The movie relates the story of a woman with too many love demands in a rural setting.

Coleen, who works as a chambermaid at an inner city hotel, is joined by Damien, who has reluctantly taken a job at the hotel to earn some money during his summer vacation. Whilst working together, they discover an unexpected attraction to one another. It is during their last working day that they confront the significance of this relationship.

Best friends Angela, Maddie, and Zoe are now juniors. Zoe begins to volunteer at Kidding Around, a childcare facility, and finds out that Doug, who used to have a crush on Angela, works there too. Maddie hooks up with a guy named Clive (nicknamed Chive, by Maddie) at her cousin's wedding. During a party hosted by a classmate, Zoe flirts with Doug (much to Angela's dismay), and Maddie once again hooks up with Clive, although persistent they are nothing more than friends. Angela shares her worries about her parents unusual behavior to her friends, and the two have reason to believe Angela's father is having an affair after Zoe's awkward confrontation with him with another woman at Starbucks. Angela's parents eventually reveal that they are moving to California, due to Mr. Silver's loss of his job. While Angela's house is under contract, Zoe expresses her feelings for Doug to Maddie, which conflicts with Angela's request for Zoe to not go out with Doug. Meanwhile, Maddie smokes pot for the first time with Clive and his friends.

The story revolves around Elena Stakhova, a girl with a hypochondriac mother and an idle father, a retired guards lieutenant with a mistress. On the eve of the Crimean War, Elena is pursued by a free-spirited sculptor (Pavel Shubin) and a serious-minded student (Andrei Berzyenev). But when Berzyenev's revolutionary Bulgarian friend, Dmitri Insarov, meets Elena, they fall in love. In secretly marrying Insarov Elena disappoints her mother and enrages her father, who had hoped to marry her to a dull, self-satisfied functionary, Kurnatovski. Insarov nearly dies from pneumonia and only partly recovers. On the outbreak of war Insarov tries to return with Elena to Bulgaria, but dies in Venice. Elena takes Insarov's body to the Balkans for burial and then vanishes.

Several odd occurrences, including a suspicious fire, happen at the farm where Alec Ramsay (Kelly Reno) and his mother (Teri Garr) stable Alec's horse, the Black. One night, the Black is taken away. Sheik Ishak (Ferdy Mayne) says he is responsible, claiming the stallion is his stolen property that he has retrieved, learning his whereabouts after the Black's win in the Match Race. The Black's real name is Shetan. After learning the sheik is returning the Black to his kingdom in the Moroccan desert, Alec stows away on a plane to Casablanca.

In Morocco, Alec is found on the plane and taken to the American embassy. The police intend to return him to the United States. At the stables, he makes some friends who disguise him as a local Casablancan. They take him to a man named Kurr (Allen Garfield) the leader of a rogue tribe called the Uruk, who is interested in the Black and Sheik Ishak. He allows Alec to travel with him and another man, but they abandon Alec in the desert after the truck breaks down. Alec is picked up by another truck driver. Aboard the truck, he meets Raj (Vincent Spano), who speaks English, and says the Black will probably compete in "The Great Race." The two become friends and travel across the desert on foot with Meslar (Woody Strode), Raj's friend and mentor. Then the Uruk kidnap Meslar, and Raj and Alec defend themselves against the harsh elements. After running out of water, they collapse but recover when they find a river. Raj's tribe discovers them, welcoming Raj home and Alec to the tribe. Raj takes Alec to the outskirts of Ishak's domain where he is reunited with the Black.

While attempting to retrieve the Black, Alec is apprehended by Ishak's men. He pleads his case to Sheik Ishak, who is sympathetic but will not give up the Black. He is racing the stallion in the "Great Race" with his granddaughter, Tabari (Jodi Thelen) as the rider. Alec insists the Black can only win if he rides him. Denied, Alec coaches Tabari, but the Black throws her off. Then, the Uruk led by Kurr, capture the Black and Alec to a hidden location. Alec escapes with the Black. As they flee, Alec discovers that Meslar is being held prisoner and gives him his pocket knife to cut his bonds. Alec and the Black escape to Ishak's. As a reward for safely returning the Black, Alec is allowed to ride him in the race.

On race day, Alec reunites with Raj, who is also competing. They and the other riders begin their run across the desert. The Uruk's rider tries to kill Alec, but he and the Black escape. Alec discovers that the Uruk's rider pushed Raj off his horse. He returns Raj's mount to him. Together, they race against the Uruk rider until Meslar appears and spooks the rider's horse, unseating him. Suddenly, Kurr chases Raj and Alec in his truck, shooting at them. However, the truck crashes into a ditch.

Alec wins the race, then pleads with Ishak to spare Raj's horse, despite the winning sheik taking any horses he chooses. Ishak grants the reprieve, which allows Alec to repay Raj for his kindness. Meslar returns with Kurr, his accomplice, and the Uruk rider, who are all taken prisoner.

Although Ishak gives the Black to Alec, he decides to leave his horse in Morocco, believing he belongs there.

Based on a real person and on the movie of the same name, Marine veteran Louanne Johnson is an unconventional teacher who inspires her class of bright but "difficult" inner-city students, and makes a real difference in their lives, outside school as well as inside.

In 1959, a new teacher named Derek Sanders becomes the new choirmaster for Blanton Academy, a prestigious but all-white private school in South Carolina. Mr. Sanders tries to reduce some of the prejudice and hostility of some of the students in his choir. Paul, a bully who feels he should be lead boy, is the worst offender. Taylor Bradshaw, on the other hand, is impressed by the music of Landy Allen, an African-American boy and grandson of Zeke, the school caretaker. Taylor begins to explore the music and lives of the African-American people who live in Rivertown, despite knowing that it could get him expelled or rejected. Sanders is also impressed by Landy's abilities and attempts to get him involved with the choir. A tragedy in the community brings the race issue to a head.

The book starts out with an introduction when Matthew Walsh is writing a letter to his younger sister Emmy to tell her the story of their mother's vicious abuse. The real story starts with Matthew and his other younger sister, Callie. Callie is eleven, Matthew is thirteen, and Emmy is a toddler. Callie and Matthew go to the Cumberland Farms store to get popsicles because there is a heatwave in the town in which they live. They see Murdoch for the first time, protecting a kid from being openly abused. Matthew and Callie like Murdoch, and both of them want to track him down so that they can be his friend.

Meanwhile, the first act of abuse that is shown in the book comes when Nikki throws Portuguese Seafood Paella at Matthew after Nikki finds Murdoch's address that Callie found on the Internet. Nikki begins to date Murdoch, but eventually they break up. Nikki is enraged and tries to blame it on Murdoch. She wants to call the Social Services and report Murdoch for abuse. Murdoch gets a restraining order against Nikki for constantly following and stalking him. Nikki is angry and sends a man called Rob to brutalize Murdoch. Nikki and Rob eventually end up in jail.

After she gets out of jail, she recklessly drives in search of Murdoch. Instead, she finds pleasure in tormenting Julie, a friend of Murdoch. Julie loses the use of her legs, and Nikki ends up in jail again. Ben, Matthew's father (who is scared of Nikki), and Bobbie, Nikki's sister, use this opportunity to gain joint custody of Matthew, Callie, and Emmy. Matthew lives with Aunt Bobbie while Callie and Emmy live with Ben in Arlington, Massachusetts. Things are fine for a while until Nikki kidnaps Emmy and gets her drunk, although she is about eight years old. Matthew gets a call from Emmy and she tells him where she is. Matthew rescues Emmy, only to run into Nikki. Matt is about to kill Nikki when Murdoch appears. Murdoch advises her to run away and never come back.

But this is not the end of Nikki. Letters continue to come. Some of them are normal, but some contain threatening messages like "I will kill you" or "It was Murdoch's fault." The book ends with Murdoch telling Matt that he was also abused when he was younger. In the end, Matt never gives the letter to Emmy.

The episode opens with The Unit assault team leader Jonas Blane and teammates Mack Gerhardt, Charles Grey and Hector Williams as they complete a mission involving destroying a factory in Afghanistan. At the end of the opening segment, the group escapes. Blane brings Bob Brown, the newest member of the unit, to meet Ron Cheals, a former member of the unit. Jonas describes Cheals as having gone from being "the best shot in the unit to the best gunsmith in the world." It is implied that Cheals' injury, as evidenced by his use of a wheelchair, was the reason for the end of his service with the Unit. At Blane's request, Cheals gives Brown a suppressed M2K handgun. While they are meeting with Cheals, a TV news report comes on, indicating that a business jet has been hijacked by terrorists in Idaho. Cheals supplies Blane and Brown with weapons and equipment. The team, minus Gerhardt, who is on another assignment, deploy for the operation.

While watching footage of National Guardsmen approaching the plane and subsequently being killed, Jonas notices that although the Guardsmen approach the plane from an angle such that no-one on the plane should be able to see them, the terrorists are nonetheless alerted to their presence. He concludes that the terrorist have a spotter, watching the scene from a hidden location in the nearby woods, and informing the terrorists when someone approaches. He sends Brown in to neutralize the spotter, which Brown does successfully.

Jonas and the team secure the area and breach the plane. Blane kills all the hostiles on board and detaches the bomb detonator. The team returns home and Bob discovers that his wife Kim Brown (who was adjusting to the shock of learning that her husband is part of the team trying to rescue the airline hostages through part of the episode) is pregnant with his second child. Due to the effects of combat stress, Jonas accidentally discharges his weapon in his home. It is revealed that Tiffany Gerhardt, Mack's wife, is having an affair with the Unit's commanding officer, Colonel Tom Ryan.

''The Mezzanine'' is essentially plotless, a stream-of-consciousness fiction that examines in detail the lunch-hour activities of young office worker Howie, whose simple lunch (popcorn, hot dog, cookie and milk) and purchase of a new pair of shoelaces are contrasted with his reading of a paperback edition of Marcus Aurelius's ''Meditations''. Baker's digressive novel, partly composed of extensive footnotes of up to several pages in length, follows Howie's contemplations of a variety of everyday phenomena, such as how paper milk cartons replaced glass milk bottles, the miracle of perforation, and the buoyant nature of plastic straws; and of everyday objects such as vending machines, paper towel dispensers, and popcorn poppers.[http://www.enotes.com/contemporary-literary-criticism/baker-nicholson "Nicholson Baker" (partially locked study guide)], eNotes.com.

Like its predecessor, ''The Death of Sleep'' is written in four parts. Each book centers on a new stage in the life of Sassinak's much removed relative, Dr. Lunzie Mespil. Lunzie leaves her daughter for what she thinks will be a relatively brief and lucrative job, but through various circumstances she suffers extended periods of cold sleep on several occasions, and finds herself thrown into a time different from her own, and is never able to meet her daughter again. Throughout her various experiences, Lunzie teams up with a changing cast of characters in order to bring down the planet pirates that plague the outer reaches of space.

The book begins as Lunzie sets off from Tau Ceti to her first assignment away from her daughter, on Descartes Mining Platform 6, which is only 12 years old. She tearfully leaves her teenage daughter behind, taking only a hologram of her and two duffel bags of clothes and the like. Her ship leaves, with her as acting psychologist, and she speaks to a man who suffered from agoraphobia due to 12 years in cryo. She consoles him, but they are interrupted by the collision alarm: two asteroids are close to colliding with the ship, and they have no way to avoid them. The crew run for the lifeboats, but Lunzie is cut off from the rest of the ship, so must board hers alone. She contacts the other lifeboats, and is told that they will all hibernate till help arrives. She goes into stasis and the first part ends.

The story resumes with a miner from Descartes Platform 6, which is now 74 years old, as he is led by a Thek (a strange silicon based, pyramidal lifeform) to a large asteroid, with a dated escape pod embedded in its surface. Lunzie is revived to discover that she's been unconscious for 62 years, making her daughter in her 70s. The rest of the crew were recovered long ago, and the man she'd been counselling for agoraphobia did not even remember her.

She decided to move on with her life and relearn medicine, due to the new techniques which she did not know, so she returned to her old university, and starts again. She also falls in love, and moves in, with 'Tee', a technician who was also behind the times due to stasis, who was depressed due to his then advanced developments having been made obsolete in the 12 years he missed. Lunzie qualifies again, and receives an invitation from her now-extended family (she has great-grand children), along with her daughter, Fiona, who she thought killed in an act of piracy. She takes a position on a space cruise liner, and sets of for Alpha Centauri. Unfortunately, disaster strikes again when the ship's engines fail, and they're dragged into orbit around the nearby gas giant. The passengers escape in pods, leaving many of the crew and Lunzie herself. Lunzie's injured by a door, and is put into coldsleep once again.

When she wakes up 12 years have passed, and 'Tee' has spent most of it looking for her, signing up with the FSP fleet. However, their reunion is marred by his having moved on from her, and started a new relationship, however, they part ways as friends, and Lunzie finally gets to meet her even larger family on Alpha Centauri. They are delighted to meet her, but she finds them hide-bound and dull, living on a planet that is over populated and heavily polluted. The only one that she can truly relate to is Lorna, who is very similar to Fiona, and who shares their 'itchy feet'. Because of this, Lunzie gives her some of her 62 years worth of salary, to use to get off planet. Lunzie must now leave, but before she does, the captain of her rescuing ship invites her out to dinner, partly out of friendship, but also to use here as a cover for getting close to some of the 'planet pirates', groups of people who illegally colonise planets. He gets a call from his source, and goes to meet him, but one of the waiters attacks them; they win the fight, but the source is dead, and their cover blown.

The end of Part Four delivers the characters to planet Ireta and intersects with the events of ''Dinosaur Planet''.

One night, the Te Kaha hotel pub carpark is parked by a sedan with nine-year-old boys Ed and Romeo in it.

As time passes, another sedan neighbors them, with the two adults, Koro and Tangata, exiting, leaving the child, 12-year-old Polly, alone. Romeo teases her, then vice versa. More time passes, and Romeo decides to know her more. In her car, Romeo finds out Polly has a plastic ring. As the parents exit the pub, Romeo and Polly express farewell. Polly gives the ring to Romeo, so that he will remember her, confiding that he will keep his promise to keep the ring. Romeo smiles and stands still looking at the car as it drives off.

Danny Valddesechi (Chris Pine) is an intelligent, handsome, charming boy who happens to be blind. Having been blind from birth, he volunteers for a risky experimental visual prosthesis that may restore his sight—having a microchip installed in the visual cortex of his brain that connects to a camera that would give him only, at best, fuzzy black and white images. During the tests he meets a beautiful Indian nurse, Leeza (Anjali Jay). Meanwhile, because Danny is a virgin at 22, his brother Larry (Eddie Kaye Thomas), who runs a limousine service, gets him a string of hilariously disastrous blind dates in between rentals. When Danny finally realizes that he is falling for Leeza, she tells him she cannot see him anymore because she has been promised in an arranged marriage. Believing that Leeza did not pursue their relationship because of his being blind, Danny becomes depressed and stops taking the necessary tests for his brain surgery. Danny's family, his eccentric psychotherapist Dr. Evans (Jane Seymour) and eye doctor Dr. Perkins (Stephen Tobolowsky) advise him to continue because it is his only chance of seeing, and soon Danny is successfully operated on. He sees his family's faces for the first time, but not Leeza's, who was away, reluctantly preparing for her engagement party. Soon the experiment proves to be a failure, as the fragile prosthesis in his brain moves, clouding his already weak vision, and Danny goes back to being blind. Realizing that he really loves Leeza, he bursts into the engagement party, professing his love for her and saying "Love is how you speak to me. Love is how you touch me...and guide me showing me the way to go. And when we kiss, when we kiss, it moves me to my soul." The couple kiss. At this the marriage is called off and Danny and Leeza start over, learning more about each other's family and culture.

In this crime caper set in the eccentric London art world, Nick Edwards (Rhys) owes £50,000 to the super-smooth, yet brutal, crime lord Foster Wright (Malik) and has four days to find the cash.

Nick knows nothing about working a heist of that size, but when he stumbles across a lost sketch by the legendary Italian artist Antonio Fraccini, he believes he's in the clear. The problem is, it's only worth 15 grand.

With the help of the eternal cynic Eve (Ashfield) and her extremely talented yet naïve artist brother Tony (Chambers), the plan is hatched; to forge the drawing and sell it to five Mayfair galleries within an hour before anyone cottons onto the fact there's a scam going down.

''Introduction:'' Wile E. Coyote, standing on the road, pulls out an arrow-shaped sign saying "''Coyote''" and another saying "''Apetitius Giganticus''". The Road Runner speeds by with a ''Beep-beep'' and ruffles the coyote's fur. Wile flips the signs to read "''Road-Runner''" and "''Fastius Tasty-us''", and winds up his legs, followed by his body, and chases the Road Runner. When the Road Runner sees the Coyote chasing him, he taunts him and gears into superspeed (leaving a "TOING!" in his wake). This causes the road to roll up, a tunnel to turn inside-out, and a bridge to compress itself as he puts his would-be predator far behind. Wile E. stops short of the chasm from the latter, panting, and two light bulbs appearing in place of his eyes signal his new-found idea.

1. Wile E. prepares himself to chase the Road Runner with his new roller skis, and skis off the plateau down the mountain and onto the road that the Road Runner is dashing over. As the camera cuts separately to Wile and the Road Runner, the bird turns across a U-turn at the end of a cliff, while Wile speeds off. When Wile E. realizes his mistake, he drops the ski poles, and soon slams into the side of another cliff. The Coyote looks up and down, trying to figure out how to escape, until he hears and sees the Road Runner at the top of the cliff. The skis provide a rather convenient "spring" for Wile E., who uses them to get closer and closer to grabbing the Road Runner. On his fourth jump, he is within millimeters of his opponent; but unfortunately, the downward force proves to be too much for a fifth, and the skis snap, causing him to succumb to gravity yet again.

2. The Road Runner beeps at Wile E. from across the canyon, and the camera pans to the Coyote attempting to shoot himself over the canyon with a bow. Before he can fire, the very end of the cliff crumbles and the bow tips over the side. Wile E. flips himself over in the air, but this causes him to bounce up and get his head stuck inside the edge of the cliff.

3. Wile E. lights a needle-nosed dart bomb and throws it at a target attached to a cactus, exploding all three items. He then gets in a hot air balloon with an artillery of dart bombs. Once Wile E. sees the Road Runner zipping over the road he lights the darts and releases them. The bombs circle in the air but the last one lands in the Coyote's balloon, blowing it up. He waves at the camera and falls toward the ground but stops himself by releasing a parachute. Unfortunately, another dart blows this up and Wile E. is left to wave at the camera with an '''''AGAIN''''' sign before resuming his plummet to the bottom. After the crash landing, a third dart follows him to the ground and explodes.

4. The darts continue to plague Wile E. from this point onwards. Wile E. gives the Road Runner a snack while he awaits with a sledgehammer behind a turn. The Road Runner is heard approaching and the Coyote gets ready to strike, but another dart plants itself into the hammerhead and blows up the handle. The hammerhead lands on the Coyote's head, causing his eyes to register "TILT" like a pinball machine.

5. The Coyote hurls a boomerang at the passing Road Runner but it misses, disappears behind a rock and comes back around with another dart attached. Wile E. starts to run from the boomerang which passes him when he isn't looking. Thinking he has outrun the bomb, Coyote stops but the boomerang also stops and hovers next to him. He turns and reacts with his eyes just before it detonates.

6. Wile E. attempts a simple gun-in-the-woods trap which fails when once again another dart plugs the barrel and explodes. Adding insult to injury, yet another dart explodes under a huge boulder which flies through the air and flattens the Coyote.

7. As the Road Runner traverses another road, the Coyote is shown at the top edge of a cliff, getting ready to drop an anvil. Another dart takes out a third of the cliff's edge and two more darts pepper the floating end. Wile E. jumps onto the "secure" main cliff, but the entire cliff falls down. The Coyote pulls himself on top of the anvil to avoid getting bonked on the head with it. The anvil smashes through the ground, followed by Wile E. and the floating end of the cliff with the two darts. The Coyote prepares for the worst, but instead of exploding the darts unfurl into "THE" and "END" signs. Wile E. sees them and laughs deeply in relief.

Ten years ago before the events of the series, a spatial anomaly which became known as "Heaven's Gate" appeared in South America. It was followed by the opening of "Hell's Gate" in Tokyo, altering the sky and wreaking havoc on the landscape. At that time, "Contractors", people with special abilities, capable of supernatural feats, emerged. Kept secret from the public, Contractors murder in cold blood and block their emotions with logic and reason. Their abilities are acquired at the cost of their humanity, and their name derives from the requirement to "pay the price" each time their powers are used. Nations and organizations around the world train and use Contractors as spies and assassins, resulting in violent battles for valuable objects and information.

After the 'Heaven's War', the United States loses its position as a superpower to a mysterious organization known as the Syndicate. ''Darker Than Black'' follows a Chinese Contractor code-named "Hei" as he undertakes espionage and assassination missions in Tokyo directed by the Syndicate. In his false civilian life, where he is known as shy a student under the alias Li Shenshun, Hei is assisted by Yin, an artificial human known as Doll and Mao, a Contractor trapped in a cat's body and overseen by former police officer Huang. The series has a villain-of-the-week format, with a variety of characters such as a Japanese Public Security Bureau who oversee the activities of dangerous people with supernatural powers.

Early in the series Hei is revealed as a former fighter in the Heaven's War, searching for his missing sister Bai; he believes that a woman known as Amber is responsible for Bai's disappearance after escaping from the Syndicate. Amber leads Evening Primrose, a group of Contractors targeted by the Syndicate who claim they are terrorists. Pandora, another group, investigates Hell's Gate; the Syndicate is using Pandora and its Saturn Ring weapon to attack Hell's Gate and annihilate the Contractors. This creates mayhem as multiple Syndicate agents target Huang who ultimately commits suicide. Hei and Yin meet Amber while Mao escapes from them. Upon meeting Amber, Hei is revealed to be an ordinary human who became able to use Bai's power after his sister placed his body onto his flesh through her powers. When Saturn Ring is activated, all Contractors except Hei are killed. Hei has a vision where he meets Bai and decides to betray the Syndicate. Amber uses her Contract powers to revert time long enough to enable Hei to destroy Saturn Ring, and Hei and Yin escape from the Syndicate.

