving the house and starting a new life together helping a resistance group against the government agency.

Category:Dystopian novels Category:Novels by Dean Koontz Category:1994 American novels Category:1994 science fiction novels Category:Alfred A. Knopf books Category:Books with cover art by Chip Kidd

Chyna Shepherd is a college student visiting the family of her friend, Laura Templeton, for a long weekend. Chyna, who was abused and neglected by her mother as a child, finds that the Templeton house provides something she has yearned for: acceptance. This comes to a violent end when serial killer Edgler Vess breaks into the house in the night and methodically kills all of the occupants except Laura and Chyna. After discovering that Laura has been tied up and raped, Chyna leaves, promising to return. Chyna hears Laura screaming and runs upstairs, intending to attack Vess with a knife. Before she can intervene, Vess kills Laura and takes her to his motor home. Unaware Laura is dead, Chyna sneaks aboard the motor home and finds her friend's corpse. Before she can escape, Vess drives away.

Chyna hides in a back room, planning to escape at the earliest opportunity. When Vess stops at a gas station, she sneaks out of the motor home and looks for a payphone. Chyna secretly watches Vess boast to the gas station clerks that he is holding a young girl, Ariel, prisoner in his basement, before he kills them and drives away. She feels compelled to follow Vess and help free Ariel, taking a clerk's car. Chyna passes Vess while traveling through a state park and intentionally crashes her car into a redwood tree. While Vess gets out to investigate, Chyna sneaks on board the motor home. However, unbeknownst to Chyna, Vess glimpses her. Fascinated, he decides not to kill her immediately, wanting to see what she will do. Eventually, they arrive at Vess's remote house.

Vess watches as Chyna leaves the motor home. She enters the house to find a catatonic Ariel locked in a room in the basement. Before she can free Ariel, Vess attacks Chyna in the kitchen, punching her unconscious before binding her with a chain. He taunts her for a while, revealing details about his past crimes. Obsessed with the "intensity" of any particular experience, sensory and existential, Vess styles himself as a "homicidal adventurer" and has killed continually since childhood. He offers to allow Chyna to live if she aids him in tormenting Ariel out of her catatonia. After Vess leaves for work, Chyna manages to break away from the table to which she is chained and slam her chair into a wall. She releases Ariel from her prison.

Vess has trained a pack of deadly Dobermann pinschers to guard his property and kill anyone attempting to get in or out. Dressed in Vess's dog-training clothing, Chyna sprays ammonia on the dogs and makes it to the motor home with Ariel. Soon after, Chyna sees a police car on the road and pulls over to signal it, only to discover that the driver is Vess, the local sheriff. In the ensuing showdown, Chyna rams his police car, but he rolls clear and uses a shotgun to disable the motor home, causing it to tip over. Chyna and Ariel escape the wreck, but Vess catches up to them and knocks Chyna to the ground while Ariel continues on, distracting Vess long enough for Chyna to pull a lighter from her pocket. She uses it to ignite Vess's gasoline-soaked boot. She rolls away to safety just before the pool of gas surrounding Vess ignites. After catching up to Ariel, she turns and watches as Vess burns to death. A passing motorist stops to help them. Some months later, Chyna adopts Ariel and meets a nice man.

The story is formatted as a test of sorts, worth 3/4 of some final grade. The action is interrupted at points with test questions, some of which do not make sense. Millions of years ago, "The Mad One", also known as Ialdabaoth or God, took over the earth in a sort of cosmic lawsuit. The original creators left behind one last member of their race, Dira, to tell humans the truth about their god, but the dominant traditions throughout the ages denounce Dira as evil. Now, the world is coming to an end and Nathan Stack, the latest incarnation of a long line of humans going back to Lilith’s husband, is revived by Snake (aka Dira) after spending 250 thousand years in an underground crypt to make the journey to the mountain where God lives. He is the only human capable of confronting him and putting the Earth out of its misery through the summoning of what is referred to as the Deathbird. The story also contains a few side plots, presumably about Nathan Stack or previous reincarnations of him. These stories tell of people that have had to make difficult decisions, allowing loved ones to die. In one such story, his mother is partially paralyzed and suffering from cancer which will eventually, slowly and painfully, travel to her heart. She eventually convinces him to inject her with a lethal substance in a hypodermic needle, killing her and ending her pain. This situation is repeated at the end of the story, where Nathan Stack must "use the needle" to summon the Deathbird and end the pain of the planet.

The novella was based on a short story by an acquaintance of Balzac, Albéric Second, as Tim Farrant has demonstrated. Its original title was to have been "Le Parasite". Sylvain Pons, a musician in a Parisian boulevard orchestra, has a close friend in another musician from the orchestra, the German pianist Wilhelm Schmucke. They lodge with Mme Cibot but Pons – unlike Schmucke – has two failings: his passion (which is almost a mania) for collecting works of art and his passion for good food. Schmucke, on the other hand, has only one passion, his affection for Pons. Pons, being a gourmet, much enjoys dining regularly with his wealthy lawyer cousins M. and Mme Camusot de Marville, for their food is more interesting than Mme Cibot's and full of gastronomic surprises. To remain on good terms with the Camusots and to repay their favour, he tries to find a bridegroom for their unappealing only child Cécile. When this ill-considered marriage project falls through, Pons is banished from the house.

The novella becomes a novel as Mme Camusot learns of the value of Pons's art collection and strives to obtain possession of it as the basis of a dowry for her daughter. In this new development of the plot a bitter struggle ensues between various vulture-like figures, all of whom are keen to lay their hands on the collection: Rémonencq, Élie Magus, Mme Camusot – and Mme Cibot. Betraying his client Mme Cibot's interests, the unsavoury barrister Fraisier acts for the Camusots. Mme Cibot sells Rémonencq eight of Pons's choicest paintings, deceitfully stating in the receipt that they are works of lesser value. She also steals one for herself.

Horrified to discover his betrayal by Mme Cibot and the plots that are raging around him, Pons dies, bequeathing all his worldly possessions to Schmucke. The latter is browbeaten out of them by Fraisier. He in turn dies a broken-hearted man, for in Pons he has lost all that he valued in the world. The art collection comes to the Camusot de Marville family and the vultures profit from their ill-gotten gains.

After a kung-fu master is killed by his students and his wife forced into suicide, their son (Lao Chung) must run for his life. Eventually, Lao discovers a hermit who has history in Shaolin and drunken kung-fu and is taught kung-fu. To avenge his parents, Lao kidnaps the daughter of one of the men who betrayed his father in hope of luring him out. Through the process of defeating his minions Lao befriends a one-handed fighter out for similar revenge, and the daughter falls in love with Lao. Lao and the one-handed man team-up in a final battle to the death. When the fight is over the daughter commits suicide in grievance of her father's past deeds, death & Lao's role in them both.

The film follows the perils of nightclub singer Eddie Livingston (Rex Marlow), as he pursues press agent Alison Edwards (Downe). Livingston's comic foil Tommy Sweetwood is an unsuccessful comedian who manages to offend his entire audience in one way or another with his brash, insensitive humor. Alison likes Eddie enough, but she hides a dark secret; she is a nudist. The two go back and forth playing cat and mouse as Eddie sings a series of Bobby Vinton-ish ballads like "Good Things Happen When I'm with You".

One day, Tommy follows Alison on one of her clandestine weekend getaways and discovers her secret, promptly passing the information along to Eddie. Shocked, Eddie denounces Alison during a radio broadcast. But Tommy has been enlightened by his visit to the nudist camp, and plays Cupid for the star-crossed lovers, and the three soon decide to spend the next weekend at the camp. Eddie embraces the nudist lifestyle, and becomes a firm believer. This, of course, is parlayed through a lengthy set of sequences showing the film's characters enjoying a smattering of activities nude, such as horseback riding, yachting, swimming and water skiing.

The game takes the player inside the virtual life of either Genghis Khan or one of his archrivals. The player must arrange marriages, father children, appoint family members to governmental positions, and fight in order to conquer the Old World. Armies must be drafted and soldiers must be trained if the player is to rule the lands from England to Japan.

Boojie Baker (Dan Conway) is a ruthless, greedy talent manager who "discovers" and then exploits unknown rock bands. The film opens in a nightclub with one of Boojie Baker's protégé acts, a band named Charlie, who have clearly been put through the grind already. They begin griping about the royalties they've been fleeced out of, then walk out on him.

Undaunted, Boojie and his loyal but dim-witted assistant Gordy (Ray Sager) walk into a local bar for some cheap drinks and they discover a new band performing, played by real-life Chicago garage rock band The Faded Blue. Promising them a recording contract and ensuing fame, Boojie renames the five-man group "The Big Blast", outfits them in designer suits and sets about to prime them for stardom. This is done by utilizing a bevy of attractive and loose women to seduce a recording engineer, photographing him in the heat of the moment, then blackmailing him into letting The Big Blast cut a single. The group cuts their big hit, and Boojie presumably uses similar tactics to promote the record and garner airplay. However, as the band's popularity grows, it doesn't take long before they begin to wonder why they aren't receiving any money for their labors.

A little later, the Big Blast confronts Boojie in his office and accuse him of swindling them out of their hard-earned money for their record sales and demand that he pay them up front for their work from now on. Being a hard line negotiator, Boojie refuses to budge in that respect, and welcomes the boys to seek fame and fortune in other avenues. To show there are no hard feelings, he even invites them to a party at his apartment. It turns out that this party, replete with liquor, women, and marijuana is a setup, and a "police detective" shows up to raid it. Coincidentally, this is before Boojie arrives, and when he does, it seems that he also has some pull in the "police department". As it happens, he is able to bail the boys out of this serious legal jam; if they agree to sign new contracts which expands Boojie's hold on them to five years, and Boojie would now be receiving over 80% of their profits. One by one, each of the five members concedes to Boojie's demands. After they leave, the "detective" hits up Boojie for some of the grass.

Back in the studio, the group begins to unravel, internal bickering starts to swell, and they just can't seem to cut their follow-up hit. In the climax, the group decides instead to bring down Boojie at the expense of their own fame and fortune by sabotaging a television appearance Boojie has lined up by showing up drunk and singing a thinly-disguised musical flipping-of-the-bird to him. Having humiliated Boojie, the group then rips up Boojie's contract to them. Angry and defeated, Boojie and Gordy storm out of the studio, presumably to go look for another rock and roll band to manage and manipulate thus starting the cycle all over again. "Oh well, that's show business", one band member says.

The game follows the basic premise of the Lone Rangers mythos. The player takes control of the Lone Ranger, a former Texas Ranger whose comrades were murdered by an outlaw named Butch Cavendish. While the game's instruction manual deviates from the original radio serials and TV series by claiming that Dan Reid was John Reid's father, the game itself remains true to its source material by identifying one of the murdered rangers as the Lone Ranger's brother. Using an overall storyline that is similar to the film ''The Legend of the Lone Ranger'', the game's ultimate goal involves rescuing the U.S. President from Butch Cavendish and his gang. One particular stage in the game (Area 6) involves the Lone Ranger saving his former fiancée Clara (a character created for the game) from a gang of ninjas working for Cavendish.

Always in search of uncharted exploitation territory, Lewis turns his attention this time to the then-controversial topic of birth control. Given the nature of the film, it is surprising that it contains practically no overt sexual situations beyond a couple suggestive dissolves. One of Lewis's more multifaceted productions, ''The Girl, the Body, and the Pill'' follows the subject through multiple perspectives. We see a liberal high school teacher (Pamela Rhea) advocating for sex education as a means of promoting proper hygiene among her rapidly developing adolescent students. Her efforts to promote planned parenthood meet with fierce opposition from the schoolboard as well as the parents of several of the students. Actually, one parent in particular, the hyperprotective puritanical father (Bill Rogers) of a virginal daughter whose boyfriend wants to go all the way, is the loudest voice to oppose such education. The film additionally follows the exploits of the school's most promiscuous student, Randy (Nancy Lee Noble), and that of her considerably more promiscuous single mother (Valedia Hill).

As part of her co-ed hygiene curriculum, Pamela has begun recently to encroach the subject of sex, despite lack of official backing from the schoolboard. Soon, the school principal expresses disapproval of this curriculum, forcing Pamela to continue to conduct the classes in her own home. The daughter of the chief opponent to this hygienic education meanwhile struggles with balancing her love of her boyfriend with maintaining her prudence. A lustful group of teenage boys, one of whom is currently engaging in relations with Randy, discuss their collective attraction to Pamela. Upon further investigation, Pamela becomes outraged that the local pharmacies refuse to dispense birth control to teenage girls out of principle. Randy, meanwhile, is in danger of running out of her contraceptive pills, prompting her to steal them from her mother and replace them with saccharine tablets. Lucky for her, as Randy's "boyfriend" decides to share his good fortune among his group of oversexed teenage male friends one night in the back seat of his car, in spite of Randy's resistance.

While all this goes on, Rogers, who clearly states his dissatisfaction in his own marriage and frustration over the fact that their daughter was an unplanned pregnancy, sets out to gather support for his cause from some of the other parents. Of course, who does he contact first but Randy's mom. It doesn't take long before he hypocritically succumbs to the temptation of the truck-stop vixen, and carries on an affair. Confident in the effectiveness of her birth control, Valenia thinks nothing of protection during this triste until, lo and behold, she becomes pregnant. Meanwhile, Rogers' daughter stands her ground and maintains her virtue, prompting her boyfriend to hook up with Randy to satisfy his burgeoning needs. An attempt to rape Pamela, an abortion, and a series of redemption-seeking sequences closes out the film.

A man who runs an alibi agency, a service for adulterous husbands and wives that provides airtight alibis, runs into trouble with his latest client. In order to remedy the problem, he has to rely on a very enticing woman, his assistant and partner. The plot thickens when he switches identities with one of his clients for a weekend, and the client's girlfriend dies in an accident. With the police, an assassin, and a jealous ex-boyfriend to run from, he discovers that he will need all the ingenuity he can muster to survive.

First encounter

Twyla and Roberta first meet within the confines of an orphanage for children, St. Bonny's (named after St. Bonaventure), because each has been taken away from her mother. Roberta's mother is ill; Twyla's mother "just likes to dance all night." We learn immediately that the girls look different from one another: one is black, one is white, although we are not told which is which. Despite their initially hostile feelings, they are drawn together because of their similar circumstances.

The two girls turn out to be "more alike than unalike." They were both "dumped" there. They become allies against the "big girls on the second floor" (whom they call "gar-girls", a name they get from mishearing the word "gargoyle"), as well as against the home's "real orphans", the children whose parents have died. They share a fascination with Maggie, the old, sandy-colored woman "with legs like parentheses" who works in the home's kitchen and is unable to speak.

Twyla and Roberta are reminded of their differences on the Sunday that each of their mothers comes to visit and attend church with them. Twyla's mother Mary is dressed inappropriately; Roberta's mother, wearing an enormous cross on her even more enormous chest. Mary offers her hand, but Roberta's mother refuses to shake Mary's hand and Mary begins cursing. Twyla experiences twin humiliations: her mother's inappropriate behavior shames her, and she feels slighted by Roberta's mother's refusal.

After four months together, Roberta leaves the orphanage.

Second encounter

Twyla and Roberta meet again eight years later during the late 1960s, when Twyla is "working behind the counter at the Howard Johnson's on the Thruway" and Roberta is sitting in a booth with "two guys smothered in head and facial hair." Roberta and her friends are on their way to the west coast to keep an appointment with Jimi Hendrix. The episode is brief but long enough for the two to show resentment towards each other. Roberta seems dismissive of Twyla and Twyla feels slighted for being told off by Roberta.

Third encounter

The third time Twyla and Roberta meet is 12 years after the second encounter. They are both married and meet while shopping at the Food Emporium, a new gourmet grocery store. Twyla describes the encounter as a complete opposite of their last. They get along well and share memories of the past. Roberta is rich and Twyla is lower middle class. Twyla is married to a firefighter and they have a son; Roberta is married to an IBM executive, a widower with four children who has a blue limousine and two servants. Twyla learns that Roberta returned to the orphanage two more times and then she ran away. She also finds out that she might have some suppressed memories about what really happened in the orphanage. She finds it hard to reconcile that her recollections may have been different from what actually transpired in reality.

Fourth encounter

The next time the two women meet, "racial strife" threatens Twyla's town of Newburgh, NY, in the form of busing. As she drives by the school, Twyla sees Roberta there, picketing the forced integration. Twyla is briefly threatened by the other protesters; Roberta doesn't come to her aid. Roberta's parting remark unsettles Twyla: "Maybe I am different now, Twyla. But you're not. You're the same little state kid who kicked a poor old black lady when she was down on the ground. You kicked a black lady and you have the nerve to call me a bigot."

Twyla replies, "Maggie wasn't black." Either she does not remember that she was black, or she had never classified her sandy skin as black. Twyla decides to join the counter-picketing across the street from Roberta, where she spends a few days hoisting signs that respond directly to Roberta's sign. Twyla realizes that her signs didn't make any sense to an objective observer but she used them to rebut Roberta's take on the protest.

Fifth encounter

Twyla and Roberta meet again, this time in a diner on Christmas Eve, years later, likely in the early 1980s. Roberta wants to discuss what she last said about Maggie. The conversation is sympathetic but ends on an unresolved note. They both end up admitting how neither of their mothers had ever recovered from their respective illnesses.

A captive woman, forced to breed mutant children, is unable to provide healthy offspring after giving birth to a stillborn and is killed by Papa Hades, leader of the inbred mutant clan living at a nuclear testing village in the New Mexico desert, designated as Sector 16. Following the events of the first film, the United States Department of Defense sent a military army to occupy the location and exterminate the remainder of the mutant clan. Colonel Lincoln Redding and a trio of scientists who are working in that area on installing a surveillance system are attacked by the mutants.

Later, a group of National Guardsmen in training led by Sergeant Jeffrey "Sarge" Millstone are sent into the desert to resupply the scientists. They arrive to find the base camp abandoned after the mutants' attack. When the soldiers pick up a faint distress call, Sarge organizes a search and rescue mission through the hills. Napoleon and Amber, who stay behind at the camp, find and retrieve one of the missing scientists out of the camp's portable toilet, but he dies before he can warn them. The two are then attacked by the mutants, who destroy their transport and steal their weapons, forcing them to run into the hills to warn the others. The search party is attacked by the mutants; Mickey is pulled into a bolt-hole and killed by Stabber, and Sarge is accidentally shot dead by Spitter's friendly fire just before Napoleon and Amber reunite with the group. Spitter is killed after one of the mutants sabotages his rappelling gear as the others try to lower him down the hill. With their remaining gear stolen, they are forced to try to find another way to escape.

The remaining troops soon locate Redding, mortally wounded and unhinged from the mutant's attack. He warns them of the mutants' plans to capture women for breeding and reveals an exit route through the mining caves before committing suicide. After the group kills Stabber, Missy is captured and taken into the mining caves by Chameleon, forcing the other troops to rescue her. Stump leaves the group to escape on his own before being pursued and killed by Letch while attempting to climb down the hill. Separating from Crank and Delmar, Napoleon and Amber cross paths with Chameleon, whom they manage to kill. While escaping Sniffer, they are rescued by a nonviolent mutant named Hansel; Sniffer encounters Crank and Delmar, shoots the latter with one of the group's M4's and is killed by Crank in retaliation. While Hansel leads them to the exit, Delmar dies from his wounds after arriving the mines' doorway. Napoleon joins Amber to save Missy. Crank, who is attempting to unlock the blast door, dies when accidentally triggering an explosion of a crate of dynamites that he attempts to take with him.

After killing Letch, Napoleon and Amber locate Missy who was being savagely raped by Papa Hades. After distracting him, they manage to free her, but Hades soon returns and attacks them, triggering a vicious fight until the trio finally subdues and kills the mutant leader with a bayonet. As the survivors prepare to depart the mines, they are watched by an unknown mutant using their surveillance equipment.

In the 11th century three men flee from an Italian city and make their way to the Holy Land to take part in the First Crusade (AD 1096-1099).

In a suburban neighborhood, Paul Gold lies in his bedroom in a coma caused by a traumatic car accident. He is cared for by his mother, Esther, who in tending him closely has distanced herself from her husband Howard and young daughter Julie. Trying to elicit her mother's attention, Julie enters Esther in a local radio contest, in hopes of winning a brand new car.

Meanwhile, after years of putting his job first, Jim Train feels his family, especially his efficient wife Susan, no longer needs him. He tries to reconnect with his son Jake (Alex House), on the edge of puberty, but the youth is preoccupied with romantic fantasies about his younger sister's twelve-inch plastic doll. After Jim is skipped over for a promotion, he stops going to work, claiming that a bomb threat was called into his office. Feeling unappreciated by his family, he convinces Esther and Julie to let him help them win the car.

The Trains' neighbor, Helen Christianson, feeling older and less desirable, tries new products to keep her feeling young. She succeeds only in alienating her husband, who loves her as she is.

Helen's good friend, Annette Jennings, in the midst of a messy divorce, struggles to provide financially for her two daughters. Sam, the older tomboyish daughter, is desperate to go off to camp that summer. Sam's younger sister suffers from mental disabilities and requires special schooling, which her father, Annette's ex-husband, refuses to pay for. Annette is also mourning the loss of Paul, with whom she was having a relationship. Randy, the neighborhood's landscaper, is coping (poorly) with his own younger brother's death in the same car accident that grievously injured Paul Gold.

Annette's ex-husband comes to visit his daughters. He says that he wants to take Sam on a holiday. Annette refuses because Sam is not interested in spending time with her father, and her ex-husband does not want to care for the younger daughter. Sam overhears their argument and runs away from her father when he tries to talk to her at the park. Soon she bumps into Randy, who tells her that her mom instructed him to pick her up.

Randy takes Sam to a remote cabin in the woods and keeps her there, not allowing her to call home. He calls her 'Johnny', after his late brother. After what appears to be three days, Randy starts driving back to the suburb, to recreate the night when the characters' lives intersected. When the beer he asks Sam to hand him does not explode, he appears to realize that the person in the back seat is Sam, not his brother.

Esther eventually gets to the final two slots in the radio contest, only to pull out at the last moment after nearly three days of physical and emotional taxation. Julie becomes angry and runs off. Jim, angry at what he feels is an inadequate second-place prize, becomes violent and wrecks the area. He gets chased off by Bobby, Helen's son, who works as the mall security guard. Esther, who finally realizes how much she has neglected her daughter, goes home and tearfully suffocates her son. Jim returns to his home, and Randy lets Sam go home. Helen almost cheats on her husband, but eventually returns home without having taken that step.

A flashback reveals the cause of the car crash: Randy, Paul, and Randy's younger brother Johnny were traveling in a car after a gig that Paul's band played. Johnny gave Randy and Paul beers which he had shaken, and they exploded when opened, on Paul who was driving. Another car, carrying Julie and Bobby, came from the opposite direction, speeding to rush Julie home after an impromptu tryst so she would not get in trouble for violating her curfew. Both drivers became distracted, both cars had to swerve, and Paul's car crashed and flipped over. The guilt that has consumed both Randy and Julie throughout the film, is shown to have originated from each taking blame for the crash.

Each acknowledges their heightened understandings of the effects of these events in their lives and their choices, and lastly, the interconnectedness of these families.

In Northern Norway during the 1860s, a little girl named Dina accidentally causes boiling lye to spill over her mother at the laundry, causing her mother's death. Overcome with grief, her father refuses to raise her, leaving her in the care of the household servants. Dina grows up wild and unmanageable, with her only friend being the stable boy, Tomas. She summons her mother's ghost and develops a strange fascination with death as well as a passion for living. Family friend Jacob (Gérard Depardieu) encourages Dina's father to hire a tutor, Lorch, who introduces her to the cello. When Jacob asks for Dina's hand in marriage, Dina refuses. Her outraged father slaps her, prompting Dina to attack him. Knowing that Lorch and Dina have grown close, her father retaliates by sending Lorch away, devastating Dina. Unable to come to terms with Lorch's departure, Dina nearly kills Lorch in a fit of insanity.

When Dina (Maria Bonnevie) is old enough, she marries Jacob and moves to Reinsnes, a port he runs with his mother, Karen, and his stepsons Niels and Anders. Niels dislikes Dina's wild ways, and the fact that she has taken over accounting duties at Reinsnes. As Dina's eccentric tendencies become even stronger, Jacob suffers gangrene poisoning after breaking his leg when he falls off the roof of his mistress' house while trying to fix a leak. As Jacob does not appear to be getting better and worsens, Dina takes him on a sled to the top of a cliff and pushes him off to his death, hoping to end his suffering and send him to a better place. Jacob's death reunites her with Tomas and the two have a passionate affair. Several months later, she gives birth to a baby boy that she names Benjamin, presumably her offspring with Tomas. She then learns of Lorch's death when the latter bequeaths her his cello.

Some years later, as a child, Benjamin accidentally sets fire to the barn. Dina falls in love with a courageous, handsome Russian named Zhukovsky (Christopher Eccleston) who rushes into the burning barn to save her beloved horses. It turns out Zhukovsky had seen Dina several years ago in Bergen and was smitten by her, and has come to Reinsnes to court her. However, he leaves suddenly and Dina forces herself on Tomas.

Niels, drunk, rapes a servant named Stina. When Dina finds out, she issues an ultimatum to Niels: marry Stina or leave for America. Niels will not countenance marrying a servant, but cannot afford to leave for America, since Dina has confiscated his savings, giving a third of his money to Stina. Zhukovsky then returns to Reinsnes to take a prisoner back to Bergen. When a drunken and penniless Niels staggers into the house, Dina announces that he too will soon be leaving, to America. Niels then decides to ask a now well-to-do Stina to marry him, but she refuses. Overcome with despair, Niels hangs himself.

Dina's father then announces to Dina that Zhukovsky is an anarchist involved in a plot against the King, and is to hang. A distraught Dina rushes to Bergen to try and exonerate Zhukovsky. But when she visits him in prison and her visiting time is up, Dina attacks the guards, who then brutalize her, causing her to lose her baby with Zhukovsky. On the way back to Reinsnes, she is saved by Anders, who stops her bleeding. Her appeal is successful, however, and Zhukovsky is released, though no one has seen him since. Several weeks later, Dina nearly drowns while teaching Benjamin how to sail but is miraculously saved by Zhukovsky who is on a nearby steamer. In her near-death state, she dreams that she kills Zhukovsky when he announces that he is leaving her again. Dina then comes to and asks if Zhukovsky is going to leave her again. Zhukovsky says he will always be leaving her, though he says he will always be coming back.

''Benito Cereno'' takes place in 1799. The captain of a sealing ship ''Bachelor’s Delight'', Captain Amasa Delano, spots another ship drifting listlessly towards the bay of Santa Maria. Wondering if the ship may be in distress, Delano boards his whale-boat and sets sail towards the suspicious ship. He learns that the ship is called the ''San Dominick'' and meets its captain, Don Benito Cereno. Upon arrival, Delano is greeted by Spaniards and black men and women who beg him for water and supplies. Delano is troubled by the amount of black people on board since they greatly outnumber the Spaniards. This disparity is explained by the collective cries of those on-board, claiming that they had been hit by a fever that killed more of the Spaniard crew than of the slaves. Assuming the standard roles of the races, Delano ignores many troubling signs. The ship is actually filled with rebel slaves who killed their owner, Alexandro Aranda, and are in control of the Spaniards including Captain Benito. Captain Benito is constantly served by Babo, the leader of the rebellion, and Delano does not suspect anything despite the fact that Benito was never left alone. Under Babo's control, Cereno claims he headed toward the Bolivian coast in order to acquire more hands on deck. Due to all of the aforementioned conditions, the ship has doubled its path several times. At this point, Don Benito stops and states, "I have to thank those Negroes you see, who, though to your inexperienced eyes appearing unruly, have, indeed, conducted themselves with less of restlessness than even their owner could have thought possible under such circumstances." When Delano asks about the slaves' master, Alexandro Aranda, Benito states that he took fever aboard the ship and died. Delano sends his men back to bring more food and water and stays aboard in the company of Cereno, and his Senegalese servant, Babo, who is always by his side. Don Benito’s timidness and unwillingness to punish the wild behavior of the slaves confuses Delano, but he overlooks this strange behavior. Cereno is constantly attended to by his personal slave, Babo, whom he keeps in close company even when Delano suggests that Babo leave the two in private. Delano, however, does not bother Cereno to ask questions about the odd superficiality of their conversation. Delano doesn't see Babo's extreme care for his master as odd, but instead appreciates Babo’s faithful care of Cereno and offers to help out by sending three Americans to bring the ship to Concepción.

Delano is disturbed by the incidents he observes among the hatchet polishers and oakum pickers, such as when a black boy slashes the head of a white boy with a knife. Surprisingly, Cereno does not acknowledge or even seem to care about this behavior. This is also evident with Atufal, a slave who even in chains appears regal and rebellious. The whispered conversations between Cereno and Babo make Delano feel uncomfortable. Gradually, his suspicions increase as he notes Cereno's sudden waves of dizziness and anxiety, the crew's awkward movements and hushed talks, and the unusual interaction of the slaves and the crew. Yet Delano answers Cereno’s questions about the crew, cargo, and arms aboard the ''Bachelor’s Delight'' without reserve, reasoning that the innocent are protected by the truth. When The Rover arrives with supplies, Delano sends the dinghy back for more water while he continues to observe curious incidents.

Babo reminds Cereno that it’s time for his shave. "Most negroes are natural valets and hairdressers; taking to the comb and brush congenially as to the castinets, and flourishing them apparently with equal satisfaction," springing from "the docility arising from the unaspiring contentment of a limited mind." Babo suggests that Delano join them in the cuddy to continue his conversation with Cereno, and Delano witnesses the shaving with an appreciative eye for Babo’s graceful skill as a barber and a hairdresser. Their suspicious behavior continues when Babo first searches "for the sharpest" razor and Cereno "nervously shuddered" at the "sight of gleaming steel." Delano himself, for a brief moment, cannot resist "the vagary, that in the black he saw a headsman, and in the white, a man at the block." Cereno is nervously shaking, and just when Delano asks him how he spent over two months crossing a distance Delano himself would have sailed within a few days, "Just then the razor drew blood." Immediately, "the black barber drew back his steel." It is unclear whether the nick is caused by a sudden wave on the sea, or "a momentary unsteadiness of the servant’s hand." Delano precedes the two out of the cuddy and walks to the mainmast, where Babo joins him, complaining that Cereno cut his cheek in reproach for his carelessness even though Cereno’s own shaking caused the cut. Delano feels that slavery fosters ugly passions and invites Cereno for coffee aboard the Bachelor’s Delight. Cereno declines the offer, offending Delano, who is also increasingly irritated by the lack of opportunity to have a private conversation without Babo within hearing distance.

When the American steps into The Rover and takes off, "Don Benito sprang over the bulwarks, falling at the feet of Captain Delano." Three Spanish sailors dive after him along with Babo, who is holding a dagger and accompanied by a dark avalanche of slaves. Delano fears Babo wants to attack him, but he loses the dagger when he falls into the boat. With a second dagger, Babo continues his attack. His purpose is now revealed: "[It was] not Captain Delano, but Don Benito, [whom] the black, leaping into the boat, had intended to stab." Delano’s men prevent him from achieving his purpose. Delano, "now with the scales dropped from his eyes," realizes that a slave revolt has been going on aboard the San Dominick. He sees the remaining sailors taking flight into the masts to escape the "flourishing hatchets and knives" of the blacks who are after them. The canvas falls off the ship's figurehead, revealing the strung-up skeleton of Alexandro Aranda. Delano secures Babo; Delano's men, under command of his chief mate, attack the Spanish ship to claim booty by defeating the revolting slaves.

Eventually, legal depositions taken at Lima explain the matter. Instead of storm and epidemics, a bloody slave revolt under Babo’s command causes mortalities among the crew, including Aranda. As Delano approaches, the revolting slaves set up the delusion that the surviving whites are still in charge. Delano asks the sad Benito: "’you are saved; what has cast such a shadow upon you?'" To which Cereno replies: "’The negro.’"

Some months after the trial, Babo is executed never having said a word to defend himself: his body is burned but his head is "fixed on a pole in the Plaza, [meeting], unabashed, the gaze of the whites." Babo's head looks in the direction of St. Bartholomew’s church, where "the recovered bones of Aranda" lay, and further across the bridge "towards the monastery on Mount Agonia without: where, three months after being dismissed by the court, Benito Cereno, borne on the bier, did, indeed, follow his leader."

This series focuses on the Transformers, split into two warring factions: the heroic Autobots and the evil Decepticons as they crash land on Earth and continue their eons long conflict there.

Two sailors are patrolling the Walmington-on-Sea pier. They grumble that no one will be coming down to look after it for two weeks. They laugh as they realise the Home Guard will have to take over each night for a week.

The platoon are discussing their latest assignment which involves a trip to the pier. They have a boat but unfortunately, it will only hold three people at a time which means they will have to make several trips. Frazer is chosen to take them over to the pier in the boat, because he has the best Naval experience. Jones will provide food for the night, Walker will bring along a bottle of whisky and Wilson's brought some acid drops – clearly it will be a "gastronomic orgy", according to Wilson. However, when Mainwaring attempts to teach them how to get into a boat, he and Frazer have a falling out and it is determined that Mainwaring will row them over, so it takes longer than expected to get Wilson and Frazer across.

