Geralt awakens at the School of the Wolf's mountain fortress Kaer Morhen, with no memory of who he is or how he is to have arrived there. He is taken in by his Witcher brothers as well as Triss Merigold, who seeks a remedy for his mysterious condition. Kaer Morhen is suddenly attacked by an unknown group of assailants, who escape with the School of the Wolf's key mutagens and formulae that detail how to create Witchers. Pursuing this faction, Geralt travels to the Temerian capital Vizima. On the way, he saves Alvin, a magically gifted peasant child. Triss determines that Alvin is a Source, a genetic magic prodigy similar to Ciri, Geralt's foster daughter. The player has the choice of leaving Alvin in the care of either Triss or Shani, a Redanian medic and Geralt's friend. Alvin is given a magical amulet meant to keep his abilities in check while he learns magic.

Geralt pursues several leads on the group that attacked Kaer Morhen and learns that they are known as Salamandra, and ostensibly led by the foreign mage Azar Javed. To further complicate matters, tensions are high in the city due to the conflict between the religious fanatics the Order of the Flaming Rose, and the elven terrorist faction the Scoia'tael. With the help of various allies in Vizima, Geralt assaults a Salamandra base in Vizima and kills the Professor, a dangerous mercenary in the employ of the criminal syndicate, but is then betrayed by Princess Adda and is teleported to a village on the outskirts of the city by Triss. The previously peaceful hamlet becomes a battleground when armed conflict breaks out between the Order of the Flaming Rose and the Scoia'tael. Geralt is forced to choose to support either faction, or make enemies of them both. Alvin is frightened and, using his Source abilities, magically disappears.

When Geralt returns to Vizima, he finds that Temeria's regent King Foltest has also returned while Adda has relapsed in her curse and is in striga form once more. Under Foltest's direction, Geralt either assists the knights or the elves to restore order to the city as well as deals with Adda. Geralt then storms the Salamandra headquarters and kills Azar Javed, only to find that the gang's true leader is Jacques de Aldersberg, the Grand Master of the Order of the Flaming Rose. Foltest hires Geralt under a contract to slay Jacques to end the Salamandra threat. Geralt confronts Jacques, who explains that due to his Source abilities he has seen the eventual extinction of humanity due to the world-ending White Frost, and was attempting to engineer a genetically enhanced superior race of humans to survive this apocalypse. Geralt is also confronted by the King of the Wild Hunt, who warns him of an impending conflict.

After Geralt defeats and slays Jacques, he notices that the Grand Master was wearing the same amulet as Alvin, revealing that de Aldersberg was actually the village boy he saved earlier, who traveled back in time by accident. After Geralt returns to Foltest with news of his success, the king is attacked by an assassin. Geralt defeats the attacker, only to find that the corpse was a Witcher, leading directly into ''The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings''.

Hossein Rezai plays a local stonemason-turned-actor. Outside the set of a film in which he is acting, he makes a marriage proposal to his leading lady, a student named Tahereh, who was orphaned by an earthquake. Because he is poor and illiterate, the girl's family finds his offer insulting; the girl avoids him as a result. She continues evading him even when they are filming, as she seems to have trouble grasping the difference between her role in the film and her real-life self. The fictional couple takes part in what would be the filming of ''Life, and Nothing More....''

The situation complicates further as Hossein still pursues the affections of the young actress while the film goes on. The director learns about this and tries to advise Hossein about what to do. He then illustrates their story and where the conflict began. The girl manages to finish the scene while Hossein woos her and then departs by walking as Hossein runs to follow her.

In the final scene, at a great distance, the girl finally gives an answer to Hossein and we are left with him running through a green field and back into the olive grove. The audience is left to wonder what response was given by the girl.

An archaic Bajoran spaceship emerges from the wormhole. Its passenger, Akorem Laan, is a revered Bajoran poet who disappeared 200 years ago. Akorem claims to have been chosen by the Prophets as their Emissary—a role thought to belong to Captain Sisko. Sisko, who never felt comfortable being the Bajorans' messiah figure, cedes the title without resistance.

Akorem believes the Prophets brought him back to restore Bajor's traditional caste system, which was abandoned during the 50-year Cardassian occupation of Bajor. Porta, a Bajoran priest who supports Akorem, tells Major Kira that she must resign her military commission and become an artist, which was her family's traditional profession under the caste system. Sisko warns Akorem that caste-based discrimination is banned by the Federation and thus would disqualify Bajor from Federation membership, but Akorem is adamant.

Sisko has a dream where Kai Opaka, a former spiritual leader of Bajor, tells him that he has lost sight of who he is. Doctor Bashir believes that Sisko has experienced an "orb shadow", a type of hallucination that Bajorans believe are reminders from the Prophets to people who ignore the Prophets' will.

Porta murders a fellow priest whose caste is considered spiritually unclean. Sisko realizes that Akorem's influence will be bad for Bajor's future and challenges him for the role of Emissary. They decide that the only way to settle the matter is to go to the wormhole and ask the Prophets themselves what they want. The Prophets tell them that Sisko is in fact their Emissary and "of Bajor", and that they brought Akorem to the present for Sisko's benefit. Akorem is sent back to his own era with no memory of what happened to him in the future.

Sisko is once again recognized as the Emissary by the Bajorans. This time, he accepts the role happily, now that he appreciates the positive influence he has on the Bajorans. Major Kira notices that Akorem's famously incomplete epic poem ''The Call of the Prophets'' now exists in its entirety, suggesting that Akorem was able to complete his masterwork after returning to the past.

In a side plot, Keiko O'Brien and her daughter Molly return from a research trip to Bajor; Miles is glad to have his family back on the station, but he misses the free time he had to spend with his friend Bashir.

The central character and narrator, Wilmet Forsyth, is the thirty-three-year-old wife of a civil servant with a comfortable though routine life. She does not need to work and enjoys a life of leisure. When not lunching or shopping she occupies her time, somewhat guiltily, with occasional "good works", particularly at the instigation of Sybil, her slightly eccentric do-gooder mother-in-law. She becomes drawn into the social life of her church, St. Luke's, and there makes a change for the good in the lives of two other characters. One is when the kleptomaniac Wilf Bason has to resign from the government ministry where her husband Rodney works and she arranges for Wilf to become housekeeper at the clergy house. The other is her support for Mary, a ‘mousy’ worshipper, who eventually goes to live for a trial period in a convent.

After a church service one day, Wilmet renews acquaintance with her close friend Rowena's attractive but ne'er-do-well brother, Piers Longridge. She develops a romantic interest in Piers, and begins to believe that he is her secret admirer. What Wilmet fails to realise is that Piers is gay until she becomes aware of his relationship with Keith, a lower-class young man with a Leicester accent. But Keith comes in useful later, helping her to choose furniture after she and Rodney have to find somewhere new to live following Sybil's remarriage, whose house they had shared since their own marriage. The move brings Rodney and Wilmet more together at the same time as troubles are resolved for some of the other characters too.

Archie Goodwin receives a phone call from an acquaintance, Austin “Dinky” Byne, asking for a favour. Byne routinely acts as a chaperone for an annual dinner hosted by his aunt, Louise Grantham Robilotti, which is given in honour of four young unwed mothers living at Grantham House, a charity supported by her late husband. Byne claims to have a cold and is unable to attend; although skeptical, Archie agrees to stand in for him, despite Mrs. Robilotti being a former client of Nero Wolfe’s who bears him a personal dislike. During the dinner, Archie learns from one of the unwed mothers that another, Faith Usher, has a bottle of cyanide in her purse; Faith has been suffering from depression, and her friend fears that she might attempt suicide. Archie promises to watch over her, but towards the end of the evening Faith collapses and dies from cyanide poisoning after drinking a glass of champagne.

Alone of the guests, Archie maintains that Faith Usher did not commit suicide, claiming that he observed her constantly throughout the evening and that she never had an opportunity to pour the cyanide from her bottle into her glass. Although the authorities and the other guests pressure Archie into changing his story, Nero Wolfe believes him and decides to settle the matter by solving the case himself. He is given further incentive to do so when Edwin Laidlaw, another of the chaperones, approaches him to hire his services; Laidlaw is the father of Faith Usher’s child after a brief affair they had the previous year and, ashamed of his conduct, is desperate that his secret is not revealed.

Although Wolfe’s investigation begins unpromisingly, he becomes convinced that his suspicions are correct when the police receive an anonymous tip revealing Laidlaw’s secret. Although the police are skeptical due to the anonymous nature, it suggests to Wolfe that someone else knew Laidlaw’s secret and has become agitated by the ongoing investigation. His investigations begin to focus on both Faith Usher’s estranged mother Elaine, herself an unwed mother, and Dinky Byne, whose false reasons for canceling on the party look increasingly suspect given the events. He assigns Saul Panzer and Archie to investigate the two respectively, leading to a break in the case when both Archie and Saul tail their respective targets to the same location: a nightclub where Elaine Usher and Dinky Byne are meeting with each other.

When confronted by Wolfe, both Byne and Elaine Usher attempt to lie their way out of the situation, but their stories do not corroborate. Byne admits that he knew that Laidlaw was the father of Faith Usher’s child, and claims that he had them both invited to the dinner without their knowledge as a spiteful prank. During their conversation, however, Orrie Cather infiltrates Byne’s apartment and discovered a letter revealing that Mrs. Robilotti’s deceased first husband, Albert Grantham, was the father of Faith Usher. This, coupled with some unwittingly suggestive comments from Byne, leads Wolfe to identify the murderer.

Summoning the guests to his office, he has them reenact the circumstances under which Faith Usher received the poisoned champagne multiple times. This demonstrates that Mrs. Robilotti's son Cecil, who gave Faith the poisoned champagne, had a routine way of handing over a glass that someone who knew his habits would be able to predict. He accuses Mrs. Robilotti of poisoning Faith Usher; Byne was blackmailing her with the knowledge that her former husband was Faith’s father and invited Faith to the dinner as a threat. Mrs. Robilotti murdered Faith to conceal the secret and out of resentment over her husband’s affair and, learning that she was in the habit of carrying cyanide, acquired some from another source to make it look like a suicide. Archie is vindicated, and Mrs. Robilotti is taken into custody.

Bryony Ashley has the gift of telepathy and is able to communicate subliminally with a man she regards as her lover, but whose identity she is unsure of. She supposes that he is a blood relative because the gift of telepathy runs in the family, and assumes him to be one of her three male second cousins, twins Emory and James, and the younger Francis.

Bryony returns to the UK having received a telepathic message and discovers that her father has been hit by a car, and has died after speaking some mysterious phrases, which seem to have some connection with a book in the house's library.

She remains puzzled about the identity of her telepathic contact. Her initial preference is for James, but she gradually realises that the twins are plotting to steal her inheritance, and are willing to murder for it. She learns also that her secret lover is a long-standing friend to whom she had not known she was related, the man-of-all-work around Ashley Court, Rob Granger, whom Bryony grew up with.

Bryony gradually solves her father's puzzles, some of which involve a maze depicted on the family's arms, the motto being "Touch not the cat". In the book's climax, when they learn that she has married Rob, the twins try to murder Bryony and flood the property so they can sell it for redevelopment. She is saved by Rob, with whom she plans to emigrate, and Francis belatedly shows up, the implication being that he will take over the care of Ashley Court.

Blue van Meer is a film-obsessed, erudite teenager. She is the daughter of itinerant and arrogant academic Gareth van Meer, who, after the death of his amateur lepidopteran-catching wife (and Blue's mother), never manages to stay at a high school for more than a semester. During Blue's senior year, however, they settle in the sleepy town of Stockton, North Carolina. She starts to attend the St. Gallway School and befriends a group of popular, rich, and mysterious teenagers called the Bluebloods. The Bluebloods are also close friends with the film-studies teacher at St. Gallway, Hannah Schneider, a perplexing woman, who intrigues Blue. After Schneider dies, seemingly by suicide, Blue is left to determine why.

Young teenagers Jake and Marco leave the mall one evening. On the way out, they meet Rachel and Cassie, who are together, and Tobias—all children from their school—and decide to walk home together. While taking a shortcut through an abandoned construction site, an alien spacecraft lands nearby. The badly injured alien pilot, an Andalite named Prince Elfangor, emerges from the ship and explains to the children that the Earth is being invaded in secret by a race of aliens called the Yeerks, a slug-like parasitic species who infest humans through their ear canals and take complete control of the human's body, turning them into what is called a Controller. The human controllers are still self-aware but the Yeerk in their head has complete control over their body and what they say. Elfangor tells them that the Andalite fleet has been defeated and more Andalites will not come to Earth for a year or more, and by then, Earth will already be completely taken over. To combat the Yeerks, he gives the humans morphing ability: the power to become any creature they touch by absorbing the creature's DNA. Elfangor warns them to never stay beyond two hours in a morph, or they will be trapped in that form forever. The Yeerks, led by Visser Three, arrive to kill Elfangor and eliminate all traces of him and his ship. The humans hide and watch, but are discovered and chased by the Yeerks. The group escapes shaken, but more or less unhurt.

The next morning, Tobias visits Jake and informs him that the previous night was not just a dream; he had already morphed into his pet cat. Jake is skeptical, but then acquires and morphs his dog Homer. The five kids meet at Cassie's farm, where a police officer arrives and informs them that a group of teenagers were sighted setting off fireworks in the abandoned construction site the previous night. He asks if they know anything about it, and the five of them realize that the police officer is a Controller. Later that day, Jake's older brother Tom expresses a similar interest in the teenagers at the construction site and presses Jake for information. Marco realizes—much to Jake's anger—that Tom is also a Controller. Tom invites Jake and Marco to a meeting of a local community club called The Sharing, which the teens quickly determine is a front for the Yeerks to acquire new hosts. They also discover that their assistant principal Mr. Chapman is the leader of The Sharing and a human-Controller.

The next day, Jake morphs into a green anole lizard to spy on Chapman, and discovers that there is an entrance to the Yeerk Pool—a large, underground control center where the Yeerks can feed and recuperate—in their school. The teenagers, newly christened as Animorphs ("animal morphers") by Marco, head to The Gardens, a large zoo and amusement park, to acquire some new, battle-capable morphs. That evening, they decide to infiltrate the Yeerk Pool in order to rescue Tom, but find that Cassie has been kidnapped by the policeman-Controller. With no time to plan a strategy, the four remaining Animorphs head into the Yeerk Pool. They manage to rescue Cassie, but find themselves outnumbered and outgunned by Visser Three and his Yeerks. Jake, Rachel, Marco, and Cassie barely escape along with a woman who is free. During the escape, the policeman-Controller is killed. Tobias is able to escape later, but has stayed in morph too long and gets stuck in morph as a red-tailed hawk. The Animorphs fail to rescue Tom, and Jake promises to keep fighting the Yeerks until the Andalites arrive.

Inconsistencies

Jake uses thought-speak while in human form early on in the book, thinking ''at'' Tobias who is in cat morph, but in subsequent books it is stated that this is impossible. This is because K. A. Applegate changed her mind about this, but forgot to correct the scene. Later editions and the audio book corrected the mistake. When talking to Elfangor, Visser Three's dialogue gives the impression that the two have never met, but ''The Andalite Chronicles'' reveals that in reality, Elfangor was indirectly responsible for Visser Three acquiring his current host (although this implied lack of knowledge could have simply been Visser Three's attempts to taunt Elfangor with how little he has accomplished in his struggle against Visser Three). *When Tobias comes over to Jake's house, he said that when he morphed, his cat freaked out and scratched him, and he still had the scratches, even though morphing heals any injury. They discover this later when acquiring injured animals at the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic.

An away team on an uninhabited planet find a small spaceship, crashed and damaged. Upon finding that its programming is fully sentient and in distress, the Doctor asks that the crew rescue it and return it to its people.

The artificial intelligence's memory is damaged, and it cannot tell them even what its function is; however it is soon found to be a weapon of mass destruction. At the Doctor's behest, Captain Janeway keeps the missile aboard, but orders B'Elanna Torres and Harry Kim to disarm the warhead before it remembers what it is.

However, during the procedure, the warhead's intelligence takes over the Doctor's holomatrix, and traps Kim and Torres in sickbay. Threatening to detonate, the warhead orders the Captain to take it to its target. While the rest of the crew look for ways to disable the intelligence, Kim tries to reason with it. The bomb refuses to listen, insisting that it must be allowed to reach its target; it threatens to detonate and destroy the ship if the crew does not comply.

''Voyager'' crew members attempt to reconstruct the warhead's damaged memory circuits. They determine that its creators, a race called the Druoda, halted all hostilities with their enemy and issued recall orders to its fleet of sentient warheads. Most complied, but a few warheads malfunctioned and could not receive the order. This warhead is one of those, and was forcibly crash landed by the Druoda (by remote) to prevent it from detonating. The warhead does not believe this, and thinks that the order to stand down was faked by the enemy.

However, Kim reasons that the recall orders are protected by a code that is nearly impossible to break. The warhead is eventually convinced that hostilities are over; however, over 30 of its fellow warheads are still out there, and have already found ''Voyager''. They ignore the Druoda order to stand down, and the warhead realizes what it must do next. The warhead is downloaded back into its 'body' (freeing the Doctor) and returned to its companions - whereupon it detonates, destroying itself and the other smart bombs.

In the year 2999, Earth is under siege by aliens from the planet ''Drakkon''. Using time travel technology, they have sent armies to four periods in human history, with the intention of altering history to make humankind easier to conquer in the present. The player assumes control of the "Time Lord", who has until January 1, 3000 AD to vanquish the enemy in the past, or else, he will self-destruct along with the time machine.

In these stories from Conan's late thirties, the Cimmerian becomes involved in the civil wars of a lost city, a contest over treasure in the black kingdoms, and the border wars between the kingdom of Aquilonia and the savage Picts in the wilderness to the west.

Chronologically, the three short stories collected as ''Conan the Warrior'' fall between ''Conan the Buccaneer'' and ''Conan the Usurper''.

The story is told from the point of view of Yassa Povey, a young boy living in the Cursed Earth, a radioactive desert in post-nuclear war America where the whole story takes place. Yassa discovers the body of a man with appalling injuries caused by acid burns, leaving him so badly disfigured that he effectively has no face left. At first believing the man to be dead, Yassa is startled when the man regains consciousness, and he runs home to get help. The townsfolk collect the injured man and take him back with them, fully expecting him to die during the night, but he survives. When he has finally recovered enough to talk, it transpires that the mental trauma caused by his injuries has caused him to lose his memory, and he has no idea of who he is. Therefore Yassa nicknames him "Dead Man", and for want of a better alternative the name sticks.

Once the Dead Man has finished recuperating, he resolves to set out on his own and retrace his steps in an effort to find out who he was. Yassa's father gives him a rifle and some clothes: a brown overcoat and a wide-brimmed hat, giving him the appearance of a character from a Western. The Dead Man sets out alone, but is followed by Yassa and his dog. When the Dead Man discovers Yassa, he forbids him to accompany him any further due to the exceptionally dangerous terrain they will be passing through, but Yassa disobeys and the Dead Man gives up trying to stop him.

The rest of the story tells of their hazardous journey through the Cursed Earth, during which they are attacked by various hostile inhabitants. Throughout the story the Dead Man is plagued by enigmatic nightmares and half-memories of the circumstances of his near-fatal injuries. During a kidnap attempt by mutants seeking food, it is established that the Dead Man is highly proficient with the rifle, and at tracking.

During their journey they not only encounter the usual Cursed Earth mutants, but also are occasionally visited by a strange, supernatural presence: a woman dressed in black. At first beautiful, she later transforms into a terrifying monster before disappearing.

Eventually the pair reach a river of acid, where the Dead Man finds traces of the clothing he was wearing when Yassa first found him. His memory slowly begins to return as he recalls running through the river, pursued by an unseen foe, and then losing his footing and falling into the acid. Soon after they reach a small town called Crowley, where they both sense the presence of some great evil and Yassa's dog refuses to go any further. Entering the town, they find the whole place has been burned down, and the streets littered with corpses. There are no survivors.

The Dead Man discovers more artefacts which belonged to him and which help to jog his memory: a wrecked motorbike, an irreparably damaged handgun, and pieces of an old uniform, including a badge. As the memory of his identity finally returns, the Dead Man shows Yassa the name on the badge: Dredd.

The Dead Man recalls that he resigned from the Justice Department and took the Long Walk into the Cursed Earth, leaving Mega-City One behind for ever. After one hundred days of bringing law to the lawless outside the city walls, he reached Crowley, where he was attacked by the Sisters of Death, who incinerated everyone, chased him into the acid river and left him for dead.

At the very moment of this revelation, the two Sisters of Death – Nausea and Phobia – manifest themselves in their hideous true forms, and burn Yassa's eyeballs out of his skull. They try to kill Dredd, but this time Dredd realises what he did not understand before: the Sisters are not physically present, but are only psionic projections, illusions which can only harm him if he believes they can. By refusing to believe they can hurt him, Dredd survives their assault, but Yassa is too terrified to heed his warning and is therefore blinded.

Once the Sisters have vanished, Dredd takes Yassa back home, where he is denounced by Yassa's mother for allowing her son to be exposed to such peril. Dredd is remorseful, realising too late that he should have done more to stop Yassa from following him in the first place. However he must travel to Mega-City One to investigate what is happening there, since if the evil Dark Judges have returned then the whole city is at risk.

Left behind, Yassa struggles to cope not only with his blindness, but also with the nightmares about that fateful encounter which wake him screaming every night. Unable to forget that terrible day, he becomes envious of the Dead Man's loss of memory, wishing that he could forget too.

In an attempt to return Abernathy to his former human self, court wizard Questor Thews inadvertently sends the canine court scribe, along with Ben Holiday's royal medallion, to Earth. Specifically, Abernathy ends up with the medallion in the menagerie of Michel Ard Rhi, a cruel former prince of Landover who was banished from Landover years ago. Ard Rhi is now a Washington state millionaire who keeps a collection of rare and magical items in his personal castle. As part of the botched spell, Abernathy is exchanged for one of Ard Rhi's magical artifacts, and a strange bottle appears in Landover in Abernathy's place. The bottle contains a Darkling, a creature similar to an evil genie that corrupts its master.

The bottle is stolen by the G'home Gnomes Filip and Sot, and Ben gives chase along with Questor, Willow, and Bunion. Ben and Willow later decide to use Questor's magic to travel to Earth to find Abernathy. With the help of Miles, Ben's old law partner, and Elizabeth, the daughter of one of Ard Rhi's employees, Abernathy is rescued. However, Ard Rhi uses his influence to have the party detained at a police station.

Meanwhile, Questor continues to pursue the Darkling. He finds that through a series of thefts, the bottle has ended up in the hands of the evil witch Nightshade. Knowing that only the High Lord can defeat Nightshade, Questor decides to try to convince the dragon Strabo to fly him through the fairy mists to Earth. Using an itch spell, Questor gets the dragon to agree. They arrive at the last moment to rescue Ben and his friends from the police station and fly them back to Landover, but not before Questor uses his magic to restore Ard Rhi's conscience and convince him to give away his vast estate.

Ben and Questor confront Nightshade, and Ben uses his medallion to summon his knight champion, the Paladin. Nightshade, however, uses the Darkling to conjure a perverse version of the Paladin, and the creations give battle. Questor, meanwhile, manages to shrink himself and act as a stopper in the Darkling's bottle, cutting off the source of its power. The Darkling is destroyed, Nightshade flees, and order is restored to Landover

''Prisoner of Time'' follows Strat's younger sister, Devonny, as she accidentally slips one hundred years into the future, to Annie Lockwood's time, and begins to fall in love with Annie's younger brother. This happens at both an inopportune, and an opportune time, as she was about to marry a young man whom she does not love.

Devonny is an independent minded young woman with her own ideas for business ventures. However, in a time when the role of women are to stay at home and please their husbands, Devonny soon finds herself engaged to Lord Hugh-David, a British noble she does not love nor respect. With the family's business and reputation hanging in the balance, Devonny agrees to marry the noble, despite how she knows he is an avoidant person and she will be dominated by her mother-in-law. In the meantime, Devonny tries to help her friend Flossie, who has fallen in love with an Italian construction worker and wants to elope.

In the present, Tod Lockwood, Annie's brother, tries to find his own place in the world. With failed business enterprises and difficulty living up to Annie, Tod finds confidence only when he is coaching a girls' soccer team. In the past, Devonny despairs at her circumstances, with the disappearance of her brother Strat and the death of her friend Harriet, hoping that at least Flossie will find happiness. She discovers at the wedding that her father was blackmailed into ensuring Devonny would marry nobility and that the blackmailer was Aurelia Stratton, Devonny's mother who has been incarcerated and driven to desperation to ensure her own escape.

Devonny calls out to Time for help, in hopes that Strat or Annie will come to save her. Instead, she arrives in the present and meets Tod. In the modern age, she is able to find strength within herself that the women of Todd's age possess that embolden her to take action regarding her own future once she returns. Meanwhile, Hugh-David learns to stand up for himself when he begins to search for Devonny and comes to love her after learning what kind of woman she truly is. When Devonny returns at last, she finds the circumstances now favour her to choose her own path for the future.

On a Bermuda beach, a sleeping Magnus Dens is approached by a beautiful but mysterious woman, Jennie Haniver, who seems to recognize him. In the meantime, Magnus is dreaming of his childhood, playing on the same beach, watching a turtle egg hatch with his friend Jennie. Jumping a few years later, both are playing with a grown turtle, Magnus carves "J+M" inside a heart on the turtle's shell while Jennie makes a cowrie shell necklace for Magnus. The scene then shifts to young Magnus on the beach spotting Jennie riding the turtle, heading out to open sea and disappearing beneath the water as he calls after her, then shifts again to his nightmare of the night his father, Lionel, was knocked into the water by an unseen horror in the cave beneath the house and part of his house on a cliff crumbling down to the beach as the storm rages on.

Finally awakening and groggily gathering his things to go to town, Magnus sees a woman swimming in the ocean. He meets his childhood friend, Eric, at the docks. When Eric asks him where he has been, he admits he has been drifting for a few years. Eric introduces Magnus to Dr. Paulis, whom Eric is working for to finish his master's degree in marine biology. Suddenly, the boat lists violently to one side and the net they pulled up has been shredded by something very large and strong.

That evening, the three men are joined by Eric's wife, Doshan, for dinner at Dr. Paulis' house. He explains that he and Eric are doing teratology. Dr. Paulis calls out to Delia to hurry up with dinner. Magnus is intrigued by the necklace she wears, which resembles his own.

After dinner, upon not getting answers to his question about his father's death from Dr. Paulis, Magnus steps outside. He again sees Jennie swimming by the boat. He jumps into the water to follow her, but he is saved from drowning and revived on the beach by the woman, whom he does not recognize. She returns to the ocean, telling him her name is Jennie Haniver. His description of the incident to Dr. Paulis is not taken seriously. Dr Paulis tells him the woman must have been joking with him, as "Jennie Haniver" is the name given to a sea creature of local folklore. But Delia later tells him the full legend; Jennie Haniver was a beautiful but vain woman who bargained with a mysterious god to save her from a violent storm at sea, and was granted eternal life at the cost of becoming a sea creature who can never again live on land.

The next morning, the police brings in Eric to examine enormous tracks on the beach. Magnus goes down to the beach and meets Jennie. Finally remembering her as his young playmate, he takes her to his father's wrecked house. He tells her some of his memories from childhood, while she describes the quadrilles her father would hold in their great hall. Then Eric calls him away to go out on a boat with Dr. Paulis. Again the boat lurches uncontrollably, forcing Eric to cut the cable to the trawling net.

In the evening, Magnus again confronts Dr. Paulis about his father's death. Paulis explains that Lionel was conducting tests regarding mutation in sea life when he was attacked and apparently eaten. Magnus asks him if he remembers the turtle from his childhood, and describes how he carved initials on the shell, for himself and Jennie. Paulis is dismayed.

Magnus awakens to Eric and Dr. Paulis arguing. Eric wants to use the Horror, a harpoon-firing bazooka. Paulis, aghast at the idea, withdraws his support for the expedition. Eric collects Magnus and heads out in the boat. After some trawling, they again find something dragging on the line. Taking a small harpoon gun, Eric dives to try to save the net. He shoots at a form he can see only vaguely. It turns out to be Jennie. Eric and Magnus resume trawling. Magnus tells Eric he had been with Jennie the night before on the beach, and how she was his friend from when he was young. Eric does not remember her, and dismisses her as an imaginary friend. The trawl lines finally catch the turtle, which is so large it begins to tear through the net. Eric blasts it with the Horror, and allows it to run out the line, waiting for it to resurface.

After sundown, the boat's power mysteriously gives out, the compass spins crazily. Magnus leaves the boat's cabin, finds Jennie on board the ship. She begs him to free the turtle, nebulously saying she made a promise long ago she will forever regret.

At Doshan's insistence, Dr. Paulis boards a helicopter to fly out to the boat. Upon arriving, he observes a huge shape underwater near the boat. The turtle surfaces, swimming quickly towards the helicopter, then leaping out of the water, sending the helicopter crashing into the ocean. Upon seeing the crash, Eric rushes out onto the deck, but is confronted by Jennie. To his horror, her eyes glow an eerie green, just as the turtle surfaces under the boat, capsizing it. Magnus climbs aboard the lifeboat amidst the wreckage and desperately tries to help Eric on board, but he is entangled in the line from the Horror. The turtle surfaces, its eyes glowing green exactly like Jennie's, before it dives down into the depths, dragging Eric helplessly behind.

Jennie approaches an unconscious Magnus lying face flat on the beach, sadly kisses him, then returns to the ocean for the last time.

Doshan approaches Magnus in the graveyard where his parents are buried and expresses her horror at the losses of her husband and Dr. Paulis. Magnus tells her he is leaving Bermuda and wants nothing to do with the sea ever again. He walks away without noticing the statue of Jennie and the inscription "Jennie Haniver, 1701- , Lost at Sea" on her gravestone.

On the ferry leaving Bermuda, Magnus removes the necklace Jennie had given him and sadly throws it into the sea. It sinks past the giant turtle, which is shown to have the same initials Magnus inscribed on its shell all those many years ago.

Charles Lattimer is an everyday man facing middle age and a marriage to Kristen coming to an end. He stumbles across a time slip that occurs on one of his regular train rides, as the train goes through a tunnel. Coming across an antique watch, he learns it allows him to get off the train during the time slip, whereupon he finds himself back in the 1890s. Before long he finds a new love, and a new purpose there. The watch gets broken and complications occur when the portal back to the past starts to close, leading him to a decision that could leave him stranded out of his own time.

Rusty, played by Shawn Hatosy, and Dallas, played by Caan, are best friends, in their mid-20s. Their main source of income is collecting small debts for a local crime boss, Bear (played by Heavy D). Rusty's mother, played by Kelly Lynch, is constantly bailing them out of jail, stitching their cuts, and trying desperately to get them to change their ways, but can't seem to break them out of this destructive pattern. Desperate to help her son, she persuades Rusty to begin sessions with the therapist she is dating, Bob (Jeff Goldblum).

Around the same time that Rusty is making up his mind to go back to Texas to compete in rodeos, Dallas is presented the opportunity to be the driver for "Rubin the Roofer", where there is supposedly $50,000 to be had, of which he will get $20,000. But he has to put $1,000 up front for Rubin, to ensure he doesn't get scared and flee. In the search to collect the $1,000, Dallas attempts to borrow $300 from Christian (played by Val Lauren), one of the men they collect money from for Bear. Christian refuses to loan Dallas the money, so Dallas offers to rob Bear with Christian, telling Christian he knows for a fact that there is $150,000 to be had, as long as he gives him the $300.

Christian ends up overhearing Dallas tell Rusty that he won't go through with the plan with Christian, but will still do the job with Rubin. Christian follows Dallas and Rubin on their robbery job, and it turns out that they are robbing Bear. After Rubin goes inside, Dallas decides to go after him to get the proper share of the $150,000. They end up getting killed trying to rob Bear.

In the end, Rusty goes to Texas, and rodeos like he wanted to. On the bus ride to Texas, Rusty sees a sign that reads "Dallas 362", the title of the film.

Eight years after the Change, Clan Mackenzie, led by Juniper Mackenzie, and the Bearkillers, headed by Mike Havel, have established themselves in the Willamette Valley. They have become bitter enemies of the much larger, expansion-minded Portland Protective Association (PPA), led by the Armingers. The barons of the PPA constantly violate a ceasefire with the other factions. During one of their raids, Eddie Liu, Baron and Marchwarden of the PPA, is confronted by a small group of Mackenzies, led by Eilir Mackenzie and Astrid Larsson. After a short skirmish, Liu leaves, again swearing revenge against the Clan.

In the meantime, in Great Britain, Sir Nigel Loring is imprisoned by the mad King Charles III, but is rescued by his son Alleyne Loring and John Hordle, formerly of the Special Air Service. They leave England aboard a Tasmanian sailing ship, which is conducting a worldwide survey. On their arrival in Portland, Arminger pressures Sir Nigel, who is the closest thing to an expert on nerve gas, to help him recover some of it to use against his enemies. The British trio outwit Arminger and escape to the south.

Mike Havel and his wife Signe Larsson Havel try to lure Crusher Bailey, a bandit who has been raiding and taking slaves, into a trap by masquerading as travelers with a herd of horses and a wagon of valuables. When Bailey takes the bait, Mike and Signe's reinforcements are delayed and they have to retreat to the ruins of an abandoned pornographic video store. Just before they are overrun, they are saved by the timely intervention of the Lorings and Hordle. Sir Nigel and his son meet the Mackenzies and their old friend Sam Aylward, who was formerly a sergeant under Sir Nigel. The Mackenzies tell of their raid, where they ambushed a horse-drawn train and unexpectedly captured Norman Arminger's only child and heir, Mathilda.

Soon after, Eddie Liu and his massive bodyguard Mack arrive on a diplomatic mission to negotiate Mathilda's release. Astrid Larsson and Eilir Mackenzie and their small band of Rangers discover signs of a PPA group hiding nearby. Liu fires nerve gas at the guards, killing all of them, and frees Mathilda. Despite the danger, Liu searches Rudi Mackenzie's tent for a book that Mathilda gave Rudi, which contains the key needed to decode PPA plans that have fallen into Clan hands. A fight breaks out. Mack seriously wounds Rudi before he is killed by Hordle, and Liu is killed by Eilir Mackenzie. The Bearkillers arrive soon after and mop up the remaining PPA knights. Rudi is saved by Signe, who overcomes her distaste for him and saves his life with an immediate blood transfusion. The book ends with Rudi's initiation into Wicca.

Copper, a bloodhound crossbred, was once the favorite among his Master's pack of hunting dogs in a rural country area. However, he now feels threatened by Chief, a younger, faster Black and Tan Coonhound. Copper hates Chief, who is taking Copper's place as pack leader. During a bear hunt, Chief protects the Master when the bear turns on him, while Copper is too afraid of the bear to confront him. The Master ignores Copper to heap praise on Chief and Copper's hatred and jealousy grow.

Tod is a red fox kit, raised as a pet by one of the human hunters who killed his mother and litter mates. Tod initially enjoys his life, but when he reaches sexual maturity he returns to the wild. During his first year, he begins establishing his territory, and learns evasion techniques from being hunted by local farm dogs. One day, he comes across the Master's house and discovers that his presence sends the chained pack of dogs into a frustrated frenzy. He begins to delight in taunting them, until one day when Chief breaks his chain and chases him. The Master sees the dog escape and follows with Copper. As Chief skillfully trails the fox, Tod flees along a railroad track while a train is approaching, waiting to jump to safety until the last minute. Chief is killed by the train.

With Chief buried and Master crying over a dead dog he trains Copper to ignore all foxes except for Tod. Over the span of the two animals' lives, man and dog hunt the fox, the Master using over a dozen hunting techniques in his quest for revenge. With each hunt, both dog and fox learn new tricks and methods to outsmart each other, Tod always escaping in the end. Tod mates with an older, experienced vixen who gives birth to a litter of kits. Before they are grown, the Master finds the den and gasses the kits to death. That winter, the Master sets out leg hold traps, which Tod carefully learns how to spring, but the vixen is caught and killed. In January, Tod takes a new mate, with whom he has another litter of kits. The Master uses a "still hunting" technique, in which he sits very quietly in the wood while playing a rabbit call to draw out the foxes. With this method, he kills the kits; then by using the sound of a wounded fox kit, he is also able to draw out and kill Tod's mate.

As the years pass, the rural area gives way to a more urbanized setting. New buildings and highways spring up, more housing developments are built, and the farmers are pushed out. Though much of the wildlife has left and hunting grows increasingly difficult, Tod stays because it is his home range. The other foxes that remain become unhealthy scavengers, and their natures change—life-bonds with their mates are replaced by promiscuity, couples going their separate ways once the mating act is over. The Master has lost most of his own land, and the only dog he owns now is Copper. Each winter they still hunt Tod, and in an odd way he looks forward to it as the only aspect of his old life that remains.

The Master spends most of his time drinking alcohol, and people begin trying to convince him to move into a nursing home, where no dogs are allowed. One summer, an outbreak of rabies spreads through the fox population. After one infected fox attacks a group of human children, the same people approach the Master and ask his help in killing the foxes. He uses traps and poison to try to kill as many foxes as possible; however, the poison also kills domestic animals. After a human child dies from eating it, the humans remove all of the poison, then the Master organizes a hunt in which large numbers of people line up and walk straight into the woods, flushing out foxes to be shot. The aging Tod escapes all three events, as well as an attempt at coursing him with greyhounds.

One morning, after Tod's escape from the greyhounds, the Master sends Copper on the hunt. After he picks up the fox's trail, Copper relentlessly pursues him throughout the day and into the next morning. Tod finally drops dead of exhaustion, and Copper collapses on top of him, close to death himself. The Master nurses Copper back to health, and both enjoy their new popularity, but after a few months the excitement over Copper's accomplishment dies down. The Master is left alone again, and returns to drinking. He is once again asked to consider living in a nursing home, and this time he agrees. Crying, he takes his shotgun from the wall, leads Copper outside, and pets him gently before ordering him to lie down. He covers the dog's eyes as Copper licks his hand trustingly.

The story centers on Mona Lisa Figg Newton, a teenage girl living in the fictional town of Pineapple with her eccentric family, including: her tap dancing mother, Sister Figg Newton; her uncles, Truman the Human Pretzel, Romulus the Walking Book of Knowledge, Remus the Talking Adding Machine, and Kadota with his Nine Performing Kanines; and her cousin Fido the Second. The only family member Mona gets along with is her uncle Florence, a book dealer. A main concern of the characters is Capri, the Figg family heaven, which involves a ritual passed down through the Figg family for generations. Uncle Florence's greatest wish is to find his Capri. Mona's greatest fear is that her uncle will succeed and leave her alone.

One of the novel's unusual characteristics is its interactive status. The opening pages classify it as a "mysterious romance or a romantic mystery," but the book never mentions the mystery again. Rather, to unravel the truth about some of the novel's most mysterious happenings, readers must follow the trail of literature, history and music that Florence leaves behind him, by investigating the writings of Joseph Conrad, William Blake and Gilbert and Sullivan. While the book can be read on its own as a surrealistic journey, solving the mystery leads to greater insight in to the truth about Florence.

In the eleven years of "The Second Bug War", the Mobile Infantry has improved their weapons and tactics, while the Bugs have countered by developing many new Arachnid variants. The United Citizen Federation now finds itself engaged in prolonged trench warfare. The Federation puts out a positive spin through the media, while using its judicial and military authority to suppress peace protesters and religious fanatics.

Colonel Johnny Rico is stationed on the agricultural planet Roku San, where the popular Sky Marshal Omar Anoke pays a visit. Rico's old friend, General Dix Hauser, gets into a bar fight with farmers protesting against the war. When Rico stops Dix from shooting a farmer, Dix orders his arrest, but the base defenses suddenly fail due to a Bug attack. Rico knocks down Dix and leaves to fight the Arachnids. When Roku San falls, Rico is blamed by the Federal Media and condemned to execution for insubordination.

Captain Lola Beck is piloting Anoke to Sanctuary, the Fleet's secret HQ, when they are marooned on classified planet OM-1. Admiral Enolo Phid suppresses this information, but Dix learns of the situation and has Rico's execution faked, wanting him to lead a rescue mission.

On OM-1, an apparent earthquake causes Dr. Wiggs to fall into a crevasse, where Anoke sees a giant eye staring from below. Cynical cook Jingo Ryan is next to die after he takes shelter within a cluster of rock outcroppings, which are actually Arachnid limbs which pull him below. Engineer Bull Brittles asks the deeply religious Holly Little to marry him, but dies shortly after.

On Earth, General Hauser confronts Admiral Phid about why she is abandoning the Sky Marshal, only to be arrested. Phid reveals to him that Anoke is responsible for the downfall of Roku San, having used psychic powers to communicate with the "Brain of Brains", also known as "Behemecoatyl", through a previously captured Brain Bug. The Sky Marshal, deluded into thinking that he could save humanity if he could make peace with them, adopted the Bugs’ religion. He turned off the electric barrier surrounding the base on Roku San to demonstrate his willingness for peace. The Federation now believes the original Brain Bug ''allowed'' itself to be captured in order to pass on intelligence from inside the Federation. When the Federation decides to kill and dissect their Brain Bug, it somehow discerns their plot. It retaliates by unleashing a telepathic attack, and slaughters many soldiers before Hauser kills it.

It is revealed that Admiral Phid ignored the distress calls from OM-1 so she could become the new Sky Marshal; however, she failed to take into account that highly skilled Beck would be with Anoke.

On OM-1, the stranded make contact with Behemecoatyl, who communicates with them through the corpses of their fallen comrades and soon kills Anoke to absorb his knowledge; Beck and Holly, the last survivors, begin praying to be saved.

Rico leads the Marauders, an elite team of troopers, on a rescue mission, using the Federation's new battle-suits. They defeat the Arachnid warriors on OM-1, suffer no casualties, and rescue Beck and Holly. OM-1 is revealed to be the home of the Bug Hive, the Arachnids' ruling body, and Fleet destroys it from orbit with a "Q Bomb".

Rico is cleared of all pending charges, promoted to the rank of General and given command of the Marauder program. Anoke is reported to have died in a terrorist attack, staged by the government to explain his disappearance. Dix and Beck are married, Admiral Phid is appointed the new Sky Marshal with Dix as her second-in command, and Holly becomes the first Federal chaplain. Dozens of peace protesters are hanged in connection to the purported terrorist attack. Phid, impressed with the way that Sky Marshal Anoke was rendered servile by the Arachnids' religion, decides the Federation should adopt a religion, and Christianity is embraced by the Federation but altered to suit the Federation's needs to ensure steady recruitment, absolute loyalty and obedience who would follow without question.

The Stooges are detectives in the Old West. They have been sent out to recover an IOU from Double Deal Decker (Fred Kohler), a ruthless killer who plans to take possession of a ranch that is rightfully owned by Nell (Dorothy Kent). After an unsuccessful attempt at a saloon, the Stooges head to Decker's hideout, where they find an IOU, and Curly manages to defeat the killers.

Parents Mortimer "Mo" Folchart (Brendan Fraser) and his wife Teresa "Resa" Folchart (Sienna Guillory) read the fairy tale "Little Red Riding Hood" to their baby daughter Meggie, as a red velvet hood appears out of thin air. Twelve years later, Meggie (Eliza Bennett) visits an old book shop in Europe with her father, unaware that he is secretly looking for a copy of the book ''Inkheart''. Shortly after Mo finds the book, Meggie encounters a horned marten outside the shop and it tries to bite her fingers. A man (Paul Bettany) suddenly appears from the shadows, claiming to be an old friend. Mo comes out of the shop, recognizing the man as Dustfinger, who quickly asks him to "read him back into the book". Mo flees with Meggie.

Mo takes Meggie to visit her great-aunt Elinor (Helen Mirren) in Italy. There he tells Meggie that nine years ago, while reading to her from ''Inkheart'', he inadvertently brought Dustfinger out of the world of the book and into the world Mo and Meggie live in, through a gift he possessed from birth. Unfortunately, the book's villain, Capricorn (Andy Serkis), and one of his henchmen, Basta (Jamie Foreman), were also brought out of the book. Fleeing with his infant daughter, Mo realizes his wife Resa has been taken into the book. Capricorn arrives with Basta, who captures the group, destroys Elinor's library and takes ''Inkheart''. Mo, Meggie, and Elinor are taken to Capricorn's new castle in the "real" world.

During their imprisonment, Mo explains his gift to Meggie and Elinor, stating that when he reads a person or an object out of a book, someone from the real world is sent into it, hence his wife's disappearance. Capricorn forces Mo to use his gift, acquiring treasure from one of the stories in ''The Arabian Nights'', and imprisoning Farid (Rafi Gavron), one of the 40 Thieves. Dustfinger, who was promised a return into the book, is betrayed by Capricorn. The group escapes using the tornado from ''The Wonderful Wizard of Oz''.

Elinor leaves to recover what is left of her library as the others head for Alassio, the town of ''Inkheart'' s author Fenoglio, who may have another copy. Dustfinger is initially afraid of learning his fate in the book, but eventually joins them. When they meet Fenoglio (Jim Broadbent), the author's ecstatic reaction to seeing his creation alive leads Dustfinger to learn he dies at the end of the book while trying to save his marten, Gwin. Angry, he berates Fenoglio before eventually telling Mo that Resa is trapped in the castle and has lost her voice.

Mo and Dustfinger take Fenoglio's car and Farid stows away in the trunk. At Fenoglio's house, Meggie begins reading out loud, bringing Toto from ''The Wizard of Oz''. Basta bursts in with his men and takes the group to Capricorn. Elinor, having decided to stay, realizes something is amiss and pursues them. At the castle, Capricorn orders Meggie to bring a monster called the Shadow out of ''Inkheart'' and threatens to harm her mother if she does not comply. Mo sneaks into the castle. Dustfinger is captured, but escapes after Meggie informs him of Capricorn's intentions.