Maria, a ten-year-old orphaned girl, is nominal owner of the grand but impoverished country estate on which she lives. Her only friends are a loving family cook and a retired professor, who try to protect Maria from her strict governess, Miss Brown. The governess makes her miserable, taking her cue from her (Maria's) guardian, a vicar named Mr. Hater. Miss Brown and Mr. Hater are conspire to keep Maria poor and isolated, hoping eventually to steal her inheritance. Maria does not go to school, and in church she has to walk all the way to her seat in oversized football boots which make a great deal of noise. Shy, lonely, and starved of affection, she meets a colony of Lilliputians living on an island in an ornamental lake. Her relations with them are initially quite strained: she tries to win them over with gifts while imposing her own ill-considered plans upon them, but eventually learns that she must respect them as her equals. Learning of the Lilliputians' existence, her guardians try to exploit them for gain, but working together Maria and her friends thwart their evil plans. The estate is restored to its former glory and becomes the Lilliputians' permanent home.

The story begins by introducing itself as a made-up story. It introduces the three children as the principal characters and considers a number of settings before deciding on a meadow. It turns out that the meadow lies within a small kingdom inhabited by the three children and a variety of anthropomorphic animals. We find Robert, Joanna, and Moritz hard at work trying to reach hazelnuts in three tall trees. They make the acquaintance of a dignified owl, Dr. Loy, who is suddenly scared off by the sound of an approaching motor. The children watch bemused as King Fatback's royal limousine approaches. The King himself, a pig, accuses them of stealing his nuts. They are taken to the castle and introduced to the caretaker, a matronly cat named Miss Bellmouse, who places them in separate rooms. Life at the castle is a regimented series of rings, gongs, bells, and buzzers that announce one dismal activity after another: sleep; lessons taught by the unpleasant teacher-dog, Mr. Prouch; brainwashing lectures given by the king's overbearing cousin Clemens; flavorless meals; and a weekly trip to the playroom.

The children rebel at every possible turn despite being held against their will. They talk back to Mr. Prouch and, when he loses his spectacles in a rage, make their first escape attempt. However, it fails when they find themselves caught climbing over the castle's surrounding wall. They also start a food fight at dinner one night.

One day, while alone in the playroom, Robert discovers a hole in the wall behind a large wardrobe. The hole leads to a dusty store room that contains what they first think is a gray hose but which turns out to be the trunk of Holger, the elephant, who is locked in the next room and is sticking his trunk through a hole in the door. Holger tells the children about Crown Day, an impending holiday in which he will be forced cart the king around in the Royal Litter (a box-like seat which straps to Holger's back) so that all the animals may see and honor the king. The children suggest the idea of stealing the king's crown, though no one ventures a specific plan.

The next week, the children meet Holger in the storeroom and tell stories about whimsical dreams they have had. Holger presents them with a daring plan, to which the children agree. The three fake an escape, pretending to have broken out of the play room window, but in fact they return to the storeroom and hide inside the Royal Litter. The castle is in an uproar searching for them, but the children pass the time with Holger telling stories, and eventually fall asleep.

That night Robert dreams that the snatched crown falls onto the head of Dr. Loy.

The next day is August 21, Crown Day, and the children wake to find themselves inside the litter being strapped to Holger's back. They are not discovered, and the Crown Day parade commences. The party reaches a bridge and springs the plan into action: Holger uses his trunk to blow a smoke screen, grabs the crown, and passes it to the concealed children. He pretends that the crown rolled off the bridge. The king's party desperately searches the water, which allows the children to escape with the crown. Disgraced, Fatback and Clemens skip town that night.

The children reach Dr. Loy, present him with the crown, and ask him to be the new king. He accepts, and the next day he holds a meeting with all the townspeople. King Loy changes the kingdom's motto from ''Let the People Serve the King'' to ''Let the King Serve the People,'' and announces that each citizen may choose his or her occupation. Thus, the kingdom shifts from totalitarianism to a constitutional monarchy.

The next part begins much like the first scene: The three children lie in the meadow. They visit with their friends, who are all hard at work at their new jobs. At first they beg for their food, but then realize they need occupations if they are going to survive. They get a job at the bakery under the tutelage of the lion, Hubert Knapsack. He gives them the job of baking a "dignified" cake for one of King Loy's official functions. They bake a cake in the form of King Loy himself, but the king dismisses the cake as inappropriate for the occasion and unbefitting his stature. When Hubert finds out, he is enraged and sues them. The children are tried in court, found guilty, and lose their jobs. When they ask how they are to eat, the king replies, "To decide that is not the function of a court of arbitration."

Soon after, the king awakes to discover the crown is once again missing. He calls a meeting of all the people under the assumption that the thief or thieves will not appear. Sure enough, the children are among the absent. After much speculation, the children appear with Holger and friends. They carry a bag that makes odd clinking sounds. They have changed the monarchy into a democracy by melting the crown down into many small crowns, one for each person.

The book ends as it began, with the acknowledgement that the story was made up.

Jessica "Jessie" Montgomery (Ally Sheedy) is a bratty, hard-partying rich girl in her mid-20s. Jessie's self-indulgent lifestyle (along with a lack of respect for anything or anybody, even herself) has been wearing thin on her father Charles (Tom Skerritt), a widowed philanthropist. When Jessie's boyfriend Brent (Jason Beghe) breaks up with her, out of frustration with her immaturity and utter lack of values, she could not care less. Then, Jessie is arrested for drug possession and DWI with a suspended license (she also attempts to bribe her arresting officers). Charles blames himself for his daughter's downward spiral: Jessie's mother died only a few years after the girl was born; instead of laying down the law, he spoiled Jessie rotten...often leaving her in the care of his valet Woodrow (Theodore Wilson) and other family retainers. Now, hearing that his daughter has been busted and her car impounded, he wishes aloud (ostensibly to Woodrow, but also to himself) that he had never had a daughter. Outside, a star falls. Jessie's identity is magically erased, leaving her fully clothed, but with no resources or possessions, and no family or friends.

Enter Stella Winston (Beverly D'Angelo), a fairy godmother who has been "assigned" to the Montgomery family. Stella pays Jessie's bail and explains what has happened as a result of Charles' wish. Being Jessie, she does not believe a word Stella says. When she walks to her father's mansion, neither he nor any of the servants recognize her; neither does Jimmy, the family dog. When Jessie breaks into the mansion, she is promptly chased out and has to flee when the cops show up.

Wandering the streets, Jessie trips over some girls with whom she recently partied. They insist they have never seen Jessie before in their lives, and shove her away. She once again encounters Stella...who spells out all of Jessie's faults and suggests the girl find a job to provide for herself. Having never worked a day in her life (she dropped out of junior college after "six years"), Jessie nonetheless succeeds in finding employment as a live-in maid for an eccentric Malibu family: Stan Starkey (Dick Shawn), his wife Georgette (Valerie Perrine), and their daughter Brie (Rain Phoenix). A few years ago, the Starkeys won several million dollars in the lottery; they now aspire to break into the music industry as talent agents.

Gradually, Jessie learns to interact with the Starkeys' other retainers - failed singer-turned-cook Audrey (Merry Clayton); Hispanic fellow maid Maria (Begoña Plaza); and chauffeur Nick (Michael Ontkean), who aspires to make it as a songwriter. Jessie learns the true meaning of love, friendship, hard work, and self-respect. When she chooses the happiness of her new friends over her own, she is rewarded with having her old life returned to her, and being reunited with her father. Her attitude, though, is now much improved.

The film opens in 1972 with a single mother and her two children (a teenage son and nine-year-old daughter) running a boarding house. The mother is hurt in a car accident and hospitalized. As a birthday present, her son and his band drive her Pink Cadillac to Cleveland, Ohio, to kidnap her favorite singer, Elvis Presley. He gets the owner of a local pizzeria, who looks eerily like Elvis' mother, to pose as his mother's ghost as a distraction, and then drugs Elvis with chloroform. Elvis awakens in the boarding house. He and the boy do not get along at first. The boy disrespects Elvis, accusing him of selling out to Vegas. However, the boy and Elvis get to know each other, and they became friends. Elvis closes the film playing "Heartbreak Hotel" with the boy's band at the high school talent show.

The novel starts with an attack by Arthur and his war-band, and the escape of Gwyna, a servant girl. She is found by Myrddin, a bard who hopes to build Arthur's reputation as a great hero so that he can unite the native British against the Saxons who have occupied the east of the country. Myrddin tells Gwyna to give Arthur Caliburn while pretending to be the Lady of the Lake. When she does that successfully, Myrddin disguises her in boy's clothes so that she can travel with the war-band as his servant.

During her travels, she meets a boy who was brought up as a girl, tricks a holy man, swims in the Roman baths of Aquae Sulis, takes part in a battle, and witnesses Arthur's brutality, piety and immorality, all the while observing her master create the fantastic stories that have made 'King Arthur' one of the most famous men in legend. After Arthur's death she creates some stories herself, conceding that the legend is more important than the mere facts.

Richie is alone in his room having just finished reading Leo Tolstoy's novel ''War and Peace'', when he hears loud noises coming from Eddie's room next door. Richie attempts to get into Eddie's room, but is met with a sharp stick to the eye and having his genitals set on fire. After falling downstairs and extinguishing his groin, Richie gets excited when Spudgun and Dave Hedgehog show up. They are too socially awkward to reject Richie's attempts at conversation with them, and only when Eddie comes downstairs do they head to Eddie's room. Richie follows and discovers what Eddie's been up to: he has been forging money. Eddie gives Spudgun and Hedgehog thousands of pounds in forged money, before Richie notices that the notes bear absolutely no resemblance to real money; rather, they feature pornographic images of the British royal family and other celebrities with misprinted currency numbers. Eddie reveals that his plan is to make sure people are so shocked by the perverse images that they will never notice how unconvincing the forgeries are.

The four head down to the local pub to try out their plan on landlord Dick Head. The plan initially seems to work, but when Dick retreats to the backroom to "take a closer look," he phones his friend "Skullcrusher" Henderson, the biggest forger in London. Once the others have downed their expensive drinks, Dick politely informs them that Skullcrusher takes a psychotically, violently dim view of competing forgers, and unless they pay him £5,000 by the end of the night, he will come down there and crush their skulls. The group, suddenly realising why he is called the Skullcrusher, initially panics, before they discover that the pub has its annual quiz that evening, with a £5,000 prize. They settle the £200 entry fee with gold teeth, which they violently extract from each other's mouths.

The four later return to the pub for the quiz, and Eddie attempts to buy drinks with a forged 137-krugerrand note. In an effort to cheat in the quiz, Richie hides an edition of the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' in the toilet. Eddie takes a rather more proactive approach and sabotages the other team's buzzers to administer near-lethal electric shocks when pressed. Eventually their team is the only one left, but they are still too stupid to answer any of the questions. Richie retreats to the toilet while Eddie stalls Dick by asking him about the time he had a tryout with Queens Park Rangers. Richie tries to consult the encyclopedia, only to find that a patron has used the necessary volume as toilet paper. Richie attempts to attack the patron, but he himself is beaten up instead. After passing on yet another question, Dick simply gives up and awards them the prize.

Skullcrusher shows up at that moment, and Richie and Eddie hand over their winnings; but, it turns out that the prize money was forged by Skullcrusher himself (and which are not much more convincing than Eddie's forgeries, featuring Danny La Rue instead of the Queen), and the boys get their skulls crushed anyway.

A young, struggling Bangkok rock musician, Sutin, constantly dreams about having almost sex with sexy model-actress La-mai, but always wakes up before he can actually have sex. When he wins a chance to appear in a battle of the bands contest, and La-mai presents the prize, he is not sure he is dreaming, so he crudely propositions La-mai on live television. Embarrassed by what he's done, Sutin proceeds to go out to dinner with his bandmates and become very intoxicated. Later that night, he masturbates in front of a poster of La-mai, and then the next day thousands of women in the city become pregnant. The women then give birth to abnormal, fast-growing babies that all look like Sutin.

Observing the proceedings is a scientist, Dr. Satifeung, and assisted by his daughter, he tries to come up with a way to stop the "look alike gang", but soon there are bigger problems.

''Pâté'' is a dark story about an aristocratic family struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. Amongst a landscape of desolation, two young children, Otto and his sister Vera, hunt daily for food. Meanwhile, at home in an abandoned ship, their delusional Mother clings onto the faded glory of their former aristocratic lives, aided by her shiftless Maid.

Full of memories, their life is a shadow of the past as each character copes with the grind of daily survival. When the malevolent Mister Griswald, the only man to survive the apocalypse, drops in for dinner, he sets in motion the final act - revealing the shocking secret of their survival.

The novel tells the story of a math professor who struggles against urges to commit suicide. His life seemed so successful. He was a well-liked college-on-TV lecturer who offered the public a way to improve their meager living standards in the crowded future world of 2200. He has a lovely young wife, which would seem to be a protective factor. Doctors have ruled out depression, and they cannot figure out his problem. Yet in a suicidal attempt he tries to hurl himself from a high balcony. During one TV lecture he cuts his neck on live broadcast, and he takes an overdose of pills. In fact, a mysterious foe is trying to cause the professor to die, and this villain plans to increase the death toll into the millions.

Scientist Thomas Edmunds (William Desmond) and his daughter (Gloria Shea) attend the National Air Races in Cleveland, Ohio to find a pilot. They select pilot Bob Raymond (Tom Tyler) from the U.S. Border Patrol, to demonstrate an anti-gravity device called the "Contragrav". At the air meet, Mortimer Crome (LeRoy Mason), a friend of Gloria, is his main rival and has his henchman "Skip" (Walter Brennan) sabotage Raymond's aircraft prior to the air race. Raymond crashes but survives.

Edmunds' invention is sought after by a gang of smugglers led by Crome who owns the International Import & Export Company, who wants the invention. The inventor has a secret airfield in a desert region. Raymond comes to the inventor's aid, using another of Edwards' inventions, the superplane, the "Phantom." Able to control the aircraft remotely from an underground headquarters, Bob foils Crome's plans. Gloria has become Bob's love interest.

A last attempt to get at the inventor's work leads to an explosion at his workshop that kills the criminals. Edmunds escapes and is reunited with Gloria and Bob.

After their recent defeat, the hamlets and villages of Derbyshire are no longer ringing with the wild shouts of Bonny Prince Charlie's Highland Brigade; instead, troops loyal to King George are looking for those accused of high treason and are offering a reward of twenty guineas for the death of any traitor or rebel.

Philip James Gascoyne, eleventh Earl of Stretton, is in hiding, in fear for his life after being wrongly accused by Sir Humphrey Challoner of being a traitor to the King.

For months Philip has been a fugitive, disguised in rough clothes and hiding in odd places, trusting no-one, but now he has been given shelter and a cover by honest John Stitch, the local blacksmith, and is pretending to be his nephew while trying to get a note to his sister, the beautiful Lady Patience Gascoyne.

John Stich is also friends with the notorious Beau Brocade, a masked highwayman who roams the moors holding up coaches so he can steal from the rich and give to the poor. Beau Brocade is actually Captain Jack Bathurst of His Majesty's White Dragoons, a handsome but tragic figure on whose head the Government has put the price of a hundred guineas.

The blacksmith gets Beau Brocade to deliver a letter from Philip to his sister and a couple of days later she turns up at his forge in her coach. Reunited with his beloved sister, Philip gives Patience a packet of letters which prove his innocence and asks her to take them to London and clear his name.

Just as they are discussing when she can leave, they spot Sir Humphrey's coach in the distance, Philip goes back into hiding while Patience heads towards the inn in Aldwark village to get a couple of hours rest for herself and the horses before starting the journey to London.

Buck Gordon is hired to discover who has been rustling a rancher's cattle, while simultaneously trying to protect a young girl (Madge Bellamy) and her prospector grandfather (Tom Ricketts) from having their newly discovered gold mine stolen from them by a mystery villain.

Aviator Dick Moreland uses his winnings from a recent flight to fund an expedition to recover treasure buried by his pirate ancestor. However, Stanley Brasset, another member of Moreland's club, steals his map and sets out to find the treasure for himself. Dorothy Craig becomes involved when Dick needs her car to chase Brasset's henchmen and recover the map, which results in Dorothy being kidnapped and requiring rescue by Dick. When told of the treasure, Dorothy offers her father's yacht to take them to the island. Unable to retain the map, Brasset joins the expedition (his identity as the villain unknown to the protagonists) with henchmen hidden aboard. The henchmen are discovered and attempt to take over the ship en route to the Caribbean but this fails. Brasset releases them again after arrival to stop Dick from recovering the treasure. The treasure chest itself is empty and the search by the two parties continues on the island. Island natives eventually capture Brasset and his henchmen and plan to sacrifice them. Dick intervenes and they are brought back to America as prisoners.

Ex-sergeant Bouvier, expelled from the army for fits of violence, shoots at Louise when she rejects him and then puts his last two bullets in his own head. The pair survive, and he is shut away in an asylum. Rejecting civil society on his release, he wanders the countryside raping and murdering isolated teenage children. His crimes are followed closely by Rousseau, a provincial judge, and when Bouvier enters his jurisdiction he is arrested. Pretending to be his friend who will get him off on a plea of insanity, Rousseau humours his whims and encourages him to incriminate himself. In fact, Rousseau is seeking personal glory and career advancement. When Bouvier is condemned, Rousseau's working-class mistress Rose joins the strikers in the town factory. A postscript notes that hundreds more children died in factories than Bouvier's few highly-publicised victims.

Fliss Morgan has a nightmare on the night before her school trip, to Whitby. Every night Ellie-May Sunderland is drawn to the landing outside the mysterious Room 13, which does not seem to exist during the day. Fliss and her friends attempt to unravel the mystery of the room, and determine the identity of its sinister inhabitant.

Titled after the number of Mirbeau's licence plate, ''La 628-E8'' begins by recounting Mirbeau’s travels to Belgium, whose colonial exploitation of Belgian Congo rubber and abuse of the indigenous people Mirbeau excoriates. The book then proceeds to the Netherlands, where he finds remembrances of Rembrandt, Van Gogh and also Claude Monet. It is during his sojourn in this country that Mirbeau encounters his old friend, the deranged speculator Weil-See, whose reflections on mathematics and metaphysics are among Mirbeau’s most colorful pages. Mirbeau's fictional car trip then takes him to Germany, whose industry, cleanliness, and order stand in contrast to what Mirbeau regarded as the slovenliness and laxity of his own countrymen.

Steve Mallory has been involved in a car crash, and it appears he has killed his mistress, Holly Mitchell. Steve suffers from amnesia, he has no recollection whatever of the event. His wife is hostile and cold toward him, his father-in-law has been severely disabled by a stroke and his wife's cousin appears to despise him. Added to this is the sinister presence of Lester Aldrich, who turns out to be the downtrodden husband of the sleazy nymphomaniac Holly.

Lew Marsh receives a message that his only son, Rusty, has been killed in the war. Lew, a pharmacist in the small town of Hartfield, Iowa, is so grief-stricken, he neglects everything and isolates himself.

One day, Lew is visited by his dead grandfather's spirit. "Gramp" is troubled by Lew's prolonged mourning and the way it is affecting his life and those around him. Lew tries to send him away, but Gramp has "all the time in the world". Gramp takes him on a stroll through the streets of town, showing him flashbacks of events from his and Rusty's life.

It begins with Lew and other Hartfield residents returning home after serving in World War I. He finds out that his girlfriend Velma married a Marine just the month before. He meets Agnes soon after, falls in love, and marries her. Gramp becomes sick, but lives long enough through sheer stubbornness to see Rusty born.

Rusty turns out to be a perky boy with a mind of his own, who cares a lot for his friends. He becomes a member of the Boy Scouts. As a teen helping out at his father's pharmacy, he gives an old man medicine for his sick wife, even though the man does not have enough to pay for it, later putting money he has been saving for something special in the cash register.

Rusty falls in love for the first time at eighteen, with a girl named Gretchen Barry. She soon dumps him for a young man, which was expected by both Lew and Agnes. Lew tries to comfort him by giving him a glass of loganberry wine and toasting him as an adult. When Lenore Prentiss, a childhood friend, develops into a nice looking woman, Rusty takes notice.

Then the Nazis take control of Germany and invade Poland. Some of Rusty's friends join the Canadian armed forces, but Rusty continues helping out in the pharmacy. Then he leaves to study for his certificate. After some time, Rusty joins the Navy and is shipped out, bidding farewell to his parents and Lenore.

Back in the present, Gramp states that Rusty had a wonderful life up to his death. Lew is unconvinced, and Gramp tells him to go to pharmacy that evening. There he encounters a young sailor named Tony, someone Rusty often mentioned in his letters. Tony had agreed to tell Rusty's parents what happened if Rusty died.

Lew invites Tony home and introduces him to Agnes. Tony tells them about Rusty's last hours. After a torpedo struck their ship, Rusty was carrying a wounded man when a second one hit, flinging Tony into the water. That was the last he saw of his friend.

In New York City's Central Park, people begin committing mass suicide. The event is believed to be caused by a bio-terrorist attack using an airborne neurotoxin. The behavior quickly spreads across the Northeastern United States. High school science teacher Elliot Moore and his wife Alma are convinced by Elliot's mathematician colleague Julian to accompany him and his daughter Jess on a train out of Philadelphia. During the trip, the group learns that Boston and Philadelphia have been affected. The train loses all radio contact and stops at a small town. When Julian learns that his wife has left Boston for Princeton, he decides to go look for her and entrusts Jess to the Moores. However, Julian arrives to find Princeton has been affected, and he commits suicide by slitting his wrist.

Elliot, Alma, and Jess hitch a ride with a nurseryman and his wife. The nurseryman theorizes that plant life has developed a defense mechanism against humans consisting of an airborne toxin that stimulates neurotransmitters and causes humans to kill themselves. The group is later joined by other survivors coming from various directions, and the small crowd chooses to avoid roads and populated areas. When the larger part of the group is affected by the toxin, Elliot suggests the nurseryman was right and that the plants are targeting only large groups of people. He splits their group into smaller pockets and they walk along. The trio ends up with a pair of teenage boys, Josh and Jared, who are later shot and killed by the armed residents of a barricaded house.

Elliot, Alma and Jess wander the countryside and come upon the home of Mrs. Jones, an eccentric and paranoid elder. Jones initially agrees to house the group for the night but is suspicious of them having bad intentions; the next morning, she decides to expel them. In a fury, she leaves the house alone and is affected by the toxin. The shaken Elliot realizes that the plants are now targeting individuals. Left with no option when Mrs. Jones strikes her head into several windows, the trio chooses to die and embraces in the yard only to find themselves unaffected by the toxin. The outbreak has abated as quickly as it began.