As Pike is the last man across, he will be in charge of securing the boat. Mainwaring quickly commandeers the only hammock, but Wilson persuades him that they should take it in turns, but Mainwaring will go first. Pike secures the boat, but leaves the food in it, so he goes to fetch it. However, he comes back dejected: he had tied the boat to the thinner telephone cable rather than the sturdier electricity cable (because he "didn't want to get electricity-fied"), but the boat is now gone, with all the food on it (with the exception of Wilson's acid drops), and has disconnected the telephone. The platoon are cut off.

Jones suggests using the window to signal Morse code to the shore to get help. ARP Warden Hodges spots it and rows out in a children's paddle boat to try to get them to switch it off. The boat sinks, and Hodges is stranded with the platoon. To calm him down, Walker gives him his bottle of whisky. Pike spots a crane game where the prize is chocolate. Frazer is the only one with pennies, but they fail at each attempt, so Walker steals some chocolate from inside the machine. All but one are cardboard, to the great distaste of everybody – except Frazer, who quickly scoffs his genuine bar of chocolate.

Late in the night, the platoon are woken to Hodges' drunken singing. Mainwaring orders him to "shut up", and after a brief struggle with the angry (and half-naked) Warden, Mainwaring comments to Wilson "Well what do you expect from a tradesman?" It is decided that Hodges should have the hammock so he can get some sleep.

At about 5:45 am, Jones sees an unusual object through the floorboards, and alerts Mainwaring, who identifies it as a mine. They wake everybody up and they try to hook it. Hodges scoffs at their attempts and tries to hook it himself. However, he falls in the water again, and, since the mine turns out to be magnetic, has to remove his metal helmet to prevent it following him.

The platoon set up the Lewis Gun and fire at it with their rifles. However, they soon run out of ammo as the mine edges closer to Walmington. A soaking Hodges joins them and, using his expert bowling skills, manages to blow up the mine with a wooden boule. Mainwaring is impressed, and Wilson adds "He's even better with his clothes on."

On Eternia, the Sorceress of Castle Grayskull is woken one night by a mysterious magic sword that leads her to a glowing portal known as a 'Time Gate'. Recognizing the sword as the 'Sword of Protection', the Sorceress summons Prince Adam and Cringer to Castle Grayskull and sends them through the portal to find the person destined to possess the sword.

Arriving in the other dimensional world of Etheria, Adam and Cringer stop at an inn for lunch and discover that Etheria is ruled by an evil intergalactic army known as the Horde. When some Hordesmen soldiers cause trouble in the inn, Adam stands up to them and defeats them with the help of an archer named Bow, who tells Adam that he and his friend Kowl are members of the 'Great Rebellion'.

As word of the fight reaches the Horde's leader Hordak, Bow and Kowl take Adam and Cringer to the Rebellion's base in the Whispering Woods. They meet the other Rebels, including their leader Princess Glimmer, tree people called the Twiggetts, and Madame Razz, the comically inept witch, who arrives on her talking Broom to reveal that the Horde are threatening to enslave the villagers unless the Rebels responsible for the fight in the inn give themselves up, and that some of the Horde's worst villains, including Catra, Mantenna, Leech and Scorpia are there, stacking the odds almost insurmountably against the rebels. Bow is willing to surrender to save the village, but Adam and Glimmer convince the group that they should fight back to save the villagers instead.

As the Horde, led by Force Captain Adora, start taking away the villagers, they are attacked by the Rebels, aided by Adam and Cringer in their secret identities as He-Man and Battle Cat. He-Man confronts Adora and the Sword of Protection glows in her presence, revealing that she is the one he's looking for. This distraction allows the Horde to knock He-Man out and capture him.

Madame Razz uses divination to discover that the Horde have taken He-Man to their prison complex on Beast Island, and the Rebels head there to attempt a rescue. In the prison, Adora interrogates He-Man and agrees that the sword seems to be meant for her, to which He-Man retorts that he is to give it to someone who serves good rather than evil. Adora believes the Rebels are evil and the Horde the rightful, benevolent rulers of Etheria, although she admits to not knowing much about life outside the Horde's base. When He-Man dares her to see for herself what life on Etheria is really like, Adora says she'll think about it. The Rebels arrive on Beast Island and manage to get into the prison to find He-Man, only to get captured and imprisoned themselves. Kowl manages to elude capture and frees He-Man, who then frees the others and destroys the prison. Meanwhile, Adora has ventured into the towns outside the Fright Zone and sees first-hand the cruelties Etheria's citizens are forced to endure at the hands of the Horde.

As Hordak and Shadow Weaver discuss how He-Man is a threat too powerful to ignore, they are confronted by Adora wielding the Sword of Protection. She has discovered how cruel the Horde truly are, but Shadow Weaver casts Adora into a mystic sleep that will make her forget what she learned and takes the sword, planning to learn its secrets.

Later, Hordak shows the Horde his latest weapon: the Magna-Beam, a willpower-fueled transporter that will allow him to send the entire Rebel base into exile forever. However, none of the Horde's captives have sufficient willpower to fully charge the machine. He-Man sneaks into the Horde base looking for Adora, but Adora once again thinks he's the villain and arrests him. Hordak then confines He-Man in the Magna-Beam's energy chamber to charge it overnight.

Later that night, Adora has nightmares about He-Man's fate and hears a voice calling her name. She discovers the Sorceress talking to her through the Sword of Protection and asking her to help He-Man, whom the Sorceress reveals is Adora's twin brother. After reflecting upon the Sorceress's words, Adora breaks Shadow Weaver's spell then follows the Sorceress's instructions to hold the sword aloft and say "For the Honour of Grayskull!" She then transforms into the superpowered She-Ra, Princess of Power. After she rescues and revives He-Man, the pair destroy the Magna-Beam and make their getaway on Adora's horse Spirit, who in She-Ra's presence is transformed into a talking winged unicorn named Swift Wind.

She-Ra reveals that she is He-Man's sister, but He-Man is skeptical. When She-Ra explains that she was told by the 'woman in the sword', He-Man uses the Sword of Protection to contact the Sorceress, who confirms and explains their relationship. When Adam and Adora were born to King Randor and Queen Marlena, Eternia was invaded by the Horde. Unable to defeat the combined might of the Eternian army and the magic of Castle Grayskull, Hordak plotted to demoralize them by kidnapping the newborn royals, aided by his favorite pupil (and He-Man's future archenemy) Skeletor. Although the kidnapping was interrupted by Man-At-Arms, Hordak escaped with Adora and ultimately fled through a Time Gate. The Sorceress was unable to discover which dimension Hordak fled to, so she cast a spell that wiped all memory of Adora from the people of Eternia except for herself, Man-At-Arms, King Randor and Queen Marlena. Thus Adam was raised unaware of his sister's existence. Convinced by the Sorceress's story, He-Man happily accepts She-Ra as his sister.

Returning to the Rebel camp as Adam and Adora, the Rebellion accept Adora into their ranks after learning that she was mind-controlled into serving the Horde. The Rebels also discover that Queen Angella, rightful ruler of the kingdom of Bright Moon, is being held prisoner on nearby Talon Mountain, so Adam and Adora volunteer to rescue her. As He-Man and She-Ra, they defeat Queen Angella's jailer Hunga the Harpy, free Queen Angella, and reunite her with her people (including her daughter Glimmer).

Adam takes Adora back to Eternia to reunite with their parents, but Hordak has found out that Adora is with the Rebels and pursues them through the Time Gate. Finding himself back on Eternia, Hordak goes to his old base on Snake Mountain and discovers that Skeletor is now the principal villain of Eternia. Skeletor is not pleased to see his old mentor and engages him in a magical duel. Upon learning that Hordak is after Adora, Skeletor agrees to help him to be rid of him. Magically disguised as cooks and with Hordak hidden inside a giant cake, Skeletor and his henchmen manage to infiltrate the royal palace and kidnap Adora.

As Man-At-Arms, Teela and He-Man reassure the distraught king and queen that they will save Adora, Skeletor betrays Hordak and forces him back to Etheria, planning to ransom Adora himself. However, Adora manages to outwit her captors and, reclaiming her sword, deals with the villains as She-Ra before running into the rescue party. As He-Man introduces She-Ra to the others and helps her to convince them that Adora is safe, Skeletor is left bemoaning "A female He-Man! This is the worst day of my life!"

Adora decides to return to Etheria to aid the Rebellion, a decision accepted by her family, and the Sorceress sends Adora and Spirit back to Etheria, telling them they can use the Sword of Protection to summon aid from Eternia should they ever need it. Adam and Cringer tag along, offering to "help Adora get the Rebellion off to a big start".

As He-Man and She-Ra, the twins help the Rebels liberate Bright Moon, learning more about She-Ra's powers in the process (including using empathy to communicate with the wild animals of the Whispering Woods and healing Swift Wind when he is injured by the Horde). He-Man and Battle Cat then return to Eternia, while She-Ra and Swift Wind resolve to stay until all of Etheria is free.

After the events of Dodonpachi, in which the pilot stops Colonel Schwarlitz Longhener's plan to annihilate humanity, the remains of the Donpachi Corps are sealed away in the moon, never to be heard from again. 1000 years later, the robotic army, led by Hibachi, have reawakened and are slowly rebuilding itself in order to wipe out humanity again, taking the defenseless moon colony of Lunapolis. The world quickly resurrects the Donpachi Corps, and aided by Element Dolls, sentient androids meant to increase a ship's power, are deployed on the moon to destroy Hibachi's army.

Depending on the element doll the player chose at the beginning of the game, the ending will differ upon defeating Hibachi;

• Shotia: In a last resort attack, Hibachi's program turns into a virus and invades Shotia's system, slowly deleting her memories bit by bit. Shotia's last memories are those with her pilot, and she dies with a smile.
• Leinyan: After defeating Hibachi, Leinyan has developed feeling for her pilot. Upon returning to Earth, Leinyan is taken away to be experimented on, but escaped and reunites with her pilot.
• EXY: EXY shuts down Hibachi's computer network, but was driven insane due to the overflow of data. EXY kills her pilot and does not return to Earth. The events of this game will eventually lead to Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu.

A synopsis prior to the release of the film stated:

:"''Caotica Ana'' is the story-journey of Ana during four years of her life, from 18 to 22. A countdown, 10, 9, 8, 7... until 0, like in hypnosis, through which Ana proves that she does not live alone, that her existence seems like a continuation of other lives of young women who died in a tragic way, all at the age of 22, and who live in the abyss of her unconscious memory. This is her chaos. Ana is the princess and the monster of this feminist fable against the tyranny of man."

The book centers on a 16-year-old girl, Twyla Gay Stark. She soon transfers to a new town and a new school in a wealthy neighborhood, Highland Park High, where the rich and nasty strut around in designer labels. The worst happens when Twyla Gay runs afoul of the resident bitch clique, led by the beautiful, intimidating and rich Jeanette Sue and bringing in the rear of the vicious pack is Myrna Fry, a "hanger-on" who is shallow, ignorant, racist and lacks backbone. Jeanette Sue and her cohorts at first pretend to be friends with Twyla Gay, until a wicked prank almost has Twyla Gay raped and killed at the local mall at night.

Encouraged by the fact that Twyla Gay likes Jeanette Sue's boyfriend Ryder, the bullying becomes even worse, with Jeanette Sue marginalizing the fact that Twyla Gay is poor. She also turns everyone against the helpless Twyla Gay, making online websites to bash her and practically chasing her out of school. Twyla Gay considers dropping out, until she runs into the school outcast, Deena, another victim of the in crowd, who has been labeled a slut. Together the two girls vow to exact revenge on Jeanette Sue and her entourage, by gathering other social rejects of the school and silently retaliating.

Pessimistic at first, Twyla Gay and Deena's team eventually learn respect, trust and to stand up for themselves, and realize that Jeanette Sue is controlling the school with her mentality and peer pressure. They break out of their fear and intimidated state and it all leads to a showdown in the school between all the students, that is everyone who isn't with The Ruling Class, and Jeanette Sue's clique itself.

Category:2004 American novels Category:American young adult novels Category:Dallas County, Texas Category:Novels set in Dallas

Opening with a wedding between two young Communists, officiated by a CP functionary, under the poster of Mao-Tse Tung, the bride suddenly spears the man and escapes, chased by the police. This is the end of 'Cataratte'/'Cataracts', a 10-year-old action B-movie projected in an open-air cinema in honor of Bruno Bonomo (Silvio Orlando), a cockeyed film producer, who did some trash movies starring his wife Paola (Margherita Buy) in the 1970s. He also has two young sons loved by him and his wife. During this homage, a young woman presents him the script of a movie she wants to direct with his help.

Slated to start on a project celebrating the return voyage of Columbus just after his discovery of America, Bruno is stunned when his director, Franco Caspio, quits because of the low budget. Suddenly Bruno has no projects, no financing and no leverage.

Added to his many troubles, Bruno's wife asks for a separation even though they have two sons. She wants to pursue her artistic options.

Bruno reads the offered script and realizes that it's a thinly disguised account of Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian media magnate who promoted his political career through his TV stations. Knowing this could draw political and legal heat, not to mention difficulty for finding funding; but the young woman convinces Bruno to start production on ''The Caiman''. The film shows how secret money, slush funds and Swiss bank accounts start Il Caimano's career as a big building developer. She hopes that the film will influence voters in the elections slated for 2006.

Starting to fall in love with the writer, Bruno meets her lesbian partner and her son 'made' in a 'journey' to the Netherlands.

The production of the film is rife with problems, including the defection of the main actor Marco Pulici (Michele Placido), but the plot of ''The Caiman'' also deals with the domestic issues between Bonomo and Paola until their final separation, with the compromises made for their two sons.

Despite growing evidence that his film will never be completed, Bonomo decides to shoot the last scene, which shows the political nucleus behind the film: in it, Silvio Berlusconi (played by Nanni Moretti himself) enters the tribunal room to hear the ruling against him (see Legal investigations of Berlusconi), which sentences him to seven years of jail. Notwithstanding the sentence, Berlusconi/Moretti exits the tribunal while a crowd throws debris at the judges, including a Molotov cocktail.

The whole, crude scene is not only an allusion to Berlusconi's judiciary controversies, but also to his powerful ability to communicate, which (in Moretti's view) led Italian people to support him anyway despite his controversial past.

Three young hipster men who share an apartment in Bangkok are each chasing after a woman, but are unaware that it's the same woman they are after.

Strange things start happening when separate twists of fate bring each of three friends, Big, Dan and Beam, into contact with three strangers – an old woman who tells prophecies, a little girl who sells garlands on the street and a young woman named Aom. What none of them realize is that not only is there a connection between the three females, but also between the guys themselves and their destinies. But it starts to become clear that one them is fated to die.

On a future Earth (c. 2080 CE) overwhelmed with severe difficulties related to overpopulation, a portal is discovered that leads to a parallel world. Jim Briskin, campaigning to be the first Black president of the United States, believes that the new "alter-Earth" could be colonized and become a home for the seventy million people that are being kept in cryopreservation. Known as ''bibs'', these are people - mostly non-caucasians - who decided to be "put to sleep" until a time when the overpopulation problem is solved.

Briskin is a social conservative, who does not support the Golden Doors of Bliss orbital brothel, and opposes widespread abortion access. There are two dominant US political parties, the "Republican Liberals" and the "States Rights Conservative Democrats" who run CLEAN, a racist frontgroup that opposes Briskin's candidacy, although higher-income white American voters support him. Terraforming becomes a pivotal election issue, until a warp drive malfunction in a "'scuttler" tube results in the discovery of an apparently uninhabited alternate world, an 'alter-Earth' where ''Homo sapiens'' either never evolved or lost in competition with other early hominids. In this case, the point of divergence appears to have occurred between one and two million years ago, as ''Homo erectus'', also known as ''Sinanthropus'', ''Pithecanthropus'' or Peking Man, is the dominant species. In reference to the latter designation, the explorers refer to the indigenous hominids of this world as "Pekes."

There is a hasty initial colonization attempt. The minimum time period necessary for all of the tens of millions of "bibs" to emigrate is estimated to be twenty years. In order to cut this down to 5 years the rift is temporarily closed so a new power supply can be installed which will theoretically quadruple the width of the rift. When this action is completed, however, it is discovered that one hundred years has elapsed in the parallel world. During this time the conjoined twin businessman George Walt, who had run the Golden Doors of Bliss satellite brothel, had emigrated into the parallel world during initial colonization and set himself up as a "wind god". He spent those hundred years teaching and filling in technological gaps in the Peke's world as well as learning many new ideas from them. He also apparently assisted in sabotaging the colonization effort, as it would not exactly be in his own best interest were word to leak out that he was merely a mutated ''Homo sapiens''.

After all the decades-consuming preparations have been completed, however, George Walt eventually sets a trap so that whenever the rift eventually re-opens, the "Pekes" can power it from their side and keep it from closing.

This procedure allows the Pekes to begin an invasion of Earth, but they abruptly depart en masse when it is finally revealed, as George Walt originally feared, that their wind god is actually just a wind bag; that is to say, he's just another lying, deceiving, untrustworthy member of the species ''Homo sapiens''. The colonization attempt from Earth is thereby aborted, and Briskin, being newly elected, is left at the story's end to deal with the consequences during his next two presidential terms.

In 1431 Siam, during the reign of Borommarachathirat II of the Ayutthaya Kingdom, Tien, the young son of a noble family, is forced to flee from enemy soldiers. He manages to escape to the forest, where he is captured by slave traders. Tien's resistance leads the traders to throw him into a pool with a crocodile, but at that moment, the Pha Beek Khrut ("Garuda Wing Cliff"), a band of bandits and martial artists, unveil themselves and attack the traders. The leader of the band, Chernang, is intrigued by the boy's physical prowess and sheer willpower, and saves him by passing him a knife to slay the crocodile with. They take him to their village, where their soothsayer claims that Tien is destined to become a great warrior, and Chernang offers him to become one of them, which Tien accepts.

Years later, an adult Tien is subjected to the tests necessary to become a true member of the Pha Beek Khrut. He successfully tames wild elephants, and afterwards he fights and defeats three other bandits, a Japanese swordsman, a Chinese fighter, and an indigenous wrestler. After Tien passes his last test, killing a demonic female martial artist, Chernang proclaims him his adopted son and heir. Tien subsequently becomes the field leader of the bandits, whose adventures make him reminisce about his previous life. His father, Lord Sihadecho, sent him to learn dances in a remote village under Master Bua instead of making him a warrior. Sihadecho wanted Tien to be safe from the commander of the Ayutthaya royal guard, Lord Rajasena, who had plotted against his family. In the village, although the young Tien disdained their peaceful life, he eventually befriended Pim, an orphan girl. Back to the present, Tien tracks down his old slave traders and beats them down in revenge, throwing their leader to the crocodiles as he did to him.

Another flashback reveals that Lord Sihadecho was betrayed by one of their own guards, who attempted to kidnap Tien, but the boy managed to flee with a loyalist's help. At the same time, Sihadecho and his household were massacred by Lord Rajasena and a mysterious masked assassin, which Tien witnessed before escaping and being found by the slave traders. In the present, Tien makes a blood oath to avenge his family, which Chernang encourages him to fulfill, promising him to make him their new leader upon his return. Tien travels alone to Rajasena's palace, where the lord is hosting a party to proclaim his power. After a dance coincidentally performed by a grown-up Pim, Tien sneaks in dressed as a khon dancer himself and attacks Rajasena, apparently cutting the treacherous lord down.

Tien returns to the Pha Beek Khrut village, but he founds it empty. He is instead confronted by the masked assassin that killed his father, whom Tien attacks, but more masked attackers emerge. Tien fights wave after wave of opponents, putting on the line every skill he learned, and eventually overcomes his enemies with the help of an elephant. However, Tien meets his match at the hands of a final opponent, Bhuti Sangkha ("Crow Ghost"), a sinister yet formidable martial artist. Bhuti defeats Tien and takes the elephant away, leaving him to be submitted by Lord Rajasena and his army. The lord turns out to have survived the assassination thanks to hidden armor, and reveals that the masked assassin is no other than Chernang, who must now finish his job from years ago in exchange for Rajasena pardoning his bandits.

As Tien reluctantly fights Chernang, the latter pins Tien down, acknowledges tearfully him as his son, and asks him to accept his own life to avenge his father. Chernang then causes the blade of Tien's sword to snap and slash across his throat, killing himself. Exhausted and devastated, Tien collapses on the ground surrounded the soldiers, and Rajasena orders Tien to be taken away and slowly tortured to death. As the movie ends, a voiceover explains that Tien suffered this fate due to his bad karma, but adds that he may find a way to cheat death. An ambiguous scene shows him with a fully-grown beard standing in front of the Ong Bak Buddha statue.

King David is the second king of Israel and returns to Jerusalem after a military victory over the Philistines. When the Ark of the Covenant stumbles on a cart, a soldier reaches out to steady it and is struck dead. While the prophet Nathan declares this the will of God, a skeptical David pronounces it the result of a combination of heat-stroke and too much wine. David becomes attracted to Bathsheba who is the wife of Uriah, one of David's soldiers.

The attraction is mutual although both know an affair would break the law of Moses. When Bathsheba discovers she is pregnant from the affair, David sends for Uriah hoping he will spend time with his wife to cover her pregnancy. David's wife Michal, who is aware of the affair, tells David that Uriah did not go home but slept at the castle as a sign of loyalty to his king. Frustrated, David orders Uriah to be placed on the front line and for the troops to withdraw leaving him to die. Uriah is reported dead and David sends a dispatch to tell Bathsheba so they can plan their marriage.

Nathan advises David the people are dissatisfied with his leadership and desire his sons to rule. Nathan tells David he has forgotten that he is a servant of the Lord. Shortly after David marries Bathsheba, a drought hits Israel and the couple's newborn child dies. Nathan returns to tell David that God is displeased with his sin. However, he will not die as the law demands, but he will be punished through misfortune in his family. David takes responsibility as he insists Bathsheba is blameless, but the people want Bathsheba killed. David makes plans to save Bathsheba, but she tells David she is not blameless as they are both at fault.

David is reminded of the Lord and quotes Psalm 23 as he plays his harp. David tells Bathsheba she will not die and is willing to accept God's justice for himself. Repentant, David, seeking relief from the drought and forgiveness, reaches out to touch the Ark presuming that he will die like the soldier. A clap of thunder is heard and there are flashbacks to David's youth depicting his anointing by Samuel and his battle with Goliath. King David removes his hands from the Ark as rain falls on the dry land.

''Fighting Masters'' takes place in a pre-apocalyptic universe, where an enormous red sun is about to go supernova within hours, leading representatives from multiple alien races to fight against each other to gain trust and service of an ultra-intelligent race known as Primaries, who will grant another galaxy to live in for them and their future generations. However, the in-game plot tells a different story involving a demon lord known as Lord Valgasu, who leads an underground campaign against a twelve-star galaxy to take control of it, conquering all of the stars' rulers and making them his slaves except one. Assuming the role of a lone hero, the player battles against the enslaved rulers and Valgasu himself.

The novel opens with a lunar find by the Apollo 17 astronauts, which is suppressed.

Tom Broadbent (who first appeared in Preston's novel ''The Codex'') is riding in the New Mexico desert when he hears gunshots coming from Tyrannosaur Canyon (a fictional canyon east of the Rio Chama Gorge, on Mesa Viejo, and north of the Monastery of Christ in the Desert). Following the sound, he comes upon an old prospector who has been shot by a sniper. He gives Tom a notebook just before he dies, and Tom rides off on his horse to find help. The murderer, Jimson Maddox, is furious that the notebook is gone by the time he reaches the body; he has been hired to retrieve it at any cost. He does, however, find an interesting rock sample. When Tom returns to Tyrannosaur Canyon with the police, the prospector's body has disappeared without a trace.

The notebook is filled with numbers, a code Tom is unable to decipher. He brings the book to Wyman Ford, a monk in training at a nearby monastery. Ford is a retired CIA analyst and he takes the notebook to try to decipher it. Ford discovers that the numbers are not a code but a sequence of ground-penetrating radar readings. When processed, they form the image of a fully intact ''Tyrannosaurus''.

The rock sample Maddox found turns out to be a fragment of the ''Tyrannosaurus''. Maddox's employer, Iain Corvus, a curator at the American Museum of Natural History, convinces a lab assistant, Melodie Crookshank, to examine the sample in secret. Corvus intends to steal her research, acquire a permit to excavate the ''Tyrannosaurus'', and thus secure tenure at the museum, as well as wealth and fame.

Melodie discovers tiny particles within the sample which she calls "Venus particles". Upon making this discovery, Melodie calls Corvus to describe it to him, and the NSA hears the call. They initiate a black op led by J.G. Masago to cover up evidence of the particles, kill any witnesses, and retrieve the specimen.

Meanwhile, Ford goes into the desert to look for the dinosaur. At the same time, desperate to recover the notebook, Maddox kidnaps Tom Broadbent's wife, Sally. He takes her to an abandoned mine to use as a bargaining chip, forcing Tom to hand over the notebook. Now that Maddox has the notebook, however, he intends to kill Sally so he can not be identified. She manages to break free, Tom rescues her, and the two of them escape into the desert on foot, pursued by Maddox and his rifle.

Masago infiltrates the museum and kills Corvus, stealing the samples and his research. But Melodie, realizing previously that Corvus would try to steal the credit from her, had made copies of everything and hid them, along with more samples of the dinosaur. When she sees that he has been murdered and that his work is missing, she realizes she is the next likely target. Her only chance is to complete the research and post it to the Internet, so killing her would no longer serve the purposes of a cover-up. During her final research, she discovers that the 65-million-year-old Venus particles are still alive. They are a type of virus that destroys the cell structure of reptiles, evidently introduced to the earth by the Chicxulub meteorite. She posts her findings to the web to show the world.

Back in the desert, the black ops team has tracked Ford down, and Maddox is gaining on Tom and Sally. They manage to overpower Maddox and kill him, retrieving the notebook, and Ford leads them out of the canyon in an effort to evade the government assassins. Trapped in an old Anasazi cave, they discover the partially excavated ''Tyrannosaurus rex'' just before Masago's team converges on their location. Ford repeatedly reminds the team commander, Hitt, that Masago is ordering them to kill unarmed American civilians on American soil without first explaining to them why, which convinces Hitt and the rest of the team to turn on him. They then force Masago to tell them about the lethal Venus particles, which had also been found on the moon, thus establishing their extraterrestrial origin. As the entire team takes off in the helicopter, Masago breaks free and kills the pilot before being restrained by Ford and Broadbent. Despite the co-pilot's attempts, the helicopter crashes into a cliff. Though Tom and Sally manage to escape first and rather quickly, Tom heads back into the burning wreckage to save Ford and Hitt. With Sally's help, the four manage to get away just before the helicopter explodes, killing Masago, the co-pilot, and all of the other soldiers on board.

By the time they arrive with news about the dinosaur's location, Melodie's research has spread across the Internet. All those involved are made famous, including Robbie Weathers, the old prospector's daughter. The Smithsonian Institution funds a program to research the Venus particles and the dinosaur itself, which is christened by Robbie and named after her. At the reception, Ford makes an off-hand remark where he speculates that the particles may have been intentionally developed by an alien race, so as to destroy the dinosaurs and allow humans to begin their evolution.

In the story, Schlemihl sells his shadow to the Devil for a bottomless wallet (the gold sack of Fortunatus), only to find that a man without a shadow is shunned by human societies. The woman he loves rejects him, and he himself becomes consumed with guilt. Yet when the devil wants to return his shadow to him in exchange for his soul, Schlemihl, as the friend of God, rejects the proposal and throws away the bottomless wallet besides. He seeks refuge in nature and travels around the world in scientific exploration, with the aid of seven-league boots. When overtaken with sickness, he is reconciled with his fellow men, who take care of him, and in regard for his sickness do not look for his shadow. Finally, however, he returns to his studies of nature and finds his deepest satisfaction in communion with nature and his own better self.

At the end of the previous novel, ''A Ship of the Line'', after attacking and severely damaging a superior French squadron with HMS ''Sutherland'', Hornblower had to surrender his ship to the French. He and his surviving crew are imprisoned in the French-occupied Spanish fortress of Rosas on the Mediterranean Sea. From the walls of Rosas, Hornblower witnesses an English raid leading to the final destruction of the French ships he immobilised.

Soon afterwards, Hornblower is told that he is to be sent to Paris to be tried as a pirate for his previous actions, including the capture of a battery and some coastal vessels using a ruse of war. Hornblower, his first lieutenant, Bush, who is still recovering from the loss of a foot in the fighting, and his coxswain, Brown, are taken away in a carriage by an Imperial aide-de-camp.

The carriage becomes stuck in a snowstorm on a minor road close to the river Loire, and part of the escort leaves to get help from Nevers, the next town. Hornblower and Brown overpower the remaining guards and steal a small boat on the river. Taking Bush with them, they set out downstream, but the river is in spate, and the boat eventually capsizes in some rapids. Hornblower and Brown carry Bush towards the nearest building, which happens to be the Chateau de Graçay. The Comte de Graçay, a member of the old French nobility who has lost three sons in Napoleon's wars, and his widowed daughter-in-law Marie, welcome them and protect them from the authorities, who eventually abandon the search thinking them drowned.

The party spends the winter as guests of the Comte and prepare for an escape in late spring. During these months, Bush recovers and learns to walk with a wooden leg. Hornblower, Bush and Brown build a new boat to continue their voyage downstream. Meanwhile, Hornblower and Marie have a short but intense love affair.

Springtime comes and the river is in perfect condition for travel. Disguised as a fishing party, the escapees make their way to the port city of Nantes. There, they change their disguise to that of high-ranking Dutch customs officers in French service, using uniforms made for them by Marie and the staff of the Chateau. They manage to recapture the cutter ''Witch of Endor'', taken as a French prize the year before. Manning it with a prison work gang, they take the ship out of the harbour and rendezvous with the British blockading fleet.

Here, Hornblower learns that his wife Maria had died in childbed; his son, Richard, survived and was adopted by his friend Lady Barbara, widow of Admiral Leighton and sister of Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington.

Returning to Portsmouth, Hornblower, in common with any other captain who has lost his ship, faces a court martial for the loss of the ''Sutherland''. However, he is 'most honourably' acquitted by the court and finds himself a celebrity for his exploits in the Mediterranean and his daring escape from France. He is received by the Prince Regent (the later King George IV), who makes him a knight of the Order of the Bath and a Colonel of Marines (a sinecure providing worthy officers with extra income). Together with the money from prizes taken while he was captain of the ''Sutherland'' and from his recapture of the ''Witch of Endor'', he is finally financially secure and free to court and marry Lady Barbara.

In France just prior to the French Revolution, Queen Marie Antoinette asks her cousin Noel, the Marquis de Maynes, to uncover the identity of "Marcus Brutus", a dangerous pamphleteer rousing hatred of the aristocracy. She also pressures de Maynes to marry to preserve his line, and at his request for her to choose his bride is introduced to Aline de Gavrilac, one of the Queen's wards.

Meanwhile, André Moreau, a nobleman's bastard, kidnaps his beloved Lenore to keep her from marrying another man. Afterwards, Moreau learns that his father is the Comte de Gavrillac. While traveling to meet his parent, Moreau runs into Aline de Gavrillac when her carriage breaks down in the road. They are strongly attracted to each other, but Moreau's ardor suddenly cools when he learns that she is his half-sister. He hides that information from her, partly because of sympathy after he learns the Comte de Gavrillac has recently died.

By chance, de Maynes encounters Marcus Brutus: Moreau's best friend, Philippe de Valmorin. A master swordsman, de Maynes provokes de Valmorin into a duel, then toys with his inexperienced opponent before finally killing him. Enraged, Moreau attacks, but does no better than his dead friend. After de Maynes easily disarms him several times, Moreau chooses discretion over valor and flees for his life, vowing to kill de Maynes the same way he slew de Valmorin.

Chased by de Maynes' henchmen, led by the Chevalier de Chabrillaine, Moreau hides out in the ''commedia dell'arte'' troupe in which Lenore performs. Forced to disguise himself as the character Scaramouche, he discovers a hidden talent as a performer. Burning for revenge, Moreau seeks out de Maynes' fencing instructor, Doutreval of Dijon, and trains diligently in secret for weeks, while also performing with the troupe. However, de Maynes appears during one such training session, and they fight for a second time. Moreau is still overmatched, and is saved only by Aline's unexpected arrival, enabling Moreau to escape (with Doutreval's assistance).

He decides to seek out Doutreval's teacher, Perigore of Paris, the man who according to Doutreval "is the master of all swordsmen." Moreau takes the troupe to Paris for that purpose. There, Dr. Dubuque, a deputy of the new National Assembly, seeks his help. The aristocrats in the assembly are systematically killing off the deputies representing the common people by provoking them into duels. Moreau is not interested, until Dubuque mentions that de Maynes is one of the duelists; then he eagerly accepts the seat of a deceased deputy. Each day, he shows up at the assembly to challenge de Maynes, only to find his enemy absent on trivial but official duties, arranged by Aline and Lenore working together to protect the man they both love. However, other nobles in the National Assembly are eager to fight the newcomer, challenging him on a daily basis. Moreau wins every duel; the Chevalier de Chabrillaine barely escapes with his life.

In the meantime, de Maynes becomes engaged to Aline. Overhearing de Maynes' intention to confront Moreau that night, Aline persuades him to take her out instead. At the suggestion of de Chabrillaine, they attend a performance of the De Binet Troupe, where Andre seizes his opportunity for revenge. The two men engage in a prolonged duel (reputedly the longest in screen history at about seven minutes) that ranges throughout the theater and finally back onto the stage itself. At the end, Moreau has de Maynes at his mercy, helpless as Philippe de Valmorin had been, but something he cannot explain stays his hand. Moreau stalks off, leaving de Maynes bloodied but alive.