Mo attempts to free Meggie and the others, as Capricorn forces her to read the Shadow out of the book. Dustfinger returns to the castle with Farid and sets it on fire. The distraction allows Fenoglio to give Meggie a rewrite of part of ''Inkheart'' that he wrote to help Meggie stop Capricorn's plan. As Elinor arrives with the creatures Capricorn imprisoned, Meggie writes out the story on her arm. As she reads out her creation, Capricorn turns into ashes as the Shadow devours him, his henchmen vanish, the Shadow explodes, and all the read-out creatures back are returned where they belong, including Toto. In addition, she grants Fenoglio's wish to live in the world he created, while reuniting her and Mo with her mother and restoring her voice. Dustfinger is also safely read back into ''Inkheart'', where he is reunited with his wife Roxanne. In the real world, Farid reveals he kept Gwin with him, thus allowing Dustfinger to avoid his own death. As Mo and his family leave with Farid, Meggie agrees to teach him how to read and Farid agrees to teach her how to use the dragon breath, the fire breathing ability of Dustfinger's which Farid learned.

When Sisko sees a painting depicting B'hala, Bajor's legendary lost city, he is inspired to search for the sacred site. The painting depicts an obelisk that, according to legend, marked the city's coordinates. Sisko recreates the obelisk in a holosuite to try to determine what the hidden markings might be. A short circuit in the holosuite system briefly knocks him unconscious. Dr. Bashir tells Sisko his brain has been overloaded, and his senses will be enhanced for a few days; he warns him to return to the infirmary if he experiences any side effects. At dinner, Sisko absentmindedly cuts his fruit into shapes which he realizes are the missing markings from the obelisk.

Meanwhile, Sisko receives news that Bajor has been accepted into the Federation, and the signing ceremony will be held on Deep Space Nine.

Back in the holosuite, Sisko has a vision of B'hala, during which he briefly understands all of Bajor's history and can see its future. Soon, Kasidy Yates is released from prison, and Sisko tells her he has located B'hala and invites her to accompany him to Bajor to find it. On Bajor, Sisko is stricken with a painful headache, but he soon brings Kasidy to the ruins of B'hala.

The Bajorans regard Sisko's discovery as a miracle and, for the skeptics, confirmation that he truly is the Emissary. When Sisko gets home, he seems to have psychic powers; he has a vision of a swarm of locusts passing by Bajor and attacking Cardassia. Bashir determines that Sisko's headaches are life-threatening and asks to operate immediately. Sisko refuses, unwilling to put a stop to his visions. With Kai Winn's help, he consults the mystical Orb of Prophecy.

The ceremony for Bajor's admittance to the Federation begins without Sisko. Sisko bursts in, weak and in pain, and warns that if Bajor joins the Federation now, it will be destroyed by locusts. The Bajorans vote to delay joining the Federation.

Sisko is rushed to the infirmary, where Bashir reports that he must operate immediately to save his life. Since Sisko himself refused the operation, his son Jake, as the next-of-kin, must decide his father's fate. Unwilling to let his father die, Jake permits the operation. Sisko awakens to anguish at the loss of his visions. Kasidy reminds him that while he has lost something very important to him, what he saved—his life with his son—is even more precious.

Deep Space Nine's bartender Quark has come into possession of an infant Changeling and sells it to Odo. Odo begins trying to teach his "child" to shapeshift; he is displeased when Dr. Mora, the Bajoran scientist who "raised" Odo, arrives to help.

Dr. Mora and Odo immediately clash over how to best raise the Changeling. Odo, still angry at the invasive methods Dr. Mora employed with him, hopes to reach the infant through encouragement. Mora insists on probing and measuring the creature, to Odo's disgust. Unfortunately, Odo makes little progress using his own methods. Under pressure from Starfleet, Odo has no choice but to resort to Mora's methods.

Using Dr. Mora's equipment, Odo employs electric shocks to prod the changeling into holding several basic forms. Both are amazed when the creature imitates the shape of Odo's face. The moment brings Odo and Mora together—especially when Mora admits to Odo that his caring seems to have helped him form a connection with the baby. Mora's support helps Odo to finally forgive Mora for treating him more as a specimen than as a person. He invites Dr. Mora to celebrate their success with a glass of champagne. But the happy mood is shattered when Odo receives word that the little creature is dying.

Dr. Bashir is unable to save the "child". Odo holds the dying creature in his hands, and, as it dies, the infant Changeling merges into Odo and restores his shapeshifting abilities.

Meanwhile, Major Kira goes into labor, and gives birth as a surrogate mother to Keiko and Miles O'Brien's baby, after having to hear the bickering of Shakaar and Miles beforehand (to the point where they are nearly kicked out of seeing her give birth). At the end of the episode, Kira tells Odo about her feelings of loss, after turning over the baby to his parents. Odo tells her he knows how she feels, and the two go for a walk together.

Sisko encounters Michael Eddington, his former Starfleet Security Chief, who betrayed him and joined the Maquis. Obsessed with capturing the traitor, Sisko pursues him in his ship, the USS ''Defiant''. But when Sisko gives the order to fire, the ''Defiant'' experiences a massive computer failure—caused by Eddington. He leaves Sisko angry and humiliated, and facing a long trip home.

The ''Defiant'' is towed back to Deep Space Nine by the starship ''Malinche'', and Chief O'Brien begins the massive job of bringing the ship back on-line. Adding insult to injury, Sisko learns that Captain Sanders of the ''Malinche'' has been given the assignment to apprehend Eddington, since Starfleet has lost faith in Sisko's ability to do the job. But when he learns that Eddington is attacking Cardassian colonies with a weapon that renders planets uninhabitable to Cardassians, the ''Malinche'' is too far away to intercept him. Sisko sees his chance, and although the ''Defiant'' is not yet fully repaired, he and his crew take the ship back into space.

The ship lurches out of the station and soon encounters Eddington again. Eddington taunts Sisko by sending him a copy of the novel ''Les Misérables'' and comparing Sisko to the obsessive policeman Javert. The captain realizes too late that he was baited to false coordinates. As the crew sets off to find Eddington's real location, a distress call is received from the ''Malinche''—Maquis forces have ambushed and disabled the starship.

Sisko determines Eddington's next planetary target, but is too late to stop him from releasing his weapon into the atmosphere. The ''Defiant'' chases after Eddington's fleeing ship, but Eddington cripples a transport vessel evacuating Cardassian civilians, forcing Sisko to break off his pursuit and rescue the helpless Cardassians.

Sisko realizes that Eddington sees himself as a noble hero and Sisko as the obsessed villain. In order to stop Eddington, Sisko decides he must do something truly villainous. He prepares to poison the atmosphere of a Maquis colony in retaliation, and reveals his sinister plan to all. Eddington is prepared to call his bluff. Sisko orders the deadly torpedoes launched, and the Maquis scramble to evacuate. Sisko says that he is prepared to eliminate every Maquis colony in the Demilitarized Zone, and Eddington, realizing Sisko is serious, makes the "heroic" gesture of offering himself in exchange. Eddington is captured, and Sisko's vendetta is finally over.

Ghemor arrives at Deep Space Nine, having left Cardassia after his activities as a dissident became known. Kira hopes he will be the face of the resistance against the Dominion-controlled puppet government of Cardassia, but he tells her that he is dying. He wishes to participate in a Cardassian tradition in which a dying person reveals their secrets to the rest of the family for use against their enemies. He chooses Kira to interview him, since he regards her as family. Captain Sisko (Avery Brooks) encourages her to participate, as Ghemor's information could greatly aid the Federation and Bajor. Kira is hesitant at first, remembering the injuries that her father suffered at the Cardassians' hands during the occupation of Bajor. However, she agrees to hear Ghemor's secrets and use them for good.

Gul Dukat (Marc Alaimo), the head of Cardassia's Dominion government, requests Ghemor's extradition to Cardassia, but Sisko brusquely rejects him. Refusing to take no for an answer, Dukat and the his Dominion liaison Weyoun visit the station, intent on taking Ghemor with them. Dukat first offers to reunite Ghemor with his long-lost daughter, and then gives Kira information that incriminates Ghemor in a massacre at a Bajoran monastery. Finally he delivers a bottle of poisoned liquor to Ghemor's quarters, but Sisko intercepts it.

Kira becomes furious at Ghemor and spends as little time caring for him as possible. However, she later learns from security chief Odo that Ghemor was only nineteen at the time of the massacre, an inexperienced foot soldier. Kira recalls that when her own father was badly injured, she chose to participate in a counterattack rather than stay with him, and missed his death by minutes. Realizing that she is letting her own past bitterness taint her relationship with Ghemor, she returns to his bedside and stays until he dies. Dukat intends to tell the public that Ghemor praised the Dominion with his last words and wants to have the body returned to Cardassia for a military funeral. Sisko rejects the request and allows Kira to bury Ghemor on Bajor.

Captain Benjamin Sisko receives a recording of an intercepted message: the few surviving Maquis terrorists who have not been wiped out by Cardassia's Dominion allies have launched a massive retaliatory missile strike against Cardassia. The missiles are believed to be equipped with cloaking devices, and unless they are stopped, Sisko fears the Dominion response will envelop the entire quadrant in all-out war. Sisko goes to the message's intended recipient: Michael Eddington, now in prison. Eddington refuses to tell Sisko how to stop the missiles; so Sisko takes Eddington with him to compel him to help.

Upon entering the Badlands, a dangerous region of space where the Maquis hid out, Eddington is still uncooperative. Sisko traps him into taking over the runabout's controls to evade two pursuing Dominion warships. Eddington finally agrees to help Sisko find the launch site to deactivate the missiles, but vows to kill him afterwards.

Meanwhile, in a side plot back on Deep Space Nine, cadet Nog earns the respect of the Klingon soldiers on the station by learning to stand up to them.

Sisko and Eddington arrive at Athos IV, a tiny, fog-bound planet where the launch site is hidden. Upon landing on the planet, they discover the facility is crawling with Jem'Hadar, the Dominion's soldiers, with many of the Maquis dead. Eddington is shocked and stunned: the Maquis had been on the verge of declaring their colonies an independent nation from both Starfleet and the Cardassians. Sisko admits that Starfleet let the Maquis down.

Sisko and Eddington fight their way to the command center, where Sisko is surprised to find a dozen Maquis prisoners, including Eddington's wife, Rebecca Sullivan. Eddington reveals that there are no missiles at all — Rebecca sent the message as a code to let Eddington know they had fallen back to Athos IV. Eddington knew he would need Sisko's help to evacuate them, and manipulated him in order to reach the location. Sisko is furious at being lied to, but relieved that all-out war is no longer imminent. He and Eddington fight off the Jem'Hadar while directing the prisoners toward the runabout, but Eddington is shot. Insisting Sisko and the others continue without him, Eddington stays behind to fend off the soldiers and is killed.

Three months after the events of "Call to Arms", the Federation-Klingon alliance is badly losing the Dominion War. After hearing news that the Seventh Fleet was almost obliterated, Captain Sisko and his crew are assigned to pilot a captured Dominion ship into Dominion/Cardassian territory and destroy a valuable stockpile of Ketracel White, the drug that controls the Dominion's Jem'Hadar foot soldiers.

The navigational eyepieces used on the stolen Dominion vessel induce headaches in Captain Sisko. Cardassian ex-spy Elim Garak, an informant for Sisko's crew, observes that the eyepieces seem to have no ill-effects on Cardassians, so he volunteers to wear the device. Later, Sisko's ship is fired upon by the USS ''Centaur'', unaware that Sisko's ship is staffed by fellow Federation officers, and Sisko is forced to return fire. Both ships escape but the danger is not over yet: the Starfleet officers are now deep behind enemy lines.

They succeed in destroying the Ketracel White depot, but the ship's engines are damaged in the explosion; without the use of warp drive, they are many years' journey from home.

Meanwhile, on Dominion-occupied DS9, friction arises between Dukat and Weyoun. Dukat is optimistic about how well the war is going for the Dominion-Cardassian alliance; but he has not yet been able to disable the minefield blocking passage to the wormhole, and Weyoun reminds him they are vulnerable without reinforcement and resupply from the Gamma Quadrant.

Bajoran Major Kira Nerys is uncomfortably reminded of the Cardassian occupation of Bajor, but Quark points out that the Dominion's occupation of DS9 is far less brutal, and the Dominion is holding the Cardassians in check. Sisko's son Jake is on DS9 as a reporter for the Federation News Service, but Weyoun claims his articles are biased against the Dominion, and refuses to broadcast them until he sees "open-mindedness".

Dukat refuses to employ Bajoran security deputies, to the frustration of security chief Odo, a rogue Changeling not affiliated with the Dominion. Major Kira convinces Odo to use his status as a Changeling to get what he wants. Genetically programmed to see him as a god, Weyoun instantly accepts Odo's request to reinstate his deputies. Odo is also offered a seat on the station's ruling council, giving him a voice in station policy. He accepts.

Captain Benjamin Sisko and his crew have been rescued from the planet upon which they were marooned in the previous episode, by the Klingon general Martok's ship, the ''Rotarran'', on which Worf is first officer. After dropping off Sisko's crew, the ''Rotarran'' picks up some new recruits, including Worf's estranged son Alexander, who has joined the Klingon Defense Force without his father's knowledge.

Worf and Alexander argue about Alexander's motivation for joining the military. Worf tells Alexander that he had accepted that his son does not have the heart of a warrior, and he is now confused by Alexander's determination to fight. Later, another member of the crew taunts Alexander about having been raised by humans, and a fight breaks out. Worf breaks up the combat, afraid that Alexander will be injured or killed; Alexander resents Worf's interference, and Martok reprimands him for it. Later, Alexander humiliates himself further when he mistakes a simulation program for an attack on the ship.

Worf attempts to train his son in combat, but the training session quickly breaks down into an argument. Alexander asks if his father plans to send him away yet again, and says that Worf will be glad when he is dead. In an attempt to quash the tension between Worf and Alexander, Martok reassigns Alexander to a transport ship, which provokes another confrontation. This is interrupted by an attack on the ''Rotarran'' by Dominion ships.

Alexander distinguishes himself in the ensuing battle by stopping a plasma leak, though he somehow gets himself locked in a room and needs to be rescued. Worf gains a new respect for his son, as well as an understanding that Alexander must choose his own path, and says that he will try to be a better father. The episode ends with Alexander joining the House of Martok, as Worf had done.

Meanwhile, on Deep Space Nine, Dukat brings his daughter Ziyal on board, hoping to use Kira's affection for Ziyal to bring her closer to him. When Ziyal's art is accepted into a prestigious exhibition, Dukat invites Kira to a party to celebrate, sending her a beautiful dress as a gift. Kira is briefly tempted by Dukat's offer, but finds that she cannot face herself in the dress and angrily returns it to him. Ziyal asks Kira not to make her choose between her and Dukat, but Kira tells her there is no choice; Dukat is her father.

Returning from another mission against the Dominion on the ''Defiant'', Captain Sisko is informed that Starfleet Intelligence has discovered a massive sensor array that the Dominion is using to track Starfleet ship movement. Sisko determines that the only way to destroy the array is to approach it from through a star cluster. However, Sisko is promoted to adjutant to Admiral Ross, and will not be commanding the mission. Commander Dax is placed in command of the ''Defiant''. While Sisko misses his crew and frets over their safe return, Dax leads the mission and succeeds in destroying the array.

Meanwhile, Major Kira and the others on occupied Deep Space Nine are successful in spreading distrust between the Cardassians and Dominion, by allowing the Dominion's Jem'Hadar soldiers to find out about Cardassian officer Damar's proposal to poison the Jem'Hadar if supplies run out of the drug needed to control them. Meanwhile, the Cardassian leader Dukat has still not been able to destroy the Starfleet minefield preventing Dominion reinforcements from arriving from the Gamma Quadrant.

One of the Changelings, the shapeshifting rulers of the Dominion, visits DS9, hoping to spend time with Odo, a rogue Changeling who has lived among and allied with the Bajorans. She persuades Odo to "link" with her, physically joining their liquid bodies, so he can understand more about his people.

Damar, while drinking at Quark's bar, reveals that he has found a way to destroy the minefield by firing a beam from the station's deflector array. Quark relays this information to Kira, and she and Rom plan to sabotage the deflector. Odo offers to disable the security system so that Rom's interference goes undetected. However, when the moment comes, Odo is in the middle of linking with the other Changeling, and so when Rom begins his work, he sets off the security alarm and is captured by Damar. Kira confronts Odo, but he merely says that while linked nothing else matters.

Captain Benjamin Sisko decides to retake Deep Space Nine in order to bolster sagging Federation morale. He plans a large force in order to do so but it will take some time to assemble. The Klingon general Martok and his first officer Worf are sent to convince the Klingon High Council to send ships to join the attack.

On Deep Space Nine, the Ferengi technician Rom is sentenced to execution for attempting to foil the Dominion's plan to destroy the minefield blocking the wormhole. The minefield is the only thing keeping Dominion reinforcements from arriving from the Gamma Quadrant. Major Kira Nerys, the Bajoran liaison officer secretly leading the resistance against Dominion occupation, pleads for mercy for Rom with Weyoun, the station's Dominion administrator, but to no avail. Kira persuades Tora Ziyal, the daughter of Cardassian commander Dukat, to ask her father to show mercy, but he too is adamant. Security officer Odo is no help; he is seduced by an offer to return to his people, the shapeshifting Founders of the Dominion, and has lost interest in station affairs.

Cardassian officer Damar lets slip to the bartender Quark that the minefield will be eliminated in about a week. Quark passes this intelligence to Kira's resistance; and Sisko's son Jake, who remained on the station when the Dominion seized control of it, is able to sneak a message to his father alerting him to the minefield's impending destruction. Sisko realizes he must take the station now, though his fleet is nowhere near large enough. With a fleet consisting of 600 vessels, Sisko arrives near Deep Space Nine facing a Cardassian-Dominion fleet of 1254 ships. He turns to his crew and says "There's an old saying: 'Fortune favors the bold'. I guess we're about to find out," as the operation begins.

The episode starts with teen pop sensation Hannah Montana — who is actually Miley Stewart (Miley Cyrus) — and her father Robby Ray Stewart (Billy Ray Cyrus) singing the song "This Is The Life" in preparation for a sold out concert in Los Angeles the next day. After she reluctantly gives her older brother Jackson (Jason Earles) two tickets for him and a girl he is trying to ask out to the concert, Miley's best friend, Lilly

The USS ''Defiant'' is sent on a mission to investigate a subspace anomaly. When Jadzia Dax, Miles O'Brien, and Julian Bashir take the runabout USS ''Rubicon'' into the anomaly, the entire runabout is shrunk to only several centimeters high, but the crew expects to return to normal once they exit.

While the runabout is in the anomaly, the ''Defiant'' is attacked by a Jem'Hadar ship, disabled, and boarded by Jem'Hadar soldiers. The Jem'Hadar commander, Kudak'Etan, proclaims the superiority of Jem'Hadar who were born in the Alpha Quadrant, and dismisses the advice of his more experienced, but Gamma Quadrant–born, second in command Ixtana'Rax. Since the ''Defiant'''s engines are damaged, Kudak'Etan demands that Captain Benjamin Sisko repair the ship's warp drive. Sisko claims he needs his crew's assistance to do so, and Kudak'Etan grants his request over Ixtana'Rax's objections.

Meanwhile, the ''Rubicon'' and its crew escape the anomaly and return to the ''Defiant'', still miniaturized. They enter the ship through a plasma vent and make their way into the engine room, where they discover the Jem'Hadar takeover. The ''Rubicon'' crew observe Sisko executing his plan: while Major Kira repairs the warp drive (working slowly to stall for time), Sisko, Worf, and Nog are attempting to regain control of the ship. O'Brien observes that Nog is attempting to override the ship's security codes, and suggests that they take the ''Rubicon'' to the bridge to assist them. When Kudak'Etan enters, Sisko complains about Ixtana'Rax's interference, driving an additional wedge between the two. As the Jem'Hadar departs, the ''Rubicon'' follows him through the door.

On the bridge, O'Brien and Bashir beam into a computer node to manually bypass the command codes. They manage to reroute the circuitry, granting Sisko control of the ship. Sisko is unable to take advantage of it, however: Ixtana'Rax, having discovered that the warp drive repairs are complete, orders the ''Defiant'' crew away from the computer consoles. Kudak'Etan orders that the ship return to a Dominion outpost immediately, ignoring Ixtana'Rax's concerns about sabotage.

The ''Rubicon'' returns to engineering and attacks the Jem'Hadar, and it and the full-size crew are able to overcome them. After the ''Defiant'' is retaken, the ''Rubicon'' re-enters the anomaly and is returned to its normal size.

A crazed scientist, Morder (Paul Wegener), driven even crazier by his nagging wife, murders her and walls her up in a basement, a la Poe's ''The Black Cat''. He then flees as the police and a reporter, Frank Briggs (Harald Paulsen), set out to track him down. Morder eventually escapes, by pretending to be insane, into an asylum. Though here the patients has managed to free themselves, lock up the guards, and take charge (inspired by Poe's ''The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether''). After Morder's final escape, he turns up as president of a secret Suicide Club (based on the short story by Stevenson).

Part I

A huge ship appears in the sky above an alien colony and fires an energy beam, transforming the city into mountains and fields. As the wave encompasses the planet, the ship's crew comment on the colony's erasure before targeting the species' homeworld.

On board ''Voyager'', Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) and Harry Kim (Garrett Wang) have developed a galactic map which should shave five years from their journey. Seven informs Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) that the area of space they are in belongs to a species that the Borg know as the Zahl. Upon entering this space, a small vessel appears off of ''Voyager'' s port bow and begins an unprovoked attack. The ship is a Krenim destroyer, and the captain of the vessel declares that ''Voyager'' must leave Krenim space or be destroyed. As the ship's weapons prove useless against ''Voyager'' s hull, Janeway ignores the ship and proceeds to negotiate with the Zahl, who disdainfully threaten the weaker Krenim vessel. During their discussion, Tuvok (Tim Russ) observes that a temporal disruption involving the homeworld of the Zahl race has just occurred. As they try to understand what happened, a wave of temporal energy reaches their sector of space.

The wave wipes the Zahl race from existence while making the Krenim vessel bigger and more powerful, and reducing ''Voyager'' to a severely damaged state. Now aggressive and more arrogant, the Krenim captain tells Janeway that ''Voyager'' must submit to the Krenim Imperium and prepare to be boarded. Janeway takes advantage of ''Voyager'' s speed to escape. A scan of the region in the new Astrometrics bay reveals that Krenim warships dominate this region of space and it will be difficult for ''Voyager'' to sneak past them.

''Voyager'' begins a running battle with many Krenim ships over a period of two months, suffering heavy damage and casualties. During one attack, Seven of Nine uses an unexploded Krenim chroniton torpedo to devise a method of shielding ''Voyager'' against the weapons; however, the weapon partially explodes, blinding and severely burning Tuvok. When utilized, the shielding also affects the temporal waves in the region, attracting the attention of the Krenim "time ship", the large vessel that is causing the disruptions. Krenim scientist Annorax (Kurtwood Smith) built the ship to cause "temporal incursions" to be used to erase events from history to strengthen the Krenim Imperium. However, a prior incursion caused a plague that killed millions of Krenim, including Annorax's wife, and he has been seeking a full restoration of his species for the past 200 years. Annorax decides to destroy ''Voyager'' due to the temporal distortions caused by its shields. The crew escape as ''Voyager'' is faster, but more damage to the ship ensues. Janeway orders all but the senior staff to abandon ship. She and the senior staff intend to rescue Commander Chakotay (Robert Beltran) and Lt. Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill), who were abducted by the time ship.

Part II

Captain Janeway makes an alliance with local races to attack the Krenim time ship. The senior staff move to the allied ships while Janeway remains behind on ''Voyager'' to pilot the heavily damaged ship herself. With the help of a dissatisfied crew member, Chakotay and Paris take the time ship's temporal core offline, rendering it vulnerable to attack, and beam to the nearest allied ship. Using conventional weaponry, the time ship disables the allied ships. ''Voyager'' is crippled when one of the ships collides with her. Theorizing that the original timeline may be restored if the Krenim ship is destroyed by its own weapon, Janeway orders the fleet to drop their temporal shields and rams ''Voyager'' into the time ship while it is powering up for another incursion. ''Voyager'' is destroyed, while the Krenim time ship's temporal core destabilizes and explodes. This erases the time ship from history, resetting the timeline. As his ship is erased, Annorax witnesses his wife's lock of hair vanish and appears to realize the significance of what is about to happen: reversing all of his changes will bring Annorax's wife back as well, fulfilling his ultimate goal.

In the original timeline, ''Voyager'' once again ventures into Krenim space. This time, the captain of the Krenim warship is moderate: he advises ''Voyager'' that "this area of space is under dispute" and suggests they avoid it. After giving the command to plot a course around the disputed space, Janeway remarks to Chakotay that she is thinking of replicating a bottle of wine for ''Voyager''’s re-dedication ceremony, saying the vintage is a "good year". Elsewhere, Annorax works diligently in his study. His wife (Lise Simms) enters and asks him to enjoy the day with her. Annorax hesitates for a moment, and then decides he can "make the time" for her. They leave while his work remains on his desk, depicting the calculations for his initial alteration of the timeline.

Luthien Bedwyr lives on Isle Bedwydrin, an island where they are bred as soldiers and fight in an arena for pleasure. When Viscount Aubrey, cousin of Duke Morkney of Montfort, visits the island, Luthien's world is turned upside down. After defeating Garth Rogar, a rival in the arena but a friend in life, Luthien is told to kill him by Viscount Aubrey. When he doesn't, one of the Viscount's cyclopian guards kills Garth instead. Luthien swears on his dead mother that he will avenge Garth in front of Katerin O'Hale, his lover. He runs away alone after killing the cyclopian who killed his friend and on the road meets Oliver deBurrows, a highway-halfling who steals from rich merchants that cross his path, and his mutated donkey, Threadbare. Together, Luthien and Oliver cross the Dorsal Sea and go to the mainland, where they are saved from numerous cyclopians by an old wizard named Brind'Amour. In return, he tasks them with finding his staff in a cave. Inside the cave, they find a crimson cape that renders the wearer invisible and a folding bow, and are attacked by the dragon Balthazar. Ultimately, Brind'Amour acquires the staff inside the cave and saves the two bandits from the dragon. The wizard then gives Oliver a "housbreaker" and a magical grapnel. Luthien and Oliver go to Montfort where they commit a dozen thefts. However, the magical cape from the cave casts a crimson shadow that cannot be removed. Seeing the shadow, merchants declare the second coming of the Crimson Shadow, a legendary, ancient thief, though in reality it is actually Luthien. Along the way, Luthien falls for a half-elf slave in the market. He tries to free her from her master but finds that she is also a thief. Later, she is captured by Duke Morkney because she is Luthien's love interest. He goes to free her, and a revolt begins after he fires upon Morkney. He chases the Duke to the top of a giant chapel called the Ministry, where Duke Morkney becomes the demon Praehotec and is ultimately slain by Luthien. In the epilogue, Katerin O'Hale returns from Isle Bedwydrin with news and a gift. She says that Luthien's father Gahris has revolted and that not a single cyclopian lives on Isle Bedwyrdin. He gives the Sword of Bedwyr - Blind Striker - to Luthien, now the Crimson Shadow and the leader of a ragtag insurgency in Montfort that has taken control of half the city.

The version which aired February 2006, differs from its premiere on MTV's Spring Break 2005 in March. A girl was to interview five boys, and after a set of about five questions for each person or an activity of some sort, the father will eliminate one of the contestants. This continues until one contestant remained.http://www.mtv.com/parentalcontrol

In the latest version, parents are unhappy with their child's current boyfriend or girlfriend. The parents interview and select prospective partners who vie for the affections of their child. Afterwards, their child goes on a date with the two selections that each parent chose. The child then has to decide whether to keep their current relationship, stay single, or choose one of the new prospects.

During each date, the parents and the current partner watch and comment, often antagonistically, as the date unfolds on television. When the dates are finished, the child selects their new partner from amongst the competitors and current partner. First, one of the three is picked to leave before the other two. Then the child chooses between the two remaining potential partners, commenting what they liked from the remaining parent's choice and from their current boyfriend/girlfriend. The whole process often results in unpleasant behavior from the two who were eliminated. Usually, the current boyfriend/girlfriend is selected which angers their parents who had hoped to be rid of their child's significant others. In some occasions, the child chooses their parents' choice of boyfriend/girlfriend, resulting in the significant other to leave angry and make rude comments. In other occasions, the child chooses to stay single, and eliminates the current significant other and the dates that his or her parents orchestrated. In a rare occasion, the child's chosen date would reject them and go with their previous significant other. Another rare occasion had the child's chosen boyfriend/girlfriend break up with them right away, leading the angry parent to chase after them.

The show like the other reality shows aired on MTV has been accused of being staged and fake.

Sylvester awaits the arrival of a new canary after the previous house bird has mysteriously disappeared (one of several such disappearances, according to stencils the cat keeps on a wall hidden by a curtain, confirmed by his "hiccup" of some yellow feathers). Upon the arrival of the bird, Sylvester pretends to play nice in order to abuse and eventually make a meal of the naive canary.

A series of violent visual gags ensues in which Tweety physically subdues the threatening cat by smoking him up, hitting him on the foot with a mallet, feeding him some alum and using his uvula as a punching bag.

A couple of racial or ethnic gags are included. Sylvester imitates a Scandinavian-sounding maid, who feigns complaining about having to "clean out de bird cage." He reaches into the covered cage and grabs what he thinks is the bird. The canary whistles at him. The confused cat opens his fist to find a small bomb, which promptly explodes, covering the cat in "blackface" makeup. His voice pattern then changes to something sounding like "Rochester", when he utters, "Uh-oh, back to the kitchen, ah smell somethin' burnin'!" just before passing out in the doorway. (This gag is often edited out for television broadcasts.)

A more subtle gag occurs when Tweety, inside the cat's mouth, yells down its gullet. The answer comes back, "There's nobody here but us mice!", which is a reference to the Louis Jordan hit "Ain't Nobody Here but Us Chickens" (1946).

At the climax, Tweety has managed to trap Sylvester inside the birdcage, and has introduced a "wittle puddy dog" (rhymes with "puppy dog"; a not-so-little "pug dog", an angry bulldog - in his first appearance). Their deadly battle occurs under the wrap the bird has thrown over the cage.

The film ends with the lady of the house calling the pet shop again, this time ordering a new cat, while Tweety lounges in Sylvester's old bed. Overhearing the woman telling the pet shop that the cat will have a nice home here, Tweety reveals the silhouette of a cat now stencilled on the wall, and closes the cartoon with a comment to the camera, "Her don't know me very well, do her?" a variant on one of Red Skelton's catchphrases by his "Mean Widdle Kid" character from radio.

When a female student is abducted and on the verge of being raped, Boogiepop rushes onto the scene just in time to save the day. But Boogiepop's new male alter-ego, Akizuki Takaya, finds himself in the middle of a crime wave with ties going back to the previous owner of the Boogiepop mantle.

In these stories from Conan's early thirties, the Cimmerian starts as a leader of an Afghuli tribe in Vendhya, journeys into the Black Kingdoms south of Stygia, and ends up as a Zingaran buccaneer.

Chronologically, the four short stories collected as ''Conan the Adventurer'' fall between ''Conan the Wanderer'' and ''Conan the Buccaneer''.

In these stories from Conan's late twenties, the Cimmerian is a mercenary with the Free Company in the city-states of Shem and the lands to the north and east, a war leader of the steppe-raiding Kozaki, and finally a soldier in the service of the kingdom of Khauran.

Chronologically, the five short stories collected as ''Conan the Freebooter'' fall between ''Conan of Cimmeria'' and ''Conan the Wanderer''.

Professor Lawrence "Larry" Mackay and his wife Kate are struggling with four young sons in a tiny two-bedroom apartment in New York City. Months before, they had announced their intention to move to a larger apartment, but have not been able to find one. Meanwhile, their lease has expired and the landlord has rented out their apartment to someone who insists they vacate immediately. They decide to look for a house in the country, but the only thing they can afford is a run-down mansion complete with secret panels and trap doors, 70 miles away by train in fictional Hooton. They have no choice but to move in and start fixing it up.

In the midst of the moving chaos, Larry has left his professorship at the university to become a drama critic for a major New York newspaper. His first assignment is to review the new show produced by his best friend, Alfred North. The show is awful, and Larry's review is especially hard on the show's star, Deborah Vaughn, who gets her revenge by hiring a press photographer to capture her slapping Larry's face at Sardi's. This publicity stunt, along with Larry's published response, makes Larry the toast of the town. Kate and Larry are suddenly invited to society parties and hobnobbing with the rich and famous, which begins to go to Larry's head. With the hammering and builders at home, Larry decides to stay in a hotel in the city for a few weeks, leaving Kate to organize the new house.

Back home, Kate tries her best to manage the four children and fit into their new community. When asked by the local dramatic society to find them an original play for their next production, Kate turns to Alfred. Alfred, seeing a chance for a bit of revenge of his own, gives them a terrible play written by a young Lawrence Mackay — with an altered title and fictitious playwright listed on the cover. Alfred then secretly invites all of the major New York critics to review the play. Larry finds out and has a huge fight with Kate, blaming her for his professional embarrassment. He refuses to allow the show to go on. Kate insists it is too late for the Hooton Holler Players to get another show ready, so Larry reluctantly allows them to proceed, publishing his own review of the show before opening night.

Not to be left out, Deborah Vaughn decides to strike up a close, personal friendship with Larry, flattering him seductively. Kate's mother Suzie Robinson urges her to get Larry back before it is too late. Kate and Larry make up and return to their country home in time for one of the boys to drop a water bomb on them from an upstairs window.

''Story of the Eye'' consists of several vignettes, centered around the sexual passion existing between the unnamed late adolescent male narrator and Simone, his primary female partner. Within this episodic narrative two secondary figures emerge: Marcelle, a mentally ill sixteen-year-old girl who comes to a sad end, and Sir Edmund, a voyeuristic English émigré aristocrat.

The story starts with our narrator and Simone meeting at her villa three days after first being introduced through their families being distantly related. Shortly after, Simone instigates a dare from the narrator to sit in a saucer intended for the cat's milk, which she wins by sitting on the bowl with her vagina in the milk. They both masturbate to completion without any physical contact and, after cupping a feel of her vulva while Simone is resting in her mother's arms, the narrator goes home and masturbates throughout the night. This upsets Simone, and when they meet the next day she makes him promise to never masturbate without her again. They start a sexual relationship, though one absent of conversation or penetration.

Whilst having sex on the edge of a cliff they are approached by their friend Marcelle, who collapses crying into the grass upon the sight of their unorthodox sexual acrobatics. Simone and the narrator proceeds to rape Marcelle, and when it starts raining Simone starts masturbating in a puddle of mud.

About a week or so later the pair encounters Marcelle on the streets. Simone apologizes for what happened on the cliff and promises to never lay a hand on her again. Marcelle agrees to join them, and a few other teenagers, for tea at Simone's villa; though instead of tea they drink large amounts of champagne. Simone, pretending to be dead wasted, makes a bet that she can pee into a tablecloth in front of everyone at the party. One of the boys challenges her bet, and when he loses Simone pulls off his pants. Marcelle begs to leave, but the narrator repeats Simone's promise to not touch her. Simone falls onto the floor and starts spasming while begging the pants-less boy to pee on her. Marcelle announces she wants to take off her dress but after being touched briefly by the narrator she retires to a bridal wardrobe to masturbate. A violent orgy unfolds and Marcelle pisses herself in the wardrobe. Later yet, covered in blood and cuts, the narrator checks up on Marcelle who shrieks in terror upon seeing the blood- and piss-covered scene that had unfolded in the living room. Marcelle's continued screaming brings the parents of the teenagers to the villa, where Marcelle bites off her mother's face in a state of delirium. The police are called and the narrator decides to steal his dad's money and gun, flee his home and escapes into the woods.

The narrator moves in with Simone, bribing the villas servants in exchange for food and information about Marcelle. We learn that Marcelle has been admitted to a psychiatric ward, which upsets Simone. The couple concocts a plan to break Marcelle out of the ward, but their first attempt is ultimately unsuccessful and Simone ends up ill from their escape. While bedridden, Simone discovers a fetish for eggs and their experimentation culminates with Simone putting a soft-boiled egg inside her vagina while bathing.

On their second attempt they manage to break Marcelle out of the ward, however her sanity is long gone and she is incapable of discerning what is happening around her. When brought back to the villa she immediately recognizes the wardrobe from the orgy and has a psychotic breakdown that ends in Marcelle hanging herself in the closet. Simone spreads her corpse out in the living room and the couple has penetrative sex for the first time next to the corpse, taking Simone's virginity.

To escape the legal consequences of Marcelle's suicide the couple flees to Spain where they meet Sir Edmund, a depraved aristocrat who is happy to accommodate their lifestyle. Edmund tells Simone about the tradition in the aristocracy to eat the testicles of a recently killed bull while watching bull-fighting and Simone demands the raw testicles of a bull be given to her when they are watching the famous matador El Granero. As Granero is impaled by a bull and his right eye is ripped out of its socket, Simone sticks one of the raw testicles up her vagina and has an orgasm at the same moment El Granero dies.

While sightseeing around Spain, Simone wets her dress laughing. They then visit the Church of Don Juan, where Simone seduces the priest, Don Aminado, by masturbating while confessing inside of the confessional. After an assortment of sexual debauchery with the priest, Sir Edmund undertakes a blasphemous parody of the Catholic Eucharist involving desecration of the bread and wine using Don Aminado's urine and semen before pinning the priest down as Simone strangles Don Aminado to death during his final orgasm. Simone demands the priest's right eye, and proceeds to insert the eye into her vagina. The scene ends with the narrator seeing Don Aminado's eye looking right at him out of the vagina. They escape punishment by donning disguises and making their way down to Andalusia, where they buy a yacht staffed by Africans to continue their adventures overseas, whereupon the story ends.

In a postscript, Bataille reveals that the character of Marcelle may have been partially inspired by his own mother, who suffered from bipolar disorder, while the narrator's father is also modeled after his own unhappy paternal relationship. In an English-language edition, Roland Barthes and Susan Sontag provide critical comment on the events.

After a letter reflecting on Conan's life written by Howard to P. Schuyler Miller and John D. Clark, both fans of Howard's work, is an essay on the invented prehistory in which the hero's adventures are set tracing its development up to Conan's own time. The stories gathered in this collection then follow the Cimmerian from his escape from slavery in Hyperborea through his days as a youthful thief in Zamora, Corinthia, and Nemedia, to the beginning of his employment as a mercenary for King Yildiz of Turan. To Conan's discomfiture, the supernatural is his constant companion.

Chronologically, the seven short stories collected as ''Conan'' are the earliest in Lancer's Conan series. The stories collected as ''Conan of Cimmeria'' follow.

The Animorphs convene and decide that they need to make their next move against the Yeerks. The only lead they have is that Hedrick Chapman, the assistant principal at their school, is a Yeerk Controller. Jake asks Rachel to try to get to him through his daughter Melissa, an old friend of hers. However, Melissa has become distant lately, and Rachel fears she has become a Controller like her father. Rachel remembers Melissa's pet cat Fluffer McKitty, and the Animorphs plan to infiltrate Chapman's house to find out what they can; Rachel morphs Melissa's pet cat to gain access, after a harrowing experience morphing a shrew to lure the cat out of a tree.

Once in the house, Rachel follows Mr. Chapman into a basement room and discovers that he communicates directly with Visser Three, the leader of the Earth invasion, through holographic technology. While in the room, she is spotted by Visser Three, who orders Chapman to kill her because she might be an Andalite. Rachel does not react, and Chapman reasons with Visser Three to allow Rachel to escape shaken, but unharmed. Before she leaves the house, Rachel follows Melissa and learns that she is not a Controller, but has pulled away from her friends because she believes her parents, who are now both Controllers, do not love her anymore.

Rachel decides to keep the encounter with Visser Three a secret from her friends, and convinces them that she needs to infiltrate Chapman's house again. She does a few nights later, this time with Jake stowed away on her back as a flea, unbeknownst to Rachel. She is careful to stay out of Chapman's and Visser Three's sights, but is again discovered. Visser Three is sure now that she is an Andalite bandit, and orders Chapman to bring Rachel to him. He also tells Chapman to bring Melissa so that she can be infested, because she is a security risk to the Yeerks; it was her cat that the "Andalite" used. Chapman rebels against his Yeerk, Iniss 226, causing Iniss to momentarily lose control of the host body and fight to take it back. Iniss is tired by the effort and opts not to take Melissa, planning to explain the circumstances face to face with the Visser.

Iniss takes Rachel and Jake, still morphed as a flea, to the abandoned construction site where the Animorphs first met the alien Elfangor, and he allows Chapman himself to speak to Visser Three. Chapman reminds the Visser that he willingly became a Controller on the condition that the Yeerks not take Melissa, and if they were to violate that contract, he would make life as hard as he could for the Yeerk in his head. Since Chapman is in a position of some influence at the school and is regularly meeting with parents, this would be very disastrous, and Visser Three grudgingly gives in. The other Animorphs show up to rescue Jake and Rachel and barely escape from one of Visser Three's monstrous morphs. The next day, Rachel writes an anonymous note to Melissa, telling her that her father loves her more than ever, despite not being able to show it.

Gloria decides to run away from home with her gay friend John McFadden. Both of them have a reason to leave: Gloria wants to find her estranged father, and John wants to avoid being drafted and being sent to Vietnam. They head from Belle Woods, a fictional suburb of Detroit, Michigan, to New York City, where they meet a host of colorful characters. The novel explores the personal freedoms of the late 1960s, including casual drug use, draft evasion, homosexuality, and incest.

Continuing on immediately from ''The Answer'', Rachel attacks the Yeerks in control of the Blade ship, and kills Tom Berenson and his Yeerk, before being killed at the hands of his Yeerk allies shortly after; before she dies, the Ellimist briefly stops time to tell his own story to her and answer a question about her contribution to the war. As soon as her question is answered, Rachel dies. Tom's morph-capable Yeerks escape in the Blade Ship, abandoning the disabled Pool Ship to the Animorphs. Visser One, realizing that he is defeated, leaves Alloran-Semitur-Corrass's body after being knocked unconscious by Ax. The remaining Animorphs, as well as Alloran (freed after more than two decades under Visser One's control over his body), contact the Andalite fleet, who are primed to annihilate Earth. Ax reveals that the non-military Andalites are listening to their communications and will not approve of the fleet's actions should they proceed. The Andalite fleet calls off their plan to destroy Earth and, after hours of negotiations, they promote Ax to rank of Prince and declare the war for Earth over.

In addition, Cassie, at Jake's urging, goes to look for Erek and finds him escaping the Pool ship. She lets him know that they have won the war at last, but promptly tears into him for draining the ship's weapons, which both enabled the Blade ship to get away and caused Rachel's death to be in vain. Erek defends his decision and likewise chastises Cassie for resorting to the tactics that they had used against him. Ultimately, Cassie tells Erek that he and the Chee can decide whether or not they are ready to reveal their presence to the world now that the war is over, but though he says nothing about it, it is clear to her that the Chee are still unwilling to do so. Cassie and Erek part ways, and it is clear to the former that the latter and his people are no longer friends or allies with the Animorphs.

The Andalites find Rachel's body floating around in space, having been jettisoned by the Blade ship just before the Yeerks escaped. The Animorphs attend Rachel's funeral, where a statue is erected in her honor. Tobias, with the permission of Cassie and Naomi, Rachel's mother, flies away with Rachel's ashes to spread them in the sea. It is also revealed that the Animorphs lived in California, a fact that had not been revealed throughout the course of the series.

The remainder of the book describes the development of the characters over the course of three years after the war. Jake, Marco, and Cassie become instant celebrities, while Ax returns to the Andalite homeworld a hero. Surrendered Yeerks are allowed to choose an animal form in which to become a ''nothlit''. Arbron's Taxxons are granted their wish and become ''nothlit'' anacondas or other big snakes, relocated to the Amazon Rainforest. Unable to morph out of his Taxxon form, Arbron is soon killed by poachers. The free Hork-Bajir colony is moved to Yellowstone National Park, protected by Toby Hamee and Cassie. Toby becomes a non-voting member of the US Senate while Cassie serves as an adviser to the President. Humanity develops an alliance with the Andalites. Some developments between the two races are companies such as Microsoft and Nintendo building new electronics and Andalites morphing into humans to experience the sense of taste. Marco embraces his new fame, and winds up becoming the self-proclaimed "spokesman" for the Animorphs, as well as a TV star. Cassie uses her powers in the government to become an activist for the environment and the Hork-Bajir. Jake, however, adjusts less easily than they do to the new conditions and becomes depressed, having minimal contact with his friends and not morphing at all.

A year after the conclusion of the war, Esplin 9466 (formerly Visser Three and later Visser One) is put on trial in The Hague and convicted of crimes against humanity. During Jake's testimony at the trial, Esplin's defense lawyers attempt to discredit Jake by claiming that he himself is a war criminal for his actions, such as his emptying of the Pool ship that killed 17,372 Yeerks. Though this objection is overruled, Jake is deeply shaken by it, as he feels that it, along with many of his actions during the war, was immoral or mistaken. In a bid to cheer Jake up, his friends capture him and dump him into the ocean, thinking that by forcing him into a dolphin morph (dolphins being naturally happy) they can cheer him up. Jake remains aloof, however. Esplin is forced to live out his remaining days without a host in a purple box constructed by the Andalites.

Two years after Esplin 9466's sentencing, Ax is charged with finding the Blade Ship. He notes that the Andalite military is being shrunk back, and that he easily has the most interesting assignment. The ship crew comes across a massive ship of unknown origin and finds a mysterious DNA sample inside it, a polar bear. Ax leads the investigation team. As First Officer Menderash-Postill-Fastill later recalls, the ship came alive and attacked. Menderash broke off from the ship, but they were then attacked by pirates. He is the sole survivor.