Three months later, Elliot and Alma have adjusted to their new life with Jess as their adopted daughter. Alma learns she is pregnant and surprises Elliot with the news. On television, an expert compares the natural event to a red tide and warns that the epidemic may have only been a harbinger of an impending global disaster. In Paris's Tuileries Gardens, people begin committing mass suicide.

D'Artagnan leaves his hometown in the province of Gascony for Paris, in order to join the King's Musketeers or the Guards of the Cardinal. At his arrival, he gets into an argument with Athos, Porthos and Aramis and provokes them into a sword-fight. While fighting, they are interrupted by the Guards of the Cardinal, who are enforcing the King's decree banning duels. Afterwards, d'Artagnan and the others become friends and adopt the motto "All for one, and one for all".

''Otto Matic'' takes place in the year 1957, as the Earth is being conquered by the evil Brain Aliens from Planet X. The people of Earth are being systematically abducted by the flying saucers of the Brain Aliens, who wish to transform the humans into new Brain Aliens, subject to the will of their leader, the Giant Brain.

The player takes on the role of Otto Matic, one of a line of robots charged with policing the galaxy, as he attempts to defeat the Brain Aliens and restore the independence of the Earth. Otto travels to eight planets and rescues the humans, defeating the Giant Brain in a final confrontation.

The Irish-American Catholic Sullivan brothers are introduced through a progression of baptisms: George Thomas in 1914, Francis "Frank" Henry in 1916, Joseph "Joe" Eugene in 1918, Madison "Matt" Abel in 1919, and Albert "Al" Leo in 1922 in their hometown of Waterloo, Iowa. There is also a sister, Genevieve, nicknamed "Gen", making the Sullivans a happy family of eight.

Based on the apparent ages of the boys, the first part of the plot occurs in the late 1920s. As the boys grow, they are doted upon by their mother and Gen and given stern but loving guidance by their father, who is a railroad freight conductor. Each day, the boys climb the water tower by the tracks and wave to their father as he passes by on the train. The brothers are shown getting into their fair share of trouble growing up: a fight, a near drowning (after which their mother makes them promise not to set foot on a boat again until they are adults), and accidentally flooding the kitchen.

By 1939, only Al is still in high school. On the day that George wins a motorcycle race, Al meets Katherine Mary (played by Anne Baxter) an only child who lives with her father. Despite their youth, Al and Katherine Mary fall in love. Believing that Al is too young, his brothers nearly break the couple up, but realize what they have done and apologize. Soon after, Katherine Mary and Al are married, and ten months later, are expecting a baby. Al is fired for taking the afternoon off to escort his wife to the doctor, but his brothers vow to help them out.

Later, months after little Jimmy has been welcomed into the family, the Sullivans are relaxing on a Sunday—December 7, 1941. They hear about the attack on Pearl Harbor on the radio. The boys realize that one of their friends, Bill Bascom (Bill Ball in real life), was on and resolve to join the Navy to avenge him. Al decides that he cannot go with his brothers, due to his family responsibilities, but when Katherine Mary sees his despondent face, she tells him to go with the others to the recruiting station.

The brothers insist that they serve on the same ship, but the recruiting officer, LCDR Robinson (played by Ward Bond), states that the Navy can make no such guarantees. The brothers leave, but later, George receives his draft notice, and writes to the Navy Department, obtaining official permission for the boys to serve together.

Later, Tom, Alleta, and Katherine Mary eagerly await letters from their loved ones, who are serving aboard in the Pacific. A battle rages off the Solomon Islands, and one day, ''Juneau'' is hit. Four of the brothers find each other, then realize that George is below in sick bay. They rush down to get him, the ship continuing to be battered by explosions, and when George insists they leave him behind, Al replies, "We can't go swimming without you." There is a large explosion and the screen fades to black, insinuating that ''Juneau'' has been sunk and all the brothers killed.

Soon after, LCDR Robinson visits the Sullivan home and tells Katherine Mary, Tom, Alleta, and Gen that all five of the brothers were killed in action. Stunned, Tom goes to work and salutes the water tower on which his sons used to stand and wave to him.

Sometime later, Tom, Katherine Mary, and Gen, who has joined the WAVES, watch with pride while Alleta christens a new destroyer, . As Tom and Alleta watch the ship sail away, Alleta declares, "Tom, our boys are afloat again."

In actuality, only Frank, Joe, and Matt went down with ''Juneau'' when it sank. George and Al managed to make it to a life boat, but Al died the next day. George survived before suffering from delirium as a result of hypernatremia, although some sources say he went mad with the grief of losing his brothers, and four or five days later he slipped quietly out of the raft, never to be seen again.

When Beth (Angela O'Neill) is a little girl, her brother Bobby (John C. Russell) kills her whole family and attempts to kill her. When he is caught, he is committed, and she grows up with a new family. Years later, Beth goes to college, where she joins a sorority. Due to a memory block, she doesn't remember that the sorority house was her childhood home, however her memory soon starts to return. Meanwhile, Bobby senses her presence in the house and escapes the mental asylum so he can finish the job he was unable to complete. He steals a hunting knife in a hardware shop killing the elderly owner.

As Beth settles into the sorority, many of the girls leave for the weekend, leaving only her, Linda (Wendy Martel), Sara (Pamela Ross) and Tracy (Nicole Rio) in the house. As the girls enjoy having the house to themselves, Craig (Joe Nassi), Andy (Marcus Vaughter) and John (Vinnie Bilancio) come over. John tells the story of Beth's family murders, scaring her. She goes to bed and has a nightmare about her brother, becoming more scared. She remembers her brother hiding a knife in the fireplace, and when the group investigate, they find the knife. Realizing the time, Andy leaves in a rush, only to be confronted by Bobby and stabbed to death. Linda hypnotizes Beth, who recalls Bobby attacking her. Afterwards, Tracy and Craig go outside to the tipi they set up earlier, while Linda and Sara go to bed. Bobby attacks Tracy and Craig, shredding the tipi with his knife. As they try to escape, Tracy is stabbed to death. Craig runs into the house and alerts Linda and Sara who try to phone the police but find the lines have been cut. They attempt to warn Beth and John, but both have fallen asleep. As Bobby approaches them, Beth wakes and runs upstairs to the others, but John is murdered.

The survivors barricade themselves inside a room, before Craig escapes out the window down a safety ladder. While he holds it steady for Linda to climb down, Bobby stabs Craig to death before climbing up the ladder for Linda. Linda manages to make it back through the window and the others remove the ladder, making Bobby fall. Thinking he is dead, the girls try to escape the house but upon discovering he is still alive barricade themselves back into the room. However, Bobby comes in through the window and they flee outside. They once more encounter Bobby, who manages to repeatedly stab Sara. Meanwhile, Bobby's search party realize he will have gone to his old house and send the police there.

Beth and Linda run down into the basement where Beth finally realizes what happened to her when she was younger. When Bobby once more attacks them, the girls run upstairs. Bobby corners Beth but Linda manages to hit him with a shovel. Thinking he is dead, they begin to leave the house, but Bobby stabs Linda before attacking Beth who over powers him and stabs him in the neck, killing him. The police arrive. Beth is taken to the hospital where she continues to have nightmares about her brother.

The movie tells the story of a love triangle, in which a young man is loved by two women. Adel, a thief, is loved by aging Afaq also a thief. The story of the gang of thieves changes direction when Adel meets Nargess, a beautiful young girl from an impoverished family.

The game is set after the end of the "Terran Empire". Terra has lost a millennial war against the Kroll, who then used a planetary technology to move Terra out of its orbit and move the planet to an unknown location deep in Kroll space. Humans now have no homeworld and some have ended up as space pirates.

The game features an unnamed protagonist starting in a dark alley in Stambul city. No details are given about the player character other that he is a "Terrie" (human). At first, the player can explore some streets of Stambul City but there not much to do as the player character has no money. However, after incapacitating an alien mugger, he is awarded several thousand credits by the police force, with which he can buy a ticket out of Stambul.

The player can afford a ticket to the luxurious cruise spaceship ''Belshazzar''. As the player interacts with "Captain Starbird" and his daughter "Stella" the ship is attacked by the "Spaceship Warlock". The pirates led by Captain Hammer, an eyepatch-wearing space pirate and revolutionary leader (aesthetically a blatant nod to Nick Fury) board the ship and apprehend the passengers. In the brig, Hammer invites the player to his crew.

The player then goes on to battle and ultimately overthrow the evil Kroll empire and restore freedom to the galaxy.

In Paris, Pepé is strolling and causing a disturbance with his fumes. At one point Penelope Pussycat is walking with Claude Cat and Pepé's stink causes Claude to faint and Penelope to spring in the air, her back making contact with a fresh white-painted flagpole before she falls right into Pepé's arms. As Pepé introduces himself, Penelope scurries away.

Pepé chases Penelope into the Louvre, with Claude following. Pepé's stench ruins a couple of sculptures (correcting one into the ''Venus de Milo'') as well as thwarting Claude's ambush attempt (who Pepé mistakes for a sculpture due to him turning white; the cat's teeth, whiskers, tail, and nose fall off, which he sweeps up before fleeing) and he terrifies Penelope in the sculpture gallery, even as he paints a picture of her ("Don't move, darling. I want to remember you just as you are."), she scurries away again and Pepé "accidentally" paints the dust cloud she left onto his picture ("Aw, shucks... You moved!").

Claude pumps himself with air in an attempt to hold his breath as well as look strong and muscular while he confronts Pepé. Pepé plays along with the confrontation as a duel, miming a miss and a defeat. Claude in the meantime slowly suffocates and finally, the air he fights very hard to hold in is forced out, launching himself into the Hall d'Armour. Pepé wonders where everyone has gone to and after remarking that "War is fine, but love is better", he immediately picks up on where Penelope went.

Pepé finds Penelope hiding in the air conditioning machine below the Louvre and traps her in it with himself. Pepé's fumes spread through the Louvre spoiling various works of art (the limp watches on Salvador Dalí's ''The Persistence of Memory'' turn erect and break while the head and insects pass out, the heads of the couple on Grant Wood's ''American Gothic'' retreat into their bodies in the manner of turtles, the person overseeing the workers on Jean-François Millet's ''The Gleaners'' shoots a starting pistol causing the workers to dash off like sprinters, and the color on Edgar Degas's ''Two Dancers'' falls off turning it into a paint-by-numbers picture), the cartoon ending with the fumes causing the ''Mona Lisa'' to talk and breaks the fourth wall and says ("I can tell you chaps one thing. It's not always easy to hold this smile.").

It is 1812. General Wellesley is ready to invade Spain from Portugal. But two formidable fortresses stand in the way. Ciudad Rodrigo is taken, but Colonel Lawford is severely wounded and forced to relinquish command of the South Essex Regiment, depriving Captain Sharpe of an influential friend.

Colonel Windham, the new commander, brings his own officers, so Sharpe is demoted to lieutenant and is humiliated by being put in charge of the baggage and losing command of his "chosen men" to an aristocratic officer who purchased the commission of the South Essex's Light Company. Worse, one of the reinforcements is Sergeant Obidiah Hakeswill, an old enemy from Sharpe's days in India.

Meanwhile, Sharpe's lover, Teresa, tells him that he has a baby daughter living with her family in Badajoz, the second fortress town. Not knowing who she is, Hakeswill tries to rape her, but proves no match for her. Teresa then slips into Badajoz to spy on the French and to see her baby.

To cause trouble for Sharpe, Hakeswill steals from the officers and plants a picture frame belonging to Windham in the kit of Sharpe's right-hand man, Sergeant Harper. When it is found, the colonel has Harper flogged. Later, during a night skirmish, a turncoat French soldier escapes the besieged town, bearing a dispatch and a letter from Teresa, but he is shot and killed. Sharpe recovers the letter, which contains a map showing where she is staying, but on his way back Hakeswill tries to shoot Sharpe in the confusion, but kills a young ensign.

Eventually the walls of Badajoz are breached, but the first assault falters. Sharpe rallies the men and leads them into the town. Hakeswill gets to Teresa first due to the letter he stole from Sharpe. Harry Price, one of Sharpe's officers, intervenes and is shot and apparently killed by Hakeswill while trying to protect Teresa. (Price reappears, in ''Sharpe's Waterloo'', this time played by Nicholas Irons.) Sharpe is not far behind and stops Hakeswill, who is wounded in the process, but Hakeswill still manages to get away. Hakeswill then rapes and murders the widow of one of the company's soldiers, before retrieving his cache of stolen goods and deserting.

For his bravery and because many of the other officers have been killed, Sharpe gets back command of his Light Company. Harper is exonerated when he finds the missing portrait of Windham's wife hidden in Hakeswill's shako and returns it to the colonel.

''Path of the Assassin'', called ''Hanzō no Mon'' in Japan, is the story of Hattori Hanzō, the fabled master ninja whose duty was to protect Tokugawa Ieyasu, the ''shōgun'' who would unite Japan into one great nation. But before he could do that, he had to grow up and learn how to love the ladies! As the secret caretaker of such an influential future leader, not only does Hanzo use vast and varied ninja talents, but in living closely with Ieyasu, he forms a close friendship with the young ''shōgun''. The quality of their relationship is unforgettably crystallized by Hanzo's fulfillment of a challenging but enticing task Ieyasu sets him: to demonstrate how to make love to a woman, which neither youngster has ever done. Hanzo succeeds at obliging his master and winning himself a woman whom he pleases, but anticipating that he won't be able to serve both master and wife, Hattori turns away the young woman he won while Ieyasu walks a tactical tightrope between the factions contending for rule—one led by his ''de facto'' father, the other by his older brother while Hanzo meets Tsukumo, the female ninja who will be his wife. Ieyasu wins his first battle when his foster father is killed, which simplifies Ieyasu's next choice of an ally, while meanwhile Hanzo and Tsukumo oppose the marriage because two families' lords are potential rivals. Later, Hanzo rescues Ieyasu's wife and children from a sadistic warlord, precipitating an attempt on Hanzo's life and, oddly, estrangement between him and Ieyasu when Hanzo offends Ieyasu's wife. Hanzo's father-in-law is attacked by another ninja who had previously attacked Hanzo, and the dying man charges Hanzo and Tsukumo to avenge him. Ieyasu, awaiting Hanzo's return from his voluntary exile, makes a mistake by attempting to collect rice from Buddhist-monk vassals belonging to a sect that spurns feudal obligations and provokes an uprising that may be taken advantage of by his rivals. Hanzo learns of the situation and with Tsukumo begins a series of subterfuges and impersonations which culminates in him obtaining a secret document that enables Ieyasu to quell the uprising.

The plot focuses on Grace Hanadarko (Holly Hunter), a heavy drinking and promiscuous Oklahoma City detective. In the series opener, Grace meets up with her "last-chance" angel when, after a night of drinking, she runs down and kills a pedestrian with her Porsche. In desperation, she calls out for God's help; and a scruffy, tobacco-spitting man, who calls himself Earl (Leon Rippy), appears. Unfolding his wings to reveal his divine origins, Earl tells her that she is headed for Hell and asks if she is ready to turn her life over to God. When he finally disappears, the person she struck is also gone and it is as if the accident never happened. The only evidence left is a small amount of the victim's blood on her blouse, which she takes to her best friend, forensic science expert Rhetta Rodriguez (Laura San Giacomo), to analyze. With Rhetta's help, Grace discovers that the victim in her accident is actually a man awaiting execution on death row, Leon Cooley (Bokeem Woodbine). When she visits Cooley in prison, he reveals that he has also had encounters with Earl.

Passionate in her job, Grace investigates homicides and other major crimes with the other detectives in her squad, including Ham Dewey (Kenny Johnson), Butch Ada (Bailey Chase), Bobby Stillwater (Gregory Cruz), and Captain Kate Perry (Lorraine Toussaint).

Off the job, Grace drinks heavily, engages in numerous one-night stands and casual encounters with men, and is having an affair with her married police partner, Ham. Aside from her faults, Grace is an extraordinarily loving and generous person to those around her. In particular, she loves her young nephew, Clay (Dylan Minnette), and devotes a great deal of time to him.

Earl appears to Grace throughout the series, hoping she'll turn away from her more self-destructive tendencies and seek God's help. ''Saving Grace'' uses Grace's story to discuss the topic of faith and how difficult faith can be in such an imperfect world.

Oklahoma City

Series creator Nancy Miller grew up in Oklahoma City, and as a result ''Saving Grace'' includes many references to Oklahoma City and the state of Oklahoma. For instance, many of the characters' last names are the names of Oklahoma towns: Hanadarko is derived from Anadarko, Oklahoma; also Clay Norman, Ham Dewey, Butch Ada, Bobby Stillwater and Captain Perry all have last names taken from Oklahoma towns and cities.

The 1995 bombing of Oklahoma City's Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building and its aftermath have been frequently incorporated into the plot and character development of the series. In the show, Grace's sister, who was also Clay's mother, died in the bombing.

In addition, local Oklahoma City eating establishment Johnnies Charcoal Broiler is frequently incorporated.

In an October 2007 trip to Oklahoma City by the cast, writers and producers, Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett presented Miller and Hunter with Keys to the City.

The book deals with Joey as he tries to take charge of correcting his wrongs in his life and the lives of the people he knows, before finally learning that his priority should be doing what's best for himself and leaving the others to their own ways.

The story starts out with his father, Carter Pigza, who also has ADHD, riding his motorcycle noisily around the neighborhood. Joey's mother, Fran, came out screaming at him, resulting in him crashing his motorcycle into an old apple tree, where a branch stabbed him. Carter was admitted into hospital, but he later ran off.

Throughout the story, Frances had Joey home schooled by her old friend Mrs. Lapp, along with Olivia, Mrs. Lapp's sullen, bratty, blind daughter. Carter kept on bugging their family so Frances had to put out a restraining order to keep him away. Frances was also dating a new boyfriend, Booth Duprey, who was a photographer at her working place and whom Joey disliked.

Joey's grandmother was concerned of Joey having no friends, and persuaded Joey to make friends with Olivia, which Joey found very depressing and tiring, for Olivia's main goal is to either make Joey so miserable he would run off or establishing in her mother's point of view that Joey is up to no good, so as for her to be sent off to a boarding school, where she preferred to be. Olivia stated that many kids like Joey had come to be her homeschooling partner and had gone off, Joey would be the last one her mother would try.

Some time later, Joey's grandmother declared that she would die if Joey could not bring Olivia to meet her and prove that she is Joey's friend. Meanwhile, a performance of the musical Godspell was in town, which happened to be Olivia's favorite show. However, Mrs. Lapp disliked the show due to its novelty portrayal of religion and forbade Olivia from seeing it. Joey and Olivia later struck a deal: Joey finds a way for Olivia to see the show, and she will go to see his grandmother. Olivia then went to meet his grandmother.

During the talk, Olivia revealed that her mother was bitten by a snake while she was pregnant, resulting in her blindness. As her mother is a dedicated Christian, the snake is like an evil being, like Satan. Because of that, Olivia believed she was hopeless and up to no good and behaved like she did. However, after hearing grandma's view on life and her past life, Olivia later confided to Joey that she felt they had a lot in common and it can be implied that she felt better about herself also.

One day, Carter, who wanted a chance to talk with Joey and make it up to Frances, came and stole Pablo, Joey's pet dog. As Carter is unsure exactly which Chihuahua is Joey's, he took all Chihuahuas in town also. Joey ended up returning the dogs to their rightful owners before finally going out to meet his father. One owner, however, had another dog in their depression of their previous one, and the two dogs do not cope. Joey took the extra dog and renamed her Pablita.

Joey advised Carter to be nice to Frances, so that maybe things could get better. But at Thanksgiving, Frances was enraged by the gifts Carter sent and the two had a violent row in front of the house, ruining the party they held and sending a visiting Mrs. Lapp into horror. Joey sprinted after her departing back. When he caught up with her at her home, Mrs. Lapp announced coldly that his family already had enough problems to deal with and for that she would not prefer him to help her in solving Olivia's problems anymore.

Joey's Grandmother died the next day, and Booth broke up with Frances. Seeing that his plans for the others has all gone awry, Joey decided to do as his grandmother told him to; to care more about himself and leave everyone else to care about themselves. Joey arranged the remaining settings for his grandmother's funeral and used some of her savings on buying nice clothes and tickets for him and Olivia to watch her favorite show she had mentioned earlier.

Late at the funeral, Frances and Carter had a row again, concerning the disdainful wooden coffin Joey's grandmother was laid in. Joey lashed out, telling them that it was because his grandmother would be cremated. Joey then ran away and in the evening asked Mrs. Lapp for permission to take Olivia to the show. She allowed him to and apologized for her anger in the Thanksgiving night, but maintained her decision of no more home-schooling, though she was happy for a visit occasionally. She told him that Olivia would be sent to a boarding school instead. Olivia was delighted after the show and by now was nicer and friendlier to Joey after all the help he had given her. Joey experienced his first kiss with Olivia before they departed and they promised to keep in touch.

Later, Joey went back to study normally in his old school, and he stated that he was 'where he belonged'. While his dad 'went in circles' and his mom was 'up in down', Joey decided that it was time he moved in his own direction; forward.

Category:2003 American novels Category:American young adult novels

Nagaraj's world is comfortable. Living in his family's spacious house with only his wife, Sita, and his widowed mother for company, he fills his day writing letters, drinking coffee, doing some leisurely book-keeping for his friend Coomar's Boeing Sari Company, and sitting on his verandah watching the world and planning the book he intends to write about the life of the great sage Narada.

But everything is disturbed when Tim, the son of his ambitious land-owning brother Gopu, decides to leave home and come to live with Nagaraj. Forced to take responsibility for the boy, puzzled by his secret late-night activities and by the strong smell of spirits which lingers behind him, Nagaraj finds his days suddenly filled with unwelcome complication and turbulence, which threaten to forever alter the contented tranquility of his world.

The three volumes of the series span the whole of almost one millennium of war between humanity and the Taurans, an extraterrestrial species that stays enigmatic throughout the series. Due to time dilation, the two main characters experience the whole of the war, biologically appearing to be in their early thirties at the end of the hostilities.