Later, Moreau learns from Philippe's father that his father is not the Comte de Gavrillac, but rather the old Marquis de Maynes, the Comte de Gavrillac's friend; Noel, the man he could not kill, is his half-brother. He then realizes that he is not related to Aline after all, so they can be married. Lenore consoles herself with a certain Corsican officer.

''Magic Sword'' takes place in an unnamed world, which is being threatened by the dark lord Drokmar, who has control over an evil crystal known as the "Black Orb", which would allow him to rule over the world. In order to prevent this from happening, the hero, known as the Brave One, must scale to the top of the 50-floor tower in which Drokmar resides, known as Dragon Keep.

At the game's end, when Drokmar is defeated, the player has the option of two endings: Destroy the Black Orb, or to take control of it, becoming the new dark lord.

Lone Wolf learns that the evil god Naar has created an evil doppelganger of himself, the champion of the forces of good on Magnamund. A cat and mouse game between the two warriors ensues, which leads both across a world claimed by Naar.

Summer Arc

The first twelve episodes of the series focus on the day-to-day life of Ayumu Aizawa as he visits his father, a veterinarian, at a small town in the countryside. Ayumu has spent his visit thus far aimlessly biking across the valley, but a chance meeting with a girl named Miku sends him searching for a long-lost friend of his, Wakkun. Upon finding Wakkun, he discovers that the boy has not aged since he and Ayumu played as children. Wakkun is also wearing clothes very similar to the raincoat and galoshes that Ayumu wore habitually as a child. Wakkun introduces Ayumu to his two friends, Dosshiru (Doss) and Shisshin (Sense), mysterious flying objects that alternate between a mechanical form and a sphere of yellow light.

These lights seem to be invisible to most of the people in town, but appear in reflections in people and animals' eyes. A local reporter, Akira Sukawara, shows up, attracted by reports of kappa and other mysterious events. She follows the animals, notably a cat one of the local boys saw fighting a kappa, to the yellow lights, and grills a reluctant Ayumu for information. Unable to remember the summer he spent in Tana as a child, Ayumu, with the help of Miku and several other people from Tana, tries to understand what happened when he was a child, and the mysterious connection between him, Wakkun, Dosshiru, and Shisshin...

Winter Arc

One and a half years later, Kisa Tanigawa, a depressed high school student, routinely skips class. One evening, wandering aimlessly around the city, she stumbles upon another mysterious mechanical object. Naming it "Bun-chan" or "Ping" in the English dub, after the sound it makes, she takes it home and treats it as a pet. When she tries building a fish out of old scraps of metal, the top fin of the fish does not stay, so Bun-chan (Ping) helps glue it on. Meanwhile, Sukawara reappears, now trying to prove the existence of the mysterious objects that appeared at the Cat Dance in Tana a year and half ago, which she terms "material fairies", and hears about Bun-chan. Upon witnessing a meeting between Kisa and Ayumu, she calls Bun-chan not a material fairy, but a "material evil", as its outward appearance does not resemble those of the material fairies spotted in Tana. The material fairies and the material evils, however, seem to be at war with each other. When the three meet, Dosshiru, Shisshin and Bun-chan. Dosshiru and Shisshin start chasing Bun-chan and soon destroy it, leaving Kisa very upset that Bun-chan is gone. After a while the connection of Kisa's fish's metal fin starts glowing. One night the fish turns into a sprite form of Bun-chan. Kisa then decides to name it Po-chan.

The city's population becomes increasingly aware of the situation, as pictures of the material evils, spheres of blue light, circulate among cell-phone users, accompanied by rumors that they bring good luck. Murals appear urging people to think and trust themselves. Eventually, a giant spiral, resembling the metal construction of the material evils, appears in the sky, and the police evacuate a section of the city. Some of the same phenomena are present as in Tana, such as the failure of electronic devices.

Set in Denmark during September 27 - October 3, 1943, ''Miracle at Midnight'' is a dramatization of the true story of the Danish rescue of Jews from deportation to Nazi concentration camps. Doctor Karl (Sam Waterston) and Doris (Mia Farrow) Koster are a Christian couple living in Copenhagen with their two children, 18-year-old Henrik (Justin Whalin) and preteen Else (Nicola Mycroft).

As Chief Surgeon of Christiana Hospital, Doctor Karl Koster initially uses his position to protect a young resistance fighter shot by the Nazis. Meanwhile, Henrik is secretly working for the same group, commandeering weapons sent to the Nazis.

On Wednesday, September 29, 1943 (three years into the occupation), Doctor Koster learns of the imminent arrest of the Danish Jews on midnight Friday (the beginning of Rosh Hashanah) from a former government minister, who had been alerted by German maritime attache Georg Duckwitz. The Kosters start by hiding Rabbi Ben Abrams and his family, but soon realize they can help more Jews and become an integral part of an effort to transport over 7,000 Jews to neutral Sweden.

Doctor Koster, hospital staff and his family work with the resistance to save the Danish Jews from deportation to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. As Doctor Koster declares, "In every language and religion, to be humane is to love your neighbor."

Henrik and his friend load up a truckload of Jews, planning to drive them to the coast from whence they'll be taken to safety in Sweden. En route, they are stopped by German Nazi officials who tell Henrik to open the back of the truck. When the Nazis find Jews, Henrik's friend runs and hides in the woods, and gets help from Henrik's father, who springs Henrik, but Henrik's friend is killed while distracting the Germans.

First they find hiding places for the Jews to survive the initial raids, and then work with the Swedish government and local fishermen to transport them to safety. Meanwhile, Henrik secures trucks and other transport to get people to the coast. They discover that one of the fishermen that was helping them transport Jews was a traitor and tried to turn them in to the Germans.

Finally, the Kosters themselves have to flee when the Nazis discover their activity. Doris Koster is captured by the Nazis, but the rest manage to escape to Sweden. Doris is questioned by the Nazis and released two years later and the family reunites (the reunion is not shown in the film, but is mentioned).

The central protagonist of ''Paradise'' is a young woman called Ann Smith, the daughter of King Rodon, the dictator of the fictional African country of Maurania. Ann is in Europe when she hears that her father is seriously ill, but while she is en route to see him, her aircraft is shot down by rebels. She is rescued, but when she regains consciousness she cannot remember her identity or what she is doing in Africa.

The Twelve Colonies are at peace, 58 years before the rebooted series, when an act of religious fanaticism brings together Joseph Adama, a lawyer with ties to the criminal underworld, and wealthy technologist Daniel Graystone, both of whom lost family members. Grief-stricken by the loss of his daughter and fueled by obsession, Daniel sets out to bring her back, using his considerable wealth and sprawling technology corporation. Offered the chance of his own daughter being restored, Joseph wrestles with the notion until he comes face to face with its reality.

After witnessing the murder of his wife and young son at the hands of Henry Caine (Craig Fairbrass), who then turned the gun on himself, Abe Dale (Nathan Fillion) is so distressed that he attempts to take his own life. A near-death experience follows that leaves Abe with the ability to identify those who are about to die. He acts on these premonitions to save three people from death, among them a nurse met during his recovery, Sherry Clarke (Katee Sackhoff).

Abe soon learns that Henry, before murdering Abe's wife and son, actually saved their lives. Abe concludes that Henry also had the ability to see death. Wanting to learn more about Henry, Abe visits his house only to learn that Henry survived his suicide. Investigating further, Abe discovers the phenomenon of "Tria Mera", The Third Day, when Christ was resurrected. Also on the third day the devil takes possession of the mortals who cheated death. Abe concludes that three days after he saved their lives, those he saved will be possessed and compelled to take the lives of others. Accepting this responsibility, Abe comes to terms with the horrible fact that he must consider killing those he had saved to prevent further tragedy.

Abe tries unsuccessfully to prevent the second man he saved from killing others, but arrives just a minute too late. Abe is able however to take the gun from the man before he kills himself. Abe tries to explain the situation to Sherry but she is at first non-receptive and he must follow her to the cafe where his wife and son were murdered. While driving he sees his own aura in the rear view mirror, predicting his own death. This time, Sherry listens but, just as Abe brings up the gun, police who are already in the cafe shoot him dead. Abe spends his last minutes trying to convince Sherry she must kill herself before her own possession is complete. However, as she reaches for the gun the police pick it up and she becomes hysterical, and is put into an ambulance.

As the ambulance leaves, Sherry struggles against the demons inside her. Back at the cafe, Abe's life force leaves his body as a lightning streak in pursuit of Sherry's ambulance vaulting from one utility post to the next. He reaches the ambulance and appears to Sherry as a spectre of himself. He is able to comfort her before the demons possess her. She acknowledges him and expires peacefully after he places his hand over her heart. Up ahead, the speeding ambulance is unaware of an accident blocking its path. An 18-wheel fuel tanker is disabled and a commuter bus is stopped. Abe, still manifested as a ghostly spirit, appears on the street directly in front of the ambulance, causing the driver to swerve, avoid the accident at the last minute and miss the tanker, thus saving the people on the bus. Abe's mission completed, he finally sees a bright white light in front of him with his family waiting in the distance and is able to move on. Back at Blackmount County Asylum, Henry is tormented and driven further insane by the restless spirits of all the victims who died at the hands of people he saved.

Two years ago during a trip to Istanbul, Turkey, Nikki Conners, a former member of the Green Beret, witnesses her husband and young child die in a car bomb explosion at the hands of Omega 19, a brutal terrorist organization. A short time after, Jacobson, the head of a mysterious counterterrorism group known as the Phoenix, reveals Nikki's deceased husband, Michael, was a member of Phoenix, and recruits Nikki as she seeks revenge for her family's death.

After two years of vigorous training, Nikki completes her final part with the help of Jonah. Her first mission takes her to a countryside in Spain to retrieve a journal that contains all the illegal activities Omega 19 has committed. However, the journal is stored in the villa of Henry Van Clief, an illegal weapons dealer and member of Omega 19. Once she arrives, she witnesses the death of a fellow Phoenix agent at the hands of Van Clief's men. Nikki plants three C4 charges (on the car, in the basement, and in the kitchen, respectively) and detonates them, alarming Van Clief. She gives chase to him to the basement of the villa, where Nikki kills Van Clief and retrieves the journal.

During a mission briefing, Jacobson states an infiltration team was sent to Uzbekistan to destroy an Omega 19 base, only to disappear and never be heard from again. The Uzbekistan government refuses to assist Phoenix unless they can recover an artifact that was stolen from them by the British Empire 100 years ago. This takes Nikki to a museum in England to steal the ancient artifact and replace it with a fake. However, as she prepares to acquire the artifact, she informs the team the object she sees is a fake, and Peter, Phoenix's intelligence expert, informs her of Omega 19 agents having acquired the artifact for their own purposes. Nikki kills the escaping terrorists and retrieves the artifact.

The team hands the artifact to the Uzbekistan government officials, and they reveal the last known location of Phoenix's strike team, at a military base near a silo. Nikki finds the leader of the missing strike team inside the silo, where the captive tells Nikki of a nuclear weapon Omega 19 plan to release, which is designed to release an electromagnetic pulse in space, wiping out all the computer systems in the United States, leading to an economic apocalypse. As Nikki leaves to stop the weapon from launching, the strike team leader is killed. She apparently kills Serena, one of Omega 19's top female assassins, and cause the missile to explode inside the silo, but this gives her 3 minutes to escape before the place explodes. She leaves the scene in the nick of time.

Hiding in a Phoenix safehouse in Hungary, Nikki infiltrates the Magyar Club in Budapest to interrogate and kill Augustin Varga, the Hungarian Minister of Defense, who is a key player in supplying Omega 19 with the doomsday weapon. However, the foreigner assigned to help Nikki was captured, but she kills them and rescues the foreigner. Nikki finds Varga, where he talks about the Stauffer Bank. She kills Varga, and escapes back to the safe house.

Nikki travels to the Stauffer Bank in Switzerland to obtain information on the connections between Stauffer and Omega 19. She enters the highly secured Bank via the sewers, where it is revealed $60 million is hidden in the bank, so she is ordered to remove the bonds. During the mission, Serena is alive and well, and this exposes Omega 19's collaboration with Stauffer. Nikki obtains the bonds, but is ambushed by Serena and her operatives. She incapacitates Serena once again and heads back to the States.

In San Diego, Nikki suspects a mole in the Phoenix organization, though Jacobson denies the allegations. She is commissioned to investigate Omega 19's current plans inside a shipping company and to find an agent with knowledge of Omega 19. She disguises herself as a scientist as a means to steal a security card from a technician and advance deeper into the shipping company. Serena reappears, and Omega 19 plans to use a nerve agent into a tanker. Nikki enters a lab, where she acquires a sample of the toxin, but as she does this, three technicians accidentally convert the toxin into a liquid form, killing them instantly. Nikki escapes certain death, and disables the tanker carrying the toxin. Angered by this, Serena reveals she was the one that killed Nikki's family. Nikki kills Serena once and for all.

Nikki makes her way to Siberia, where Jacobson tells her Michael was ordered to end an Omega 19 operation in Turkey, but pulled him from the mission due to Nikki and her child being present, but not before a Russian government official commissioned Serena to kill Michael. At a secret military base in Siberia, Nikki hands the vials to the doctor, who is revealed to be Peter, the mole in Phoenix the whole time. He betrays Nikki and she is imprisoned, but not before she got infected with a bio-virus. She escapes her confinement, destroys the remaining samples of the bio virus, and escapes Omega 19, passing out aboard the helicopter there after.

At an infirmary, Nikki is cured thanks to Phoenix separating the virus from her system and using her blood as an antidote. Much to Nikki's dismay, Jacobson sends a strike team to Omega 19's base in the Caspian Sea. Nikki knocks out Cody and she goes to the Caspian Sea to kill Peter and the Russian for good. Fighting her way through the base, she finds Peter and the Russian, whereas the Russian commanders a prototype android to finish Nikki. She outwits and destroys the android. On the helipad, the Russian programs a much larger version of the android to combat Nikki, but she outsmarts the Russian and destroys the android. The Russian begs for mercy, but Nikki kills him with a headshot. She tells Peter she is leaving Phoenix, but Peter reveals her daughter is still alive. Startled by this, Nikki shoots him in the leg, and as she prepares to kill Peter for betraying Phoenix, Jacobson arrives, and a Phoenix strike team surrounds Nikki, ending the game on a cliffhanger.

Ray Pluto has horrid memories of watching his wife and child die in a traffic accident. He's also a cop who's the laughingstock of New York City because his back failed while he was trying to stop a mass murderer — who was then shot by a child. For his back, he gets help from a chiropractor. Meanwhile, a teenager hires thugs to kill her father, who's the super in Ray's apartment building. In the same building, two young men are writing a movie script. Ray tries to get past his grief to solve the assault on the super and also return the affections of the chiropractor.

Charlie Pope (Miguel Ferrer) is a writer who goes to Mexico to write the ending of the plot for a movie. In Mexico he is attracted to a woman, Natalie (Leilani Sarelle). They go together to a beach where when she goes away to swim, he is attacked and wakes up five days later. When he wakes up he discovers that one of his kidneys has been removed. Rather than return he decides to find the "ring" whose members removed his kidney. He begins by tracking down Natalie (whose involvement with the ring he is unsure of). He returns to United States with Natalie. There he is attacked by Noel (Tony Denison) who tells him that the surgery was a failure and they require his other kidney. He learns that Natalie was involved in the ring. When Steve is about to kill Charlie, Natalie intervenes and Charlie is able to kill Steve and turn away the people who have come to remove his other kidney. It seems the end and Charlie is finishing the script when Detective Topo (Henry Silva) comes to meet him and informs him that he has questioned Natalie and she is innocent. Charlie goes out to meet her and sees that she looks identical to the Natalie he traveled with. In the end we hear a telephone conversation between Charlie and his boss (who had sent Charlie to Mexico) and we overhear that his boss has had a kidney transplant.

The novel centers around Joe Carpenter, a man who lost his wife and two daughters in a plane crash the year prior. Joe has never been able to fully cope with their deaths, and on the one year anniversary, meets a strange woman named Rose, claiming to be a survivor of the crash even when none were reported. Rose promises to tell Joe the truth, but just not yet. Finally acknowledging that the story of the crash never fully made sense to him, Joe begins seeking answers as to what really happened on that night, discovering that some may be interested in stopping him even if it means taking his life.

There is a large number of suicides of family of the crash victims, which for a while convinces Joe that Rose is somehow getting them to kill themselves with a picture of a gravestone. This leads him to a development involving his dead daughter and a laboratory developed girl, CCY 21–21, with healing powers who looks like his daughter and who wants to live the life she was never able to. This girl can heal, and give hope to anyone she touches. The only weakness is that she cannot heal herself if she is hurt.

Rose had been keeping this girl safe until her healing powers and full potential have matured, until Rose gets shot by agents who are attempting to kill her, and the girl. Another experiment, SSW-89-58, has the power to telepathically see, and know things through looking at pictures of places, also being able to control the minds of living beings in that area. The plane crash, as it turns out, was a plan to kill Rose because she had smuggled 21-21 out of the compound. 89-58 was forced to take over control of the pilot, in an attempt to kill everyone on the plane.

The plane crashed but the girl and Rose escaped, and were on the run. The novel ends with Joe escaping with Nina (CCY 21-21) and going underground. Rose was shot and dies in a final maelstrom

''Fear Nothing'', told in the first person, follows 24 hours of Christopher Snow's life, as he discovers and attempts to unravel a mysterious and seemingly endless conspiracy centered on a military compound called Fort Wyvern. The book opens with Christopher Snow going to visit his dying father at the hospital. As Snow crosses the hospital to his father's room the lights are thoughtfully dimmed to protect him in his condition. His father's dying words of advice were, "Fear nothing, Chris. Fear nothing".

As he leaves the hospital Snow accidentally and serendipitously watches as his father’s body is switched with that of a drifter. Following the people taking the body to the funeral home, Christopher is nearly caught and a manhunt begins. Christopher is chased to the outskirts of town and only his knowledge of the landscape of night keeps him ahead of his pursuers.

Later, upon returning home, Christopher finds his father's gun on his bed, and an urgent message on his answering machine to call Angela Ferryman, a nurse and lifelong family friend. Orson, the family dog, is uncharacteristically digging holes in the garden. Christopher stops the pet and brings Orson along with him to see Angela, who reveals a strange story about a night several years ago when she encountered a strange rhesus monkey in her house, a terrifying creature which is recovered by mysterious military personnel. Before more is revealed, Angela is killed while in another room, and Chris barely escapes when unknown assailants set the house on fire.

Christopher sets off on his bicycle (with Orson following) to the home of his best friend Bobby Halloway, a surfer who lives in a cottage on the edge of town, near to the sea. Upon hearing Chris’ story, Bobby urges Christopher to leave the mystery alone and continue life as normal. The friends share some food and a few beers (including the dog). Their meal is interrupted by Sasha, Christopher's girlfriend, who calls with a message from another friend of Christopher. The message sends him and Orson off on a race into the mist of the night, where they are followed by a group of mutated rhesus monkeys which are led by a shadowy figure of a half-man, half-beast.

As Christopher meets with Roosevelt Frost, an ex-football player who now focuses on a talent of communication with animals, Christopher is again warned off his investigation but now feels compelled to unravel this mystery. Frost hints at unusual, uncommonly intelligent animals escaping from the military base, including cats and dogs. He later insinuates to Christopher that his dog Orson is most likely from the military base labs. He cryptically mentions that Christopher is protected by the legacy of his mother.

Martie Rhodes helps her friend Susan Jagger, who suffers from agoraphobia, attend visits to psychologist Dr. Ahriman. Martie's husband, Dusty, tries to help his brother Skeet by providing employment in his painting business. Skeet, who had been in drug rehabilitation previously, gets high again and attempts suicide by jumping off a roof. Dusty falls off the roof while saving Skeet and decides to take his brother back to rehab.

Martie suddenly develops a mysterious case of autophobia and returns home to find herself frightened by her own reflection. Later, her condition worsens, and soon she becomes afraid of pointed objects, although she is actually afraid of the harm she might cause with them. When Dusty leaves Skeet at the rehab center, he notices a shadow lurking in the window of his brother's room. Strange things start to happen to both Dusty and Martie, involving Skeet, Martie's autophobia, and hypnotism.

The couple eventually discovers that they have both been progressively brainwashed and programmed to obey Dr. Ahriman, a sexual psychopath who drugs and indoctrinates his patients, then repeatedly rapes them or orders them to commit murders or suicide for his amusement. Dr. Ahriman orders Susan to commit suicide by slitting her wrists after discovering that she videotaped him having sex with her. The doctor has also programmed Skeet, causing his inability to fully recover from drug use and distorted thinking. Dr. Ahriman establishes control, sending patients almost instantly into a detached state of consciousness by stating a name and then reading them a haiku. He tries to justify this by stating that, by ordering certain patients to commit horrific crimes—mass murders, bombings, and random shootings—he can force legislation in order to make the world a "better place".

Dr. Ahriman is eventually killed by another patient, who had a fear of Keanu Reeves, based on his character in ''The Matrix''. The woman believes that Dr. Ahriman is one of the Machine agents trying to control her. Dusty and Martie receive a substantial inheritance from Susan's will and slowly begin to restore their shattered lives.

A shapechanging alien has come to Earth with others of his kind to save us from ourselves. After witnessing the slaughter of his entire family by evil aliens bent on stopping him, he takes off on a cross-country race to save himself. He stops at a farmhouse in the middle of the night to "borrow" some money and clothes, and comes across a sleeping boy about his age. Using a drop of blood from an old bandage, he is able to "become" Curtis Hammond, the exact duplicate of the boy. Seconds after leaving the house, the evil aliens arrive and murder the family, leaving only the dog alive. Curtis and the dog escape, and eventually end up at the location of an alien sighting. UFO buffs Castoria and Polluxia Spelkenfelter, twins, recognize Curtis from the news reports of his murder and decide to help him. Eventually he reveals to them his true nature, and they pledge to assist him in the mission he has come to Earth to complete. Together, twins, boy, and dog set off for Nun's Lake, Idaho, the next stop on the twins' itinerary while they decide what to do next.

Michelina (Mickey) Bellsong just got out of prison. She has moved in with her Aunt Geneva in order to make a new start, but things aren't going her way. She feels adrift and without direction, just wanting to get through the day. While sunning in the backyard, she is approached by a precocious but disabled little girl. Leilani Klonk has a deformed hand and a deformed leg, which requires a brace. She is more intelligent and articulate than the average nine-year-old, and disarms Mickey with her wit. Mickey and Geneva get to know the girl, and find out that her mother is an insane drug addict, and her step-father is a murderer. He killed her older brother Lukipela, and Leilani is next. Leilani believes that no one can help her, as Preston Maddoc is highly thought of by the academic community. Preston and Sinsemilla, Leilani's mother, bounce across the country looking for UFOs and Leilani knows it's only a matter of time before they bounce back to Montana, which is where Preston murdered her brother Lukipela. Mickey and Geneva vow to find a way to help Leilani, but Preston finds out and takes off with the family in the dead of night. Mickey discovers them gone and sets out after them, determined to save Leilani. Leilani has mentioned that they are headed to Nun's Lake, Idaho to the site of a supposed close encounter and Mickey races to reach the town and find the girl. Mickey arrives and goes to speak to the man who was "healed" by aliens, and finds out that Leilani's step-father hasn't been there yet. She stakes out the house, wanting to find Preston and follow him to Leilani. Preston is alerted to her presence by the man who was healed, who he then murders. He sneaks out of the house and creeps up on Mickey, knocking her unconscious. He carries her into the dead man's house and ties her up, leaving her there and racing back to the campground.

Curtis encounters Leilani at the campground in Nun's Lake and knows she's in trouble. He and the twins approach her while Preston's out and convince her to come with them. As they are running for the twins' RV, Leilani is snatched by her step-father and taken to the house he has hidden Mickey in. His plan is to make Leilani watch him kill Mickey, then torture and kill Leilani. When he gets back to the house, he discovers that Mickey has gotten free of her restraints. He dumps Leilani, takes her brace, and starts searching for Mickey in the maze of old magazines and newspapers. Leilani heads into the maze looking for a way out, and she and Mickey find each other. Preston traps them in a corner and lights the newspapers in front of them on fire, planning to listen as they burn to death. Curtis and the twins, now aided by a disillusioned ex-PI sent by Aunt Gen, arrive at the house. Noah Farrell, the PI, shoots Preston Maddoc as he races through the maze searching for Mickey and Leilani. Preston stumbles away, getting weaker and weaker from blood loss and smoke inhalation. Noah and Cass find Mickey and Leilani and the four of them search for an exit. Curtis, in his natural form, comes to their rescue, and they all escape the house. Preston Maddoc is buried under a pile of burning trash and dies.

Leilani, Mickey, Aunt Gen, and Noah join Cass and Polly in their quest to help Curtis fulfill the mission he's been sent here for.

Dylan O'Conner is traveling with his 20-year-old brother Shep. During a stay at an Arizona motel, he is knocked out and tied up by a doctor, who administers 18 cc's of a golden substance from a syringe with a large-bore hypodermic needle. He informs Dylan that it may have unexpected effects.

Jillian Jackson, a traveling comedian, is tied up and chloroformed by the doctor before being injected with the same substance.

The two meet after escaping their bonds, just as a large number of SUV's arrive. A brief meeting fight ensues before they escape.

While traveling, they are overcome with the urge to do the right thing. Dylan becomes psychometric and Shep reveals an ability to travel from one place to another, referred to as 'folding'. Eventually, they come to share each other's abilities.

The basic plot follows New Orleans detective Carson and her partner Michael on the hunt for a serial killer dubbed "The Surgeon". Reports of this killer catch the attention of Deucalion, formerly known as The Monster, who believes his former master and maker, Dr. Victor Frankenstein, has returned. As the body count grows, the case takes a darker turn when Carson encounters Deucalion, pushing Carson and Michael on to the path of a 200-year-old mystery and evil that threatens more than just New Orleans.

Mitch Rafferty, owner of a small landscaping business, receives a phone call from someone claiming to have kidnapped his wife Holly. The caller demands that Mitch pay two million dollars or Holly will be killed, and if he informs the police, Holly will be tortured and left to die. When Mitch protests that he doesn't have the money, the caller tells him that if he loves his wife enough, he will find a way. He is told to look across the street and witnesses a man walking his dog get shot in the head. The murder is meant to make Mitch believe that the kidnappers are serious and not individuals Mitch could disobey. Mitch also becomes aware that he is being watched and therefore cannot inform the police of Holly's kidnapping.

When the police arrive to tend to the murder, Mitch is questioned by a detective named Sandy Taggart. Mitch does not tell Taggart of the kidnapping, and can sense that the detective believes he may be holding something back. However, Mitch is not arrested and leaves after Taggart officially dismisses him.

On arriving home, Mitch finds his house staged to look like he had killed his wife. He finds blood smeared over his clothes in the closet and splattered on the kitchen walls. The phone rings, and the kidnapper verifies Mitch's ideas about the staging. He informs Mitch they have also planted additional evidence that would be difficult for Mitch to locate and remove, but easy for police dogs. The kidnapper then plays a recording of Mitch's session with Taggart, which confirms his earlier belief that the kidnappers have him under surveillance. Mitch is then told to have his cell phone on and remain available for further instructions later in the evening.

Unsure if Taggart can be trusted, Mitch lies to the detective when he stops by, claiming Holly had come home with a migraine and was sleeping. Taggart tells Mitch that the victim has been identified as Jason Osteen, Mitch's college roommate, to whom he had not spoken for many years. After Taggart leaves, Mitch takes a lug wrench from the garage to use as a weapon. While in the garage he finds some high-tech spying equipment. Just after this discovery, he is surprised at gun point by one of Holly's captors, and is told to drop the wrench. As the gunman orders Mitch to leave, the lug wrench the captor had picked up gets caught on a stack of Halloween decorations that subsequently get knocked over upon the gunman. During the fall the gunman lands against a wheel barrow that crushes his trachea, breaks his neck, and then he inadvertently shoots himself in the chest. Mitch takes the handgun, another concealed gun from the man's ankle holster, puts the corpse in the back of his wife's car, and decides to visit his parents.

Mitch, realizing that events could worsen, arrives at his parents' house. He has no intention of revealing any information about Holly's abduction, but wishes to ease his mind with what could possibly be a final visit, and end on good terms with his parents. His relationship with his parents is not close, due to their harsh and unconventional views on raising children which includes the “learning room”, a sensory deprivation chamber. Mitch speaks briefly with his father, learns his mother is out for the evening, and comes away disappointed with the encounter.

The next phone call from the kidnappers comes at 6:00 p.m. As instructed, Mitch visits his brother Anson without informing him of Holly's kidnapping. During this time, Anson receives a call from the kidnappers and becomes aware of the situation. Anson, who had helped his siblings throughout their childhood cope with their parents, offers to give Mitch the two million dollar ransom amount. Mitch is surprised that Anson is financially able to provide this. Anson tells Mitch of a friend, ex-FBI agent Julian Campbell, and drives Mitch to Julian's residence explaining that Julian may be able to provide suggestions learned throughout his FBI career. After arriving at Julian's huge estate, Anson pulls a gun on Mitch and states that he wouldn't give his money to save Mitch, let alone Holly. Mitch learns Anson has worked with the criminals behind Holly's kidnapping and shorted them on their last criminal enterprise. Now, the kidnappers mistakenly believe that Anson will do anything to help Mitch save Holly.

Julian informs Mitch that he has never worked for the FBI and has obtained his wealth through the "entertainment industry." Julian has his two henchmen disarm Mitch and take him outside the city to be disposed of. Mitch manages to kill his executioners with the forgotten gun in the ankle holster and returns to his parents' house where he finds them dead. Again, the scene has been set up as if Mitch had killed his parents, although this time, Mitch believes Anson to be behind the setup.

Mitch confronts Anson at Anson's house, tasers him, and ties him to a chair in the laundry room. He does not reveal that he knows Anson killed his parents and promises to release Anson if he gives Mitch the two million. Anson eventually gives him the combination to a secret safe in the kitchen where he finds 1.4 million dollars in bearer bonds and cash. Mitch, remembering an earlier conversation with his brother, asks Anson how he really made so much money. Anson informs him of an illegal Internet company run by Julian Campbell that downloads untraceable adult and child pornography. Anson takes great delight in telling Mitch this, because he wants Mitch to know that Holly's ransom money is dirty and realizes Mitch will be reminded of this for the rest of his life with Holly. After hearing the story, Mitch is disgusted and leaves him in the dark laundry room instead of releasing him as promised, knowing that Anson does not like the dark and will be reminded of their parents' learning room.

Meanwhile, Holly is being held captive in an attic, trying surreptitiously to pry a nail from the floorboards. The nail is something that she regards as a pathetic weapon, and at first, she works at it merely to have something to focus on. She finally pries the nail free and conceals it without really knowing how she can use such a small device effectively against trained killers.

Holly has also learned that one of the kidnappers, Jimmy Null, has become suspicious of the others and killed them. He tells Holly how they had all grown dubious of each other and acted so that they would not kill him. He plans to keep all the money for himself.

During this time, she also wins the remaining kidnapper's trust by listening to his stories of visions, inventing a vision of her own, and indicating she might travel with him to New Mexico where their visions take place.

Jimmy Null then calls Mitch again - speaking with a different voice - and agrees to the 1.4 million in cash offered. Mitch is instructed to meet them at the Turnbridge house, an enormous mansion on which construction was halted. Before Mitch can leave, Taggart arrives with the news that Anson's name appeared in Jason Osteen's phone book. Taggert also points out inconsistencies in Mitch's earlier story to him. Mitch initially claims his brother is away, but finally confesses the series of events to Taggart. As they are going to see Anson in the laundry room, Mitch tasers Taggart and runs away. Before fleeing, he tells Taggart that he cannot trust anyone else to save Holly, because he loves her too much and time is running out.

After buying rounds for a gun he took from one of the executioners, Mitch is chased on foot from the gun store by the police. He steals an SUV from a gas station and goes to the Turnbridge house where he confronts his enemy. The kidnapper tells Mitch that Holly's moment of decision has arrived, and Holly is able to distract the kidnapper with what he believes is proof of her visions and devotion by appearing to have stigmata. Holly's wounds are in fact secretly self-inflicted from the nail. Mitch takes advantage of the distraction and shoots the kidnapper, who is initially protected with a bullet-proof vest. Null then chases Mitch and Holly with a motorcycle but Mitch is able to eventually kill him by firing at his head.

The novel ends with an epilogue. It is at the 32nd birthday of Mitch. We learn that Campbell has been murdered in prison and Anson is currently on death row. Mitch and Holly have two children and will eventually have a third, Mitch's business is booming, and Detective Taggart is now a family friend.

Category:2006 American novels Category:Thriller novels Category:Novels by Dean Koontz

The novel begins seven months after ''Forever Odd''. During that time, Odd Thomas has been a guest at St. Bartholomew's Abbey, where he hopes to seek peace and understanding. During his time there, he befriends a white-furred dog who assists him in his further adventures.

Odd sees a shade-like bodach. This portends great disaster for the abbey. One of the monks disappears and Odd is attacked by a mysterious killer. As he searches for the missing monk, Odd hears an odd noise in a great snowstorm, and later sees an intricate, shifting pattern of bones against a window.