Meanwhile, Jake finally concedes to the government and agrees to train special ops teams to use the morphing power to combat terrorists. After a few months of meetings, two Andalite officials approach Jake, and Menderash relays Ax's story. Jake agrees to help. He informs Marco and Cassie, the latter of whom is spending time assessing potential new places for the Hork-Bajir to inhabit with her new boyfriend Ronnie. Cassie offers to come, but Jake declines, saying that her role is over and that she is doing what she wants to do the most. Jake also believes that Cassie will be happier if she stays on Earth. He asks her to find Tobias, who has since shut himself away from the world (save for monthly visits to his mother, Loren) and remains angry at Jake for Rachel's death. Tobias relents and joins Jake on the mission. Marco agrees to come, as well, but only after yelling at Jake, and telling him that he cannot undo his past mistakes, and that, just as during the war, they will only succeed if they follow his instincts, no matter how "crazy, reckless, and ruthless." Jake selects two of his students (Santorelli and Jeanne Gerard) to join the mission.

As the mission is top-secret and unauthorized, Jake and the others conduct a very elaborate plan. Marco knocks out two Andalites who are guarding a shuttle. They use the shuttle to take off and board a captured Yeerk cruiser. They then crash the shuttle into the ground. The official story would be that terrorists overpowered the Andalite guards but could not pilot the ship and crashed. Menderash, following an Andalite tradition, believes it bad luck to board the ship before it is named. After Tobias notes that it is "beautiful and dangerous and exciting," the group gives it the only fitting name, the ''Rachel''.

After several months in space, the Animorphs find the Blade Ship, only to discover that Ax has been assimilated into an entity only known as The One, which has given Ax a new mouth that splits open the lower part his face. The One threatens to consume the Animorphs, as it had done to Ax. Jake comments on Marco's earlier call to be "crazy, reckless, and ruthless" and, with a smile that Marco notes makes him look like Rachel, orders them to ram the Blade Ship. The series ends with Jake, Tobias, Marco, and Ax's ultimate fates left unknown.

Johan Falk, a Gothenburg police officer and former member of Nationella insatsstyrkan, gets involved in a shooting on Christmas Eve. He saves the life of a little girl but is then drawn into a stream of events and he ends up being the accused. In the search for the truth he sees no other way than to take the law into his own hands, and becomes hunted by his own colleagues.

Tobias and Rachel liberate a caged red-tailed hawk from a car dealership, Dealin' Dan Hawke's Used Cars, where it is being used as a mascot in advertisements. Later that evening, Tobias sees a shimmer in the air and is perplexed by it. He decides to check it out again the next day, and this time notices a flock of geese seemingly run into an invisible wall in the air. Tobias suspects the anomaly to be a Yeerk ship using optical camouflage and tells the other Animorphs about it. The group morphs into wolves to follow the last known direction of the ship into the mountains. They arrive at a lake guarded by Park Service human-controllers and Hork-Bajir-controllers. The ship decloaks over the lake, revealing itself to be a massive logistics ship that collects water and air for the Yeerk Pool ship in orbit. Tobias also sees the hawk that he and Rachel freed, and has an urge to be with her.

The Animorphs return from the mountains and make plans to morph into fish in the lake and get sucked up by the ship so they can disable it from the inside, thus deactivating the cloaking device while it is above a city and revealing the Yeerk invasion to the general public. Tobias heads up to the lake again to scope out potential hiding places, but his hawk instincts overpower him on the way and he kills and eats a rat. Greatly disturbed by the experience, he flies to Rachel's gymnastics exhibition at the mall and tries to commit suicide. He flies around the mall in a panicked state until Marco smashes open a skylight for him with a baseball to escape. Tobias regresses into his hawk instincts for several days, living in the woods and hunting rodents. His human side only re-emerges when he saves a man escaping from Hork-Bajir near the mountain lake. He returns to Rachel to talk about what happened, and he decides that he needs to keep fighting the Yeerks to remain human.

The Animorphs revisit the lake and hide in a cave until the Yeerks arrive. They then morph trout, and Tobias carries them to the lake to avoid notice by the Yeerks who have locked down the area. The others are successfully sucked up into the ship, but they discover that the water tank is sealed off inside; they are trapped. They communicate this information to Tobias and ask him to bring the ship down if possible. Meanwhile, Tobias is spotted and identified as an "Andalite bandit." To avoid attacks from Yeerk Bug Fighters and helicopters, he lands on top of the logistics ship, the one place he can be sure the Yeerks won't risk firing. A dozen Taxxons emerge out onto the deck to kill him, but Tobias aims for the eyes of the nearest one. The Taxxon, trying to shield itself, accidentally makes it easier for Tobias to grab its Dracon beam. He grabs the weapon, flies to the ship's Bridge, and fires the beam into the bridge, making the ship fly out of control and crash into the other Yeerk ships (Bug Fighters and USFS helicopters). A large gash is torn in the side of the ship, and the other Animorphs come pouring out with the collected water. They are able to morph into birds and escape. Tobias again sees the female hawk, but the Yeerks, mistaking her for him, kill her.

The remains of the downed truck ship are disposed of by the Yeerks, thus leaving no evidence for the Animorphs to show the world. Tobias is distressed over the death of the hawk, but realizes that it is this emotion that makes him human, as a true hawk would not care if another hawk had died. Tobias discusses this with Rachel, and begins to accept his newfound balance between being a hawk and being a human.

Inconsistencies

Tobias states that Marco had previously acquired a bald eagle morph and used it during the escape from the Yeerk ship. However, Marco never acquired a bald eagle; his raptor morph is an osprey. Tobias is shown morphing into a hawk on the cover page as a brunette, but he was described previously as having blonde hair. *Tobias states that the truck ship is about 700 feet above the forest when the rest of the Animorphs fall out of the ship. It takes less than 7 seconds to fall that distance. Despite that, everyone is able to completely morph into birds before hitting the ground (all of them except Marco manage to even stay above the treeline), even though the morphing process is described as taking up to 2 minutes.

A football player finds his head coach is suffering from a suicide.

The film is set in the reign of King Louis XIII. When Comte Châtellerault fails to win the hand in marriage of Roxalanne de Lavedan, despite hinting at leniency for her rebellious family if she accepts, he responds to the notorious womanizer Marquis de Bardelys' mockery by wagering his estate against that of Bardelys that Bardelys cannot succeed in marrying Roxalanne either within three months. While Bardelys does not desire marriage, he feels he has to accept the challenge. However the king, on hearing of the wager, forbids Bardelys from seeking a marriage alliance with a rebel family.

Bardelys ignores the king’s orders as he feels that his honour is at stake. On the way to the Lavedan estate, he stumbles upon a fatally wounded man, Lesperon, who asks him to say farewell to his beloved but dies before telling him her name. Bardelys takes his papers and, when challenged by a party of the king’s soldiers, assumes Lesperon’s identity to conceal his own, only to find that Lesperon is a wanted traitor. Bardelys escapes after fighting them off, and wounded, seeks refuge in the Lavedan residence. Roxalanne tends to him and hides him. Meanwhile, Roxalanne and her family discover with anger that she is the subject of a public wager by Bardelys, who prudently retains his assumed identity and grows closer to Roxalanne.

They declare their love for one another but she discovers that Lesperon was engaged and, furious at what she thinks are his false protestations of love, denounces Bardelys to soldiers. Bardelys, under the identity of Lesperon, is tried for treason. Châtellerault, who is the head judge, maliciously refuses to confirm his true identity and condemns him to death.

Roxalanne, still in love with Bardelys and guilty at causing his imminent death, marries Châtellerault on his promise to remit the sentence, but he breaks his word. Bardelys, on the gallows, delays his execution until the king arrives and saves him. Bardelys goes to Châtellerault and forfeits the wager and his estate so he can propose to Roxalanne with a clear conscience. The two men fight and Bardelys repeatedly wins, when soldiers enter to arrest Châtellerault upon which he kills himself rather than suffer the indignity of a trial. The king enters to laud Bardelys’ skill with women to Roxalanne’s annoyance but she is mollified when the king says that this is the first time Bardelys has sought to marry.

A teenage outcast road movie, ''Jimmy and Judy'' follows a pair of outsiders who fall in love and out of control as they travel across an American landscape dotted with hypocrisy, materialism, drugs and violence.

The film focuses on classic themes such as adolescent rebellion, love, and anger. Jimmy and Judy are modern-day Bonnie and Clyde: destructive young lovers who leave the comfort of their suburban community in rural Kentucky in search of a better life.

The film is presented in the form of a video diary from the point of view of the main characters.

While sneaking into a concert in dog morph, Jake and Marco discover that they are unable to detect a smell from their friend Erek King, something impossible, as all living things smell (Marco describes Erek as a "black hole of smell"). They then realize that he is also a member of The Sharing. When the Animorphs investigate further, they find out that he is really an android with a hologram projected around him, after he is hit by a bus and his hologram fails for a few seconds.

Marco finds out from Tom that there is a barbecue for The Sharing going on at a nearby lake, and the Animorphs go there to find out whether Erek is working for the Yeerks. Only certain animals can see through Erek's hologram, so Ax and Marco morph wolf spiders, while the rest of the Animorphs go into their bird morphs (except Jake, who morphs a fly) to act as lookouts. While in morph, Marco and Ax confirm their suspicion that Erek is an android. However, Marco is then grabbed by a bird, who tries to eat him. He is forced to demorph in full view of Erek. Erek projects a hologram around him, so he is hidden from the Controllers. Erek tells Marco to come visit him at his house, and to bring the other Animorphs.

After some thought, the Animorphs decide to go. In case it's a trap, they leave Rachel behind, who will morph into grizzly bear and storm the place if Ax thought-speaks a distress call. Once they get there, Erek reveals he is part of an ancient race of androids called the Chee, whose creators, the Pemalites, were destroyed by the Howlers thousands of years ago. The Chee managed to escape to Earth with a few of the last remaining Pemalites (which resembled humanoid canines), and fused their essence with wolves, creating dogs. A few members of the Chee are working against the Yeerks. Erek agreed to "become" a Controller, but in reality he controls his Yeerk. When he goes to the Yeerk Pool, he simply projects a hologram of the Yeerk going in and out of his ear, realizing that the Yeerks have very little ability to communicate while in the pool.

The Chee have amazing physical strength, but they have one drawback: their programming means they cannot hurt anyone. Erek tells the Animorphs that they can change their programming with the Pemalite crystal. They find out that the Yeerks are currently in possession of the crystal, and have it in a high security facility. They agree to attempt to retrieve the crystal so the Chee can join the fight.

To get it, they decide to sneak in using cockroach and spider morphs. They are chased by a rat and just barely escape being burned by a furnace, but they reach the highly guarded room. They morph into bats to echolocate and avoid the complex wiring that protects the crystal from normal means. However, once Jake has the crystal in his mouth, the Animorphs realize that he can't echolocate out of there. They go into battle morphs and race out, where they are stopped by twenty Hork-Bajir warriors. Marco sees Erek outside the windows looking in, powerless to help them. During the fighting, Marco ends up by the windows. Gasping, he smashes the window and gives the Pemalite crystal to Erek before dying.

When Erek delivers an electric shock to Marco's heart and he comes to, Marco realizes that all of the Hork-Bajir are dead, and the Animorphs and Erek are fine, Erek having massacred the Hork-Bajir. Erek says that he has realized why the Pemalites put the pacifist programming in him—as his memory remains perfect, Erek will never be able to move past the memory of the violence that he has committed and will constantly remember it as though it just took place—and changes his programming back to what it was. He says that he can never join the actual fight, but he can pass on information. He gives Marco a phone number for a safe, untappable line so they can communicate. At the end of the book, Homer, Jake's dog, drops the Pemalite crystal into the ocean.

During the middle years of the war, three men are called up to serve in the British Army. The Englishman Philip Hamilton (Underdown), the American David Morgan (Clanton) and the Irishman Smoke O'Connor (Michael Brennan) are conscripted into the Guards Division and report to their barracks at Caterham, Surrey. After going through strict training (including real Coldstream Guards Regimental Sergeant Major Brittain) they find themselves receiving emergency promotions. Philip and David are promoted to 2nd lieutenant and Smoke to corporal and are attached to a tank company of the Welsh Guards, where Philip and David command their own tank and Smoke is part of David's crew. Months of 'real' training follow, where they learn about tank warfare and also their comrades.

The film follows the three main characters as the Guards Armoured Division lands at Normandy weeks after D-Day, and on into action as part of the break-out. Following the crew of a Sherman tank, they cope with different aspects of fighting a war on another continent, such as being separated from family and loved ones and coping with the loss of comrades. Operation Market Garden and the Battle of the Bulge are depicted, but with the Welsh Guards as the pivotal British Army unit. During Market Garden, the Welsh Guards are shown linking up with American paratroopers at the Grave bridge before moving on to Nijmegen and the failure of the operation. The film ends with the Ardennes Offensive and the Guards' unknown operations around the east side of the River Meuse, and only Smoke left alive of the three friends.

''All in Good Faith'' was written especially for its lead star, ''The Good Life'' actor Richard Briers. The series was his first ITV sitcom. He played the Reverend Philip Lambe who, in his middle age, decides to move from his wealthy Oxfordshire parish to one in Edendale, a fictional urban town in the Midlands. He is determined to do things in his new parish and is faced with new problems like homeless people. He is accompanied by his wife Emma, sixteen-year-old daughter Miranda and twelve-year-old son Peter.

Set during World War II, the book follows Alfred Vicary, a historian and friend of Winston Churchill, who was wounded in battle during the World War I while serving as an officer in the Intelligence Corps, joins the British intelligence service. He is assigned the job of protecting Operation Mulberry in the lead up to the invasion of Normandy in 1944. The German spy Catherine Blake, whose real name is Anna von Steiner, an Abwehr operative, actually is close to learning the secret. Catherine's aid is Horst Neumann, a former lieutenant in the paratroopers and later on in the Abwehr, a trained assassin.

Some little failures help Alfred Vicary to reveal her true identity. So he devises and carries out his plan of Double Cross. The basic idea of it is that after uncovering the German spy Catherine Blake, instead of capturing and imprisoning her, the British Intelligence provides her with false documents which she accepts as information she seeks. Then she sends the content of those papers through other spies to Germany, and so the German Spy agencies are being deceived without having the least idea of it. The story ends with depiction of the night Catherine tries to escape from Britain. If she could have fled she would be able to tell all she knew about British Intelligence agents and their Double Cross operation, and maybe Germans would understand that they had been deceived all the time. But Catherine does not manage to escape and is killed by the fire laid down by the British martial ship. The Germans, therefore, remain ignorant of the secret they tried to reveal and this causes their defeat in World War II.

As part of their travels, Daja and Frostpine are staying with some friends of Frostpine's from his days of studies as a Goldsmith, the Bancanor family. While they are staying there, Daja realized that the two eldest daughters of the family possess ambient magic. She devises a metal scrying mirror to test the twin daughters Niamara (Nia) and Jorality (Jory)'s aspect of magics. Shy, quiet Nia is discovered to possess Carpentry magic and loud, impatient Jory if found to possess Cooking magic.

As Daja is considered an adult by the Winding circle, a fact that is acknowledged with the entrustment of her mage medallion, she is responsible for aiding those whom she personally discovers as having magic. However, because of her lack of skill and magic in either of the twins' disciplines, she investigates and eventually entrusts the twins to local mages for instructions pertaining to the development of their craft. However, Daja retains responsibility for teaching them to meditate, as both areas of instruction for the twins are loud areas where teaching of meditation is inadvisable. Since the twins are complete opposites in personality, this proves to be a challenging task.

Meanwhile, Daja makes friends with a local non-magical firefighter, Ben Ladradun. He is trying to form an organized much needed fire brigade from the villagers, but is facing issues from lack of funding. As Kugisko is a village with houses built mainly of wood, fires in the area were not uncommon, yet increasing in number throughout Daja's stay.

Daja and Ben suspect that many if not all of the recent fires were set on purpose. As Ben searches to discover the "fire-bug", Daja works tirelessly to make Ben a pair of living metal gloves to protect his hands from harm when handling fire burning debris.

Daja ends up saving many people from burning buildings as the number of fires increases.

In the end it is revealed that Ben is the "fire-bug" and Daja captures him and gives him to the authorities; who end up burning him to death. Ben set fires because the only time he got respect was when he was a victim of the flames or when he was fighting them. His emotionally and physically abusive mother created his twisted way of thinking.

Oakie Doke was a character who lived in an oak tree. His head was an acorn and an Oak leaf covered his upper body. His skin was a light green and he had distinctive rosy cheeks. He was a friendly character and a well-respected member of the forest. He slides down the slide around his treehouse everyday and his friends includes squirrels, mice, toads, hedgehogs and moles.

At the start of the show, one of his friends would ring a bell at the bottom of his tree, which would wake him up. He would then ride a slide that wound round the trunk of the tree to the bottom. The episode then began. On a typical episode, there would be a friend who had an everyday problem in the woods, and Oakie would immediately come to their aid. There was usually a dilemma, but he would help them and was often assisted by his friends from the forest. Many of the problems that arose were a result of the actions of Dave and Denzil who were known to carry actions out without considering the consequences. However, they usually showed some remorse when Oakie later confronted the pair about their behaviour.

Towards the end of each episode, after Oakie had helped solve the problem, he would state: "Well, it's like I always say...", followed by a rhyming phrase. This phrase would be in relation to the solution of the problem. This was greeted with approving laughter and applause from whoever was present at the time.

The life of Yale Law School student Sherman takes an unexpected turn when he decides to follow his girlfriend's advice and take more chances in life. She meant their relationship. But Sherman's new spontaneity lands him in the car seat next to Palmer, a washed-up, cheerfully eccentric former Olympic athlete.

Dumped and cut off from his mother's funds, Sherman has to travel with Palmer to Southern California for an important job opportunity.

Bryson was born on December 8, 1951. He spent his childhood growing up in Des Moines, Iowa, part of the baby-boom generation born in the post-war years. He describes his early life and his parents, Bill Sr. and Mary Bryson. His father was a well-known sports writer for ''The Des Moines Register'', the leading newspaper in Des Moines. His mother was also a writer for the ''Register'', she also wrote for magazines like ''Better Homes'' and ''Gardens'', ''Good Housekeeping'', and ''House Beautiful''.

He recounts many things that were invented during his childhood that fascinated him, which include frozen dinners, atomic toilets, and television. His middle-class, all-American lifestyle is shown constantly throughout the book, and the influence of his depression-era raised parents rubs off on him. He also remembers his adventures as "the Thunderbolt Kid," an alter ego he made up for himself when he felt powerless. He was able to vaporize people with his heat vision and thought that he came from another planet. He tells amusing stories of his misadventures as Billy Bryson, including his first days in school when he figured out that when the entire class was running drills to protect themselves from a bomb, he would simply read comic books instead. However, when the principal and a police officer came in one day to supervise, he got in trouble. Trouble was something fairly common for "the Thunderbolt Kid", as throughout his childhood his teachers were unamused by his activities. In fact, Bryson recounts how he really was uninterested in getting up before noon, thus not even going to school very often. Despite his unique behavior, Bryson tells his story through the eyes of a child, filled with hilarious observations about the world — from "Lumpy" Kowalski's curious nickname to the joy that was to be had in the department stores.

Though Bryson focuses mostly on his childhood, he tells of many of the events that were happening at the time, including the development of the atomic bomb, and the beginnings of the civil rights movement. He tells of his first days in junior high and high school, and during both he began smoking, drinking, and stealing, although he didn’t get caught for any of it. He met Stephen Katz in junior high school, when they were both in the school's audio-visual club. Katz would accompany Bryson on many of his travel experiences. At the end of the book, Bryson tells the reader that "life moves on", and that he wishes that the world could be more similar to life in the 1950s and 1960s. The last lines of the book are, "What a wonderful world that would be. What a wonderful world it was. We won’t see its like again, I'm afraid."

This is a story about a private high school (Ryuzan) in which lawyer Kenji Sakuragi, a former biker, is sent to close down. His business is on the rocks due to his biker background being made public in a scandal-magazine. Sakuragi gets the idea of turning the school around instead of closing it, thereby resurrecting his career. He goes for an outrageous goal: getting 5 students from this no-hope highschool into Tokyo University, the top university in the country. He persuades the director to back him, then gives a rousing speech to the entire school to announce the special class. "You're all losers and you'll stay losers for the rest of your lives! Because you're too lazy to use your brains and you haven't figured out that society is run by clever folks who make sure they always win and you always lose. If you don't like that prospect, study! I'll give you a goal: get into Tokyo University!" he shouts to a stunned, silent crowd.

When none of the existing teachers have the backbone to take on the responsibility for this class, Sakuragi decides to run the class himself. To help him, he obtains the assistance of a motley crew of unorthodox teachers to teach math, language arts, social studies, and English. Using a combination of tough love and unusual scientific methods, he goads, bribes, and cajoles 2 students into joining the class. He's assisted but also opposed by a couple of young English teachers, one of whom hates him and is always suspicious of his motives and methods. Will Sakuragi succeed or will the cynicism of just about everyone else win out? And just how does Sakuragi know so much about how to get into Tokyo University, anyway?

In addition to offering many scientific methods for studying for tests generally and preparing for Tokyo University, in particular, the series includes many interesting insights and points of view about human psychology.

The action takes place over the course of a year in North Oxford, some time before World War II. Miss Doggett likes to entertain students and young clergy at her gloomy Victorian home in Banbury Road. When the new unmarried curate, Mr. Latimer, comes to lodge at their house, he strikes up a friendship with Miss Doggett's paid companion, the homely Jessie Morrow, through whose eyes much of the action is seen. He begins to see her as a potential wife but she rejects his proposal, knowing that his interest in her is practical rather than romantic. The title of the book refers to a fictional village called Crampton Hodnet, which Mr. Latimer invents as an off-the-cuff excuse when asked where he has been, as he does not wish to admit he has been out for a walk with Miss Morrow instead of attending church. "Crampton" was the author's middle name; an old family name on her father's side.

Miss Doggett's nephew, the don Francis Cleveland, a reader at the (fictitious) Randolph College of Oxford University, falls in love with one of his students, Barbara Bird. He contemplates an extramarital affair with Barbara, but two of Miss Doggett's student protégés see them together, and the word soon reaches acquaintances of Francis's wife, Margaret. Francis' daughter, Anthea, is in love with Simon Beddoes, the son of Lady Beddoes, and Miss Doggett is especially keen for the relationship to progress to marriage.

After Margaret finds out about Francis's relationship with Barbara, she leaves for a trip to London. Francis offers to take Barbara for a weekend in Paris but they only get as far as Dover, where Barbara gets cold feet and goes to stay with a friend, leaving Francis to return alone to Oxford, where Margaret forgives him. Simon breaks up with Anthea by letter; she soon begins dating again. Mr Latimer becomes engaged while on holiday, and makes preparations to leave his role as curate. As the new academic year dawns, Miss Morrow acknowledges that she will probably remain unmarried and that nothing really ever changes.

Mother Bernle is a widow in Bavaria with four sons: Franz, Johann, Andreas and Joseph.

Joseph receives a job offer from the United States, and he is given money to travel there by his mother.

The First World War is heating up. Franz, who is already serving in the German army, is joined by first Johann and then Andreas who is forced into the army.

In New York, Joseph is married with a newborn son. He is running a delicatessen and when America enters the war, Joseph enlists to fight for the American side. When Joseph's enlistment is discovered, it causes problems for Mother Bernle because she is shunned in her village.

Franz and Johann are killed on the Eastern Front. Andreas is wounded on the Western Front and dies in the arms of his brother Joseph.

Joseph returns to New York to discover that the delicatessen has prospered in his absence. He sends for his mother to join him, and she departs her village only to end up hopelessly lost wandering New York. A policeman brings her to Joseph's apartment, where she joyfully joins her son, daughter-in-law and grandson.

Set in an unnamed American city, two urban, middle-class couples deal with their unhappy relationships by shamelessly lying and cheating in their quest for happiness. Jerry (Stiller) is a theater instructor married to Terri (Keener), a writer who is alienated and unfulfilled with his love-making skills. Jerry and Terri have dinner with Mary (Brenneman), a writer friend of Terri's, and Mary's husband Barry (Eckhart), a business executive oblivious to his wife's unhappiness. During dinner, Mary talks about writing for a local newspaper column about bickering couples and their troubles, while Barry does not think that other couples' problems are anyone else's concern. After dinner, Jerry discreetly asks Mary out on a date. Mary, out of frustration, accepts.

The next day, Terri, visiting a local art gallery, meets and begins a secret romance with Cheri (Kinski), a lesbian art gallery worker. Terri feels satisfied with their love-making and enjoys the quiet compared with Jerry's performance.

Meanwhile, Cary (Patric), a doctor friend of Barry's, is a devious and narcissistic sexual predator who picks up and seduces naïve and emotionally vulnerable young women and quickly dumps them for his sadistic pleasure of watching them cry. Aware of the distance between Barry and Mary, Cary tries to persuade Barry to leave his wife for the swinging, non-monogamous lifestyle Cary has built for himself. Barry thinks he can save his marriage.

During Jerry and Mary's rendezvous at a local hotel, Jerry fails to get aroused during foreplay. As a result, he takes out his frustrations on Mary, believing she has made him impotent. Angry and offended by Jerry's misogynist outburst, Mary abruptly ends their "affair." A few days later, she feels more miserable when Barry unwittingly takes her to the same hotel room to rekindle their romance. Mary realizes that Jerry had told Barry about being in the room. Barry fails to understand Mary's unhappy attitude and thinks he might somehow be responsible.

Jerry, Barry, and Cary get together to work out at the local gym, and, in the steam room, Barry tries to get them to reveal their best sexual experiences. Barry tells them that he only feels satisfied with himself. Cary then tells a disturbing story about his best sexual experience: partaking in a gang rape where he and a group of friends forcibly sodomized a male high school classmate on the floor in the locker room at his boarding school when he was a teenager. Barry and Jerry are stunned but fascinated by Cary's sordid and evil story. When Barry tries to persuade Jerry to reveal his best sexual experience, Jerry refuses. After being goaded in the locker room, Jerry angrily responds that his best sexual experience was with Barry's wife. He then leaves, with Barry too stunned to reply. Cary, also caught off-guard, says: "that beats my story."

After returning home from the gym, Barry confronts Mary over dinner about her affair with Jerry, just as Terri accidentally finds out about Jerry's indiscretion after finding Mary's phone number in one of Jerry's playbooks. Mary and Jerry are both unapologetic for their unfaithfulness and express dissatisfaction to their spouses. Terri accidentally reveals her own lesbian romance with Cheri but does not feel guilty for her infidelity. Jerry later confronts Cheri at the art gallery over his wife's affair with her. However, Cheri also shows no remorse or regret for her relationship with Terri or for interfering with Jerry and Terri's troubled marriage. Cheri tells Jerry that Terri can do much better than being with him.

As the film comes to an end, both the married couples split up. Terri moves in with Cheri, although she quickly finds her emotional neediness irritating. Jerry continues his philandering lifestyle with his female theater students. Barry becomes miserable all by himself because he can no longer give himself an erection during masturbation. Mary has moved in with Cary, who treats her coldly like all the other women in his life even though she is pregnant with his child. The film closes with Mary and Cary in bed, as Mary realizes that she is even more unhappy in her new relationship with the catty and heartless Cary than she had been with her clueless husband, Barry.

Set in Manhattan in the early 1940s, the film focuses on the relationship between Joseph Mitchell, a writer for ''The New Yorker'', and Joe Gould, an aging, bearded, disheveled bohemian and Harvard University graduate who wanders through the streets of Greenwich Village carrying a tattered portfolio and demanding donations to "The Joe Gould Fund". At times Gould is calmly sweet and perceptive, at others he's a pathological liar and an obnoxious drunk, and he frequently experiences sudden outbursts of rage. Earning occasional financial support from poet E. E. Cummings, portrait painter Alice Neel, Village Vanguard founder Max Gordon, art gallery owner Vivian Marquie, and even the sculptor Gaston Lachaise, Gould is able to secure a nightly room in flophouses until an anonymous benefactor arranges accommodations in a residential hotel for him.

Gould allegedly is collecting the observations of average citizens to incorporate into his oral history of the world, fragments of which he has given to various people for safekeeping. Mitchell meets him in a coffee shop and initially is fascinated by the colorful character. However, with the passage of time, as Gould becomes irritatingly intrusive and demanding, disrupting the ordinary life Mitchell shares with his photographer wife and their two daughters, the journalist begins to question if the elderly man's 9 million-word opus actually exists or is merely a figment of his imagination.

One scene with Mitchell and Neel takes place at a gallery filled with the work of Lachaise, and was filmed at Salander-O'Reilly Galleries at 20 East 79th.

The setting is Rome, 54 A. D.; the camera pans past a billboard announcing "Another Appian Freeway for Your Safety (Slow Chariots Keep Right)" before settling on an exterior view of the Coliseum. As spectators file into the Coliseum, their shadows fall on a poster describing the day's sporting event: "Detroit Lions in Season Opener — Undefeated Lions out for First Taste of Victory". The sign is a reference to the NFL team with the same name, which was a league powerhouse at the time. The NFL Lions had appeared in the league championship game in the three seasons prior to the short being released, winning the title in 1952 and 1953.

A radio-style sportscaster describes the scene for his audience and the entrance of Emperor Nero into the arena (in a chariot with tail fins from a 1950s Cadillac). Nero is represented as a caricature of actor Charles Laughton who had played the character in ''The Sign of the Cross'' in 1932. The announcer reports that Nero has "consented to throw out the first victim". When it turns out they are all out of victims, Nero commands Captain of the Praetorian Guard Sam to take his legion out to get one right away informing Sam that if he fails to provide a victim for the lions, ''Sam'' will be the victim. Along the way, Sam and the legion (which looks more like a squad) cross paths with Bugs Bunny who is looking at them expecting a parade. Sam sends his troops after Bugs. but he trips them up with his foot. Sam then chases after Bugs in a chariot where he once again is a victim of the "giddyap mule!/whoa mule!" routine.

Through the rest of the picture, Sam and Bugs are running through the labyrinth of the Coliseum where the lions seem to be lurking behind every other door. Sam ends up near a lion's cage and is startled when it roars loudly, for which it gets clobbered over the head. Seeing this, Bugs turns a wheel which opens the cage and the now-freed lion roars again. Sam starts whacking it again, but slows and halts as he realizes the situation: "How many times do I have to tell.... you.. to.. shut... up?". Sam barely escapes by putting a locked door between him and the angry predator only for the lion to grab the rug underneath him and pull him under the door to attack him. Yosemite then chases Bugs into a large underground room, full of sleeping lions. Sam unknowingly follows him in and sees Bugs sneaking toward the ladder. Bugs gets out and lowers an alarm clock on a rope through a grate into the room, which wakes the lions who attack Sam as he escapes.

He then nears a pit of lions with Bugs at the other side ("How now, brown cow?"). As Sam makes his way across with stilts ("No long-eared galoot can outfox the Captain of the Guards!"), Bugs gives the lions some axes and saws which they use to cut the stilts down and attack Sam as he tries to get back to the other side.

Bugs finally escapes, but accidentally gets himself in the middle of the arena. Sam victoriously joins Nero in his box as the lions are released. The lions run by Bugs who quickly protects himself and straight to Sam and Nero who take refuge atop a tall column. Bugs puts on a Roman crown and says "Well, as the Romans say, ''E Pluribus Uranium''". As the enraged lions slowly chop down the column piece by piece in order to attack Nero and Sam, Nero plays "Taps" on his fiddle as he and Sam await their fate, with the cartoon fading to black.

'''Part One – Senator – 79–70 BC'''

The book opens with Tiro, the secretary of Marcus Tullius Cicero and the book's narrator, looking back in time over the thirty-six years he was with his master. They met when he was twenty-four years old and Cicero twenty-seven on the family estate in the hills of Arpinum. Cicero decided to consult the leading teachers of rhetoric, most of whom lived in Greece and Asia Minor, and borrows Tiro, never to return him. After trying the so-called Asiatic method, Cicero decides to enroll in the school of Apollonius Molon, a lawyer from Alabanda, who had retired to Rhodes to open his rhetorical school. It is here that Cicero develops the physical physique and voice that will make him such a popular and effective orator. Returning to Rome and becoming a senator, Cicero participates in a year of obligatory government service in Sicily and makes his way back to Rome to seek his fame and fortune. The plot develops when the senator and lawyer is visited some months later by Sthenius of Thermae, who has fled from Sicily after being threatened by the governor of Sicily, Gaius Verres. Cicero decides to defend him and raises the matter in the Roman senate but his motion is talked out by Catulus and finally Hortensius, an aristocrat, Cicero's arch rival and the leading lawyer in Rome.

Cicero dispatches Tiro to the National Archive, Catulus's domain, to check Verres's quaestorian records as governor and finds no accounts submitted. In the meantime, Verres finds Sthenius guilty of spying in his absence and sentences him to death. Tiro arranges for a place to hide him – in one of his wife's garrets in the Roman slums – and a decision is made to appeal to the tribunes and a deal is made with Palicanus, one of Pompey's lackeys – Pompey the Great will assist over Sthenius if Cicero supports Pompey's consular ambitions. Gaius Verres, the pro-praetor of Sicily, sends his freeman Timarchides to search Cicero's house and Terentia, his wife, berates her husband to act. The next day Cicero, accompanied by Terentia and Quintus, his brother, makes a speech before the ten tribunes and Sthenius is safe as long as he remains in Rome. Crassus returns to Rome, victorious after his defeat of Spartacus and Cicero goes out to welcome him, following an invitation, on the Appian Way. However, the two men intensely dislike each other and Cicero refuses to support Crassus's request for a triumph. Pompey the Great also returns from Spain and strikes a bargain with Crassus: they will share the consulship and Cicero's career will soon end.

Sthenius, who has been ignored for some time, turns up at the house one morning, accompanied by Heraclius and Epicrates who have also been swindled out of their estates by Verres. Over dinner one evening, Cicero declares his intention to stand for election as aedile and to accomplish it by prosecuting Gaius Verres for extortion, based on the accumulated evidence. Over the following months, Quintus acts as his campaign manager. Pompey is given his triumph. Gaius Verres returns to Rome. At the embezzlement court, chaired by Glabrio, Cicero submits his postulates, an application to prosecute. However, the court also receives a second application to prosecute Verres from Verres's quaestor, Caecilius Niger – a time delaying tactic by Hortensius and Cicero has to fight it out at the Temple of Castor and eventually wins against a biased jury, surprisingly supported by Catulus, the hard and snobbish old senator who is, nevertheless, a patriot to his marrow.

Cicero is forced to borrow money from Terentia to support his case and leaves Rome on the Ides of January to seek evidence against Verres in Sicily. He, Lucius, his cousin, and Tiro gather a lot of incriminating evidence, particularly after a raid on the office of the tax collectors in Syracuse where they find out about the extent of Verres's extortion from a set of duplicate records (the originals have been removed) kept by Vibius, the financial director during Verres's term of office. On a visit to the stone quarries, they encounter crews of merchant ships imprisoned there that should have been captured pirates whom Verres had ransomed. Cicero has an argument with Metellus, the Governor, over his appropriation of the records but is allowed, under law, to make a fair copy of them and is supported by leading members of the city's most eminent men.

On his return to Rome, Cicero discovers Hortensius hoping to tie up the extortion court's time until the consular elections. To fund his case and also his aedile election campaign, Cicero is obliged once more to borrow money from Terentia. At the first round of the elections, Cicero learns that Verres is bribing the voters with his immense wealth; Marcus Metellus also draws the election court as praetor. At his wit's end, Cicero pays a visit with Tiro to Pompey's house and a secret bargain is made. The second round of the aedile elections takes place on the Field of Mars Marcus Cicero is victorious against all the odds. His energies renewed, Cicero brings all this Sicilian witnesses to the extortion court, on 5 August in the consulship of Gnaeus Pompey Magnus and Marcus Licinius Crassus, and the trial of Gaius Verres begins. With only ten days to go until the games of Pompey the Great, Cicero follows Terentia's advice and makes a short, withering speech saying he will make his case in the space of ten days and his success is confirmed when the court hears of the case of a Roman citizen, named Herennius, beheaded by Verres because he knew of the Governor taking bribes from the pirates. On the last day, a Sicilian named Numitorius tells the story of Publius Gavius, flogged to death in public despite saying 'I am a Roman citizen' at every stroke of the lash. All that is left is to determine the fine. Verres disappears and Hortenius makes a written offer of one and a half million which Cicero and his team reject. However, Pompey pays a call to his house who orders them to accept it (it turns out Cicero had asked Pompey to ensure Glabrio, the judge of the extortion trial, remained independent) – Pompey himself does not want to be caught in the middle of a civil war between the people and the senate.

'''Part Two – Praetorian 68–64 BC'''

Cicero enjoys two years of success and happiness. In his thirty-ninth year he is looking forward to the elections for a praetorship. He maintains relations with Pompey and decides to take on the case of Marcus Fonteius, the former governor of Further Gaul who is being prosecuted for corruption. Cicero does it so that he can deal with the rumour that he supports foreigners above his own people and lay it to rest. Back in the extortion court he wins his case against the Gauls but is saddened by the death of his cousin, Lucius, whom Tiro knows commits suicide, as well as the death of his father. Whilst staying at the family farm, news arrives that Rome is threatened by pirates and Cicero is invited to attend a council of war held at Pompey's country estate. A plan is hatched to divide the Mediterranean into fifteen zones, with each zone to have its own legate, responsible for scouring his area clean of pirates and then to make treaties with the local rulers to prevent their return – all to report to one supreme commander, Pompey the Great.

Knowing that the aristocrats will baulk at this concentration of power, Cicero persuades Pompey not to put his name anywhere on the bill setting up the supreme command and to leave it to the people to vote it to him. Rome is in a panic with the burning of Ostia by the pirates and when the Latin Festival finishes, Gabinius mounts the rostra to demand a supreme commander and at a meeting in the Senate Pompey's arrival is greeted with boos and jeering and Piso and the other aristocrats attack him for wanting to be a second Romulus in their determination to vote down the ''lex Gabinia''. Back at Pompey's mansion there is a determination to prevent Crassus stealing Pompey's glory. Cicero's plan is to have Gabinius summon Pompey to the rostra the next day, asking him to serve as supreme commander, and to have Pompey reject it and then the people would demand he take it. Cicero writes his speech and Pompey makes his announcement to retire from public office.

Crassus and Pompey are evenly matched against one another, with each having enough supporters to veto the bill if required. Crassus turns up at Cicero's house and suggests a joint supreme command, and offering to support Cicero for consul if he conveys the offer to Pompey but Cicero's rejects the proposal, despite being threatened by Crassus with suffering the same fate as Tiberius Gracchus. Tiro is dispatched once more to the National Archive to research Gracchus and Cicero learns that his agrarian reform law was vetoed by the tribune, Marcus Octavius, and Gracchus called upon the people to vote him out of office but was later beaten to death with sticks by the aristocrats and his body thrown into the Tiber. At a meeting at Pompey's house, Cicero reads out the extract from the Annals and it is decided to use the same precedent – although a dangerous one for the health of the republic – to get Pompey the supreme command.

Gabinius oversees a vote although he is opposed by a fellow tribune, Trebellius, a supporter of Crassus, and so Gabinius puts it to the voters to vote him out of office. Catulus tries to intervene and Roscius tries to propose splitting the joint command but is ignored by Gabinus and the ''lex Gabinia'' is passed. Pompey later arrives in the forum wearing the ''paludamentum'', the bright scarlet cloak of every Roman proconsul on active service, and leaves the city to tackle the pirates, not to return for another six years. Cicero is elected praetor and is allocated the extortion court. The ''lex Manilia'' is proposed, granting command of the war against Mithradates to Pompey, along with the government of the provinces of Asia, Cilicia and Bithynia, the latter two held by Lucullus, which is opposed by Catulus and Hortensius. Marcus Caelius Rufus, the son of a wealthy banker, becomes Cicero's pupil and brings him political gossip. Cicero is summoned to the house of Metellus Pius, pontifex maximus, and requested to prosecute Catilina over his extortion as governor in Africa.

Turning down a governorship of a province and the lucrative money-making opportunities, Cicero opts instead to defend Caius Cornelius, Pompey's former tribune, who has been charged with treason by the aristocrats and the jury acquits him of all charges. Events take a turn for the worse when Publius Clodius Pulcher lays charges against Lucius Sergius Catilina for the crimes he committed in Africa and Cicero thinks about defending Catilina. Terentia gives birth to a baby boy named Marcus, much to the household's delight, and Cicero goes to Catilina's house once more and says he is so guilty he cannot be his advocate. Cicero leaves Rome to campaign amongst the people of Nearer Gaul for their vote in the consular election. He is assisted by and stays with the governor, Piso who tells him that the aristocracy are backing Antonius Hybrida and, on his return to Rome, learns that Hybrida and Catilina are planning to run on a joint ticket. He learns from his close friend, Atticus, that Crassus is attempting to hijack the election through bribery. Using two political agents, Ranunculus and Filum, he is eventually taken to a bribery agent, Gaius Salinator, who tells him under duress that he has been paid by Crassus to deliver votes for Hybrida and Catilina and that Crassus is attempting to buy eight thousand electoral votes at the cost of twenty million.

Tiro is dispatched off to meet with Caelius Rufus, who is now working for Crassus, to find out what his plans are. Rufus, who dislikes Crassus intensely, agrees to hide Tiro in a secret alcove behind a tapestry during an important meeting. About twenty important men meet at Crassus’ house, including Caesar and Catilina, and on Tiro's return to Cicero they work together on his transcribed notes, finding out that the conspirators plan to seize control of the state, introduce a land reform bill, sell off vast amounts of conquered land abroad and then annex Egypt for further acquisition of land in Italy for the plebeians.

It is Terentia's idea to Cicero to use the aristocrats to support him. A copy of the meeting's notes are sent to Quintus Hortensius Hortalus. Cicero makes a devastating attack on Mucius in the senate, calling him a whore for being paid to slander Cicero's reputation, and then goes on to indirectly attack Crassus for using bribery to reject an anti-bribery bill. Cicero then turns his attack on Catilina and, on returning home, has to wait for a reaction from Hortensius. He receives a message and is taken to Lucullus’ new house outside Rome, and Quintus Metellus, who tried to block Cicero's efforts in Sicily, is also present. They are suspicious of the meeting's notes but Tiro convinces them by recording their own conversation using his shorthand script and in the early hours of the morning a deal is struck between the 'new man' and the aristocrats.

The next day is the consular election on the Field of Mars. On returning home Cicero informs Quintus of what has transpired, and Terentia is also supportive. Cicero puts on a splendid show with a large crowd of supporters and followers accompanying him on the parade and Hortensius comes up to him with a message which leaves Catilina and Hybrida confused as they know the two men are arch enemies. The aristocratic centuries have been instructed to switch their support from Catilina to Cicero and, despite Crassus’ vote purchase, the turnout is large enough to swing the election Cicero's way, and he is the outright winner for consul with 193 centuries, followed by Hybrida with 102. At the age of forty-two, the youngest age allowable to achieve the supreme imperium of the Roman consulship, the 'new man' has achieved his ultimate ambition.

Jennifer Tree is a rising fashion model. On an evening out alone, Jennifer is stalked and drugged. She wakes up in a cell containing personal items taken from her apartment. Jennifer is shown recordings of victims who were tortured in the same cell, as well as records of her interviews. She screams and pleads to be let go, but no one replies.

Jennifer is subjected to various forms of psychological torture. She then discovers that a young man, Gary Dexter, is being held captive in an adjoining cell. The two make contact and attempt to find an escape. They both make it to a garage containing a vehicle, but are knocked out by sleeping gas. Jennifer wakes up in her cell, and sees a recording of Gary being threatened in his cell. Afterwards, he is thrown into her cell. She rushes over to help him, and they proceed to have sex.

After Jennifer drinks a bottle of drugged water and falls asleep, Gary wakes up and leaves the cell. It is revealed Gary and his older brother, Ben, have Jennifer captive in their home; she is the latest of several women they have abducted to re-enact the tortures inflicted upon them as children by their mother. Gary joins Ben and tells him that he is falling in love with Jennifer, then stabs his brother. He watches recordings of him murdering their mother.

Gary is interrupted by two detectives looking for Ben. Despite Gary telling them his brother is not home, the two enter the house. After they accidentally see the surveillance video of Jennifer in her room, Gary shoots them both.

Gary goes back to Jennifer's cell and tells her that he has killed the perpetrators and they can leave. He places Jennifer in a room and tells her to stay there. One of the detectives, having survived the gunshot wound, jumps out at her. Mistaking him for her captor, she kills him with a baseball bat. She then discovers the incriminating photos with Gary in them. Ben, who survived the stabbing, attacks her, and she kills him as well.

Jennifer searches through one of the detectives' pockets. Gary finds her and she says she will help him clean up the mess. When he lets down his guard, she sprays him with pepper spray and runs away, sabotaging the house's electrical system. Eventually, Jennifer successfully kills Gary. She uncovers a window leading outside and leaves.

Alternate ending

The film's original ending, shown in its entirety on the DVD, depicted a man being captured and tortured with acid before being murdered with a hammer. Through press clippings, the man is shown to be a serial killer of women, and his assailant is revealed to be Jennifer, who has adapted her former captors' methods to become a vigilante who tortures and kills criminals. This ending was re-edited and used as a cold open in the final cut.

The book is presented as a translation of an ancient Greek novel published in Athens just after the Peloponnesian War, complete with the extensive footnotes from the scholar performing the translation. In the ancient novel (which is itself called ''The Athenian Murders''), a young ephebe named Tramachus is discovered on the slopes of Mount Lycabettus, apparently attacked by wolves. Diagoras, the boy's erastes and tutor at the Academy, enlists the help of a "Decipherer of Enigmas" (a detective named Heracles Pontor) to learn more about Tramachus's death. As Diagoras and Heracles investigate, more youths from the Academy are discovered brutally murdered. Their investigation takes them all over Athens, from mystery cult worship services to a symposium hosted by Plato.

Meanwhile, the translator (who is never named) provides frequent commentary on the work, particularly as he believes it to be an example of a (fictional) ancient literary device called ''eidesis''. "Eidesis" is the practice of repeating words or phrases so as to evoke a particular image or idea in the reader's mind, as if it were a kind of literary steganography. As the translator works on the novel, he concludes that the eidetic secret concealed within the novel is The Twelve Labors of Heracles, one labor for each of the twelve chapters of the novel. The translator becomes obsessed with the imagery, going so far as to see himself depicted within the ancient work.