Volume 1: Private Mandella

The first volume mainly describes the training of the Earth elite force, and their first combat with Taurans, focusing on how military ideology is used to form humans into fighting machines, and in how typical the results end up being.

The story starts on Earth in the early 21st century, where Mandella and about a hundred other young men and women of especially promising physical and mental capabilities have been drafted into a special force designed to combat the extraterrestrial threat. All soldiers are of genius-level IQ, and most have degrees in advanced subjects, such as Mandella, who was studying to become a Doctor of Physics. The Taurans are at this stage almost fully unknown to humanity, except for the apparently unprovoked destruction of some of the first Earth colonization ships sent to another star system - an act witnessed only by an automated drone probe.

Sent out both to gather information and as a show of force to reassure a vengeful Earth population, the force first goes through an extremely grueling training period on Earth and on the planet Cerberus (a fictitious planet beyond Pluto, not the satellite of Pluto which had not been discovered at the time the original novel was written). The exercises involve military and technical training under extreme circumstances and with live weapons, including the use of nuclear weapons and various other advanced armaments. They are designed to make Mandella and his compatriots into the most powerful infantry forces ever, to combat a foe whose physiology is still totally unknown. During a lecture to the soldiers, it is noted that they now know many different ways to kill humans - such as with a shovel blow to the kidneys - but are not even aware if Taurans possess kidneys.

After the training period, during which almost 1 out of 10 is killed in accidents and simulated attacks that are fully accepted by the military as part of a realistic training environment, the already quite chastened military force sets off on their journey to the nearest known Tauran base. Their spaceship journeys via a collapsar-jump, a portal through a black hole-like collapsed star - with the crew knowing that due to relativity time dilation, their journey may feel like it takes several months only, yet decades will go by on Earth before their return.

Eventually arriving at the collapsar 'portal planet' ''Aleph'', many light years away, the force lands near a Tauran planetary base, which remains unaware of their presence. With their small force, the soldiers advance over the foreign planet to eventually reach the base. Activating psychological conditioning that had been implanted earlier, their officers command them to attack the base. Suddenly turned into frenzied, hateful attackers - far different from their much less aggressive and more contemplative normal personalities – the soldiers raze the base and kill all but one Tauran, who successfully escapes the planet.

It later turns out that the Taurans (now for the first time shown as a roughly humanoid species, somewhat in-between a quadrupedal and bipedal species) on the base had been totally unarmed, and that all of the casualties sustained during the firefight were caused by frenzied friendly fire. The realisation that humans had in the recent past done worse things to their own fellow humans - and without psychological conditioning - leads Mandella to a resignatory conclusion about human nature.

Volume 2: Lieutenant Mandella

The second volume deals with the effects of time dilation on the veterans and on human society involved in the war, as well as with the cold-hearted way in which the military bureaucracy ignores human feelings.

On board of the combat vessel ''Anniversary'', heading out to another collapsar-mission, Mandella and his compatriots, including Marygay Potter, a woman he has become romantically involved with, are attacked by a Tauran cruiser "from the future" – while on a mission involving collapsar jumps, so many decades or even centuries may go by in the rest of the universe that ships from different time periods may end up meeting each other. The consequences are disastrous for Mandella's ship, with a large part of the vessel being destroyed and many of his fellow soldiers dying during the engagement, which is fully fought under computer control as the ship tries to escape new missiles accelerating at several hundred gravities.

Returning to Earth after their combat with the Taurans, the veterans slowly realise how much Earth has changed in the decades since they set out. Friends have grown old beyond their age, parents have died, younger brothers are now much older than they are. Earth's society has also changed strongly, and is now under the control of a militaristic world government leading the fight against the Taurans.

Though feted as heroes, being the first ever soldiers to fight Taurans, Mandella and his compatriots find their sceptical views on the war and on their own military mission edited by all-present censorship - their own complaints during talk shows are digitally replaced by positive, propaganda-inspired comments. Later, when his mother lies dying, Mandella finds that medical services are unavailable for 'Code Zero' people. In the same vein, homosexuality is officially encouraged to also combat overpopulation (some elements of a 'decaying society', such as all-pervasive lawlessness and roving bands of criminals in the countryside - present in the novel - are not depicted in the graphic novels, where the Earth's military government reigns over a more or less subtly oppressed, but apparently quite prosperous society).

Though having left the military, Mandella and many other veterans, including Marygay Potter, by that time his partner, eventually decide to return. Soldier’s life is now the only life they know, and contains the only people from their own time. Earth has changed so much that few things hold them there. They take up offered positions training new recruits on the Moon. However, the military almost immediately breaks its promises - both new lieutenants are transferred to combat roles. During an attack mission on another Tauran base they come under heavy fire while approaching in their shuttles, and are shot down. Both Mandella and Marygay end up having wounded limbs amputated by automatic 'guillotine' systems in their space suits, and only recover in a hospital, shaken and traumatized.

Allowed to recover on Heaven, a hidden colony planet used for the recovery of war veterans, they spend a few brief months of tense bliss while their bodies are regrown. Chronologically over 200 years old, unsure what to do with their future and their growing love for each other, they eventually find that the military has not forgotten them - and is still uncaring about their feelings. Instead of both being assigned to the same force, Marygay is assigned on another collapsar mission, and Mandella to a training battalion, to also eventually lead a different mission. The different locations of their goals - Mandella's mission is to be the greatest series of sequential collapsar jumps ever made - make an eventual reunion almost impossible. On their return they will have aged so differently, that it is unlikely both will be alive - even if they both survive the combat.

Mandella protests about the cold-hearted split the military forces on them, arguing that the recruits he is to train and lead will not be born for a century. He is told that nonetheless, they will be ready for him, and both are sent on their missions. Mandella contemplates committing suicide by jumping from the cliff from where he watches Marygay's spaceship lift off. In the end he decides that he has given the military his life, and will not give them his death as well.

Volume 3: Major Mandella

The third volume concerns itself mainly with the difficulties of a reluctant leader (Mandella) being the officer for a group of soldiers totally estranged from his version of humanity - still human, but genetically engineered and both created and born ''in vitro''. Involving more combat (especially in space) than the other volumes, it also resolves the end of the Terran-Tauran war.

Heading out on the ''Masaryk'' (a large Terran cruiser named after the Czech politician Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk of the 20th century), Mandella has now reached a level of command he feels unsuited for due to his remaining pacifist leanings. Also, his troops – genetically engineered individuals born many hundreds of years after his own 21st century – are distrustful of him and his heterosexual nature (Earth having long since made homosexuality the norm, originally for population control), which they perceive as barbaric.

After over 350 years of absolute travel time, the ship arrives near the portal planet ''Sade 138''. The infantry force that Mandella commands builds a military base on the surface and settles in. However, boredom soon starts, and tensions come to a head when one of the soldiers attacks Mandella with a knife during a court martial hearing. Mandella survives by virtue of quick reflexes and long training - but is now faced with the difficulty of making a command decision: Should he execute the soldier for attacking his officer, or can he show leniency without losing the remaining respect of his charges? He is saved from the hard decision by an 'accident' during medical treatment of the soldier (it is implied that his medical officer, Diana Alsever, took the decision into her own hands) and then by a Tauran attack on the solar system.

The Taurans are soon engaged in a running battle with the Terran space forces, while the infantry watches helplessly from their planetary bunkers. With the deadly ballet of space combat unfolding, the grim realities of war are exemplified by a computer screen shown calculating the Terran survival chances, underlined by the note:

:''"These figures assume that you are willing to sacrifice all your fighters."'' The fighters are manned.

One of the two Tauran cruisers is overwhelmed later in the fight, while troopships drop Tauran soldiers to engage the human forces on the ground. The second Tauran cruiser eventually manages to overwhelm the ''Masaryk'''s defenses with missiles. Knowing they are doomed, the commander of the Terran cruiser decides on a kamikaze mission by having her ship detonate close to the remaining Tauran cruiser. This in turn leads to the Tauran ship impacting on the tiny planet, causing extreme earthquake shocks, above 9 on the Richter magnitude scale.

Mandella and some of his troops survive only by taking refuge in a stasis field device which slows down all movement to a crawl, including that of all energy – and thus makes them immune to all modern weapons and most outside forces. However, the Taurans have encountered the device before, and enter the stasis bubble with melee weapons, leading to a short fight with the similarly armed humans - a reduction to archaic fighting methods unseen for millennia.

Eventually, the humans remove one of their nuclear weapons from the shuttle and detonate it just outside their field, destroying the remaining aliens outside. A few days later, they shut off the stasis field - in the middle of a giant thermonuclear crater, they are the only living beings left in the whole solar system. Yet thankfully, an emergency shuttle left behind by the ''Masaryk'' before her demise, enables them to return home.

Arriving centuries later at ''Stargate'', a large asteroid used as the main human staging base for the war, the veterans find it almost deserted. It turns out that in their absence, the war has ended, and the two species are now living in mutual, total peace. The war ended only after human soldiers had been evolved into clones - allowing first meaningful contact with the Taurans, who turned out to be a natural group consciousness clone species (an idea further explored in the sequel trilogy).

The whole war turns out to have been a mistake and a misunderstanding. Mandella is deeply shocked by the developments, and also by the change in his own species - which has evolved into a joined group consciousness with the Taurans, lacking true individualism. While Mandella has never developed any real hate for the Taurans, this is depicted as an at least faintly sad ending to his, and humanity’s, journey. He is finally, totally, an outcast.

Robbed of his last purpose, war, he however finds out that Marygay has also survived the fighting, having returned hundreds of years before, as predicted. However, instead of dying in the meantime, she has used the funds accumulated during centuries of duty to purchase an old spaceship to use as a 'time capsule' to wait for him, via continual time dilation travel. Mandella is finally reunited with her and several other veterans and relocates to ''Middle Finger'', the only planet in the universe where humans are still allowed to live the type of life they did before the war, as individuals, conceiving and raising children in the old-fashioned way.

In Berlin, a young woman named Else is a gorgeous trickster. Her high fashion clothes and perfectly ornamented makeup make her deserving to be peering over diamond cases while batting her eyes in want at the jeweler. She is caught lying and after professing it was the first time, that she needed the money. Even when she meets Albert. she insists her luxurious apartment and belongings are not hers. She maintains her story until she flings herself into his arms and confesses to him, "I like you."

Else thinks about Albert and as she smiles for the first time when she finds the passport photo of Albert in her apartment. Gazing at the photo she smiles comparing him to her criminal, older, and uglier boyfriend in a photo beside her. She stares and smiles at his picture again in the nightclub, when she becomes compelled to return his passport and give him a gift of cigars, a scene that results in a confession of love from both Else and Albert.

Albert is then at Else's feet, begging her to be his wife, that she can no longer stand the differences between them. He looks up at her in her white elegant dress and she runs away. She breaks away and exposes all her stolen goods from her criminal past. As he considers his fate, her criminal boyfriend enters the scene and a brawl ensues. The boyfriend is killed accidentally, and after struggling with his decision, Albert leaves the scene. In confession to his parents, Albert's father deems that the law is the law, and he must turn himself in. When Else discovers he has done so, she knows what she must do. Else voluntarily turns herself into the police. Elsie is able to smile once again as Albert follows her and professes he will wait for her. Albert watches Else through a barred doorway as she goes off to jail.

The film begins with Private Shane Gulliver (Matthew McNulty) of the 1st Battalion, Northdale Rifles marching to a court martial. The film then cuts to Gulliver's arrival in Basra, Iraq with fellow soldier Mark Tate (Gerard Kearns). Once there, they are briefed by their commanding officer (CO), Major Godber (Shaun Dingwall), who tells them to treat the people of Iraq with respect. While on patrol the troops are ambushed by insurgents, and the men witness the death of their CO whilst trying to rescue a Territorial Army private who is struck with shock while in a Land Rover and is incapable of taking cover. After this the troops receive reports that the insurgents came from a village nearby.

When the troops arrive in the said village, they arrest several men suspected of being insurgents, and take them back to their base. Once there, they are told to leave the prisoners to the Royal Military Police (RMP), but due to their anger over the death of their major, they begin to beat, torture and sexually abuse them. When Corporal Gant (Shaun Dooley) orders a reluctant Tate to join the troops he refuses at first, but is bullied into helping them. During the torture, Gulliver takes some photographs.

After the torture scene, we see as they arrive home, they resume their normal lives, during which Gulliver shows his girlfriend the pictures of the torture. After she discovers that he has been cheating on her, she reports him to the civilian police. Gant, Gulliver and Tate are subsequently arrested by the RMP.

Gant is fined, while the two privates are court-martialed. Upon hearing this, Tate kills himself. In the final scene of the film, we see Gulliver's trial, he pleads guilty to all charges, but rather than solely take the blame he tells the court what Gant and the other soldiers did. When Gulliver is returned to his cell, he is beaten by his fellow soldiers. He is then put in prison.

Both Alf and his wife Melissa have returned home to New Zealand after being homesick. After a delay in customs that irritates Alf, the two return to their old home which has just had the utilities switched back on. As they arrive the house is destroyed in a gas explosion. Paranoid Alf goes to report his suspicions that the explosion was deliberate to his nemesis on the New Zealand Police, Inspector Evans. Evans thinks Alf is upset and imagining things. Alf later survives a car crash where his brakes were cut, however an examination of Alf's car lead Evans to believe that shrapnel from the house explosion cut the brake line.

Alf and Melissa escape to a country house on Waiheke Island where Alf's increasing paranoia leads him to establish a line of tripwires around the property that drop noise making kitchen utensils. Alf also arms himself with a small bore rabbit hunting rifle. They are joined by a hunter who eschews shooting bunnies and instead shoots at Lisa until Alf kills him with his rifle. Evans still thinks Alf is paranoid but is mystified as the unzeroed sights on Alf's weapon and its small calibre makes Alf's one shot one kill of the hunter a remote possibility. After fleeing to the West Coast of the South Island where Alf and Melissa are followed, and a helicopter drops two assassins with fully automatic weapons who destroy the property where they are staying, Evans starts to believe Alf. This leads to a cross country chase across New Zealand, featuring nonstop car chases, assassination attempts and continuous references to 007. Alf and Melissa eventually make their way back to Auckland Airport where a meetup with Melissa's father's lawyer (who recently died) reveals the true intentions of the assassination attempts and who the real culprit is.

The film begins with the protagonist, former conscript Ivan Yermakov (Alexei Chadov), being interviewed by a journalist in a detention center. As he begins recounting his story, the film cuts to Chechnya in the summer of 2001, during the Second Chechen War. Held captive by Chechen warlord Aslan Gugayev (Georgy Gurguliya), Ivan and another conscript, Fedya, serve as domestic slaves, while Aslan also uses Ivan as a communications specialist. Eventually, Aslan's militants also capture English actor John Boyle (Ian Kelly) and his fiancée Margaret Michaelsen (Ingeborga Dapkūnaitė). After a while, Ivan, Fedya, and the two English prisoners are taken to another aul and put into a zindan where they find Captain Medvedev (Sergei Bodrov, Jr.), who is paralyzed due to injury.

Aslan releases John so that he can raise £2 million ransom for Margaret's release. Along with John, he releases Ivan and Fedya, as no-one is willing to pay for them.

John's efforts to raise money are unsuccessful, but one British television company offered to provide him with financial assistance in exchange for extensive video footage of the operation. In Moscow, John again runs into the complete indifference of military officials and instead decides to ask Ivan to help him rescue Margaret.

Ivan's life in Tobolsk is not working out. He cannot adapt to a peaceful civilian life, and he cannot find work due to fears over his potentially unbalanced psyche after Chechen captivity. Before that, he comes to St. Petersburg, to the family of Captain Medvedev, whom no one is willing to rescue. When John comes to Tobolsk, Ivan agrees to go back to Chechnya in exchange for money. After passing through Moscow and Vladikavkaz, Ivan and John covertly enter Chechnya, seizing an SUV with a large number of weapons in the trunk en route. On their way, they kidnap a local, Ruslan Shamayev (Euclid Kyurdzidis), and Ivan finds the road to Gugayev's aul. After waiting for a large group of militants to depart, Ivan, John, and Ruslan attack the aul. Having killed the guards with the weapons they had seized earlier, they find Margaret with Captain Medvedev and discover that the militants had raped her. Enraged, John kills Gugayev, further complicating the situation: Ivan needed Gugayev alive as a hostage to leave Chechnya safely.

Gugayev's militants assault the aul and give chase, but the group escapes on a makeshift raft and takes up defensive positions in an old fortress tower. With the help of a satellite phone taken from Aslan, Medvedev requests support from the Air Force. Russian Mi-24 helicopters arrive, routing the militants, and deliver Medvedev and the group to a military base.

John gives Ivan the cash he promised, of which he shares a thousand pounds with Ruslan. Ivan later gives the remaining money gave to Captain Medvedev for treatment.

The film ends with Ivan's brief comments. Margaret did not marry John. John, having filmed the trip, released a movie and a book, titled "My Life in Russia." After the release of his film, Ivan was brought to trial for "the murder of peaceful citizens of the Russian Federation." Ruslan, who moved to Moscow, testified against Ivan. The only one who stood up for Ivan was Captain Medvedev.

The film is set in Foshan, China sometime in the late 19th century during the Qing dynasty. Liu Yongfu, the commander of the Black Flag Army, invites Wong Fei-hung on board his ship to watch a lion dance. Sailors on board a nearby French ship hear the sound of firecrackers and mistakenly think that Liu's ship is firing at them so they return fire and injure the dancers. Wong picks up the lion head and finishes the performance. Liu comments about the perilous situation China is in, and then gives Wong a hand fan inscribed with all the unequal treaties signed between China and other countries.

Wong is the martial arts instructor of the local militia in Foshan. He also runs his own traditional Chinese medicine clinic, Po-chi-lam, and has three apprentices: "Porky Wing", "Bucktooth" So, and Kai. He meets Siu-kwan, the daughter of a sworn brother of his grandfather. Even though she is around the same age as him, he still has to address her as "13th Aunt" as she is considered more "senior" than him. They have romantic feelings for each other but their relationship is restrained because it is taboo in the conservative Chinese society of their time.

Leung Foon arrives in Foshan with an opera troupe to stage performances. He encounters 13th Aunt by chance, has a few clumsy encounters with her, and develops a crush on her. He also runs into trouble with the Shaho Gang, which terrorises and extorts money from local businesses. A fight breaks out between the gang and the local militia while Wong is meeting the Governor of Foshan in a restaurant. The gangsters flee when they realise they are no match for Wong. The Governor blames Wong for the disturbance, and disbands and arrests the militia members. Wong confronts the Shaho Gang's leader, defeats him and captures him, but the authorities release him because no one wants to help Wong by testifying as a witness in court.

In the meantime, Leung Foon meets a northern martial artist, "Iron Vest" Yim, and decides to follow him. Yim wants to become famous and start a martial arts school in Foshan, but he needs to prove himself first. One night, the Shaho Gang sets fire to Po-chi-lam in revenge, after which they flee and take shelter under Jackson, an American official. In return for protection from the authorities, the Shaho Gang helps Jackson run his underground human trafficking ring by kidnapping Chinese women to be sent to America as prostitutes. When Wong and the Governor are watching an opera performance, the Shaho Gang and Jackson's men ambush them and try to assassinate the Governor and kill Wong. Their plan fails but many innocent people at the theatre are wounded. The Governor blames Wong and threatens to arrest and execute him, but allows him to give medical attention to the injured.

While tending to the injured people in his clinic, Wong meets an escaped Chinese labourer from America who relates his story of how he and his fellow labourers were treated in America. Just then, Yim arrives at Po-chi-lam and insists on challenging Wong to a fight to prove he is the better fighter. Yim leaves with Leung Foon, who was fired from the opera troupe, after he was defeated by Wong but later joins the Shaho Gang instead – even though Leung strongly objects to Yim working with the gang. Shortly after Yim left, the Governor shows up and orders his men to search Po-chi-lam for fugitives. While buying time for the labourer, 13th Aunt and "Bucktooth" So to escape, Wong and his apprentices fight with the Governor's men until 13th Aunt, "Bucktooth" So and the labourer have escaped. Wong then surrenders himself and is imprisoned along with his apprentices. In the meantime, the Shaho Gang kills the labourer, abducts 13th Aunt and takes her to their base. "Bucktooth" So escapes and goes to the prison to inform Wong. The prison guards release Wong and his apprentices out of respect for him.

Wong and his apprentices disguise themselves and infiltrate Jackson's base to find and rescue 13th Aunt. Yim engages Wong in a one-on-one fight and again, Wong defeats Yim for the second time in a row, and realises that he has been cheating in fights; there is a small spearhead tied onto the tip of Yim's queue (which Wong uses to tear Yim's queue in retaliation for cheating) at the same time, Wong's apprentices and Leung Foon overcome the Shaho Gang and Jackson's men, and save 13th Aunt and the kidnapped women. Just as Wong is about to board Jackson's ship, Yim shows up, wanting to resume his fight with Wong, and gets fatally shot by Jackson's men. With his dying breath, he tells Wong that "martial arts stand no chance against guns". During the fight on the ship, the Shaho Gang's leader meets his end after being pushed into a furnace. At the critical moment, Jackson takes the Governor hostage at gunpoint, but Wong kills Jackson by using his fingers to flick an unused bullet into Jackson's forehead, and saves the Governor. At the end of the film, Wong accepts Leung as his fourth apprentice and they take a group photo in Po-chi-lam.

Wong Fei-Hung now has his own school of Kung fu, but its premises have become too small for his numerous students. Two of his disciples, Leung Foon and "Bucktooth" So succeed in finding an agreement with the owner of a vacant house. The school thus changes location... Unfortunately, Wong Fei-Hung's new school building is next to a "love hotel", which is unacceptable for the Master, although less so for his young students. What's worse, a new general wants Wong gone at any cost, for fear that he will reveal the general's dirty secrets...

Batman must counter sinister machinations and new dimensions of wickedness as he confronts the hooded menace of the Mad Monk, his first encounter with a supernatural villain. He also must deal with the direct repercussions of the events in ''Batman and the Monster Men''.

The book starts with Jack McEvoy, a crime reporter for the ''Rocky Mountain News'' ("Death is my beat"), relating how the news of his identical twin brother Sean's suicide was broken to him. Sean was a homicide detective with the Denver Police, who was found dead in his car in a remote parking lot. A one-sentence suicide note was found in the car with him, and it seemed impossible that someone else could have killed him. McEvoy, though, is reluctant to accept that his brother had succumbed to depression resulting from his investigations, even though the last one was particularly brutal: Theresa Lofton, a young college student, who was found in a park in two pieces.