Rodion Romanovich, the abbey's other guest, meets Odd in the garage to pick up the monks. Odd, suspicious of Romanovich, intends to leave him in the abbey but he takes one sport utility vehicle (SUV) full of monks before Odd can stop him. On the way there, Romanovich's SUV is turned over by a bone-creature. Brother Knuckles, Odd's confidant, damages the creature with the other plow, saving everyone. Back at the school, Odd and Romanovich are able to determine that Jacob's father, the Neverwas, is John Heineman, a monk at the abbey known as Brother John and a former physicist who experimented with reality.

Later, Odd decides to leave the abbey, but as he rides down the highway back to his hometown, psychic magnetism pulls him out of the car, where the book ends as he walks down the highway toward the unknown. After three adventures, Elvis Presley, who sometimes assists Odd, finally crosses over. Odd and the dog (who is now revealed to be a ghost) continue along together, only to be united moments later with the ghost of Frank Sinatra.

They are stronger, heal better, and think faster than any humans ever created—and they must be destroyed. But not even Victor Helios—once Frankenstein—can stop the engineered killers he’s set loose on a reign of terror through modern-day New Orleans. Now the only hope rests in a one-time “monster” and his all-too-human partners, Detectives Carson O’Connor and Michael Maddison. Deucalion’s centuries-old history began as Victor’s first and failed attempt to build the perfect human–and it is fated to end in the ultimate confrontation between a damned creature and his mad creator. But first Deucalion must destroy a monstrosity not even Victor’s malignant mind could have imagined—an indestructible entity that steps out of humankind’s collective nightmare with one purpose: to replace us.

After Odd Thomas discovers that his childhood friend Danny has been kidnapped and his step-father brutally murdered, he assumes that Danny's birth father, who was recently released from prison, has kidnapped him. Because of this belief, Odd starts to investigate, and is led through a water tunnel and into an abandoned hotel by his "psychic magnetism," an ability of Odd's to track down who, or what he is visualizing.

Inside, Odd finds his friend tied up and strapped to a bomb. Danny informs Odd that his dad did not kidnap him. Instead, Danny recounts that, because of his loneliness from a debilitating bone disease, he called a phone sex line and spoke with a woman named Datura. Danny, having been seduced by this woman, had eventually given up the information of Odd's "gift." Once this registered in her mind, she kidnapped Danny in order to have Odd reveal himself to her.

Odd leaves Danny and finds Datura in her room with two thugs, Cheval Robert and Cheval Andre. She orders Odd to show her ghosts. Reluctantly, Odd takes her to the casino in the hotel where he previously saw many ghosts and one poltergeist. Datura insults a ghost, and the enraged poltergeist flings objects at them. At this point, Odd escapes from Datura, returns to Danny, and disarms the bomb. Odd returns to Datura's room and finds a shotgun, which he uses to kill Cheval Robert. Datura finds him by "reverse psychic magnetism"; as they are talking, a mountain lion attacks her from behind. An angry Cheval Andre chases Odd through the hotel, before Odd kills Cheval Andre in a sewer.

Odd dies in the sewer, and his spirit visits three of his friends. He comes back to life, however, in front of the Blue Moon Café with no idea how he got there. At first he is dismayed at his survival, as his dearest hope is to be reunited with his soul-mate, Bronwen "Stormy" Llewellyn, in the afterlife. Odd accompanies the Chief Porter to the hotel, where they go back to retrieve Danny from that terrible place. Two months later, Odd makes plans to work in a monastery high in the mountains in an attempt to find peace.

A musical drama, ''Cheviot'' recounts the history of economic change in the Scottish Highlands, from the Highland Clearances in the early 19th century through to the contemporary oil boom at the time of its first production. The 7:84 Touring Theatre Company presents its live stage play to the people of South and North Uist, Benbecula and Lewis. The stage play is mixed with filmed reconstructions of documented events in the Highland Clearances, darkly humorous songs and sketches and, later, interviews with those participating and affected by the North Sea Oil industry in 1974.

Scotland from 270 miles above the Earth. Castle from helicopter. Land mixes with water, seabirds, fiddle music; people enter the presentation in a community hall. Images of giant earth-moving equipment, sheep, stag, gas flare, then the faces of the locals watching the play – some baffled, some sceptical, some participating, particularly in a song sung in Scottish Gaelic...

Each sketch and reconstruction is supported by a continuous narration of facts and statistics, presenting an account of Scottish history from 1746 to 1974. Scenes describe 60 years of poverty, abuse and small scale eviction endured by the crofting tenants of the Highlands from 1746 – "Culloden and all that" – when speaking, singing or writing Scottish Gaelic and the wearing of the plaid were forcibly forbidden by the government.

The sudden expansion of English and Scottish capital and estate enlargement – "more money to buy more land" – at the beginning of the 19th century is outlined next. Patrick Sellar, a factor of the Duke of Sutherland, is introduced. His systemised evictions of the Highlanders were the broadest and most brutal of all the Clearances, and he is evoked as representative of the issues of land ownership in the Highlands and Islands and the north of Scotland. With frequent shots of the audience the play gives dispassionate readings of the equally dispassionate contemporary accounts of the brutality involved in evicting Highland crofting tenants to make way for the more profitable Cheviot, and later Blackface, sheep.

The reasons for the Clearances are explained and how they were enabled for the 'ruling classes' with the connivance of the church, the Law, the police and the military. It details where the people went: often to allotments on the seashore with wretched soil and conditions, where they were supposed to fish and gather kelp for the soda ash industry. It details the economic reasons why the men were often away south for much of the year, trying to find work to pay the rents on their crofts, or in the Highland regiments defending the British Empire. It also details the emigrations to the Victorian slums of Glasgow and to the rest of the world.

The few, but hugely important, successful instances of organised resistance to the evictions feature. It lists political resistance to the evictions such as the Land Leagues of the 1880s, which are contrasted with the Victorian landed gentry's passion for stag hunting; this and the sheep industry now having taken over many millions of acres. The land raids by crofters in the early 20th century are mentioned.

The play briefly mentions the modern day (1974) exploitation of the Highlands by the tourist industry then makes political comparisons between the past and 1974. McGrath explained in 1981: "At the first sniff of oil off the east coast of Scotland, things began to jump. First in Aberdeen and the North-East. Then all over. Suddenly villages that did not merit even an advance factory for 100 workers are being taken over by thousands of men in labour camps building oil-rigs, and oil-production platforms."

Oilmen at Aberdeen are interviewed about conditions, health and safety at work and wages. These are followed by interviews with American oil bosses and members of the population of Aberdeen and on issues such as the inaffordability of housing after the oil boom.

The play details the political history of North Sea oil from the North Sea Gas explorations of 1962, and explores issues of shore and village destruction and pollution, accompanied by shots of refineries and plant. It explains that exploration is now looking to the West and has in fact already started off the Butt of Lewis.

With a final montage of images from 1746 to the Aberdeen riggers, the performers tell audience members that this is their land and urges them to resist exploitation, warning them that they will find the oil corporations even more insensitive than Patrick Sellar.

"On the tallest mountain above town," the young Prince Bertie still has not married, as is the custom in his kingdom. His mother, a grouchy Queen who is tired of ruling and wishes to pass on the responsibility to her son, insists he must find a princess to marry. The prince tells his mom "Very well, Mother.... I must say, though, I've never cared much for princesses." His mother marches princess after princess through the castle, from places ranging from Greenland to Mumbai, but in spite of their various talents — Princess Aria of Austria sings opera, Princess Dolly from Texas juggles and does magic tricks — they fail to interest the prince (though the prince's page falls in love with the princess from Greenland). After a while, along comes Princess Madeleine escorted by her brother Prince Lee. At the same time, both Bertie and Lee exclaim, "What a wonderful prince!" The princes immediately fall in love, and they begin marriage preparations at once. The wedding is attended by all the rejected princesses and their families; the two princes are declared King and King, and the Queen can finally relax, sunning herself in a lounge chair near the page and the princess from Greenland. The story ends with a kiss between the two kings.

In 1932 Sonora Webster lives with her sister, Arnette, and abusive Aunt Helen during the Great Depression. After a series of troubles, which involve her accidentally letting the cows loose, punching another girl for making fun of her poor economic background, and getting suspended from school, Aunt Helen sells her treasured horse, Lightning. Helen then tells Sonora that she will be sent to an orphanage the following day. Instead, Sonora slips out of the house during the night. She ends up at a county fair and sees a performance by Marie, a diving girl who rides a horse off a platform, and aspires to do so too. Marie's employer, Doc Carver, tells her she is too young but gives her a job as a stable hand due to her ability with horses, and she begins traveling with them. Doc's son, Al, wins a wild horse in a card game and Sonora names him Lightning. She later surprises Doc by taming and riding him, so he promises to train her to be a diving girl if she can mount it while it's moving, which she succeeds after multiple attempts.

Marie's regular horse gets sick, therefore Al decides to use Lightning in the shows. Sonora warns Marie not to kick him, but she ignores her and he causes her to fall off and dislocate her shoulder. With her unable to perform, Al asks Sonora if she can do the stunts. Although she has never dove with Lightning, their first jump is successful. Marie becomes jealous, and as Doc tires of her diva-like behavior, she quits rather than share billing with Sonora. Al develops a romance with her that strains his relationship with Doc, and he leaves home after a particularly bad fight. He promises to write to Sonora, but Doc hides all his letters and she thinks that he has forgotten about her. When Doc and the new stable hand, Clifford, are away from the farm in search of jobs for the show, Lightning falls ill with colic. Al returns, and he and Sonora work together to heal Lightning. Doc hasn't found any places for them to perform at, but then Al announces he has arranged a six-month contract to do so at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City, New Jersey. This reconciles Doc and Al, but then the former passes away of a heart attack on the way to Atlantic City, and Al assumes Doc's role as the show presenter. Sonora searches for Doc's jacket to give Al confidence on his first show, and finds one of his letters in it that confesses his love for her, and she lets him know that she feels the same.

Al proposes to Sonora just before a performance in front of their biggest crowd, which she accepts. The horse is a jittery stallion instead of Lightning, and he falters and trips off the end of the diving board after shying from cymbals crashing below. Not expecting it, Sonora has her eyes open as they land in the pool. Both are alive, but Sonora can't see properly. However, she hides this from Al, not wanting him to stop her from doing the shows. She wakes the next morning to discover she is permanently blind from detached retinas in both eyes. She has to learn to find her way around, and Al is always by her side to help her. To avoid a breach of contract lawsuit, he must find another diving girl within a week, so he calls Marie, who returns. Meanwhile, Sonora misses diving terribly, especially as she has to stay home while she knows Al and Marie are out performing. She tells Al of her desire to dive with Lightning again, and they work together to try to train her to mount him blind, but it proves fruitless and Al gives up.

The next day, Clifford locks Marie in her dressing room, and Sonora performs in her place with Lightning. Al shouts at her to come back down, but she continues and the jump is successful. Her voiceover tells you that she continued diving for eleven more years with the audience never learning of her blindness, and of her happy marriage to Al.

''Cold War'' takes place in 1986 and follows the story of a freelance journalist named Matthew Carter who finds himself in the midst of an international conspiracy that aims to control the Soviet Union. Twelve hours after arriving in Moscow in hopes of gathering material for a Pulitzer Prize winning story, he finds himself thrown into the KGB's political prison and framed for an attempted murder of the president. The reason for this was unknown, however, an unidentified female agent replaced his original camera with a prototype X-ray camera. Carter noticed this unknown device and decided to capture a fire extinguisher for testing, but the chemicals in the flash powder caused the object to explode, making him visible to the guards.

Inside the prison, he met a former Soviet agent whom he agreed to accompany. The two escaped by using a shaft to go to the outer areas of the prison.

Using only recovered weapons and improvised gadgets, he must now evade or overcome elite Soviet forces and defeat the conspiracy before he is sent to a Siberian prison camp or killed.

Hung Hei-kwun arrives in his village after a raid by government soldiers, only to find his whole village destroyed. Hung Hei-kwun quickly finds his infant son and gives him a choice between death and joining him in the rebellion. Upon leaving his village he encounters Ma Ling-yee, who is also supposed to be involved in the rebellion; he learns that Ling-yee had betrayed him and their village for the bounty on Hei-kwun's head. After an epic battle, the film skips ahead several years and arrives with Hung Hei-kwun and his now-skilled son making their way through China in order to find money for food. At this time, the film introduces "Red Bean", who is in the process of swindling a very rich man, Ma Kai-sin, out of his money. Kwun tries to leave his son in the care of his brother but is betrayed, forcing him to kill his brother. The rich man, witnessing the carnage done by Kwun, hires Hung Hei-Kwun as a bodyguard. Initially he wants Kwun to help him bully and steal from others; Kwun refuses the offer but decides to be his bodyguard instead because he and Man Ting, his son, ran out of money.

At the same time the government has begun to crack down on Shaolin. Pieces of a map are tattooed onto the backs of several pupils, who are then removed from the temple in order to keep safe the Ming Dynasty treasure the map leads to. Years ago, Hung Hei-kwun's encounter with the money hungry Ma Ling-yee did not end as Hung thought it did: Ma Ling-yee survived the fight as a result of being dipped in poison and restored by The Monk of the West District. Now a disgusting creature, his only purpose for life is to get revenge and kill Hei-kwun. The government massacres Shaolin, while Ma Ling-yee himself kills the abbot. Thereafter, he begins the hunt for Hei-kwun and the escaped pupils.

Hei-kwun and Man-ting, along with Red Bean and her mother (who plays dead in order to swindle people out of their money) arrive at Ma Kai-sin's mansion. Red Bean is to be married to Kai-sin, who is completely oblivious to Red Bean and her mother's plans to steal his wealth. While Hei-kwun and Man-ting begin to settle in, Red Bean sees Hei-kwun as a threat to her plans. She attempts to kill him, but she fails and Hei-kwun warns her that as long as he is around, she will not be causing any trouble. Man-ting sees all of this, and accuses his father of having feelings for Red Bean, since through their travels, Hei-kwun taught his son many teachings to stay alive, such as "to kill without mercy", or "hold your temper, but only until you cannot hold it anymore".

Meanwhile, Kai-sin's son, Ma Chiew-Heng, begins to bully Man-ting, due to Man-ting's low social status and Ma Chiew-Heng's jealousy of Man-ting's superiority in Kung Fu. Chiew-Heng, a former pupil of Shaolin (who has a part of the map tattooed on his back), calls upon his former Shaolin friends (who also have the other parts of the map) to help him beat up Man-ting. Man-ting, although trying to be passive at first, loses his temper, beating all the boys up, as well as spraining Chiew-Heng's arm. However, Man-ting commands Chiew-Heng to hold still as he quickly fixes his arm, to prevent permanent damage. This earns him the respect of all the other boys, and they all call him "oldest brother" out of respect, although he is the youngest of them all.

On the Lunar New Year, several guests dine and celebrate at Kai-yin's mansion. However, government soldiers have tracked the location of the pupils to Kai-Sin's home. Ma Chiew-Heng escapes and causes confusion at the same time as Ling-yee is revealed, during which Man-ting is captured. Ma Chiew-Heng reveals that his four brothers have been captured and that they have four pieces of the map tattooed on their backs and that he has the final piece tattooed on his back. Hei-kwun fights Ling-yee. Ma Chiew-Heng is captured.

Hei-kwun rescues the five boys and continues his fight with Ling-yee. The five boys, now known as the dragon brothers, fight (unknown leader) who has chased them in a metal horse (self-powered cart). Ting rejoins Hei-kwun and they blow up Ling-yee together. Ling-yee unexpectedly survives.

Hei-kwun and the five boys travel to the Red Dragon Pavilion seeking a rumored Shaolin master. They find a ghost town with an old man and a wax maker who make realistic wax figures using human flesh. They get directions to the Red Dragon Pavilion and meet the rebels, led by Sung Young Chen, who has an invincible sword. They are attacked by government forces. Red Bean's mother rescues the boys from a dart attack, but is wounded in the process. Hei-kwun kills (unknown leader). Ling-yee attacks while they are mourning Red Bean's mother. Hei-kwun fights Ling-yee while Red Bean and the five boys escape. Man-ting rejoins Hei-kwun to help fight Ling-yee. The secret saholin master (secretly the old wax maker) rejoins them and fights Ling-yee using his dragon fists. Red Bean and Hei-kwun rescue the boys from acid when Ling-yee breaks through the floor. Ling-yee is killing Hei-kwun when Red Bean joins the fight. Man-ting rescues her. Hei-kwun rescues Man-ting and tackles Ling-yee through a window to their mutual death, but is rescued by Man-ting who throws a rope.

They return to town. Man-ting calls Red Bean mom as they ride off away from the sunset.

A young family moves to rural Wales to renovate a farmhouse and recover from the drowning death of their daughter, Ruthie. While there, the family witnesses a series of terrible mutilations of sheep by an unknown perpetrator.

Dr. Jonathan Hemlock is an art professor and mountaineer. He is also a collector of paintings, most of them obtained from the black market. To finance his collection, Hemlock, who served in a Special Forces team of the Army Intelligence Branch and fought in the Korean War, works as a so-called "counter-assassin" for a secret US government agency, the CII.

In order to acquire a Pissarro, Hemlock agrees to carry out a couple of "sanctions" (contract assassinations targeted specifically against killers of American agents). The first one is easily dealt with in Montreal. For the second, he will need to join a group of climbers who are about to attempt the north face of the Eiger, a particularly difficult challenge. Hemlock goes back into training and eventually climbs the mountain with the team that he believes includes his would-be victim — whose identity he will have to deduce on the mountain itself. Poor climbing conditions disrupt the climb and lead Hemlock to the discovery that his target is someone other than he had expected.

As in the original anime series, the first four volumes of the manga deal with the Angel invasions, but from a much different angle. Moreover, several more mundane sub-plot tropes common to Japanese manga occur at the same time as the invasions, such as:

: Asuka and Shinji are childhood friends, but both are reluctant to risk their friendship and form a deeper relationship. Nonetheless, Asuka becomes jealous when Rei is attracted to Shinji. : Kensuke has an unrequited crush on Asuka, but is afraid to act because of Shinji's possible feelings. Rei is in a parallel position, with the roles reversed. : Toji and Hikari date, even though the invasions threaten both of their lives. : Kaworu is also a childhood friend of Shinji. However, their friendship originated from childhood incidents when Asuka abandoned Shinji, and he and Asuka never got along. By the time of the manga, Kaworu has failed to form intimate relationships with anyone besides Shinji, and resents Shinji's closer relationship with Asuka, and also tries to prevent Rei from getting closer to Shinji. :* Gendo Ikari's work schedule and cold personality alienate Shinji, who in turn resents his father's attitude towards his mother, Yui.

At the end of the fourth volume, the main characters, as Evangelion pilots, are broken up and posted to different spots around the world, although they plan to (and, with one exception, do) meet up after the Angels' threat is over and they grow too old to be pilots anymore.

The fifth volume is a flashback to Gendo and Yui's youths. This flashback presents Gendo as a violent juvenile delinquent in high school, abandoned by his parents, and he hates the world. Yui is introduced as a star student who is attracted to Gendo and helps him overcome his problems.

The sixth and final volume returns to the main story arc after the Angels' defeat, specifically the actions and fates of the characters as they grow up. The volume attempts to tie up loose ends, including:

: Rei and Ritsuko, who are stationed together, both realize their romantic feelings will remain unrequited - Rei's feelings for Shinji, and Ritsuko's feelings for Gendo. : Misato and Kaji, who dated in college and remain good friends, review their relationship. Although they seemed to break up soon after college, they realize that they never "officially" broke up and still have feelings for each other. They agree to keep their relationship going, but not to rush anything. : Hikari and Toji endure a long distance relationship, made complicated by the constant dangers in Toji's job. : Shinji and Asuka, now dating, are forced to deal with strains in their relationship on their own, especially since Kaworu is (apparently) no longer around to defuse their arguments. :*Kaworu's true identity, goals, purpose, feelings, and eventual fate are hinted at during both story arcs, but are never explicitly identified. He briefly returns to show Shinji and Asuka well.

Ravic is an Austrian doctor who helped Jews escape from the Nazi regime. He was tortured in a concentration camp. In 1939 he is living in Paris, under a false name and without any documents, constantly aware of the risk of being arrested. At night, on one of Paris' bridges over the Seine, Ravic meets Joan Madou, a woman about to (possibly) attempt suicide, and helps her. This is the start of a romance. But the prickly Ravic has unfinished business with the Nazis, and in particular Haake the Gestapo chief who had sent him to the concentration camp after spotting him in the street. He is separated from Joan after being discovered as refugee without papers. With no communication possible between them, they each try to manage under difficult circumstances and, when they finally meet up again after six months of unexplained absence, there are shadows hanging over their relationship. They cautiously try to mend their broken affair as international events spin out of control around them.

In the end, as planned, Joan tells her lover that she is leaving him for Ravik and meets Ravik at a restaurant. But he has sighted Haake at another table and is so consumed by revenge that he sends Joan away, even though she tells him that her lover threatens to kill her if she leaves him. The radio and newspapers warn that war is imminent. Ravic kills Haake, but so abruptly that he does not have time to reveal his identity or call Haake to account for the lives he destroyed. Joan’s lover does shoot her, and hours later he goes to Ravic for help.

When Ravic operates he discovers the bullet cannot be removed. Paralyzed, dying and in pain, Joan makes him promise to release her.. They declare their love and when a wave of agony overcomes Joan, he gives her an injection that eases her pain and then frees her. “My life, my love... God, Why?" he sobs in despair.

His friend Boris offers him false identity papers, but Ravic is tired of running and living without a name. He turns himself in to the French authorities and is sent to an internment camp. He tells a pregnant woman on the truck not to worry. A fellow passenger says “Here we go again". "Ah yes," Ravic replies, "Human beings can stand a great deal." The truck drives off through the night, towards the Arc de Triomphe. The audience knows that the war is about to start and that the Nazis will march into Paris along the same route.

In 1900, lumberman Jim Fallon (Kirk Douglas) greedily eyes the big redwood trees in the virgin region of northern California. The land is already settled by, among others, a religious group led by Elder Bixby (Charles Meredith) who have a religious relationship with the redwoods and refuse to log them, using smaller trees for lumber. Jim becomes infatuated with Bixby's daughter, Alicia (Eve Miller), though that does not change his plan to cheat the homesteaders. When Jim's right-hand man, Yukon Burns (Edgar Buchanan) finds out, he changes sides and leads the locals in resisting Jim. The locals combat Jim's loggers with a sympathetic judge with Jim fighting back by using Federal laws.

Elder Bixby is killed when a big sequoia tree is chopped down by Jim's men and falls on his cabin. Jim's desperate attempt to rescue Alicia's father saves him from being convicted of murder. Meanwhile, timber rival Cleve Gregg (Harry Cording) appears on the scene, making it a three-way fight. Gregg and his partner Frenchy LeCroix (John Archer) try to assassinate Jim, but end up killing Yukon instead. Jim has a dramatic change of heart and leads the settlers in defeating Gregg and Frenchy. Afterwards, Jim marries Alicia and settles down.

Fifteen years ago, wealthy but crippled Colorado cattleman Arch Strobie, whose own son Lee was wild, took in young Owen Daybright as a foster son to help raise and control Lee. Now Owen is ranch foreman, but Lee, despite being married to Jen, is wilder than ever.

Unmarried Lily Fasken gives birth but refuses to identify the father. After Owen gives Lily $500 to help care for the baby, her brothers Hub and Dick believe it must be he, but they are unaware Owen did it on Lee's behalf. The brothers try to beat up Owen, after a fight he lodges a complaint against them. Sentenced to a week in jail, they vow to get even as soon as they get out.

When Arch chides Lee for overdrawing his bank account by withdrawing $500 in gold, Jen realizes that Lee fathered Lily's baby. When she confronts him, Lee tries to lie his way out. She decides to leave him, but Owen and Arch persuade her to stay. Lee inveigles Arch to make him a partner in the ranch by saying that he will strike out on his own unless he gets a half-interest; he gets what he wants and learns that the other half will go to Owen, once Arch retires or dies.

Jen locks Lee out of their bedroom. He gets drunk, mistakenly believing she and Owen are carrying on behind his back. He schemes to get rid of Owen and make a fortune at the same time by conspiring with Hub and Dick to ambush Owen during the spring cattle roundup. On the trail, Lee secretly sells 3,000 head of the cattle, intending to run off with the proceeds. However, Owen learns of the plan.

Lee pretends to have changed his mind. He persuades Owen to ride in with him to cancel the sale, but in fact he lures Owen into a trap. Hub and Dick, waiting in ambush, wound Owen as Lee flees the scene. In the ensuing gunfight, Owen kills Dick. Hearing shots, a group of trailhands ride to Owen's rescue. They chase down and shoot Hub. Owen catches up with Lee and tells him they are both going back to tell everything to Arch. Lee refuses, confident he can outshoot Owen. He draws his gun, forcing Owen to kill him. Owen breaks the news to Arch and Jen.

It is eighteen months since the outbreak of World War II and Captain Mainwaring is giving a lecture on the progress of the war, and admits that they have thrown the Allies out of Greece and Crete, but reminds them that Rudolf Hess surrendered not too long ago, so the rats are leaving the sinking ship. However, he tells the platoon that the enemy are dropping empty parachutes to confuse the people, and if they spot one, they must report it to GHQ. Jones wonders what the difference is between British parachutes and Nazi parachutes. Mainwaring's memo tells him that British parachutes are white, while Nazi parachutes are a dirty, creamy, off-white. Frazer points out that the parachutist may be miles away by the time they find the parachute, so Walker decides to bring a tracker dog to the next parade.

After the parade, Jones decides to go to the pub, but Walker has to talk to Mainwaring. He confides in Mainwaring and Wilson that he found a parachute not long ago. Mainwaring is anxious to know whether it was white or cream. Walker cannot remember, as he sold it on his stall as part of eight dozen pairs of ladies' knickers. He, Mainwaring and Wilson now have the unenviable task of trying to find a pair among the citizens of Walmington-on-Sea.

Unsurprisingly, they have no luck, except a young lady who has no hesitation in showing Wilson her blue knickers. The people they have questioned complain to ARP Warden Hodges, who leaves Mainwaring in a tough situation when a pair of knickers emerges from a letterbox.

During a stealth practice the next day, Walker brings in the tracker dog. They test the dog's sniffing power by having Jones pretending to be a Nazi parachutist. They remove Jones's jacket and allow the dog to pick up his scent. As they head up the church hall stairs, Mrs Pike arrives to remind Wilson about their tête-a-tête supper. As the platoon, Jones and the dog come charging down the stairs, they knock down Mrs Pike, revealing her underwear. Walker remembers that he sold the last pair of knickers to Mrs Pike, and they're white: it was a British parachute.

Some time later, Hodges notices a parachute stuck in a tree. He is so busy trying to get it down that he unwittingly gives directions to Downsend Woods for a man with a peculiar German accent. Just as he removes the parachute, the platoon arrive, and after Hodges is mistaken for the parachutist, it isn't long before the dog picks up the scent. Hodges tells Mainwaring about the man with the German accent, and it isn't long before they spot him.

They follow him to a barn containing a Pekingese dog, a big mansion that was bombed in an air raid the previous year and into a dilapidated old house, where they confront him. However, it turns out he's a Viennese ornithologist, having found a golden oriole bird's egg (which the platoon initially mistake for a grenade). Mainwaring asks the man why he kept running away. The man explains that since the oriole bird is protected, it is illegal to take its eggs.

Suddenly, the real German parachutist comes barging in, angry that the platoon keeps running away because he has been trying to surrender to them.

Mainwaring is preparing to march the platoon over to the recreation ground for a lecture on field craft. Wilson enters the office, informing him that Pike and Jones are ready for him to inspect their rifles, and Frazer is ready with the Lewis gun. Mainwaring inspects Jones' rifle, and reminds him not to leave sausage skins in the magazine again. He also reminds Pike not to let his mother clean his rifle with a bath brick. Frazer is relieved to not have to clean the Lewis Gun again for three weeks, but Mainwaring notices that the butterfly spring is missing, and Frazer surmises that it is in his workshop.

Mainwaring marches the platoon to Frazer's workshop and Frazer searches for the box where he keeps his tools, believing the spring is there, but it has gone. Mainwaring asks him what the box was like, and is shocked to learn that it is shaped like a coffin. Frazer tells him that when he was young, he learnt how to make coffins and perform dentistry on the Isle of Mingulay. He remembers that Mr Drury, an undertaker, would probably have taken it, so the platoon head there.

Mr Drury is in a hurry and does not stop to speak with Frazer and Jones. They instead speak with his secretary, Miss Baker, who confirms the use of the coffin. Frazer asks if it is still there, but Miss Baker reveals it is now occupied by a Mr Horace Blewitt. Jones and Frazer are shocked, and are even more shocked to learn that his brother Sidney wanted him to rest in peace on his dining room table.

Jones and Frazer worm their way into Mr Blewitt's house, and Jones distracts Mr Blewitt while Frazer searches the coffin. Mr Blewitt tells Jones that his brother came home after buying best end of neck from Jones, looked at it, and cried: "Look at that! All bloody bone!" before collapsing and dying from the shock. Jones takes offence at the comment and claims Mr Blewitt is accusing him of "doing in" his brother, and drags Frazer out of the house in indignation before he has had a chance to fully inspect the coffin.

Mainwaring rings GHQ to enquire about spare springs, but none is in stock. Walker has a friend who is a metal worker, but he cannot help them because he is currently in prison. So, Mainwaring decides that they should return to Mr Blewitt's house that night and break in after Mr Blewitt has gone to bed. However, when Jones and Frazer climb into the dining room via the kitchen window, they are shocked to find that the coffin lid is screwed down. They attempt to unscrew it with Pike's scout knife, but they are interrupted by Mr Blewitt coming down the stairs and quickly make their exit.

The next morning, while Frazer is officiating Horace's funeral, the platoon arrive at the churchyard, just as the procession arrive at the grave. They stick a "Danger! Unexploded Bomb" sign in the ground, and warn the vicar and the mourners that there is an unexploded bomb in the churchyard. However, it is just a ruse to clear the graveyard. Later, Jones' section arrive at the grave to retrieve the spring. Jones reluctantly climbs inside to check, but they are interrupted by the verger, who has come to fill in Horace's hole. However, they are unable to remove Jones from the grave, so the verger is understandably surprised when the earth he digs into the grave is flung back at him.

The verger confronts the platoon, who manage to cover up the event until he leaves. Mainwaring admits he must report Frazer to GHQ for court-martial but, just in the nick of time, Frazer discovers the butterfly spring in his trouser pocket.

Mr Maxwell, the solicitor for the late Mr Johnson, tells Mainwaring and Wilson that the only things he left of any value are the clothes he stood up in, and his boat ''The Naughty Jane''. Wilson adds that Mr Johnson's account was overdrawn to the extent of £33 12s 6d. (Or £1,323.02 in 2017) Mainwaring admits that that means the boat becomes the property of the bank, and can be used to offset the overdraft.

Just as Mr Maxwell leaves, Mainwaring has an idea, much to Wilson's panic: the platoon can use that boat for river patrols and tells him that half a dozen determined men, armed to the teeth, can play havoc with the Nazis if they invaded. Wilson tells Mainwaring that the platoon work hard enough as it is, and deserve a rest. Mainwaring tells Wilson that he only wants to test it out and decides to call for volunteers. He chooses Jones, Pike, Walker, Desmond, Godfrey and Frazer.

They hold a practice in the church hall using chairs and mops. Mainwaring's lack of nautical knowledge annoys Frazer, who holds the most claim to being an experienced sailor. It isn't long before they get it out on the open water. Mainwaring says they'll just row up to the mouth of the river and turn back. However, it soon turns foggy, and Mainwaring decides to turn round. It isn't long before Mainwaring takes charge completely, and Frazer goes into a sulk.

Night falls, and Mainwaring says they must be well up-stream by now. Pike is ill, and wants a drink; Walker scoops some water with his forage cap and gives it to Pike, who promptly spits it out because it's salty; they're in the middle of the English Channel. Frazer refuses to help, still stung after being spurned by Mainwaring, so the men have to come up with their own ideas, with little success. Mainwaring is proud of the men's loyalty, and Frazer, realising his stupidity, apologises to Mainwaring, and he accepts his apology. Mainwaring asks him where the North is, but Frazer doesn't know either.

As dawn breaks, Jones hears voices from the shore. Elated, the men row into the shore, and prepare to call out, but are interrupted by French singing (in fact, French Canadian pilots celebrating a successful mission in a nearby pub). Mainwaring believes that they must have drifted into France. The platoon sneak into an empty railway truck, and make themselves comfortable, so they can escape the next night.

Later, Jones is woken by the sound of wheels turning, and is shocked when he opens the truck door and sees the train moving. He alerts Mainwaring, who in turn wakens the platoon, and they prepare to jump off, stop by stop, and make their way back to the coast to get back to England. They throw their rifle bolts and the Lewis gun's butterfly spring out of the door, stuff their hats and jackets up their tunics and exchange goodbyes. As the train stops, they open the door, and spot a man on the station. Using schoolboy French, they attempt to bluff their way out of it, and the puzzled man tells them that they're at Eastbourne Station, much to the men's relief.

Wilson gets the idea of heading back to Walmington-on-Sea by train for lunch, but Mainwaring bursts his bubble by reminding him that they have to retrieve their rifle bolts and they set off back down the tracks.

Raimunda (Penélope Cruz) and Sole (Lola Dueñas) are sisters who grew up in Alcanfor de las Infantas, a small village in La Mancha, but now both live in Madrid. Their parents had died in a fire three years before.