Partway through the novel, the translator is kidnapped and forced to continue the translation in a cell. His captor turns out to be the scholar Montalo, whose edition of ''The Athenian Murders'' is the only surviving copy of the work. Montalo himself had obsessed over the novel, hoping to find in it a proof of Plato's Theory of Forms. He felt that should an eidetic text, such as this novel, evoke the same ideas in each reader it would then prove that ideas have a separate, independent reality. However, Montalo finished the translation only to discover that the book proved the opposite—that the book proved his (and the translator's) reality did not exist. The translator finishes the work only to have the same realization: that they themselves are characters in ''The Athenian Murders'', which was written by a colleague of Plato named Philotextus as a way to incorporate Plato's theory of knowledge while criticizing the philosophical lifestyle.

During the Korean War, Major Cleve "Iceman" Saville, a veteran World War II ace, returns to combat, eager to fly the F-86 Sabre jet fighter. His commanding officer, Colonel "Dutch" Imil, assigns him command of a flight. Among his pilots is a new replacement, talented but brash Lieutenant Ed Pell. On his first mission, Pell abandons his element leader to go after a group of MiG-15s, and the other pilot is killed. As a result, Saville wants Pell assigned to someone else, but Imil overrules him. Pell was top of his class in flight school and Imil sees him as a younger version of Saville. If anyone can get Pell to grow up, it is the major.

Another pilot under Saville's command, Lieutenant Carl Abbott, poses a different problem. He lacks confidence in his abilities; his worried wife Kristina asks Saville to watch over him. Saville falls in love with her, and vice versa. Aware of the situation, Abbott offers Saville a deal: his wife in return for the opportunity, if they should run into him, to go one-on-one with "Casey Jones", the most feared enemy ace. A disgusted Saville turns him down. Nevertheless, on a mission soon afterward, Abbott tangles with Casey Jones and is shot down behind enemy lines. Saville shoots down the enemy ace, then searches for Abbott. When he spots Abbott's parachute, Saville deliberately crash-lands his aircraft nearby, disobeying standing orders. He cuts the injured Abbott down from a tree, but they are immediately attacked by an enemy patrol. Pell strafes the enemy infantrymen, but they shoot him down and he joins his comrades on the ground. The trio then set out through enemy territory toward friendly lines.

Along the way, they are assisted by a Korean Christian farmer and his family. When an enemy patrol happens by, the Americans hide. However, in their haste, they leave behind a flight jacket, which is spotted. As a result, the entire family is executed, including a young girl. Saville and Pell avenge them, ambushing and wiping out the patrol, but Saville is shot in the shoulder. Wounded, exhausted, and hungry, the three airmen finally reach the safety of UN lines.

Afterward, Saville and Abbott convalesce in a military hospital. Abbott is to be transferred back to the U.S. to recuperate. His brush with death has changed his priorities; he remorsefully asks Kristina for another chance at their marriage. She decides to go with him.

The game's story revolves around an extraterrestrial mineral, Siberite, that can catalyze cold fusion and serve as fuel for an alien artifact. Siberite and the artifact – named EON – are discovered by an American expedition to Russia during World War I. EON is revealed to be a time machine capable of sending objects into the past, but by the time of the discovery, Siberite stocks are exhausted and research stops. Then in the new millennium vast deposits of the mineral are found in Siberia, and Americans are able to extract enough of it for small-scale time-travel.

The U.S. comes up with a plan to send a small force two million years back in time. There it will mine the Siberite and transport it over the Bering Land Bridge to Alaska, into what will one day be in American hands. The best troops are selected, briefed, and told that it is a one-way trip back through time.

This results in a new time line with the mineral located in Alaska and the U.S. being the only undisputed superpower thanks to the inexhaustible source of energy. Here the time machine wasn't found by the U.S. but the Russians instead. The Soviet Union fumes under American supremacy. Frustration turns to outrage when Soviet scientists find traces of American settlement and Alaskite, the source of U.S. power, in remote Siberia. A Soviet expedition is sent through the EON, here called TAWAR, to repel the American thieves and preserve what is rightfully theirs.

The game story is freely based on the sci-fi novel ''The Last Day of Creation'' (1981) by Wolfgang Jeschke.

Julianna 'Juli' Baker meets Bryce Loski two weeks before the beginning of second grade. Though Juli believes she is in love, Bryce is annoyed by her constant and persistent attention.

In elementary school, Juli becomes preoccupied with saving her beloved sycamore tree from being cut down. She spends hours up in the tree, but her protest is foiled when she is forcibly removed from her favourite perch. Unbeknownst to Juli, Bryce feels horrible about Juli's tree but does not know how or if he should bring it up with her. Matters are not helped when Bryce's grandfather takes a liking to Juli and starts pestering Bryce to be friends with her.

Things with Juli start to change when Juli begins giving Bryce and his family weekly batches of chicken eggs from the hens she raises in her yard. Bryce’s family worries that because Juli’s yard has always been very messy the eggs may contain salmonella. Bryce's father tells him to stop accepting eggs from Juli, but rather than risk hurting Juli’s feelings, Bryce ends up throwing the eggs away every morning. Despite his efforts, Juli accidentally discovers what Bryce’s family thinks about her and her eggs. Her feelings for Bryce deteriorate even further when she overhears him talking to a classmate about her mentally challenged uncle. Juli, furious and hurt, decides to abandon every thought of Bryce.

Bryce, meanwhile, has started to notice and like Juli more and more, especially after he finds an old article about Juli's protest for her tree. At a dinner party his family organizes, he attempts to explain to Juli that he wasn’t trying to make fun of her uncle, but she refuses to listen to his excuses. Bryce finally confronts Juli and attempts to kiss her at an auctioned lunch date both of them attend. Juli throws him off, mortified, and goes home to hide from Bryce’s attempts to contact her. Bryce makes a last attempt to win Juli’s heart by planting a sycamore tree in her backyard. When Juli realizes what he is doing, she knows that he has actually changed and decides to give him a second chance.

Conan, about forty in these stories, embarks on the most desperate gamble of his life — leading a revolution against King Numedides of Aquilonia, with the goal of making himself king in his place. From his low point as a treasure-seeking fugitive in the Pictish Wilderness, he is retrieved by allies from his days in the Aquilonian army to lead the revolt. The borderlands suffer grievously during the war, but in the end Conan takes the throne, only to suffer the customary uneasiness of the head that wears the crown, from an attempted assassination involving Stygian sorcerer Thoth-Amon to magical treachery on the battlefield as he strives to defend his hard-won kingship against predatory foreign powers.

The Aquilonian civil war between Conan and Numedides is not actually depicted, but occurs offstage as background to the action of "Wolves Beyond the Border", Howard's only non-Conan tale set in the Hyborian Age. De Camp later made the war itself the subject of his novel ''Conan the Liberator'', co-written with Lin Carter.

"The Phoenix on the Sword", which Howard rewrote from an earlier Kull story, marks his only use of Thoth-Amon as an antagonist, in a somewhat peripheral role — he and Conan never even meet! In later stories, De Camp and Carter would later elevate the Stygian sorcerer into one of Conan's principal enemies.

Howard later reused the plot of "The Scarlet Citadel" as the basis of his only Conan novel, ''The Hour of the Dragon'' (afterwards retitled ''Conan the Conqueror'').

Chronologically, the four short stories collected as ''Conan the Usurper'' fall between ''Conan the Warrior'' and ''Conan the Conqueror''.

Game interface The game's storyline is about the Blubs, an extraterrestrial family (father and mother Blub, their son and daughter, the grandparents and their pet Stinkie), who crash with their spaceship on a landfill on Earth after being pursued by the villainous Khan and his criminal associates. After surviving the crash, the Blub family goes on to live on the landfill, while trying to repair their damaged spaceship in order to return home. The player is set out on a mission by grandfather Blub, an inventor and the spaceship's technician, to find the missing parts needed to reconstruct the spaceship. Meanwhile, Khan, whose ship also crashed on the landfill after the pursuit of the Blub family, sends out his minions to frustrate the efforts of the Blubs.

''Bang'' is a story about an unnamed young woman living in Los Angeles, played by Darling Narita. It explores her transformation from being a victim to being in control, after a series of incidents which cause her to snap.

On a raining stormy night while traveling through rural Ireland on his way to Dublin, Porky Pig is caught in a storm and asks for lodgings at a nearby castle for the night, but the caretaker, Seamus O'Toole, tells him that no one inhabits the place but himself and the leprechauns. Porky dismisses the remark, tells the caretaker to "cut out this nonsense and take my bags to a room", and slams the front door, causing a mace above to fall. It strikes Porky on the head and knocks him unconscious. At that point, "O'Toole" is revealed to be a pair of leprechauns disguised as a human being. O'Pat, the first one, is very calm while O'Mike, the second one, quickly becomes frantic with fear that Porky is after their pot of gold. O'Pat, being the "Chief Leprechaun" in their area, convinces his partner that he knows how to deal with the pig.

When Porky wakes up, he is helped to a room by the "reunited" caretaker who, during the short trip to the room, gets accidentally divided in two again when O'Pat walks along the stone railing of the stairs and goes off to the left as Porky and O'Mike go right. Porky, quite tired out by "all this excitement" doesn't notice the problem with his host, even handing him his coat, which O'Mike takes, and Porky tells him to just put the bags anywhere. Moving toward the bed, he meets "O'Toole" who asks him if he has seen his other half. Without thinking, he tells him it's by the door, O'Pat moves out of frame, and then it registers with Porky that he is in the presence of two leprechauns. Terrified, he hides in the bed, which is a trap door. The bed closes into the wall and Porky is dropped down a winding shaft until he lands in a witness chair in a leprechaun courtroom ("The Leprechaun Court of Shaughnessy Township, County of Rourke O'Houlihan"). There the leprechauns charge and convict him of trying to steal the pot of gold (despite having no substantial evidence against him); they sentence him to the wearing of the Green Shoes.

At first, Porky appreciates them as nice shoes, but soon he realizes that they are cursed, as his feet begin a frantic Irish jig which makes O’Pat and O’Mike laugh at him. The shoes will not stop dancing; even when he removes them, they chase him and return themselves to his feet. He is "danced" through an Irish dreamscape—reminsicent of the 1948 Powell & Pressburger classic The Red Shoes famous 15 minute ballet montage—until he falls in a boiling pot of gold. At this point, he wakes up, in a puddle of water, on the spot where he fell after being hit by the mace. "O'Toole" is standing over him with an empty bucket, implying he has dumped water over Porky to revive him. Porky screams, remembering that "O'Toole" is actually the two leprechauns, and leaps up to one of the posts that had been holding the mace. The caretaker tries to convince Porky that nothing has been amiss; Porky, frightened and disoriented, grabs his bags and runs away from the castle and into the distance stating he's late for an appointment with his psychologist. "O'Toole" watches him run, smoking his upsidedown pipe, and sporting a mischievous smile, shakes hands with himself (a hand that emerges from his trousers, clearly O'Mike) over a shamrock-shaped iris out.

Conan, now about thirty-one, survives a Turanian-involved trap which crushes his Zuagir raiders and seeks revenge on Vardanes of Zamora, their betrayer. Afterwards, he moves on to other adventures, killing a high priest in the cannibal-haunted city of Zamboula and ultimately gaining command of a band of Kozaki warriors in the service of Kobad Shah, king of Iranistan. In his final adventure, Conan once again encounters his old rival, Olgerd Vladislav, and predecessor as chief of the Zuagirs.

Chronologically, the four short stories collected as ''Conan the Wanderer'' fall between ''Conan the Freebooter'' and ''Conan the Adventurer''.

Rodrigo Junquera, who is close to death after a long illness, decides to ask the nanny of his young child, Virginia Martínez, to marry him so she can look after his children when he will be gone.

Virginia is a noble young woman who is in love with Rodrigo's eldest son, Carlos Alberto. When after his death it is discovered that Virginia is Rodrigo's wife, the heir of all his wealth, Carlos Alberto, along with his brothers, accuse her of being an ambitious woman who married Rodrigo in secret.

Virginia's ordeal begins because she not only has to deal with the contempt of Carlos Alberto, who is still in love with her, but with the rudeness of Rodrigo's oldest children: Junior, Raquel, and Violeta. With the love of Aldo and Memo, the little ones, it makes coping with the existence within the mansion a little better.

Meanwhile, in another part of the country, a young woman named Vanessa is dedicated to deceiving millionaires in order to get their fortune, eager to get out of the miserable life she leads. She is the twin sister of Virginia, who has distanced herself so that their relationship is almost nil.

Beset by debt, Vanessa travels one day to Mexico where she meets Carlos Alberto, with whom she falls in love. However, despite her being a physical clone of Virginia, he despises her for her rudeness and impudence and just appearing like Virginia.

Virginia and Carlos Alberto marry, but after a series of faintings and loss of vision, Virginia discovers she has an inoperable brain cancer. At the same time, the medical findings confirm that she is pregnant. She finds that bringing the baby into the world can hasten the time of her fatal outcome. Virginia, disregarding the doctor's advice, decides to go ahead with the pregnancy. Blind and with the tumor extending inevitably, Virginia manages to give birth to a beautiful girl; but she dies afterwards.

The news of the death of her sister and the birth of her niece reaches Vanessa, who decides to go to Mexico to avenge all the slights Virginia suffered and to take care of her niece.

This cartoon is the first of a short series directed by Jones and using the characters of Marc Antony and Pussyfoot (Marc Antony's barks and grunts courtesy of an uncredited Mel Blanc).

Marc Antony, a massive-chested bulldog, tries to intimidate a stray kitten with his ferocious barking and grimacing. Instead of being frightened, she climbs onto the dog's back and falls asleep in his fur. Despite wincing at her kneading, Marc instantly falls for the kitten and decides to adopt her, bringing her home with him.

Upon his arrival, his human owner (voiced by Bea Benaderet), tired of picking up his things, orders him not to bring one more thing inside the house. As she reprimands him, Marc Antony discreetly hides the kitten under a bowl. Much of the cartoon centers on the kitten keeping several steps ahead of the dog, continually getting into things around the house. Each time she nearly alerts the dog's owner of her presence, he employs various tactics to hide or disguise her as common household items, including a powder puff, much to his owner's confusion.

After a while, Marc Antony takes the kitten into the kitchen and tries to reprimand her, but quickly forgets his anger when she tries to play with his wagging finger. But when he hears his owner walking toward the kitchen, he hastily hides the kitten in a flour canister and tries to look innocent. Growing tired of his antics, his owner ejects him from the kitchen and tells him to stay out while she bakes cookies. Marc Antony watches as his owner scoops out a cup of flour, and is horrified to see that the kitten is in the measuring cup. The lady pours the flour, along with the kitten, into a mixing bowl and prepares to use an electric mixer. The dog tries several times to thwart or distract her, finally spraying his face with whipped cream to make himself appear rabid. His exasperated owner sees through his disguise and throws him out of the house. Meanwhile, the kitten climbs out of the bowl and hides out of sight to clean herself up.

Marc Antony, unaware that the kitten has escaped, can only watch in horror as his owner mixes the cookie batter, rolls out the dough, cuts it into shapes and places the cookies in the oven. At each phase of the process, the poor dog becomes increasingly distressed until he finally collapses in tears, literally crying a puddle of tears in the back yard. His mistress comes out a short time later and, believing he is crying over being disciplined, lets him back inside and tells him he has been punished enough. She attempts to console him by giving him a cookie in the shape of a cat. Stunned, Marc takes the cookie and places it on his back where the kitten had slept earlier, then collapses and bawls uncontrollably.

The kitten then walks up and meows at him. Marc Antony, immediately overjoyed to see his friend alive, picks the kitten up and kisses her, then suddenly realizes that his owner is watching. He vainly tries to disguise the kitten like he did earlier, but then begs at his mistress's feet. To his surprise, she allows him to keep the kitten, sternly telling him that the kitten is completely ''his'' responsibility. At this realization, the dog once again wags his finger at her, but melts as the kitten plays with it and purrs at him. She climbs onto his back and settles in for a nap, and he tucks her in using his fur as a blanket.

Winslow's novel describes three decades of the United States' war on drugs by following several main characters: The DEA agent Art Keller; Adán Barrera, who controls large parts of the drug trade from Mexico to the United States of America; the prostitute Nora Hayden; and Sean Callan, a gangster from the streets of New York. Agent Keller becomes obsessed with the Barrera family after they torture and kill a DEA agent in Mexico. Trying to avenge his colleague, Keller discovers massive involvement of the US and the Mexican governments in drug trade operations. The CIA prevents him from taking revenge on the drug cartels to combat left-wing activists in Latin America.

Winslow's novel exposes the brutality of the war of drugs with graphic scenes of torture and massacres. It also navigates through the inner workings of the drug trade and how different organizations collaborate to achieve their respective goals, from the Mexican drug cartels to the Vatican.

The film stars the familiar characters from the Finnish TV show ''The Autocrats'' (a political satire of Finnish politics) in a fairy tale where the inhabitants of a small Finnish village have to defend themselves against a despotic emperor.

In ''Ambermoon'', the player plays as the grandson of the hero of ''Amberstar''. The grandfather of the player explains at the beginning of the game that his presumed-dead companion spoke to him in a dream of a new threat to the land of Lyramion. He consequently sends the player on a journey to Newlake, where he can speak with his old companion.

Those familiar with Thalion's games could find many connections to other games. The main character from ''Lionheart'' makes an appearance, as does the main enemy from ''Amberstar''. By way of a dimensional gate, the player briefly enters the world from Thalion's previous game ''Dragonflight''.

The 1940s English edition subdivides the book into seven major sections.

'''1. Red Don or White'''

Set in 1918, this section covers the initial opposition of the Don cossacks to the Bolsheviks, the effective surrender of many of them to Red forces, and then the growing discontent leading up to the Upper Don province revolting. In Tatarsk, the Melekhov family decide not to retreat with the White cossacks, but Mikhail Koshevoi and other communists begin purging the village of wealthier Cossacks. Piotra is protected by his old military comrade Yakov Fomin, now a Red leader, but Gregor is forced to flee to escape arrest.

'''2. The Cossacks Rise'''

The Don cossacks rise in response to the executions. Piotra Melekhov, leading the local squadrons, advances against the Reds but is outmaneuvered, captured and ultimately shot by Mikhail Koshevoi. The rebels effectively form their own soviet-style government, though they accept some logistical support from the Whites, who are fighting on the Donietz. Grigor becomes a division commander, holding Kargin against the Red forces, but is often appalled at his own side's actions, letting a number of family members of Red soldiers out of prison in Vieshenska. Mikhail Koshevoi becomes part of the Serdobsky regiment, and narrowly escapes when the men all defect to the rebels; his fellow communist Stockman is killed. Ivan Alexievich, a communist cossack from Tatarsk, is captured and driven through different villages with other prisoners being brutalised by crowds, before coming to Tatarsk and being shot by Piotra's widow Daria.

'''3. Retreat and Advance'''

In May 1919, the Red government pushes harder against the Don rebels, and they fall back to guard one side of the Don, leading all the fighting-age cossacks (Pantaleimon Melekhov included) to leave Tatarsk and guard a position on the other side of the river. Gregor works to keep order among the front, including forcing his own father not to desert, and his lover Aksinia moves to his camp opposite Vieshenska. Whilst the Melekhov men are on the other bank of the Don, Mikhail Koshevoi visits Tatarsk to remind Ilinicha, Gregor's mother, that he intends to marry her daughter Dunia; whilst there, he murders Grishaka, an elderly relative of Natalia's, and burns the houses of seven wealthier cossacks including the village priest. Eventually, the Reds retreat under pressure from advancing White forces.

'''4. The Shadows Fall'''

The Whites reach the insurgent army; Gregor's men link up with them as they push towards Ust-Miedvieditsa, but Gregor clashes with the White officer Fitzhelaurov, who treats him as a mere cossack with contempt despite their near-equivalent commands. He continues commanding his men for a while, but is eventually reduced in rank in favour of more upper class officers. Mitka Korshunov, a Tatarsk White cossack, returns with the Kalmyk regiments who are used for punitive actions, and kills the Koshevoi family in Mikhail's absence. The White general Sidorin comes to Tatarsk and provide medals and money to the women, in an attempt to drum up support for the war effort. Piotra's widow Daria is initially happy to have the money, as she has a disease, but she then discovers that it is syphilis and cannot be cured. She starts contemplating death, and admits to Natalia, Gregor's wife, that she assisted him in renewing his relationship with Aksinia. Natalia confronts Aksinia, who admits everything. Angry at Gregor, Natalia resolves not to have his third child, which she has just discovered herself to be pregnant with. The attempt to abort the pregnancy goes badly wrong, giving Natalia severe internal bleeding and causing her death. Gregor briefly returns to Tatarsk before returning to his new regiment; Daria drowns herself in the Don ten days after he leaves.

'''5. Flight to the Sea'''

Late in the summer of 1919, Pantaleimon is mobilised, but deserts rapidly. The Red overall strategy changes (this is attributed to Stalin), seeking to push through the Donbass area rather than the Don province, cutting the Whites' Volunteer Army off from their Cossack forces: by November this plan works, forcing the Volunteers to withdraw south, exposing the Cossacks' left flank and ultimately forcing them to retreat too. Gregor returns home with severe Typhus, from which he slowly recovers. The retreat reaches Tatarsk, and Pantaleimon and Gregor go by different routes. Gregor travels with his old orderly, Prokhor Zykov, and Aksinia, though he is forced to leave the latter behind when she becomes ill. On arriving at one village he finds that Pantaleimon has died, and buries him. Gregor falls ill himself, and Prokhor nurses him as they travel into the Kuban region, ultimately arriving in Novorossisk. There, the Whites are boarding ships and fleeing to the Crimea or to Turkey; Gregor and the other Cossacks are unable to get a place on a ship. Deciding not to attempt flight to Tbilisi, Gregor stays, and the section ends as the Reds close in on the port.

'''6. Home At Last'''

Aksinia returns home to Tatarsk, having recovered, and grows closer to the remaining Melekhovs out of their shared concern for Gregor. Mikhail Koshevoi returns too, and marries Dunia against her mother's wishes. Ilinicha for her part grows increasingly mad waiting for news of Gregor. It eventually transpires, when Prokhor Zykov (who has now lost an arm) returns, that he is now fighting for the Reds with Budionny's cavalry, and helping them win significant victories in the Ukraine. Gregor sends a letter which Ilinicha and Aksinia read numerous times to each other; Ilinicha dies before Gregor returns. Mikhail Koshevoi becomes the village's chairman, and is increasingly inflexible and defensive of the Red government's actions, as well as fearing for his life after he confronts and shoots at a cossack he suspects of White sympathies. Gregor finally returns having been demobilised - despite his military heroics, he cannot escape suspicion for his previous actions fighting for the insurgents and then the Whites, and found the Reds just as mistrustful of him as the Whites had been. Mikhail and Gregor are now implacable enemies, as the former suspects the latter of White sympathies. Gregor is forced to report to the Political Department in Vieshenska - where Piotra's old comrade Yakov Fomin warns him that former White officers are being rounded up. A few days later, as men from Vieshenska come to arrest him, Gregor flees with help from Dunia and Aksinia.

'''7. The Fugitive'''

Gregor wanders for a while, as in late 1920 supply shortages cause increasing tension in the region and armed bands spring up to oppose the grain requisitioning units. Eventually, Fomin himself attempts a revolt in Vieshenska, but the Communists maintain control of the machine-guns and his rising fails. Fleeing with his men, Fomin becomes a self-styled freedom fighter, though in practice he is little more than a bandit. Gregor joins him in preference to spending his life in hiding or prison, often clashing with him to prevent Fomin's men looting indiscriminately. Fomin's first band is wiped out, but after a long patch in hiding in the spring of 1921 he starts a second. Gregor eventually leaves Fomin and resolves to try and flee south with Aksinia, and hopefully start a new life there. As he and Aksinia try to flee southwards on horseback, though, they are shot at by some guards - Aksinia is hit in the base of the neck, killing her rapidly. After burying her, Gregor stays with some deserters camping in the woods for a while, before finally deciding to return to Tatarsk, symbolically throwing his rifle and pistol into the Don at last. On reaching there, he finds Dunia absent, Koshevoi gone to a military unit, and his daughter Poliushka a while since dead with pleurisy. The book ends with him holding his son Mikhail's hands in his own, outside the gate of the Melekhovs' old house, with the comment that these are the only things that life has left to him.

''All Night Long'' was set in a bakery in London, and showed the employees working during the night to prepare the bread for local hotels and cafés. Bill Chivers, who owned the business, had learnt bakery while in prison for armed robbery, and was determined to be a law abider. He employed Vanda, a Romanian, Scottish Tom and Courtney who was given a job after breaking into the bakery in the first episode. Clare was a disabled crime writer, who was inspired by the bakery, Wally was a cab driver and PC Digby and WPC Jackson were the local police officers.

After ''Voyager'' detects a Federation probe, the bridge-crew wonder if Starfleet has been looking for them. After setting a course for the beacon, they find it in an ion cloud and grow suspicious. Then, the Kazon Nistrim attack, matching their beams with the shield-harmonics of ''Voyager''. The Kazon send a small craft which rams and punctures the hull of ''Voyager'', enabling them to steal one of Voyager's transporter technology-modules, with a distraction in the cargo-bay. The shuttle causes a destabilized warp-field. To prevent the Kazon from escaping, a tractor-beam locks on and Maj Culluh hails them. It turns out that Seska, returning to her Cardassian form, has allied with Culluh and is helping the Kazon upgrade their technology to rival ''Voyager'' and dominate the quadrant. Seska calls Chakotay predictable and causes a feedback-loop which breaks the tractor-beam entirely. Voyager, unable to sustain a stable warp-field, cannot pursue. The crew plan on removing the craft before going anywhere. Janeway explains the ramifications of allowing Federation technology to be in the hands of the Kazon, and what might happen to the quadrant. Chakotay interprets this as a personal attack to lure ''Voyager'' into another trap for the rest of the ship's bounty of technology for the Kazon.

Meanwhile, on the Kazon Nistrim ship, Culluh attempts to unite the other sects by "sharing" ''Voyager'''s technology, starting with the transporter. On Voyager, Torres and Chakotay plan on beaming the transporter technology over; or, in a worst case scenario, destroy the module. Torres notes Chakotay taking this personally, because of how she could easily infiltrate the Maquis. Torres points out that everyone was manipulated, and that he should stay focused. Back on the Kazon vessel, Culluh and the Reloran Maj are finding it hard to unite to take ''Voyager''. Seska offers for the Reloran Maj to return to his ship as they consider the offer, only to later test the transporter on him and his companion. ''Voyager'' later finds two of the Reloran Kazons floating in space. The cadavers of the dead Kazon are revealed to have been beamed into space alive. Neelix points out that the Relora are sworn enemies of the Nistrim. Janeway calls a senior-staff meeting, only for Chakotay to have left the ship. He disobeys protocol by taking a shuttle-craft without Janeway's permission. He also has taken the Coil Scanner - the device which will lock a beam onto the transporter-module. On the Nistrim vessel, Seska apologizes to Culluh for not being able to convince the Relora and the futile negotiating. She reassures him, however, that the technology can prove that the Nistrim will soon conquer all the sects, becoming the most powerful Kazon sect in the quadrant.

In Janeway's ready-room, Torres defends Chakotay's actions by explaining the embarrassment of Seska's betrayal and insulting return. Chakotay meanwhile, tries to sneak up on the Kazon ship, but Seska sees him and he is captured by the Kazon. Yet before he is caught, he sends a beacon to ''Voyager'', and transports to Seska's location and destroys the transporter on the Kazon vessel. He holds Seska at phaser-point, but hands it to her. ''Voyager'' receives the signal. After putting Chakotay in the Kazon brig to save the crew from more trouble, Seska interrogates him. She states that even though the transporter was destroyed, the shuttle could be reverse-engineered; however, Chakotay informs her that he wiped the computer-core before boarding. Seska keeps Chakotay alive for ''Voyager'''s command-codes, but gets nothing from him. Culluh attempts to force the codes out of Chakotay, but to no avail. Later, Chakotay taunts Culluh with talk of how he and Seska once had a relationship. Culluh's men inject him with a truth-serum, but Chakotay says Seska will kill Culluh when she is done with him.

''Voyager'' finds the Nistrim vessel and is surrounded by six other ships, with the possibility of uniting with other sects. Torres puts forth the idea of a transwarp-beaming to save Chakotay, which she has once before performed. Back on the Nistrim vessel, Culluh calls a meeting with other sect-leaders and states that he has the ''Voyager's'' command-codes. To prove it, he brings in Chakotay. Torres begins the procedure to rescue Chakotay as ''Voyager'' battles the Nistrim. During the battle, Torres beams out Chakotay, but Seska tries to stop them by re-modulating. Janeway then has the sect-leaders beamed on board and negotiates terms with them: return Chakotay and the shuttle in exchange for their freedom. They agree and Janeway scolds Chakotay for his reckless decision; as First Officer, he must set an example for the crew. His settling a personal score shows insubordination and made Janeway's job as Captain harder. Seska contacts ''Voyager'' telling Chakotay that she extracted some of his DNA while he was prisoner and is now pregnant with his child (starting a narrative which leads up to the events of Basics).

During an away mission, Tuvok and B'Elanna Torres are captured and imprisoned while attempting to obtain a chemical vital to ''Voyager'' s systems. An injured Captain Janeway is rescued by a local man, Caylem, who believes her to be his daughter. The action takes place among Alsaurians who are contacts of Neelix, and whose planet is occupied by the aggressive Mokra.

Caylem eventually helps Janeway gain entrance into the caves where Tuvok and B'Elanna are being held prisoner and she releases them. Soon after, they are seized by the Mokra prison guards. The Mokra commanding officer, Augris, reveals that Caylem's real daughter Ralkana was shot and killed 12 years ago while attempting to rescue his wife from prison, who, unbeknown to her, had already died. Augris also indicates that Caylem has made this rescue attempt several times since then, having been rendered slightly delusional after being unable to accept their deaths. Before Augris can interrogate Captain Janeway with the brutal methods that he used on Tuvok, Caylem, who still believes Janeway is his daughter, attacks. Caylem stabs Augris during the fight, but is shot by two prison guards before they can be stopped.

As Caylem lies dying, Janeway tells him the commander was lying about Ralkana being shot. She reminds him that his wife had forgiven him for past actions, and asks that he accept that forgiveness. "My sweet girl" are Caylem's last words before he dies in her arms, and Janeway is saddened at his death. Back on ''Voyager'', Janeway ponders Ralkana's precious metal necklace that he had presented to her, which she kept to remind herself of his kindness.

The novel is set in the northern Manitoban forests and in the Barrens to the north. Jamie, Awasin, and Peetyuk divide their time between studying with Jamie's uncle, Angus Macnair, and trapping in the woods. When the Chipeweyan camp nearby succumbs to deadly influenza, the boys help with supplies and nurse the survivors, while Angus travels south in search of medical help. However, Angus contracts pneumonia on the journey and is hospitalized. Jamie is anxious both to obtain money for Angus's treatment and to avoid being placed with Child Welfare. He prepares to return to the Viking tomb he discovered (in ''Lost in the Barrens'') which he believes may contain valuable archaeological relics.

The boys and Awasin's sister, Angeline, set out to the still frozen north by dog sled and cariole and eventually meet up with Peetyuk's people, with whom they stay until the thaw. They realize that the Ihalmiut are struggling to survive, and so they decide that most of the profits from the grave should go to help them. The medicine man tells them the story of the heroic Viking known as Koonar and claims that a curse will descend on anyone who disturbs his rest. Defying the curse, Jamie uncovers a sword, a soapstone box, and other ancient pieces. Planning to take the artifacts to Churchill, the travelers set out again, this time by canoe, and brave the treacherous Big River which leads to Hudson Bay.

The episode begins with a first person point of view, with an object in space, scanning the surroundings in black and white. It then sees ''Voyager'' and is beamed aboard. Chief Engineer B'Elanna Torres and Lt. Tuvok lean over it. The next thing the object sees is Engineering, and its reflection. It is a robot.

Aboard ''Voyager'', the robot's battered body is examined by Lieutenant Tuvok, Captain Kathryn Janeway and Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres and found to have a quickly dying plasma-based energy source. Tuvok suggests they let the source fizzle out and examine the body in an incapacitated state, but Torres suggests they try to revive the robot to discover more about it. For the sake of scientific exploration, Janeway agrees.

After consulting with Ensign Harry Kim and the Doctor, Torres manages to revive the robot by modifying its energy source to accept plasma taken directly from ''Voyager's'' warp core. The robot's body activates, introduces itself as "Automated Unit 3947" and thanks Torres for her actions. While Torres is examining 3947, the robot reveals how he had come to be drifting in space, saying that he was in a mining pod that exploded. 3947 then asks Torres whether she could duplicate the energy source she made and use it to create a prototype Automated Unit, since the units themselves found they were unable to do so on their own. The robots were designed by what 3947 calls "the Builders," which have since become extinct.

Torres, though she is personally willing to carry out the experiment, takes the question to Captain Janeway, who reminds her that doing so would be a violation of the Prime Directive in that it would give the capability to reproduce to a race that was not designed to do so, thereby interfering with its culture, and forbids her to try. Torres objects, but fruitlessly. 3947 is disappointed, and claims that without Torres' assistance, their race will die out. Torres is empathetic, but can do nothing. A ship commanded by more Automated Units approaches ''Voyager'' in order to pick up 3947.

While saying goodbye to Torres, 3947 uses a bolt of electricity to knock her unconscious. He then proceeds to hijack the transporter controls and sends himself and Torres to a laboratory aboard the robots' ship. He informs Torres that she will work on the prototype unit here. ''Voyager'' attempts to beam Torres out, but the signals are blocked by the robots' shielding. Janeway proceeds to attack the robot ship, but is outgunned and nearly crippled. Torres is forced to promise to build the prototype in order to stop the robots destroying ''Voyager''.

While Torres works on the prototype with 3947, answering his questions about other units in their society and informing him that Data is the only android among them and is treated like any human, Janeway tries to figure out how to rescue her. They finally realize that if a shuttle could get past the robots' shields, it could beam Torres away. While they are looking for a way to distract the robot ship, a second ship, piloted by similar-looking robots, appears and attacks the first robotic ship. Just as the first shots are fired between the robots, Torres finally succeeds in completing a functional prototype, named "0001". It sits up and repeatedly asks for further programming. Paris, piloting the shuttle, uses a breach in the robotic shields to sneak closer to the ship.

When asked by Torres why robots are at war with each other, 3947 further reveals the robot race's history: their Builders (two races, the Pralor and the Cravic) were at war with each other and designed these robots to be soldiers. When the Pralor and Cravic decided to call a ceasefire, they attempted to terminate their robot soldiers. The robots, now seeing their Builders as "the enemy" (whom they are programmed to kill no matter what), turned on their makers, wiped them out and resumed the war. A horrified Torres realizes she has upset the balance of the war by creating her prototype, and, with only a moment's hesitation, plunges an electrically charged knife into the prototype's body, causing it to short-circuit and be destroyed. 3947 uses a bolt of electricity which knocks Torres down.

"I told 6263 you were not our enemy," 3947 says to Torres from across the body of the prototype. She replies, "I never wanted to be your enemy. I'm sorry," just as Paris beams her out. The two robotic ships are so engaged in their battle that the Pralor cannot go after the departing ''Voyager''.

Di, known as 'Big D', runs a large textile company called ''Garsley Garments'' and also is the manager of the local rugby league team. Always at the bottom of the league, she renames the team ''Frilly Things'' and sets about reviving their fortunes.

The Prologue is set in "A place once designed for spectacle, now only a shell of its former self." Mercure, messenger of the Gods, questions the Muses to find out why their spirits are downcast. Melpomene replies that the king (i.e. Louis XIV), in his desire for conquest, has plunged the country into war and ignored the Muses and their feasts. The other Muses agree and add: "he does not approve of anything we do; we are not worthy in his eyes." Mercure interrupts and insists that they put aside worry and concentrate on the charming spectacle to be performed before them. The scene is transformed, "as though its former glory had been restored." The Muses agree to pay careful attention to the forthcoming play and to try especially hard to enjoy it despite their misgivings. Jupiter descends and urges their particular contemplation of the Greek hero, Achille. The Muses agree and await the tale of the invincible Achille and his famous battles.

Act I opens on the Isle of Tenedos, Achille's refuge after a quarrel with Agamemnon. Patrocle asks Achille if Hector's bravery in past battles has made him jealous. Achille responds that only the losses sustained by the Greeks give him pleasure: Agamemnon, king of the Greeks, is the focus of his rage. In a rousing aria ("Je cours asseurer ma memoire"), Patrocle declares that he will defeat Hector. Achille, though concerned for his friend's safety, agrees, saying, "if your heart is strong, so too will be your arms." After Patrocle exits, Achille, left alone, entreats the gods to protect his friend in a moving soliloquy. Diomede approaches and announces that without Achille's help, the Greeks will not overcome the Trojans. Achille insists that he is happy here, out of contact with the quarrelsome Greeks. Diomede chastises the hero, suggesting that his bravery is shallow and that he loves vain pleasure. Venus and the Graces, descending from the heavens, remind Achille of the pleasure he experienced with them when he was not in battle. The act concludes as Arcas rushes in to announce that Patrocle is dead. Achille swears vengeance on Hector in an impassioned aria ("Manes de ce Guerrier, dont je pleure le sort").

Act II takes place in a Greek camp on the eve of battle with the Trojans. Diomede is certain that, with Achille's help, the Greeks under Agamemnon will be victorious. Agamemnon remains uncertain and, seeing the advancing Achille, decides to move back. A chorus of soldiers sing the praises of the victorious Achille. Arcas assures the Trojan prisoners that Achille is not without compassion--hope should replace their fears. King Priam of Troy, his daughter Polixene and his daughter-in-law Andromaque conspire to soften Achille's heart. Each appeals to Achille with stories of their losses suffered in the war with Greece. But it is the beautiful Polixene who breaks Achille's heart with her moving aria, "Vous le sçavez, Dieux que j'atteste!" The great warrior pledges eternal peace with the Greeks.

The Act III curtain rises on Achille's camp. Achille confesses his love for Polixene to Arcas, who reminds the hero that his original intent was to avenge their dead friend Patrocle. Achille counters that it is only Hector who deserves his wrath; the rest of the Trojans are not to blame. Agamemnon enters and also questions Achille's allegiance. Achille reminds him that it is for Patrocle, not the Greeks, that he engaged the Trojans. Agamemnon, realizing that Achille has fallen in love with the enemy princess, introduces the great hero to Briseis, a Greek princess whom he hopes will win Achille back to the side of the Greeks. Briseis confides to Achille the story of her capture and the loss of all she loved. Achille, as gallantly as possible, explains that he cannot love her. Furious, Briseis calls on the goddess Juno to avenge her broken heart. Juno accepts and promises that before the day is over, Briseis will see the result of her request. The act concludes with a chorus of shepherds offering thanks for the peace established by the "generous conqueror."

Priam's Palace provides the setting for Act IV. Polixene, alone and confused, questions the wisdom of marrying Achille, so recently the enemy of her people. She resigns herself to the inevitable, however, and awaits the ceremony. Andromaque, recognizing Polixene's despair, tries to comfort the bride-to-be, swearing "I will make my fidelity [to you] as famous as his [Achille's] glory." Priam enters and calls for his subjects to begin the wedding celebrations. Choirs of Trojans sing the praises of the beautiful princess and the heroic conqueror.

Act V takes place in Apollo's temple. As the Act opens, Achille asks his new bride why she turns away from him when he approaches. She replies, "the more I see you, the more I am troubled." Priam enters before the troops of Greeks and Trojans and commands that everyone, for the sake of peace, should surrender himself to love. He charges the lovers to swear an oath of tender and devoted love. Briseis is beside herself with anger when she witnesses the marriage of Achille and Polixene. She demands to know why Juno has not exacted revenge. The chorus of Greeks warn Achille to flee a certain death. He is struck down and Arcas rushes to his side, blaming the Trojan Paris for the treasonous act. Briseis allies herself with Polixene and swears that she will lead the forces to avenge Achille's death. Polixene sends everyone away, and, in "C'en est fait," a grief-stricken soliloquy, declares that she is unable to live without her husband. The opera ends with her suicide.

America has won the Cold War, but continues to face new dangers from terrorists. After Admiral Hardcastle warns the world about America's lack of guards against terrorism, the horrors begin. Henri Cazaux, a psychopathic Belgian ex special Forces soldier, is out for revenge against the United States. After a botched exchange of military hardware leads to federal agents swarming the airport where he was conducting the transaction, he escapes on his plane and ends up bombing a military airfield and San Francisco International with explosives, escaping via parachute in the process.

Later at a staff meeting, he then is convinced by his financial manager to attack companies who have hubs at airports, using the chaos to make money by driving down the stocks of the companies attacked and conducting options on other transportation industries such as oil and railroads. Memphis International is targeted with explosives dropped from a cargo plane leading to heavy loss of life and a major shipping company's headquarters destroyed.

Faced with the growing chaos, the President authorizes Admiral Hardcastle to help lead the operation by authorizing the military to defend airports across the nation through the use of Patriot missile batteries and around the clock air defense through intercepting any aircraft that deviates from their flight plan. After a failed attack by Cavaux's forces on Dallas-Fort Worth International and another botched incident when an F-16 on an intercept course mistakenly shoots down a TV news crew off the coast of New Jersey, the President cautiously begins to relax the strict civil emergency measures.

A tip off by Cavaux's attorney leads to a joint agency raid on his hideout in New Jersey, where Cavaux escapes in the confusion. He then heads to New Hampshire where his final plan is unrevealed: attacking Washington DC itself. Under the cover of a disguised Air Force One, the operation begins with Cavaux's forces attacking and disabling all Patriot units and air defense forces in the Washington DC area. The disguised plane then launches a suicidal run on the Capitol. A remorseful F-16 pilot, who was blamed after failing to prevent the first attack on San Francisco which lead to the death of hundreds and his wingman, rams his jet into the plane, causing it to crash and cause heavy damage in the Washington Mall area, but sparing the Capitol. In the chaos, Cavaux attempts to kill Hardcastle himself, but is stopped by the FBI director. Cavaux escapes, and reveals his final plan: using another plane loaded with explosives to fly into the White House. Hardcastle, with the help of the local mission commander, manages to shoot down the plane using the Avenger Air Defense System, just before it strikes the White House. However, the White House is badly damaged in the explosion that follows. Cavaux escapes in the chaos, but is then shot dead by his top lieutenant, who remarks that Cavaux's time is over and now it's his time.

''Squire'' tells the story of Keladry of Mindelan's years as a squire, between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. Having passed the "big examinations", Kel becomes a squire without a knight-master. While she becomes frustrated at waiting for offers from knights, her best friend, Nealan of Queenscove, becomes squire to Alanna the Lioness, the first lady knight in Tortall, and Kel's personal hero.

While Kel is disappointed at not becoming the Lioness's squire, she shortly receives an equally prestigious offer from Lord Raoul of Goldenlake, commander of the elite King's Own and a personal friend to the Lioness. As Lord Raoul's squire, she travels with the King's Own and participates in routine duties ranging from chasing rogue centaurs to helping to rebuild villages afflicted by natural disasters such as mudslides. Along the way, Kel acquires a baby griffin from the bandits who kidnapped him from his parents' nest. Due to the high incidence of kidnapping immature griffins for their magical powers, griffin parents attack any human who has ever touched one of their offspring, so this task is not without its dangers.

As knight-master, Raoul teaches Kel the fineries of command, and hones her proven skills in jousting, eventually entering her into tournaments where she jousts against other squires and knights. She jousts twice against Wyldon of Cavall, her previous training master, a political conservative who was initially vehemently opposed to Kel's training to be a knight. After the second time, she meets three girls, two of them sisters, who explain that they wish to train for knighthood as well. Kel gives them some advice, noting that the sisters appear serious about it while the third girl seems more like the type that jumps around from idea to idea.

When a political marriage is arranged for Prince Roald, the heir apparent, the Yamani Princess he is betrothed to turns out to be Shinkokami (nicknamed Shinko), a friend from Kel's childhood years in the Yamani Islands; one of her ladies-in-waiting is Yukimi noh Daiomoru, another of Kel's old friends. Shinko's anxiety about her upcoming marriage, and the prospect of integrating into Tortallan society, become catalysts for the three to reforge their friendship as Kel introduces Shinko to various aspects of Tortallan culture. She also introduces Yuki to her squire friends, and she and Neal strike up a quick romance.

Joren of Stone Mountain is found to be the noble who paid two men to kidnap Lalasa Isran, Kel's maid. He is, however, acquitted with a fine. Kel protests the unfairness of the law to the monarchs and gets them to attempt to change it.

Princess Shinkokami's introduction to the subjects of Tortall provides an excuse for the Grand Progress, a progress of the royal family, nobility, and other notables. Against his wishes, Raoul joins the progress, with Kel in tow. This becomes a chance that lets Kel strike up a secret romance with Cleon of Kennan, and Raoul becomes involved with the commander of the Queen's Riders, Queen Thayet's former bodyguard and right-hand lady, Buriram Tourakom.

Kel's second Midwinter as a squire sees her facing the ordeals of knighthoods of her older friends Prince Roald and Cleon of Kennan (who is at this point Kel's sweetheart). Their age group includes Joren of Stone Mountain, who dies in the Chamber, and Vinson of Genlith, who is punished by the Chamber for all the evil deeds he has done to women, namely by feeling every injury done to them.

On the Midwinter after her eighteenth birthday, Kel is scheduled to undergo the Ordeal of Knighthood, a ritual that determines if a squire is worthy to become a knight. Of all her year-mates, her name is drawn for the last day of midwinter. Kel waits anxiously while all her friends pass their Ordeals, but her anxiety is disproven; she passes the Ordeal and receives her knight's shield after seeing a disturbing vision in the Chamber, as well as a sword from the Lioness, who had been anonymously sending her gifts of weapons and training equipment throughout her page and squire years.

One year after the events of ''Tsukihime'', half of July 2001, protagonist Shiki Tohno is a victim of an accident. After this accident, Shiki finds himself in a dream where he repeats the same day over and over. Eventually, he discovers that he must find Arcueid's familiar Len, the creator of the dream, if he wishes to escape.