After much investigation on his own, including retracing his brother's investigation into the Lofton case, Jack concludes that his brother's death was simply made to ''look'' like a suicide by a serial killer. By focusing on homicide detectives who committed suicide in a similar fashion and left a one-sentence suicide note quoting the works of Edgar Allan Poe (as Sean's did), Jack finds three clear matches to his brother's death. When the FBI finally realizes that he is on to something and attempts to block him from further access, he is able to trade his knowledge of the other deaths (one of which the FBI had not uncovered) for a role with the FBI investigative team headed by Robert Backus, the son of a famous agent within the bureau who has been overshadowed by his father's legend. Assigned the duty of handling him is agent Rachel Walling, one of Backus' main protégés, and the two of them become personally involved. The FBI nicknames the serial killer "The Poet" because of his use of Poe's lines with the victims.

As the case focuses on an Internet network of pedophiles and one in particular (William Gladden), McEvoy is taken along on the operation to arrest Gladden, who is suspicious of the set-up and kills the FBI agent trying to arrest him, Gordon Thorson (Walling's ex-husband). McEvoy ends up killing Gladden himself while being held hostage. However, Gladden's comments about his brother's death lead McEvoy to believe that Gladden was not the killer, even though the case has been officially closed. He then finds evidence that the killings had a connection to the FBI and identifies a phone call to the FBI from Thorson's room that he links to a "boasting" fax sent to the bureau by The Poet. Since McEvoy knew that Walling had sent Thorson on a fake errand to buy condoms during the time the fax was sent, he suspects Walling of being The Poet and of posting to the pedophile network under the name "Eidolon", another Poe reference. He then learns that Walling's father, a cop, had committed suicide when she was a teenager ... and had been suspected by the investigating officers of molesting Rachel over a period of time. Since pedophiles tend to have been abused as children, McEvoy becomes worried enough to tell Backus of his suspicions. Backus tells McEvoy that they'll set a trap for Walling and then takes him to a remote location—where Backus drugs McEvoy into nonresistance. Backus admits that he himself is both Eidolon and The Poet, because the room mistakenly billed to Thorson was actually the one in which he stayed. He admits to all of the deaths and to his setup of Gladden as the "fall guy" for the murders.

As Backus prepares to sodomize and then kill McEvoy, Walling (who was suspicious because of messages that she had received from both men) shows up and eventually saves McEvoy's life by knocking Backus out the window and down a long hill. Later the police find a body; however, it is left open if this is Backus. Meanwhile, as the facts of the case become known, Walling's judgment is called into question owing to her personal relationship with McEvoy and her professional relationship with Backus. A tabloid publishes a photo of McEvoy and Walling together. However, because McEvoy suspected her, Walling ends their relationship and takes a trip to Italy. McEvoy then takes leave from his paper to write a book about the events, although Walling explains to him that the book will forever taint the FBI because of Backus.

Stanley Stanfield is the inventor of the Vanishing Ray, a wearable device which, when active, leaves only the user's shadow still visible. After meeting with fellow scientist, Carl Van Dorn, a prototype Ray is built. Stanley intends to sell bonds to finance his invention. He inherited them from his late father, the publisher and editor of the local ''Tribune'' newspaper, but the stockbroker he meets is corruptly involved with Wade Barnett, the businessman who hounded Stanley's father to his death. Barnett wants the bonds and will go to any length to acquire them. A conflict ensues between Stanley and Barnett during the 12 chapter serial. However, Stanley's new girlfriend, Gloria Grant, is really Gloria Barnett, his enemy's estranged daughter. Neither hero nor villain wants to see Gloria hurt and must work around this motive in their on-going struggle.

Dorgan, Barnett's "spear-point heavy", is unhappy with having to hold back to protect Gloria. Eventually, he captures both Stanley and Gloria, but blackmails his boss to ensure her safety. Barnett turns up with both the ransom money and the police, but he is shot in the ensuing fight. Before dying, he makes his peace with his daughter. Gloria and Stanley finally marry and take over operation of the ''Tribune''.

Sheriff "Red" Davison (Buck Jones), the sheriff of Sun Dog, is shocked when he hears his good friend "Silent" Slade (Grant Withers) has been accused of murdering a man named Scotty McKee (J.P. McGowan). He feels that Slade was framed and denied a fair trial. When Slade is sentenced to hang, Red allows him to escape from jail, sacrificing his job and his good reputation in the process. Red and his horse Silver then follow Slade in an attempt to aid him in proving his innocence.

Two cargo airlines clash over a government mail contract. "Tailspin" Tommy (Maurice Murphy), a young mechanic, gets a job with Three Points Airlines, which wins the contract. Their opponents resort to sabotage in order to have the contract for themselves. Wade "Tiger" Taggart (John Davidson) becomes their enemy, a man who will do anything to stop the airline from doing business.

After Tommy becomes a pilot, he prevents a runaway aircraft from crashing into a crowd of children, among other adventures that put him into the public eye. Eventually Taggert and his gang are brought to justice. Tommy goes on to win a movie contract, and win the heart of his sweetheart Betty Lou Barnes (Patricia Farr).

The story differs partly depending on the PC-Engine and TurboGrafix-16 version.

''PC-Engine'': Earth astronomers observe a supernova many astronomical units away; some time after the supernova, several iron cells and alien debris fly directly from the destroyed sun and into the Solar System towards the Earth. After much chaos and the continual shower of iron cells, it was ruled out that the disaster was invasion related, resulting in the construction of a fleet of space fighter class called the Violent Soldier. The Violent Soldiers are sent to the source of the supernova whereupon they find the automated ruins of an advanced civilization led by an enormous, cybernetic iron-spewing alien monster.

''TurboGrafix-16'': A massive, planet-devouring, cybernetic entity named Sinistron approaches the Solar System. After devouring Pluto, a fleet of space fighters is sent to destroy it, but only one (the player's) survives.

Baldwin relates his experiences in Leukerbad, a small, isolated Swiss village, in the summer of 1951. Residents of Leukerbad were fascinated by Baldwin's blackness; according to Baldwin they had never seen a black man before, thus making him a stranger in the village."

Baldwin describes a kind of naive racism within the villagers: children who shout "Neger!" when they see him, unaware of the echoes he hears from his past when others shouted a more damning word ("Nigger!"  The village has even ritualized an overt control of Blacks with their custom of "buying" Africans in the attempt to religiously convert them.

There is also a more sinister racism, even in a remote village that has direct experience with only one Black man: men who describe Baldwin as "le sale negre" ('the dirty Black man') behind his back and assume that he stole wood from them, or of children who "scream in genuine anguish" when he approaches them because they have been taught that "the devil is a black man."Baldwin, James. "Strangers in the Village." In ''Notes of a Native Son'' (revised ed.), edited by E. P. Jones. Boston, MA. . .Baldwin, James. "[https://genius.com/James-baldwin-stranger-in-the-village-annotated Stranger in the Village (annotated)]," edited by J. R. Garza. ''Genius''.

This fantasy about the disposability of black life is a constant in American history.

Baldwin further goes on to explain the relationship between American and European history, by explicitly pointing out that American history encompasses the history of the Negro, while European history lacks the African-American dimension. Baldwin observes that in America the Negro is “an inescapable part of the general social fabric” and that “Americans attempt until today to make an abstraction of the Negro.”Griffin, Farah Jasmine, and Cheryl J. Fish. 1998. ''A Stranger in the Village: Two Centuries of African-American Travel Writing'' . Boston: Beacon Press. .Baldwin, James. 1953. "Strangers in the Village."

Baldwin argues that white Americans try to retain a separation between their history and black history despite the interdependence between the two. It is impossible for Americans to become European again “recovering the European innocence” through the neglect of the American Negro; the American Negro is a part of America permanently pressed and carved into an undeniable history".

The final sentence in his essay articulates a defiant claim by Baldwin and an understanding that the villagers' and white Americans' need to reach, losing thereby what Baldwin describes as "the jewel" of the white man's naivete - in other words, white Americans' willful desire to ignore white privilege and the effects of centuries of racism and systemic discrimination against Black Americans: "This world is white no longer, and it will never be white again." Therefore, as Baldwin put it, “people are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.”

Novel

A group of outcasts who meet each other through an online website decide to form an IT company. They seek to create a search engine that will become more popular than Google. They call their creation CROOK (クルーク). This new search engine uses Artificial Intelligence to understand the user's intentions and help them narrow their search. This attracts the attention of Nakagomi Takeshi, the president of Digital Capital (DigiCap), who after a failed attempt to take over Akihabara@Deep, steals the technology for himself. The group must then find a way to get their technology back from DigiCap. The novel is narrated from the point of view of CROOK's Artificial Intelligence.

Drama

The Drama takes a much more lighthearted approach to the story. It all begins when a mysterious online personality named Yui decides to assemble these outcasts to try to form a group dedicated to solving the problems that plague Akiba by forming the "troubleshooting" company, Akihabara@DEEP, often shortened to just @DEEP. One example of this troubleshooting would be that the otaku of Akiba have come under a surge of bullying. @DEEP's first task was to eliminate this bullying. After getting rid of this problem, @DEEP began taking up other tasks as well. Some of these include clearing the name of a cosplayer in a case that involved the distribution of underground videos depicting other cosplayers getting undressed in dressing rooms, protecting a news anchor from attacks by otaku who were enraged at a story that she had previously worked on that bashed the youth of Akiba, and helping out a maid café that the people of Akiba frequent from an opposing maid café that was acting extremely hostile to this maid café and even provided various prostitution services to the visitors of the opposing maid café.

While @DEEP solves these cases, the group unintentionally attracts the attention of a seedy character named Nakagomi Takeshi. The reason behind this is because of a secret past relationship between Nakagomi and Yui. What adds to this is a fully self-reliant AI program that Nakagomi would greatly benefit from if he got his hands on it. This is because he is the president of a very influential electronics company called Digital Capital, often shortened to DigiCap. He will eventually raid @DEEP's headquarters and steal Yui's AI.

The story begins with Sofie (Laura Buhl) being told by her single mother, Tove (Ann Eleonora Jørgensen), that they have to move to Singapore by the end of December for her job, and for her new boss, Mr. Tong. They have to stay with Ragnhild (Vigga Bro), Tove's mother and Sofie's grandmother, until that time because Tove has already sold their apartment. Sofie is gloomy because she does not want to move to Singapore, as she has had to constantly move around the world for Tove's job as an efficiency expert.

When they reach Ragnhild's house on a hill called "Loki's Hill," they find that the loft is being rented out to a woodsman named Asbjørn (Troels Lyby), who is also a single parent, and has two children named Jonas (Lukas Thorsteinsson) and Emma (Clara Bahamondes). Sofie and Jonas become close friends very quickly, but Tove and Asbjørn have a lot of tension and animosity between each other because their personalities are opposites. Tove has a great love of technology and business, while Asbjørn values nature and days of honest labour outdoors. While they often quarrel over the differences in their ideologies, they also quarrel over petty things; for example which side of the room they think the basket of chopped wood should be kept on (this, in particular, becomes a running gag throughout the series). However, throughout the series, the attraction between them increases and they gradually fall in love.

Sofie goes out exploring Loki's Hill, and finds an old dolmen surrounded by a ring of megaliths on the crown of the hill. She accidentally kicks a small rock into the dolmen, and afterwards she hears strange bell-like metallic noises coming from within. Startled, she runs back to Ragnhild's house. Over dinner that night, Sofie asks her grandmother why her home address is called "Loki's Hill." Ragnhild tells the children that it is because the legends say the old hill near the house is the place where the Norse god Loki is still chained. That night, before she goes to bed, Sofie looks out a window and sees a yellow glow emanating from the top of Loki's Hill.

Jonas and Emma go to school the next day, but Sofie feigns illness so she can stay home and explore some more. She succeeds in tricking Tove, who allows her to stay home. Then, Sofie goes back to the dolmen she found and crawls in. Inside, she sees a large stone snake decorating the wall, and in the middle of the cavern, she sees a man with long hair and beard chained (by both of his arms and by his neck), on his knees, and apparently sleeping (his eyes are closed and he is snoring). When Sofie tries to move the man's hair so she can see his face, he wakes up, and is surprised to see a person. He introduces himself as the Norse god Loki, and implores Sofie to unchain him. Sofie is frightened and runs back home, while Loki calls after her to not be afraid and to come back.

When Jonas comes home from school, he notices that Sofie has mud on her clothes, and knows that she was outside playing instead of healing indoors. The next day, Sofie goes back to the dolmen to see Loki again. Loki offers to give her a rune stick, which would have the power to cast a spell. Sofie wants a spell to heal Emma's sick rabbit. Loki makes a show of not being able to carve the runes into the stick, as his arms are chained. Sofie unchains one of Loki's arms, and he makes the rune stick for her. The spell works, and the rabbit is healed. Jonas finds the rune stick in the rabbit's box, and he is curious about where Sofie has been going. He confronts her about this, and she concedes, telling him about the dolmen and Loki. They gather together some goods to bring to Loki, including a razor, some men's underwear (both belonging to Asbjørn), and some scissors.

The following day, Sofie takes Jonas to see Loki while bringing him the goods they had gathered, and Jonas helps Loki shave his face. Sofie does not want to unchain either of Loki's two remaining bonds, but Jonas is tempted by the magical spells Loki has to offer, so he returns to the dolmen later, without Sofie. Then, Jonas has Loki make a rune stick for him that would make his father change his mind about technology and get a television, in exchange for Jonas unchaining Loki's other arm. Loki's spell works, and Asbjørn promptly purchases a large television, and Jonas tells Sofie what he has done.

Sofie soon realizes that she could have Loki make a spell which would keep her from having to move to Singapore. Loki says this would be a simple spell for him to make, but she would have to unchain his final bond. Sofie begins to, but decides against it and runs back to the house, again with Loki calling after her to come back. She talks to Jonas about it, and Jonas is disappointed that she did not get the spell, because he has become very close to Sofie. He again goes to the dolmen without Sofie knowing, and tells Loki that he is willing to unchain him for the rune stick he had made for Sofie, and proceeds to do so. However, Tove shows no sign of staying in Denmark, and even prints out a picture of the Singaporean hotel in which they will be staying, and shows it to Sofie, pointing out their exact room. Sofie is upset with Jonas for having been tricked so easily.

The two return to the dolmen to see if Loki is still there, but he is not. While they stand there, a heavy snow begins to fall. Back at the house, Ragnhild comments that the snow is so heavy that it is almost like Fimbulwinter. She tells the children that Fimbulwinter is the harbinger of Ragnarok, which she describes as the battle in which all humans, gods, and giants will die. But, she adds, it won't come until Loki has been freed from his chains. This makes Jonas and Sofie worried, because they know Loki has truly been freed.

Sofie and Jonas then set up a hideout in Loki's old dolmen where they can make plans on how to stop Loki, and effectively stop Ragnarok. They then discover a tunnel behind the stone snake that leads to Asgard. They ask the gods about Loki, but none of them want to talk about him. Jonas and Sofie do not tell them that Loki has escaped because they are afraid. They decide that the one friendly place where Loki must be hiding is in Hel, the land of the goddess Hel. They then travel there, and meet Hel and Balder. Balder tells them that Loki is indeed hiding out there.

Soon after, however, Loki travels to Utgard to corroborate Ragnarok plans with the giant Thrym. The gods refuse to tell them how to get there (saying it is no place for children), but Jonas and Sofie manage to trick Heimdall into telling them how to get to Utgard. Jonas and Sofie then disguise as scullery maids to spy on Loki and Thrym. They learn that Loki still needs one last thing before he can start Ragnarok. The gods tell them that Loki cannot start Ragnarok without the Fenris Wolf, and they decide this must be it. They figure out that their grandmother's dog, Snifer, is actually Fenris (and that "Snifer" is actually just an anagram of Fenris), so they rush back to the house to get Snifer. Meanwhile, Loki gets into the house first by disguising as a delivery boy, and he takes Snifer before the children can get home.

Back in Utgard, Thrym decides that he doesn't need Loki anymore, since he has the Fenris wolf, and the Fimbulwinter is well underway. He and Loki had originally agreed that, after the battle, Loki would rule Asgard and Thrym would rule Jotunheim. Thrym now says, however, that he intends to rule both Asgard and Jotunheim himself. Loki decides that it is not worth it to fight his family anymore, begins to regret having started Ragnarok, and flees to Midgard.

Returning to Midgard, Loki meets Sofie and Jonas, as they have been spending a lot of time in his dolmen. At first they are angry with him, but after Loki explains his plight they decide to work together to stop Ragnarok. Jonas and Sofie find out that if any part of the prophecy of Ragnarok is broken or contradicted, the entire prophecy is rendered bunk. Otherwise, so long as all the conditions are met, it will be unstoppable. They decide that they should get at least one of the gods to forgive Loki, because one of the conditions in the prophecy is that none of the gods forgive him.

They disguise Loki as Sofie's grandmother, and take him to Asgard to seek forgiveness. All of the gods refuse to forgive Loki. Odin easily recognizes Loki through his disguise, and apprehends him. Jonas and Sofie return to Midgard. They are about to give up hope, when they remember that one of the gods was not in Asgard: Balder. They go back to Hel, and this time Emma sees them and follows them. Since time is running short, they do not take her back home. In Hel, Balder says that he would gladly forgive Loki.

Hel says she will only let Balder go to Asgard to forgive Loki if they leave Emma behind as insurance that Balder will come back. They agree, and Balder forgives Loki in Asgard, meanwhile Emma stays behind playing games with Hel. This breaks the prophecy, and a different future is then possible. Thus, Ragnarok is avoided before any of the gods are harmed. Odin, after seeing his beloved son Balder forgive Loki, also forgives Loki.

The gods then celebrate Yule late, because Fimbulwinter pushed the winter solstice back. Odin is sad because he had seen his son Balder again after many years, but he quickly had to leave. But, since Hel was invited to the Yule celebrations this year (previously the other gods had excluded her because they considered her to be strange), she allowed Balder to come along with her, and Odin rejoices in seeing his son again. Jonas and Sofie give the gods various gifts: Heimdall gets polish for Gjallarhorn, Sif gets a mirror, Idun gets hair spray, Freya gets Sofie's charm bracelet, and Loki gets an electric razor. Loki asks why Sofie seems sad, and she explains that she still has to leave for Singapore.

Back at Ragnhild's house, Sofie does not enjoy her Christmas dinner, because she is constantly thinking about the move to Singapore. They hear the taxicab arrive in the middle of dinner, so Sofie and Tove go outside. However, the cabby is actually Loki in disguise. Loki decided that owed Sofie a favour, so he has Tove quit her job and they do not move to Singapore. Jonas and Sofie are happy that they can continue to be friends, and Asbjørn is happy that Tove will stay with him.

''Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man'' is told in diary writings starting in 1952 when the protagonist, Daisy Fay Harper, is 11 years old. She lives with her mother and her father in Jackson, Mississippi. Daisy Fay received her name from a vase of flowers that her mother had in her hospital room. Her father involves her in many of his unsuccessful schemes to make money or build inventions. He alienates his family members but makes great friends when he drinks.

Her mother lives in a constant state of embarrassment, and tries to do what she can to make Daisy Fay into a lady, which consists of making her fetch endless cups of coffee in the cafeteria, and buying matching mother-daughter outfits.

Her mother, Daisy's Grandma Pettibone, believes she married beneath her. (Despite both sets of Grandparents not speaking to Daisy's father, they absolutely dote on Daisy) The diary reveals Daisy Fay has an expansive imagination and a detailed memory as a long list of endearing and strange characters are described and the story is told in humorous vignettes.

Soon after the beginning of the diary, Daisy Fay and her parents move to Shell Beach, Mississippi, after her father buys half a share of a malt shop on the beach with $500 her mother won at a Bingo game. Daisy's mother was dead set against moving from Jackson, but her father stated that since nobody in their respective families were speaking to him, they would have been unhappy staying in Jackson, hence the move.

Her father's plan is to become a taxidermist during the off season, and to use the malt shop's freezer to store the dead animals before stuffing them.

The biggest town near Shell Beach is Magnolia Springs, where the school, a movie theater and several other businesses are. Her parents' relationship becomes more tempestuous as her father drinks too much and hangs around a gentle crop duster named Jimmy Snow, and they manage to get into impossible situations.

When the fall starts, Daisy Fay starts the 6th grade and meets her classmates, which include the very snobby and spoiled Kay Bob Benson, who serves as a nemesis for Daisy Fay throughout the rest of the book. Daisy's best friend is Michael Romeo, a Catholic, and the only other child, aside from Daisy and Kay Bob, who lives in Shell Beach full-time.

She also makes friends with classmates, Patsy Ruth Coggins and Amy Jo Snipes, among others, and is good friends with an African-American mortician/bar owner named Peachy Wigham and her co-hort, an albino named Ula Sour. Peachy, the owner of the Elite Nightspot bar, had a secret on the white Sheriff's daughter, (she had had an abortion) which was why she wasn't ever arrested.

Also, she meets Mrs. Dudley Dot, a journalist (she writes the Dashes from Dot column for the local paper) and the leader of the Junior Debutantes, a pre-teen group which meets in the bait shop over the summer. Mrs. Dot is idolized by Daisy, and is eventually institutionalized after trying to kill her hateful husband.

The taxidermy doesn't seem to work out well, as the bobcat had a smile on its face and the flamingo's neck was crooked. Added to that is the fact that Daisy Fay's father didn't add bread to the hamburgers, and his drinking increased.

Daisy's parents relationship gets even more and more rancorous, with them fighting over money and various infidelities.

In fact, one argument was so bad that Mrs. Harper, armed with a gun, was intent on killing Mr. Harper dead. So angry was she at him that she kicks the screen door clean off the hinges and knocks him eight feet into the back yard. She then proceeded to chase him all over the beach, but she never catches him.

After the malt shop burns down in a suspicious fire (the insurance money wasn't enough anyway), Daisy Fay's mother, finally having had enough of Daisy Fay's father, leaves him to go live with her sister, Mignon, in Virginia.