Raimunda and her daughter Paula (Yohana Cobo) live with Paula's father Paco (Antonio de la Torre). When he attempts to rape Paula, claiming that he is not really her father, Paula stabs him to death in self-defense. Raimunda hides the corpse in the deep-freezer of a nearby restaurant with an absent owner, Emilio (Carlos Blanco). When members of a film crew happen upon the restaurant, Raimunda strikes a deal to cater for them, and finds herself back in the restaurant business.

Meanwhile, Sole returns for the funeral of her elderly and dementia-stricken Aunt Paula (Chus Lampreave). Aunt Paula's neighbour Agustina (Blanca Portillo) confesses to Sole that she has heard Paula talking to the ghost of their mother Irene (Carmen Maura). Sole encounters her mother's ghost herself, and when she returns to Madrid, she discovers that the ghost has stowed away in the trunk of her car. Sole agrees to let Irene stay with her and assist her with clients for her illicit hair salon, which she operates out of her apartment. Irene agrees to pose as a Russian immigrant who doesn't speak any Spanish. Irene questions why Raimunda hates her and is fearful of revealing her presence to Raimunda.

Raimunda reveals to Paula that Paco was not her biological father, promising to tell her the whole story later. Agustina is diagnosed with terminal cancer and goes to Madrid for treatment. Raimunda visits her in the hospital. Agustina asks Raimunda if she has seen her mother's ghost. Agustina hopes that the ghost will be able to tell her about her own mother, who disappeared three years before. Raimunda leaves Paula with Sole, rents a van and transports the freezer to a convenient spot by the river Júcar. While staying in Sole's apartment, Paula meets her grandmother's ghost and grows close to her. The next night, Agustina comes to the restaurant, and reveals two startling secrets: her mother and Raimunda's father were having an affair, and her mother disappeared on the same day that Raimunda's parents died.

Sole reveals to Raimunda that she has seen their mother's ghost, who is in the next room with Paula. Irene admits that she did not, in fact, die in the fire, and reveals the whole truth. The reason for Raimunda and Irene's estrangement is that Raimunda's father sexually abused her, resulting in the birth of Paula; thus, Paula is Raimunda's daughter and her sister. Irene tells Raimunda that she did not know about the abuse until Aunt Paula told her about it, and never forgave herself for not noticing it.

Irene explains that she found her husband in bed with another woman and started the fire that killed them both. The ashes that had been presumed to be Irene's were, in fact, the ashes of Agustina's mother, the woman with whom Irene's husband was having an affair. After the fire, Irene wandered for several days in the countryside, until she decided that she wanted to turn herself in. But first, she wanted to say goodbye to Aunt Paula, who had lost the ability to look after herself and with whom Irene had been living prior to setting the fire. Paula welcomed Irene home as if nothing had happened, and Irene stayed, caring for her sister and expecting that the police would come soon to arrest her. Due to the superstitious and closed nature of the community, however, the police never came and the residents, accustomed to tales of the dead returning, explained the rare sightings of Irene as a ghost.

The family reunites at Aunt Paula's house. Irene reveals her presence to Agustina, who believes her to be a ghost. Irene pledges to stay in the village and care for Agustina as her cancer worsens, saying to Raimunda that it was the least that she could do after killing Agustina's mother. Raimunda visits her mother at Agustina's house, and the two embrace and promise to repair their relationship.

Overpopulation has caused humanity to grow food in colonies on other planets. Unfortunately, the mushroom-growing planet that the player is responsible for is also inhabited by hostile native aliens which resemble giant insects. The player must use the droid under their control to maintain and harvest the mushrooms as well as look after and protect the colony itself.

The game takes place in 2061. Halley's Comet has been approaching Mars for quite some time, and the nations of Earth send a mission to investigate the comet as some form of life has been detected inside the gas of it.

Musou Hayao is stationed on the space lab Jesus. He speaks with his commanding officer on the station, who requests that he track down the members of the two crews being sent to the comet and give them the access cards they would be using on the spaceships. Hayao meets with 7 different crew members during this time: the Chinese doctor, German captain, Soviet captain, American xenobiologist, French mathematician, Italian computer engineer, and Brazilian astronomer. The mathematician is also Hayao's love interest, Eline. They share a heartfelt goodbye, as they would be boarding different ships for the mission which depart two weeks apart from another, with Eline's ship leaving for the comet first. Eline happens to be a talented musician as well as a mathematician, and plays him a song that she wrote before he leaves.

After meeting all of the crew, it cuts to after Hayao's ship has arrived at Halley's comet. Hayao is sent to investigate the first ship and finds most of the crew missing. Eline's intelligent robot pet, Fojii, is found in the ship's docking bay, and after updating its data offers Hayao assistance in tracking down the missing crew members. Unfortunately, many are found dead or just beginning to die, whispering dire but vague warnings to Hayao about something else on board. A crew member tells Hayao that fire cannot hurt "it". None of the dead crew display any physical signs of harm except for a small pinprick on one of their fingers.

Hayao collects the key cards of the missing and murdered crew to access journal entries and video recordings showing a xenomorph-like creature attacking those on the ship. Recordings also say that Eline fled the alien creature and hid, giving Hayao hope that she may still be alive on the ship. While investigating for Eline, Hayao and Fojii eventually come face-to-face with the monster, at first fleeing because they have no way of harming it, but eventually attacking it with a freeze gun looted from an armory on the 4th floor of the ship. They do not manage to kill it, only slowing its movements to ensure that it cannot chase after them.

Eline is soon found hiding in one of the engine rooms, and Hayao reunites with her, asking what happened before he arrived. He tells Eline that the crew has died and they make plans to use the shuttlepods to escape the spaceship. The shuttles can only take one passenger, so Eline uses the first shuttle, with Hayao following shortly after. Before he leaves he encounters the alien monster once more, and it leaves behind a piece of its skin or body. Hayao contacts the xenobiologist, who requests he bring back the sample for further study.

Back on the first ship, the xenobiologist (Carson) begins research into the alien monster, but soon enough the "sample" of the monster breaks free and hides on the ship. Hayao and Carson suspect that the alien is able to regrow itself from the sample, much like a worm when cut in half. While searching the ship for clues, Hayao discovers happenings eerily reminiscent of the second ship's previous crew: the doctor's cryogenic pod has been used when only she should have access to it, and the astronomer's favourite food (hamburgers) is found littered in one of the storage bays. In a briefing room, a tape recording of Eline's song can be found, and it starts playing randomly over the comms as the player explores the ship only to abruptly stop. Upon returning to the room, the tape containing Eline's song is crushed. Suddenly, Carson is attacked by the monster and is missing, presumably dead. Hayao's commanding officer from the Jesus arrives to aid in capturing and killing the monster at any costs. Hayao and Eline board the commander's vessel and they plan their next attempt to locate and ultimately destroy the monster.

Carson manages to send a signal from the first ship, and Hayao goes back to investigate. However, upon returning to the commander's vessel, the monster has also boarded the ship, and breaks out of a nearby vent. Hayao and Eline manage to escape due to the commander's sacrifice - he closes the door behind him, pushing the two out to safety on the primary ship. They hide in the cryo-pods, fearful of the alien's next moves. Hayao finds a way to communicate with Jesus in Carson's pod, as Carson hooked up his pod's comm system to the main labs. In the midst of sending a distress call to Jesus, the alien monster - now more evolved - begins to speak to them in a strange language. Eline notes that the language sounds like many human languages mangled together, and Fojii begins decrypting the speech until they are able to communicate with it. The alien's speech is a combination of Chinese, German, Russian, English, Italian, and Portuguese - making it clear that the alien has taken knowledge and memories from each of the crew members that it killed, using the DNA it stole from their bodies to evolve.

The monster informs Hayao that it has taken control of the ship and plans to head for Jesus in order to conquer mankind, killing them for the sake of advanced evolution. The alien mentions that it is no longer harmed by Hayao's freeze rays, as shown in some earlier confrontations with it developing a resistance. Hayao and Eline try bargaining with the alien to no avail, until Hayao bluffs and claims that he has a remote detonator he will use to destroy the ship if the alien does not meet with them. They lure the alien further into the ship while considering their options and searching for some sort of weapon that can harm it. Fojii helps Hayao recall what happened when the tape of Eline's song started playing - the monster was the one who crushed the tape, finding the harmony unbearable to its foreign biology. He takes Eline's synthesizer and confronts the alien in front of an airlock, then plays Eline's song. The monster is disabled long enough for Hayao to jettison the creature out into space, but not before hearing - telepathically - the voices of all the crew members that were killed. They tell Hayao and Eline that their memories live on inside the alien creature and they are one and the same being now, although they are long gone. They assure the two that humanity will have the strength to fight this new breed of monster even if it returns in an attempt to destroy mankind some day, which they suspect it will. Hayao and Eline hold one another on the ship for a while, staring into the void of space, knowing that they will have to tell the tales of their fallen colleagues and prepare Earth for a future confrontation when Halley's comet returns.

The game centers on a city of humans which was one day encased by a Dome of Darkness, perpetrated by robot cybers who have trapped the citizens in lies (which range from various Christian topics such as God, creation, morality, forgiveness, so on and so forth). While the organization known as Bible Corps. has managed to make a hole in the dome big enough for Captain Bible to go through, they have not been able to accomplish much more.

Captain Bible is sent by Bible Corps. to be beamed into the city. Though he is able to take his computer Bible with him, all of the verses are erased once he entered the Dome of Darkness. To remedy this, Bible Corps. beams Scripture stations into the city where he may reload it. In-between each level, a flying small drone type cyborg comes and deletes the Bible scriptures from your Computer Bible while you move onto the next level/world forcing you to find new verses for new lies in the next world/level. Gameplay centers on Captain Bible obtaining these verses and using them to confront the cybers who obstruct the hallways of the buildings in the city. An optional feature allows the player to engage the cybers in hand-to-hand combat giving the options to defend attack and retreat, which is performed using the Sword of the Spirit and the Shield of Faith.

The game is presumably set in the somewhat distant future based upon several of the game details, including the cybers themselves, the transporter-type device used to beam Captain Bible into the Dome, and the spacecraft he uses in the opening screen to fly to the command post.

Dr. Jim Parsons is a physician born in 1980 and living in 2012. Abruptly, he undergoes involuntary time travel to 2405 and finds that his profession is treated with disdain. In the future, the population is static, with no natural births; only a death can cause the formation of a new embryo. The result is a society ambivalent toward death, as controlled genetics ensures that each successive generation better benefits the human race as a whole. By killing off the weak and the malformed, poverty and disease are eliminated, and humanity has an optimal chance for survival. Moreover, a single race derived from a mix of races controls this future world, as white men had become extinct centuries earlier.

After Parsons cures a dying woman (not knowing that this is considered a heinous crime in this time period), Chancellor Al Stenog exiles him to Mars, but the spaceship is intercepted en route, and Parsons is returned to a deserted Earth far in the future. On finding a marker with instructions on how to operate the time travel controls on the spaceship, he is directed to a Native American-style tribal lodge, where he must perform surgery to hopefully restore the life of a cryogenically suspended time traveler, Corith, subsequent to the latter's death from an arrow wound 35 years earlier. Parsons extracts the missile but it later mysteriously rematerializes in Corith's body.

To resolve this situation, Parsons travels with Corith's relatives back to Corith's previous assignment in 1579 on the Pacific Coast of North America, where Corith was to kill Sir Francis Drake in order to change history and preserve the Native American way of life, avoiding their subjugation by European colonial powers. While observing the assassination attempt on Drake, Parsons realizes that Drake is actually Chancellor Stenog. It seems that Stenog, in an ironic twist of fate, has taken Drake's place long enough to ensure that Corith's mission fails. Parsons tries to warn Corith, but Corith discovers that Parsons is a disguised white man and attacks him. In the ensuing struggle, Parsons inadvertently stabs Corith in the heart with one of the arrow replicas that were intended to make it appear that Drake was killed by a Native American of that period.

In retribution, Parsons is left stranded by Corith's relatives in 1597, a year in which the European explorers had removed themselves for many years to come. But Parsons is quickly rescued by Loris, Corith's daughter, when she has a change of heart after learning that she is pregnant with Parsons' child.

While briefly back in 2405, Parsons realizes that the reason the arrow mysteriously reappeared in Corith's chest after he'd removed it was because he had apparently murdered him for a second time to cover his own tracks. If Corith were to recover, he would have revealed that it was Parsons who killed him, and an unwitting Parsons from slightly earlier would have been left helpless at the hands of Corith's relatives. As he stands over Corith, ready to kill him for a second time, he decides against it and flees. But a nagging curiosity obliges him to return yet again. He sees two unknown people kill Corith with the second arrow to the heart. Parsons discovers that the murderers are the children he will one day have with Loris, traveling back to 2405 from an even more distant future.

His children take Parsons forward in time to meet with Loris again, and he struggles with the decision to return to 2012. Eventually he goes back to the same day that he left and to the doting wife who saw him off earlier that morning. He sets about his old life with a new task at hand. The novel closes with him designing the stone marker that will eventually save his life on that desolate future Earth.

Bunjy Kennefick is an Irish mother's boy living in London. He is a top executive of a company and lives a bachelor lifestyle. However, his old-fashioned Catholic mother often puts a stop to his plans, many of them involving his girlfriend Miss Argyll. Other characters include Father Patrick, often mocked for his dubious morality, and Cousin Enda.

The episodes feature some surreal elements, such as "Catholic Chess", which pits pieces modelled on prominent Catholic figures against one modelled on prominent Protestant figures. On the Catholic side of the board are buttons which can drop opposing pieces through trapdoors, "sending them to Hell". Bunjy's mother would pray to bizarrely named saints.

The film begins on a passenger plane, where a young girl named Miki and her step-mother are taken hostage by a man and a cross-dressing woman. They call the father of Miki, but he has his own problems; another man is menacing him and when he tries to take the gun a fight breaks out and the father is shot. One of the Chai Lai members, Rose, enters the house and gets into a fight with another henchman.

Miki gets upset that her father is shot via the mobile phone and she stabs the man who has taken her hostage in the hand with a pipe, which sets off a fight on the plane. The members of Chai Lai are fighting along with a young police man named Chen. Meanwhile, Rose (Bongkoj Khongmalai) has gutted the henchman at the house with a machete and chases the man, who shot the father but crashes her car shortly after. When the man drives and misses her, she shoots the gasoline pouring out of the vehicle and it explodes.

A crime boss named Dragon yells at his henchman at a meeting for failing their mission to which the cross-dressing woman is named King Kong, whom she blames Chai Lai for their failures. Miki's step-mother barges in on the meeting, revealing that she works for them.

Chai Lai's boss tells the girls that it is alright that they failed their mission despite that the father is dead and the men escaped. The new plan is to protect Miki at school.

They fail to keep Miki safe at her school on the first day and she gets kidnapped by the henchman. Chai Lai chase them but when member Hibiscus (Jintara Poonlarp), after being freed from the van and saved by Rose, gets out a rocket launcher and fires but remembers that Miki is still inside.

Luckily for Miki, the van swerves and the rocket hits the tuk-tuk that Spadix was driving instead with her and Lotus (Supaksorn Chaimongkol) narrowly escaping. The van escapes as the train goes by, stopping them. Later, Miki attacks the henchman but is quickly stopped and tied. Miki's Step-mother, Ms. Mei Ling, pretends to be beaten up by King Kong so that she can reveal the secret location of the Andaman Pearl but it backfires.

The next day, the Chai Lai are getting a massage with Ms. Mei Ling and King Kong. Soon, a fight quickly breaks out with them wearing nothing but towels. Eventually, Ms. Mei Ling escapes and the henchman join in the fight. During the fight, Ms. Mei Ling gets into her car and menaces Chen in the car park until Hibiscus appears and tries to gun her but she quickly escapes.

Soon into the fight, a woman in a suit shows up and fights, King Kong escapes and Rose is about to chase after until she is pursued by two henchman outside. King-Kong runs into Spadix, who tries to gun her but fails. After Lotus, Rose and Pouy-Sian (Kessarin Ektawatkul) finish they meet Spadix outside just as she throws King Kong and she escapes.

King Kong hires the four-nation bounty hunters to finish the Chai Lai off, Rosen goes on a date with her boyfriend, Gud, who proposes to her. Dragon's henchman arrive with a beaten up Gud, the girls end up fighting their way into the swimming pool, and they escape through hatch that is in there. The exit is in a medieval castle, which is filled with weapons the girls stock up on, because King Kong is outside with the four-nation assassins.

Kathleen, who is a goofy cross-eyed assassin girl, who becomes King Kong's sidekick. The girls are captured in a cage except Hibischus, who arrives in a tank and attacks as the girls escape but unfortunately Gud is still captured.

The Chai Lais have no clue how Dragon knew where their house was and also they decide not to love anyone again because of Gud, new orders are given to the girls from their boss by iPod. Dragon get the idea the Andaman Pearl is on an island called Thai Baht due to Miki and they travel there. The men find the Andaman Pearl and escape with it after being attacked by Lotus, Rose and Pouy-Sian.

At a party to sell the Andaman Pearl, Miki's father arrives as a surprise bidder. The Chai Lais, soon enter the arena, where a fight starts.

Ms. Mei Ling shoots Gud in the back in cold blood with Rose upset and in her anger, she guns Ms. Mei Ling down and the SUV driver guy. Dragon is chases by Lotus, Spadix and Pouy-Sian as he has the pearl and Miki hostage, whom she escapes from. Dragon heads to the roof for a helicopter escape, with Lotus chasing after. Miki is pursued by King Kong and Kathleen in a park and the rest are with many henchman in another part of the park.

The henchman are all dead, Dragon shot in the head twice by Lotus and Kathleen shoots King Kong many times. Chai Lai's boss reveals that Kathleen was a spy and he has some kind of relationship with her. Miki is made as a member of Chai Lai. Chai Lai (including Kathleen and Miki) goes to battle; the members are dressed in white with machine guns fighting on the Afghan beaches near the Afghan jungles.

Jack Slate is a police officer partnered with his K-9 unit, Shadow. The two patrol Grant City, a metropolis seemingly populated with more criminals than honest citizens. One night while on a routine patrol, Jack responds to a call at a construction zone, only to find his own father murdered. In pursuit of his father's killer, Jack is led through a labyrinth of crime and corruption. He is eventually framed for another murder by the corrupt police chief Richard "Dick" Hennesey, in a bid to stop Jack before he undermines the status quo. After seven months in prison, Jack escapes from imprisonment by putting battery acid on the electric chair wires and hunts down Hennesey, clearing away the city's crime lords in the process. He first gets clothes at the apartment he was framed at and goes to Chinatown for information. There he battles Fat Chow and his goons and interrogates Marvin Silt, a goon who tried to run him down outside the prison before a woman named Eve Adams murders Silt. Eve is able to identify the assassin who was hired to frame Jack and the two have to battle Fat Chow and his goons again, with Jack killing Fat Chow before they are able to escape. Afterwards Jack visits his father's grave and meets Hildy, his father's former assistant there and he learns from her that his father was investigating the corrupt mayor and police force for mayoral candidate Gloria Exner before his murder. Jack comes under attack by unknown attackers in clown masks, but eventually escapes the cemetery and links up with Eve again to foil an assassination attempt on Exner at a public debate. The two foil the attempt, but Eve is murdered by Patch, the assassin who framed Jack. Jack chases down Patch and causes his limo to crash, but the crash kills Patch, preventing interrogation, although Jack takes his pager.

Jack then protects Gloria Exner from corrupt police officers attempting to murder her and learns a little more about what his father was investigating, but learns Gloria never found out what he knew as he was murdered before he could tell her. After receiving a message on Patch's pager, Jack chases a man named Gofer around the docks hoping for answers, but finds Gofer murdered and is injured. While Hildy helps him, mercenaries led by Rafshoon Digs captured both Hildy and Jack and takes Jack to meet Fahook Ubduhl, a Middle Eastern crime lord who basically runs the Grant City underworld. With the help of Shadow, Jack escapes and finally learns what this is really about: gold. The mayor was running a gold mining operation and Jack's father stumbled on it. Jack returns to the prison where he kills Diggs and confronts the mayor who confirms all he's found out already and fills in the rest: the mayor was running a gold mining and smuggling operation with Fahook. Police chief Hennessey, who is corrupt and blackmailing many people, had his hands in the operation. As he would lose money if the mayor was shut down, Hennessey murdered Slate's father to protect it.

The mayor and Jack ally to take down Hennessey, with Jack getting incriminating files from the police station in exchange for a pardon from the mayor. Jack gets the files (learning at the same time that the attackers in the cemetery were corrupt police officers in disguise), but decides to give them to Exner instead, only to Exner betraying him and takes the files to give to the mayor out of fear. Exner is murdered by Hildy who is now working for Fahook. She takes the files, but doesn't harm Jack who follows her to an abandoned Air Force base that is Fahook's hideout. There, Hildy is murdered by the mayor after giving Fahook the files and Jack kills the mayor in revenge. Fahook escapes on a plane, but Jack manages to get on board, blowing up the base at the same time. Jack chases Fahook through the plane and battles him in the cargo hold, finally killing him by knocking him out of the plane in mid-flight while getting the files at the same time. The plane crashes back at the airbase and Jack is the only survivor.

Jack then gives the files to reporter Kip Waterman to put on the news before he heads off to get his revenge on Hennessey. At the end of the game, Jack kills Hennessey in the boiler room of an apartment building and leaves town, stating that while he has justice for his father's murder it will take more than him to clear the city of crime. Jack states that with Hennessey, Blatz (the man that he was framed for murdering) and Fahook, the city's three major crime lords, dead, there will be a struggle for power among the criminal underworld. As Jack revealed the evidence to the media, the FBI investigate the case and presumably clear him of the murder charges, but Jack fakes his death, pretending to have died in the plane crash near the end of the game with only Kip Waterman knowing the truth. During the credits, Preacherman Jones, the man who helped Jack escape from prison and was also framed for a crime, receives a package from Jack with a note saying "faith padre, faith" (what Jack had told him earlier in the game when promising to come back for him), a bar of gold and evidence taken from Hennessey's files that could clear Jones' name. Jones then summons a guard to presumably give the evidence to.

In 1970s western North Carolina, a young man stumbles across a grove of marijuana, sees an opportunity to make some easy money, and steps into the jaws of a bear trap. He is discovered by the ruthless farmer who set the trap to protect his plants, and begins his struggle with the evils of his community's present as well as those of its history. Before long, he has moved out of his parents' home to live with a onetime schoolteacher who now lives in a trailer outside town, deals a few drugs, and studies journals from the American Civil War. Their fates become entwined as the community's terrible past and corrupt present lead to a violent reckoning with the marijuana farmer and with a Civil War massacre that continues to divide an Appalachian community.

The story deals with Brian, still stranded at the L-shaped lake during the fall and winter, constructing a winter shelter, building snow shoes, being confronted by a bear, befriending and naming a skunk and learning how to make a bow more powerful. Eventually, Brian meets a family of Cree trappers, the Smallhorns, who help him return home.

Henry Graham, a playboy from a wealthy patrician family, has run through his entire inheritance and is completely unequipped to provide for himself, with his greedy uncle Harry refusing to lend him any more money. His valet Harold suggests to a suicidal Henry that he should marry into wealth. With a $50,000 loan from Harry to tide him over, Henry has just six weeks to find a rich bride and repay the money, otherwise he must forfeit all of his property to his uncle.

Desperation sets in as Henry's attempts to meet a suitable mate fail. With only days remaining, Henry meets clumsy, painfully shy heiress Henrietta Lowell, a botany professor. She is the answer to his prayers: wealthy and with no family. However, Henrietta's suspicious (and crooked) lawyer Andy McPherson is a problem, as Harry plots with him to prove to Henrietta that Henry only wants her for her money. They fail, and Henrietta marries Henry. On their honeymoon, Henrietta discovers what may be an unknown species of fern.

Murder never far from his mind, Henry takes charge of his wife's life. He reorganizes her household staff, who had been taking full advantage of her timidity and naivete and sharing their profits with her former lawyer. He also learns how to manage accounts and a vast estate. Henrietta is completely disorganized and welcomes Henry's guidance. She also finds out that he has a B.A. in history, and suggests that an unwilling Henry could get a teaching job at the university she works at, so they could be together all the time.

When Henrietta's fern is confirmed as a new species, she names it ''Alsophila grahami'' after Henry. She invites him to join her on her canoe trip to the Adirondacks for her annual field trip. Henry sees this as an opportunity to rid himself of Henrietta in a remote area with no witnesses. Before he can dispose of her, however, their canoe capsizes. Henry makes it to shore, but Henrietta tells him she cannot swim. Henry tells her to let go of the log she is clinging to and he will rescue her. As he is leaving her to her watery fate, he finds an example of the fern Henrietta named after him. Realizing that he loves her, he rescues her and resigns himself to his unexpected fate as a married man, vowing that he will always be there to take care of her.

In 1972 David and Peter face each other in a chess match. David, the loser, stabs the winner Peter with a fountain pen. The loser's savage attack on his childhood opponent after his public humiliation and defeat leads to the dissolution of his parents' marriage. His father leaves forever, and the boy finds his mother dying from suicide from a slashed wrist, yet he ignores her and retrieves his locked-away chessboard. The boy spends the next twenty years in and out of asylums and foster care and is never seen again.

In the meantime, Peter becomes one of the youngest, most successful chess grandmasters in history. A brilliant yet troubled widower with a beloved daughter, he suddenly finds himself a suspect in his casual lover's murder. When more homicides occur, newly-appointed Police Captain Frank Sedman and his partner Detective Andy Wagner determine that a serial killer is at work. As the chess master becomes more and more connected to the deaths, psychologist Kathy Sheppard is brought in to figure out if the chess prodigy is as innocent as he claims to be.

The book's plot concerns two retired men who are thrown together following the deaths of their wives in the same hospital. Both have served in the armed forces, one, Reggie Conyngham-Jervis, being a former officer, the other, Roy Southgate, an ex-NCO. The perceived class differences lead to Roy moving in with Reggie and being treated as an unpaid servant. The reader's sympathies are with Roy as he remains humble and faithful to his purpose until Reggie becomes too domineering. Roy remarries, and Reggie, whose attempt to seduce a younger widow, Liz Franks, has ended in failure, is left alone.

After foiling a purse snatcher who steals Jenny Johnson's purse on the subway, Matthew Saunders becomes her "hero" and starts dating Jenny. After several dates, Jenny displays increasingly neurotic and aggressive behavior, becoming more demanding and ultimately injuring Matt and destroying his bed the first time they have sex.

Soon after, Jenny reveals to him that she is in fact the voluptuous blonde superheroine G-Girl, who received the powers of flight, superhuman strength, speed, heightened senses, invulnerability, super breath, and heat vision after being exposed to radiation from a crashed meteorite as a teenager. She becomes more controlling after revealing her powers and Matt is overwhelmed.

Hannah Lewis, Matt's beautiful co-worker, flirts with him, although she is going out with a handsome but shallow underwear model. As their friendship develops further, and after becoming aggravated with Jenny's escalating jealousy, Matt ends the relationship. An enraged Jenny vows to make Matt regret it. She uses her superpowers to publicly embarrass him, throwing his car into space and eventually causing him to lose his job as an architect by stripping him naked during an important meeting.

Professor Bedlam was formerly Jenny's high school boyfriend, Barry Lambert. While about to become intimate they were interrupted by the crash of the meteor. Barry saw her obtain superpowers, then watched and became embittered as she ignored him for other guys, something her new charisma made possible. Consequently, he studied to be a supervillain and is now G-Girl's nemesis. He contacts Matt to enlist his aid in defeating her. Matt refuses and makes plans to leave the city. As he does, Hannah contacts him. She has broken up with her cheating boyfriend, and after confessing their feelings to each other, they end up in bed together.

Jenny (as G-Girl) finds them in bed the next day. Enraged and jealous, she attacks them with a great white shark. Fed up, Matt contacts Professor Bedlam; at his house he accidentally sees a room in which Bedlam has a shrine showing his secret continuing adoration of Jenny. Matt agrees to help him defeat her, as long as Bedlam retires from being a supervillain. He must lure Jenny to another meteorite that will draw away her powers, leaving her a normal woman. Matt agrees and meets her for a candlelit dinner at his apartment, under the pretense of wanting to resume their relationship. Hannah arrives to see Jenny sitting on Matt's lap. The two women fight, and in the struggle, Jenny's superhero identity is revealed to Hannah. Bedlam's trap is sprung, and Jenny's power is absorbed back into the meteorite, incapacitating her.

Professor Bedlam appears, but reveals that he has no intention of keeping his promise to retire from villainy and in fact plans to take the powers for himself. While he and Matt fight, Jenny crawls to the charged meteorite attempting to regain her powers. Hannah intervenes just as Jenny grabs the meteorite, which explodes in a burst of power. Both Hannah and Jenny are catapulted off the roof, apparently to their deaths; Jenny appears within seconds, powers restored, threatening even more mayhem. Hannah unexpectedly reappears, having also been exposed to the meteorite and gained the same powers as G-Girl. She saves Matt, and the second fight between Hannah and Jenny is a full-on super-brawl, destroying part of the neighboring properties. Matt ends the fight at a fashion show by revealing to Jenny that Bedlam loves her and making her realize that he is her true love. She is softened, and embraces her former nemesis as the spectators cheer.

The next morning, Matt and Hannah meet up with Professor Bedlam (now just "Barry") and Jenny. As cries for help are heard from afar, Jenny and Hannah, now partners in crime-fighting, take off to tackle the emergency. Matt and Barry are left holding their girlfriends' purses and clothes, and leave to have a beer together.

Eleven-year-old Hunter Steel searches for the legendary inner world by following instructions in his grandfather's journal. He enters a cave where he finds a mysterious manacle attaching to his arm. A spider startles Hunter, who falls into a hole to the center of the Earth and into the subterranean world of Arachna. There, he discovers a small group of elite warriors struggling to survive and to save Arachna from the attack of Invectids, a race of insectoids. The warriors are children, each fighting with the help of their own battle spiders. They call themselves "Spider Riders". In the English TV series, the ages of the characters were reduced. There is a prophecy that says a surface-dweller or Human, like Hunter, will bring disaster to the Inner World. Sparkle mentions it in the beginning of the TV series. When Princess Sparkle finds out she says, "I wonder if he will bring doom to us...or to them."

Oracle Keys

The Oracle Keys are fractions of the Oracle's power. They are cards that can be split in two. The Invectids hope to gain them for Mantid, who wants to use their power to rule Arachna. The Oracle uses much of her strength to protect them. The Spirit Oracle Key passes its power onto Hunter and Shadow, giving them new armor and weapons as well as new abilities.

To activate the keys, the holder must shout "Oracle's Light!". Two in combination can create more powerful armor and weapons. The wielder must have a sincere desire to protect without arrogance, otherwise the keys will malfunction. The Oracle Key from Nuuma was called by Corona, using her power, to let Hunter use it without having to hold it. Mantid used two of the Oracle's keys to power himself, plunging the Inner World into darkness and preventing Hunter from using his own keys.

Currently the locations of the four Oracle Keys are known in the English version:

• Found in the Oracle's shrine in Arachna, the first key is taken by Hunter and Shadow, who retain possession of it throughout the series.
• The second key is brought to Arachna by a page from Nuuma. Hunter and Shadow have it in their possession for most of the series, though it was briefly taken by Aqune and Portia.
• The third key is initially kept in a sanctuary in Nuuma and allows the castle to float in the sky via the Oracle's power. It is taken by Aqune for the Invectids, but ends up in the possession of Hunter and Shadow during the final battle against Mantid.
• The fourth key held by Mantid powers Castle Mantid and sustains Mantid throughout the series until he steals the Oracle's power and abandons it. It ends up in the possession of Hunter and Shadow during the final battle against Mantid.

In February 1943, Tom Jericho, a gifted cryptanalyst at Bletchley Park, is recuperating in Cambridge from a nervous breakdown brought on by the pressures of work and the breakup of his relationship with Claire Romilly, a cipher clerk. After a few weeks, he is told Bletchley needs him back since it has become locked out of the Naval Enigma. Back at Bletchley, Jericho is still infatuated with Claire and makes his way to her lodgings, only to be told by her flatmate Hester Wallace that Claire is not there.

Jericho waits for Hester to leave and lets himself in to rifle through Claire's possessions. He discovers that her bedroom floorboards have been recently replaced. Beneath them he finds a sheaf of unsolved cryptograms, which he takes. He goes to leave but notices a male figure arrive at the cottage and flees at the sight of him.

Jericho discusses the Enigma lockout with Jozef "Puck" Pukowski, an Anglo-Polish cryptanalyst who fled Poland after the invasion by Germany and so left his family behind. Jericho realises that the way back into the Naval Enigma can be made through collecting 'contact codes', abbreviated reports made by a U-boat when it discovers a convoy. In the meantime, Claire has gone missing. Jericho's attempt to phone her father, Edward Romilly, is rebuffed. He approaches her flatmate Hester and the two learn that the cryptograms that Jericho found had originated from Smolensk, in the German-occupied Soviet Union. Hester discovers that the cryptograms were part of a series sent to German Army High Command but that interception and decryption of the signals at Bletchley were abruptly terminated by a high authority for unknown reasons. Hester and Jericho bluff their way into a signals-receiving station and purloin copies of the full set of undeciphered signals.