''Dirty War'' opens with a quote from Eliza Manningham-Buller, the then-Director General of MI5: "''It will only be a matter of time before a crude chemical, biological, or radiological (CBRN) attack is launched on a major Western city''". ''Dirty War'' follows the journey of radioactive material, hidden in vegetable oil containers, from Habiller, Turkey, approximately west of Istanbul, through Sofia, Bulgaria, onwards to Deptford, then to an East End Indian food takeaway restaurant, and finally to a rented house in Willesden, where the radioactive material and other components are assembled into a dirty bomb. When the bomb goes off in the heart of London, next to the entrance to Liverpool Street Underground station, the city's inadequate emergency services plans are put to an immediate test, with disturbing results for a population ill-prepared to understand or obey anti-contamination and quarantine orders.

In addition to touching upon the motivations of the Islamic extremist terrorists to conduct what they saw as a martyrdom operation, the events are shown through the eyes of three principal groups: the government, the emergency medical services, and the police. Nicola Painswick (Helen Schlesinger), Minister for London, and Deputy Assistant Commissioner John Ives (Ewan Stewart) of the Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorist Branch, present a governmental point of view. Watch Commander Murray Corrigan (Alastair Galbraith) of the London Fire Brigade and his wife Liz Corrigan (Louise Delamere), who works for the National Health Service, present the emergency services' story. Detective Sergeant Mike Drummer (Martin Savage) and Detective Constable Sameena Habibullah (Koel Purie) lead the police investigation to catch the terrorists, under the watchful eye of their boss, Commander Paul Hardwick (Paul Antony-Barber). DC Habibullah, an English Muslim policewoman from Luton, who speaks Urdu, Punjabi, and Arabic, presents a unique point of view throughout the film.

In the early 1980s, a series of ritualistic murders take place in Southeast Asia in which the victims have their eyes and ears removed, and are each found with a playing card placed in their mouth bearing the word "KOKO". During a reunion of veterans at the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C., four survivors of a doomed platoon—Michael Poole (a grief-stricken pediatrician), Tina Pumo (owner of a Vietnamese restaurant), Conor Linklater (an itinerant construction worker) and Harry Beevers (an opportunistic lawyer)—gather to discuss the killings. Because the word "Koko" holds special significance to their old platoon, and because the killings recall the events in books he has written, the men believe that the killer is Tim Underhill, another member of their platoon who disappeared years earlier. Beevers convinces the men to help him track down Underhill.

While Pumo remains in New York City, Beevers, Poole, and Linklater travel to Asia in search of Underhill. Michael, Conor, and Harry fail to find Underhill in Singapore, but are given several leads which send Michael and Conor to Bangkok and Harry to Taipei. While wandering around a residential area of Bangkok, Michael comes across Underhill at a small neighborhood fair and realizes that he is too stable and good-natured to be the killer. Underhill agrees to return to the U.S. to help in the pursuit. He, Michael and Conor reunite with Harry in San Francisco before returning to New York together. Meanwhile, the killer travels to the U.S. himself and murders Tina in his apartment. Tina's girlfriend, Maggie Lah, comes across the scene and narrowly escapes the killer's clutches.

Michael, Conor, Beevers, Underhill, and Maggie deduce that the killer is Victor Spitalny, a member of the platoon who vanished in Bangkok following the death of another soldier, Manny Dengler, after the war. Michael, Underhill and Maggie travel to Milwaukee and speak to Spitalny's parents. Learning that he and Dengler went to school together, they speak to several of their old classmates. Michael learns from one of them that Dengler was physically and sexually abused by his parents. From this, Michael realizes that Dengler assumed Spitalny's identity after murdering him and is the killer they are chasing. When the group returns to New York, Underhill is arrested thanks to an anonymous tip to police by Beevers, who wants to capture the killer alone and take all the credit for himself. He is let go when Michael shares his findings with the arresting officer.

The group tracks Beevers and Dengler to Chinatown, but split up when they realize the police are trailing them. Michael, Conor, and Underhill find Beevers, who has been captured and bound by Dengler. Dengler smashes a lightbulb, throwing the group into darkness as the police begin to negotiate for their release. Dengler stabs Michael and Underhill, and takes Underhill's jacket so that he can easily pass for Underhill himself in the dim light. After Michael alerts the police that he is not Underhill, Dengler murders one of the officers and escapes. He flees to Honduras and is never heard from again. Underhill narrates the end of the story, and imagines Dengler's first few days in Honduras and the constant anxiety that would come with them.

In 1951, 19-year-old Lata Mehra attends the wedding of her older sister, Savita, to Pran Kapoor, a university lecturer. Lata’s mother, Mrs. Rupa Mehra, says that it is time for Lata to be married as well, which Lata dismisses as she intends to concentrate on her studies in English literature. Nevertheless Mrs. Rupa Mehra begins to put out feelers to her friends and family, for a suitable boy for Lata.

In the meantime Lata is approached several times by a boy her own age and after a few meetings feels she is in love with him. His name is Kabir Durrani, and Lata is distressed when she realises he is Muslim as her Hindu family would never allow her to marry a Muslim man. When her early morning meetings with Kabir are discovered she tries to run away with Kabir, who refuses. Ultimately Lata agrees to go with her mother to Calcutta to live with her arrogant older brother Arun, who is already married.

As Lata is leaving she is spotted by Haresh Khanna, an ambitious shoe manufacturer who is involved in business with Kedarnath Tandon, the husband of Pran’s older sister, Veena. He is intrigued by her beauty and sadness.

In Calcutta, Lata is surprised to find herself enjoying her time with her brother, and his wife Meenakshi. She meets Meenakshi’s eccentric family, the Chatterjis, and bonds with her older brother, Amit, an England-educated poet who is under pressure from his family to marry. Though Amit initially only intends on being friendly to Lata as a member of his extended family, he begins to consider her as a possible wife. Mrs. Rupa Mehra is horrified when she realises that Amit and Lata might be considering marriage, as she dislikes Meenakshi and therefore disapproves of the Chatterjis. She goes to Delhi to renew her efforts to find a spouse for Lata. By accident she is introduced to Haresh Khanna and decides he is suitable for Lata. Despite the fact that he is in love with another woman (whom he cannot marry due to her family's objection), Haresh agrees to meet Lata. Lata finds the idea of marrying Haresh ridiculous but nevertheless has an agreeable time with him and gives him permission to write to her.

Returning home she hears that Kabir was involved in reuniting her sister-in-law Veena with her young son after a mass stampede separated them. She nevertheless vows to forget about Kabir only to be surprised when they are both cast in the university’s production of ''Twelfth Night''. During rehearsals her brother-in-law Pran is hospitalised, and his wife Savita gives birth. Lata takes on a more prominent role in taking care of her sister and niece which results in her realising her mother is only trying to ensure her happiness and safety. She begins corresponding more warmly with Haresh and despite still being attracted to Kabir tells him that she is no longer interested in marrying him.

Haresh loses his managerial job at the shoe factory but inveigles his way into a lesser position as the foreman at the Praha shoe factory with promise of upward mobility. His new circumstance fails to impress Arun and Meenakshi who are also biased against him as they are aware of Amit's attraction to Lata and want to encourage that match.

In the new year the Mehra family once again travels to Calcutta to spend time with Arun and Meenakshi and to reconnect with Haresh. At a cricket match Haresh, Kabir and Amit all meet and recognise that they are all loosely acquainted, but fail to realise that they are all, in one way or another, courting Lata. Kabir is in Calcutta trying to work up the courage to speak to Lata, however he fails to do so and Lata receives a letter from her best friend informing her that Kabir was spotted in an intimate conversation with another woman. Haresh is more persistent in his courtship of Lata, but after she off-handedly calls him mean, he takes offence and their relationship comes to a standstill.

In the new year, based on Kabir's invitation, Amit comes to speak at Lata's school. She reconnects with Kabir where she learns that the information he was courting another woman was false. However she tells him she is seriously writing to Haresh and is strongly considering marrying him. Amit also takes this opportunity to more seriously propose to Lata. Lata meets Kabir one last time where she realises that the passion she feels for him is not the basis for a good marriage. After receiving an apologetic letter from Haresh renewing his offer of marriage and a second letter from Arun, strongly encouraging her to reject Haresh, Lata decides once and for all to marry Haresh.

Concurrent to the main plot is the story of Maan Kapoor, a brother to her brother-in-law Pran. Maan is the feckless youngest child of respected politician Mahesh Kapoor, the state Minister of Revenue. At a Holi celebration, Maan sees the courtesan singer, Saeeda Bai, perform. He visits her house and begins to court her. They become lovers. Saeeda Bai later feels that her feelings for him are interfering with her work and reputation. She sends him away with her young sister Tasneem's Urdu teacher, Rasheed, to his remote village under the pretence of wanting Maan to learn flawless Urdu. Maan spends the time becoming acquainted with Rasheed's family who are politically influential but immoral and corrupt.

When Maan returns to Brahmpur he resumes his love affair with Saeeda Bai and gains favour with his father who decides to run for office again in the seat where Rasheed's family lives. After campaigning with his father, Maan returns to Saeeda Bai's house where he sees his friend Firoz and believes from veiled comments of Saeeda Bai that the two have been having a love affair behind his back. In reality, Firoz had come to propose to Tasneem, when Saeeda Bai reveals that Tasneem is in fact her secret daughter and Firoz's half-sister. In the ensuing confusion Maan stabs Firoz in a fit of jealousy. The scandal that follows causes his father to lose his seat and his mother to die after a series of strokes.

However once Firoz recovers he insists that the stabbing was caused by his own clumsiness and his friend Maan is made a free man.

The wedding between Lata and Haresh takes place with joy to all except Kabir who is invited but does not come. A few days later Lata and Haresh take a train to his home to begin their new lives together.

The game begins with a cut scene of the main character's clan being attacked by the vicious Taldor (default name "Danat" if male, or "Danta" if female). Then you choose three members for your party and the game begins.

The Taldor are goblin-like creatures who seem to be cursed with violent bloodlust. The main objective of the game is to retrieve Khamalkhad and join the warring tribes of the North and South.

The game employs an interesting pantheon of gods. The player can go to the resting points of the sleeping gods and receive a permanent skill increase by whispering a prayer to them. The game employs creatures like the Tlengle (Lizardfolk), Humans, Dwarves, Talador, Wizards, and Amazons. Magic is done in an odd way; the amount of a specific spell numbers one to ninety-nine. As the player casts a spell they use up one "use" when they run out of uses they either forget the spell or buy a totem, to learn the specific spell by assigning the character to study the magic.

Recently graduated from high school, 17-year-old Shiro (Yūya Yagira) decides to put off college and work at a gas station instead. Shy and introspective, Shiro understands he is at a turning point of his life, but is unsure of what lies ahead. Though his parents disapprove of his decision, he has the support of his flower child grandmother (Natsuki Mari) who declares that a gas station is a romantic place for life's drifters. Surely enough, soon a new co-worker, college student Noriko (Erika Sawajiri), drifts into Shiro's life. He falls headfirst into a bittersweet first love that ushers him into the world of adulthood.

''This section of the article includes text from the revised 1898 edition of Henry Grey's A Key to the Waverley Novels (1880), now in the public domain.''

At the end of the 11th century, the Byzantine capital of Constantinople was threatened by Turkic nomads from the east, and by the Franks from the west. Unable to rely on his Greek subjects to repel their incursions, the emperor was obliged to maintain a body-guard of Varangians, or mercenaries from other nations, of whom the citizens and native soldiers were very jealous. One of these, the Anglo-Saxon Hereward, had just been attacked by Sebastes, when a Varangian officer, Tatius, intervened and led him to the palace. Here he was introduced to the imperial family, surrounded by their attendants; and the Princess Anna was reading a roll of history she had written, when her husband Brennius entered to announce the approach of the armies composing the first Crusade. Convinced that he was powerless to prevent their advance, the emperor offered them hospitality on their way; and, the leaders having agreed to acknowledge his sovereignty, the various hosts marched in procession before his assembled army.

As Emperor Comnenus, however, moved forward to receive the homage of Count Bohemond, his vacant throne was insolently occupied by Count Robert of Paris, who was with difficulty compelled to vacate it, and make his submission. The defiant knight, accompanied by his wife Brenhilda, afterwards met the sage Agelastes, who related the story of an enchanted princess, and decoyed them to his hermitage overlooking the Bosphorus. Here they were introduced to the empress and her daughter, who, attended by Brennius, came to visit the sage, and were invited to return with them to the palace to be presented to the emperor. At the State banquet which followed, the guests, including Sir Bohemond, were pledged by their royal host, and urged to accept the golden cups they had used. On waking next morning, Count Robert found himself in a dungeon with a tiger, and that Ursel was confined in an adjoining one. Presently an aggressive orangutan descended through a trap-door, soon followed by the armed Sebastes. Both were overpowered by the Count, when Hereward made his appearance, and undertook to release his Norman adversary.

A treasonable conference was meanwhile taking place between Tatius and Agelastes, who had failed in endeavouring to tamper with the Anglo-Saxon; and the countess had been unwillingly transported by the slave Diogenes to a garden-house for a secret interview with Brennius, whom she challenged to knightly combat in the hearing of her husband. Having hidden the count, Hereward encountered his sweetheart Bertha, who had followed Brenhilda as her attendant, and then obtained an audience of the imperial family, who were discussing recent events, including a plot in which Brennius was concerned for seizing the throne, and received permission to communicate with the Duke de Bouillon. Bertha volunteered to be his messenger, and, at an interview with the council of Crusaders at Scutari, she induced them to promise that fifty knights, each with ten followers, should attend the combat to support their champion.

Having made his confession to the Patriarch, while Agelastes was killed by the orangutan as he argued with Brenhilda respecting the existence of the devil, the emperor led his daughter to the cell in which Ursel was confined, with the intention of making him her husband, instead of Brennius. She had, however, been persuaded by her mother to intercede for the traitor, and Ursel was merely placed under the care of the slave doctor Douban to be restored to health after his long imprisonment. The emperor had decided that Brennius should fight the Count of Paris, instead of the countess, and all the preparations for the combat had been made, when the ships conveying the Crusaders hove in sight; and, after defeating the Greek fleet, they landed in sight of the lists. Brennius, in the meantime, was pardoned, and, in answer to shouts of discontent from the assembled crowd, Ursel was led forth to announce his restoration to liberty and the imperial favour, and the conspiracy was crushed. Hereward then appeared to do battle with Count Robert, and, saved from the knight's axe by Bertha, he joined the Crusaders, obtaining on his return the hand of his betrothed, and, ultimately, a grant of land from William Rufus, adjacent to the New Forest in Hampshire, where he had screened her when a girl from the tusk of a wild boar.

During the struggle for the Scottish crown between Edward I and Robert Bruce, the stronghold of his adherent Sir James Douglas, known as Castle Dangerous, has been taken by the English, and Lady Augusta has promised her hand and fortune to its new governor, Sir John de Walton, on condition that he holds it for a year and a day.

Anxious to curtail this period, she determines to make her way thither, accompanied by her father's minstrel, Bertram, disguised as his son, and they are within three miles of their destination, when fatigue compels them to seek shelter at Tom Dickson's farm. Two English archers, who are quartered there, insist that the youth (Lady Augusta in disguise) should be left at the neighbouring convent of St Bride's, until Bertram satisfies Sir John as to the object of their journey, and this arrangement is approved of by Sir Aymer de Valance, the deputy governor, who arrives to visit the outpost. As they proceed together towards the castle, the minstrel entertains the young knight with some curious legends respecting it, including the supernatural preservation of an ancient lay relating to the house of Douglas, and the future fate of the British kingdom generally. De Valance would pass the stranger into the stronghold as a visitor at once; but the old archer Gilbert Greenleaf detains him in the guard room until the arrival of the governor, who, in the hearing of Fabian, Sir Aymer's squire, expresses his disapproval of his deputy's imprudence, and thus the seeds of disagreement are sown between them.

Sir John, however, wishes to be indulgent to his young officers, and accordingly arranges a hunting party, in which the Scottish vassals in the neighbourhood are invited to join; but, at the mid-day repast, a forester named Turnbull behaves so rudely to the governor that he orders him to be secured, when he suddenly plunges into a ravine and disappears. The young knight takes fresh offence at being ordered to withdraw the archers from the sport to reinforce the garrison, and appeals to his uncle, the Earl of Pembroke, who, instead of taking his part, writes him a sharp reproof. He then opposes the governor's wish that the minstrel should terminate his visit, which induces Sir John to threaten Bertram with torture unless he instantly reveals his purpose in coming to the castle. The minstrel declines to do so without his son's permission; and, the Abbot having pleaded for delay on account of the boy's delicate health, Sir Aymer is ordered to meet a detachment at an outpost, and then to bring him to the castle to be examined. As he passes through the town he encounters a mounted warrior in full armour, whom neither the inhabitants nor his followers will admit to having seen. The old sexton, however, declares that the spirits of the deceased knights of Douglas cannot rest in their graves while the English are at enmity with their descendants. On reaching the convent, De Valence rouses Father Jerome, and insists that the youth (Lady Augusta) should at once accompany him. He is, however, allowed to return to his bed till daybreak, and upon the door of his room being then forced open, it is empty. During the night, Sister Ursula, who has hidden in the room, elicits Lady Augusta's secret, which she has already guessed, and, having narrated the circumstances under which she had entered the convent without taking the vows, they escape through a concealed postern and find a guide waiting for them with horses. A scroll which his lady-love had left behind her explains matters to Sir John, who, in his despair, is comforted by the sympathy of his lieutenant; and the faithful minstrel, having been admitted to their confidence, steps are at once taken to track the fugitives.

Having reached a thicket, Sister Ursula (whose original name is Lady Margaret) disappears to join her friends, and Lady Augusta is escorted, first by the celebrated Douglas, and then by Turnbull, to a spot where they meet Sir John, to whom the forester delivers a message with which he refuses to comply, and mortally wounds the man when he attempts to lead the lady away. But Sir James is at hand, and the two knights fight until summoned by the church bells to Palm Sunday service, at which the old bishop officiates in the presence of an excited assemblage of armed English and Scotch warriors eager to attack each other. Bertram meets Lady Augusta in the churchyard, and is arranging for her safety, when De Walton and The Douglas renew their combat, and an encounter also takes place between De Valence and Sir Malcolm Fleming, Lady Margaret's lover. The life of Sir Malcolm is saved by the intercession of Lady Margaret, and Sir John surrenders his sword and governorship on the arrival of a messenger with the intelligence that an English force, commanded by the Earl of Pembroke, which was advancing to prevent an anticipated attack on the castle, has been utterly defeated by Bruce and his followers. He and his troops, however, are allowed to retire with their arms, Sir James Douglas having chivalrously transferred his claim upon her lover to the Lady Augusta of Berkeley, who, in return for his courtesy, decorates the brave Scotchman with a chain of brilliants which were won in battle by her ancestor.

The story begins several years after the destruction of the second Ark. The military, led by General Hallo, recruit an unwilling Spike Witwicky to help them face a new menace - as satellite pictures show a reactivated Megatron destroying a South American rebel camp. Most of the Transformers lost in the Ark disaster have now been recovered by Lazarus, a former US Army officer who has developed a way to control the Transformers, and is now selling them as war machines to the highest bidder, using them to slaughter a group of oil workers as a demonstration. Using a small fragment of the Matrix of Leadership, given to him by Optimus Prime Spike is able to reactivate the one Transformer recovered by the military - Prime himself. Prime is reactivated, but Spike is angry and bitter towards him for his father's death because of their involvement in the war.

Meanwhile, Megatron and the Decepticons have broken free, killing Lazarus, and plan to use a technorganic virus to reformat Earth into a new Cybertron. Prime and the other reactivated Autobots confront their old foes, but are stopped when Hallo drops a massive bomb on all of them. The advancing virus takes the brunt of the blast, fuelling it further, and the Decepticons (joined by the defected Grimlock) escape. As the Autobots try to stop the virus Megatron unleashes Devastator on San Francisco in a mass slaughter. Prime and some of the other Autobots arrive in time to halt them, but when Superion is gunned down by Starscream, Skywarp and Thundercracker the Autobots are decimated by Devastator's strength. Prime takes out the giant combiner in a full-frontal assault, and Megatron takes the chance to cajole his greatest enemy into joining him.

Meanwhile, Wheeljack and the rest of the reactivated Autobots try in vain to stop the spread of the virus, which is now fuelling itself, but are hindered by the Canadian military. Spike has been imprisoned by Hallo after discovering the truth - that Hallo was responsible for the destruction of the second Ark. After his attempts to create his own transforming robots had failed one of his subordinates developed a way to control the Transformers, so they sabotaged the Ark in order to gain the Transformers for themselves. Lazarus later went rogue and took most of the Transformers with him. Hallo now plans to obliterate his mistake by launching a nuclear missile at San Francisco. Spike escapes with help from one of Hallo's former employees, and Hallo is gunned down by the President and his aides. The nuclear missile has already been launched, however.

Back in San Francisco Prime refuses to join his foe, and is spared death when Megatron is distracted by heroic firefighters. The Autobots defeat their foes, but Superion is forced to sacrifice himself to stop the missile. In Canada, Wheeljack also manages to create a device to stop the virus, but sacrifices his own energy to power it. The Decepticons escape due to the distraction caused by the missile, but Grimlock refuses to rejoin the Autobots. Spike now rethinks his attitude towards the Autobots.

A year after the events of the first series, the Autobots and Decepticons are drawn to the Arctic by a signal from a mysterious pod. As the two sides battle the pod opens to reveal Scourge, who tells the astonished Transformers that the war is over and Shockwave has united the planet. Shockwave himself then arrives with a bodyguard of Autobots and Decepticons, gunning down Scourge and arresting the Earthen Transformers as war criminals. After quelling any discontent with his new Triple Changers (and gunning down Megatron) the rest of the Transformers leave peacefully, but not before Prime leaves a team of Autobots on Earth just in case.

After Starscream dumps Megatron in space after escaping from stasis the Autobots learn that Shockwave had indeed unified the planet, awarding power to an Autobot council while he remains in charge of the military, with Ultra Magnus as his second in command. Before the series started Cybertron had completely shut down before Scourge arrived to study the inhabitants. Reactivating Shockwave he saved him from the Sharkticons, only to be shot in the back in return. Shockwave used the secrets plundered from Scourge's body to create the Triple Changers and unify Cybertron. In the present, Shockwave is studying Alpha Trion for his access to Vector Sigma, and has Menasor reactivated as a distraction while he puts the final phase of his plan into operation. In the meantime Grimlock has located the rest of the Dinobots in the Arctic and is now returning to Cybertron with them.

Prime, about to be forcibly shut down, is saved by Sandstorm and Broadside take him to see an Autobot resistance group led by Hot Rod, where he discovers that Shockwave has secretly been conditioning the population for a war of conquest. With Magnus taking out Menasor and the Dinobots battling the Guardian units Prime led an attack on Iacon itself. A doubting Magnus is shot by Shockwave, and he also takes the Matrix from Prime to access Vector Sigma. However he is stopped by Magnus, now having lost his damaged outer armour to reveal his inner robot - who looks exactly like a white Prime. It is revealed Magnus is in fact Prime's brother, and the two stop Shockwave as Starscream and his followers flee the planet. Grimlock arrives and saves both brothers from falling into the pit at the centre of Cybertron. Elsewhere Megatron's battered body is recovered by Wreck-Gar

''Surcos'' follows the struggles of a Spanish family as it emigrates from the countryside to Madrid circa 1950. Facing difficulties in finding housing and employment, several family members turn to illegal or immoral activities in order to make ends meet, and the traditional family structure disintegrates.

The movie begins when the Perez family of country bumpkins arrive from the country at the Madrid train station, disoriented, gawking and loaded down with baggage, including a basket of live chickens. The Perez family consists of a mother (who is never named in the movie), the fiftyish aged father, Manuel, his older son Pepe (who had visited Madrid during the Spanish Civil War), his younger son, Manolo and his slightly impish, but completely naïve daughter, Tonia.

They move in with a relative of the mother in a run down apartment complex that is overrun with hordes of children who do cruel things every time they get a chance, showing that none of them are attending school at that point in Franco's Spain. In the apartment they meet the relative's daughter, the street smart Pili. Pili makes a living for her mother and herself by selling contraband American cigarettes in the street. Pili has an evil boyfriend, El Mellao. El Mellao works for the even more evil black marketer, but well dressed, very rich and smooth, Don Roque (“El Chamberlain”). Pepe quickly makes an implacable enemy of El Mellao when he defends Pili from his abuses and Don Roque hires Pepe in the place of El Mellao to drive around his contraband, because Pepe will do it for less. Pepe and Pili also become a couple and move in together.

The father, Manuel tries selling candy in the street for his sister in law, but fails when the multitude of street children demand that he give it to them for free. Then a police officer takes away his entire supply because he is selling without a license. His sister in law is so enraged that she makes a very proud Manuel do kitchen work. Then, to Manuel's surprise, a note arrives that he has gotten a job in a foundry. However, when he attempts to work in the arduous conditions, he is quickly overcome by the noise and heat of the foundry and faints, losing the job almost immediately. His sister in law then again relegates him to humiliating kitchen work.

Pepe's job for Don Roque is to work with a gang that steals sacks of potatoes from trucks that are climbing a hill and then deliver those potatoes to Don Roque to sell on the black market. Tonia also meets Don Roque through Pepe and Pili, who immediately has designs on her. First, he hires Tonia as a maid for his mistress. Tonia is very impressed by all the fine clothing that Don Roque's mistress has. When Don Roque hears Tonia sing while working, he tells her she has talent and offers to pay for singing lessons for her. With her mother's reluctant consent, Tonia accepts enthusiastically. He buys her a lot of attractive clothing, supposedly so she will be well dressed for her performance as a singer. However, when she actually gets the chance to sing on stage, some ruffians, hired by Don Roque, disrupt her performance and make her look foolish. Tonia runs off the stage in tears. Then, Don Roque comforts Tonia and takes her away in his limousine to deflower her and make her his mistress. Manuel is totally shocked by the whole thing and slaps his wife around for letting it happen. Then, Manuel shows up unexpectedly at the door of the love nest, slaps a shocked Tonia hard and cries bitterly while she goes to get her things so he can take her away.

Pepe loses his job with Don Roque when he confronts him about deflowering his sister and demands that Don Roque marry her, which Don Roque laughs off with contempt. Pili still demands that he steal from trucks, but the rest of Don Roque's gang refuses to accompany him and El Mellao tips off the authorities that Pepe is about to try it without them. When Pepe hops into the back of the truck, they are waiting for him. They shoot him and he is further injured when he jumps off the truck. When he returns in the truck, badly injured, he finds El Mellao trying to drag away Pili as his prize. El Mellao then hits Pepe on the head with a large wrench and rushes off to chase a fleeing Pili. Don Roque arrives to find Pepe badly injured, but still alive. He takes him to a bridge and throws him onto railroad tracks as a train passes under the bridge.

In the last scene of the movie, Manuel, his wife, Manolo and Tonia have returned to their village where Pepe is being buried. Manuel picks up a handful of soil from the grave and tells his family that they have to return to the country. His wife says people will laugh, but Manuel replies that, even with shame, they have to return to the land.

The unnamed narrator of the story and his manservant Alyeshka start on an evening trip by sledge from Novocherkassk in the Caucasus to a destination in central Russia. As they ride, a winter storm begins, and soon the road becomes covered with heavy, thick snow. The narrator becomes concerned about getting lost and queries his driver about their chances of making it safely to the next post station. The driver is somewhat vague and fatalistic concerning the rest of the journey, suggesting that they may or may not get through. The narrator has little confidence in the driver, who seems inexperienced and sullen.

A few minutes later, the driver stops the sledge, gets down, and starts searching for the road that they have lost. Disturbed by this situation, the narrator orders the phlegmatic driver to turn back, giving the horses their head to seek out the post station from which they started out. To add to the anxiety, the driver tells a story of some recent travelers who got lost and froze to death in a similar storm.

Soon they hear the bells of three men sledges coming toward them and going in the opposite direction. The narrator orders his driver to turn around and follow the fresh tracks of the courier sledges. The tracks and road markers quickly disappear in the drifting snow. The narrator himself now gets out of the sledge to look for the road, but soon loses sight of even the sledge. After finding his driver and sledge, a decision is again made to turn back and return to the station from which they started out.

Again they hear the bells of the courier troika, which is now returning to their original starting point, having delivered the mail and changed horses. The narrator's driver suggests that they follow them back. As the narrator's driver tries to turn around, his shafts hit the horses tied to the back of the third mail troika, making them break their straps, bolt, and run. The post driver goes off in search of the runaway horses while the narrator follows the first two sledges at full gallop. In better spirits now that he has somebody to follow, the narrator's driver converses with his passenger affably, telling about his life and family circumstances.

Soon they run across a caravan of wagons, led by a mare without help from the driver, who is sleeping. They almost lose sight of the courier sledges, and the driver wants to turn around again, but they go on.

The old driver who went to get the runaway horses returns with all three and loses little time in reprimanding the narrator's driver, whose inexperience created the problem in the first place.

The narrator begins to daydream, losing himself in the monotonous and desolate snowstorm and musing lyrically about the snow and wind: “Memories and fancies followed one another with increased rapidity in my imagination.” The narrator conjures up stream-of-consciousness images of his youth: the old family butler on their baronial estate, summers in the country, fishing, languid July afternoons, and finally a peasant drowning in their pond and nobody being able to help.

The narrator's driver announces that his horses are too tired to go on, and he proposes that the narrator and his servant go with the post sledges. The baggage is transferred, and the narrator is glad to get into the warm, snug sledge. Inside, two old men are telling stories to pass the time. They give very short, blunt answers to the narrator's suggestion that they all might freeze to death if the horses give out: “To be sure, we may.” After driving a while longer, the men in the sledge begin arguing about whether what they see on the horizon is an encampment. The narrator becomes sleepy and thinks that he is freezing to death. He has hallucinations about what it must be like to freeze to death, dozing and waking alternately.

The narrator wakes in the morning to find that the snow has stopped and he has arrived at a post station. He treats all the men to a glass of vodka and, having received fresh horses, continues on the next leg of his journey.

Castella (Bacri) owns a steel factory. He is told that in order to conduct a business with a group of Iranians, he must learn English, so he hires Clara (Alvaro) to teach him. His wife, Angelique (Millet), is an interior decorator who loves her dog and is in the process of working on her sister-in-law's apartment. The couple go to the theatre, where their niece is performing in a production of ''Bérénice'', accompanied by the driver, Bruno (Chabat), and Castella's temporary bodyguard, Franck (Lanvin). While there, he sees Clara, who is an actress. Meanwhile, we learn from Franck and Bruno's conversation that the former was a police officer. After working tirelessly with his partner towards bringing down a seemingly untouchable criminal, their investigation was abruptly ended. Franck had finally suffered enough corruption and quit the force, while the partner he respected never spoke a word about it.

Franck sends Bruno to the bar to buy cigarettes. The barmaid, Manie (Jaoui), remembers having had sex with Bruno, but Bruno regrets that he does not remember her.

''Bérénice'' over, Clara goes to the bar with her friends, including Antoine and Valerie, and their conversation reveals that she is afraid of never working again; after all, she is forty years old. Bruno, whose fiancé is doing an internship in the United States, spends the night with Manie, who, it turns out, sells drugs on the side and is frequently visited by clients. Franck meets Manie through Bruno and they start a relationship.

Previously uninterested in theater and reluctant about seeing a play rather than having dinner in a restaurant, Castella attends another of Clara's performance and develops a fascination with her bohemian lifestyle. He joins her and her friends for lunch and attends an art show where he buys a piece. However, his cultural ignorance and general roughness makes him a laughingstock. At the bar with Clara's friends, they joke with him that Henrik Ibsen is a great comic playwright, as well as other dramatists like Tennessee Williams. Clara confides to her friend Manie that Castella is thick.

Castella's English is poor at first, but he soon makes progress. He and Clara move the classes from his office to an English tea room, and to mark his progress, he writes an awkward poem dedicated to Clara; however, he is dismayed when she says that she does not share the feelings expressed in his poem. One day she waits at the tea room and he doesn't show up. Throughout the film, Bruno practices his flute, which he plays in a band. Later, he gently complains to Manie that he hasn't received news from his girlfriend who has gone to the US for an internship. Finally, the girlfriend tells him that she has, like him, slept with someone else, and also wants to stay in the States. Manie has now developed an intense affair with Franck, to the point that they speak of marriage—jokingly, they say. However, Franck reveals himself to be more and more angry and bothered regarding Manie's drug dealing, which proves to finally end their relationship.

Castella and Angelique are drifting apart, which is made clear when she moves the painting he bought from Clara's friend, she doesn't like it and that it doesn't go with rest of the house. He retorts that he can't stand living in a candy store, referring to Angelique's interior decorating. Clara starts to feel that her friends are taking advantage of Castella and tells him. He tells her that he bought the painting and is working with her friend to redesign the front of his factory not for her but because he truly likes those things. Franck's contract is finished, and Bruno reveals that the corrupt politician he had tried to send to prison was finally caught by his former partner. Bruno says that he thinks the partner was right to stay on the force after all. This leads Franck to drive to Manie's apartment for a reconciliation. From her window, she sees him reach the door to the lobby, but he hesitates and finally drives away. Clara lands the lead part in ''Hedda Gabler'' and invites Castella to the opening. Agitated after seeing an empty chair all night, Clara is overjoyed to see him in the audience as she takes her final bow.

Brenda (Rita Tushingham) and Yvonne (Lynn Redgrave), two girls from the North of England, arrive at St Pancras railway station in London to seek fame and fortune. However, their image of the city is quickly tarnished when they realise that they cannot pay for their meals in a greasy spoon café as Brenda has been robbed of her savings by a tramp. Yvonne visits Carnaby Street in the hope of catching the eye of a trendy photographer, while Brenda has to stay behind and do the washing up. A messy scene ensues as washing-up liquid is mistaken for ketchup and everyone in the café is drenched in variously-coloured liquids.

The pair get separated. Brenda ends at a strange party served by robots (built and introduced by Clive Sword (Bruce Lacey)) where trendy photographer Tom Wabe (Michael York) is taking photos.

Yvonne has a romantic meeting with Bobby Mome-Rath (Ian Carmichael) while Brenda tries to sabotage the tryst, adding laxative to Bobby's drink and ensuring that his bubble bath gets out of control. Meanwhile, a man (David Lodge) spies through a hole in the ceiling. he falls through, giving Brenda and Yvonne a chance to escape.

Brenda goes to an exclusive design shop called "Too Much" where she is asked to prepare for a party. Everyone coming in is forced to buy something. Although she sells a lot, the owner isn't pleased because nothing is left for the party-goers to see. At the party Brenda meets Tom, who asks her out to dinner. The restaurant does not seem to serve any food and has a barber-shop theme, being named Sweeny Todd's. A custard-pie fight starts at the party and spreads to the street. Yvonne (in Nell Gwynne garb) is blamed for starting the pie fight and fired.

The girls watch a Candid Camera-style TV show on a television in a shop window entitled ''You Can't Help Laughing'' in which an old lady's house is demolished as a joke. The girls wander on to the set and Yvonne inexplicably wins a cheque for £10,000. She decides to invest the prize money in becoming a pop star. Although the live recording of her single, "I'm So Young", is patently awful, it becomes highly polished after mixing, and Yvonne's out-of-tune voice is put in tune. It becomes a big hit and Yvonne becomes a star appearing on other programmes like ''Hi-Fi Court'' (a parody of ''Juke Box Jury'').

Yvonne and Brenda drift apart. As Tom Wabe's new girlfriend, Brenda goes to dinner on his canal barge home and stays the night. They spend the next day taking photos and she goes on to become a top model, while Yvonne's popularity wanes. Yvonne throws a plate at the TV when she sees Brenda in an advert for a new perfume called "Direct Action".

At a glamorous and star-studded party for Yvonne at the top of the Post Office Tower, Yvonne sits alone while everyone else enjoys themselves. Brenda watches the party on CCTV and sees Tom arrive to be mobbed by adoring girls. She gatecrashes the party only to see Yvonne humiliated when she falls in her own giant cake. Brenda finds the control to the revolving restaurant and turns it to full speed, ending the party in disarray.

The girls walk away in the early morning and decide to return home. The film ends with a reprise of the song ''Smashing Time''.

A young Bernice Summerfield lands a job as an archaeologist on a colony world. She discovers evidence that the planet was previously inhabited by a sapient species.

Conan, now in his late thirties and privateer captain of the ''Wastrel'', becomes embroiled in the politics of the kingdom of Zingara when he searches for a mythical treasure on the Nameless Isle. Mixed up in his adventure are Princess Chabela, daughter of a dying Zingaran king, the privateer Zarono, and the Stygian sorcerer Thoth-Amon.

Chronologically, ''Conan the Buccaneer'' falls between "The Pool of the Black One" in ''Conan the Adventurer'' and "Red Nails" in ''Conan the Warrior''. However, the present book ends with Conan as a successful captain, high in the favor of the royal family of Zingara, while "Red Nails" starts with him as a fugitive mercenary in the jungles south of Stygia. How Conan lost his ship, left the sea, and took up again the role of a mercenary is untold.

Miranda Hollander is a beautiful and smart young woman. She is a college professor and lives with her "uncle", Tom Hollander who works in a museum; he adopted her after a car crash killed her parents. Miranda can read books just by touching them, without even needing to open them. Miranda believes that she has lived with her "uncle" ever since her parents were killed in an accident while she was a baby. After her birthday, Miranda passes out and is sent to a local hospital. Tom is notified by the police. When Miranda arrives at the hospital, she silently transforms into alien form and kills several people. When Tom finally arrives at the hospital the following morning, he finds bodies everywhere. Tom locates Miranda, injects her with human hormones and begins driving her to Mexico.

On the way to Mexico, Miranda wakes up, asking for the cause of her 'illness'. Tom tells Miranda that she is the result of an experiment that combined human and alien DNA, an experiment conducted with his friend Forbes McGuire while they were both still in college. Tom has been injecting her with human hormones since her childhood to suppress her alien DNA. (Thus she never entered a cocoon stage and aged as human.) Her parents never existed; they were just a fiction created by Tom to help build up Miranda's "normal life". Tom explains he and Forbes parted ways because of differences of opinion over their vision of their creation.

When they arrive in Mexico, Miranda rests in a motel room while Tom spends the day searching for Forbes. After a few incidents, Tom and Miranda locate Forbes' current home. Forbes now lives with his recent experiment named Azura, another human and alien DNA hybrid who also serves as his assistant and lover—she is sterile to prevent offspring. Forbes supports his experiment by creating half-alien facsimiles of dead pets and relatives. Forbes checks Miranda's condition and finds that Miranda has reached the end of her lifespan and will die in days; her changes to alien form are her body's way of fighting back as her human form has a weaker immune system. The only way to deny death is injecting fresh human DNA into Miranda. Miranda won't allow that to happen when she realizes it will result in the sacrifice of another human being. Again, Miranda becomes unconscious. Tom goes searching for a "donor" and is mugged by a woman in the process. Azura then incapacitates the mugger and the two bring her back to Forbes' lab, where they succeed in extending Miranda's life.

However, Miranda starts acting odd, joking about having sex with Azura. Tom checks her blood as she invites him to get drunk and have sex in their hotel room; he tells her to rest, believing she is delirious from the procedure. She leaves in a huff. Tom finds Forbes did a sloppy job; Miranda's hormones are unstable, causing her alien side to become increasingly dominant. Driven by her alien sex drive, Miranda manages to seduce the innkeeper, another hybrid; however she kills him mid-process upon finding he is sterile. She goes to a bar for potential mates, seeing that a female singer in a provocative red dress is garnering a lot of attention. She sneaks backstage, intimidating the singer into giving up her dress.

Tom wishes to sedate Miranda, so they can fix the imbalance in her DNA; Forbes gives him a near-lethal dose to use, but warns that she's "100% pure creature". Making things worse is that Miranda is no longer sterile, thanks to the new stem cells. Investigating a church, Tom is attacked by Azura; she is angry that his arrival changed things. He manages to knock her out by dropping a large cross on her, leaving Azura to heal and regain consciousness. Forbes tracks Miranda to an abandoned warehouse, where she strips naked; Miranda reveals Forbes has wanted to have sex with her since they met. She squeezes his hand to make him drop the sedative; Forbes gives in to his lust, allowing Miranda to strip him. They copulate, much to his pleasure. Once finished, Miranda changes into alien form and sends her tongue down Forbes' throat, suffocating him. Tom finds them later, barely pitying Forbes.

Tom takes Miranda back to Forbes' house, where he discovers via X-ray that a hybrid child is rapidly growing in her womb. Miranda weakly says her humanity is dying, and that she doesn't want to be pure alien. Unfortunately, Azura returns in alien form; Tom is forced to fight her. Just when Azura has Tom cornered, Miranda attacks her and apparently kills Azura. However, Azura rises again and fatally impales Miranda before Tom kills Azura with a shotgun. In human form, Miranda thanks Tom for giving her life before dying.

A saddened Tom turns on all the gas burners and tanks in Forbes' house and leaves, and as he walks away the house explodes.

The game takes place a year after a catastrophic disaster known as "The Event" wiped out 90% of the human race. The cataclysm continues to make itself felt by way of aftershocks and the toxic dust that hangs permanently within the half-collapsed cities. In the weeks and months after The Event, resource shortages quickly became peoples' biggest problem, a situation that has only gotten worse as time has passed. As the game begins, society has broken down into small pockets of survivors, some of whom want only to protect what meagre resources they have, whereas others are out to get everything they can. No matter their agenda, however, everyone is on guard and on edge, and everyone is capable of violence.

The game opens with an unnamed man arriving in his home city of Haventon, hoping to find his wife, Julie, and daughter, Mary, whom he last saw just before The Event. Recording updates via a video camera, which are being watched by an unidentified person at some point in the future, he explains it took him almost a year to walk back to Haventon from "out east". When he gets to his apartment, he finds a note written by Julie in which she explains that she and Mary left shortly after The Event, hoping to make it to one of the emergency camps. She also tells him that she forgives him for everything.

As he is leaving the apartment, he sees a small girl who he initially mistakes for Mary, before saving her from three hostile men. The girl, Mei, tells him that her mother went missing on a supply run and she gives him a walkie-talkie with which to speak to Henry, Mei's family friend. Upon arriving at Henry's apartment, Henry thanks the protagonist for protecting Mei, and asks him to retrieve a radio transmitter. Henry himself is unable to get it as he is confined to a wheelchair.

Traversing the deadly dust clouds, the protagonist is able to retrieve the transmitter. Back in the apartment Henry tells him that Mei's mother is in a local hotel, held against her will, and asks him to save her. Fighting his way through gang members who take women prisoner and force them to provide sexual gratification, he finds and rescues Mei's mother, Linda. On the way back to Henry's, she says that Henry used to oversee the dispatch and communications systems of the Haventon Fire Department, and will probably know the locations of all the emergency camps in the city.

At Henry's, Linda and Mei are reunited, and Linda is able to use the radio to pick up a broadcast from a ship en route to Haventon to collect survivors. However, it can't dock because of the heavy dust. Henry says they need to create a beacon to guide the boat in by using fireworks. The protagonist takes the fireworks to the roof of the tallest building in the city, where he successfully ignites them. However, upon returning to the apartment, he finds Henry, Linda, and Mei gone. Outside, he encounters Linda, who tells him that men came and took Mei. Henry pursued them, but he didn't return. The protagonist finds Henry's wheelchair and learns from an injured man that Henry was taken by the gang, who wanted to learn what he knew about the camps. Eventually, the protagonist finds Mei, and the beacon successfully guides the ship into the harbour.

Mei and Linda get aboard but the protagonist decides to stay, still hoping to find Julie and Mary, and maybe Henry. Mei and Linda bid him farewell and he records his last tape, vowing that he will find his family no matter what and apologizing to Julie, promising her that he will find a way to "make it up". It is then revealed that the person watching the tapes is a young woman. As the protagonist vows to find Julie and Mary, the woman begins to cry, and we see that all of the protagonist's gear is on a nearby table.

Zoë Sutcliff is a young woman who experiences the slow death of her mother, Anne Sutcliff, and the dislocation of her father, Harry Sutcliff. She turns to her sole friend Lorraine, who cannot provide emotional support for Zoë. Lorraine moves to Oregon with her father and stepmother, leaving Zoë completely alone. On the news, there are reports of women being killed in Zoë's area, whose throats are slashed and drained of blood. 

While walking in a park, Zoë meets Simon and begins a friendship with him; they eventually develop a mutual romantic attraction until one night she catches him eating a pigeon. He later tells her the truth of his origin, namely that he is a vampire from 17th-century England, and he is seeking to kill Christopher—his own brother—who looks like a six-year-old albino but is a sadistic version of what Simon could become. He reveals that Christopher is Zoë's neighborhood's throat-slashing killer, and his brother was also responsible for the murder of their mother and his vampirism; hence, he wants retribution against his brother. Prior to Simon's revelations, Lorraine was almost killed by Christopher when he attempted to lure her into an alley until Zoë reached her in time; Zoë now realizes that she has met the childlike vampire before and inadvertently saved her friend's life by interfering. Skeptical, Zoë allows Simon to feed upon her in a controlled manner to prove his claims.  

Simon is entranced by the grief-stricken Zoë and must accept his feelings of fondness for her while trying to control his own nature. His growing attachment to Zoë puts them both at risk because of his feud with Christopher. Zoë tells Lorraine about her feelings for Simon, but does not tell her about him being a vampire. Zoë considers asking Simon to turn her mother into a vampire, but he tells her there is no cure for vampirism and that existence as one is unappealing.

Despite misgivings, Simon approaches Zoë; she lures Christopher into a trap where Simon has the strategic advantage. In a climactic battle, Simon slays Christopher. After the battle, Zoë offers herself to Simon for him to turn into a vampire for companionship. He refuses and, seeking the peace he has been unable to get since his transformation, decides to end his life now that his revenge is complete. Simon spends his final hours with Zoë; they have sex and he dies after exposing himself to sunlight.