With her mother gone, her father devises a three-day scheme with a scheming local preacher named Billy Bundy to use Daisy Fay as a "glory getter" to bring her back from the dead and bilk the faithful religious out of their donations. The plan falls apart of course, when Daisy is asked to heal a disabled girl named Betty Caldwell, the girl walked, and the crowd went berserk.

Her father and she had to escape quickly in Jimmy Snow's cropduster to Florida, and the diary takes a hiatus for four years.

Her mother finds out about what happened, and she is furious (allegedly Daisy's mother hears the news from Kay Bob Benson's equally snobby mother).

She pulls Daisy Fay from her father and puts her in a Catholic Boarding School in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

When the diary resumes, the year is 1956, Daisy is 15, and she has returned to Shell Beach from living in the Catholic boarding school.

Her father still drinks - maybe even more - and her mother has died from cancer. Daisy Fay enters Magnolia Springs high school to find Kay Bob snobbier than ever, but now has a best friend, Pickle Watkins, to endure the trials of high school.

She meets Pickle after she comes to Daisy's aid by helping her beat up another local girl, Dixie Nash, who had insulted her because of her living in a Catholic school, while Daisy called Dixie, a Baptist baboon.

Along with Pickle, Daisy Fay meets her friend's siblings, older brother Lemuel and younger sister, Judy (aka Baby Sister), who also become her friends. Pickle is obsessed with being accepted by the popular seniors and gets them into situations where they must better themselves socially. Daisy Fay lives in various apartments, hotels, and porches with her father and Jimmy Snow.

Pickle gets raped by her father, a member of the White Citizens Council, and drops out of school after she finds out she is pregnant. When she learns about her pregnancy, her boyfriend, Mustard Smoot, marries her to give the baby a father. She eventually gives birth to a son, Lemuel, named after her brother, and they have another child.

Daisy Fay goes to Summer School in Jackson (she briefly stays with her grandmother) and later becomes involved in a community theater in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where she and her father and Jimmy Snow had moved to.

She manages the spotlight, then becomes an actor in the various plays and musicals they put on.

Her closest friend at this point in her life, is a gay man named Mr. Cecil. Mr. Cecil, whose last name was never revealed, was a well known hat designer who happened to own a millinery shop in Hattiesburg.

Mr. Cecil also served as the costume designer for the theater and he is often seen with his ten male cohorts called the "Cecilettes".

Other friends at this point in her life included Professor Teasley, the head director of the theater; his wealthy and often eccentric mother Nanny Teasley; Tootie, Helen, and Dolores, three secretaries at the theater, J.R. Phillips, the theater's stage manager, who was supposedly also gay; Hubert Jamison, a fellow (and somewhat vain) actor; and a woman named Paris Knights, an artist who is a friend of Mr. Cecil's.

At this point, she is engaged and almost married, but was jilted by her fiancé, Ray Layne, when he returns to his former fiancée, named of Ann, and eventually marries her. She eventually graduates school, with the aid of Professor Teasley fixing it so she can graduate without having to deal with Algebra.

Seeing her only break to be a professional actress, Daisy Fay, with Mr. Cecil's help, enters the Miss Mississippi pageant in Tupelo, Mississippi, once more meeting up with her perennial antagonist, Kay Bob Benson, who is also a competitor.

However, she makes fast friends with four other girls, Darcy Lewis, Mary Cudsworth, Jo Ellen Feely and Penny Raymond (Darcy met Daisy Fay after overhearing her call Kay Bob a witch); and they help her contend with how the Pageant was rigged by the Pageant's head, a Mrs. Lulie Harde McClay, who had promised the title to a Margaret Poole, who was supposedly sweet and kind, but was very much a hypocrite.

Margaret drank, smoked, swore, had many, many boyfriends, and had a very bad reputation; but around Mrs. McClay, butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.

In fact, during one of her smoke breaks, while the pageant hopefuls were at the Tupelo Country Club, she tried to get Daisy Fay framed for smoking, and in trouble with Mrs. McClay.

Mrs. McClay, spitefully, left Daisy Fay out of the Country Club talent show, of course believing Margaret. Kay Bob couldn't resist gloating and laughed at Daisy in scorn.

However, Darcy and the others, to avenge Daisy Fay's being left out of the talent show and get even with Mrs. McClay and Margaret Poole for their deceit, not to mention having waited three years to do so, think up and then sing the dirtiest song they could dream up.

The extremely objectionable song stuns the well-heeled audience, and this stunt gets Darcy, Mary, Jo Ellen and Penny left backstage at the State Theater, during the final judging of the pageant.

After that song, however, Daisy was again set to perform at the theater, with Mrs. McClay thinking that what Darcy and her friends did by singing such an objectionable song was far worse than Daisy smoking a cigarette, which she was innocent of. So the plan succeeded.

The talent portion of the show at the theater degenerates into a comedy of errors, as every other contestant's talent entries, excepting Daisy Fay's and a few others, were sabotaged in one form or another by the stagehands union, of which her paternal grandfather was president of (the theater's microphones malfunctioning ; the house organ gets unplugged; a dummy's mouth which was glued shut, Kay Bob Benson throwing her batons all over because her hands were covered with axle grease, etc.).

They carried on like troupers, but afterwards, the sabotaged contestants would either react in abject rage or out of fear. Either way, they whose talent had been sabotaged ended up making fools out of themselves.

It was shown that during the final vote, the judges get into a knock down drag out fight over the results.

Only the snobbish Mrs. McClay and her ally, Mrs. Peggy Buchanan, the head of the Mississippi Junior League, were on Margaret Poole's side, while the other judges were rooting for Daisy Fay. However Margaret Poole herself had not wanted the title because she was secretly married to an African-American and was pregnant. Whether this was truth, or just another scheme, wasn't revealed.

This angered Mrs. McClay all the more, and she screamed that she was being sabotaged. She thought of Daisy Fay as white trash, and wasn't refined enough or enough of a Southern lady to be Miss Mississippi. The other judges, though, had their good names and reputations in the community to consider, and they didn't want to run the risk of the news about Margaret Poole being true, hence how they voted.

In fact, one of the judges, Madame Rosa Alberghotti, a well-known opera singer, was dead set against awarding the title to Margaret because she had screamed an expletive into the microphone. Mrs. McClay yelled at her to shut up. She further states that Margaret hadn't screamed the word into the microphone, although her claims were easily disproven because the offending word was heard by the whole audience.

With a lot of help from a lot of people (some of it not quite legitimate), she unexpectedly wins the pageant, to Mrs. McClay's disgust and outrage (because of this, she quits running the Miss Mississippi pageant for good because she felt betrayed by her so-called "friends") and is off to Atlantic City.

It was revealed that Mr. Cecil and the Cecilettes were going to accompany her, although it was never revealed who in the Miss Mississippi organization, if anyone, did accompany her, since Mrs. McClay had stated that she would not accompany Daisy Fay to Atlantic City.

After she won, she also discovers, to her shock and joy, that her maternal grandfather, who everyone had thought had died, was in fact alive and well and working as a cab driver in Tupelo. In fact, it was ''he'' who had driven his granddaughter to the pageant events. He had kept in touch with her Daddy over the years, despite their not speaking.

Before she leaves for the Miss America pageant, however, she gets word that Jimmy Snow, who had been kind of a surrogate uncle to her, had been in a plane crash, and had died of a broken neck. She mourned him, as did her father, and her loyal friend, Mr. Cecil. Her father revealed to her that she was the only person that Jimmy really loved, which surprised Daisy. After that, she achieves her ends and gets out of Mississippi. At the book's end, she states that "I promise that I won't come back until I'm somebody. And I won't."

On the floating island of Neo Verona, Leontes Montague and his men lead a bloody coup and murder all the members of ruling House Capulet. Only Lord Capulet's young daughter, Juliet, is able to escape. Fourteen years later, Leontes rules the land with an iron fist and crushes anyone who opposes him. Juliet, now sixteen, fights against House Montague's oppression as the masked vigilante "The Red Whirlwind". While attending the Rose Ball hosted by the Montagues with a friend, Juliet meets Romeo, Prince Montague's son, and both of them fall deeply in love at first sight.

Romeo is a kind, caring, selfless and humble man who is opposed to his father's cruelty and tyranny, and shares many ideals with Juliet. Unfortunately for them, Capulet loyalists are planning a rebellion to overthrow House Montague, while Leontes is obsessed with destroying the threat of the House of Capulet permanently. As these starcrossed lovers face many challenges and adventures together, which will strengthen and deepen their true unwavering romantic love even further, an ancient secret hidden deep within Neo Verona is slowly revealed.

Set at the turn of the 20th century in an old town called Elmsville located somewhere on the Great Plains, ''These Are the Days'' portrayed the everyday lives of the Day family, which consisted of a widow, her three children and her father, a self-styled inventor. Various family members interacted with friends and neighbors, with the story usually ending with a lesson learned.

After Joan Randall (Blanche Bates) accuses her fiancé Jim Cleeve (Eugene Strong) of being a coward, he joins a gang of outlaws called the Border Legion. Feeling guilty about how she treated him, Joan follows after Jim and is soon attacked by gang leader Jack Kells (Hobart Bosworth), whom she shoots.

In the coming days, Joan nurses the outlaw back to health, earning his undying gratitude and a promise that he will always protect her. Later, when Jim reclaims her, Jack follows after the couple and threatens him. As the law closes in on the Border Legion, Jack tries to prevent the gang from using Joan as a hostage. During a confrontation, Jack is killed by his own gang. A posse soon arrives and save Joan and Jim.

The story is narrated by an unnamed psychiatrist as he reflects on the life and loves of Claude, the child of an aristocratic French family in the early 20th century. Assigned female at birth, Claude (born and often referred to throughout the story as Claudine) has identified as a boy since the age of eight; Claude's parents take him to the psychiatrist, who befriends Claude after confirming that he is in good health.

As a teenager, Claude falls in love with Maura, a servant in his family's house. Though Maura loves him in turn, she goes back to her home after the death of her father. As a high school student, Claude falls in love with Cecilia, a librarian at his school. Cecilia does not reciprocate his feelings, and is, in fact, secretly having an affair with Claude's father, Auguste; Louis, Cecilia's brother who himself had an affair with Auguste in his youth, kills Cecilia and Auguste out of jealousy.

Later, as he works towards his master's degree, Claude falls in love with a ballet dancer name Sirène. The two begin a relationship, though Sirène eventually falls in love with and becomes engaged to one of Claude's brothers. Believing that his female body makes him an "imperfect man", and with a final appeal to Sirène having been ignored, Claude falls into despair and commits suicide. In a closing narration, the psychiatrist confides to the audience that he has "no hesitation" in his belief that Claude is transgender.

Raimundo Silva, assigned to correct a book entitled ''The History of Siege of Lisbon'' by his publishing house, decides to alter the meaning of a crucial sentence by inserting the word "not" in the text, so that the book now claims that the Crusaders did ''not'' come to the aid of the Portuguese king in taking Lisbon from the Moors. This has repercussions both for himself and for the historical profession. The second plot is Saramago's simultaneous recounting of the siege in the style of a historical romance.

The multilayered plot also include the love story between Raimundo Silva and his editorial supervisor Maria Sara and the middle-aged Silva's discovery of his imagination and ability to experience desire and passion. On other levels it is also a novel about the act of writing, the process of publishing and a comic commentry on recurring human foibles.

The story focuses on the Turtles in the days leading up to and following the success of their single "Happy Together". Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman receive their draft cards and Frank Zappa tells them to seek advice from Herb Cohen, Zappa's manager and Kaylan's cousin, to avoid being drafted in the Vietnam War. Cohen advises Kaylan to show up to the draft board intoxicated from drug use, not to bathe or sleep, and to behave so obnoxiously that the Army will not draft him, leading Kaylan and Volman to engage in a sleepless night of marijuana smoking before their draft review, which they fail due to being high while taking the tests, and Kaylan pretending to be homosexual in front of the physician and expressing psychotic views to the psychiatrist.

Because they avoid the draft, the Turtles fly to England where Graham Nash and Donovan play them an advance reel to reel recording of the unreleased Beatles album ''Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'', which the Turtles declare to be the greatest album they ever heard. At a nearby pub, the Turtles have a disastrous meeting with the Beatles, in which Turtles guitarist Jim Tucker is verbally abused by John Lennon, leading the Turtles to leave the bar as Kaylan stays behind and Brian Jones, the founder of the Rolling Stones, introduces Kaylan to Jimi Hendrix, who Kaylan ends up having dinner and a conversation with, while the two drink much alcohol and smoke marijuana, with the evening ultimately ending with Kaylan vomiting on Hendrix' suit.

Kaylan ultimately purchases copies of ''Sgt. Pepper'' and the Jimi Hendrix Experience's debut, ''Are You Experienced?'' and Tucker quits the Turtles and the music industry, never getting over his treatment by John Lennon, although the postscript states that Tucker remains a fan of the Beatles' music.

In San Francisco, Joey Evans is a second-rate singer, a heel known for his womanizing ways (calling women "mice"), but charming and funny. When Joey meets Linda English, a naive chorus girl, he has stirrings of real feelings. However, that does not stop him from romancing a former flame and ex-stripper (Joey says, "She used to be 'Vera Vanessa the undresser...with the Vanishing Veils'"), now society matron Vera Prentice-Simpson, a wealthy, willful, and lonely widow, in order to convince her to finance Chez Joey, a night club of his own.

Soon Joey is involved with Vera, each using the other for his/her own somewhat selfish purposes; however, Joey's feelings for Linda are growing. Ultimately, Vera jealously demands that Joey fire Linda. When Joey refuses ("Nobody owns Joey but Joey"), Vera closes down Chez Joey. Linda visits Vera and agrees to quit in an attempt to keep the club open. Vera then agrees to open the club and even offers to marry Joey, but Joey rejects Vera. As Joey is leaving for Sacramento, Linda runs after him, offering to go wherever he is headed. After half-hearted refusals, Joey gives in, and they walk away together.

Peter Wilson (Jack Lemmon) is a sarcastic near-sighted cartoonist, author, and swinging bachelor living in Manhattan. He detests women, dogs, and children. He is flustered by women's priorities and avoids commitment, much preferring transient physical relationships. At the office of his eye surgeon, Peter meets a leggy, eye-catching strong-willed woman named Terri Kozlenko (Barbara Harris). He likes her very much, but discovers later that she is a single mother to three children, Caroline, Linda, and David. The first thing she learns about him, from his ophthalmologist, is that he's in danger of losing his sight, which would make it impossible for him to continue his work.

Nevertheless, they develop a close friendship that grows into romance, when Peter realizes that Terri is the only woman who can tolerate his strong anti-feminist opinions. When she rejects his plan of a sexual relationship conducted exclusively at his bachelor pad (so that he doesn't have to bond with her demanding family), he reluctantly proposes to her. They get married and he moves into her apartment, but her rogue ex-husband Stephen (Jason Robards) appears to spend more time with their children. Stephen and Peter clash at first, but they soon become good drinking friends, much to Terri's disapproval. Peter also begins to bond with David, who has had no stable male role model with his father perpetually off photographing war zones.

Peter's eyesight gradually worsens and his boss, Howard Mann (Herb Edelman), begins to criticize his work. On the advice of his ophthalmologist, Peter schedules an operation that could cure his problem, and tries to keep it a secret from Terri to avoid worrying her. Howard gets hysterical and inadvertently ruins Peter's alibi of working away from home on a book. Terri tells him that she had known that Peter was going blind before they ever got involved. This revelation enrages Peter, and he accuses her of only going to bed with him out of pity. She says she never once felt sorry for him, but his pride is too wounded to accept this.

The operation is partly successful in restoring Peter's vision, and he moves out of the house to his old studio to begin work on a new book, ''The Last Flower''

Stephen is killed on assignment, which traumatizes everyone, but Linda in particular. Her stammer is getting progressively worse. Terri insists she go talk to Peter, who takes her on an imaginary visual tour of his new book—which is about war and human stupidity, but also love and hope and restoration. She begins to conquer her stammer, and he realizes he was wrong to leave his new family, who need him. He meets Terri at a party related to the release of his new book, and they renew their bond. Much against his misanthropic nature, he is forced to rejoin humanity.

The TARDIS lands the Doctor and Martha in the Lake District in 1909, where a small village has been terrorised by a giant, scaly monster. The search is on for the elusive 'Beast of Westmorland', and explorers, naturalists and hunters from across the country are descending on the fells. King Edward VII himself is on his way to join the search, with a knighthood for whoever finds the Beast.

But there is a more sinister presence at work in the Lakes than a monster on the rampage, and the Doctor is soon embroiled in the plans of an old and terrifying enemy - the Zygons. As the hunters become the hunted, a desperate battle of wits begin - with the future of the entire world at stake.

Upon being asked where she wants to go next, Martha chooses the zoo, falling back on childhood memories which appears to upset the Doctor who later admits the idea of animals in cages hurts him. Seeing the Doctor using a dodo feather as a bookmark, Martha asks to see a dodo in its natural habitat. The Doctor slots the feather into the TARDIS which ends up taking them to the Earth section of the Museum of the Last Ones (MOTLO) run by the sinister Eve. The Doctor also gives Martha an I-Spyder book which she regularly updates. Eve explains that the entire Universe is monitored and when a species gets down to only one, they are retrieved and placed in suspended animation within the museum. As several specimens have been going missing, the Doctor, Martha and the museum workers investigate, ultimately finding the thief to be a museum worker Frank, trying to make a profit. Frank is detained by Eve, who then also captures the Doctor since he is the Last of the Time Lords, while sending Martha off with another museum worker to retrieve another last one specimen. Upon discovering the Doctor frozen, Martha manages to free him and transport all the frozen animals back to their original destinations, only for the Doctor to reveal that since MOTLO doesn't possess time travel, they will be returned to present day earth. The Doctor and Martha head to Earth where they find the Dodo (which the Doctor dubs Dorothea) in a town, along with a sabre tooth tiger and dinosaurs, but soon discover multiples of the creatures in the town. Another MOTLO worker Tommy arrives to try to help but is injured by a sabre tooth tiger. Transported back to MOTLO, Martha gets help for Tommy before attempting to investigate, finding Frank in a secret lab before she is cornered by both Frank and Eve. On Earth, the Dodos seem to lay eggs which begin ticking. At MOTLO, Eve reveals that while Frank had been cloning the animals mainly to make a profit, she had realized that since planets ended all the time and species died, her collection would never be truly complete so she plans to have the clone dodos lay bomb eggs which when detonated would destroy the Earth and will then hold Martha in her collection as the last survivor of Earth. The Doctor returns to MOTLO, attempting to hold Eve at stalemate with a ticking Dodo egg, which fails. Upon being told the plan, the Doctor points out it wouldn't work as since the Universe is constantly expanding, by the time Eve finishes killing off one civilization, billions more will have already been created, meaning her collection can never be complete. Faced with this, Eve shoots herself, revealing herself to be an android, and the Doctor is able to disable the bombs from her. Attempting to find out Eve's codes so they can retrieve the displaced animals, the group is confronted by Frank who plans to use one Dodo egg to destroy MOTLO and escape with his cash. Dorothea manages to bury the egg in Frank's bag before he teleports away. Tommy reveals he knows Eve's password and the Doctor transports all the animals on MOTLO back to their original time periods. Dorothea is introduced to the Dodo clones which have remained behind and the Doctor advises the MOTLO workers to possibly document the creatures another way. Discovering another secret room, Martha and the Doctor find Eve's creator who reveals that he created Eve after he found his own world destroyed and she had misunderstood his desires to document lost species. Upon leaving MOTLO, Martha fills in the I-Spyder guide and receives her certificate.

Tati Benítez (Ignacio Benítez), is a young man who lives in the Misiones Province, and an Argentine lumberjack who's been laid off at work, now making a living by collecting wood for an artisan named Silva (Miguel Gonzales Colman). Benítez is married to his pregnant wife (Paola Rotela).

Typical of Argentines, Tati is a football fanatic. Tati is quite quirky and, like many Argentines, is obsessed with the Argentine football player Diego Armando Maradona, who is legendary in Argentina because of his prowess in the World Cup. He wears a football kit with Maradona's number 10 on it and has a very large 10 tattooed on his back. He even owns two parrots who scream "Maradona" from time to time. His friends joke that Tati is not married to his wife, but to Maradona. In fact, Tati knows every possible statistic of Maradona's career, and has a great deal of knowledge regarding his hero's life.

One day Tati hears from friends that Maradona is suffering from heart problems, so he decides to go on a quest.

His mission is to deliver an unusual piece of wood to Maradona at the Swiss-Argentine Hospital in Buenos Aires where he is recuperating. The piece of wood resembles Maradona.

Tati travels by foot, by bus, and even by ambulance, to let Maradona feel the dedication and love of his loyal fan base.

On his way he runs into many adventures.

In the German spa town of Wildbad, the 'Scotchman' Mr. Neal is asked to transcribe the deathbed confession of Allan Armadale; his story concerns his murder of the man he had disinherited (also called Allan Armadale), who had subsequently married the woman he was betrothed to under false pretensions. Under Allan's instructions, the confession is left to be opened by his son once he comes of age.

Nineteen years later, the son of the murdered man, also Allan Armadale, rescues a man of his own age, Ozias Midwinter. The stranger reveals himself to Reverend Decimus Brock, a friend of Allan through his late mother, as another Allan Armadale (the son of the man who committed the murder). Ozias tells Decimus of his desperate upbringing, having run away from his mother and stepfather (Mr. Neal). The Reverend promises not to disclose their relation to one another, and the young men become close companions. Ozias remains haunted by a fear that he will harm Allan as a result of their proximity, a fate warned of in his father's letter; this feeling intensifies when the pair spend a night on a shipwreck off the Isle of Man—as it turns out, the very ship on which the murder was committed. Also on the vessel, Allan has a mysterious dream involving three characters; Ozias believes that the events are a prophecy of the future.

Three members of Allan's family die in mysterious circumstances, one of which was instigated in the rescue of a woman who attempted to commit suicide by drowning. As a result, Allan inherits the estate of Thorpe-Ambrose in Norfolk and relocates there with Ozias, intending to make him steward. Once there he falls in love with Eleanor (Neelie) Milroy, the sixteen-year-old daughter of Major Milroy, to whom he has rented a cottage. During this time, correspondence takes place between Maria Oldershaw and Lydia Gwilt concerning the latter's ambitions to marry Allan as a means of achieving retribution for his family's apparent wrongdoings (she was originally a maid in the service of his mother).