Back at Bletchley, Jericho joins the effort at deciphering contact reports and eventually produces a 'menu' for the cryptanalytic 'bombes' to work upon. He slips out and secretly deciphers the stolen cryptograms with the Enigma settings that Hester has obtained. From them, he learns that the Germans have discovered thousands of bodies buried in the Katyn Forest. The corpses are those of Polish officers who must have been murdered by Britain's ally, the Soviet Union, which invaded eastern Poland in 1939. Another cryptogram proves to be a list of abbreviated Polish names; he continues deciphering until he discovers a familiar name: ''Pukowski, T''. He realises that to be Puck's missing father and that Claire stole the cryptograms to bring to Puck, her secret lover.

Claire's bloodstained clothing is found near a flooded gravel pit. Jericho calls at Puck's lodgings but discovers that Puck has escaped and made for the railway station. Jericho follows him there and secretly boards the same train. He confronts Puck, who confesses to Claire's murder before he shoots the ticket inspector and jumps from the train. Jericho chases him, but Puck is fatally shot by MI5 agents who had boarded the same train, and Jericho is also wounded. Recuperating in hospital, Jericho is told by MI5 officer, Wigram that Puck, outraged by the murder of his father, had been preparing to defect to Germany to bring proof that Bletchley had broken Enigma. Claire's father's absence from her funeral tells Jericho that she is not really dead. In London, he obtains the death certificate of one Claire Romilly, the daughter of Edward Romilly who died in childhood. He confronts Romilly and learns from him that the woman whom he knew as Claire Romilly was Wigram's agent at Bletchley and was sent under a false identity to find the suspected mole there. 'Claire' agreed with Puck to stage her death, but both had different motives for doing so. Now back with MI5, she is alive, but Jericho knows that he will never see her again. Less troubled by the prospect than he might once have been, he returns to Cambridge and sends a letter inviting Hester to meet him there.

The game takes place inside the dreams of SpongeBob SquarePants, Patrick Star and Sheldon J. Plankton, where each individual must survive the most bizarre adventures.

In SpongeBob's dream, his bed transforms into a hot rod and he drives it around a track across Bikini Bottom, which now resembles an automobile-hot rod paradise inspired by the works of Ed Roth. After upgrading his car and winning several races against dream versions of Patrick, Plankton, and Gary, he accidentally drives into an unnoticed pit. SpongeBob falls through the pit until he reaches the bottom, where he is eaten by an Alaskan Bull Worm. He encounters Old Man Jenkins, who is building a biplane to escape the bowels of the worm. Within the worm, SpongeBob locates spare parts from the chief of a village of castaways and an eccentric inventor for the biplane, while also getting rid of a huge can of chili that's causing the worm stomach problems.

In Patrick's dream, he is a masked superhero called "Starfishman" in a cel-shaded comic book-like world where everyone resembles him. Starfishman pursues the villainous "Dreaded Patrick", who attempts to remake the town in his own image. Starfishman goes around town beating his paper-flat minions, getting clothes for a man after saving him from a train, and giving the mayor laundry detergent to help "clean up the town." Starfishman eventually beats Dreaded Patrick in a showdown at his secret lair. However, he fails to see a surprise attack, is knocked out, and gets tied to a rocket originally intended for another starfish, which launches into outer space. The rocket hits an asteroid, a piece of which falls to Earth and traps Dreaded Patrick. In outer space, Starfishman manages to untie himself from the rocket after flying around. He shoots asteroids threatening a space station and continues to fly around until he meets up with a U.F.O. in the shape of a patty. He shoots off its wings, destroying it. Then Patrick returns to Earth while trying to figure out how to stop the rocket.

In Plankton's dream, he zaps a crumb of a Krabby Patty with his Enlargatron Ray to learn the secret formula. However, the ray's coordinates are inaccurate, causing the Krabby Patty to overgrow and mutate into a vicious monster. Plankton decides to fight back with size but the inaccurate ray only makes him the height of an average citizen, which was not enough to dwarf the patty. Plankton, arming himself with his freeze ray (aka "The Despiculator" as Plankton calls it) for protection, is pursued by the patty throughout Bikini Bottom. Plankton eventually loses the patty by hiding, but then gloats about his victory, allowing the patty to find and crush him. Plankton then awakes to find the giant Krabby Patty sleeping beside him. As he sneaks away, Karen's wake-up call awakens the patty. Plankton sets the accurate coordinates for his ray and transforms himself into a giant, atomic-powered mutant plankton. The patty flees and Plankton gives chase, destroying Bikini Bottom in his wake. He finds the patty hiding in a skyscraper twice and destroys each floor to force it out. Meanwhile, SpongeBob and Jenkins fly out of the worm's mouth and find Plankton. The giant patty escapes Plankton's clutches and clings onto SpongeBob's plane, with an enraged Plankton in pursuit.

SpongeBob tries to avoid Plankton while devising a plan to defeat him. After a long pursuit through the city, including the sewers and a construction site, SpongeBob engages Plankton on a radio tower. SpongeBob destroys the support bolts to make the tower unstable, causing Plankton to fall on his rear. As Plankton aches in pain, SpongeBob feels sorry for him and decides to help him up, which allows Plankton to grab the plane. Just then, Starfishman lands his rocket and teams up with Mermaid Man and the Bikini Bottom Defense Force to battle Plankton and rescue SpongeBob. He defeats a small army of plankton minions to reach an experimental shrink ray, which he uses to undo Plankton's transformation and save his friend. After Plankton is shrunk, he accompanies Patrick and SpongeBob into a dream bubble, where they meet a doctor with a Krabby Patty for a head.

The doctor explains that the reason for their bizarre dreams is because they all ate a Krabby Patty before falling asleep; the chemical composition of the patties affected their biorhythms and caused a reaction that resulted in the dreams. SpongeBob then asks the doctor how he knows so much about Krabby Patties; the doctor strips his outfit off to reveal that he is the Krabby Patty in their own dreams. In order to wake up, SpongeBob, Patrick, and Plankton decide to chase after him and head into the final level where they race against one another for the Krabby Patty trophy in a bizarre, nightmare-like racetrack. The game starts off with SpongeBob as the only choice available. To unlock Patrick and Plankton, the player must collect Sleepy Seeds spread throughout the game.

Endings

The level's ending depends on which character the player wins with: * SpongeBob celebrates his victory, and overlooks his dream bubble thinking that it ''was'' all just another dream. He pops out and brings the Krabby Patty to the Krusty Krab, chopping the patty into average-sized patties for the customers. SpongeBob then notices that he and the customers have Gary's shell on their backs, and meows. * Patrick suddenly appears at the Krusty Krab where everyone is celebrating his victory. He attempts to eat the Krabby Patty but it escapes and Patrick ends up ramming into a door, causing him to see multiple Garys. * Plankton successfully takes over Bikini Bottom and drives the Krusty Krab out of business with his own Krabby Patty franchise. However, the talking patty from before warns him that, "what the patty gives, the patty can take away." Patties then begin raining down and crushing Plankton's empire, one of which has a familiar set of snail-eyes that crushes the Chum Bucket after bouncing off a run-down Krusty Krab.

In the ultimate ending, SpongeBob, Patrick, and Plankton wake up in one another's dream and it is revealed that this was all Gary's dream. He was the one who ate the Krabby Patty. After waking up, he goes around town and sees SpongeBob, Patrick, and Plankton doing things similar to his dream before returning home to rest. SpongeBob then brings back a Krabby Patty for Gary, who refuses to let him eat it because it may give him nightmares. Gary then watches as SpongeBob has a "conversation" with the patty. As SpongeBob prepares to eat the patty, he is eaten by the Alaskan Bull Worm, causing Gary to faint into slumber.

''Just Cause'' begins in 2006 with Rico Rodriguez, an operative for an organization known only as the "Agency", being dropped into a Caribbean island nation called San Esperito to link up with his mentor and Agency superior, Tom Sheldon, and help him overthrow San Esperito's dictator, President Salvador Mendoza, whom the Agency believes to be in possession of weapons of mass destruction. After his arrival, Rico meets up with Sheldon and fellow agent Maria Kane, and they ally themselves with a guerrilla group staging a rebellion against both Mendoza and the Rioja drug cartel, which has exploited the corruption of the regime to expand its operations throughout San Esperito. Most of the game focuses on Rico's efforts to dismantle Mendoza's regime, eliminate the Black Hand mercenaries hired to oppress the people of San Esperito, and fight back against the cartels. Rico can also assist in the liberation of various territories to further destabilize the government's rule over the island.

Eventually, Sheldon discovers that Mendoza does, indeed, have control of WMDs, and with San Esperito lost to his control, the president is forced to retreat to his private island just off the mainland. To stop him from using the weapons, Sheldon and Kane fly Rico to the island, causing Mendoza to attempt an escape by jet. However, Rico boards the jet and kills Mendoza and his remaining bodyguards, ending his reign over the islands and allowing the Agency to secure the WMDs.

''The Eternal Champion'' is narrated by John Daker, an inhabitant of 20th century Earth. Daker has a wife and child whom he loves but no further information is given. He has an occupation that does not interest him and feels unfulfilled in life. One night, while thinking of morality and "the futility of human existence", Daker hears a voice calling him to action in order to protect humanity. The voice calls him Erekosë. Daker hears the voice on several other occasions and makes an effort to hear it better and answer its call, though also seems uncertain he has a choice to ignore it. Finally, his spirit moves through time and space and he realizes he is the Eternal, a being who is reborn time and again throughout the multiverse. Throughout their lives, the Eternal Champion is called to maintain or restore the balance between the cosmic forces of Chaos and Law when needed. While many Eternal Champions only remember their current life and existence, Daker's trip through time and space reveals scattered memories from many other incarnations, such as Erekosë and Michael Moorcock's other characters such as Elric, Prince Corum, Dorian Hawkmoon, Jerry Cornelius, the Rose, and members of the family von Beck.

Daker manifests on another version of Earth (he is not certain if it's the distant past or distant future), in the tomb of Erekosë, a long dead warrior who was prophesied to return when needed. Daker now inhabits a body resembles Erekosë's (whose face reminds him of his own). Daker knows Erekosë was a past life of his and understands he's been called to resume that particular role again. After just a few hours, he remarks that his memory of being John Daker is dimming while his knowledge of Erekosë's life and way of thinking becomes stronger. Although he isn't entirely sure how all this has happened, he accepts that this is his life and role now. He even laughs happily when he is reunited with Kanajana, the radioactive sword of Erekosë that poisons everyone except him when it is unsheathed.

Erekosë learns that he is in the fortress city of Necranal, the capital of human society. Led by King Regenos, the city is at war with the Eldren race of the Southern continents. King Regenos called for Erekosë, hoping the warrior will defeat the Eldren completely. Erekosë attempts to understand the cause of the war and questions why Necranal attacked the Eldren for expanding into territory already abandoned by humanity. But the people of Necranal insist that Eldren are monsters and the expansion of their empire is an inherent threat to humanity. Erekosë suspects humanity is engaged in a war motivated by racial bigotry towards the Eldren, but feels that as a human himself he must be loyal to Necranal for now. He befriends Iolinda, daughter of Regenos, and the two become secretly engaged.

Joining the forces of Necral in battle, Erekosë is appalled by the violence and ruthlessness of the human soldiers, particularly when they attack children and non-combatants. The soldiers of Necral take prisoner Ermizahd, sister of Prince Arjavh who commands the Eldren forces. During the journey back to Necranal, Erekosë watches over Ermizahd, admiring her strength and sympathizing with her suffering. Later, Prince Arjavh brings an Eldren force to Necranal to rescue his sister.

After a battle between the Eldren and the humans, Erekosë is taken prisoner by Arjavh, who reveals this world was originally inhabited only by Eldren. After the arrival of humans, a war between the races nearly destroyed the planet. The Eldren hid away their most dangerous weapons, vowed never to use them again. The humans made no such vow but over time forgot how to build certain technology. Now sympathizing with the Eldren, Erekosë is sent back to Necranal and Ermizahd escapes. Realizing Erekosë sympathizes with the Eldren, and suspicious of his feelings for Ermizahd, Princess Iolinda deems him a traitor to be executed. To quell the anger of his betrothed, and hoping this will stop the war the humans insist on having, Erekosë vows to help kill all Eldren. :''"You will spare none?"'' :''"None! None! I want it to be over. And the only way I can finish it is to kill them all. Then it will be over—only then!"'' :''"Including Prince Arjavh and his sister?"'' :''"Including them!"'' :''"You swear this? You swear it?"'' :''"I swear it. And when the last Eldren dies, when the whole world is ours, then I will bring it to you and we shall be married"''.

The war continues for a year, during which Erekosë compromises his morals and suppresses his dreams and memories of other lives as the Eternal Champion. Eventually, the last Eldren outpost is Loos Ptokai. The night before the outpost comes under siege, Prince Arjavh allows Erekosë to visit Ermizahd, as the two love each other. Falling asleep in Loos Ptokai, he dreams again about being the Eternal Champion but now sees a larger scope, realizing all of humanity is often trapped in eternal struggle. Deciding to make one last attempt at peace rather than genocide, Erekosë returns with his army to Necranal. Princess Iolinda commands he be taken prisoner, but he escapes to Loos Ptokai. Soon, the humans attack the outpost. At first, the Eldren still refuse to use their ancient war machines, but Erekosë convinces Arjavh that not doing so will mean the Eldren will be completely wiped out. Using the ancient technology, Erekosë destroys the army of Necranal, ending the war.

Despite his earlier reluctance to commit genocide, Erekosë kills the humans in Necranal following the conclusion of the war. He then tracks down and kills any remaining survivors. Finally, when it seems all of humanity is gone, he returns to Ermizahd and marries her, hoping this world will finally know peace.

Ralph Walker is a teenager attending a Catholic school in Hamilton, Ontario. His father was killed in World War II and his mother is hospitalized with an unidentified illness. Ralph is naturally prone to mischief and often finds himself an outcast among his classmates. He tries to emulate the conduct of grown ups, and is caught smoking cigarettes and masturbating by headmaster Father Fitzpatrick. Already labeled a troublemaker, Ralph is forced to join the school's cross country team to relieve him of his excess energy.

When Ralph's mother falls into a coma, he is told it will take a miracle for her to survive. When running coach Father Hibbert, a former world class marathoner who was forced to quit running when he injured his knee, claims it would be a miracle if a member of his team won the Boston Marathon, Ralph decides to train for it in the hope his victory would fulfill the miracle needed to save his mother's life.

At first, Ralph cannot even keep up with his teammates in practice. He reads books to learn about running, uses the new techniques, and gradually improves. Father Hibbert decides to train him despite disapproval from Father Fitzpatrick. Ralph begins to win the respect of his classmates, and eventually earns the attention of the local media when he wins a prestigious regional race.

When Father Fitzpatrick learns Ralph intends to run the Boston Marathon, he threatens to expel him if he participates, as well as remove Father Hibbert from the priesthood should he try to interfere. Both Ralph and his mentor must then decide how deeply they believe in miracles, and what is possible when a person risks everything without promise of success.

Both he and Father Hibbert defy Father Fitzpatrick and decide to go to Boston. Ralph ends up winning second place after a close race with the previous year's winner and gives the medal to his mother who wakes up from her coma.

Despite the destruction of the Death Star in the 1976 novel ''Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker'', the Galactic Empire stills retains an iron grip on the galaxy. Upon discovering the Rebel Alliance's secret base, the Empire strikes with massive force, sending the rebels scrambling across the galaxy. Han Solo, Princess Leia, Chewbacca ("Chewie") and C-3PO are slowed down from escaping with the rest of the group by collapsing ice on Hoth. Throughout the story, they remain within the Empire's reach.

Luke Skywalker and R2-D2 flee to Dagobah, but not to regroup with the others. Instead, Luke seeks Yoda in order to be trained as a Jedi Knight. His development of Force sensitivity during his training gives him a sensation of the danger shadowing his friends. Subsequently, Luke's friends are captured in Cloud City. Han is frozen in carbonite and taken to Jabba the Hutt. Luke leaves Dagobah to save his friends. But it is a trap, as the unprepared Luke is drawn into an unsuccessful confrontation with the Imperial Sith Lord Darth Vader. He is left with a missing hand, near-death and reeling from the shocking revelation that Vader is his father. However, he is rescued by the ''Millennium Falcon''.Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

As in the film, the ending sees Luke, Leia, Chewie, 3PO and R2-D2 reunited, with Luke and Lando finalizing their plan to rescue Han Solo from Jabba's captivity.

Camille Baker (Pascale Bussières) is a university literature professor at a religious college in a long-term relationship with fellow professor Martin (Henry Czerny). When her dog runs away and she finds him dead on the street, she ends up crying in the middle of the laundromat where she is approached by Petra (Rachael Crawford), who comforts her. Later on Camille realizes that her laundry was mixed up with Petra's and finds a business card inside the laundry bag. Going to return Petra's clothes she finds that Petra is a circus performer, and when she goes to Petra's trailer to retrieve her clothes Petra tells her that she would like to sleep with her. Confused and uncomfortable, Camille grabs her clothes and leaves. Petra later tracks Camille down and shoots an arrow through her window with a picture of herself and her phone number attached. Camille invites Petra inside and ends up kissing her before running away.

Camille and Martin are being groomed to take over for the university chaplain, with the chaplain hinting heavily that they must marry in order to be promoted. At the interview Camille refuses to denounce homosexuality as a sin, and when asked what she would do if a male student came to her for advice on being attracted to another man, Camille cannot answer the question. Martin believes that Camille is acting unusual on purpose because of her discomfort over their future marriage, and embraces her. They are seen by Petra, who was waiting outside Camille's office. Afterwards Camille goes to see Petra, ostensibly to ask Petra to stop following her, but instead ends up asking her to become her friend after telling her that the kiss was a mistake.

Petra takes Camille hang-gliding, and though Camille is initially reluctant to participate, Petra urges her onward by telling her that night is falling and they will miss their chance if they don't hurry. While hang gliding Camille ends up injuring her knee. Petra takes her home and then massages her, with the massage quickly turning sexual as Petra unbuttons her blouse and takes off Camille's bra. They are interrupted by the university chaplain (David Fox) visiting Camille. Camille passes Petra off as an acquaintance, and when she refuses to leave, excuses her to the chaplain by saying she is a disturbed street kid. Petra leaves in anger and Camille goes to Martin's house, where she has sex with him. However, when Martin leaves to go to a conference, Camille cannot stop herself from fantasizing about Petra and goes to the circus to see her, where the two have sex.

Camille goes to the chaplain seeking guidance, and he is more understanding than she anticipated. She goes to the circus where Petra and the rest of the performers are celebrating an invitation to Circumstance, a festival for Circus performers. She and Petra begin a relationship and they discuss the possibility of Camille joining Petra in the circus. Meanwhile, Martin, who has returned from his trip, waits for Camille in her home and finds the picture of Petra with her number written on it. He goes to the circus and sees Camille and Petra naked in the trailer. After Camille leaves without seeing him he introduces himself to Petra and then leaves, but not before hitting the outside of her trailer in anger, scaring Petra.

Camille meanwhile heads home to break up with Martin, and is surprised to find him already there. He urges her to think before she speaks, telling her that they have a good relationship and suggesting that her passion for Petra will fade. Thinking things over, Camille heads into the woods to finally bury her dead dog, whom she had kept in the fridge until that point. After burying the dog, she begins drinking and passes out in a snowbank. She is found by the hang gliders who had joined her and Petra on their first outing as friends. They call Petra and she rushes to Camille's side, wrapping her body around her and trying to revive her. Once revived Camille joins Petra and the circus on their way to Circumstance. The director of the circus (Tracy Wright), who had dreamed of running away, stays in the city where she and Martin spot each other outside a café.

The plot portrays the Swedish government as being responsible for using the ship to covertly transport Russian high-tech components to the United States. The story is uncovered by a young female journalist, not unlike Rabe herself. According to Rabe, divers hired by the Swedish government (signing contracts swearing lifetime secrecy) spent hours breaking into cabins frantically searching for a black attaché case carried by a Russian space technology dealer, Aleksandr Voronin (who died 2002). She highlighted US interest in various Soviet technology, including nuclear-powered satellites. She also suggested that panic about the stability of some form of nuclear device is the most likely reason behind the initial Swedish government suggestion of burying the wreck in concrete, a highly unusual proposal for a wreck, reminiscent of Chernobyl's sarcophagus.

Timmy Willie is a country mouse who falls asleep in a hamper of vegetables after eating peas and is carried to the city. When the hamper is opened, Timmy escapes to find himself in a large house. He slips through a hole in the skirting board and lands in the midst of a mouse dinner party hosted by Johnny Town-mouse.

Timmy is made welcome – and tries his best to fit in, but finds the noises made by the house cat and the maid frightening and the rich food difficult to digest and feels ill. He returns via the hamper to his country home after extending an invitation to Johnny Town-mouse to visit him.

The following spring, Johnny Town-mouse pays Timmy Willie a visit. He complains of the dampness and finds such things as cows and lawnmowers frightening. He returns to the city in the hamper of vegetables after telling Timmy country life is too quiet. The tale ends with the author stating her own preference for country living.

The story concerns Edward Bush, an artist searching for inspiration in the past. When Bush returns from a long stay in the Jurassic, he finds that his nation (presumably the United Kingdom) has been taken over by a totalitarian government. He is immediately drafted into the military and given the mission to kill the scientist Silverstone (whom he had met as "Stein" in the past). As Bush mind travels again to fulfill his mission, he learns of Silverstone's new philosophical and scientific discoveries. Bush and Silverstone meet, travel to the Cryptozoic with a few allies, and decide together to usher in a new era of humanity, one enlightened by the realization that time flows backward. Bush returns to his present time, only to be imprisoned in a mental institution. Bush's father tries to see him but is prevented by doctors, who explain his son has had a breakdown brought on by excessive mind travel. Outside, a girl stands watching the hospital, presumably planning a rescue.

Charlie Lester is a public relations speech writer for an oil magnate. He is married with two children. As the film opens we see him drinking heavily at an office party and then having an argument with his wife Fran after he tipsily returns home. The song "Yesterday", sung by Joey Scarbury, is played several times in the film as Charlie continues in a downward spiral. He is given a jolting reason to quit drinking after his boss scolds him for appearing half drunk at an important business meeting, then ruining a dinner party at his home and even hitting his wife in a drunken rage. He is shown afterwards literally on his knees, begging her forgiveness.

It is revealed in the film that Charlie's father was an alcoholic and his mother was abusive, ignoring him while lavishing her affections on his younger brother. He breaks down as he tells this story to a therapist. In massive denial and pain, he drops out of therapy and continues to drink, culminating in a physical assault on Fran as she tries to drag him out of a bar. When he returns home, she informs him she is seeing a lawyer and filing assault charges. Charlie then becomes violently ill and vomits blood. His doctor informs him he may be suffering from liver damage and "either you stop drinking or you're going to drink yourself to death!"

In a desperate attempt to stop, Charlie takes a vacation and goes alone to a seaside resort. He winds up passed out on the beach. He suffers a terrifying attack of delirium tremens and wakes up in a mental ward. Even in this desperate circumstance, Fran stays with him and his sympathetic doctor informs him he can be helped, but his recovery is entirely up to him. Shortly afterward, Charlie escapes from the hospital and goes to a bar. He calls Fran and tearfully apologizes for all the pain he has caused her. He tells her he loves her and their children with all his heart but "It's no use...there's just no point...I'm no damn good, I never was...goodbye, my heart." The final scene shows Charlie alone, drunk and hopeless on a deserted beachfront.

''Don't Stop the Carnival'' revolves around the lead character of Norman Paperman. He is the middle-aged New York City press agent who leaves the noise and safety of the big city and runs away to a (fictional) Caribbean island to redeem and reinvent himself as a hotel keeper. The result is a satirical tale of tropical disaster.

The novel takes place on the fictional island of Amerigo. According to the opening of the musical (a paraphrased excerpt from the novel):

A murder takes place in a rural British hospital. Inspector Cockrill is tasked to determine whodunit when the head nurse is killed after revealing that the death of a patient under anaesthesia was no accident. Cockrill states at one point, "My presence lay over the hospital like a pall - I found it all tremendously enjoyable." After another murder attempt leaves a nurse dangerously ill he re-stages the operation in order to unmask the murderer.

Category:1944 British novels Category:British mystery novels Category:British novels adapted into films Category:Novels set during World War II Category:Medical novels Category:Novels set in hospitals Category:Novels by Christianna Brand Category:Novels set in England Category:British detective novels Category:The Bodley Head books

Mary Faber is a member of Rooster Charlie's orphan gang in Cheapside, London, during the late 1790s. After Charlie is murdered by a grave robber, she disguises herself as a boy and seeks passage on the ''Dolphin'', a man of war tasked with hunting pirates. As Mary can read, she is assigned to serve as the schoolmaster's assistant, under the name Jacky Faber. She quickly befriends her fellow boys Tink, Willy, Benjy, and Davy. Jaimy Fletcher, the son of a once-prosperous family, joins the crew at the last second to train as a midshipman.

Over the course of several months, the boys gradually become accomplished sailors. Jacky forms a close bond with Irish seaman Liam Delaney, who teaches her how to play the penny whistle. As Jacky begins to mature, she creates a new uniform to hide the changes; in response, the captain orders her to make uniforms for all the boys. While cruising off the coast of North Africa, the captain spots a pirate ship and pursues it. After battering the vessel into submission, a boarding party including Jacky and Jaimy is sent aboard. During the battle, a pirate carrying the ship's money chest sneaks up on Jaimy, and Jacky manages to shoot him dead, earning her the name "Bloody Jack". Disturbed by the experience, Jacky falls further into depression after learning that Benjy was killed in action. With the ''Dolphin'' low on supplies, the crew heads to Palma for rest and relaxation. Jacky begins to menstruate, and mistakingly believes that she will soon die.

After landing at Palma, the boys spend their money on tattoos, declaring themselves the Brotherhood of Ship's Boys. Upon having her first menstrual period, Jacky visits a nearby brothel to learn about her condition. Unaware of the truth, the boys assume that she is a "rake" and taunt her.

Resupplied, the ship travels to the Caribbean Sea to continue its mission. Bliffil, an abusive midshipman, attacks Jacky in the classroom, putting her in the sick ward with severe injuries. Eager for revenge, she persuades another midshipman, Jenkins, to challenge Bliffil to a fight, which he wins. Bill Sloat, another sailor who frequently targets Jacky, discovers her secret and tries to rape her in the ship's rope locker. Jacky manages to stab him with her shiv, and Sloat falls overboard and drowns. Liam is charged with the murder and sentenced to death, but Jacky confesses and is subsequently tried in his place, with the court freeing her on account of self-defense.

With peace restored, Jacky begins to fall in love with Jaimy. When he decides to leave the ship out of fear of being ostracized for homosexuality, she reveals her true identity to him. Soon after they arrive in Kingston, Jamaica, Jacky puts on a dress and goes on a date with Jaimy, only to be interrupted by the other boys. With Jaimy distracting them, she is able to slip into her disguise and maintain her cover. Davy convinces them to all get earrings, which Jaimy and Jacky take as symbols of their love.

While hunting for the French pirate LeFievre ("The Fever"), the ''Dolphin'' is attacked by a fireship and begins to sink. While serving as a lookout, Jacky spots land and alerts the crew, allowing them to beach the ship safely. Davy catches her sleeping in Jaimy's hammock, and she reluctantly tells him the truth. Phineas Tilden, the ship's schoolmaster, recruits Jacky to pilot an experimental kite in the hopes of finding help. When the kite breaks free from its moorings, Jacky winds up trapped on a nearby island, where she uses smoke signals to contact the crew. Unfortunately, LeFievre and his men spot the signals and set an ambush for the rescue party. Jacky tries to warn them, but is captured and tied to a rope. The pirates try to hang her, but she is saved seconds before death. In the process, the entire crew discovers her female nature.

Despite earning a promotion to midshipman for bravery, Jacky is discharged from the navy and sent to Boston, where Tilden has arranged for her to attend Lawson Peabody's School for Girls under her assumed name. Accepting her fate, Jacky embraces her shipmates before stepping off.

Grant and Fiona are a retired married couple living in rural Brant County, Ontario. Fiona begins to lose her memory, and it becomes apparent she has Alzheimer's disease. Throughout the film, Grant's reflections on his marriage are woven with his reflections on his own infidelities, and influence his eventual decisions regarding Fiona's happiness.

When she feels she is becoming a risk to herself, Fiona decides to check into a nursing home, where one of the rules is that a patient cannot have any visitors for the first 30 days, in order to "adjust". Despite being wary of this policy, Grant agrees at the insistence of his wife whom he loves. During the drive to the home, Fiona acknowledges Grant's past infidelity while he was a university professor. Despite the awkward situation, the couple makes love one last time before separating.

When the 30-day period ends, Grant goes to visit his wife again, only to find she has forgotten him, and turned her affections to Aubrey, a mute man in a wheelchair who has become her "coping partner" in the facility. A caregiver at the facility befriends Grant and gives him some advice and support.

While seeing his wife grow closer to Aubrey, Grant becomes an unhappy voyeur when visiting his wife at the nursing home. As time goes by and Fiona still does not remember him, Grant even wonders whether Fiona's dementia is an act, to punish him for his past indiscretions. After some time, Aubrey's wife Marian removes him from the home due to financial difficulties. This causes Fiona to sink into a deep depression, with her physical well-being also appearing to deteriorate. Grant is touched by this, and visits Marian in an effort to allow Fiona to see Aubrey again. He would rather see his wife happy with another man than miserable and alone. Marian initially refuses, but the meeting leads to a tentative relationship between her and Grant. As time passes, Grant continues to visit both Fiona and Marian. He eventually succeeds in taking Aubrey back to visit his wife. But in his "moment alone" before he brings Aubrey into Fiona's room, Fiona temporarily remembers him and the love she has for him. They embrace.

''Zona Zamfirova'' is set in the Serbian city of Niš in the 19th century. The plot follows the story of Zona Zamfirova (Katarina Radivojević), a local rich man's daughter, and the vicissitudes of her affair with Mane (Vojin Ćetković), an ordinary goldsmith. As it was undesirable for the daughter of a rich man to marry a craftsman, the two are at first divided, with the possibility of Zona marrying Manulać, who comes from a wealthy family. Everything is, however, changed as Mane organizes a successful conspiracy to keep Zona for himself.

Cosimo is arrested when he and Toto try to steal a car. In prison, he meets an old man who tells him of a “Bellini” - a perfect heist - that he could not carry out because of a life sentence. Cosimo asks his girlfriend Rosalind to find a "Mullinski" (slang for someone willing to do prison time in exchange for money) so that he can walk free and pull off the heist. Rosalind and Toto ask misfits Basil, Leon, Riley, who babysits his infant son while needing $1,000 to pay his own wife's jail fine, and Pero "Pepe" Mahalovic, a Serbian American boxer who agrees to confess to Cosimo's crime for $16,000 but ends up being jailed alongside him. While inside, Pero gets Cosimo to tell him what the Bellini is before revealing that his own sentence was suspended, leaving Cosimo still in jail. Returning home, Pero is met by Rosalind and the other four demanding a refund. He tells them he used the $16,000 to pay off debts but will share the Bellini details. The six then decide to carry out the heist themselves.

The Bellini concerns a brick building on Chester converted from a flour factory into apartments and a jewelry store. The old man in jail worked on the conversion and created a false wall between one apartment and the room with the jewelry store safe. Riley steals a video camera from a street market so that the group can get the combination by filming the jeweller opening the safe. After filming fails they hire Jerzy, a safecracker who uses a wheelchair, to teach them how to drill into the safe, whereupon Detective Babitch starts to keep a close eye on them. Then two maiden aunts with a maid named Carmela move into the long-vacant apartment, and so Leon and Basil pretend to accost Carmela while Pero comes to her "rescue" to secure a date in the hope of stealing her keys. Meanwhile, in prison a guard suddenly drops dead and Cosimo uses his uniform to escape. When he confronts Pero and the others, they try to convince Cosimo that they can split the take equally, but he hits Rosalind for betraying him and threatens to kill anyone who tries to pull off “his” Bellini.

Rosalind becomes disheartened and leaves the group but Pero finds that he is falling for Carmela, who reveals that the aunts will be out of town for several days. That same night Cosimo dies in a bus accident. Basil meets Leon's sister, Michelle, and they begin dating although she tells him that she wants “an honest man". After Babitch watches the group attend Cosimo's funeral Pero decides to bribe him in exchange for turning a blind eye while they do the heist, and gives Babitch the $16,000 which he has lied about spending.

On the night of the heist, Riley leaves his baby with Rosalind but while on his way to meet up at Pero's apartment he gets his arm broken by the men he stole the video camera from. He arrives with one arm in a cast and “high” from a bottleful of Vicodin. Leon, having found out about his sister's affair, arrives to confront Basil. Basil then reveals that he can't go on the heist because he's now taken an honest job in order to be worthy of Michelle, and leaves. During the heist itself, everything that can go wrong, does. Toto loses his pants, Pero bites off the tip of his tongue, and they find that their floor plans are out of date when they break through the wrong wall (into the kitchen) at 3 am. They realize there is not enough time left to reach and crack open the safe, but Toto finds $1,000 in a cookie jar and so they decide to heat some soup on the apartment stove so as to eat before leaving – whereupon the stove blows up. After the explosion, the group is standing at the bus stop. Riley suggests that they shouldn't see one another again, but just as he gets on the bus the other three decide to give Riley all of the $1,000 for his wife's jail fine. Leon heads home to apologize to his sister and tells Pero to let him know when he gets another Bellini, and before Pero also leaves Toto asks him about Carmela, and tells him that it's important to have someone to walk with, more so than money.