Allan, an idealistic engineer, wants to build a tunnel at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean connecting North America with Europe within a few years. The idealist's scheme is thwarted for financial reasons, and the tunnel construction (in particular a segment dug under a mountain) experiences several disasters. A fiasco seems inevitable, the army of workers revolt, and Allan becomes a figure of universal hatred throughout the world. After 26 years of construction, the tunnel is finally completed; however, the engineering masterpiece is outdated as soon as it opens, as aeroplanes now cross the Atlantic in a few hours.

Set during the American Civil War, the story focuses on Charlotte Lovell and her cousin Delia, whose wedding day is disrupted when her former fiancé Clem Spender returns following a two-year absence. Delia proceeds to marry Jim Ralston, and Charlotte comforts Clem, who enlists in the Union Army and is later killed in battle. Shortly after his death, Charlotte discovers she is pregnant with Clem's child, and in order to escape the stigma of an illegitimate child, she journeys West to have her baby, a daughter she names Clementina (or "Tina").

Following the end of the war, Charlotte and Tina relocate to Philadelphia, where Charlotte opens an orphanage. Delia is the mother of two children, and Charlotte is engaged to marry Joe Ralston, her cousin's brother-in-law. On her wedding day, Charlotte tells Delia that Tina is her child by Clem, and Delia stops Joe from marrying Charlotte by telling him that she is in poor health. The cousins become estranged, but when Jim is killed in a horse riding accident, Delia invites Charlotte and Tina to move in with her and her children. Tina, unaware Charlotte is her birth mother, assumes the role of Delia's daughter and calls Charlotte her aunt.

Fifteen years pass, and Tina is engaged to wealthy Lanning Halsey. Still unaware Charlotte is her mother, she begins to resent what she considers her interference in her life, and when Delia offers to formally adopt Tina in order to provide her with a reputable name and a prominent position in society, she gladly accepts. Charlotte intends to tell Tina the truth before her wedding but finds herself unable to do so.

Charlotte confronts Delia and reveals she resents the fact both Clem and Tina loved Delia more than they did her. Delia tells Tina that Charlotte sacrificed her own happiness by refusing to marry a man who did not want to raise Tina as his own. Delia urges Tina to kiss Charlotte last when Tina prepares to depart with her new husband. Tina complies, and her gesture leaves Charlotte happy and willing to share the rest of her life with Delia as a friend rather than an adversary.

In the second half of the 19th century, in 1875, a young boy named Romeo lives in small Swiss village called Sonogno. The village is suffering due to a long drought, and Romeo's family is hit by it the worst, as they are also under debt. Meanwhile, Luini, a dismal man with the nickname "The God of Death", arrives in the village. Luini has his eyes on Romeo and plans to buy him from his parents to work as a chimney sweeper. Luini asks Romeo's father Roberto to sell him Romeo, but Roberto refused. In order to bind Romeo under a contract, Luini burns the remaining cornfield that belongs to Romeo's family. During this tragedy, Romeo's father receives a head injury which causes blindness. Romeo's family cannot afford to get a doctor for Roberto, as they have lost their livelihood. The doctor's fee is very expensive, as he has to come from a neighbouring village. Romeo decides to sell himself into slavery for 25 francs, and signs a contract to work in Milan for 6 months. Once Roberto has been treated, it is time for Romeo to leave, but just as he leaves he is told that none of the kids ever come back to the village, probably because they succumb to the harsh work conditions. He nonetheless has no choice, and leaves the same day. Along the way he meets a mysterious boy who is unwilling to reveal anything apart from his name, which is Alfredo. They both earn each other's mutual trust and respect after helping each other out. This is also where they meet another boy named Dante. Soon they are taken into a tavern and thrown into the basement where the other kids are kept, Dante included. A few of them try to escape, but in vain. Luini decides that they must be sold as soon as possible before they try to escape again, so he forces the children to cross the lake to Milan by boat in the middle of a storm. Their boat capsizes, but Romeo and Alfredo manage to survive, and everyone else is presumed to be dead. They see Luini drowning, but Romeo's good values do not allow him to let the man sink and he saves him, as he believes that is what his father would do.

Upon arrival in Milan, Romeo and Alfredo are separated and sold to two chimney sweeps, but not before Romeo and Alfredo swear eternal friendship. Romeo is bought by Marcello Rossi. Rossi is thoroughly manipulated by his wife who hates Romeo because of the cost that had to be paid for him, but is actually kind at heart. During one of their routine cleaning days, Romeo meets professor Casella who teaches him how to read. Although Romeo is denied food by Rossi's wife, their ill daughter Angeletta, who Romeo refers to as "the angel", helps him by sharing her food with him. Soon, Anzelmo, Rossi's son and a member of a street gang called the Wolf Pack, tricks Romeo into being friends so that he could steal the letter that Angeletta had written for him, but turns out the letter was actually a page from her diary, where she detailed all the lies said by Anzelmo. When the Wolf Pack read it, they mercilessly beat Anzelmo up for lying to them. Anzelmo, hurt badly, swears revenge against Romeo. He blames his wounds on Romeo, knowing that his mother would believe him no matter what, and accuses Romeo of stealing money from the Rossis and they call the police. Angeletta witnesses Anzelmo slipping their parents money into Romeo's bag, but faints due to her serious heart illness before she could reveal the truth. Romeo manages to escape from the police just in the nick of time but is cornered by the Wolf Pack. Dante appears from nowhere and saves Romeo, who is thrilled to see that Dante is still alive. Meanwhile, Angeletta regains consciousness and reveals the truth to her parents, but Rossi's wife still wants Romeo imprisoned and forbids Rossi to say anything to the police. Dante also urges Romeo to leave the city as he is wanted by the police and helps him get onto a cart he believes is going to Venice. However, Nikita informs Dante that the cart is actually going to the prison, and is driven by criminals who plan to blow up the prison to free one of their own. The criminals lock Romeo up but he manages to escape and warn the police officers and Rossi just in the nick of time and ends up badly injuring himself. Rossi, moved by the act, decides to stand up to his wife and reveals that Angeletta had seen the real thief and he is none other than Anzelmo. After this, Rossi warms up to Romeo much more and greatly improves his living conditions, and learns to stand up to his wife's manipulations. Romeo finally meets Alfredo again, and they grab all the chimney sweepers to form an alliance called the Black Brothers to combat the Wolf Pack. They challenge the Wolf Pack to a bout and win. Giovanni, the leader, returns from a winning fight with the Scorpion gang (who disband to join the Wolf Pack after their defeat), and is outraged to hear that the Wolf Pack had lost to the Black Brothers. In retaliation, he orders his gang to kidnap a boy from the Black Brothers named Michaelo and demand to be handed Alfredo in exchange. When Alfredo refuses to kneel down in front of Giovanni, the latter proposes a battle at dawn. Initially they all fight (except Alfredo), but seeing as no one is able to gain the upper hand, Alfredo asks them to stop. Giovanni agrees and decides to make it a one-on-one fight. Tachioni volunteers to fight from the Wolf Pack and Romeo from the Black Brothers. However, midway Tachioni draws out a blade in spite of Giovanni's instructions to use only fists, luckily the reflection from Romeo's charm blinds Tachioni and he is able to defeat him. Giovanni accepts defeat and praises Alfredo for having good friends, but tells him that they will get even some day.

Later, Dante and the Wolf Pack begin to notice that Angeletta's mannerism is totally different from the rest of her family, which leads to suspicions of her being adopted. Dante manages to extract part of the truth from his master (who is a close friend of Rossi). Romeo overhears a conversation between Rossi and Angeletta and decides to follow Rossi to a mansion, where it turns out that Angeletta is in fact the granddaughter of lady Isabella, a countess. Isabella's son, Adolfo, fell in love with a poor woman named Giovanna. However, Isabella did not approve of the difference in social status and thus the young couple left after they bore a child. Sadly, the parents passed away due to an illness and Isabella passed on the child to Rossi who was her childhood friend. Isabella is unwilling to let Angeletta into the mansion as she believes the latter is only after her wealth, and Romeo is willing to wager his life to prove her otherwise. Angeletta's condition worsens and she wishes to see her grandmother once before she dies. They sneak into the mansion and Angeletta gets to see her grandmother, but she coldly tells her to go back home. Angeletta, however thanks Isabella for allowing her to meet her and goes to the church to pray. She collapses in between, and goes into a coma. Dr. Casella says the only way to save her would be to take her to his acquaintance in Paris, who is a heart specialist. Romeo, the rest of the Black Brothers and Rossi try their best to convince Isabella, and she finally agrees after being moved by Romeo's devotion and friendship. She meets Angeletta and promises to take care of her in whatever way possible, and the next day, after a farewell, they leave for Paris by train.

In the following days, Romeo notices a huge crowd gathering outside a palace, and it turns out it is the grand wedding of the Duke of Milan. Romeo is called to clean the chimney of the hotel where all the invited nobles and royalties are staying. There, he finds Alfredo's younger sister, Bianca, staying along with her uncle and aunt. She runs away hoping to find her brother and Romeo along with Alfredo begin to search for her. Alfredo is visibly unwell, this could be attributed to the abuse he regularly went through at the hands of his master Citron, a cruel, vile man who spent all his money on drinking and gambling and thus Alfredo often went hungry and beat. Alfredo tells the story of how he and Bianca were the children of the aristocratic Martini family, Vittorio and Fatricia Martini, and how their father's younger brother Mauricio was extremely jealous of his success and wealth. Along with his wife, Grazela, they burn the house which kills Alfredo and Bianca's parents, but not before they hand them the precious treasure of the Martini family, a medal. Alfredo and Bianca flee the burning mansion and their uncle and aunt frame them for the fire in hopes of capturing them and ultimately retrieving the medal. Alfredo and Bianca run for days until they are taken in by a couple, who they beg to let them stay. The God of Death makes his way to the village, and Alfredo willingly sells himself into slavery to provide the family with enough funds to raise Bianca. However, Bianca is captured by their relatives soon after Alfredo sold himself.

Back in the present, Bianca is unable find Alfredo and Mauricio captures her, takes her back to the hotel and ties her up. Luckily, Nikita witnesses Bianca's capture and alerts Romeo and Alfredo. The Black Brothers come through, free her and tie up Bianca's aunt. Mauricio makes his way to the church as he heard that Alfredo was there, but Alfredo creates a distraction and with the help of Nikita, he escapes. Alfredo is re-united with his sister, but collapses and coughs blood. He is taken to professor Casella, who is worried that Alfredo's illness is terminal. Alfredo, however says that he cannot stay any longer and has to go back to his master as his contract is not over yet. Alfredo assures his friends that it was nothing serious and he just had a cold, and the reason he was coughing blood was because he had bit his tongue. Meanwhile, Mauricio orders for a fake medal to be made in order to prove his and Grazela's royalty to the king, while Alfredo and Bianca along with the Black Brothers devise a plan to sneak inside the castle to tell the king the truth. In the background Giovanni watches them, planning to confront Alfredo once and for all. Alfredo has a talk with Romeo and heads home. He is first stopped by Nikita, who is presumably waiting for him. As they talk, though, Alfredo begins to cough blood, while Nikita watches in horror. Alfredo begs her to keep it a secret, as he does not want to worry his friends. As he moves along, he is stopped again by Giovanni, but before the latter could finish the fight, he notices Alfredo's bad coughing and stops right in his tracks. Alfredo thanks him and leaves, making Giovanni uncomfortable. The rest of the Wolf Pack decide on their own to capture Alfredo on the same day he was supposed to meet the king. After trapping Alfredo inside a basement under the bridge, the pack run to Giovanni, who is enraged at their actions. Romeo, meanwhile is able to locate Alfredo as Mr Rossi had seen him go under the bridge. Romeo asks Alfredo to escape while he would stay back to stall the pack. When the pack reaches him, Giovanni is astonished at how dedicated and loyal Romeo is towards Alfredo. Nikita, no longer able to hold back, tells them that Alfredo is dying due to an illness, which happens to be the same illness that killed Giovanni's father, and this is not known to Romeo either. Giovanni decides to help Romeo and his group for the night.

With the help of the Wolf Pack, they make their way through the castle, defeating Mauricio's bodyguards who try to kill Alfredo and Bianca. Meanwhile, Lady Isabella arrives back in Milan and sees Michaelo, who explains everything to her. Just as Alfredo and Bianca are about to meet the king, Mauricio takes Bianca as hostage, and before he could finish her off Nikita creates a distraction, due to which Alfredo and Romeo fall over the wall into the castle garden, but survive. They are successfully able to make it into the mansion, however the bodyguards capture the children. Luckily for them, Lady Isabella comes through revealing the identities of Alfredo and Bianca to everybody else and asks the bodyguards to leave the kids alone. When they refuse, she orders the king's guards to take them away, saving Alfredo and Bianca's lives. As Mauricio and Grazela are about to present the medal to the king, Alfredo pronounces the medal a fake, and claims he has the real medal. The king allows both parties to narrate their stories and Mauricio attempts to trap Alfredo and Bianca with his evil lies, but Mauricio is not aware of the fact that the king's father had marked something on the real medal- the mark of benediction, to honor the Martini family for showing true bravery in saving his life in war, which was missing from Mauricio's copy, and hence Alfredo and Bianca's names are cleared and their evil relatives are taken away. The Black Brothers celebrate their success before everyone leaves, except Alfredo and Romeo, who go to church, where they remember the moment they first met. Romeo thanks Alfredo for bringing hope into his life. Alfredo smiles, and says it wasn't him who was the ray of hope, but Romeo himself, and he thanks Romeo for bringing courage and hope into his life. Alfredo begins to succumb to his illness, he reminds Romeo of the oath they made- they would always be together, no matter how far away they are from each other, asks Romeo to fulfil the dreams he would not be able to achieve, and asks him to take care of Bianca. And with that, Alfredo peacefully passes away in Romeo's arms, leaving a heartbroken Romeo behind, crying for his dear friend.

Romeo can hardly concentrate on any of his day-to-day activities or work, and this angers the rest of the Black Brothers and Bianca. His refusal to accept Alfredo's death puts a strain on their relations. The Wolf Pack gang, particularly Nikita, were also saddened by Alfredo's death. To get Romeo back into his spirits, the Black Brothers organise a fight, where should he lose, he would be cast out. Romeo makes his way to the fight, and after taking a few punches and listening to Bianca and Dante's pleas, he finally snaps out of his trance, and finally realises what his late best friend had told him. He decides to go around town asking for donations for Alfredo's funeral. At his funeral, they sing the Black Brothers song in honour of Alfredo.

As the new leader of the group, he is presented with a challenge: to gather 20 lira, as they all want to watch the new circus that is in town. Romeo finds an old broken house that needed heavy fixes and repairs. Romeo volunteers to clean and repair the house, and seeing his dedication, the others along with Bianca pitch in too. On the day before the circus leaves, Romeo is unable to complete cleaning the second floor, but the woman is pleased with his efforts and pays him 20 lira anyway. However, Michaelo accidentally breaks a vase, which angers the shopkeeper and he takes Michaelo's pendent which was a gift from his mother. Romeo finds out, and without a moment's hesitation, trades the money for the pendent, a decision everyone agrees and praises him for. Happily, they all sit and share stories from their hometowns till the evening ends. While working one day, Romeo falls from a chimney. Dr. Casella agrees to have him and Bianca at his place until his leg heals. The doctor interests them both in many subjects, and Bianca begins to see Dr. Casella as a father. They help children at an orphanage as well. As a thank-you present, they hold a puppet show for Dr. Casella, where Bianca reveals that she wishes to stay with the doctor and become his nurse, while Romeo wishes to keep studying and become a teacher to educate and help others like Dr. Casella.

In 1876, when spring falls, the time has finally come for Romeo to return home in Sonogno, as his contract is over. Some of the boys have already left and some of them have a while still. Romeo takes his time to wish everyone goodbye, and although Mrs Rossi does not like to admit it, she does miss Romeo. Mr Rossi says that he would probably never get a helper like Romeo again, and Romeo thanks him and calls him his second father. As they are making their way, they see The Reaper with a new batch of kids. They visit Alfredo's grave one last time, where they finally make truce with the Wolf Pack, and Nikita promises to take care of Alfredo's grave. Dr. Casella drives them halfway to their home towns along with Bianca, and they all wish each other goodbyes and best of luck. Romeo returns to Sonogno and re-unites with his family, and 10 years later, in 1886, thanks to his hard work, he becomes a teacher and marries Bianca, and they name their child Alfredo. With that, the anime concludes.

Steph Landry has been the target of jokes since sixth grade when she spilt a red Super Big Gulp on Lauren Moffat's white D&G skirt. In response, Lauren coined the phrase "Don't be such a Steph Landry" to ensure Steph never lives it down. As time has passed people have forgotten both the incident and the individual, but the phrase is widely used in the small town. This has caused Steph to feel like a social pariah. Steph has since been content to hang out with her best friends Jason and Becca, also social outcasts, but as she enters the eleventh grade, she wants more out of high school. Luckily, she finds a copy of an old book titled none other than ''How to be Popular'' while cleaning out Jason's grandmother's attic.

The book is full of useful tips. She follows the book's advice and begins the school year with flat-ironed hair and a new attitude. Steph is determined to be confident and enthusiastic about school. She sits with new people at lunch and organizes a talent auction. Steph does not anticipate Lauren's anger at her sudden rise in popularity, or Jason's confusion and shock at her behaviour. As her popularity grows, Steph is forced to make difficult choices about who and what is truly important to her. A minor plot arch of the impending wedding of Jason's grandmother and Steph's grandfather. Steph's mother is against the wedding and causes familial contention. Steph's mother's sixth pregnancy also plays out as a minor plot line.

When the Donovan family moves from California to Connecticut, 17-year-old Sydney (Tia Mowry) finds it is not easy being in a new town away from her old friends and adjusting to her father's remarriage after her mother died some time ago. However, while working at her new job, she encounters Todd (Merwin Mondesir), a boy in her class, whom she has a crush on. However, Ashley (Maia Campbell), his older sister, dislikes her and criticizes her anyway she can. Her 12-year-old genius brother Willie (Tahj Mowry) is happy as long as he can tinker in his lab with his increasingly complex experiments. When another experiment goes wrong, their father, Barry (Phillip Jarrett), forbids him from making more experiments in his lab until he learns responsibility. Willie is convinced he can defeat the aging process, and while devising an experimental anti-aging formula, he accidentally spills some on a bar of soap.

When their grandmother Cat (Hope Clarke) unknowingly uses the tainted soap, she is transformed into a 17-year-old (Tamera Mowry). Her ex-husband Gene (Robert Hooks) follows suit, and is also returned to his teenaged self (Mark Taylor).

Cat and Gene are having a fine time reliving their youth and enjoying the thrill of teenage romance, but there's an error in the ointment. Willie learns his formula could have deadly side effects, and now he must discover an antidote to return his grandparents to their older but healthy bodies. Through their experience as teenagers again Gene and Cat realize they are still in love with each other but Cat is reluctant to believe Gene's feelings are genuine as she is still heartbroken that he chose to leave her for a job in Australia 20 years ago, hence the reason for their divorce.

In Sydney's room, she and Cat finally have a long and heartfelt talk. Sydney admits she's homesick for California and her old friends. She hates Connecticut and the bullying she is subjected to by Ashley and her friends because Todd is interested in her. During that time, Cat admits her earlier experience with Ashley. However unlike Sydney, she was able to stand up to Ashley and earn her begrudging respect. Meanwhile, Gene who has had time to reflect on his life choices, realizes his mistake of leaving his family, and bids farewell to his life as a teenager and the friends he has made, and goes to the dance with Ashley in hopes of reconciling with Cat.

Meanwhile, at the dance, Sydney and Cat arrive and find Gene with Ashley. Gene and Cat share a dance where they reconcile, before Cat passes out due to the side effects of the transformation. Willie arrives with the antidote as Gene carries Cat to the school's pool. Ashley, furious that Gene ditched her for Cat, cuts them off before they can save her. Sydney, having had enough of Ashley and her bullying, punches her in the face. As she and Willie leave to save their grandparents, everyone applauds Sydney for giving Ashley what she deserved. Willie tosses the antidote in the pool and Gene and Cat jump in. Gene asks Cat to marry him again after their crazy experience. Cat says yes, but then the happiness is interrupted by Sydney and Willie's parents, Barry and Monique (Tonya Lee Williams), coming home from a trip. The parents are surprised to see Cat and Gene reconciled and Monique tells him that they should let them babysit next time. Sydney asks Monique if she could help with the wedding plans and she agrees. A call comes in and Willie calls for Barry, who tells him that he's in the shower (with the soap, which they forgot to get rid of). Of course, Sydney and Willie now have to stop their father from using the soap.

Josephine March has grown into womanhood about ten years since ''Tales of Little Women'' and is now married to the German Professor, Friedrich Bhaer. In the Plumfield farm-house that Aunt March had left her, Jo Bhaer has established a new school for her two sons, Robby and Teddy, nephews (Franz, Emil, Demi-John), niece (Daisy) and a gang of orphaned children, including Annie "Nan" Harding and a rough, street-wise adolescent named Dan. With the experience of a model childhood and a faithful and caring husband, Jo guides her pupils in their young lives; with song, music and play, the children are led through the joys and sorrows of life, work and play, rewards and punishments, getting involved in all sorts of mischief and adventure.

The story concerns an American boy named Cedric Errol (more fondly known as "Ceddie"), who at an early age finds that he is the sole heir to a British earldom and leaves New York City to take up residence in his ancestral castle. After some initial resistance, he is joined by his middle-class mother (whom Cedie calls "Dearest"), widow of heir James Errol.

His grandfather, the Earl of Dorincourt, intends to teach the boy to become an aristocrat, but Cedie inadvertently teaches his grandfather compassion and social justice, and the artless simplicity and motherly love of Dearest warms the old man's heart.

It has been three years since little Katri's mother left for Germany, leaving her daughter behind in Finland, where she now lives with her grandparents. With Finland still under Russian rule, the inhabitants of these lands have had little or no news from the outside, and no one knows if Katri will see her mother again. To make matters worse, things on Katri's grandparents' farm are not going well; the harvest had been a small one, their only cow had been killed by a bear and the family confronts great monetary problems. Katri wants to help and finds work in a neighboring farm; for a girl of hardly nine years of age the work of a farm is hard and tiring even with all of her enthusiasm and good moods, which is what keeps her standing.

Perrine Paindavoine is the daughter of an Anglo-Indian mother, Marie, and a French father, Edmond, who dies in Bosnia at the very beginning of the story. Before dying, Edmond asks his wife and Perrine to return to his hometown, Maraucourt, where Perrine's grandfather, Vulfran, owns a factory and a family mansion. Perrine and her mother run a traveling photo studio on their journey to France. Upon reaching Paris, however, Marie falls ill. Although they sell everything they have to spend on medication, Marie eventually dies. On her deathbed, she reveals that Perrine must not expect a welcome from her grandfather. Vulfran strongly opposed Edmond's marriage and as such, he detests Perrine.

After the burial, Perrine embarks on an arduous journey to Maraucourt, traveling almost on foot and barely surviving starvation. Once there, she assumes the identity of Aurelie to assess the situation in advance: Maraucourt is a town whose primary function is to house the workforce of its cotton mill, which Mr. Paindavoine owns. As such, the blind, stern Mr. Paindavoine is virtually the local ruler of the town and is feared by everyone, even his irresponsible nephew who expects to inherit the factory.

Aurelie secures a job of pushing rail carts in the factory. Soon, however, she is promoted to factory's interpreter, as she speaks both French and English fluently. Ultimately, through her efficiency, loyalty, and (unbeknownst to many) compassion, she becomes Vulfran's personal secretary and is invited to live in his mansion. Vulfran gradually grows fond of Aurelie, who has become his all-time companion without him asking. Coming so close to her grandfather, Aurelie learns about his personal life: Having virtually no loving relative, Vulfran has started a search for Edmond, intent to bring him home. Aurelie translates his foreign communications but does not dare to mention that his search is in vain, because Vulfran makes no secret of his hatred for Edmond's wife and daughter, blaming them for stealing his son away, which hurts Aurelie.

Eventually, Vulfran is informed of the premature death of Edmond in Bosnia. The bad news is proved almost fatal, as Vulfran is struck down by grief and only survives the ordeal through the passionate care of Aurelie, who helps him recover. Vulfran is grateful to Aurelie; during a visit from the elderly "grandmother Françoise", once Edmond's nanny, he proclaims that Aurelie is an angel sent by God to save him because such unconditional love is unique for a total stranger. Françoise, a mutual friend of Aurelie since her arrival in Maraucourt, replies that the angel curiously resembles Edmond. Vulkan immediately sends his lawyer to investigate Aurelie's background and also acknowledges that if she is truly his granddaughter, he must make up for having said terrible things about Edmond's family in front of her.

After receiving confirmation that Aurelie is indeed Perrine, Vulfran undergoes dangerous eye surgery to see his granddaughter's face. He also orders the construction of a daycare center and healthy dormitories for the workers of the factory.

Episodes List

1 Episode Setting Out

2 Episode A Long Journey

3 Episode Mother's Strength

4 Episode The Rebel Count

5 Episode GrandFather and Grandson

6 Episode Two Mothers

7 Episode The Circus Boy

8 Episode The Drunk Donkey

9 Episode Business Rivals

10 Episode The Camera Thieves

11 Episode Baron Does His Best

12 Episode An Audience of Two

13 Episode Crossing The Alps

14 Episode In A Beautiful Country

15 Episode France! France!

16 Episode Mother's Decision

17 Episode An Inn in Paris

18 Episode The Old Man At The Gate

19 Episode The Boy From Downtown Paris

20 Episode Farewell, Palikare

21 Episode Mother's Last Words

22 Episode Unforgettable Friends

23 Episode Solo Journey

24 Episode A Beautiful Rainbow

25 Episode Palikare! That's My Palikare!

26 Episode Kind Rouquerie-obasan

27 Episode Grandfather's Cold Face

28 Episode Working in Paindavoine Factory

29 Episode A Hut By The Lake

30 Episode All By Herself

31 Episode Perrine's Guests

32 Episode Her Secret Name

33 Episode Theodore's Wallet

34 Episode An Unforgettable Day

35 Episode The English Letters

36 Episode Joy and Anxiety

37 Episode Grandfather's Large Hand

38 Episode Her Lovely Dress

39 Episode A Letter From India

40 Episode Baron's Calamity

41 Episode A Castle-Like Château

42 Episode Rosalie's Sorrow

43 Episode On Sunday' Perrine...

44 Episode A Malicious Woman

45 Episode News From Bosnia

46 Episode Vulfran's Sorrow

47 Episode Aurelie's Face

48 Episode The Fire

49 Episode A Time for Joyful Tears

50 Episode The First Snow of Winter

51 Episode Grandfather's Eyes

52 Episode An Unforgettable Christmas

53 Episode Spring Cometh

The anime revolves around a young boy who decided to provide shelter to a raccoon that was discovered by a hunter. As the boy attempted to domesticate the wild animal as part of his family, he soon realized through trials and tribulations that his efforts were futile and decided to release Rascal back into the wild.

''A Land Remembered'' focuses on the fictional story of the MacIveys, who migrated from Georgia into Florida in the mid-19th century. After settling, this family struggles to survive in the harsh environment. First they scratch a living from the land and then learn to round up wild cattle and drive them to Punta Rassa to ship to Cuba. Over three generations, they amass more holdings and money, and move further from their connection to the native, untamed land.

The story revolves around Marcelino, an orphan abandoned as a baby on the steps of a monastery in nineteenth-century Spain. The monks raise the child, and Marcelino grows into a rowdy young boy. He has been warned by the monks not to visit the monastery attic, where a "very big man who will take him away" lives, but he ventures upstairs anyway, sees the man and tears off back down the stairs.

At a festival, Marcelino causes havoc when he accidentally topples a pile of fruit and lets some animals loose. The new local mayor, a blacksmith whom the monks would not let adopt Marcelino because of his coarse behaviour, uses the incident as an excuse to try to shut down the monastery.

Given the silent treatment by the monks, Marcelino gathers up the courage to once again enter the attic, where he sees not a bogeyman, but a beautiful statue of Christ on the Cross. Remarking that the statue looks hungry, Marcelino steals some bread and wine and offers it to the statue, which comes to life, descends from the Cross, and eats and drinks what the boy has brought him. The statue becomes Marcelino's best friend and confidant and begins to give him religious instruction. For his part, Marcelino realizes that the statue is Christ.

The monks know something is strange when they notice bread and wine disappearing, and arrange to spy on Marcelino. One day, the statue notices that Marcelino is pensive and brooding instead of happy, and tells him that he would like to reward his kindness. Marcelino answers: "I want only to see my mother, and to see Yours after that". The statue cradles Marcelino in its arms, tells Marcelino to sleep - and Marcelino dies happy.

The monks witness the miracle through a crack in the attic door and burst in just in time to see the dead Marcelino bathed in a heavenly glow. The statue returns to its place on the Cross, and Marcelino is buried underneath the chapel and venerated by all who visit the now flourishing monastery-turned-shrine.

The main story is told in flashback by a monk (played by Fernando Rey), who, visiting a dying girl, tells her the story of Marcelino for inspiration. The film ends with the monk entering the now completely remodelled chapel in the monastery during Mass, and saying to the crucifix once kept in the attic: "We have been speaking about You, O Lord", and then, to Marcelino's grave, which is situated nearby, "And about you, too, Marcelino."

Joanna Mills (Sarah Michelle Gellar), a travelling rep for a trucking company, is dedicated to her successful career but something of a loner. Since the age of 11 she has been a troubled person, with episodes of self-mutilation and menacing visions. Normally she avoids returning to her native Texas, but agrees to a trip there to secure an important client. During the trip her visions, which take the form of memories of events not from her life, increase in intensity. She sees a strange face staring back at her in the mirror. Her truck radio plays Patsy Cline's "Sweet Dreams" no matter what station she selects. She stops at the scene of an accident that, on the following day, seems not to have happened. Joanna cuts herself in a bar restroom and is narrowly rescued by a friend. She visits her father, who observes that from age 11 she was "a different girl". The visions continue, becoming both more specific and more threatening, centering upon a menacing man she does not recognize and a bar she has never seen, but a picture of which is in one of her catalogs.

Drawn by the image to the Texas town where the bar is located, a place she has not been since childhood, Joanna meets a man named Terry Stahl, whose wife, Annie, was stalked, brutally assaulted, and left to die fifteen years before, a crime of which Terry was suspected but not convicted. Joanna continues to have visions of this crime and the events that led up to it, and to discover other links between Annie's life and hers. She meets the real killer and is led by what she has seen in her visions to recover the knife he used from its hiding place. She is then stalked, herself. She finds herself drawn into a repetition of the crime, but this time she stabs her assailant with the recovered knife, using the original weapon to avenge the original crime.

The story ends with the revelation that Annie, clinging to life as Terry drove her to the hospital after the original assault, died when his car crashed into one driven by Joanna's father, in which the eleven-year-old Joanna was a passenger. After momentary unconsciousness, the young Joanna seems to have survived the crash. A silent Joanna is seen reflecting on who she is and what has happened to her. She seems to reach an inner resolution of these questions.

An alternative ending included on the DVD release more straightforwardly supports the interpretation that Annie's soul has been placed in Joanna's body.

The player is a young man who lives with his friend Takakura on a farm in Forget-Me-Not-Valley, at roughly the same time as ''Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town''. The game begins with the Harvest Goddess, a deity of ''Harvest Moon'', and the Witch Princess fighting. Neither can win, so they part ways. The Witch Princess, on meeting the Harvest Goddess next, attempts to cast a spell to silence her, but instead petrifies her. While trying to undo her spell, the Witch Princess inadvertently sends the Harvest Goddess to another world, so she sends all of the Harvest Sprites (small, elf-like creatures) to the same world to rescue her. The Witch Princess then tells the player to bring all of the Harvest Sprites back in order to rescue the Harvest Goddess.

Living in the valley are a number of villagers, nine bachelorettes, and five rival bachelors. The characters and locations in ''Harvest Moon DS'' are the same as those in ''Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life'' with a few minor exceptions.

Riddled with guilt over the loss of his rock star older brother, 16-year-old David Forrester (Ricky Ullman) becomes obsessed with death, leading his misguided parents to send him to Driftwood, an "Attitude Adjustment Camp for Troubled Youths" run by the sadistic Captain Doug Kennedy (Diamond Dallas Page) and his brutal young henchman, Yates (Talan Torriero). Once there, David becomes haunted by the spirit of Jonathan (Connor Ross), a former inmate who met a mysterious end; a mystery whose resolution could very well be David's only way out.

Lucy Bonnard, a young woman with a history of mental illness, helps her older sister, Charlotte, operate the Willows, an inn at their familial plantation in the Louisiana bayou. The sexually-frustrated Lucy is unsuccessfully courted by Etienne LeViolette, her childhood friend who now works as a handyman for the sisters. Charlotte is carrying on a romance with town sheriff Cleve Bonnard, but he ends the relationship, blaming Charlotte's overbearing devotion to caring for Lucy.

Late one night, Matt Rutledge, a congressional aide from Washington, D. C., arrives at the inn as a guest, and soon finds himself attracted to Lucy. Three other guests—Mrs. Bettleheim, her daughter, Fran, and son-in-law, Lenny—arrive, and the group share dinner. When a storm causes a power outage, Lucy entertains the guests by telling a ghost story about Jud Nevins, a man who disappeared in the bayou years ago. Lucy claims that other spirits in the area protect her from the malevolent Jud. Etienne, observing Matt's romantic advances toward Lucy, becomes enraged. That night, as Lucy sleeps, an unseen assailant spies on her from a hole in the attic floor, and later lurks downstairs while Mrs. Bettelheim has a snack in the kitchen. In the morning, Charlotte and Lucy find that their beloved dog, Beaux, has been murdered. Lucy becomes hysterical and blames Jud's ghost. Moments later, Etienne appears at the house accuses Charlotte of being Jud's killer. Later that night, when Matt returns to the Willows, Etienne stops him on the road and warns him that Charlotte is dangerous. Meanwhile, Cleve reviews Jud's missing person file at the police station, and finds a photograph of Jud with a young boy who resembles Matt.

Matt returns to the house, but Charlotte forbids him from seeing Lucy, whom she has locked in her bedroom. Lucy manages to smash a window to alert Matt, who rushes upstairs and breaks down her bedroom door. The two have sex in Lucy's bedroom. After, while Lucy takes a bath, she recalls a repressed memory from her childhood: During a Fourth of July party at the Willows, Lucy and Etienne played a game of hide-and-seek in a nearby graveyard. There, Lucy witnessed Charlotte being assaulted by Jud, and attempted to stop it. Jud attacked Lucy, leading Charlotte to stab him to death. Charlotte and Lucy disposed of Jud's corpse in the bayou. When Charlotte sent Lucy back to the graveyard to retrieve Jud's baseball cap, Lucy observed the silhouette of a boy from a distance, whom she assumed was Etienne.

Lucy, rattled by her disturbing memory, sees a man wearing Jud's jacket and baseball cap outside, and runs after him. Shortly after, Etienne is shot with a bow and arrow in the bayou by an unseen assailant. Etienne crawls to the front porch of his shack, where the assailant confronts him, and is revealed to be Matt, Jud's younger brother; the boy Lucy saw in the graveyard the night of Jud's murder was not Etienne, but Matt. Matt flees when he hears Lucy approaching. Lucy arrives at Etienne's shack just as he dies of his wounds.

Lucy returns to the house and is consoled by Matt, unaware that he is Etienne's murderer. Matt implies that Charlotte murdered Etienne. When Charlotte confronts Lucy downstairs, Lucy accuses her of having her institutionalized to keep their secret safe. A confrontation with Matt follows, during which Charlotte explains to Lucy that Matt is manipulating her to avenge his brother's murder. Overwhelmed, Lucy flees into the bayou, reaching spot where they disposed of Jud's body years ago. Matt attempts to drown Lucy in the swamp, but a number of hands emerge from beneath, pulling him under and killing him. A bewildered Lucy watches as a mysterious fog rolls in, and the ghostly figures of several people—among them Etienne—emerge before vanishing.

Some time later, Lucy helps Charlotte prepare for her wedding to Cleve at the Willows. While looking at herself in the mirror, Lucy has a vision of Matt breaking through the glass and attacking her. She is at first terrified, only to realize it was merely a vision.

The game's opening sequence shows TwinBee and WinBee patrolling the skies of Donburi Island when they suddenly receive a distress signal from a young girl named Madoka. Madoka reveals that she is the granddaughter of Dr. Mardock, who was once a benevolent scientist until a bump in the head turned him insane. Dr. Mardock now seeks to conquer the world with an army of Acorn Men and only TwinBee and WinBee can stop him.

Faraway from Donburi Island (where TwinBee and his friends live) lies a fantastic island known as the Land of Wonders. Its ruler, Queen Melody, has been imprisoned by Archduke Nonsense, who seeks to use the Queen's Harp of Happiness to conquer the world. Flute, a fairy who serves Queen Melody, escapes during the coup d'etat and goes to Donburi island requesting the help of TwinBee and WinBee. ''TwinBee Yahho!'' features fully voiced cut-scenes during the game performed by the cast of the ''TwinBee Paradise'' radio drama. Story elements from ''TwinBee Paradise'', including names of TwinBee's and WinBee's respective pilots (Light and Pastel), were used for the first time in the games in this installment.

''Magik'' tells the story of Illyana Rasputin from a six-year-old child to a thirteen-year-old mutant/sorceress. The narrative is framed by Illyana reflecting on these events on her fourteenth birthday.

Belasco, demon lord of Limbo, wants to use Illyana to help the Elder Gods destroy Earth. To do this he has to place five bloodstones in a pentagram locket he has given to Illyana. When he first captures her at age six, he takes part of her soul and remakes it in his image, creating a bloodstone which he places in the locket. An elderly sorceress version of Storm (a former apprentice of Belasco) and an elderly, part beast version of Kitty Pryde (codenamed Cat) rescue Illyana. Storm transports them to her garden sanctuary in Limbo. Unable to remove Belasco's corruption from Illyana, Storm decides to help her combat it by taking her on as an apprentice. She spends a year showing Illyana how to separate her astral body from her physical form, while showing her a massive oak that grew from an acorn she created. Disapproving of Illyana being trained in sorcery, Cat kidnaps her.

Cat takes Illyana to a replica of the Savage Land in Limbo, where she trains her physically and teaches her to sword fight. They then storm Belasco's tower. It is protected by a corrupted version of Nightcrawler, whom Cat kills. Cat then attempts to use her phasing power to take her and Illyana to Earth, but Belasco intercepts them. Belasco turns Cat into a feline demon and gives Illyana a knife. Illyana cuts herself, and the blood forms the second bloodstone in the locket.

Illyana spends three years learning magic from Belasco, while secretly reading every book in his library, plotting his downfall. Alone in her room, she attempts to imitate the creation powers Storm showed her by forming an acorn from a part of herself, only to find the acorn is black and rotten. Hearing Belasco's voice outside her room, she panics, and her mutant power to create teleportational light discs manifests itself. Illyana uses a disc to enter Belasco's library, hoping to steal his grimoire, but Storm intervenes, accidentally sending her into another disc. She finds herself in the past, witnessing Storm "killing" Belasco, who claims to be immune to death while in Limbo; it is this act which binds Storm to Belasco. She teleports back to the present to find Storm battling Belasco. Cat fatally wounds Storm, then attacks Illyana. She kills Cat in self-defense. Belasco orders her to sacrifice Storm's soul to the Elder Gods. Instead, she kills Storm to save her soul and teleports to Storm's garden, where she buries her. Enraged by her defiance, Belasco captures Illyana, extracts another bloodstone from her essence, and casts her out into a wintery wilderness as punishment.

Illyana finds Storm's massive oak and spends years trying to use it to help create a living acorn from her essence, only to produce still more rotten acorns. When the oak finally crumbles to dust from her efforts, Illyana realizes that she was only trying to create life as a means to an end: destroying Belasco. She tries instead to manifest her desire directly, using the last of her power to create a "Soulsword". The enchantment that held her in Storm's garden is banished in the process and she takes a stepping disc to confront Belasco. While fighting Belasco she realizes she is replaying the same scene by which Storm was corrupted, so she spares his life and he escapes. She then uses a light circle to return to Earth, rejoining the X-Men seconds after she had left them.

The unnamed protagonist is the player's alter-ego whose name can be decided at the start of the game. He is summoned by Princess Melora from the real world in order to save the TwinBee world. His distinguishing characters includes an outfit consists of a cap, knee-long trousers, and a vest, and an androgynous face with shoulder-long hair. His personality can be changed by the player from serious to rebellious or even perverted depending on the player's actions. Although the protagonist was designed so that his age and gender would be ambiguous according to interviews with the developers, the game's supporting cast such as Madoka and Vieren refer to the protagonist by male pronouns.

The seven short stories collected as ''Conan the Swordsman'' are set at various points of Conan's career, from his youth as a raider in the north to his maturity as a general in the kingdom of Aquilonia. The two associated non-fiction pieces by de Camp are on the Conan saga in general and the derivation of the names used by Howard for constructing the fictional "Hyborian Age" setting of the Conan stories.

Chronologically, the seven stories supplement the tales in the twelve volume Lancer/Ace Conan series, falling into the period covered by ''Conan'' through ''Conan the Warrior''.

Sixteen-year-old Cole McKay’s struggle for independence is put to the test as his South Boston Irish-Catholic family implodes around him. Older brother Terry is descending into a life of drugs and crime, pregnant sister Kathleen is being sent away to cover up the shame of unwed motherhood and Cole’s father, Desmond, spends his days in a fog of alcohol and self-pity, silently torturing himself over what might have been. The one thing keeping young Cole’s head above water is his love of baseball. The movie starts with Cole practicing his pitching, when he is picked up by his family to attend the funeral of Desmond's sister. A talented baseball pitcher, Cole overcomes self-doubt and family indifference to fight his way into the state championships. To get there he must make a life or death decision, one that will change the McKay family forever.

The plot of the movie is about newsreel cameramen and production staff who will do anything to get footage. Set between the years 1948 and 1956, when television was introduced to Australia, the film tracks the destinies of two brothers, their adventures and misadventures placed in the context of sweeping social and political changes in their native Australia as well as natural disasters. Len Maguire is constitutionally resistant to change, while his younger brother Frank Maguire welcomes any alterations in his own life and in the world around him.

Events covered in the film include Robert Menzies' return as Prime Minister of Australia, the 1951 referendum to ban the Communist Party, Post-war immigration to Australia, the combatting of the rabbit plague, the Redex Reliability Trial, the 1955 Hunter Valley floods and the 1956 introduction of television in Australia.

Green Lantern Hal Jordan, investigating the disappearance of Evergreen City on Earth, discovers that Appa Ali Apsa, the lone remaining Guardian left behind after his brothers left our dimension, has been driven insane by loneliness. For companionship, Apsa has been uprooting cities from all the worlds he has visited and transporting them to the planet Oa, creating a patchwork known as the Mosaic World.

John Stewart, captured by Apsa, summons Jordan through their power rings and, together with Guy Gardner and the newly returned Guardians, defeat Apsa.

Believing that Apsa's experiment should be allowed to progress to its conclusion, the Guardians elected to maintain his strange mosaic of communities rather than return the inhabitants to their homeworlds. Accordingly, the Guardians assigned Stewart to act as the Green Lantern of the Mosaic world. Stewart was charged with maintaining the peace among the different communities as well as attempting to construct a cohesive society from the disparate races.

Initially distrustful of each other, the various communities sometimes came to battle, even leading to fatalities. Some of the cities had life-forms hostile to each other or to all other life. Stewart also dealt with less fatal problems, such as overpopulation and the fact one of the cities was inhabited by only two people. Assisting Stewart in his efforts are some of the citizens of Evergreen City, including several youngsters whose parents are suffering severe mental problems due to their unique situation. John gives these children less-powerful rings and they assist in future conflicts. John also tries to build roads between the cities. This, along with his other efforts, are hampered by visions of 'the red', which seem to be manifestations of Sinestro. During one of these vision flares, the Green Lantern known as Ch'p is struck and killed by a yellow truck on one of the connecting roads.

Not all the cities were dangerous. The 'Trendoids' were entities who avoided conflict by impersonating any visitors.

Through John's efforts, the cities of Mosaic World were eventually forged into a cohesive society. In return for his success, the Guardians granted Stewart the honor of becoming the first mortal Guardian.

Hal Jordan, possessed by the Parallax entity, destroyed the Central Power Battery and slew all but one of the Guardians of the Universe, leaving Oa and the Mosaic a barren wasteland.

Later it was revealed that The Mosaic World was evacuated by a multi-species coalition in anticipation of the battle between the corrupted Hal Jordan/Parallax and the Guardians. The survivors of the experiments were carried back to their homeworld.

Mosaic's abandoned remains were finally destroyed when Oa was obliterated by Kyle Rayner during a battle with Jordan.