Lydia, who is thirty-five but looks twenty-something, is the villain of the novel and her colourful portrayal takes up much of the rest of the story. Originally Allan's mother's maid, and a contributor to the conflict between Allan and Ozias's fathers, she is a fortune hunter and, it turns out, a murderess. Unable to alienate Allan's affections from Miss Milroy, she settles for marrying Midwinter, having discovered his name is the same. She plots to murder Allan, or have him killed by her ex-lover, a Cuban desperado and, since she is now "Mrs. Armadale," to impersonate his widow. Allan escapes the desperado's attempt on his life—he is supposed to have drowned in a shipwreck—and returns to England. Lydia's plans are thus foiled. Her last shot is to murder Allan herself—the weapon being poison gas, the scene being a sanatorium run by a quack called Doctor Downward—but she is thwarted by her own conscience. Midwinter and Allan have switched rooms, and she can't bring herself to murder her true husband, for whom she does have genuine feelings of love. After rescuing Midwinter and writing him a farewell note, she goes into the air-poisoned room and kills herself. Allan marries Miss Milroy; Midwinter, still his best friend, becomes a writer.

Some linking passages consist of letters between the various characters, or of extracts from Lydia's journal, but the great majority of the text narrates the events as they occur. The novel is enlivened by many minor characters including Mr Bashwood, an old failure of a clerk who is infatuated with the beautiful Lydia; his son, James 'Jemmy' Bashwood, a private detective; Mrs Oldershaw, an unscrupulous associate of Lydia's; the Pedgifts (father and son), Allan's lawyers; and the Rev Decimus Brock, a shrewd (but not quite shrewd enough) clergyman who brings Allan up but who is kept out of the way for much of the book.

Is the dream to be interpreted rationally or superstitiously, as Midwinter does? The question is never resolved.

“The distortions of the plot, the violent and irrational reactions of the characters, reflect and dramatise the ways in which his readers’ perceptions were distorted by the assumptions and hypocrisies of the society in which they lived," writes Catherine Peters.

Paul King (Anton Argirov) dies of kidney cancer. Five years later, his father Preston King (Jeffrey Combs), a scientist, invites the doctors that could not save his son to his uncharted island in the western Pacific. Paul's widowed wife Amelia Lockhart (Hunter Tylo), who believes Paul died five years ago from cancer, and Amelia's new love interest Tom Reed (William Forsythe), also travel to the island. There, King reveals that Paul never died and was saved from death by being injected with hammerhead shark DNA to modify his stem cells. This turned Paul into a half-man/half-shark creature. King releases the water from the tank where he was keeping Paul, in hopes that he will eat the doctors as revenge for them firing him from his job five years previously. As Paul, now known as Hammerhead, chases after them, they escape along with Hammerhead.

Hammerhead starts to attack Bernie nearly the docks and almost rip his right leg off. He then kills Julie by ripping her apart into pieces when she is separated from Whitney. Then the monster kills the wounded Bernie, then the doctor Katie Medevenko who sided with the protagonists but unfortunately falls into water after King's men attack where Hammerhead kills her, and he eats Jane alive while she tries to relieve her burns.

Hammerhead begins killing the workers on the island and tracking down King's "guests" until he is eventually recaptured by King's remaining workers. King's men also capture Amelia, who King hopes his son will remember and mate with to create a half-human/half-shark offspring, as he is convinced that part of Paul is still human. King forces Amelia to watch as one of the doctors, Whitney Feder (Arthur Roberts), is fed to Hammerhead. Amelia is then injected with a drug to calm her as King watches in hopes that Hammerhead will mate with her. However, instead of mating with Amelia, Hammerhead bites off his father's right arm. Tom arrives at the laboratory and rescues Amelia. He forces liquid nitrogen down Hammerhead's throat, causing him to explode. King attempts to shoot Amelia, but Tom shoots him dead. The building explodes as Amelia and Tom, the only two survivors, escape.

It is the Season of Misrule in Rome, sheer misery for Falco. Uppity slaves give orders to their cringing masters, masters try to hide in their studies, women are goosed, statues wobble, a prince has a broken heart, Helena’s brother will not decide if his heart is broken or not, children are sick and even the dog can’t stand it any more. As the festival meant for healing grudges riotously proceeds, a young man who has everything to live for dies a horrific death while the security of the Empire is compromised by the usual mixture of top brass incompetence, bureaucratic in-fighting and popular indifference. The barbarians are not just at the gates, they are right inside - and that’s just the bombasts in the Praetorian Guard, encouraged by the pernicious Chief Spy.

Doctors are making a killing. Alternative therapists are ecstatic. Members of the Didius family are about to receive some extremely unusual seasonal gifts. But for the non-persons on the fringes of society life is not so jolly, and dark spirits walk abroad (available for hire through the usual agents). Falco has a race against time to find a dangerous missing person, aided and hindered by faces from the past, while running the gauntlet of the best and worst Roman society can offer as Saturnalia entertainment. Unfortunately for him.

This novel makes numerous references to the events in Lindsay Davis' earlier novel in the Falco series, ''The Iron Hand of Mars'' (1992).

Jack Wood and his pals make a journey across the West and come up against rustlers, Indian attacks and outlaw gangs. They make a journey across the West and come up against rustlers, Indian attacks and outlaw gangs.

In 1581 Fresno, conquistadors exploring California discover grapes from Napa Valley. In present-day Fresno, the raisin-growing empire of the once-wealthy Kensington family are locked in a struggle with their former business partner Tyler Cane. The Kensingtons are pinning their hopes on a new grape variety they have developed. Foreman Juan is charged with getting the prototype raisins to the patent office in Sacramento, but on the way is ambushed by Cane's men, who destroy the shipment. Juan is saved by a stranger, Torch. He accompanies Juan back to the ranch, and is hired as a ranch-hand. As Charlotte shows Torch around the ranch, she explains how, 20 years earlier, her late husband Yancey fell out with Cane, and then died after a fall. Torch begins to investigate the Kensingtons' affairs, awakening suspicions in Charlotte about Yancey's death, and her interest in finding her real parents.

Attempting to save the business, Cane Kensington strikes a deal with Mr. Acme, owner of Acme Toxic Waste. He pays Cane to allow him to dump toxic waste into Duke Lake, a private dam owned by Cane's neighbor Ethel Duke, and main water source for both the ranches. Suspecting that their meeting may have been overheard by the maid, Bobbi Jo Bobb, Cane decides to get send her to Bakersfield. However, Cane's patronage upsets Bobbi Jo's husband Billy Joe, leading to tragic consequences.

Duke's water rights are crucial to Cane and the Kensingtons. Cane visits Duke, offering to buy the water rights, but she refuses. Later that day, in Fresno, Charlotte is outmaneuvered by Cane, who takes control of the annual Raisin Festival and vows to erase the Kensington name from Fresno forever. That night, Billy Joe listens to Bobbi Jo on the radio, and becomes enraged when she makes a dedication to Cane. He shoots the radio, but the bullet ricochets off it, killing Duke. Billy Joe is arrested and charged with murder. Public defender Desiree DeMornay is assigned the case.

Nature-loving Kevin finds dead fish floating in Duke Lake, and soon discovers a leaking Acme Toxic Waste drum at the bottom of the river. Kevin confronts Mr. Acme, who orders his henchmen to kill Kevin, but they blow up Acme's truck by mistake. Juan confronts Charlotte and demands a raise at gunpoint, but instead Charlotte cuts his wages in half. Cane makes an anonymous phone call to the police, implicating Kevin in the death of Duke, and Kevin is also arrested and charged with murder.

Duke's death triggers a struggle between Cane and the Kensingtons to buy the water rights from Duke's husband, Earl. Tyler bribes Earl, but Cane learns of Tyler's bid, and outbids him. That night, Charlotte goes to Earl's to seduce him, but her plan is ruined when she discovers that Tyler has sent Candy Cane, who emerges from Earl's bathroom clad only in a towel.

Charlotte visits Kevin in jail, where she learns his bail has been set at $250,000. Cane blackmails Mr. Acme into paying him an additional $300,000, so he can buy the water rights. He rushes to the bank to clear the check, but Charlotte arrives just after he leaves, and withdraws most of the money. Tiffany meets Torch at a Fresno restaurant and asks for his help in finding her real parents. Back at the jail, Kevin and Billy Joe deduce that Cane is behind the entire conspiracy. Bobbi Jo arrives, but when she learns of Talon's attempt to seduce her husband, she suspects the worst and rejects him.

Rushing back to Earl's, Cane tries to stop Tyler from buying the water rights, but when Earl phones the bank to verify Cane's check, he learns it is worthless because Charlotte withdrew money to pay Kevin's bail. Ethel's attorney arrives: he explains that Earl cannot sell the water rights because Earl will not inherit Ethel's estate until the reading of the will at 2pm tomorrow.

Two teams of scientists scour the dark jungles of Africa to find a secret formula.

Millennium Approaches

It is 1985, Ronald Reagan is in the White House, and AIDS is causing mass death in the Americas. In Manhattan, Prior Walter tells Louis, his lover of four years, that he has AIDS; Louis, unable to handle it, leaves him. As disease and loneliness ravage Prior, guilt invades Louis. Joe Pitt, a Mormon and Republican attorney, is pushed by right-wing fixer Roy Cohn toward a job at the US Department of Justice. Both Pitt and Cohn are in the closet: Pitt out of shame and religious turmoil, Cohn to preserve his power and image. Pitt's wife Harper is strung out on Valium, causing her to hallucinate constantly (sometimes jointly with Prior during his fever dreams) and she longs to escape from her sexless marriage. An angel with ulterior motives commands Prior to become a prophet.

Perestroika

Prior is helped in his decision by Joe's mother, Hannah, and Belize, a close friend and drag queen. Joe leaves his wife and goes to live with Louis, but the relationship does not work out because of ideological differences. Roy is diagnosed with AIDS early on and, as his life comes to a close, he is haunted by the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg. As the film continues, the lost souls come together to create bonds of love, loss, and loneliness and, in the end, discover forgiveness and overcome abandonment.

"Tailspin" Tommy (Clark Williams) and his fellow pilots, Betty Lou Barnes (Jean Rogers) and Skeeter Milligan (Noah Beery, Jr.) prevent a group of corrupt businessmen from stealing Nazil Island's oil reserves. The villains are Manuel Casmetto (Herbert Heywood), the half-brother of Don Alvarado Casmetto, Nazil Island's ruler and villainous oil tycoon Horace Raymore (Matthew Betz).

Tommy and his friends are aided in their efforts by news reporter Bill McGuire (James P. Burtis). Milt Howe (Pat J. O'Brien), a masked mystery plot known as The Eagle and El Condor stands in their way. When Tommy is triumphant, he also finds he has a movie contract.

In a dance hall, an ebullient ex-convict named Bob befriends an impecunious young couple, the shrewish Monique and the passive Antoine. He takes them burgling and, while he and Antoine ransack the place for valuables, Monique has a bath and helps herself to clothes and scents. But it becomes apparent that it is Antoine to whom Bob is attracted, while Monique is an also ran. The relationship between the two men develops in unexpected directions.

College sports hero Frank Meriwell leaves school before an impending decisive baseball game to track down his missing father and locate a fabulous lost treasure.

The movie is about a young boy, whose father, Blue Thunder, was murdered by the villainous "Black Mantis." After Black Mantis kills his father and steals the family fighting style, Blue Thunder's son takes on the name "Thunder Prince" and vows revenge.

He comes upon a wise old man who teaches him how to fight, but discourages revenge. When face-to-face with Black Mantis, Thunder Prince must decide which he will choose once and for all, honor or revenge.

The film tells the story of David Vass (Julio Chávez), an obsessed filmmaker who attempts to make an epic account of the French adventurer Orelie-Antoine de Tounens, who in the 19th century assumed the title of King of Patagonia and Araucania.

Vass meets major obstacles at every turn. Word leaks out to the Argentine media that Vass is finally making his film and he has to dodge them as he executes his preproduction plans. A bigger problem arises as he begins auditioning for the perfect actor to portray the king; when all of the professional auditions are rejected, Vass turns to the street. Unfortunately, the man he decides would be perfect for the role is a hippie who mistakes Vass for the police and flees. Vass eventually catches up with him, however, and convinces him to play the part.

Confident that things are looking up, Vass assembles the cast and crew and prepares to go southern Argentina to shoot the film. However, his financial backer withdraws with the film's money and flees abroad. Suddenly unable to pay any of his staff, all of his supporting actors abandon the project. Once more, Vass hits the streets to find replacements.

Finally, the group makes it to the location for shooting. By this time they are so broke that they cannot afford proper lodging and end up staying at an orphanage until an actor makes unwanted advances towards a minor and gets them kicked out. The crew, not wanting to sleep in tents, decides to leave, and the cast joins them. Despite this final crushing blow, Vass will not abandon the film and portrays the king himself, using mannequins for extras to create some of the film's most haunting and surreal scenes.

Summary

The events of ''The Harlequin'' take place one week after the events of Danse Macabre

''The Harlequin'' shows Anita and Jean Claude coping with a threat from Vampire Council enforcers. Desperate, Anita calls Edward for assistance. Edward arrives the same day, bringing Olaf and Peter (now 16), who we last saw in Obsidian Butterfly.

The Harlequin exists to police and punish vampire leaders who violate various rules, such as Malcolm's resistance to the blood oath. It was formed by the Mother of All Darkness, modeled in style on the Commedia dell'arte and by action on the wild hunt. It is composed of very old and powerful vampires who are capable of not just manipulating the behaviors and emotions of humans or younger vampires and lycanthropes, but of Jean-Claude, Anita, and Richard. Under this influence, Richard and Jean-Claude nearly kill each other, and Anita must also be repeatedly resuscitated. Anita keeps them alive by feeding on first Rafael (and through him, all the wererats in the city); Belle Morte; and later, all the swanmanes in the United States via the swan king, Donovan Reece. Anita's second triumvirate also comes through, with Nathaniel and Damien "eating for five" so as to provide healing energy to Anita — and the others through her.

However, the Harlequin appears not to be following its own rules, so by vampire law Jean Claude's people can strike back. Edward doesn't actually kill a Harlequin, Anita does through a psychic link that she accidentally creates while trying to remove a sort of vampire spell that one of the Harlequin has put on her in order to keep track of her and Jean Claude's etc. movements. They subsequently end up killing the human servant of that vampire after Anita has fed on Donovan the king of the swan manes. They recover in time to face off with the remaining members in Malcolm's Church of Eternal Life. They not only succeed, but determine that the Harlequin members were planning to take over Jean-Claude's territory and not operating on official Council orders.

Anita almost allows the Mother of Darkness to become a full flesh being by allowing her anger to fester.

Anita also leaves her former allies, the werelions, to potential death. At a point where Anita and many of her other allies are injured, sex is demanded from the werelion Rex Joseph so that Anita could gain the power to heal. The rex refuses because he is married and values being faithful to his wife. In a scene reminiscent of ''The Godfather'' series, Anita decides that this is a betrayal of their alliance and decides to abandon Joseph.

Sally Carrol Happer, a young woman from the fictional city of Tarleton, Georgia, United States of America, is bored with her unchanging environment. Her local friends are dismayed to learn she is engaged to Harry Bellamy, a man from an unspecified town in the northern United States of America. She brushes off their concerns, alluding to her need for something more in her life, a need to see "things happen on a big scale."

Sally Carrol travels to the north during the winter to visit Harry's home town and meet his family. The winter weather underscores her growing disillusionment with the decision to move north, until her moment of epiphany in the town's local ice palace. In the end, Sally Carrol returns home.

Houston police officer Jack Caine will not let police procedure prevent him from pursuing his mission to wipe out the White Boys, a gang of white collar drug dealers who killed his partner while Caine was stopping a convenience store robbery.

The White Boys disguise their narcotics trafficking behind the visage of expensive luxury sports cars, executive level jobs, and flashy designer suits. Led by the vicious but urbane Victor Manning, the White Boys operate above accusation but not suspicion. When the White Boys steal a shipment of heroin from a federal evidence warehouse, they hide evidence of their involvement by blowing up the facility, killing or injuring numerous people. This brings in the FBI, and Caine is partnered with a by-the-book agent, Arwood "Larry" Smith. They investigate the drug theft and the later murder of several key White Boys soldiers by a hyper fast spinning disk. At the same time, Caine is made aware - via his girlfriend, coroner Diane Pallone - of a series of strange drug-related deaths. The corpses are full of heroin, but the cause of death is a puncture wound to the forehead. Unknown to Caine and the police, the deaths are caused by Talec, an alien who is extracting something from the victims. He is being pursued by Azeck, a similar alien to himself.

Azeck soon tracks Talec to a supermarket where a battle ensues. After being severely injured in the fight, Azeck is able to sneak into Caine's car as he and Smith investigate the bloody scene left at the super market. After Caine and Smith are ordered off the investigation by their superiors, they discover the mortally wounded Azeck in the back seat. Azeck explains that he is a police officer from his own home planet, and that Talec shoots his victims full of synthetic heroin and then uses alien technology to extract the resulting endorphins from their brains, synthesizing them into a drug called "Barsi" to be used by addicts on his home planet. He warns Caine and Smith that if Talec is not stopped, thousands of intergalactic drug dealers will come to Earth to slaughter its population, since Earth is seen as a cheap source of Barsi, which is extremely rare in the rest of the galaxy. Azeck dies and his body cremates itself - but Smith has retained Azeck's powerful hand-gun and intends to pass it onto his FBI superior to prove that the aliens exist. Caine warns that Switzer should not be trusted and wants to give the gun to his own supervisor, Chief Malone. The two disagree and separate.

Smith gives the weapon to Inspector Switzer, who reveals that the FBI already know about the aliens, and they intend on opening dialogue with Talec in order to gain technological and weapon advantages. He then attempts to shoot Smith, but Caine saves him at the last moment. Thanks to information from Azeck, they track Talec down to an industrial complex but are waylaid by the White Boys who believe Caine to be behind the deaths of their soldiers. Talec arrives in the middle of the standoff and kills the remaining White Boys before being forced to retreat after Smith uses Azeck's weapon against him.

At the complex, Azeck's weapon runs out of charge and Talec attempts to kill Caine using his drug harpoon. While fending off the harpoon Caine grabs a vial of the synthesized Barsi drug and the two engage in hand-to-hand combat over the vial, resulting in Talec being impaled on a steel spike. Cain retrieves Talec's gun - a similar weapon to Azeck's - and shoots nearby drums of fuel, killing Talec in the resulting explosion.

With Talec dead, Caine and Smith realize that they have completed Azeck's mission: Talec won't return to his home world, and since no other drug dealers from his home planet knows about Earth, there will be no invasion.

Described by the director as his statement on modern pornography, the film follows the misadventures of a small yellow bird, which include the adult themes of hallucinogenic drugs and sexual intercourse with a brown horse.

Following the events of the first ''Resistance'', soldiers from the Special Research Projects Administration (SRPA), led by Major Richard Blake, take custody of Sgt. Nathan Hale. They transport him to an American black site in Iceland, but are soon shot down by Chimeran forces. In a desperate move, Blake accidentally releases "Daedalus", a hyper intelligent chimeran leader, while trying to input a kill code to kill him before the chimera can get to him, as he had to undo the safety protocols put in place to contain Daedalus to enter the code. Daedalus soon escapes and the SRPA are forced to abandon their base. Blake then explains to Hale that he is part of "Project Abraham", a covert effort to create human soldiers infused with the Chimera virus, known as Sentinels. Two years later, Hale is promoted to Lieutenant and given command of Echo Squad, consisting of Sergeant Ben Warner, Specialist Aaron Hawthorne, and Corporal Joseph Capelli.

On May 15, 1953, a Chimeran armada launches an invasion of the United States, overwhelming most of its remaining populated cities. Among the targets is an underwater SRPA outpost in San Francisco, where Hale is scheduled to undergo inhibitor treatment to prevent the Chimera virus completely taking him over. With Blake providing backup, Hale oversees a full evacuation and retrieves inhibitor samples for the Sentinels. The survivors retreat to the Midwest, where they track a damaged Chimeran flagship to Orick, California. Stealing an enemy transport, Hale boards the ship and steals intel while Echo Squad sets explosives to destroy it. Using the intel, they learn that the Chimera are planning to attack the SRPA's Liberty Defense Perimeter in Twin Falls, Idaho. Before the fleet can begin its assault, the Sentinels activate two defense towers, resulting in an artillery barrage that breaks the offensive. Defying orders to return for needed treatment, Hale takes a squad to "Station Genesis", a Chimeran tower in Bryce Canyon, Utah, where an SRPA expedition led by Russian doctor Fyoder Malikov has been massacred by Daedalus's troops. Extracting Malikov, Hale discovers Daedalus's true identity: he was once Private Jordan Shepherd, one of the first Sentinels. Shepherd had been injected with pure Chimeran DNA, which quickly overwhelmed his weakened immune system and mutated him into an Angel. Malikov also warns Hale that the same will eventually happen to him unless he receives treatment.

With his condition worsening, Hale orders an attack on Chicago, where the Chimera have begun to restart their network of towers. Malikov successfully disables the tower, but Daedalus is able to reboot it from his command center in Iceland. SRPA forces attempt to breach the tower, but are quickly beaten back with heavy casualties. Against Blake's order to retreat, Echo Squad enters the tower and initiates a manhunt for Daedalus, during which both Hawthorne and Warner are ambushed and killed. Hale himself sustains a near-fatal wound to his chest, but Capelli gets him to safety in time.

Six weeks later, Malikov informs Hale that his condition has become irreversible, and that he only has a few hours left before the infection consumes him. Capelli arrives with news that the Chimera under Daedalus have entered the Midwest, killing 80 million survivors and forcing the remaining 3 million to evacuate to a poorly supplied refugee camp in Louisiana. With Daedalus's army converging on the Chicxulub Crater in the Yucatan Peninsula for unknown reasons, Hale, Capelli, and Blake infiltrate his ship with a nuclear warhead, hoping to detonate it near the central reactor and trigger an explosion that wipes out the entire fleet. Unfortunately, Blake and his team are intercepted and killed by the Chimera, who take the bomb to Daedalus. Entering the core, Hale kills him via electrocution; while examining the corpse, he inadvertently absorbs Daedalus's psychokinetic abilities. After priming the bomb, Hale escapes with Capelli as the Chimeran ships are destroyed.