The film dramatises three stories from the book:

• "The Granton Star Cause": A comedy, in which Boab (Stephen McCole) is having a rotten day. His parents throw him out so they can indulge in sado-masochism and he is sacked from his job, dumped by his girlfriend, and dropped from his football team. It has elements of Franz Kafka's ''The Metamorphosis''. One of the characters is a pitiless, profane God who transforms him into a fly as punishment for wasting his life. Named after an Edinburgh housing district, "The Granton Star Cause" was filmed on location in Muirhouse and Pilton, including Ferry Road Drive.
• "A Soft Touch": Kevin McKidd plays Johnny, a man who is cuckolded by Larry (Garry McCormack), the ruthless upstairs neighbour who steals his electricity and his wife (Michelle Gomez). Filmed on location in Niddrie.
• "The Acid House": An acid trip and a bolt of lightning result in amiable schemie Coco Brice (Ewen Bremner) exchanging bodies with the baby of a middle-class couple (Martin Clunes and Jemma Redgrave).

All three sections are independent, but are linked by setting and the reappearance of incidental characters, in particular Maurice Roëves who appears variously as an inebriated wedding guest, a figure in a dream, and a pub patron. All three of his parts symbolise a human manifestation of God.

The film offended elements of the UK tabloid press with a depiction of a cynical, jaded, foul-mouthed God. In some English-speaking countries such as Canada and the United States it has been screened with subtitles because of the Scots vernacular and heavy Edinburgh accents.

A local Utah LDS Church's holds the record as having the worst basketball team in the church ball league. The team has failed to make it into the church tournament in the past 20 years. Due to rumors of this being the last year of the league, former team coach, and now Bishop Linderman (Fred Willard) has called Dennis Buckstead (Andrew Wilson) to coach a team made of clumsy misfits to the championship.

Church expectations of brotherly love, sportsmanship, and fellowship fall prey to competitive fierceness in the effort to win, while Dennis works to bring unity and cooperation.

The plot involves the discovery of a mysterious torpedo found on the shore of Benbecula. A naval team descends on the area to deal with the torpedo accompanied by Nicolson, an intrigued security officer. Further investigation of the torpedo reveals an international spy kit, the contents of which include a Finnish passport, British and Swedish currency, and most intriguing of all, a fragment of sheet music.

Nicolson is joined by fellow security operative Grant, and together they investigate the sudden appearance of the torpedo. Their investigations meet with resistance from the locals, and when their investigations lead to a murder, it becomes apparent that someone is trying to conceal something sinister. As Nicolson comes close to learning the truth, he is lured into a trap and is injured. When he comes to, he discovers that Grant has been murdered and he endeavours to find the people responsible. He eventually uncovers an elaborate espionage operation.

Geraldine Liddle (Curtin) is a small town woman from New Brunswick who gains local fame as she is about to appear on a gameshow called ''Bring Home the Bacon'' (a show with a pig theme similar to ''Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?'') with a top prize of $2 million dollars. As friends and family gather to watch Geraldine on television, family secrets come to surface and a physical fight occurs, bringing all the family and friends outdoors. As the fight is happening, Geraldine calls them for help with a question during the gameshow. After the question is asked, the scene turns back to the home where the fight is happening outdoors and where only Geraldine's elderly mother, who has less than her full faculties, is left alone, inside near the phone. The telephone rings and rings and rings, until finally she answers. Geraldine, realizing the senility of the woman, doesn't know whether to trust her answer. Geraldine and her husband return to announce whether she answered the question correctly or not, only to discover long buried family truths have come to light.

An innocent man has been turned into a walking time bomb. In 4 days, he will kill 100,000 people.

This game is set in the year 1969 (10 years after the original game) and begins with a Soviet KGB slide show meeting showing that the main character from ''Destroy All Humans!'', ''Cryptosporidium-137'', is suddenly deceased for unknown reasons. His clone, ''Cryptosporidium-138'' (Crypto for short), made of more pure Furon DNA, is now taking his place and continuing to pose as the President of the United States. KGB intelligence reveals that Crypto-138 is the first and only Furon to have genitalia, referred to only as "The Package". Seeing the Furons as a threat to the Soviet Union, the KGB destroy the Furon mothership with a nuclear missile.

Soon after, Crypto's new adventure begins. Not only must Crypto stop the KGB from preventing his and Pox's plans, he desires revenge for the destruction of the mothership. Crypto's commander, ''Orthopox 13'', downloaded his consciousness into a holographic unit (called a ''HoloPox Unit'') just before he died. After saving Bay City from annihilation at the hands of the Soviets, Crypto discovers that the KGB have fled to Albion and promptly follows, where he meets ''Reginald Ponsonby-Smythe'', the James Bond-esque head of M16 (a parody of MI6), and a rogue KGB agent named ''Natalya Ivanova'', to whom Crypto is attracted. They discover that the KGB have created a type of spore that causes humans to mutate into monsters. Eventually Ponsonby betrays Crypto, revealing he is the leader of the British branch of Majestic, Majestic Sector 16. After killing Ponsonby and puzzling over his cryptic reference that the Furons may not be the only aliens on Earth, Crypto learns that the KGB have a base on Takoshima Island.

Arriving in Takoshima, Crypto has to rescue a person that calls himself ''Dr. Go'' (a parody of Julius No) from the Black Ninjas and KGB. He provides access to the KGB base hidden in the island's volcano. Inside Crypto and Natalya are addressed by the mastermind behind the spore plot, ''Soviet Premier Milenkov'' (a parody of Ernst Stavro Blofeld). Milenkov shows a film clip of his men using spores on a Takoshimese intern, who transforms into a giant Godzilla-like monster called "Kojira". After defeating Kojira, Crypto follows Natalya to Tunguska, home of "Project Solaris". In the Soviet Union, Crypto discovers that another alien race has crash-landed on Earth, The Blisk. The Blisk are an enemy that the Furons had thought they had wiped out during the Martian War a long time ago. Pox realizes that the Tunguska event of 1908 was actually a downed Blisk warship crash-landing into the Tunguskan hillside and not a meteorite. After destroying the crashed Blisk warship and rescuing Natalya from a Blisk gas bubble, Crypto meets Milenkov face to face. Milenkov then retreats to his Moon base, Solaris, in a Blisk shuttle.

a human On the Moon, Crypto discovers that Project Solaris is a Blisk superweapon designed to bombard the Earth with Blisk spores and radiation, granting the Blisk control of Earth as their new irradiated, water-logged homeworld. Using his ability to "body snatch", Crypto disguises himself as Soviet cosmonaut Leonid, the head scientist on the Moon, and convinces the rest of the humans to go to war with the Blisk. Then Crypto manages to sabotage the weapon's firing mechanism. Upon doing so, Milenkov confronts Crypto. He then reveals that ever since the Blisk crashed, they have been controlling the Government of the Soviet Union, each Premier before him had been a Blisk, and they were responsible for several world crises; including the Cold War. After their conversation, Milenkov leaves. Crypto and Natalya battle for their various species to save the Earth by attacking and successfully destroying the Blisk Hive Mind with the O.M.G.W.T.F. virus Pox developed in his lab, but Milenkov appears and fatally shoots Natalya in the back. He then reveals his true form, a heavily armored blisk. After defeating Milenkov, Crypto relaxes in his flying saucer while Pox appears on the video monitor, congratulating Crypto and eagerly anticipating his newly cloned body. He has detected activity in the emergency cloning lab. He questions Crypto about it, then realizes that Crypto has cloned Natalya, and is extremely infuriated by this and begins yelling at him, just before Crypto abruptly shuts off the video monitor mid-sentence. Lying next to him, Natalya awakens briefly and favors Crypto with a smile and an invitation to wake her when he's ready for "re-entry". As the game ends, Crypto leers at the player and admits to having made "a few adjustments".

Voyages

Rose and Owen find out that their apartment block is to become a co-op. Rose visits her son, who lives in a shabby neighborhood; he says he likes to go to the East Village. One Sunday she takes a walk, goes to an automat and bumps into her husband. Owen then goes to a gay pornographic cinema, where a man leaves him his number.

Philip and Eliot are in bed; Philip gets up to do the dishes. He thinks back to how they met through Sally. Back to the parents, Owen gets back to his apartment, soaked through. Philip and Eliot then wake up; Philip seems keen on flatmate Jerene's research on lost languages. There is then an account of Jerene's childhood up to her coming out to her parents and being spurned by them. Philip and Eliot then talk about their experiences with men. Philip goes on to remember the way he would masturbate a lot and how he tried to ask girls out - and they refused. Finally, he recalls going to a gay pornographic cinema when he was seventeen.

Myths of origin

Owen calls Alex Melchor and finds out it was a wrong number. Philip asks Eliot to introduce him to Derek and Geoffrey. Later, he goes to his parents' flat to look at Derek's books. Jerene is getting ready for a date. Philip meets Eliot's foster parents for dinner, then they go to a gay bar where Philip meets his old acquaintance Alex Kamarov. Outside, Eliot admits to being unsure about their relationship; nevertheless they return to Eliot's, where he teaches Philip how to shave properly.

Philip eventually comes out to his parents. His mother is tersely averse; his father says it is fine, though he starts weeping as soon as the young man has left.

The crane-child

In the library, Jerene reads an article about a child who emulates cranes as this was the only thing he would see out of his window from his cot, and his parents weren't about. He was then sent to a psych ward.

Father and Son

Eliot doesn't return Philip's calls; when Jerene meets Philip for a drink, she admits there is not much that can be done. Later, Philip talks to his friend Brad. He then gets really drunk out on the town to forget. A few days later, he meets Rob in a bar and they return to the boy's dorm room where they have sex. Subsequently, Philip does not return his calls.

Owen calls a gay hotline, then hangs up and calls Alex Melchor, who tells him to call someone else, and then Philip, hanging up before they can talk. Later, Philip runs into his parents and tells them he's broken up with Eliot.

Rose says to Philip that she needs more time to ruminate. Owen calls a gay sex phone-line and starts sobbing. He then goes to a gay bar and meets another man named Frank; they go to Frank's flat and have sex. When he gets home, it's half past two in the morning, and Rose is hurt.

Owen invites Winston Penn to dinner, and attempts to fix him up with Philip. That night, Rose finally realizes that Owen is gay too. While Philip and Brad get into bed together, Rose and Owen have a big argument. Owen goes off to a Burger King until he calls his son asking for a place to stay for the night. Before Philip goes to find his father, he passionately kisses Brad. Upon Philip's arrival Owen confesses to being gay, and they settle in for a sleepless night in Philip's disorderly apartment.

The series revolves around ''dream masters'' who turn nightmares into peaceful dreams. On behalf of their clients they go around searching for nightmares which have escaped the mind of the owner and have manifested themselves into the real world, causing havoc. The nightmares are a paranormal phenomenon which have the appearance of poltergeist activity. The dream masters' goal is to defeat the nightmares, and returning them to their respective owners as pacified dreams. However, the dream masters do not interfere with an owner's life, and the owner is left to deal with the source of the nightmare. The show is characterised by haunting music, strange ghost like nightmares and the transformation of children's toys known as "play offerings" into weaponry and monsters.

Unlike the anime, the manga is a lot more in-depth with the cases, for example, the first case takes up the entire first three volumes. Also, they don't just pacify nightmares and expel them from the real world, but instead they take all sorts of cases, where no dreaming is involved, but their power is required.

As the film begins, Tai Po (Gurmit Singh) and Vernon (Moe Alkaff) are shown to have a common pastime of playing soccer. Later, Tai Po enters a Youth Soccer Competition in a tryout, but gets hurt with his leg bleeding. Since that event, Tai Po appears to shun matches of soccer on the radio or on television while at work.

Handsome Toh (Mark Lee) is then shown into the film, released from prison as an ex-convict, also with Kim (Sharon Au), who writes to her home back overseas.

Handsome arrives for a job interview, meeting Kim outside Sonny's factory. Sonny's arrogant son Gavin (Robin Leong) is introduced, whom Kim stated that he changed so much after returning from an American school overseas. Turns out later Handsome faces the brunt of getting a job from Gavin. Gavin relents, but eventually gave Handsome a chance, but agreeing that ⅓ of Handsome's salary is donated to the company's soccer team.

Vernon is shown with his band, The Vibrations, and they are as terrible as his singing.

Tai Po, Kim and Baka fail to fix a plumbing issue with a customer, and breaks the customers expensive glass bowl worthing 15 grand. As such, Tai Po and Baka's promotion salary of 10 grand are confiscated, yet owing the customer another five grand. However their boss, Sonny Lee (Lim Kay Tong) offers them to work overtime to repay what they owe and possibly earn back their promotion pay, by manually installing a swimming pool at Sonny's estate. Gavin arrives at the office and suggests to his father by separating Baka and Tai Po and putting Tai Po's partner as Handsome, which Tai Po gasps to know Handsome is an ex-convict.

Kim tells a horror story to Tai Po, which that somehow sours Handsome and his relation.

While watching television in Tai Po's home with Vernon and Tai Po's kids, they come across an advertisement for a Starhub soccer challenge which the winning team walks away with tickets to the 2002 World Cup Finals. Vernon suggests that they enter by calling his old soccer mates, but Tai Po reveals about his pairing with Handsome, also gasping Vernon.

Vernon arrives to register, not after a terrible encounter with the clerk Eugene (Hossan Leong), who becomes their team coach, though also horrid at soccer. The team looks as a failure, and even Tai Po could not get Handsome to join after a test which Handsome thought was an attempt to fight.

Two Brazilian soccer experts, Adriano and Vernato are introduced, which they were robbed of their belongings in Singapore, but join construction workers just for a meal to satisfy themselves.

Vernon asks about Sammy Best (Siva Choy) who was a soccer sports star, but his friend Ah Huat tells that Sammy now works at a construction site guard. Tai Po and Vernon try looking for him, but after told off by the foreman (Jack Neo) about how a drunkard Sammy was, Tai Po resigns to fate as failure, but then the two notice Adriano and Vernato, who are both hired into the team. Later while they are tried out, Handsome eventually joins, becoming their goalkeeper.

The team fails even to a female soccer team, who are challenged straight by the Kosmos, Sonny's company team and Gavin is a player in it. The team, known as the Durians (suggested by Ah Huat who "sponsored") lost badly, getting laughed at by a drunkard field cleaner, who turns out to be Sammy himself. It was quite a hassle to get Sammy as their coach, but soon the Durians succeed winning a match.

The Durians go to a KTV pub, where Handsome while singing a love song remembers Gwen (Fiona Xie), Gavin's beautiful sister and breaks out in tears while trying to confess his love for her. But he then finds Kim as a KTV girl, getting beaten up after trying to save her. He then realises he has anger management problems, resorting always to fights to settle issues. Kim tries to pacify him, also inspiring herself to be what she wants.

In a party Gavin held, he is revealed to be keeping a Barbie doll, showing his extreme sadism he tries to hide from others.

Tai Po's daughter Chun Huey is told off by her teacher, and Tai Po goes angry, trying to teach his children a lesson that he is a failure, but his children then tell him that he is in fact a great father, even with their deceased mother who Tai Po thought he had failed to take care of.

Vernon is soon fired by his uncle at the KTV they work in, as Vernon's concerts scared customers away, resulting in the Karaoke machines replacing him. "Vernon and the Vibrations" supposedly ended their career. Vernon is also told off by his father who claims that he should wake up, becoming a singer was impossible for him.

Gavin's sadism and extreme life gets on Gwen's nerves, who then resigns being the Kosmos team manager, telling off Sonny. Sonny himself, like his son becomes a sadist, even going so far to being harsh on Tai Po when Tai Po was previously his best worker.

The finals to the match is soon, but the Durians and Kosmos go for a dinner party held by the organisers. In the party, the Kosmos bully the Durians, and Gwen appears to seduce Handsome while they were outside smoking. That had then broke Kim's heart, and enrages Gavin who threatens to report Handsome for molesting Gwen. Handsome angrily apologises, fortunately controlling his anger at his one enemy. Later, Vernon criticises Handsome for rejecting Kim, but Handsome criticises back about Vernon's horrid singing. The fight ends abruptly when Sammy is admitted into the hospital for liver failure. Tai Po is held down by the bill, also by his cut salary for playing soccer and not working.

Sonny then approaches Tai Po, offering him 10 grand to him and the team, for their own usage. Tai Po is also relieved of building the swimming pool. However, if the money is taken, the Durians must not play in the match the next day, or Handsome, Kim, Baka and himself will be fired.

The Durians meet up, which they discuss their future. Tai Po has his bills to settle, Vernon has his life to handle, and Kim has her family to support. They were thinking of giving up the match, but Eugene then scolds them for being shallow. They now are at crossroads.

While visiting, Sammy tells Tai Po that he really is not a failure, Tai Po was a good player in the Youth Soccer tryouts when younger, and Sammy had seen it.

The match arrives, but many of the Durians are missing. Tai Po, Baka and Handsome approach Sonny and return the money, also stating that they no longer want to work for him, wishing the Kosmos good luck in the meantime. Miraculously, the Durians arrive and play the game. Things do not look hopeful, until Adriano and Vernato escape the clutches of their abusive foreman and quit being construction workers, arriving at the match, bringing their cheering soccer fanatic construction worker mates.

Sammy sneaks out of the hospital to see the game, Vernon's father watches his son and Kim supports Handsome. Tai Po realises he indeed can succeed, and Vernon does something which he has not done before. Handsome also controls his anger perfectly in front of Gavin, in which Gavin's reaction has the referee offering him a red card but sends back another player.

Tai Po is tackled down hard by Gavin, but he tries his best and scores the final goal to win. The Durians triumph, while Gavin weeps over his lost girlfriend (who ironically was stolen by none other than his father) and is appalled by his doll which he claims has stopped loving him and in a fit of rage decapitates the doll, exasperating him.

Tai Po, Baka, Handsome and Kim start a mobile phone shop, also having Kim and Handsome married. Tai Po has taken his kids on a holiday, and is now more well off. Vernon now has a singing career, settling in Las Vegas in America while Sammy is now a full-time soccer coach with Eugene. He signs his autograph to a customer who finds out their identity as the film ends.

Set in 1919, following the end of World War I, the novel takes place in the wilderness of Northern Ontario and on the battlefields of France and Belgium. Niska, an Oji-Cree medicine woman, is the remnant of her native relatives who refused to assimilate in the 19th century. She rejected European beliefs and culture and continues to thrive in the bush in a manner befitting her and her traditions. Niska’s voice is one of two narratives that complete the novel. After getting word that her closest thing to living family, Elijah, is coming back from the war, she paddles the three-day journey to meet him in town. She finds, however, that it is not Elijah but her nephew Xavier who has returned from battle. In an attempt to heal her only relative, who has clearly been sucked dry of his soul and has hardened with nightmares from the war and turned hollow by morphine, she begins to recount the stories of her past. She believes that perhaps this will revive Xavier and the Three Day Road will not be one to his demise. Similarly, Xavier attempts to stumble over his story for his aunt and unearths ghosts of his bullet-riddled past.

The novel was inspired in part by real-life Indigenous World War I heroes Francis Pegahmagabow and John Shiwak. In addition it seems relevant that Boyden's father Raymond Wilfrid Boyden was a medical officer renowned for his bravery, who was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and was the most highly decorated medical officer of World War II.[1]

The story opens in the town of Wheeling, West Virginia. We first see Roget Germyn, a banker and model Citizen. An Eye forms over him while he is meditating, but he is interrupted and the Eye vanishes. He then returns to a more Earthly concern - whether or not the 'sun' will be regenerated, ending the current period of hunger and cold.

Attention then shifts to Glenn Tropile, who lives among the Citizens, but regards himself as one of the feared Wolves. He has even managed to slowly coach his wife, Gala, toward a more Wolfish outlook. Despite this rebellious attitude, he maintains a genuine interest in meditation.

Glenn Tropile is exposed as a Wolf while stealing bread. He escapes execution and is collected by a community of Wolves living in the town of Princeton. They find he doesn't entirely fit in there either, but hope he may get collected by an 'Eye', giving them a chance to measure this process in detail. This eventually happens and they find, as expected, that his disappearance was facilitated by the Pyramid on Everest. Glenn Tropile has been sent to the Pyramid's planet.

We then learn his fate. To the Pyramids, the human race is nothing more than a useful source of 'Components' for a complex world-machine devoted mostly to feeding these artificial and semi-organic beings. Tropile is suspended in a fluid-filled tank and 'wired in' to the vast computer system. Later, he is linked to seven other humans as a 'Snowflake' - eight minds joined together to facilitate more complex tasks than a single human Component could manage.

In this condition, Tropile wakes, manages to retain his sanity, and wakes the other humans. They eventually merge with one another to form a sophisticated collective mind. The freed Snowflake then spies on the Pyramids, finding that they have been traveling for some two million years, and have collected many species as Components, but seem locked in meaningless rituals surrounding an alien creature at the world's North Pole. They later realize that this is the last survivor of the race that created the Pyramids.

In the meantime, they have modified the collection process of human Components so that it selects persons known to at least one of the eight people composing the Snowflake (which has become almost as ruthless and inhuman as the alien Pyramids). These humans are intended as 'mice,' disrupters of the planet, and later as an army with which to fight the Pyramids. Roget Germyn is one of them, as is Tropile's wife.

Facing a philosophical dead-end, the 'Snowflake' decides to separate its component minds to study the problem. Restored to individual identity, Glenn Tropile becomes horrified at what he has done. However, the majority of the others want to carry on. While they are arguing, one of their number is taken over by the mind of the alien at the North Pole, who warns them that the Pyramids have noticed them and plan to wipe out half the planet to get rid of them.

They initially re-merge their personalities as the Snowflake and expedite their plans. Tropile decides he must physically disconnect himself from the Snowflake and leave to lead the humans. They manage to defeat the Pyramids, but not before the remainder of the Snowflake is also destroyed. The humans free many of the other Components and ship them back to Earth.

Tropile now finds he is a hero of sorts, but does not fit the role (though he never truly fit any role in which he was placed - Sheep, Wolf, or Component). He also sees that there is a need for someone to wire themselves back into the alien planet's surviving systems, to re-kindle the 'sun' every five years and perhaps return the Earth to its original orbit. He doesn't want to do it alone, but most of the people he knows are either unwilling or unsuitable. On the last page, though, his wife agrees to join him. He expects that there will later be others, that "[t]he ring of fire [will] grow."

The plot follows journalist, biographer, and former poet Maggie Black as she inherits property from her former mentor, the reclusive poet Davis Cooper; he had previously shared the land with his late lover, the painter Anna Naverra. Though Cooper and Naverra are dead before the action of the book takes place, the chapters end with excerpts from their letters to each other, bringing them into the narrative. Many years prior, she had approached Cooper about writing his biography, and he declined. Now, as she takes up residence at his former home in the mountains of the Desert Southwest, she regards her inheritance as tacit permission to pursue that biography. Maggie is forty years old, moving to the desert and leaving Los Angeles and her ex-husband behind her, Maggie becomes friends with some of the locals. Slowly, she begins to see and develop relationships with apparently mythical, impossible creatures residing in the area, including six guardians of earth, sky, and the four cardinal directions as well as a number of animal spirits (e.g. Owl Boy and Rabbit Woman) that she had thought only to exist in Naverra's paintings and Cooper's poetry. The magic of the desert incorporates both Native American and Celtic mythologies. Naverra had gone mad and killed herself, and Cooper was the victim of a mysterious murder. Maggie wonders if she will share their fate.

The series tells the story of the battle between the Earth's defenders and a demonic entity named Genma Daioh. Its first protagonist is Jo Azuma, a Japanese highschool student of the 1970s who suddenly finds out he has psychic powers and is being called along with other psychics around the globe. They are gathered by Vega, an alien cyborg warrior, and Luna, the princess of Transylvania, who have discovered the presence of Genma traveling towards the Earth with the intention to conquer it. In order to stop him, Luna and Vega train Azuma and all the other psychics to defeat Genma and thwart his destructive plans. However, despite initial victories, the manga ends in an ambiguous cliffhanger, hinting that the psychics are defeated and the Earth will be destroyed.

After the premature end of the manga, the story was expanded upon by other series of the franchise, featuring time travel and battles in other realities. This is first shown in the sequel ''New Genma Wars'', which takes place in 1999, after Genma's victory has turned the Earth into a post-apocalyptic wasteland ruled by the demon. In that place, a surviving psychic named Chinami Kagawa is entasked by Beatrice, princess Luna's daughter, to travel back to the Edo period and create a new clan of psychics who could defeat Genma. She is opposed there by Yui Shōsetsu, who has fused with an incarnation of Genma come to chase Kagawa. (This series also ties with a previously unrelated Hirai manga, ''Adult Wolf Guy''.)

The story is taken then to ''True Genma Wars'', after Kagawa's exploits rewrote reality. In a new version of 1979, Jo Azuma, now an adult paranormal researcher and writer, is hired by a powerful woman known as Moonlight to expose the existence of psychics to the world. After several events, Jo gains the knowledge of the previous timeline destroyed by Genma, only to disappear mysteriously. His mantle is taken by his secretary Yuri Sugimura, who travels to the 7th century to meet the mystic En no Gyōja. Also, in another time plane, an ancient Greek girl named Chronos gets involved in a war against Mu, an ancient civilization populated by mysterious beasts who might be related to Genma.

The next installment is ''Genma Wars: Eve of Mythology Chapter'', though it takes place again in the original timeline, where the world was conquered by Genma. Humans now live in primitive societies, while the planet is ruled by a race of intelligent Genma beasts serving Maoh King, who now plans to give birth to an heir by raping a human woman. However, said woman, Non, manages to run away with the resultant children, two male twins named Loof and Jin, who swear to stop their father. After defeating Maoh, they travel to the past in an attempt to prevent the existence of their terrible world, but agents of Genma from the past spoil their plan by provoking a nuclear war in substitution of the original Genma victory. Nonetheless, Loof and Jin take over the new timeline, ensuring a better future for mankind there.

A Hirai novel of 1979 similarly named ''Genma Wars'' takes a new route from ''New Genma Wars''. being set on a timeline created there. A young version of Jo discovers in 1967 he has psychic powers which predict the coming of Genma, so he initiates a resistance movement from his school's literature club, named "Genken". As in the previous story, Joe disappears mysteriously, and the members of Genken are left to advance by themselves. In a sequel named ''Harmageddon'', a member named Keisuke Takatori gives birth to a totalitary global movement based on his messiah complex.

''Harmageddon Girl'' is a side story of Genma Wars featuring Michiko, Jo Azuma's sister. She uncovers her own powers to save herself and a plane full of passengers from an attack by Genma, but is sent to ancient Greece as a result. Here, she meets Chronos, who leads her to the space in order to gather with several other characters of the franchise, among them Luna. At the end of the story, they get ready to battle Genma in his invasion of Earth.

The entire franchise is revisited in a 2014 manga named ''Genma Wars Rebirth'' and written by Kyoichi Nanatsuki. In it, Luna and Stella (Luna's daughter with Jo) travel to the past in order to try to prevent the war.

''Genma Wars'' is set in a post-apocalyptic world, where mankind has been subjugated by a demonical tribe known as Genma. The humans are reduced to little more than slaves for the Genma, who employ mutant armies of cyclopses, vampires, werewolves, highly intelligent simian soldiers, and other mythological beings, to keep the humans at bay. The authoritarian Genma leader, the Maoh King, desires to have an heir with immense, extraordinary power. He orders his men around the kingdom to abduct human women. The Maoh King is convinced that if he conceives a child with a human woman the child will possess amazing powers.

In one case, in exchange for the safety of her village, a girl called Non submit to the Maoh King, and give birth to male twins, Loof and Jin. Loof is taken to grow up among the Genma, while Jin grows up under his mother' care, however she is labelled as a whore by her fellow kinsmen. Eventually, Loof and Jin encounter each other and plan revenge against their hated father. However, their father reveals he only created them, and the whole hybrid Human-Genma, to bring the war across the Earth, out of boredom. He throws his sons in a time portal, back to the present time, when the war was initiated, in order to stop their dystopic world.

The game is a prequel to the ''Land of the Dead'' film, taking place during the initial outbreak of the zombie pandemic. Players take on the role of a farmer named Jack, who, one day, finds his farm besieged by the undead. After finding the other nearby farms desolate, he makes his way to the city, hoping to find help, but instead finding the city in ruins, overrun by the undead. Jack later learns about the existence of a safe-haven located within the city, and makes it his priority to reach it.

In a vastly overpopulated world, businesses have taken the place of governments and now hold political power. States exist merely to ensure the survival of huge trans-national corporations. Advertising has become hugely aggressive and by far the best-paid profession. Through advertising, the public is constantly deluded into thinking that the quality of life is improved by all the products placed on the market. Some of the products contain addictive substances designed to make consumers dependent on them. However, the most basic elements of life are incredibly scarce, including water and fuel. Personal transport may be pedal powered, with rickshaw rides being considered a luxury. The planet Venus has just been visited and judged fit for human settlement, despite its inhospitable surface and climate; the colonists would have to endure a harsh climate for many generations until the planet could be terraformed.

The protagonist, Mitch Courtenay, is a star-class copywriter in the Fowler Schocken advertising agency who has been assigned the ad campaign which would attract colonists to Venus. But a lot more is happening than he knows about. It soon becomes a tale of mystery and intrigue, in which many of the characters are not what they seem, and Mitch's loyalties and opinions change drastically over the course of the narrative. One of the hazards he faces is a psychopathic agent of his former company, found using the same psychological techniques used to identify targets for advertising.

Mitch goes to a resort in Antarctica, only to become lost outside in a blizzard. He recovers to find that he has been shanghaied as an ordinary working stiff. His ID number tattooed on his arm has been altered so he cannot reclaim his old identity. However, his skills remain intact. He becomes the propaganda specialist for a cadre of revolutionaries (the World Conservationist Association, known as Consies), in the process becoming a convert to the cause of those he once manipulated as mere consumers. In the end he confronts those who stole his life, who are not necessarily his enemies, and those from his old life, who are not necessarily his friends.

During one of the many monster attacks on the city where the story takes place, Silk Koharuno and her two friends attempt to get closer to the monster to get a better view. Unfortunately, the city's protector, UFO-man, comes to the rescue but inadvertently steps on them and crushes the girls to death. Feeling sorry for what he had done, UFO-man blames their deaths on the monster and promises to bring them back to life by lending them his power. However, now they must become the city's protectors as well.

In the second novel of Princess Diaries, Mia must learn to deal with the public and reporters, beginning with a primetime interview Mia is instructed to attend by her Grandmère, despite Mia's protests. When Mia gets sick, she thinks that the interview will be cancelled, but she is enticed out of her sickbed by the notion of a "secret admirer," and cannot avoid the interview.

During the interview itself, says a number of embarrassing things, including that her mother is pregnant with the baby of her boyfriend, Mr Gianini (who is also Mia's algebra teacher). The pregnancy revealed, Mr Gianini asks Mia's mother to marry him. Grandmère organizes for the Royal Genovian Event Planner to be flown to New York from Genovia to plan an elaborate, elitist wedding. Mia has to deal with the unwanted attention brought on by the interview, along with the knowledge that a secret admirer has been sending her emails under the name of JoCrox.

On the day of the wedding, Mia discovers that her mom and Mr. G have eloped in Mexico with the help of her father. Mia herself manages to escape the wedding extravaganza in her bridesmaid gown to attend the Halloween screening of ''The Rocky Horror Picture Show'' with her friends, where she discovers that her secret admirer is her biology partner Kenny Showalter. Mia is disappointed, as she has been hoping that it would be Michael, her own crush, and Lilly's (her best friend's) older brother.

The book ends with Mia philosophically reflecting that ''what doesn't kill us makes us stronger'', and that she cannot hurt Kenny's feelings and accepts a date with him.

Category:2001 American novels Category:American young adult novels Category:The Princess Diaries novels Category:HarperCollins books

Jason Dorrant is a lonely twelve-year-old boy who is a suspect in the brutal murder of Alicia Bartlett, the seven-year-old sister of a classmate. Trent, an expert interrogator for the police department who is known to get confessions that seem impossible to obtain and who has never lost a case, is called in to interrogate Jason, who is Alicia's friend and the last known person to see her alive. An ambitious man looking to move up in the ranks, Trent hopes to win the favor of an influential Massachusetts senator. Trent discovers that Jason had few friends prior to the crime save for Alicia, with whom he would regularly visit and complete jigsaw puzzles with. Jason was the last person to see Alicia alive and is the prime suspect, although he doesn't know it – Trent tells Jason that the information he is providing is voluntary.

Trent interrogates Jason in a small white-walled room with no ventilation and a single light bulb dangling from the ceiling, and he twists the information that Jason gives him into a distorted story that makes Jason look guilty of Alicia's murder. Trent makes Jason look like a violent maniac simply because he reads and watches science fiction (accusing him of being unable to discern between fantasy and reality), gaslighting him until the boy begins to doubt his own statements and innocence. Trent brings up Jason's seemingly unprovoked attack on a schoolmate as proof of his capacity for violence; Jason protests that the attack was in response to the schoolmate in question, Bobo Kelton, sexually assaulting a female student, but Jason has no proof of this. Trent begins the interview believing Jason murdered Alicia but comes to realise, via Jason's answers and body language, that he is actually innocent. However, Trent presses the interrogation, determined to extract a confession from Jason. Ultimately, Jason is so mentally pressured by Trent's line of questioning that he comes to believe the policeman's fabrication that he is a bloodthirsty killer. Doubting his own recollections, Jason confesses to the crime of Alicia's murder.