'''Chapter 1:''' The story begins with the narration of Helios at the age of 70. He reflects back to when he was 8 years old and lived in Troy. En route to deliver a pot of cooked meat to his foster father Polydextus, he is confronted by Milentius. Milentius demands the food from Helios and when he refuses, Milentius trips him. The pot of meat shatters and the food is soiled. Helios threatens that his alleged father, King Priam will find out. Milentius threatens to hurt him unless he denies King Priam as his father. Helios retracts his statement just as Prince Paris approaches. Paris mentions how he heard the rumours of Priam having too much wine and meeting a pretty slave girl in a dark corridor and thus leading to the birth of Helios. Paris tells Milentius he did no wrong and says the story sounds absurd due to the age of Priam at the time of conception. Helios returns home and shares the salvaged food with Polydextus. Polydextus then tells Helios how important his heritage is, and he has done a great wrong by denying it when pushed by a bully. He then whips Helios to both punish him and teach him to deal with pain.
'''Chapter 2:''' One day Helios climbed a secret stair to the roof of the palace. He decided to offer a sacrifice to the sun, whom his birth mother worshipped. While lying naked on the roof he is surprised by Cassandra, who was the youngest daughter of Priam and several years older than Helios. She says she overheard Paris telling the story of what happened between Helios and Milentius to Priam, and she did not think that Priam cared to hear it too much. After examining Helios she asks him to look into her eyes where he sees a blinding glow. She then insists that the power of the sun will enter him in time. After leaving the roof Helios is attacked by Milentius and another boy. Helios successfully fends them off, swinging a dead branch that fell off the sacred bay tree. He yells that he is in fact a son of Priam. Prince Hector stops Helios from fighting them off, and then shows him to Priam. Priam asked Helios to return home while he considered the matter. Cassandra followed after Helios, giving him the dead branch he swung earlier telling him it is an honor of Apollo to receive a sacred weapon. At home he sacrificed the branch with Polydextus as an offering of thanks to the Gods. Shortly after, Hector arrived to inform Helios and his foster parents that Priam is not displeased. He has not officially acknowledged Helios as his son, but would like him to work at the palace as stable boy.
'''Chapter 3:''' After becoming stable boy, Polydextus and Troilus train Helios in chariot fighting and javeling. Polydextus, Troilus, and Sardon would also discuss battle strategies. Helios would ride a horse on an occasion which were not meant to be ridden due to their small stature, and would be whipped by Polydextus as punishment. Nine summers of training later Helios "gained three fingers in height", and his weight "balanced that of a sack of wheat". This was an improvement, but not by much. One morning Hector allowed Helios to accompany him to meet Paris, who was returning from his mission across the sea. Hector & Helios are introduced to Helen of Sparta, who accompanied Paris back to Troy along with her dowry meant for Menelaus. Paris insults Helios, causing him to leap at him in anger. Paris begins to whip Helios, but Polydextus draws a blade and prepares to fight. A woman screams for Hector, who stops the fight and explains to Paris that Priam has not acknowledged or denied Helios' bloodline. Paris accepts the explanation, but Helios says he knows they will never be friends. They all travel to Troy together.
'''Chapter 4:''' Soon after the group returned form the beach, Priam called an immediate meeting of the council. Hector & Andromache's bedroom balcony overlooks the throne room. With Hector's permission and guidance, Helios crawled onto the balcony to watch the council meeting from above. Priam enters the throne room and he informs the room that he called the meeting to hear Paris' report from his trip across the Aegean. Paris first lectures the room on his travel, then displays found treasures from his exploits, and then introduces Helen. Antimachus approves of Paris' doings, and cries of approval were heard from the council. Later on Helios learned there was rumors of Antimachus being paid to back this argument. Prince Aeneas is granted permission to speak by Priam, who proposed that allowing Helen to stay may ignite war with Agamemnon, the High King of the Achaeans. Paris insists that it is impossible to have the Achaeans band together, and if that does happen Troy will protect him. Antenor then pushed his way into the open and says allowing Helen to stay would be a violation of customs, disrespectful, and would bring the anger of the Gods. With great respect Helen asks for permission to speak, and tells the story of Gaia, and how she is a woman and has the power to "put away a male". She says she "does things and does not know why", and then asks Priam for "help" understanding the decision she has made to accompany Paris. Priam then announces that it is his will that Helen be welcomed to Troy as the lawful mate of Paris. Suddenly Cassandra cries out from the women's balcony a prediction of Paris bringing death to Troy. Priam ordered her gagged and sent to her room immediately. Helios began to think of her as "his Cassandra" even though they only met once over a year ago. He crawled back into the bedroom and waited for Hector to return. Hector informed Helios that she was whipped by Priam for interrupting council, and after fled to the roof alone. After hearing this, Helios sneaks to the storeroom and fills a jar with salve. He takes off his tunic in order to tie the jar around his neck so that he would be free to climb up a palace wall with both hands. At the top he was greeted by Cassandra, who questions his nudity. She undresses so that Helios could put the salve on her back, bruised from the whipping. She cried and hugged Helios because of his thoughtfulness, but then suddenly recoils. Even though Helios is only 9, she says she wanted to be sure that he does not mate with her. Apollo does not want anyone else to have her. If a man does mate with her he will be punished and Cassandra will lose her gift of prophecy. She then tells Helios that she does not know what she will say whenever she makes a prediction. She mentions one prediction told to Laomedon long ago; "''Stone on stone will ever fall, at the dread Earth-Shaker's call.''" She tells Helios she feels that a spell is coming on and she will perform an oracle for Helios. She smells the salve to become in a "dreamy" state, and she speaks in a trance to Helios. A couple of lines of the oracle caused many thoughts to race in Helios' mind: "''First, you ancient in the Earth, Judge for Troy what he is worth.''" Unaware of what she had just said, she asked Helios if he would remember the words exactly, but not to tell her what it was. She suggests to Helios that it would be a good idea for him to leave the roof, and he climbs down carefully.
'''Chapter 5:''' The next day Sisycles summons Helios to be taught writing by order of Priam. The next morning he is formally introduced to Cassandra, as it is supposed to be their first meeting. After the first lesson, Cassandra offers to teach Helios additional writing on her own time. She tells Helios that it was her that requested Helios be taught how to write. From that point on every second morning Helios had writing lessons from Sisycles, then Cassandra would give him additional writing lessons or other studies. Late that winter, Troy received news that the Achaen rulers are preparing to make war on Troy. Another serious announcement is made, a change to The Festival of the Scapegoat. This was a carnival marking the end of winter where a goat is sacrificed to eliminate all the sins of the city. This year, a man would be chosen. Names of men suspected of evil would be given to Priam. Sisycles would write the approved names on clay tablets. All the tablets would be left on until it rained, then 2 priests and Priam would choose the name that stands out most clearly. The person named would be sacrificed as the Scapegoat. The first day of sunshine came, and is Helios' 10th birthday. Helios and Cassandra celebrate by having snacks and wine, which in turn made them sleepy. They both undress and lay down on the roof naked to enjoy a sun bath. They are discovered on the roof by Queen Hecuba with a few guards. He is taken to Priam and questioned. We learn that Cassandra is only 15 years old. Hecuba demands that Helios be punished, but Priam is not sure if any wrong was done. They agree to enter Helios' name in the Festival of the Scapegoat. Helios' writing lessons stop, and Troy waits for rain. The day of the ceremony, Helios' name was the most legible and his tablet is chosen. Hector interrupts the ceremony and demands that his life be taken, but Priam denies him. Helios takes a close look at the tablet and points out that someone has switched the tablet, as this one was fired in a kiln, not dried out in the sun. Sisycles confirms that he did not create this tablet, and it must have been switched. Priam cannot decide the next course of action. Cassandra orders Helios to say the oracle of his fate. Helios says "''First, you ancient in the Earth, Judge for Troy what he is worth.''" Priam says that the ancient in the Earth is a calling from Gaia, and Helios unwillingly appeals to her. Priam declares that they must seek an answer from her in order to find out Helios' fate.
'''Chapter 6:''' Formal arrangements were made to receive an oracle from the Gaia priestess. After nearly 2 weeks pass, the priestess approves. A party is formed to set out for the oracle. They stopped overnight at Lyrnessus and are welcomed by its ruler and his son Aeneas. They continue to the When they arrive Laocoön introduced the party to a handmaiden of the priestess, who inspected the gifts of Priam. The handmaiden only allowed Priam, Hector, Helios, Cassandra, and Helen to see the priestess. The priestess gave readings and chanted "''Those who wish to chase a boy, will not succeed in saving Troy.''" The party was dismissed, and returned to Troy. Another Scapegoat was chosen.
'''Chapter 7:''' Soon after the return from the shrine Helios and Cassandra were allowed to resume their writing lessons with Sisycles as well as their private talks. One day in early summer the Achaean fleet arrives on the shores of Troy. Battle erupts by sea and on land. Helios follows Troilus and Polydextus, only to witness them killed by Achilles. Helios attempts to defeat Achilles by throwing rocks at him, but he is stopped by Odysseus. Diomedes steps forward leading a captive, Milentius. Milentius is then killed by Diomedes. The three Achaeans discuss what to do with Helios, and Achilles dons him a kitchen pot as a helmet and a ladle as a sword. He then orders his son Neoptolemus to fight Helios to the death.
'''Chapter 8:''' Neoptolemus wounds Helios in the fight with a slash to his ribs. Helios uses the ladle to scoop up embers from a nearby fire and throw them into Neoptolemus' helmet. Helios grabbed a bucket of water and threw in the boy's face. Achilles hates himself for "blinding his son", but Odysseus calls for Machaon to look at Neoptolemus' eyes. He says that the cold water may have saved Neoptolemus from blindness. Machaon leads Helios and the Achaeans to Achilles' tent set up on the beach. There he chants over Neoptolemus, and says it will be days before they know if Neoptolemus' sight would return. In that time, someone must drip medicine over Neoptolemus' eyes. Helios volunteers to stay and apply the medicine. Achilles reluctantly accepts, and leaves the tent under guard and arranges for another tent to be raised. Machaon stitches Helios' wound and leaves. When they are alone, Neoptolemus compliments Helios' fighting and then goes to sleep.

After the destruction of the Yeerk pool, Jake, Tobias, and Marco hide while witnessing the Yeerks destroying the last remnants of their hometown and watch as the Pool Ship lands amidst the destruction. After briefly considering destroying the Pool Ship, the Animorphs hide, deciding that capturing the vessel would be a better strategy.

Hoping to gain military assistance for the attack, Jake visits Major General Sam Doubleday. Although Doubleday is initially distrustful of Jake, he eventually listens and agrees to Jake's plan after a Controller-major on the general's staff tries to kill Jake. After a Yeerk attack on the general's base, Doubleday evacuates his troops and confines them and himself for three days to eliminate any remaining Controllers amongst his soldiers.

Unfortunately, the confinement of Doubleday and his troops means a three-day delay before the Animorphs can launch their attack on the Pool Ship. Sensing that the Yeerks could get the new Yeerk pool that is under construction operational within that time period, the Animorphs decide to take out the Taxxons digging the pool. In the ensuing battle, Jake finds himself underground and in the company of several Taxxons, led by none other than Arbron, a former companion of Elfangor's who became a Taxxon-''nothlit'' several years earlier. Arbron makes Jake an offer: in exchange for allowing his followers to become ''nothlits'' and make a home for themselves on Earth, the 1709 non-Controller Taxxons on the surface and on board the Pool Ship will defect and join the Animorphs in their fight against the Yeerks.

Jake returns to the Hork-Bajir valley and tells the others of Arbron's offer. The brief period of excitement that reigns through the camp is spoiled, however, when Ax, prompted by Cassie (who, as it turns out, has been privy to his prior communication with his people in the previous book by morphing into a flea and riding on his back whenever he snuck off to contact them), tells the others that the Andalites have decided that the war for Earth is lost and are planning on destroying humanity in order to stop the Yeerk menace once and for all. Jake, Rachel, Tobias, and Marco are all furious and feel betrayed by Ax for not telling them about this, and they realize that the Andalites have gone from their allies to their enemies. Ax insists that the only way to stop this is to capture the Pool Ship and use its communications technology to contact the Andalite people directly, whom he does not expect to support his government's sterilization plan.

The Animorphs return to Arbron and his Taxxon followers and secure their support. Jake promises the Taxxons a safe haven on Earth and the opportunity to morph anacondas. Immediately afterwards, Tom arrives and offers to assist the Animorphs in capturing the Pool ship, in exchange for the Blade Ship, a hundred of his own morph-capable followers, and safe passage out of the Solar System. Sensing a trap, Jake accepts Tom's offer while simultaneously setting his own plan into motion. Jake dispatches Marco to locate Erek King and bring him to the Hork-Bajir valley, while Cassie and Ax are sent to capture Chapman. Jake manipulates Erek's pacifist programming by threatening to kill Chapman if Erek does not actively participate in the assault on the Pool Ship. Erek grudgingly agrees to help.

With the attack set to begin, Jake meets up with Tom and the original Animorphs, including a severely beaten Cassie, and proceeds to board the Pool Ship. Once on board, Tom, as expected, betrays Jake by having a Taxxon eat Cassie and the other Animorphs, whom he believes to be hiding on Cassie in morph. Unknown to Tom, "Cassie" is actually a holographic projection by Erek, and the Taxxon is Tobias in morph, escorted by free Hork-Bajir led by Toby Hamee. After devouring the hologram, Tobias and Erek, with the other Animorphs in tow, are led off the bridge by Toby so they can begin trying to gain control of the Pool Ship's computer systems. Visser One gives Tom command of the Blade Ship so he can wipe out the Taxxon resistance. Unbeknownst to the Yeerks and the Animorphs (save for Jake), Rachel is hiding as a flea on Tom's head, with orders to kill him and prevent the Blade Ship from escaping with the morphing cube, an assignment that Rachel is not expected to survive.

The Auxiliary Animorphs and General Doubleday's forces begin their attack on the Pool Ship. Visser One lifts the ship off the ground and uses its massive weapons array to kill the Auxiliary Animorphs and several of Doubleday's troops. Jake, who is still on the bridge, is forced to watch the massacre until Ax and Erek are able to gain control of the helm and force the Pool Ship out of firing range. This act makes Visser One realize that the Animorphs have infiltrated the Pool Ship's engineering section and orders his troops to kill everyone in the room. Jake meets up with the others, who escaped the engine room before Visser One's forces could carry out their orders, and tells them of Rachel's part in his plan. The Animorphs continue with their assault and make their way to the Pool Ship's on-board Yeerk pool. Hoping to distract Visser One and Tom long enough to save Rachel's life, Jake orders Ax to flush the pool, killing 17,372 unhosted Yeerks. The Animorphs continue to the bridge, where they find a defeated and battle-weary Visser One. Jake asks the visser to fire on the Blade Ship with the hope that the shots will disable it, but the Dracon beams miss and Erek drains the remaining power from the weapons. Tom hails the Pool Ship to gloat about his victory, and sees Jake in tiger morph. Enraged at the realization that the Animorphs survived his trap, Tom orders the Blade Ship's weapons to be targeted at the Pool Ship's bridge.

Jake orders Rachel to attack.

The film takes place in the fictional New York town of Everyville, which is home to a vast total of 112 banks.

The title card and technical credits are followed by introductions of the two lead characters: "F.H.A. (Sherlock) Homes" as police chief "Flat-Foot Flanigan with a Floy Floy," and "Edward G. Robemsome" (a caricature of Edward G. Robinson) as notorious gang leader "Killer Diller." After these introductions, Killer and his gang are seen robbing every bank in the town in numerical order (except that they skip the 13th bank out of superstition) — with the newspaper ''Telegraph Post'' reporting the criminals' every move, and even declaring that they have robbed 87 banks in a single day. Despite the criminals' predictability and their endless sight gags (in which Killer does everything from causing one bank to behave like a casino machine to picking up a pay phone and inserting his gun into the speaker, resulting in the operator shrieking in terror and giving him many coins), the police are unable to arrest them. However, after so much bafflement, Flanigan himself gets help from an unlikely source: a man in the front of the theatre who had been sitting through the whole picture; he tells him that Killer is making plans to go to the estate of Mrs. Lotta Jewels at 10:00 in the evening. While Killer and his gang are spending time in said estate, listening to "The Lone Stranger" on radio, Flanigan and his men find the criminals and fire at them. Thus, Killer is captured, convicted, and given a long sentence — which is revealed to be a prison term in which he must write standards ("I've been a naughty boy") on a blackboard one thousand times, much like schoolkids of that era. The imprisoned Killer blows a raspberry as the cartoon irises out.

The novel is set in the 1960s in Batavia, New York. It follows Batavia police chief Fred Clumly in his pursuit of a magician known as the Sunlight Man, a champion of existential freedom and pre-biblical Babylonian philosophy. As Clumly believes in absolute law, order, justice and a Judeo-Christian world view, the two butt their ideological heads in a number of dialogues, all recorded on audiocassette by Clumly. Each of these two characters attempts to exert power over the other—Clumly with the law behind him and the Sunlight Man with his magic and violence—until they wear down not only each other, but many of the other characters with whom they come into contact. A myriad of side-stories provides background for the plot.

The film features the antics of a society of cockroaches in a Mexican café in the absence of its owner. The owner Manuel is reportedly "off to the bullfights".

The film opens with an instrumental of the title song, but interrupts the song with a solo performed by the gondolier cockroach hero. He sings the 1926 John Stepan Zamecnik-Harry D. Kerr composition, "Neapolitan Nights". The title song begins again and is interrupted with a solo by a cockroach parody of Rudy Vallee. He sings the Al Dubin-Harry Warren song, "Sweet Music" from the 1935 Warner Bros. film of the same name,

The scene shifts to a rendition of the title song by a cockroach chorus. They are performing as the background singers to a lady cockroach, who performs as dancer. Her "red velvet gown" consists of a scarlet meat frill. The rest of the film is devoted to the attempts of a parrot to make off with the cockroach heroine. His plans are foiled by the hero.

Newly widowed mother Sally Harrison is trying to hold down a job as an assistant to Mr Campbell, a veterinarian. Her children are Simon and Peter, and her aunt Flo lives with them and tries to help. In Series 3 Mr Campbell moves to Scotland and the vet premises is taken over by divorcee David Redway, an antique bookseller who has a daughter, Jane. David and Sally fall in love.

BoyTown, the greatest boyband of the eighties and the group that started the boyband phenomenon, leave their terrible lives and low-paying jobs for one last attempt at the big time. They return to the stage with slightly older fans and slightly larger pants to complete some unfinished business. These days they spend less time singing about tears, eternity, angels and their 'baby' and more time singing about divorce, shopping, and picking up the kids from school.

As their triumphant tour draws to a conclusion all the personal issues that have been safely buried away for twenty years come bubbling to the surface with explosive consequences. Suddenly the band has to deal with allegations of infidelity, paternity tests, a miming fiasco, a band member "outing" himself live on stage, an awards night disaster, solo albums, a mysterious disappearance, and a plane journey that will cement the BoyTown legend forever.

''BoyTown Confidential''

The official ''BoyTown'' website features clips from a mockumentary ''BoyTown Confidential'', hosted by Tony Martin as "Kenny Larkin", his character from the movie.

The mockumentary was supposed to be included in its entirety on the DVD release of ''BoyTown'', but was not included. Mick Molloy's Molloy Boy Productions has commented that it was left out due to lack of post-production funding. However, Tony Martin said that he would have paid the estimated $5000 post-production cost as he believed it was one of his finest works. Speculation persists that Molloy thought the mockumentary would upstage the film itself. This has led to an ongoing rift between longtime collaborators Martin and Molloy.

Four ten–year-olds are kicked out of their favorite playground by two aggressive drunkards. When they realize their parents are not going to help them, there's only one solution. They have to find a way to get the toughest boy in the neighborhood to help them. From that moment on the four friends are in for an exciting adventure.

''...And Mother Makes Five'' is basically the same as ''...And Mother Makes Three'' with domestic problems being the centre of the programme. The children are now older, but as troublesome as before. There are new characters in the form of Joss and Monica Spicer, and Mrs Fletcher.

The plot revolves around billionaire Jean-Marc Clément who learns that he is to be satirized in an off-Broadway revue. After going to the theatre, he sees Amanda Dell rehearsing the Cole Porter song "My Heart Belongs to Daddy", and, by accident, the director thinks him an actor suitable to play himself in the revue. Clément takes the part in order to see more of Amanda and plays along with the mistaken identity, going by the name Alexander Dumas. While rehearsing, Clément finds himself growing jealous of Amanda's attentions to actor Tony Danton, unaware that she only wants to help Tony achieve stardom. In order to impress Amanda, Clément hires Milton Berle, Gene Kelly, and Bing Crosby (all playing themselves) to teach him how to deliver jokes, dance, and sing, respectively. Clément even goes as far as to indirectly fully fund the revue after one of his employees, who had raised him all his life, tries to put an end to the revue by demanding a full year's rent for the theater. Throughout this, Clément and Amanda fall in love with one another.

Eventually, Clément decides to confess the truth to Amanda, who reacts by assuming that he has gotten overwhelmed by method acting and needs to see a therapist. He eventually manages to convince her of his true identity after tricking her and the revue director into coming to his offices. Amanda is initially indignant over the deception but swiftly forgives him after the two make up in the building's elevator.

In the opening scenes we meet San Francisco socialite Joyce Ramsey, her daughter Dee; Dee’s fiancée, a banker; Joyce’s husband, David; their daughter, Martha, a college student; Martha’s outspoken boyfriend, Phil Polanski, who is working his way through college to become an agricultural chemist. Joyce is concerned about Phil’s working-class background: His family is Czech and his father works as a taxi starter at the Union Terminal. Joyce is clearly accustomed to managing everything around her in order to maintain the position, family and success that she and David set out to achieve. David is preoccupied and unhappy, and while he is dressing for dinner, he suddenly asks for a divorce, which stuns her. He tells her he is leaving that night, prompting her to look back on their marriage.

Via a flashback, we learn about the couple's humble beginnings in farming country and discover how they worked their way into the world of the nouveau riche. David is a Santa Rosa attorney with no clients, working on construction jobs with his law partner, Bob Townsend. David's wife Joyce serves as the struggling firm's secretary. Finding herself pregnant, she schemes to land a new client, Swanson, a former factory worker with a valuable steel-making patent. She succeeds at getting him to hire David alone. After the baby is born, Bob is planning to quit and work in a law office. Swanson comes by the apartment with instructions for David and the truth comes out. Bob is very angry and quits. David is furious with his wife, but she placates him by convincing him her sole intent was to help him and their child, to give them hope. He promises he’ll find a way to make it up to Bob.

Back in the present, Joyce is forced to admit to her daughters their father has left her when a society columnist calls to question his move. She goes out to a luncheon engagement, leaving the stunned girls to wonder why their parents’ marriage is in trouble. At lunch, she learns from her friends that David has been seen with another woman and goes to a lawyer, Mr. Prescott. Through him, she hires a private detective to investigate. The attorney warns her not to talk about her suspicions to anyone.

Another flashback, and David is taking her to the hospital for the birth of their second child. David, now an executive in Swanson's company, announces he has been transferred to San Francisco but wants to buy a little farm within driving distance. Joyce, longing for the excitement of city living and eager for her children to have the benefits of living among people who are doing big things, changes his mind. Eventually she meets Emily Hedges, and the two, bonded by their social-climbing aspirations, become close friends.

An additional flashback which occurs in the more recent past reveals Robert Townsend, in desperate need of $15,000, arriving at the Ramsey home to request a loan. He had refused David’s offers of help for 20 years, but needs him now. Joyce tells him David is away on business and won’t be back for 10 days; she is unable to help him. Her husband learns of her lie and comes to his former partner's aid; she is furious. He accuses Joyce of being callous and breaks off the conversation “before I tell you the truth about yourself.”

A return to the present, where David and girl friend Eileen Benson, alone in her apartment, are photographed through a window by the detective Joyce hired. He asks Eileen to marry him, to save her reputation, but she says no. During a divorce settlement a few days later, Joyce insists that David fund a joint trust or separate trusts for both their daughters, rejecting the idea that Dee’s marriage will provide security for her. She refuses David’s bonded guarantee of what we would call child-support payments; they must become part of the trust(s). She also rejects David’s offer of half of everything he owns, in addition to their home, all her personal possessions and jewelry, which are not included in the settlement. Both lawyers are shocked—David is offering more than any court would award to her. She asks the lawyers to leave them alone. She proceeds to demand all of David's assets, threatening to sue him, naming Eileen as correspondent and revealing their infidelity before the world if he does not comply with her demands. Appalled, David complies with Joyce's demands and instructs his lawyer to give her anything she wants. There is only one more thing to be decided: custody of Martha, who is old enough to choose with which parent she will live. Looking up into her father’s eyes, Martha says quietly that she will choose the parent who needs her most—her mother.

While on a Caribbean cruise, Joyce meets Englishman Anthony Tunliffe. During a stop in Port-au-Prince, the two visit the now-divorced, disillusioned and alcoholic Emily living with a gigolo, and she expresses concern for Joyce's future. When Joyce learns Anthony is married and looking for nothing more than an extramarital affair, she leaves the ship and returns home.

At Martha and Phil's wedding, Joyce and David meet, but they sit at opposite ends of the table. All the friends and family go to the airport to see them off. Joyce leans against a railing, out of sight, weeping uncontrollably. David offers to put her in a taxi, and when he asks if she wants him to ride with her, she nods, speechless. In the cab, she recovers enough to tell him that she is crying not for Martha but for herself. She knows about loneliness now. She had not known how much a part of him she was. He walks her to the front door, where he suggests they start anew. He wants her back. She tells him that she has never wanted anything so much as to have him with her tonight, but she owes him something. Be sure he’s not saying this because he pities her. He moves to kiss her, but Joyce pulls back. She asks him not to decide tonight. But if he wants her back tomorrow, or the day after, or anytime, she’ll be waiting. She goes in and David walks away, smiling.

Middle schooler Wilma Sturtz is alone. Her childhood friends have moved away, and her efforts to make new ones have failed. Wilma's fortunes change when she offers an old lady her seat on the subway. The woman offers to grant Wilma one wish, exactly as Wilma wishes it. Flustered, Wilma wishes to be the most popular person at Claverford, her middle school.

The wish is granted to Wilma's surprise. She befriends a group of popular girls, along with a budding friendship with a boy named Jared. However, a loophole is revealed; Wilma's wish was granted exactly as she wished for it, so she is not popular to students outside of Claverford, or to students from other schools. Even worse, her wish will expire the day they graduate from the school.

Wilma attempts to embrace her wish and find the old lady. The wish wears off as soon as Wilma goes back to her house with her friends--by this time, they have all graduated. She reveals what she wished to her "friends," but realizes that if she wishes to remain friends with them or even to have her wish renewed, she'd be forcing them to do something against their will; without the wish, they wouldn't have befriended Wilma willingly. After telling Jared this, he says that she wasted a wish and could have wished for something better--such as a pet porpoise.

Wilma finds the old lady again, but is not given another wish again because her previous one was fulfilled. Wilma tells a kid boarding the bus to help the old lady on the bus, because "it will be worth it."

Seven men from the western United States band together and form the law in a town that, for better or for worse, needs their protection from the lawlessness of the west. They consist of an infamous gunslinger, an ex-bounty hunter, a smooth-talking con artist, a young eastern amateur, a womanizing gunman, a freed slave turned healer, and a former preacher seeking penance. While they originally band together to protect a dusty Seminole village from renegade former Confederate soldiers (whereas the movie was about protecting a Mexican village from bandits), they later come together to protect a budding town from the constant riffraff that threatens to destroy it.

The film is set in France during the Seven Years' War. As the film begins, Fanfan (Gérard Philipe) is a charming, attractive young man who is trying to escape a shotgun marriage. At this vulnerable point in his life, he is approached by the daughter of a recruiting officer, Adeline (played by Gina Lollobrigida), who tells him that if he joins the army, he will find fame, fortune, and will marry the king's daughter. Accordingly, he joins the army, only to discover that she made the whole thing up in order for her father to get a recruiting bonus. Nevertheless, encouraged by a series of improbable circumstances, he accepts her prediction as his destiny. A series of events ensues which shows off to great advantage his athleticism and leadership ability. As the film progresses, we become aware of a developing attraction between himself and Adeline which however conflicts with his perceived "destiny" of marrying a king's daughter.

Jennifer Peters (Justine Waddell) attempts to save her brother Roy, who has been abducted by a serial killer known as the Riddle Killer – or R.K. – due to his use of riddles in the murders he commits. Jennifer has recently written a book about the nature of serial killers, to which R.K. has taken offense. Jennifer follows R.K.'s clues and finds Roy, but fails to save him as the car in which he is trapped explodes.

Kevin Parson (Marc Blucas) is a seminary theology student who has recently completed the third draft of his thesis about the nature of good and evil. One day he receives a phone call from R.K. (Bill Moseley), ordering him to confess some unspecified sin or his car will explode. He also asks Kevin a riddle: "What falls but never breaks? What breaks but never falls?" Puzzled about the sin and the riddle, Kevin quickly escapes from the car before it explodes. He informs the police, among them Jennifer, but leaves out the part about the sin, believing it's something he did some time ago.

He receives a threat against his childhood dog and goes to the house of his Aunt Balinda (Priscilla Barnes), but fails to save his dog from a bomb. Back home again, he meets his friend since childhood, Samantha Sheer (Laura Jordan) and they decide to try to figure out the mystery of the Riddle Killer who continues to target him and seems to be able to monitor Kevin in his own home. Sam solves the first riddle; the answer is night and day. She is working as an insurance detective and takes to her laboratory the book in which the killer had hidden a mobile phone.

Another threat comes from the Riddle Killer: A bomb is attached to Kevin's fellow student Henry and a message on Henry's forehead points to , a Bible text about death as the wages of sin. The police manage to get the bomb off Henry's body. Kevin now remembers a boy who had always watched him and Sam during their childhood. In self-defense, Kevin had locked him in a warehouse and left him to die. He thinks that the boy escaped, and is now R.K.

Later, Kevin finds the papers of his thesis scattered around his room. He finds a TV in his refrigerator which shows R.K. with another riddle: what takes you away but doesn't go anywhere? Kevin confesses leaving the boy in the warehouse and apologizes, hoping to satisfy him so he'll leave him alone. But R.K. does not relent. Kevin and Sam, whose father was a police officer, find out that a bus on 3rd Avenue is in danger and manage to get all the passengers off safely before a bomb explodes.

Jennifer visits Kevin's Aunt Balinda and finds that she has been keeping her husband and son Bobby in the dark about the entire world outside their home, and had done the same to Kevin. She also finds a bloody jacket in the warehouse. Meanwhile, Sam talks with Kevin in a hotel. R.K. sends a recorded message to the hotel room which points to an empty building and the number 33369—the warehouse. Before Jennifer gets to the hotel, Kevin and Sam are at the warehouse, where Sam sees a wall full of enigmatic words and is trapped by the killer. When Kevin enters the building, he finds a bomb. He is unable to stop it but can escape with Sam. Jennifer and the police arrive and investigate. Sam leaves and Kevin insists on not cooperating with Jennifer, as the killer insisted on no police involvement or he'd kill more people. Jennifer declares her resignation, saying that as she is no longer officially involved, she no longer counts. However, Kevin ignores her.

Kevin finds another threat about a house on fire at midnight and realizes that Aunt Balinda is in danger. As he rushes to try to save her, he remembers that she abused him when he was a child. Sam finds a note from R.K. and is startled to realize that he has the same handwriting as Kevin. She calls Jennifer, who tells her that there was only one pair of footprints in the warehouse. Sam is now sure that she never actually saw R.K. The women also realize that all the riddles were about opposites, like nightfall and daybreak, and conclude that R.K. might actually be Kevin's "evil half."

Kevin finds Balinda tied up, and the Riddle Killer introduces himself as Slater (Bill Moseley). Sam rushes to Balinda's house and finds that the Riddle Killer, Slater, is real after all when she looks under the door and sees two pairs of shoes. Slater explains that he will have Kevin kill Balinda, then leave him to take the blame, as everyone will believe Kevin is the Riddle Killer. Jennifer arrives to find Kevin pointing a gun at himself. It turns out that both Slater and Sam are figments of Kevin's imagination; traumatized by Aunt Balinda's abuse, Kevin had imagined his friend Samantha and the boy with whom he had fought, and had subconsciously imitated the real Riddle Killer. Jennifer convinces Kevin of this, and his visions of Slater and Sam vanish.

Kevin had said that the real Riddle Killer was right in front of their eyes, and Jennifer discovers while examining his wall of clippings that the hot dog vendor who had supposedly been given a book by the killer to give to her is at the front of the crowd in a photo, holding a camera. When captured, he confesses that he hates copycats and had meant to kill Kevin for copying him.

Kevin is sent to an institution and Jennifer visits him there.

The story revolves around seven-year-old Barbro, who has a secret twin sister called Ylva-li, the only person in Barbro's life who likes her more than anything else, and who calls her Most Beloved Sister. Ylva-li is the queen of the golden hall which can be reached by crawling down a hole under the rose bush, Salikon. Barbro and Ylva-Li ride their horses and have adventures together. When Barbro has to return to her parents, Ylva-Li tells her that she will die when the roses on Salikon wither. Barbro refuses to believe her and returns to her parents, who pretend that they have missed her. The next day, the roses on the rose bush are all dead, and there is no longer a hole in the ground.

Set in 1935, Pitfall Harry, the fearless, rough-and-ready treasure hunter from the ''Pitfall'' series, returns to help a beautiful archaeologist rescue her father and thwart the evil Jonathan St. Claire from claiming the lost city of El Dorado. As Harry, players encounter various animal enemies, including scorpions, bats, piranhas, crocodiles and penguins, as well as human adversaries under the leadership of the sinister St. Claire. Numerous abilities are at the player's disposal as Harry recovers pages of the Heroic Handbook. With his various items, Harry is equipped for almost anything. Harry will also find lost explorers and be rewarded with golden idols for his trouble, which he can then use as currency with the Shaman.

The narration is about events happening to Koichi Todome while exiled from Japan after the Kerberos Riot, before Inui came to Taiwan seeking for him. The portrayed events can be localized in the saga's timeline between the prologue of ''The Red Spectacles'' and ''StrayDog''.

In 1999, ''3rd night: Story of the incident of Fast Food Grifter Cold Badger Masa's clubbing to death'' was adapted in comic to become ''Kerberos Panzer Cop'' Act 6.

Rob Horton is 12 years old and lives with his father in a Florida motel called the Kentucky Star. His father (named Robert), and Rob have recently moved to Lister, Florida, after the death of Rob's mother, Caroline. Rob is quiet and often is bullied at school. Things begin to change when Rob discovers a tiger in the forest (locked up in a cage) while wandering the woods. He then meets a girl named Sistine Bailey who has recently moved nearby. Rob shows Sistine the tiger. Rob, who usually keeps his feelings locked away begins to involuntarily open up emotionally to Sistine. Though Sistine insists on letting the tiger go, Rob is wary of what will happen to it if he does. Rob finally relents and releases the tiger, letting it run into the woods. However, just moments later, Rob's father shoots the tiger dead. At the tiger's funeral, Sistine recites a part of William Blake's The Tyger. Rob and his father confront their unresolved feelings about Rob's mother and Rob begins looking forward to going to school with Sistine.

A sailing ship happens to fall upon a floating water-cask, well-sealed with pitch and containing a manuscript. The cask is opened and the manuscript is read aloud.

It is the story of the ship ''Homebird''. A terrible storm at sea heavily damages the ship, breaking away all three masts and severely injuring the captain, and leaving it at the mercy of the winds and tides until it is caught in the "cemetery of the oceans," the Sargasso Sea. A group of crew members attempts to free the ''Homebird'' but are taken by a giant octopus. The remaining crewmen are also killed, leaving only the narrator, the injured captain, and the captain's daughter. As the captain's health fails, the narrator constructs a superstructure out of wood and pitch-hardened canvas to protect the vessel from the predator. The captain realizes that he will soon die, leaving the narrator alone with his daughter. To protect her honor, the narrator agrees to marry the young woman.

:"'Do you -- do you love her?' :"His tone was keenly wistful, and a sense of trouble lurked in his eyes. :"'She will be my wife,' I said, simply; and he nodded. :"'God has dealt strangely with us,' he murmured, presently, as though to himself. :"Abruptly, he bade me tell her to come in. :"And then he married us. :"Three days later, he was dead, and we were alone.

The narrator continues to fortify the ship's defenses, and soon finds that his new wife is pregnant. He takes stock of the ship's stores of food and finds that sufficient provisions exist to keep them alive for fifteen to seventeen years.

The narrator of the story within a story concludes by describing his plans to enclose the manuscript in the water-cask and attach it to a balloon, so that the wind will carry it to open water. The narrative returns from the story-within-a-story to describe the present captain's reaction to the story:

"Seventeen years pervisions," he muttered thoughtfully. "An' this 'ere were written sumthin' like twenty-nine years ago!" He nodded his head several times. "Poor creetures!" he exclaimed. "It'd be er long while, Jock -- a long while!"

Woody is an average man who has a happy life, until his neighbor Mr. Rottweiler makes his life miserable. Woody decides to take full revenge on Mr. Rottweiler and calls up a TV crew, which produces the self-titled reality show that shows the neighbor's relations from worst sight.

Barney Gorman (Tony Danza) works hard as a garbageman in Philadelphia, but his career indirectly embarrasses his family. Barney's frustration is made worse by being a fan of the Philadelphia Eagles, who are mired in a slump. Due to a sticky lever on his garbage truck, Barney has (without realizing it) developed a very strong kick. One day at the city dump, Barney kicks a water jug extremely far and catches the attention of a group of Eagles executives, who are scouting the location for land to build a new stadium. The Eagles coach offers Barney a job as the team's new kicker, which the owner feels is an excellent publicity stunt in "giving an average Joe a shot at the NFL".

Barney joins the Eagles, but at first isn't really accepted by his teammates, especially his roommate, Bubba Downs. But once Barney starts playing and makes a lot of important field goals, his teammates and football fans all over town begin to love him, giving him the nickname "G-Man". Unfortunately, the fame and popularity begin to go to Barney's head, and he becomes conceited and talks down to his teammates. In the next game, Barney misses a potential game-winning field goal, knocking the Eagles out of contention for the playoffs.

Barney goes to a bar, depressed and lonely, when an attractive blonde woman approaches him. She asks him if he is Barney Gorman and if she could take a picture with him. Barney is caught off guard when the woman kisses him as the photo is being taken. She says thanks while giving him an alluring smile as she walks away.

Barney's mood goes from bad to worse and he is suspended from the team. He misses a date with his wife (Jessica Tuck), who then sees the picture of him kissing the blonde woman in the newspaper. When Barney arrives at home, he finds that his wife has kicked him out as well, leaving his suitcase outside the door with the photo from the newspaper.

After some soul-searching, Barney comes to his senses and apologizes to his wife, son, father, and his teammates. The Eagles let him back on the team, just in time for the final game of the season. Barney is given a chance to redeem himself as the game again comes down to a last-second field goal. The holder fumbles the snap, and Barney grabs it and scores the game-winning touchdown. At the end-of-season press conference, Barney remembers his roots as a garbageman and points out that garbagemen are deserving of respect, too, as they work hard to keep the city clean.

The plot is based on the fairy tale of the same name which was written by the Brothers Grimm.

The main originality of the series is the coffee machine, located in the relaxation area of the company, which becomes the point of view of the viewer during each episode. In front of it, parade the employees of the company "Geugène Electro Stim" (G.E.S.) all are caricatured to the grotesque humor, even cynical at times.

This place of choice allows the viewer to live from within the everyday atmosphere of the head office of a large company in the French (such as the presence of a driver for the president, a director of human resources and 'a full-time psychologist), with professional or private discussions that often turn into caricatures.

Some extras pass from time to time down the hall and sometimes serve as spectators in some skits at strategic moments.

In January 1942, the month after the United States entered World War II, reporter John Royer (James Stewart) returns to the United States. He goes to see his friend, newspaper publisher John Manchester (Lionel Barrymore), about a scheme to smuggle desperately needed rubber out of Japanese-occupied Malaya. Manchester, though he has been selected by the government to deal with the rubber shortage, does not seem interested. However, later, government agent Kellar (John Hodiak) takes Royer to a meeting with Manchester and others. Royer is granted approval to put the smuggling plan into action.

Royer needs the help of his old friend, the smuggler Carnaghan (Spencer Tracy). He succeeds in getting Carnaghan released from Alcatraz – where the Royer's exposé had landed him – to help. They slip into Malaya and contact Carnaghan's associate, the Dutchman (Sidney Greenstreet), who recruits a gang for them from customers in his saloon, including Romano (Gilbert Roland). Carnaghan also renews his acquaintance with the saloon's singer, Luana from Italy (Valentina Cortese).

Using money and intimidation, they succeed in purchasing all the available rubber, but eventually the Japanese commander, Colonel Tomura (Richard Loo), gets wind of the scheme. On the last trip to transport the remaining rubber - belonging to German plantation owner Bruno Gerber (Roland Winters) - to a waiting freighter, Carnaghan smells an ambush. He forces Gerber to confess that he tipped off Tomura. Royer decides to try going around the ambush, but Carnaghan refuses to go with him. Royer is killed by the waiting soldiers.

Tomura hints to the Dutchman that he would be willing to look the other way and let the rubber go in return for gold. Despite the Dutchman's certainty that Tomura is lying, the cynical Carnaghan takes him up on his offer. The Dutchman is right; Carnaghan is captured by Tomura. He takes Tomura to where the freighter lies hidden, but when a Japanese warship arrives, it is met by two PT boats, which proceed to sink it with torpedoes. Carnaghan first shoots the soldiers guarding him, then Tomura, but is himself wounded in the exchange of gunfire.

When Malaya is liberated by the Allies, Kellar - hoping to present Carnaghan with a medal - tracks the smuggler to an island where he has settled down with Luana. Carnaghan refuses the honor, and tells Kellar to give the medal to the Dutchman.

Upset and angry by the fact that they are not alone in Paradise, Adam and Eve are accompanied by another man with a big mustache wearing pajamas. Every day this man, Don Jeronimo, greets the two of them very cordially and attempts to befriend them. Even though Don Jeronimo's intentions are solely to become friends with Adam and Eve, they cannot help but feel angry because the Paradise was only meant for the two of them. Don Jeronimo owns a hotel and has cows which he tends to, all of which irritate Adam and Eve more. One day, Don Jeronimo asks them whether there are others living in Paradise and they respond by saying no and that they are the first people. He congratulates them and invites Adam and Eve to dinner. The reunion between the three of them did not seem right, the picture was not meant to be painted with the three of them but rather only Adam and Eve and the serpent. To Adam and Eve, Paradise was ruined; the gentleman with the mustache had spoiled their plans. However, as Adam and Eve began to spend more time with Don Jeronimo, little by little they began to like him and become entertained by his jokes. They saw that he was a kind generous man and so the three of them were delighted to be in each other's company. Don Jeronimo asked Adam and Eve if they were married. Not knowing how to answer and unaware of what that meant, they responded by saying no. Don Jeronimo followed up by asking whether they were brother and sister, Adam and Eve answered saying yes, they were brother and sister. A thought then came into Don Jeronimo's mind. He began to tell more jokes to Eve to impress her and even gave her some of his cows. He told her he loved her and the two of them married. They had children whom as they grew created more noise and chaos in Paradise. Even though Adam respected Don Jeronimo, he and the serpent began to feel anger as they realized Paradise would never be what it was. There was nothing more to say or do, change was inevitable.

The film opens as Mr. Wilson reads a letter he has received from his son Neto, in which Neto declares his contempt for his father. It is followed by a flashback to explain the story; Neto, a São Paulo middle-class teenager, has a troubled relationship with his father and his mother, Meire.

One day, Neto travels with his friend Lobo to Santos without informing his parents. They go to an apartment where they swim and eat food; Neto leaves the place when Lobo suggests that they reciprocate for the food by letting the men there caress them. Alone in downtown, Neto begs for money, and he is helped by a woman called Leninha. She takes him home to have lunch with some friends; after it, Neto and Leninha have sex. Later, at night, he is arrested for doing graffiti, and his parents pick him up at the police station. The following day, Neto is in his bedroom and his father finds a marijuana cigarette in his jacket. Neto's sister advises his parents to send him to a mental institution.

Wilson tricks Neto and brings him to a hospital where he is forcibly admitted without any examination to verify its necessity. Neto is sedated by a nurse before receiving the diagnosis of Dr. Cintra. When he wakes up, Neto encounters Ceará, a hyperactive man, and finds out the hospital is decaying and careless. He also meets Rogério, an injectable drug user committed by his family, who tells him it is impossible to escape and that if he were to try he would be drugged with haloperidol or electrocuted. Rogério also tells him not to consume the medications administered by nurses because it awakes the appetite in order to make patients look healthier. Meanwhile, Cintra has a conversation in which he discusses that if necessary he could easily admit more people, mostly homeless, to avoid losing the government subsidy.

After some time, Neto's parents and sister visit him, and are deceived by the doctor who says Neto requires months of treatment. Neto begs his parents to take him with them and they refuse. Days later, Neto tries to escape but is captured and receives electroshock treatment. Suddenly, on another day, his father visits him to say he and Meire miss him; Neto asks to leave the place and Wilson takes him away. At home, his mother asks a downcast Neto if he wants to return to school or to work as a salesman; he decides to work. The mother of one of his friends forbids Neto to see him, and he discovers Leninha is a married woman. Then, he becomes distressed to the point of leaving a client in the midst of a sale. To unwind, Neto goes to a party at night, where he mixes Coca-Cola and cachaça. Drunk, he carries his friend Bel to the bathroom and they start to kiss each other. However, he goes berserk and starts to damage the place. The police are called and send him to another psychiatric hospital.

In this new institution, Neto angers the nurse Ivan after reporting to the hospital's superior that the nurse overreacted while trying to calm a patient. The nurse has it out for him, and when Ivan sees Neto faking to take a pill, he injects the drug through a syringe. That night, Neto, after doping a nurse, goes to the hospital stockroom and asks the inmate Biu to set fire to a stack of drugs. When Ivan discovers this, Neto receives solitary confinement. After being released from solitary, Neto writes a letter to his father and silently gives it to him when he visits. After refusing to have his hair cut, Neto is locked in solitary once again. He sets fires to the cage and is rescued by the nurses. After reading the letter, Wilson takes him from the clinic. The films ends as Wilson cries while he and Neto are seen seated side-by-side on a curbside.

Following the events of the previous episode, Veronica confronts Claire Nordhouse (Krista Kalmus) for faking her rape after she publishes a story on it. Wallace Fennel and a lawyer are taken in to Dean O’Dell’s (Ed Begley, Jr.) office, where he is caught for cheating on a test. Veronica’s criminology paper is praised by her teacher, Hank (Patrick Fabian) leading her to praise him incessantly. Harmony Chase (Laura San Giacomo), a former client who asked Keith Mars (Enrico Colantoni) to investigate her possibly adulterous husband, calls him and asks him on a date. Tim Foyle (James Jordan), Hank's teaching assistant, tells Veronica that she plagiarized her paper, even though she did not. Hank gives her three days to prove that she is innocent. Veronica learns that a student named Jeff Ratner accused her. Veronica goes to a computer student and ascertains the email address of the person who faked her paper. Stosh "Piz" Piznarski invites Veronica bowling, and she invites Parker (Julie Gonzalo) as well.