With the confession tape in hand, a triumphant Trent walks towards another detective expecting to be praised for his handiwork, but she looks at Trent accusingly and explains that Alicia's older brother Brad was the killer, not Jason; there were witnesses, and he has been taken into custody. Alicia's older brother and a friend of his initially tried to cover up the crime, but under strict questioning their stories fell apart and Alicia's older brother confessed. The female detective accuses Trent of coercing Jason's confession, and this is reported to his superiors. The result is that Trent has successfully killed his own career; he is not demoted in actual rank, but faces permanent reassignment to overnight shifts and will never be called on to conduct interrogations again.

Meanwhile, with the investigation over and Trent blacklisted by his own actions, Jason is left alone to struggle with inner demons Trent helped create. Jason is unable to decide what he is now: the same person he was before Alicia's murder, or a murderer, a reprehensible person? He ponders, "Did he kill her? No. Could he have killed her? No, but could he kill someone worthy of death? Say, a bully?" In the final twist, Jason fulfills the role that Trent assigned him, grabbing a butcher knife and heading to the local YMCA, where bully Bobo Kelton is.

Timmy Turner's mother and father have gone on a vacation and left Timmy with the evil babysitter Vicky. When Timmy tries to make a wish, his fairy godparents Cosmo and Wanda tell him that it's against "Da Rules". Outraged, Timmy wishes he didn't have to follow the rules. As a result, Cosmo destroys the book; when Vicky arrives, she gains possession of Da Rules. She wishes that Timmy was still sleeping, and since she has possession of a fairy item, her wish is granted. Timmy, Cosmo, and Wanda go to Fairy Court and are accused of destroying Da Rules. Jorgen gives the three of them 49½ hours to find the missing pages of Da Rules. Timmy must navigate through ten levels and find the pages before Vicky's wishing goes too far. By the end of the game, everything is back to normal, and Da Rules has all of its pages back.

The PC version features a different plot. In this version, Juandissimo Magnifico tricks Timmy into wishing the book destroyed so that Cosmo and Wanda will get in trouble for it. It also notably features an appearance by Vicky and Tootie's mother (at Timmy's age, as the level featuring her is set in the past), named Nicky. Here, she is shown behaving a lot like Tootie, and Timmy initially mistakes her for Tootie when he first sees her, although the in-game graphics depict her as resembling a young Vicky.

In the Game Boy Advance version, Anti-Cosmo and Anti-Wanda steal the book, and use Vicky's dreams as a conduit for their magic. As punishment, Cosmo and Wanda are demoted to 3rd-Class Faries. In response, they arm Timmy with an anti-magic backpack and magic cannon. Eventually, the Anti-Faries are defeated at the very end and Cosmo and Wanda wake Vicky, restoring peace and convincing Jorgen to promote them back to 1st-Class Faries.

Jean Preston (Patricia Morison) is determined to find her fiancé, Greg Jones (Bruce Edwards), who went on a safari and didn’t come back when expected. She travels to Akbar, India with Greg’s father, Colonel Jones (John Miljan), who also narrates the film, together with Wayne Monroe (Keith Richards) and the Professor (Wilson Benge). She asks about Jones at the front desk of the hotel where she stays. Although the clerk acts like he knows nothing of Jones, he immediately makes a suspicious phone call when the group leaves the lobby.

While Jean unpacks in her room, a native woman named Tondra (Vida Aldana), who spied on the group in the hotel lobby earlier, knocks on the door. She tells Jean that her husband, Moya (Hassam Kayyam), spoke to her of a safari that suffered a tiger attack. Jean asks Tondra to speak to her husband. Although apprehensive to get her husband at first, she quickly fetches her husband when Jean greases her palm. Tondra returns with Moya, who recognizes Jones from a photo of Jean’s. He tells Jean that Jones traveled not with the doomed safari but with a group of ivory hunters that went to Africa. Before Moya can say more, someone shoots him with a pistol through Jean’s room window. The shooting upsets the unstable locals and the group leaves for Africa.

They take a boat deep into the African jungle where they see abundant wildlife. Jean must convince Gary Lambert (Robert Lowery), who hates taking women on safaris, to be their guide. She knocks his socks off with her shooting skills with a gun. They also pick up famed safari cook, Gabby (J. Edward Bromberg), who likes to recite the poem ''Three Fishers'' to his pet monkey and tells stories of escaping his wife with belligerent verbosity. The District Commissioner of the area tells Lambert that Jones was on a mission to bust Ivory poachers and wants Lambert to do the same, which Lambert readily agrees.

The rescue mission meets with turmoil and death from an unknown saboteur among their ranks. A native man tells the group rumors of a group of white she-devils in the jungle that make their native guides skittish. The women came from a lifeboat from a shipwreck many years ago. When Greg is found, it is revealed he fell for the queen, Zita (Amira Moustafa).

Frank Leone, a mechanic in Hoboken, New Jersey, is a model prisoner nearing the end of his sentence in Norwood, a low-security prison. He occasionally spends time outside prison on furlough fixing cars, playing football and seeing his girlfriend Melissa.

While sleeping in his cell, guards arrive and forcibly take Leone to the brutal maximum-security Gateway Prison run by Warden Drumgoole. Drumgoole explains that he arranged this in retaliation for an incident in which Leone escaped from Drumgoole's previous post, Treadmore Prison, and informed the press about Drumgoole's treatment of his prisoners, after Drumgoole refused to allow Leone a one-hour furlough to visit his dying mentor. Not only did this incident result in five years in minimum security being added to Leone's sentence, but in Drumgoole's transfer to Gateway, a negative mark on his job record.

Leone is mistreated by the guards and by a dominant inmate, Chink Weber, who acts as a trusty for Drumgoole. Leone befriends fellow prisoners Dallas, Eclipse, and First-Base, and shows them how he deals with the hardship of prison. The foursome refurbish a Ford Mustang in the prison shop, which Eclipse nicknames "Maybelline". Leone explains to Eclipse that he was sent to prison for taking the law into his own hands when he avenged an attack on his mentor. After Leone reluctantly allows First-Base to start the car, First-Base drives the Mustang out of the garage and into the prison yard. Afterward, Drumgoole makes Leone and his friends watch as other inmates destroy the car. Leone is sent to solitary confinement for six weeks and tortured by the guards. However, the guards' captain, Meissner, and one other guard, Braden, become so disgusted with the sadism of the warden and his toadies that Meissner orders it stopped and releases Leone from confinement.

Aiming to force Leone to snap and compromise his position, the warden has Chink Weber kill First-Base in the gym. Enraged, Leone attacks Chink, rendering him helpless, but before he kills him, he relents, knowing that committing such an act is precisely what Drumgoole wants. Seizing this opportunity, one of Chink's goons impales Leone from behind with a shank. As Leone recovers in the prison infirmary, another prisoner tells him that he has been hired to rape and murder Melissa. That night, Leone attempts his escape with Dallas to try and save Melissa, however Dallas lures him to a dead end, where they are captured by Drumgoole and his guards, among them, the one who posed as the prisoner who claimed he would rape Melissa. It is revealed that Drumgoole arranged this to provoke Leone into attempting an escape, in order to have a mandatory 10-year sentence imposed upon him, and convinced Dallas to assist him in his plan in exchange for an early release, though Drumgoole reneges on this after Leone's capture. Drumgoole leaves the two inmates to be beaten by the guards, but Dallas, knowing the other prisoners would kill him after setting up Leone, apologizes to Leone and electrocutes himself and officer Manly to help Leone escape.

Enraged, Leone breaks into Drumgoole's office instead of escaping, takes him to the execution chamber and straps him to the electric chair. He activates the generator and secures his hand to the switch. The prison guards break into the execution viewing room, leading to an armed standoff. Under threat of being executed, the warden finally confesses to his plot to increase Leone's prison time. Leone pulls the switch anyway but nothing happens. He then reveals he took one of the fuses out before to trick the warden into confessing. Captain Meissner and his men cuff Leone, but they also take Drumgoole into custody for the legal confession.

A judicial inquiry is made into the matter about the warden's corrupt behavior and Leone serves only the prison time required of him in the first place. A few weeks later, Leone leaves prison to the cheers of his fellow inmates and meets up with Eclipse one last time. He wishes Captain Meissner farewell and exits Gateway to embrace the waiting Melissa.

When Montague Allen Stark, with the assistance of friends, attempts to summon a devil, he quite unexpectedly succeeds: Bechard possesses Prosper Nash's body and sends his soul to the astral plane. Nash awakes in a cavalier's body, with no memory, but with the old reflexes. This gets him shortly involved in a fight, and he meets up with Arizona Bill Averoff, who does not remember him, but is the image of his friend Bill Averoff, an avid Western reader. He also learns that the society is in the throes of a war with the Wotanists—or Voties, as they are commonly called (in the original 1940s magazine version, these characters are referred to as "Arries" or "Aryans", and appear to be the astral products of daydreaming German émigrés in the New York of the time).

Spending the night reveals his name, as he signs it from habit, and more importantly, the existence of the Shamir. After a failed attempt to steal it, a fellow cavalier drags him back a club, which contains letters that reveal more of his past to him. In particular, he knows Alicia Dido Woodson, the double of Alice Woodson, present when the demon was summoned, but tracking her down reveals that she was kidnapped.

An unremembered feud with Athos de Lilly catches up with him, and he ends up in jail, where he hears of a wizard, Merlin Apollonius Stark—the equivalent of Montague Stark—and resolves to get his assistance in obtaining the Shamir.

In court the next day, he is offered an enlistment in the army. He receives orders to carry a message but also news from a private detective named Reginald Vance Kramer (apparently the astral self of a daydreaming would-be Philo Vance) that Alicia was kidnapped by Sultan Arslan Bey. Passing off the message to Arizona Bill Averoff, he bluffs his way into the sultan's castle by posing as a representative of the city's Comptroller. He finds that the sultan is Bob Lanby, in reality a bachelor and clerk at the YMCA. When the Romans and Voties attack, he convinces the sultan to send him to convey the harem and treasure to safety.

Having gotten the girls to safety (in their opinion, not the sultan's) and taken a share of the treasure, he convinces Merlin Apollonius Stark to help him. He learns that the message was woefully misdelivered, and after an abortive anarchist uprising, New York City is in the middle of a battle in which the Voties have gained the upper hand. With help from Alicia, he does gain the Shamir, but when they are cornered by Voties, he has Alicia use it to escape to the mundane world.

Execution the next morning is stopped by an invasion of creatures dreamed up by Montague Stark. Alicia's attempt to contact him was successful.

Tukiphat, the owner of the Shamir, demands it of him, and Prosper explains the circumstances. Tukiphat summons Bechard to the astral plane, and sends Prosper back to deal with Bechard's connection there.

The Shamir, which could return him, is still on the mundane plane, but so is Alicia, and Prosper has her use it to return herself to the astral plane. He goes to visit Montague Stark, and finds him throwing away his magical books. Prosper takes them: he may never be reunited with Alicia, but he intends to try.

Akebono City is a peaceful community overflowing with humanity. Since there was a Power Spot that released magical power in the community, the people were distressed by the threat of the demon army Jamanga who are gathering from the frightened masses for a sinister purpose. The secret organization SHOT was formed to protect the people of the community from the Jamanga, concealing their existence as ordinary members of the Akebono Police Station, which considers demons beyond their jurisdiction. Kenji Narukami, a student of the for fighting demons, arrives to Akebono to fight the demons, eventually getting his wish when he is transformed to Ryukendo and faces off against Jamanga's forces together with his friends in order to restore peace in the community.

''Brutal: Paws of Fury''

Every four years on the uncharted Brutal Island, the world's toughest martial artists are invited to compete in the most grueling tournament, aptly referred to as the Brutal Island Tournament. Only the winner of this tournament gains the privilege to challenge Dali Llama, the greatest fighter in the world, for the coveted Belt of Heaven championship.

''Brutal Unleashed: Above the Claw''

Four years after the Paws of Fury tournament, the participants return to Brutal Island to once again compete for the match against Dali Llama for the Belt of Heaven. The tournament is also Dali Llama's way of "testing" the warriors, judging whom among them possess the deepest "warrior's spirit."

3,000 years ago, the Vader Clan, led by Queen Hedrian, devastated the planet Denji. Denji Land, an island from Denji, landed on Earth. In modern times, the computer of Denji Land awoke the Denji Dog IC when it detected the Vader Clan approaching Earth. IC found five young people (who may or may not be descendants of the Denji people) to become the Denjiman in order to defend Earth, the Vader Clan's next target.

The threat of the Machine Empire Black Magma causes the United Nations to establish the Solar Sentai at a summit. From the UN's Guardians of World Peace's (GWP) air force, navy, and rangers, Commander Arashiyama assembles three specialists to become Sun Vulcan. When Black Magma learns of this, he attacks the GWP's base, but Sun Vulcan debuts in time to save it. Hell Saturn prays to the Black Solar God and is rewarded with a revived Queen Hedrian, now a cyborg with a mechanical heart and a metallic afro. Black Magma multiple plots, even with Hedrian's aid, fails. Following the death of 01, Amazon Killer, (a Vader) arrives from space, destroying the Sun Vulcan Base. A new Vulcan Base is then built.

The original Vul Eagle, Ryusuke Ohwashi, is replaced by a friend and master of the sword, Takayuki Hiba (who first appeared in episode 23).

In 1968, a teenage girl purchases a baby American alligator while on vacation with her family at a tourist trap in Florida. After the family returns home to Chicago, the girl's surly, animal-phobic father promptly flushes the alligator, whom the girl had named Ramón, down the family's toilet and into the city's sewers.

Twelve years later in 1980, the alligator survives by feeding on covertly discarded pet carcasses. These animals had been used as test subjects for an experimental growth formula intended to increase agricultural livestock meat production. However, the project was abandoned because the formula unintentionally massively increased the animals' metabolism, causing them to develop an insatiable appetite. During the years, the baby alligator accumulated concentrated amounts of this formula from feeding on these carcasses, causing it to mutate, and grow into a monster resembling a ''Deinosuchus''-''Purussaurus'' hybrid, as well as having an almost-impenetrable hide.

The alligator begins ambushing and devouring sewer workers it encounters in the sewer, and the resulting flow of body parts draws in world-weary police officer David Madison who, after a horribly botched case in St. Louis, has gained a reputation for being lethally unlucky for his assigned partners. As David works on this new case, his boss Chief Clark introduces him to reptiles expert Marisa Kendall, the woman who, as a teenager, bought the alligator years earlier, unaware that this alligator is her former pet. The two of them edge into a prickly romantic relationship, and during a visit to Marisa's house, David bonds with her motor-mouthed mother.

David's reputation as a partner-killer is confirmed when the alligator snags a young cop, Kelly, who accompanies David into the sewer searching for clues. No one believes David's story, due to a lack of a body, and partly because of Slade, the influential local tycoon who sponsored the illegal growth experiments and therefore wants the truth concealed. This changes when obnoxious tabloid reporter Thomas Kemp, one of the banes of David's existence, goes snooping in the sewers and supplies graphic and indisputable photographic evidence of the beast at the cost of his own life. The story quickly garners public attention, and a citywide hunt for the monster is called for.

After the police unsuccessfully attempt to flush out the alligator, David is put on suspension. The alligator escapes from the sewers and comes to the surface, first killing a police officer and later a young boy who, during a party, is tossed into a swimming pool in which the alligator is residing.

The ensuing hunt continues, including the hiring of pompous big-game hunter Colonel Brock to track the animal. Once again, the effort fails: Brock is killed, the police trip over each other confusedly, and the alligator goes on a rampage through a high-society wedding party hosted at Slade's mansion; among its victims are Slade himself, the Mayor, and Slade's chief scientist for the hormone experiments and intended son-in-law. Marisa and David finally lure the alligator into the sewers before setting off explosives on the alligator, killing it. As David and Marisa walk away, a drain in the sewer spits out another baby alligator, thus potentially repeating the cycle all over again.

On a rainy night, national hero Robert Forrest drives his car over a small bridge that has collapsed. He is killed, and the entire United States goes into deep mourning. Admirer and renowned journalist Stephen O'Malley (Spencer Tracy) returns from Europe to write a biography of the great man. Among the throngs covering the funeral, he finds his old friends and fellow reporters Jane Harding (Audrey Christie) and Freddie Ridges (Stephen McNally). They remain after the rest of the press leave.

Forrest's widow, Christine (Katharine Hepburn), refuses to speak to reporters throughout the proceedings. However, O'Malley befriends youngster Jeb (Darryl Hickman), son of the gatekeeper of the Forrest estate, Jason Rickards (Howard Da Silva). The grief-stricken boy shows him a way into the mansion, where he meets Christine. Though she is cordial, she refuses to cooperate with his biography. After O'Malley leaves, Forrest's private secretary, Clive Kerndon (Richard Whorf), fearful of how the reporter will react to the brush-off, convinces Christine to offer her help to O'Malley so that they can guide him in the direction they want.

Over time, O'Malley gains the widow's trust. Christine is the "keeper of the flame," protecting her husband's memory and reputation. O'Malley's instincts tell him that a secret is being kept from him. He discovers that Forrest's elderly, mentally ill mother (Margaret Wycherly) is living in a separate house on the vast estate. Despite her servants' attempts to keep them apart, O'Malley manages to speak with her and obtains more clues from her ramblings.

O'Malley notices "the arsenal," an old fortification near the Forrest mansion that served as Robert Forrest's office and library. One afternoon, O'Malley observes smoke rising from the arsenal's chimney. When he asks Kerndon about the building's purpose, Kerndon (who cannot see the smoke) tells him it is only a storehouse. O'Malley slips away to investigate. He discovers Christine burning what she claims are love letters, but he suspects otherwise. Later, Kerndon telephones somebody and assures the unnamed party that he will take care of the situation. As O'Malley learns more, he finds evidence implicating Christine in her husband's death and begins to wonder if she and her cousin, Geoffrey Midford (Forrest Tucker), are lovers and murderers. However, Geoffrey's announcement of his engagement to Rickards' daughter, and Christine's reaction, discounts that theory.

When O'Malley admits he cares for Christine, she finally breaks down and reveals the ugly truth. Her husband had been corrupted by the adulation he received and plotted to use his enormous influence to turn Americans to fascist ideals and in order to gain control of the United States. She shows O'Malley papers stored in the arsenal that reveal how Forrest (backed by secretive, ultra-wealthy, power-hungry individuals) planned to use racism, anti-union sentiment, and antisemitism to divide the country, turning social groups against one another in order to create the chaos that would let him seize power. Christine discovered the plot the day before her husband's death. She went riding the next morning and, coming upon the washed-out bridge, could have warned her husband, but decided that a "clean death in the rain was the best thing that could happen to Robert Forrest." O'Malley convinces her to help him write a book detailing Forrest's scheme.

Kerndon eavesdrops, then locks the arsenal's door, sets the building ablaze, and shoots into it through an embrasure. Christine, fatally injured, urges O'Malley to write his book. When an automobile rushes to the scene, Kerndon shoots at the passengers and is run down and killed; then they rescue O'Malley.

O'Malley ultimately writes a book titled ''Christine Forrest: Her Life,'' which exposes the plot.

Lee Leander is arrested for stealing a bracelet from a New York City jewelry store. The assistant district attorney, John "Jack" Sargeant, is assigned to prosecute her. The trial begins just before Christmas, but to avoid facing a jury filled with the holiday spirit, Jack has the trial postponed on a technicality.

When he hears Lee complaining to her lawyer about spending Christmas in jail, Jack feels guilty and asks bondsman Fat Mike to post bail. Fat Mike assumes that Jack intends to seduce Lee, and after he posts bail for her, he delivers her to Jack's apartment. Discovering that Lee is a fellow Hoosier (native of Indiana), and that she has nowhere to spend Christmas, Jack offers to drop her off at her mother's house on his way to visit his own family.

On the drive, Jack gets lost in Pennsylvania and the couple spends the night parked in a field. The next morning, they are arrested by the landowner for trespassing and destruction of property, and taken to an unfriendly justice of the peace. Lee starts a fire in his wastebasket as a distraction, and the pair flees. Lee's mother, a malevolent, embittered woman, has remarried, and does not want a relationship with her daughter, whom she considers a lost cause.

Jack takes Lee home to spend Christmas with his family. She is warmly received by Jack's cousin Willie, aunt Emma, and his mother, even after Jack reveals Lee's past. On New Year's Eve, Jack kisses Lee at a barn dance, and later that night, his mother visits Lee's bedroom for a talk. She reveals that the family was poor during Jack's childhood, and that he worked hard to put himself through college and law school. She asks Lee to give Jack up, rather than jeopardize his career, and Lee agrees.

On the way back to New York via Canada (to bypass Pennsylvania), Jack tells Lee that he loves her, and tries to persuade her to jump bail, but she refuses. Back in New York, Jack tries to lose Lee's case by using harsh and aggressive questioning to force the jury to sympathize with her. Jack's boss has been alerted about the affair, and secretly listens outside the courtroom. Realizing that Jack may damage his career, Lee changes her plea to guilty. As she is led away, Jack wants to marry Lee on the spot. She refuses, saying that if he still feels the same way when she has served her sentence, and he has had time to consider his decision, they can marry.

The game follows the story of the manga series, starting in the Golden Age Arc and ending in the Hawk of the Millennium Empire Arc.

1952

The 1952 segment deals with Claire Donnelly, a widowed nurse living in suburban Chicago, who becomes pregnant by her brother-in-law and decides to undergo abortion in order not to hurt her late husband's family. However, abortion at the time is strictly illegal. Claire eventually finds another nurse who provides her the phone number of a woman who can find her someone to perform the abortion. The woman on the phone tells Claire that the only trustworthy care provider she knows is located in Puerto Rico, and Claire cannot afford the travel costs—with air fare and hotel costs, the total trip would cost about $1000 (about $10,800 in 2022). After a failed attempt to end her pregnancy with a knitting needle, Claire contacts a man who comes to her home and performs a clandestine, hasty procedure on her while she lies atop her kitchen table. Claire finally manages to abort, but dies shortly afterwards due to massive blood loss.

1974

The 1974 segment deals with Barbara Barrows, a struggling and aging mother with four children and a night-shift-working policeman husband, who discovers she is pregnant, despite having recently gone back to college. She considers abortion with the support of her teenage daughter, but ultimately chooses to keep the child.

1996

The 1996 segment deals with Christine Cullen, a college student pregnant by a married professor, who decides on an abortion when he breaks up with her and only offers her money. After consulting with her roommate she makes an appointment with Dr. Beth Thompson. However, the abortion takes place during a violent protest and, during the actual abortion, an anti-abortion protester walks in and shoots Dr. Thompson immediately after she completes the procedure. Christine comforts Dr. Thompson as the doctor slowly bleeds out.

In 1821, Napoleon Bonaparte (Holm), after six years in exile on the isle of St. Helena, has a plan to escape. Switching places with lowly French deckhand Eugene Lenormand (also Holm), Napoleon will make his way to Paris, at which time Eugene will announce the switch, allowing Napoleon to reclaim his throne.

However, the plan quickly goes awry: the ship Napoleon is serving on abruptly changes its itinerary and docks in Belgium instead of France. Having to make his way to France by land (and gaining an appalling look at the tourist trap the battlefield of Waterloo has become), he is finally met at the French border by a loyal agent, Sgt. Bommell (Clive Russell), formerly of the Imperial Guard. Bommell gives him the name of another agent in Paris he can trust, Lt. Truchaut.

Arriving in Paris, Napoleon is surprised to find that Truchaut has recently died. Passing himself off as an old comrade of the Lieutenant, Napoleon accepts the hospitality of Truchaut's widow, Nicole, whom everyone calls "Pumpkin" (Hjejle), and makes the acquaintance of her other lodger, Dr. Lambert (McInnerny) and her adopted young son, Gerard.

The crucial flaw in the plan reveals itself when, back on Saint Helena, Eugene decides he likes living in the relative luxury of Napoleon's exile, and refuses to reveal the switch. Napoleon's French entourage find themselves unexpectedly powerless, as Eugene stuffs his face with sweets, dictates his own bawdy version of Napoleon's official memoirs, and even manages to convince his British captors that he is the true Napoleon.

With no news from Saint Helena, Napoleon is drawn into Pumpkin's life. When her fruit-selling business is on the brink of failure, he applies his own talents for planning and organization, and the business becomes prosperous again.

As affection develops between Napoleon and Pumpkin, Dr Lambert, who had designs on Pumpkin himself, jealously searches for some kind of dirt on "Eugene." Going through his bedroom, Lambert is shocked to find a small cameo portrait of Napoleon's young son, and realizes who "Eugene" really is.

On Saint Helena, Eugene abruptly drops dead of some kind of stomach complaint (in real-life, Napoleon reportedly died of gastric cancer). Realizing that the dead man on the island is not Napoleon, the British garrison commander lays out their options: either they announce the fraud, and face heinous punishment, or else maintain the illusion, and all will be well. "Gentlemen" he tells them "what we have here is a dead emperor".

When "Napoleon's" death is announced throughout France, the real Napoleon abruptly remembers his original plan and announces to Pumpkin that it is time for him to take his rightful place on the French throne. To his fury, Pumpkin is horrified and dismisses him as delusional, pleading that she loves Eugene, but hates Napoleon for taking her husband away.

With no loyalist agent in Paris to vouch for his identity, Napoleon finds himself an Emperor without an army, or a friend. He is reduced to going to Dr Lambert, who he realizes stole the portrait, and demanding it back. When he demands to be told "who I am," Lambert retorts, "I will show you."

In revenge for being beaten to Pumpkin's affections, Lambert lures him onto the grounds of a sanitorium, where it seems every patient is dressed up as Napoleon, and pretending to be him. Lambert withdraws, expecting him to be rounded up by the attendants, but a shaken Napoleon escapes the grounds by climbing over the wall, suffering a nasty cut on his hand from the chevaux de frise on top.

Emotionally and physically exhausted, he returns home to Pumpkin's house. She lovingly tends his wounds, and whispers in his ear, "you are my Napoleon."

While Gerard is looking at a pictorial account of Napoleon's life on a magic lantern, he tells the story of what really happened. It seems that Gerard, if no one else, believes his story.

Deciding that he is happiest living a simple life with Pumpkin, Napoleon destroys all his mementos of his former life, except his old Imperial Guard uniform, which he leaves at the local military post as a gift for Sgt. Bommell, with a message that "Eugene Lenormand has moved on."

An after-note states that Napoleon Bonaparte lived out the rest of his life in Paris and was buried next to Pumpkin; while Eugene Lenormand's body was brought back to Paris and interred with high honors in Les Invalides.

Marly's father just returned from the war; he is suffering from mood swings and depression, and seems to be tired all the time. Lee, Marly's mother, moves the family to Maple Hill, a town where the children's grandmother once lived, so that her husband, Marly's father, will not suffer as much as he would in the city. In Maple Hill, neighbors help one another when help is needed; they do not keep secrets from one another. The family is supported by a neighbor couple, Mr. and Mrs. Chris, who make their living with maple syrup. Marly and her brother adapt to living in the country very well, and eventually become happier there. Their father's condition also improves tremendously.

When Mr. Chris has a heart attack during sugaring time, Marly's family steps forward to return the kindness that the Chrises have shown them. They collect the entire crop of sap and boil it down, but they are certain that they lack Mr. Chris's deft touch with making syrup. When Mr. Chris is allowed to return home, it is the moment of truth: is their syrup as good as Mr. Chris's? Mr. Chris himself is unable to detect any difference. Marly reflects that the recovery of her father and Mr. Chris, the growing strength of bonds within her family, and the second chances for life and love are the true miracles of Maple Hill.

In 1794, in Marseille, Désirée Clary makes the acquaintance of a Corsican, Joseph Bonaparte, and invites him and his brother, General Napoleon Bonaparte, to call upon the family the following day. The next day, Julie, Désirée's sister, and Joseph are immediately attracted to each other, and Napoleon is taken with Désirée. He admits to her that the poor Bonaparte brothers need the rich dowries of the Clary sisters. Later, Désirée learns that Napoleon has been arrested and taken to Paris.

Napoleon eventually returns to Marseille, tells Désirée that he has been cleared of all charges, but has been ordered to track down Bourbon royalists in Paris. Désirée begs Napoleon to leave the Army and join her brother in business, but he scoffs at the idea and instead proposes marriage. Désirée accepts and lends Napoleon the money to return to Paris.

Napoleon tells her that he will always love her and will return soon for their wedding, but, as the months pass, Désirée starts doubting him and goes to the city where she meets General Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte. She learns that Napoleon is engaged to the wealthy Joséphine de Beauharnais. Désirée contemplates suicide, but Bernadotte, who has fallen in love with her, stops her.

Later, in 1797, Napoleon, now France's leading general, has succeeded in conquering Italy, and Désirée lives in Rome with Julie and Joseph. She soon tires of Rome, however, and decides to return to Paris, where she meets Napoleon, now married to Josephine, who announces that he will be leaving for a new campaign in Egypt. Bernadotte is thrilled to see Désirée again and proposes marriage to her.

By July 4, 1799, Désirée and Bernadotte have happily settled into married life and have a son, Oscar (Nicholas Koster). On November 9, 1799, Napoleon is proclaimed First Consul of the French Republic and asks Bernadotte to join his council of state, and Bernadotte agrees.

Several years later, Napoleon is proclaimed emperor, and at his coronation, he takes the crown from the hands of Pope Pius VII and crowns himself.

Five years later, desperate for an heir, Napoleon divorces Josephine, and Désirée comforts her former rival, before Napoleon's upcoming marriage to the 18-year-old Marie Louise of Austria. Napoleon involves France in more wars, and Bernadotte is approached by representatives of King Charles XIII of Sweden, who wishes to adopt him and make him the heir to the throne. Désirée, stunned by the news that she will one day be a queen, nevertheless supports her husband, and eventually Napoleon allows both of them to leave Paris.

In Stockholm, Désirée does not fit in with the royal family and asks to go home. Eight months later, she attends a ball in Paris at which Napoleon shows off his new son. Napoleon makes veiled threats about Bernadotte's alliance with Russia and announces to the crowd that she will be held hostage to ensure Sweden's support while his army invades Russia and captures Moscow.

Napoleon's army is defeated, and he visits Désirée, asking her to write a letter to Bernadotte, requesting his help. Désirée realizes that Napoleon still loves her and came more for her than to seek her husband's help. Soon after, during the War of the Sixth Coalition, Bernadotte leads one of the armies that overwhelms Napoleon, and the triumphant general reunites with Désirée before returning to Sweden.

Napoleon's exile to Elba is short-lived, however, and after the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon retreats with his personal army to the Château de Malmaison. Representatives of the allied armies ask Désirée to speak with Napoleon, hoping that she can persuade him to surrender. Napoleon agrees to speak with Désirée alone, and muses on what his destiny would have been if he had married her. Napoleon proclaims that he has given his life to protect France, but Désirée gently tells him that he must do as France asks and go into exile on St. Helena. Commenting on how strange it is that the two most outstanding men of their time had fallen in love with her, Napoleon gives Désirée his sword in surrender and assures her that her dowry was not the only reason that he proposed to her many years ago in Marseille.

Carol was born in a family revolving around music, since she is the daughter of famous musician Lionel Mudagolas. She realizes that something unusual is happening to the world, as her father is having a harder time playing his cello and also her favorite band is unable to perform as they did before. She is teleported into a world connected to hers to fight a demon lord called Gigantica. Fighting alongside her are three heroes who have been awaiting Carol eagerly.

''Compiler'' (as in a source code compiler) features two girls, Compiler and Assembler, who arrived on earth from 2-D cyberspace to play a "game" in which they will delete the real world and reform it. However, they move in with two young men called Toshi and Nachi and lose interest in the game. After Toshi is injured and the game is cancelled, two beings called Plasma and Compiler 2 are sent in to erase the girls.

Yuu the leader of an interstellar crime force, is fighting space pirates alongside his crew consisting of Saya and the feline Nyan. This time against Berga, who has a love interest in Yuu, which he then declines, forcing Berga to go berserk.

Bengali immigrant Sushila Sen (Shabana Azmi) lives in London with her son Manek (Navin Chowdhry), who is musically gifted. She supports them both as a caterer of Indian food, while Manek studies the piano with Madame Sousatzka (Shirley MacLaine), who is a Russian-American immigrant. Madame Sousatzka, while highly talented, never succeeded as a pianist and thus lives through her students, particularly talented ones such as Manek. Manek is soon forced to choose between Madame Sousatzka and his mother, who both compete for his attention.

Nicholas Orton (played by Thomas Gibson) is an American businessman who has lived in China for several years. He has a chance encounter with a beautiful Chinese lady (played by Bai Ling) who says that he is the only one who can save the world from reverting five-hundred years. He is unswayed by this until many modern buildings begin disappearing before his eyes. This mystical lady (revealed later as Guanyin, the bodhisattva of compassion) transports him to a portal which offers entrance, through the teachings of Confucius (played by Ric Young), to the ancient Chinese underworld.

When Orton (soon to be named The Scholar From Above) reaches the other side of the portal, he finds that his studies of Confucius will come in handy for the path that lies ahead. Orton's first action is to rescue Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, from the mountain in which he has been imprisoned for centuries. Wukong travels with Orton in his quest to save the original manuscript of ''Journey to the West'' from retroactive destruction; if the story itself is erased from history, all of the people who were ever inspired by the lessons it teaches will be worse off, and history will permanently change for the poorer. They are later joined by Zhu Bajie (Pigsy) and Sha Wujing (Friar Sand) to help them on their way.