Veronica gets caught snooping in the Dean’s office, although she makes up a hasty lie that she was searching for a lost earring, and it diverts his attention. Wallace decides not to drop the class on whose test he cheated. Veronica proves that the essay hers was supposedly plagiarized from was posted after she turned in her paper; nevertheless, she still wants to find who framed her. Parker, Veronica, Piz, and Logan (Jason Dohring) bowl and have fun together. When Veronica and Logan get room service, Veronica spots Jeff Ratner and questions him. Parker is romantically interested in Piz, and she tasks Veronica with talking to him about her. After talking to Mercer Hayes (Ryan Devlin), Parker informs Veronica that she remembers Mercer's cologne from the night of her rape. Veronica goes to Sheriff Lamb (Michael Muhney) with this news; Wallace drops basketball to study for the class. Veronica runs into Keith at the hotel before learning that the room that belongs to "Rory Finch" is actually Hank, who is having an affair with Mrs. O’Dell.

On their second date, Harmony suggests that they have sex, but Keith declines the proposal. On the way back, Keith’s becomes involved in a traffic collision, but the airbag catches him. This traumatic experience makes him go back to Harmony, and they sleep together. Veronica talks to Tim Foyle, who made her follow the trail of "Rory Finch" deliberately in order for her to discover the professor’s affair. Tim was the professor’s protégé, and he wants Veronica to discover Hank's flaws before she becomes more involved with him. Logan runs up to Veronica and tells her that Mercer has been arrested for the rapes on campus, despite the fact that he believes that Mercer is innocent. Logan begs Veronica to defend Mercer, as he was with him the night of one of the rapes. However, he refuses to tell Veronica what they were doing.

The story begins with Rau Utu, a great and noble warrior in a new generation of warrior protectors of the bearers of the Marks of Kri called the Rakus, trained by his mentor, adopted father, and the last of the older generation of the Rakus, Baumusu.

Accompanied during his adventure by a raven, Kuzo, his chronicler and narrator of the story, he was taught stealth and extraordinary skill with his sword. He was also taught to be a hero to help those in need rather than act as a mercenary. Rau was being asked for a favor by the village innkeeper, Rongo, from the north of Tapuroku, who says that bandits are keeping business away and asks Rau to look into it. After Rau takes care of the bandits, news of his prowess as a warrior and his heroics spread far and wide.

This leads to a mysterious man showing up in the tavern, who offers Rau money for his services. Despite the uneasy feeling that Rau has about the man and Baumusu's suspicions regarding the necromancer, he accepts his offer. He then travels to the forest of Heiadoko, where he retrieves a piece of parchment from the tomb of Sambu-usu. This parchment, however, is actually one of the Marks of Kri - human skin. Rau returns home from his job to find that he's been taken advantage of by the mysterious man known simply as the "Dark One".

The man later revealed turns out to be the Ganguun Priest, a member of an evil organization, the Kasai, and is devoted to its efforts to rule the world, as well as subverting Rau's true destiny. Furthermore, Rau then is told by an elderly woman, the fortune teller named Simka, that the money Rau received from him was a counterfeit, a curse marked by the Kasai. He then is told to head north to a place called Vaitaku, to find a tree and eat its fruit, knowing that this special tree is an oracle.

After Rau eats the sacred fruit, the oracle tree informs him both of the Mark of Kri, and his destiny to protect a captured boy. The boy, the oracle says, holds the fifth mark, which the "Dark One" will soon have in his twisted possession. Furthermore, it is revealed that Rau not only has a great destiny, but will be among the gods, as his name will be used and whispered to quiet the children on stormy nights, and songs will be sung and written in his name. Finally, Rau is told that the sixth and final mark is well protected.

He then travels to the heavily guarded temple of Meifiti, to save a boy from being sacrificed. However, when Rau reaches the boy, he is already sacrificed by the Dark One, directly leading him to a trap, designed by the Dark One himself. Upon returning to the Inn, Rau discovers that his village has been attacked and destroyed as part of his devious trap. When he discovered the carnage the Kasai had wrought, Baumusu, tells him of his path in life, and that Rau must find his sister, Tati, who has the final Mark of Kri, had been taken during the attack on the village, before dying as a great noble warrior and as a Rakus.

As Rau's soul and heart demanded vengeance for Baumusu's death and his village's destruction at the hands of the Kasai, he travels to Rahtutusai, and encounters the Dark One. After Rau defeats his horde of Zombies and the Kasai troops, the Dark One asks him to join him on his quest for world domination. Rau declines by throwing an axe at the Dark One's head, killing him, avenging the deaths of Baumusu, the innkeeper, the destruction of his village, and succeeds in rescuing Tati at the end.

However, there was more work to be done between them, according to Kuzo, that Rau and Tati, now vowed to confront an old enemy long forgotten, and save the Three Kingdoms from world domination at the hands of the Kasai. "But all of this is a different story, for another time." Kuzo said before flying away.

This novel is the third in the ''Enchanted Forest'' series, told from the witch Morwen's perspective.

Morwen, a witch who lives in the Enchanted Forest, is having trouble with people who believe that magic should follow traditional forms, specifically one Arona Michealear Grinogion Vamist.

Morwen's cats find a large rabbit named Killer as well as the burned-looking splotches that a wizard's staff leaves in the forest, despite the spell on the forest (established in the last book) that should prevent it. Morwen calls the magician Telemain to help, who mentions a wizard-melting spell he came up with. They then find the wizard Antorell (son of the Head wizard Zemanar), who is two inches tall, shrunken by his own spell, who tries to escape but is subdued by the cats and then melted by Telemain.

Morwen then finds that Killer has eaten one of the magical cabbages in her garden, and has turned into a donkey. (Throughout the story, Killer acquires additional spells and changes form.) Morwen and Telemain immediately go to the castle of King Mendanbar and Queen Cimorene, who is pregnant. At the castle, Mendanbar and Telemain discover that the sword at the heart of the forest's magic is stolen, allowing the wizards free rein in the forest. Morwen, Kazul (the King of Dragons), Telemain, Cimorene, Killer and two of Morwen's cats must undertake the journey to the headquarters of the Society of Wizards, who stole the sword. Mendanbar stays in the Enchanted Forest to guard against wizards.

Telemain teleports the group twice towards their destination. The next teleport fails and Telemain is unconscious. Killer carries Telemain as they make their way through a swamp. They find a tower occupied by a fire-witch, Brandel, who is there because Vamist chased his family out of their home. After Brandel lets them in, they use his magic mirror to try to contact Mendanbar but find that they cannot because of a problem at his end. Kazul decides to go home and find out what's happening. The next morning, again with Brandel's mirror, they find that the sword is not at the headquarters of the Society of Wizards as they assumed, but at the house of Vamist.

With the help of the cats, Morwen and Cimorene manage to recover the sword (they melt Antorell again). Telemain teleports them back to the forest and the group realize that they accidentally brought Vamist along. While they were gone, a battle has occurred between the dragons and wizards. The wizards encased the castle in a magical bubble and Mendanbar is missing, presumed inside the castle. As with the bubble shield spell in ''Searching for Dragons'', the only way to break it is with the sword of the King of the Enchanted Forest, and the only one who can wield the sword is the King or his heir. Morwen and Telemain move the spells on Killer onto Vamist, returning the rabbit to his natural form. Cimorene hides the sword in the forest so the wizards cannot find it. The dragons put up a second bubble around the castle, which only they can take down so that the wizards can't enter the castle either. Cimorene takes her baby and hides in an outer region of the forest to wait until the baby is old enough to use the sword and rescue Mendanbar.

Cimorene raises Daystar and tells him legends about the Enchanted Forest, swordsmanship, spells, and magical protocols. One day, Antorell, a member of the Society of Wizards who has a grudge against Cimorene, tries to attack them. Cimorene melts Antorell with a spell, which raises many questions in Daystar's mind; he didn't know that his mother could do any magic. However, Cimorene refuses to answer Daystar's questions, and goes into the Enchanted Forest to retrieve a sword, which she gives to Daystar. She then sends him into the forest telling him not to come back until he can tell her why he had to leave.

When Daystar enters the forest, he meets a talking golden lizard named Suz, who tells Daystar that the sword Cimorene gave him is the 'Sword of the Sleeping King.' Daystar, confused about what all this can mean, is instructed by Suz to "follow the sword." Trying to find a place to spend the night, he enters the middle of a ring of hedges and finds a young fire witch named Shiara, who can do fire magic but only sporadically, as it does not always work for her. She explains that the wizards heard about her lack of control and kidnapped her. However, she burned the Head Wizard's staff, ran away to the Enchanted Forest, and got caught in the middle of the hedges. Daystar tells Shiara about his quest, and she decides to accompany him. Afterwards, when Daystar shows Shiara his sword and they both touch it together, they feel a surprising jolt.

The next morning, the bushes let Daystar out but refuse to allow Shiara to leave until she asks nicely, which takes a lot of time as she is not in the habit of politeness. Afterwards, Daystar warns Shiara that she will need to be more polite to people and things in the future. Soon, Shiara apologizes for her rudeness. As they venture through the forest, a wizard who is after Shiara attacks them by making a river turn into a water monster, and although Shiara attempts to burn it, nothing happens. But suddenly, the wizard and monster disappear, leaving only the wizard's broken staff behind. A nearby elf tells Daystar to help himself to the staff, but Shiara soon realizes that the staff pieces turn the moss brown and dead, and when Daystar picks up the middle piece, it explodes, burning his arm in the process. Shiara tries to help him until a cat leads them both to the house of Morwen, a witch who lives inside of the Enchanted Forest. Morwen quickly heals Daystar, gives both Daystar and Shiara a bundle of food, and gives Shiara a kitten which Shiara names Nightwitch. Morwen tells them to travel up the river to find the castle that they are looking for.

As they travel up the river, they meet a princess who asks for Daystar's sword. The princess tells them that a wizard told her to take the sword to save a knight she loves. The wizard, who is Antorell, shows up and tries to attack Daystar. But he is interrupted when a dragon who is looking for a princess comes. Shiara offers the princess they just met to the Dragon. The princess fainted when she saw the dragon, but before the dragon can take her away, the princess's love shows up, and the knight, who does not want to fight the dragon, decide to have a tourney for fun, but in the middle of it a small tree pops up and surprises the dragon. In his surprise, the dragon accidentally hits the knight with his tail, which makes the princess hysterical. Daystar tells the princess to see Morwen for help. The dragon decides to travel with Shiara and Daystar and insists on leading them on a "shortcut" to the castle. As they pass through a clearing, an invisible wall stops them. Somehow, Shiara learns how to make things invisible from this, which causes her to panic. As the three pass the castle, an evil sorceress turns Shiara into stone. Daystar fights the sorceress, and she dies, but Shiara is still a stone. Suz shows up and suggests that Daystar kiss her, and although this works, it annoys Shiara. The castle in the meanwhile has somehow disappeared, and when they come to the next clearing, they find a strange tower-house that belongs to a magician named Telemain. After some misunderstandings, Telemain allows them to stay the night and advises them to travel through the Caves of Chance. When the group travels through the Caves, Daystar finds a small key, which a strange, jelly-like creature called a quozzel insists is its responsibility and confronts Daystar. At the end of the caves, the quozzel causes a cave-in that doesn't kill anyone, although Shiara's arm is broken. Daystar causes the quozzel to leave by hitting it with his sword and they escape with the help of several dwarves who keep calling Daystar 'Lord', much to his annoyance.

The adventurers arrive near the center of the forest, meeting the King of Dragons, Kazul, who explains that Daystar must find and save Mendanbar, the King of the Enchanted Forest, who has been trapped in his castle for about 16 years by the wizards; he has not been able to be rescued because of a shield the wizards made around the castle, and the dragons put up a shield around it as well to keep the wizards from doing more harm. When the dragons take down their shield protecting the castle, Daystar uses the sword to break the wizard's shield. The wizards show up and freeze Daystar with a spell, but Shiara hides and is spared, and when the wizards attempt to kill the king, they find out that the figure on the bed is a decoy, and several leave to find the king. The freezing spell soon wears off, and Daystar fights the wizards. Shiara sets Antorell on fire and Daystar sticks the sword into a brazier in the room, shouting a spell his mother taught him, which allows him to see the magical network of the forest and to use it to disable the wizards' ability to use the forest's magic, leaving the wizards with only stored spells and swords and enabling Daystar to throw the key into the fire. The king comes out, and when Daystar hands him his sword, he realizes that the king is his father, which makes Daystar the heir to the Enchanted Forest. Daystar and the others leave and find Morwen tending to a wounded Telemain. They later explained to Daystar what had happened during the first three books. The books end with Telemain and Morwen announcing their engagement.

Sarek discovers that leaders of the Federation and its enemies have been subjected to outside mental influence. He suspects that the interference is linked to the Freelans, a race which has been part of the Federation for decades, but which no offworlder has ever seen due to a cultural taboo. Sarek once inadvertently discovered that the Freelans look like Vulcans, but later dismissed the incident as a hallucination induced by the Pon farr. After secretly accessing the Freelan computer system, Sarek discovers that the Freelans are in fact Romulans, and that their Vulcan aides are the children of Vulcan spacefarers kidnapped by the Romulans and forced to reproduce. The Freelan ambassador Taryn is actually the Romulan wing commander in charge of the plot to spy on the Federation from within. The mental influencing of various leaders is carried out by the Vulcan aides, who were raised as Romulans without the telepathic ethics taught on Vulcan.

Sarek's work is interrupted by the news that his wife, Amanda, is terminally ill. Although he returns to Vulcan to be with her, he is soon called upon to negotiate for the release of a colony world held hostage by a Klingon renegade. He agrees, even though he will not be able to return before his wife's death. His son Spock, who believes his father's first duty is to the family, becomes angry when he learns of this decision, and the feud between them that ended in the episode "Journey to Babel" threatens to reassert itself. Sarek succeeds in the negotiations and discovers that the Klingon commander Keraz who led the raid is also a victim of the Romulans' mental influence.

When Sarek returns to Vulcan for Amanda's funeral, he shares his findings with Kirk, Spock, and Dr. Leonard McCoy, and Kirk agrees to take him to Freelan aboard the ''Enterprise''. The Captain's own plans are to leave the ship to rescue his nephew Peter, a senior cadet at Starfleet Academy who has been kidnapped by the renegade Klingon Kamarag in order to lure Kirk into a trap. Kamarag, acting under the mental influence of the Freelans, is the leader of the renegade Klingons who defy the orders of the female Klingon Chancellor Azetbur. Peter is brought to the Klingon homeworld Qo'noS and placed in the care of Kamarag's niece Valdyr, who believes her uncle's actions are dishonorable but who is bound by her secondary status as a woman to follow his orders. She is impressed by Peter's bravery and strength when he overpowers several Klingon warriors in an attempt to break out, even after five days of starvation. Over the course of Peter's imprisonment, the two fall in love and eventually escape together. As they approach a Klingon spaceport intending to hijack a ship, they meet up with Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, who had intended to rescue the cadet. The five of them manage to steal a miniature Klingon Bird-of-Prey and escape back to the ''Enterprise''.

A Romulan ship is discovered just inside the neutral zone, and Sarek realizes that ship must be under the command of Taryn. Sarek and Spock beam over to the Romulan ship in an attempt to acquire incontrovertible proof that the Romulans are involved. While attempting to forestall an attack against the ''Enterprise'', Sarek accepts Taryn's challenge to an ancient form of duel that predates the division of the Vulcan and Romulan cultures. The duel is fought with the senapa, a curved sword with a poisoned blade. Sarek is cut and exposed to the poison but manages to win the duel despite Taryn's advantages of size and youth. Both men are beamed to the Enterprise where they are treated by Dr. McCoy.

With the help of the Romulan ship and a single Klingon ship that deserts the renegades, the ''Enterprise'' emerges victorious from a conflict with Kamarag's fleet. War between the Federation and the Klingon Empire is averted and the Romulan plot is foiled.

Peter is required to complete the ''Kobayashi Maru'' simulation test upon his return to the Academy, since his missed taking it with the rest of his class. Despite engineering a better-than-usual solution to the scenario, Peter decides to leave Starfleet for the diplomatic corps instead.

Joey Davis is an unemployed former child star who supports himself as a hustler in Los Angeles. Joey uses sex to get his landlady to reduce his rent, then seduces Sally Todd, a former Hollywood starlet. Sally tries to help Joey revive his career but her status as a mediocre ex-actress proves to be quite useless. Sally's psychotic daughter, Jessica, further complicates the relationship between Sally and the cynical, emotionally numb Joey.

Assil has just returned to Cairo weeks after he had dispelled Osiris' curse and finds that the holy ankh has vanished. Assil needs to recover the ankh before Osiris can unleash another curse on Egypt.

The citizens of "Cheesecago" are defenceless against "Al Catone's" mobsters until a few brave federal agents from the "Federal Mousehole of Investigation" headed by "Elliot Mouse" dare to take on the gangsters. In spite of their rivalry and continuous fights, they control gambling, shows, races and every business in town. They charge poor people and terrified traders with high taxes; they rob, and kidnap, but their biggest racket is in confiscating cheese and then deal with it illegally so that it fetches very high prices, often causing Cheesecago citizens to get ripped off.

The Hood (voiced by Ray Barrett), a criminal mastermind based in an ancient temple in Malaysia, is telepathically linked to his half-brother Kyrano (voiced by David Graham), the manservant to the Tracy family on Tracy Island. Using this connection to extract information from Kyrano, the Hood learns that International Rescue – an organisation formed by Jeff Tracy (voiced by Peter Dyneley) and his five sons – is now operational. The psychological trauma of the Hood's coercion causes Kyrano to faint in front of Jeff.

Determined to acquire the secrets of International Rescue's ''Thunderbird'' machines, the Hood plots to engineer a rescue situation that will give him the perfect opportunity to spy on the organisation. Travelling to London International Airport, he plants a bomb within the landing gear hydraulics of ''Fireflash'', a new atomic-powered hypersonic airliner departing for its maiden flight to Tokyo. Its passengers include Kyrano's daughter Tin-Tin (voiced by Christine Finn). After ''Fireflash'' takes off, the Hood anonymously calls air traffic control to reveal his sabotage, warning Commander Norman that the bomb will detonate on landing.

ATC alerts ''Fireflash'' s Captain Hanson, who tells Norman that the shield around the airliner's nuclear reactor requires regular servicing and that if ''Fireflash'' does not land within three hours everyone on board will die of radiation exposure. ATC commandeers a military plane that docks with ''Fireflash'' in the air, allowing Lieutenant Bob Meddings to gain access through a service hatch and attempt to remove the bomb. The operation ends disastrously when Meddings loses his grip and falls out of the plane, deploying his parachute just moments before hitting the ground.

John Tracy (voiced by Ray Barrett), who has been monitoring radio transmissions from space station ''Thunderbird 5'', reports the unfolding events to his father on Tracy Island. Jeff dispatches Scott and Virgil (voiced by Shane Rimmer and David Holliday) to London in ''Thunderbirds 1'' and ''2''. Landing at the airport, Scott assures Norman of International Rescue's good faith but orders that no photographs be taken of the ''Thunderbird'' machines. Airport police move in to guard ''Thunderbird 1'', but the Hood, disguised as one of the officers, breaks in and photographs the cockpit. Scott is alerted by the on-board camera detector and the Hood flees in one of the police cars, chased up the M1 motorway by police.

Landing ''Thunderbird 2'', Virgil deploys two remote-controlled Elevator Cars and a manned master car. The plan is to guide ''Fireflash'' into a gentle landing on top of the cars to avoid setting off the bomb. However, the first rescue attempt is aborted after one of the remote-controlled cars suffers a mechanical failure and crashes into a parked aircraft. Virgil activates a reserve car and ''Fireflash'' begins a second descent, successfully making contact with all three cars. Virgil brakes but then loses control of the master car; he crashes into a ditch but is unhurt. Supported by the other cars, ''Fireflash'' comes to a halt and the bomb, though dislodged by the inertia, fails to explode.

Learning that the Hood has evaded the police, Scott alerts International Rescue's London agents, Lady Penelope and her chauffeur Parker (voiced by Sylvia Anderson and David Graham). Chasing the Hood in FAB 1, Penelope's specially-modified Rolls-Royce, Penelope and Parker blast him off the motorway with the car's machine gun. Although the Hood survives, his photographs are ruined and he swears revenge on International Rescue.

Back on Tracy Island, Jeff has Kyrano examined by a doctor from the mainland. After giving Kyrano a clean bill of health, the doctor mentions the ''Fireflash'' incident and says that he would be honoured to shake International Rescue's hand. With a parting handshake, Jeff grants the unknowing doctor his wish, then tells his sons, "Boys, I think we're in business."

Miki is a young boy who, after carrying out a number of successful missions is promoted, in spite of his young age, to the rank of captain of rangers in Nevada. Miki has a young fiancée, Susy, the daughter of the fort commandant. His best friends are Doppio Rhum (Double Rum) and Dottor Salasso (Doctor bloodletting). Doppio Rhum was inspired by the actor Gabby Hayes in many western films of the 1930s and 1940s, and Dottor Salasso by the drunken Doc, portrayed by Thomas Mitchell in the classic western film ''Stagecoach'' (1939).

Moscow, 1891. Disguised as Fandorin, the leader of a revolutionary organization murders a general. Fandorin has to catch him. He is assisted (or is it hindered?) in his investigations by Prince Pozharsky, a fictional descendant of Dmitry Pozharsky, who helped bring the Time of Troubles to an end.

The sitcom ''Andy Capp'' was based on the cartoon strip of the same name that had run since 1957 in ''The Daily Mirror''. Andy Capp is a slothful man from Hartlepool, whose life consists of drinking, sleeping, watching TV, betting, going to the pub and occasionally playing football (as opposed to rugby, which was Andy's sport in the comic strip). His wife, Flo, is constantly annoyed by her lazy husband and frequently uses a rolling pin as a weapon.

In the snowy Russian countryside of the early 1940s, Vladimir (Gregory Peck) leads a squad of nearly a dozen partisan fighters operating behind German lines. The group's routines are disrupted when Nina (Tamara Toumanova), a ballerina, is brought to their hideout after becoming separated from her troupe. She confesses she has neither handled a gun nor learned to fight, cook, mend, or clean. Vladimir favors sending her away. Later, a German soldier stumbles upon the group's lair but is captured. That night, he nearly escapes, but Nina shoots him, winning the approval of her new comrades. The next night, when the guerrillas carry out the sabotage of a German munitions train, Vladimir takes Nina along. The operation is a success. Yet although she and Vladimir are falling in love, Nina does not understand his ruthlessness. He explains that before the war he, as an engineer, had to destroy the very electric power plant he had helped build in order to keep the enemy from using it.

The couple's budding romance threatens the stability of the squad. At one point, when Vladimir must enlist someone to hand-deliver a coded message on Nazi troop strength to Soviet headquarters, he decides a woman courier would less likely be caught. He chooses the veteran Yelena (Maria Palmer), the only woman in the group besides Nina. So when Yelena's horse returns to their hideout with blood on the saddle, Nina then volunteers to take her place. Vladimir reluctantly accedes, sending the teen-aged boy Mitya (Glen Vernon) along with her. After Nina and Mitya reach headquarters and deliver Vladimir's information, she is given a coded reply to Vladimir: "The snow will fall tomorrow." This indicates that a massive Russian counterattack will begin the next day. Vladimir's superiors put him in charge of a merged partisan operation. Before the fighting begins, however, he orders Nina to take Mitya's younger sister, Olga (Dena Penn), to safety. Fighting bravely, the group's members are killed one by one, but Nina returns to Vladimir. As they fight on, he administers her the partisan oath of allegiance just before a German tank rolls atop their machine-gun nest and explodes.

Taking place right after Aizen's defection from the Soul Society, a festival is being held. Ichigo and the others attend before going home. However, some special Mod Souls have been accidentally uncovered by a member of the Department of Research and Development; one of the Mod Souls, Kai, takes the form of the researcher and takes his fellow Mod souls away. However, some of the Mod Souls begin festering with hatred and transform into copies of Hollows, such as Shrieker and Grand Fisher, causing havoc throughout the seireitei.

The adventures of twins Grace and Connor Tempest continue in the second ''Vampirates'' novel, ''Tide of Terror''.

Connor may only be fourteen but he has taken to the life of a pirate like a duck to water. But his loyalties are divided between his shipmates and his sister. Meanwhile, Grace is not finding pirate life so appealing. She cannot shake the feeling that all is not well on the Vampirate ship she has left behind. Dare she try to return to it?

New experiences await them both, including a journey to the fabled Pirate Academy.

The original plot revolved around Diana Sommer's dream to become a world class ice skater. She fell in love with Julian Herzog, who signed her at the prestigious Steinkamp Sport and Wellness Center, run by the unscrupulous Steinkamp dynasty. Diana and Julian eventually became a couple, but in November 2007, Julian suffered a brain hemorrhage and died during their wedding. Diana remained in Essen until January 2009, when she left to join a skating centre in Halle. The story continues to revolve around the Steinkamp Sport and Wellness Centre and its quest to become a sporting powerhouse, as well as the lives of the characters who work at and around the Centre.

Andy Farmer (Chase) is a New York City sports writer who moves with his wife, Elizabeth (Smith) to the seemingly charming town of Redbud, Vermont, so he can write a novel. They do not get along well with the residents, and other quirks arise such as being given exorbitant funeral bills for a long-dead man buried on their land years before they acquired the house. Marital troubles soon arise from the quirkiness of Redbud as well as the fact that Elizabeth was critical of Andy's manuscript, while having her own manuscripts for children's books published. Andy's publisher stops into town to personally see the manuscript of the novel after letters informing him of his deadline go unanswered. In order to avoid having to return the advance that the publisher gave Andy he takes one of Elizabeth's children books manuscripts and passes it off as his own. After Elizabeth receives a call from Andy's publisher telling her the great work of "his children's book" she leaves Andy out of anger. They soon decide to divorce and sell their home. To expedite the sale, the Farmers offer the town's residents a $15,000 donation to Redbud, and $50 cash each if they help make a good impression on their prospective home buyers. To that end, the citizens remake Redbud into a perfect Norman Rockwell-style town. Their charade dazzles a pair of prospective buyers, who make the Farmers an offer on the house; however, Andy declines to sell, realizing that he genuinely enjoys small-town living. He and Elizabeth decide to stay together in Redbud, much to the chagrin of the locals, who are now angry that they lost their promised money. Though the mayor does not hold the Farmers liable for the $15,000, as the sale of their house did not occur, Andy decides to pay everyone in Redbud their $50, which helps improve his standing among the townspeople. The film ends with Andy taking a job as a sports writer for the Redbud newspaper, and Elizabeth, now pregnant with their first child, having written multiple children's stories.

The plot follows the career of upper-class cad Vivian Kenway (Rex Harrison). He is sent down from Oxford University for placing a chamber pot on the Martyrs' Memorial. Sent to South America after his father pulls a favour from a friend, he is fired for heckling the managing director while drunk.

A friend offers him a job, but he responds by seducing his wife and is found out. His jobs decline, as he moves from employment as racing driver to shop assistant to dancing partner. He lives a life of womanising and heavy drinking and constantly runs up large debts, which his family has to pay. One girl tries to kill herself. Driving while drunk and taking risks, he crashes and causes the death of his father, Colonel Kenway (Godfrey Tearle). Kenway is eaten up by guilt in consequence. Another girl tries to rescue him.

The plot diverges from the theme of the ''Rake's Progress'' paintings by having him redeem himself by a hero's death in World War II.

Nancy investigates a small ship cottage at the Chatham estate and discovers a connection between the mysterious occurrences at the cottage and an island where a lost treasure is said to be buried. With one half of a map, Nancy sets out to find a missing twin brother who holds the other half. The mystery becomes dangerous when an assailant hears about the treasure and is determined to push Nancy off the trail. Can she endure this and other grave dangers, and recover in time to solve the mystery?

An antique dealer's revelation about a former queen's priceless heirloom leads Nancy on a series of exciting yet dangerous adventures. Madame Alexandra, who is living in exile in River Heights, asks Nancy to search for her long-lost grandson. Using an old, faded photo of the prince at age four, Nancy begins her search. A secret in the old jewel box helps Nancy unveil a slick impostor, and bring the mystery to its thrilling conclusion.

Category:Nancy Drew books Category:1943 American novels Category:1943 children's books Category:Novels about missing people Category:Grosset & Dunlap books Category:Children's mystery novels

The film follows the courtship and marriage of Catherine Falconetti (Ullman) to local butcher Joseph Santangelo (D'Onofrio), as well as Catherine's relationship with her overbearing Old World mother-in-law (Judith Malina).

The film also focuses on Catherine and Joseph's daughter Teresa (Taylor), a devout Catholic more similar to her superstitious grandmother than with her modernized and secularized parents. As a child and young adult she puts herself through a series of trials so that she might one day be canonized as a saint. Teresa's teenage fantasy to become a nun is strained after starting a relationship with a marriage-minded young man (Michael Imperioli).

The film explores both family dynamics over the course of time as well as, on a larger level, the relationship between religious faith in miracles and modernity.

Nancy and her friends work to find an inheritance concealed in the walls of an old mansion before it can be discovered and stolen by an unscrupulous and crude man.

Nancy, Bess, and George travel to the picturesque seaside town of Candleton to meet Carson Drew's client, a woman named Mrs. Chantrey, who has been cheated out of money by buying phony stock. On the way, they stop in Fisher's Cove where Bess buys expensive "Mon Coeur" perfume from a suspicious woman. Upon arrival in Candleton, they meet busy Mrs. Chantrey at her restaurant, the Salsandee shop, and help out as waitresses for a day. While waiting on tables, Nancy meets a mysterious diner named Amos Hendrick. He tells her of his search for a missing Paul Revere bell. When he leaves, Nancy finds a piece of paper that he dropped with a mysterious message on it and gives it to Mrs. Chantrey for safekeeping.

When Mr. Drew fails to join the girls as planned, Nancy is worried. She soon finds that he has been kidnapped and left in a hotel. She rescues her father, who thinks that he has been drugged. Meanwhile, Nancy also becomes interested in the local story of Amy Maguire, who married a man named Ferdinand Slocum despite her parents' disapproval.

While talking with Mrs. Chantrey and the other residents of Candleton, they tell her of a cave which is said to be inhabited by a ghost who rings a bell every time water rushes through it. Nancy investigates and is swept into the sea by rushing water until she is rescued. This does not stop her and she continues to investigate the cave, which lies directly under the Maguire house. Then, Nancy discovers that many other residents of Candleton besides Mrs. Chantrey have been scammed into buying fake stock in the "Mon Coeur" brand. Nancy eventually tracks down the perfume scammers, finds out the true story of Amy Maguire, uncovers the ghost, and, with the help of the mysterious piece of paper, rescues the tolling bell, which turns out to be the valuable Paul Revere bell that Amos Hendrick was searching for.

Nancy witnesses a purse snatching and pursues the thief. She rescues the purse, but not its contents, then is asked by the owner, a doll collector, to do some detective work. "The source of light will heal all ills, but a curse will follow him who takes it from the gypsies." This is one of the clues Nancy is given to find an old album, a lost doll, and a missing gypsy violinist. The young sleuth never gives up her search, though Nancy faints after being injected with poison by a French-swordsman doll, is run off the road in her car by an enemy, and sent several warnings to give up the case.

Nancy Drew's jeweler's customer Mrs. Putney asks Nancy and her friends to help recover her stolen jewels. The search for the thieves takes Nancy, Bess, and George to New Orleans. Mrs. Putney's odd behavior and two young women involve Nancy in a case involving a cruel hoax being perpetrated at the abandoned Blackwood Hall. Nancy's father, Carson Drew, also helps solve this mystery by contacting his workers, and helping him find the man that is connected to this mysterious affair.

Professor Terence Scott travels to River Heights to consult with Carson Drew about the disappearance of another professor, Dr. Joshua Pitt. Mr. Drew recommends he discuss the matter with Nancy, as it seems to be more of a mystery than a legal matter. Terry Scott reveals that while on an archaeology expedition in Mexico, he, Dr. Pitt, and two other professors, Dr. Anderson and Dr. Graham, found a clue to an ancient treasure. They discovered three black keys made of obsidian and a stone tablet with a cipher engraved on it. The items and Dr. Pitt both disappeared the next morning. Only a broken half of one of the keys was left behind. Terry suspected foul play by a couple who had been working near the excavation site because they vanished at the same time.

While Nancy and Terry are at the airport, someone tries to steal the half-key from Terry's coat pocket. A Sergeant Malloy helps them identify the thief, Juarez Tino, but not until after he escapes on a plane to Florida.

Nancy asked her father's advice, and he suggests she talk to the other expedition members. Mr. Drew had drawn up Dr. Pitt's will and he confidentially tells her Terry is the sole heir, as elderly Dr. Pitt was unmarried. Out of caution, they want to be sure Terry is trustworthy. That night, a burglar breaks into the Drew home but is scared off. The black key, which Terry had entrusted to Nancy, remained safe in its hiding place.

Nancy and George meet with Dr. Graham, who clears away any suspicion by emphatically averring the integrity of the four expedition members, despite professional jealousies that might arise. Nancy learns that the evening of the attempted burglary at her home, Terry was knocked out in his hotel room and most of the documents from the Mexican expedition were stolen.

Ned Nickerson calls Nancy about attending a dance at Emerson College and asks if she could bring a fraternity brother of his who is scheduled to give a lecture at the college. Ned gives his name as Terence Scott and believes him to be about 60, when in fact he is only 25 and very handsome. Nancy thinks it's a good joke and doesn't reveal the truth to Ned. While en route to Emerson, Nancy and Terry stop for lunch and notice two men observing them intently. As they continue on their way, they round a bend and the car overturns when they hit a deep ditch. Someone had removed the warning signs from the road. After arriving at Emerson, Terry goes to the college president's home and Nancy asks Ned to ensure he is invited to the dance. Ned does so and is surprised when he meets Terry at the dance. Later Nancy learns that the morning of the accident, Bess and George had trailed a suspect named Wilfred Porterly and overheard a telephone conversation indicating plans to harm Nancy.

While at Emerson, Nancy takes a side trip and meets with Dr. Anderson, who tells her Juarez Tino came to see him a while back and offered to reveal the location of the cipher and Dr. Pitt for a price. Angry, Dr. Anderson threw him out of the office.

Nancy and Ned attend Terry's lecture on his Mexican expedition, which is very well-received by the Emerson students.

When Terry returns to River Heights, he is hired to translate an old diary as he is fluent in Spanish and Mexican dialects. The woman who hired him, Lillian Wangell, said the diary belonged to her sea captain grandfather. Due to its subject matter, Terry thinks the diary could yield clues to the ancient treasure connected with the cipher. Knowing of a past charge of fraud against Mrs. Wangell and her husband, Nancy consults a local genealogist who has records of many families in town. She confirms that neither of Mrs. Wangell's grandfathers followed the sea. Nancy urges Terry to be cautious and not to accept the invitation to stay at the Wangells' home. Mrs. Wangell had insisted the diary must remain at her home, so Terry uses a tiny camera Nancy lent him to photograph some of its pages.

Nancy makes tracings of some of the unusual drawings in the diary, and by overlaying them she discovers they form a picture of palm trees, a body of water, and a trail of footsteps.

Carson Drew receives a letter from a Caswell P. Breed in Baltimore claiming to be a relative of Dr. Pitt and demanding part of his estate. Carson Drew has other business to conduct in Baltimore and while there, he and Nancy visit Mr. Breed. They discover he did not send the letter; someone used his name as a ruse to get them out of town. When Nancy returns, she is unable to reach Terry at his hotel, and fearing foul play, goes directly to the Wangell home. The house is boarded up and while she is there, the Wangells depart in a taxi. Nancy circles the home and sees a distress signal of a handkerchief waving from an attic ventilator. The police arrive and they discover Terry imprisoned in the attic. He relates that Mrs. Wangell and Mrs. Porterly are sisters and are connected to the mystery.

Terry departs for Mexico to continue searching for Dr. Pitt. Nancy believes Juarez Tino and his wife and the Wangells are in Florida. She makes to plans to join a group of students Dr. Anderson is taking to Miami for a field trip to study the Indian tribes in that area. But Dr. Anderson tells her she must pass the same test his students are taking in order to go. Nancy studies diligently and answers all the essay questions except one. She is uncertain whether she will receive a passing grade. While awaiting the news, Nancy and Hannah hear fire engine sirens and discover a house two doors down is filling with acrid smoke. Nancy courageously ventures inside to search for a missing three-year-old. She rescues him and returns to the Drew home to find Juarez Tino leaving her bedroom with the black half-key. He had been responsible for instigating the neighbors' plight as a diversion. Nancy is able to wrest the key away from him but he overpowers her and gets it back, then trusses her up. As he pulls a handkerchief from his pocket to gag her, Nancy sees the key fly out but he doesn't notice it. He escapes as Hannah returns and finds Nancy. They search for the key to no avail. George and Bess arrive and George finds the key in the navy blue blanket Tino had used to further bind Nancy. The ringing telephone brings the good news that Nancy passed the test.

As the plane containing the students and Dr. Anderson nears Miami, it loses altitude and exhibits other warning signs after narrowly avoiding another plane that buzzed right by it. Miraculously, the pilot is able to land on an island. It is discovered that a cable broke during the dodging maneuver, and this jeopardized the plane's operation. The group later learns that the perpetrators expected this to happen and had deemed it a better method of attack than directly tampering with the plane.

Dr. Anderson give Nancy permission to work on a special assignment with a student named Fran Oakes: to look for a Florida Key known as Black Key. Fran's cousin, Jack Walker, has a motorboat and he takes them to visit a man named Two Line Parker, who knows the history of the Florida Keys. The fisherman tells them of the sinking of a ship called the Black Falcon near one of the keys. Nancy believes that is the right island but they know only its general location.

While investigating a vacant home the Porterlys had rented in South Florida, Nancy finds partially burned letters in an incinerator in the back yard. A scrap contains a mention of her name and the date of the 15th. It is currently December 13.

While motorboating among the Keys, the group sees Juarez Tino in a speedboat but they lose his trail. Nancy decides to return to the vicinity the next day. Dr. Anderson isn't able to go, but Terry Scott has arrived and he joins the expedition with Nancy, Fran, and Jack.

Making use of another clue she had found early, Nancy consults a local fisherman and learns of a group of five islands near a group of seven islands and a single island set apart. They head to the single island and while traversing it a plane flies overhead. The group fears they had been seen. They discover a hut in which Dr. Pitt is imprisoned but no one else is present. Jack and Fran leave to summon the police. Dr. Pitt tells Nancy and Terry the criminals had set a deadline of December 15 (the next day) for him to give them information. While they are talking, the Tinos and the Wangells arrive, having been alerted by the pilot. Mrs. Tino snatches the half-key Nancy is wearing around her neck after overhearing her say she has it. The criminals force Dr. Pitt to reveal information about the treasure by threatening to harm Nancy if he doesn't. He tells them it is in remote part of a jungle in Mexico.

Juarez Tino and Earl Wangell immediately depart with Dr. Pitt to travel to Mexico and search for the treasure, leaving Nancy and Terry in the custody of their wives. Nancy learns Mrs. Wangell is afraid of her husband and had been coerced into criminal activity. The police soon arrive and free Nancy and Terry, who set out for Mexico also, hoping to arrive before the others. Dr. Anderson and Dr. Graham accompany them, and they enlist the help of some Mexican policemen. The information from the diary helps them locate the trail leading to the treasure site. They stop and wait on the trail, and soon the other party arrives, with elderly Dr. Pitt nearly exhausted. They proceed on and Tino and Wangell are commissioned to dig at the site. A box is unearthed and the three keys fit the locks. Inside the box are several jewel-encrusted frogs made of silver, and a larger silver frog that contains an ancient green powder. Dr. Pitt declares the treasures belong to the government of Mexico. However, he fearfully believes the green substance is destructive and could wipe out civilization. Terry's research instead suggests that it has healing properties. Dr. Pitt listens to Terry's reasoning and agrees with his opinion. The four scientists are excited to announce their discovery to the world.

Nancy, Bess, and George follow the trail of fur thieves to New York and into Canada. While trying to catch the thieves, Nancy must catch a woman named Mitzi Channing who is using Nancy's identity. Nancy finds out that everyone who has been buying from Mitzi is in a dreadful trap.

1953 Edition: Nancy's Aunt Eloise, aware of her niece's current interest in learning horseback riding stunts, sends her a second-hand golden bracelet bearing charms of horses in all five gaits; a sixth charm is missing. Coincidentally, the Sims Circus, former employer of Nancy's equestrian instructor, is coming to town. Nancy investigates the link between the unhappy circus star, young aerialist, Lolita, and her bracelet. Lolita is the adopted daughter of the acting manager, Ringmaster Kroon, and his wife. Pietro, the young, handsome clown, tells Nancy Lolita has the missing charm from her bracelet. Nancy's regular appearances at the circus, and her detective reputation brings the ire of Kroon. When a bareback rider is injured, Nancy is asked to join the show as her replacement. Bess Marvin stands in at an interview with Kroon, and agrees to audition later, while Nancy lightens her hair and cuts it to resemble her friend. Nancy's travels with the circus come to an abrupt end when she and George are kidnapped and left aboard the car of a freight train. After their escape, Nancy continues following up on clues, including a mysterious woman in England linked to both the bracelet and Lolita! In the climax of the story, Nancy is rescued by Ned when Kroon tries to imprison her in the lion's cage, and all is revealed.

When a neighbor asks Nancy Drew to accompany her to an old uninhabited mansion, a new mystery opens up, and danger lurks on the second floor. Nancy finds a witch tree symbol that leads her to Pennsylvania Dutch country in pursuit of a cunning and ruthless thief.

The friendly welcome the young detective and her friends Bess and George receive from the Amish people soon changes to hostility when it is rumored that Nancy is a witch! Superstition helps her adversary in his attempt to get her off his trail, but Nancy does not give up. She persistently uncovers one clue after another.

Nancy's intelligence and sleuthing ability finally lead to the solution of this puzzling case.

Nancy and her friends, Bess and George travel to Charlottesville, Virginia in search for a missing stained-glass window. They also visit Richmond, Virginia, and the church where Patrick Henry gave his "Give me liberty or give me death" speech. The girls stay with Nancy's cousin Susan. Nancy discovers someone is trying to keep her away from Charlottesville. The mansion they are staying at is said to be haunted by a mysterious ghost. Also Nancy's new neighbors' brother, Alonzo Rugby, is in Charlottesville and is a major suspect in this mystery.

Category:Nancy Drew books Category:1956 American novels Category:1956 children's books Category:Novels set in Virginia Category:Grosset & Dunlap books Category:Children's mystery novels

At the Van Pelt estate, home of a local acting troupe, a mysterious dancing puppet haunts the grounds. Nancy, Bess, and George are asked to solve the case, but it will be a dangerous-yet-rewarding one when an old family mystery comes to light. From the moment Nancy, Bess and George arrive at the mansion, the dancing puppet mystery is further complicated by the Footlighters’ temperamental leading lady and a Shakespearean actor. Nancy's search of the mansion's dark, musty attic for clues to the weird mystery and an encounter with two jewel theft suspects add perplexing angles to the puzzle. This book is the original text. A revised text does not exist.

Nancy receives a moonstone as a gift from an unknown person; she is amazed yet puzzled. She then finds herself involved in a case involving the Bowens and their missing granddaughter, Joanie Horton. Clues lead Nancy, Bess, and George to the haunted Moonstone Castle along the Deep River.

Nancy finds mystery in everything she does. In the novel Nancy and her friends along with her father head to Scotland on family business and to solve the mystery of the missing heirloom. Nancy is warned not to go to Scotland, but she ignores the warning. Nancy finds strange things in Scotland like the people. She and her friends, Bess and George, visit Nancy's great-grandmother from her mother's side (who Nancy's never met) at an estate in the Scottish Highlands. While there, Nancy becomes involved in the mystery of missing flocks of sheep and a mysterious bagpiper has been spotted. Clues leading to a discovery in an old castle and a prehistoric fortress lead to the mystery's solution.

Nancy Drew, along with her friends arrive for the Emerson University June Week celebration. There is a mix-up with the motel reservations, but Ned comes to the rescue. Afterward, Ned and Nancy go to a dance, where a young waiter, Fred, spills drinks on Nancy's dress. After cleaning up, Nancy realizes that her pearl necklace is missing, leading her to a baffling mystery. John Rorick, a descendant of the early settlers of the town, invites the three girls as his guests at his historic mansion on Pine Hill.

After they arrive, he tells them of the phantom who haunts the mansion's library. John also relates the weird family saga of a lost French wedding gown and of valuable gifts and gold coins that were lost in the sinking of the 'Lucy Belle' one hundred years ago. After discovering a secret passage to the library from the chimney and a secret shack, the suspicion turns on Fred and his father.

In between enjoying the university's June Week, river pageant, and fraternity dances, Nancy and her friends work diligently to solve the mystery of Pine Hill and locate the long-lost wedding treasures.

Nancy looks for a flight of the 99 steps in France to solve the mystery of a friend's strange dream. Before Nancy, Bess, and George leaves the United States for France, a person calling himself Monsieur Neuf warns Nancy not to pursue her mission.

The girls arrive in Paris and join Nancy’s father, who is trying to find out who or what is causing wealthy financier Monsieur Leblanc to selling large amounts of securities.

Nancy determines that the case she is investigating involving the 99 steps is linked to the case her father is following. Nancy thinks that Monsieur Leblanc could be being blackmailed.

Startling discoveries convince the youn that Mr. Drew's case and her own mystery are linked by the 99 steps, and that a mysterious Arab has a strong hold over Leblanc. Nancy thinks it could be blackmail.

Nancy goes to an area in the Loire Valley to look for more clues, and Nancy, Bess, and George wind up in danger.

A woman named Carla Ponce invites Nancy, Bess, and George to Peru to help decipher the mystery in the crossword cipher—a wooden plaque that promises to lead them to a wonderful treasure. Nancy must find the treasure before a gang of thieves led by El Gato (The Cat) reach it first.

A client of Carson Drew, a Mr. Floyd Ramsey, is accused of stealing the fabulous Spider Sapphire which leads Nancy and her friends to Africa. Nancy uncovers a notorious scheme and solves the mystery of a missing safari guide.