After their escape vessel crashes, Capelli awakens and finds Hale, fully succumbed to the Chimeran virus, gazing upon several planet-like structures floating in the sky. Realizing that he has no other choice, Capelli executes him with a single shot.

At the beginning of the novel, Mona's sister, Lindy, is getting married for the second time. The date is given as 23 May 1984.

Mona is self-conscious of her appearance; she is a bridesmaid. She plays on the fruit machines in the pub in which her family live, and drinks alcohol to help her cope with the day.

After the festivities of the day, she goes to a large house in a nearby village. She occasionally tends to the residents' pony, Willow, though the Fakenhams don't pay her much attention, or any money. This evening, however, Mr. Fakenham speaks to her and asks her, in rather an awkward manner, to befriend his youngest daughter, Tamsin - she has been sent home from boarding school and seems to be lonely.

Mona herself is feeling quite friendless - she refers to 'poor lost Anne-Marie' as someone who had once been a school-friend. However, they have drifted apart - Mona had lost her mother to cancer a year previously, and she reflects that Anne-Marie was probably emotionally drained by having to support her through her bereavement. However, she thinks it's a very pitiful state of affairs that Tamsin's father is actually begging people to be her friend.

Despite this, in the days after the wedding, Mona feels lonely and bored. She is off school - it appears to be exam leave - and she decides to visit the Fakenham's house. She finds Mr. and Mrs. Fakenham in a blazing row.

The girls are then left to their own devices. Mona finds herself instantly drawn to - and fascinated by - Tamsin.

Category:2001 British novels Category:Novels set in Yorkshire Category:Fiction set in 1984 Category:British novels adapted into films Category:Bloomsbury Publishing books

''Maps'' follows a normal Earth boy named Gen. He and his girlfriend Hoshimi meet Lipmira, a scantily-clad blonde woman from outer space, who tells Gen that he is the "mapman," meaning the map to a great treasure is coded in his genes. Gen and Hoshimi leave Earth with Lipmira to find the treasure, a quest shared by evil space people whom they are often compelled to fight against. Notable aspects of the series are the spaceships (which look like giant silver angelic women, often described as "hood ornaments") and the robot women that control them, or more precisely embody them for dealings with regular-sized life forms (Lipmira is one of these robot embodiments). Each ship and its pilot have a distinct character, from playful to evil.

Flashbacks

In a flashback to Iowa, Kate's car breaks down and is towed into a service station. She overhears a man and a woman arguing. The woman is Cassidy, whom Sawyer trained to be a grifter and all of whose money he stole in the flashbacks of a previous episode. She is working the jewelry con on the man. He thinks the necklaces are fake and wants to call the police, but Kate tells him that her father was a jeweler and that the jewelry is not fake, dissuading the man from calling. Cassidy asks Kate why she didn't want the police to be called; later, over drinks at a bar, Kate explains that her stepfather was a bad man, so she killed him, escaped from the US marshal who arrested her, and now is back in Iowa to talk to her mother. Cassidy offers to help. She says she was conned and embarrassed by a "bad guy" as well (referring to Sawyer) and that one of them deserves something good.

Back in Iowa, Kate knocks on her mother's door. Diane opens the door, but before she can say anything, cops surround Kate and cuff her. Marshal Mars walks out only to realize that it is not Kate; it is Cassidy dressed as Kate, who claims to be just selling Bibles. Watching through binoculars from down the street is the real Kate, and she realizes just what she is up against - the police are paying very close watch to her mom so she will have a hard time securing contact with her. Later at the motel, Kate reveals that her mother gave her up to the police, despite Kate taking out an insurance policy on the home before buying it to set her mother up for life. Kate wants to know why her mom betrayed her and chose her abusive husband over her.

Cassidy goes to the restaurant where Kate's mom works and 'accidentally' dumps a bowl of chili on her. Diane goes to the bathroom to clean up; Kate is waiting there for her. Diane tells Kate that she killed the man she loved, and she asserts that she didn't choose that she loved him. Kate replies that Wayne abused her, but Diane simply snaps back that she didn't kill Wayne for anyone but herself. Diane promises not to contact the police, but says she will if she sees Kate again. Kate begins to tear up, emotional.

In a flashback to Iowa, Cassidy drops Kate off at the service station. Cassidy tells her she is pregnant, by the same man who conned her (Sawyer). She wants him dead, yet she still loves him. Kate says to call the cops and have him locked up. Cassidy asks if Kate would forgive her mom for calling the cops. Kate says no, but that this guy has it coming.

At the Barracks/In the jungle

Kate is held captive by The Others and still handcuffed. When Juliet comes to bring her food, Kate attempts to attack her, but Juliet quickly overpowers her. Soon after, Locke comes in to say that he is abandoning her and leaving with the Others. Locke tells her he does not want to go home; he explains that he made a strong case for her but then they told him who she was and what she had done, he knew that they would likely not forgive her.

Back at the barracks, Kate hears noises outside, looks through the screen and sees the Others packing to leave. They all put on gas masks, then the door to the recreation center flies open, someone tosses in a canister and slams the door shut. The canister pops open and gas starts fuming out, knocking her out cold. She wakes up in the jungle, handcuffed to Juliet. Kate takes Juliet's knife and tries unsuccessfully to unlock the handcuffs. Kate says they are going back for her friends.

As Kate follows a trail leading to the barracks, they end up getting into a fight about Jack, and Kate dislocates Juliet's shoulder. Juliet's yell of pain attracts the smoke monster, and they quickly run into the roots of a banyan tree for cover. The Monster roils up in front of them, and Juliet's face is lit up by a series of bright flashes of light. The monster then retreats, leaving Juliet terrified. She claims to have never seen the monster before.

Juliet reveals that Jack told Kate not to come back for him, not because he does not want Kate to be harmed, but because she broke his heart. Then, as Kate calms Juliet down, Juliet asks Kate to put her shoulder back in place, and after doing so, they fall asleep.

Kate and Juliet continue to the barracks; however, the monster returns. They take off running, and come upon the pylons. Kate jerks Juliet to a stop and says they cannot go through them. Juliet reaches into her back pocket, takes out a key, and unlocks the cuffs. She then runs to a pylon, enters an access code on a key pad, and they run across the barrier. Juliet jams the setting into the red zone, enabling the previously disabled pylons to send a powerful sonic wave to anything that tries to pass between them. The monster zooms in and bounces off the barrier. It roils and rises, making awful noises, and is unable to pass through the fence. Then it quickly flies away.

Kate asks about the key. Juliet says she was left behind, too, and by people she knew and trusted. She hoped that if Kate thought they were in it together, Kate would not leave her behind in the jungle like they did. Kate unlocks her cuff, and they continue on and reach the barracks. Everyone appears to be gone. Juliet goes to look for Sayid, and Kate goes to get Jack, finding him unconscious on the floor of his house. Kate wakes him up and tells him the Others left because of her. She apologizes and cries for messing up his plans to go home, he ignores her and asks where Juliet is. Kate pulls back emotionally, telling him that they left her, too. They join Juliet and Sayid. Jack suggests taking what they can find and starting back before dark. Sayid objects to Juliet coming with them, but Jack is insistent. Kate and Sayid trade looks, both worried about this new development, and head out.

At the beach

Back at the beach, Hurley tells Sawyer that after the Nikki and Paulo situation with the diamonds, the camp is going to vote on whether or not to "banish" him. Hurley says there are benefits to living as part of a society and suggests he make amends to fix things.

Sawyer tells Hurley he is ready to make amends. He apologizes to Hurley for calling him all those names, is nice to Claire and gives her a blanket for the baby and tells her that Aaron looks less wrinkled since the last time Sawyer saw him, and partners with Desmond to hunt for boar and provide food for the camp. Later, Sawyer roasts the boar and everyone eats. Charlie tells Sawyer he had not heard about any vote, and Sawyer realizes he was conned by Hurley into being nice. Hurley explains that with Jack, Locke, Kate and Sayid gone, Sawyer is all they have, and is the ''de facto'' leader. Sawyer dislikes this idea, but Hurley insists that while Jack didn't like it either, it didn't change the fact that all eyes were on him. Sawyer sees how happy he made people and attempts to keep the good vibes going, even offering to hold Aaron for Claire.

Characters include Elaine and Paul, a married middle-class couple, and their two male children. Paul works in New York City, and Elaine is "staying at home" to rear the children. The couple alternate between proclaiming their happiness and boredom. By the end of the first chapter, they have set fire to their house.

According to her father's wishes, Queen Salina agrees to share the rule of Icena with Justinian, a Roman. This decision angers both the bloodthirsty Druids and Romans less just than Justinian. As the two rulers fall in love, the Druids and the Romans begin to plot their downfall. It's not long before the hills of Britain are stained with the blood of the lovers' followers.

The plot combines elements of life of the historic queen Boudica (featuring the Iceni tribe, combat chariots) with elements seemingly drawn from Vincenzo Bellini's opera ''Norma'', though that is set in Gaul, and William Shakespeare's King Lear.

A vulture hacks at the protagonist's feet until a man passing by asks him why he doesn't do anything about it. The protagonist explains that he is helpless to resist, though at first he tried to drive the vulture away, when he saw that it was about to attack his face he stopped, preferring to sacrifice his feet. The onlooker exclaims, "Fancy letting yourself be tortured like this!", and offers to go and get a gun to shoot the vulture. The protagonist asks him to hurry. The vulture listens to the conversation, then takes wing and thrusts its beak into the protagonist's head, killing him, but also drowning in his blood, as it flows on "filling every depth, flooding every shore."

The player is a dog who lives with their mother, Mar, and younger sibling, Emilio/Maria (depending on the gender chosen) in Puroro Town. Emilio/Maria is sick with a disease that makes them unable to have much time to play outside; their father, Doluk, had travelled in search of a cure, but he never returned. Nevertheless, Emilio/Maria is rebellious and sneaks out to watch their older sibling as they participate in the town's festival that night, only to collapse from exhaustion after getting overexcited. The player decides to take matters into their own hands by sailing with a crew to THE DOG Island to meet with Dr. Potan, a famed doctor; after the local doctor admits that there is nothing that they can do to stop Emilio/Maria’s condition from worsening in the meantime. However, on the way there, the ship is a caught in a storm and the player is separated from the others after jumping into the ocean in an act of defiance after the local sea captain El Dorado calls off the mission during the storm.

The player is rescued and wakes up in the company of Amalia, a resident of Pupsville, THE DOG Island's main village. They also befriend an anc, creatures normally invisible to dogs, called Petasi, who was exiled by his queen for his mischief; to return to the Anc Land, he will have to raise a tree by doing good deeds. They proceed to meet with Dr. Potan, who eventually agrees to go to Puroro Town with a cure. However, even Dr. Potan's cure is not potent enough to cure Emilio/Maria. Instead, Dr. Potan suggests a search for the Legendary Flower, allegedly capable of healing everything, back in THE DOG Island.

The player learns from Obaba, a traditional healer, that the Legendary Flower is well-hidden and can only be found by dogs who are in touch with nature. The player begins learning sniffing from several masters, including Yi Lu, Rode, and finally, the Grand Master Tao, all of whom tell the player that to become a Master, they need to raise the Anc Tree by helping dogs in need. Once the player raises the tree to enough height, Tao tells the player to find a medal in Kunka Ruins, with which they can access Ancient Grove, a sanctuary of flowers that houses the Legendary Flower. Unfortunately, the flower is found wilted.

Thanks to the growth of the Anc Tree, Petasi is allowed to return to the Anc Land, where he goes to with the player. They learn from the Anc Queen that the flower is wilted because the residents of THE DOG Island have forgotten to get in touch with nature, which is simultaneously causing the crust that protects their world to break. To strengthen it back, they will have to hold the Star Festival. She sends the player and Petasi to a deeper portion of Kunka Ruins, where the Stone of the Heavens, a regalia of the festival, is stored. After retrieving the stone and battling a skeleton guardian, the player narrowly manages to escape the ruins before proceeding to hold the festival with the island residents using the stone. This act rejuvenates both the crust and the Legendary Flower. Going back home, the player bids Petasi goodbye.

The end credits show the player giving the flower to Dr. Potan, who uses it to cure Emilio/Maria. In a post-credits scene, Doluk returns home and, to the player's surprise, has brought Petasi in tow.

At MacLaren's, Barney, Marshall, and Lily criticize Ted for overthinking every aspect of his life, rather than simply acting on a whim. Barney convinces Ted to take five shots of bartender Carl's special blend called "Red Dragon;" Ted claims that he can still function cognitively even under the influence of the alcohol, but shortly afterwards he blacks out. He wakes up the next morning with a girl he does not remember beside him in bed, a pineapple on his nightstand, a sprained ankle and his coat partially burnt. Ted asks Marshall and Lily about the night and they tell him that he sang along with the jukebox in the bar while standing on a table. He also repeatedly drunk dialed Robin, who was on a date with a wealthy businessman. He fell off the table, spraining his ankle and Marshall and Lily took him up to his bed. However, they are surprised when Ted asks about the girl on the bed and can shed no light on the pineapple or why Ted's coat is burnt.

Ted calls Barney, thinking that he might know what happened the night before but finds him sprawled in their bathtub. Barney recounts that Ted reappeared at the bar around 1 a.m., but when he began to call Robin again, Barney lit Ted's coat on fire. After some more time spent at the bar, he put Ted back into bed, although similarly has no idea who the mystery girl is. Ted finds that someone wrote on his arm, saying to call the number if Ted was found passed out somewhere. Ted calls the number and reaches Carl, who fills in some more of the story: Ted again returned to the bar at 3 a.m., but Carl refused to serve him. Ted told Carl the meaning of the word "karaoke" and that he wanted to go see some penguins at the zoo, then suddenly called someone and told her come over and do something "crazy". Based on this information, Marshall, Lily, and Barney believe that the mysterious girl in Ted's bed is actually Robin, but as Ted goes to wake her up, Robin calls and tells him she is coming over to discuss the previous night.

The girl in bed, Trudy (Danica McKellar), wakes up and explains her side of the story: she had seen Ted's drunken dancing and they exchanged numbers in the ladies' room of the bar, which Ted had entered and used accidentally. She told Ted the meaning of the word "karaoke" and about her love for penguins, which Ted later mentioned to Carl. It was she whom he later called and invited over, not Robin. Ted tells Trudy to hide when Robin comes over to talk, and Trudy leaves via the fire escape before Ted can show her to Robin to prove that he has moved on. Future Ted explains that Trudy never responded to his subsequent message, and he never did work out where the pineapple came from, but that it was delicious.

In 1971, a grown Buddy returns to his former family home and reflects on his youth during The Great Depression when Rose came to live with his family in order to escape her miserable life in Birmingham, where she was being forced into prostitution. The Hillyers are an eccentric family who take Rose in as a domestic servant. Rose quickly begins to admire Mrs. Hillyer, who is working on her master's thesis and who she learns was orphaned at a young age, just as Rose had been. Rose also develops a crush on the paternal and warm Mr. Hillyer that the three Hillyer children and Mr. Hillyer become aware of while Mrs. Hillyer remains oblivious. Because she is hard of hearing (she carries an early kind of hearing aid) she misses some of the byplay.

Eventually Rose kisses Mr. Hillyer, who at first responds to her advances and then becomes angered at her and rebuffs her. Buddy witnesses Rose and Mr. Hillyer kissing and later, when Rose gets into his bed to talk to him at night, he repeatedly tries and eventually is allowed to grab and massage her breast just as his father had done while he was kissing Rose. Eventually to satisfy his curiosity Rose allows 13-year-old Buddy to masturbate her. Afterwards she is apologetic and upset and begs him not to tell anyone.

The Hillyers begin to disagree about Rose's presence in their lives. Mr. Hillyer worries that Rose is too promiscuous when she goes to town and will cause them problems but Mrs. Hillyer sees her promiscuity as her way of trying to obtain love and attention.

Strange men begin lurking around the house and even fighting with one another. Mr. Hillyer attributes this to Rose but she repeatedly denies knowing them before eventually admitting it. However, Rose is eventually arrested when some of her men begin brawling in a bar over her and she bites the finger of a policeman. Though the police and Mrs. Hillyer are willing to forgive Rose, Mr. Hillyer insists on firing her, but before he can Rose is hospitalized with a bad case of pneumonia. The attending doctor tells them that Rose has too strong a basic constitution to have had the desperately poor country background she has asserted. She develops a passion for the doctor, who spends a rather long time in her bedroom in his visits to her during her convalescence. After she recovers, Rose seems to be on her best behaviour but Mr. Hillyer eventually catches her with another man in her room. He fires her but obtains a position on a dairy farm in Tennessee for her. When he informs Rose she begins crying as she does not want her baby being born on a farm.

Mr. Hillyer believes she is lying about being pregnant and the Hillyers take her to a doctor where they learn that while she is showing signs of being pregnant she actually has an ovarian cyst and is sterile because of untreated gonorrhea contracted when she was 15. The doctor recommends a radical full hysterectomy, involving the removal of the womb and both ovaries, potentially resulting in a less feminine appearance and reduced sexual drive, as it would reduce Rose's promiscuous behaviour. While Mr. Hillyer at first agrees to the operation Mrs. Hillyer argues against it and eventually persuades the two men. Rose is treated for her cyst and returns home where she eventually marries the policeman whose finger she bit. Returning to the 1971 reflection, Buddy reveals that Rose married three more times and was eventually happy with and faithful to her last husband with whom she lived for 25 years. He goes to talk to his father who tells him that Rose died the previous week. When Buddy begins crying Mr. Hillyer tells him that Rose is a person who will never really die as she will live on forever in their hearts.

30-year-old womaniser and drunkard Caspar Laing has just been made Professor of Semitic Languages at Bedfordshire University - or, as he sardonically refers to it, the University of Beds. Prior to taking up his post, he is summoned to the Israeli Embassy to confer with the visiting Professor Agrot. An ancient parchment has recently been discovered that appears to report on the hiding of the Menorah, a holy candelabrum rescued from the Jerusalem Temple before its destruction by the Romans. But the Jordanians have a better copy of the parchment, and both of these refer to the location of a third which has details of the actual hiding place of the holy artefact, dating from the time of King Solomon. According to this account it was only a copy that was taken to Rome after the sack of Jerusalem in 70 CE. The race is on, therefore, to recover the treasure before the Arabs get to it.

The Jordanians have already sent scouting parties into the Mount Tabor area north of Jerusalem in search of the third parchment without success. In hope of treating their parchment with chemicals for greater legibility, Caspar visits an old colleague but is waylaid by Jordanians who try to kidnap him over the frontier. He barely manages to escape in time and hides out with the family of Shoshana, the driver of his military jeep, living in Tel Aviv. There Caspar begins to suspect that the report is full of coded misdirections and leaves southwards to prospect in the barren Wilderness of Zin, where he rescues Shoshana from a flash flood and eventually seduces her.

Another clue alerts Caspar to the fact that not only have directions been reversed but the distances mentioned in the parchment must be halved. This narrows his search to the wilderness area behind the Dead Sea, where the border between Jordan and Israel is imprecisely defined and his search takes him into the rugged terrain on the Jordanian side. No sooner has he located the crucial third parchment than he is spotted by a border patrol and taken for a narcotics smuggler. Escaping with difficulty over the Dead Sea, he reaches the kibbutz where his friends are camped.

What the searchers eventually learn is that the hiding place for the Menorah is beneath the foundations of a new hotel. The question of locating it is debated at a special rabbinic court but the verdict is against disturbing the Menorah's hiding place - not without the suspicion of indirect bribery on the part of Teitleman, the capitalist responsible for building the hotel. Caspar, the foreigner who understands the two-tongued language of the land, then returns to the safety of his academic haven.

A coded message is smuggled out of Russia, a plea for help from the director of a super-secret laboratory deep in the frozen wastes of Siberia. The note is addressed to Johnny Porter, a Canadian Indian of the Gitxsan tribe with a genius for languages. The CIA recruits Porter, who infiltrates Russia, first posing as a Korean sailor on a tramp freighter, then as a Chukchi driver called Khodyan. Working at a transport company, he befriends an employee who gives him sufficient spare parts to build a bobik truck, which he assembles in a cave. Porter also befriends the local doctor, Tanya Komarova, who is also working for the CIA, and they become lovers. With her help, he infiltrates the research facility by switching places with an Evenk employee. The director, Ephraim Rogachev, reveals to Porter the research they have been conducting, including a cure for blindness which the Soviets are concealing because of the military applications of the technology.

The Russian security services become aware that "Khodyan" is not who he says he is, and begin to pursue him. Porter escapes, first in the bobik, then by stealing a plane ticket, a snow-plough, and finally on skis. He makes his way to the Bering Strait where the Soviets finally catch up with him. He escapes to America, but suffers severe wounds including the loss of an eye.

The Americans fake his death, and he sends a message to Komarova to join him.

The film opens as the klutzy Valerie Highsmith arrives at an airport in Puerto Vallarta. She calls her father, a wealthy businessman, to let him know that she has arrived. While she is on the phone, she clumsily leans on the railing of her balcony and falls several stories onto a canvas. Soon after, an encounter with some street thieves knocks her unconscious and she loses her memory, then a local criminal named Frank Grimes spirits Valerie away from her hotel.

A psychologist named Monosoff, knowing that Valerie has ultra bad luck, persuades her father to send one of his employees, Eugene Proctor, an accountant with super bad luck, to find her. Perhaps he will be lucky, and his bad luck could help to find the unlucky girl. Eugene is partnered with Raymond Campanella , a hardnosed investigator, who bristles at Eugene's every move.

As they travel to Mexico together, they endure one mishap after another, from damaged luggage and bad hotel rooms to bar fights with strangers. Eventually, they are told by the local police that Valerie was last seen with Frank Grimes. Eugene thinks that he can press a local prostitute for information, but she robs him. Raymond tracks the prostitute down at a gambling club (run by a man named Fernando) and confronts several men at gunpoint to retrieve Eugene's money. Neither of them realizes that Frank Grimes is seated at the table, until after they drive away and look at his picture one more time.

Raymond and Eugene return to the club and abduct Grimes to find out where Valerie is. He confesses that Valerie's extreme clumsiness required him to keep going to hospitals with her, wiping out all his money. He could no longer afford to keep her hostage. So, Grimes turned Valerie over to Fernando (Puebla). Before Grimes can take them to Valerie, he is killed in a drive-by shooting. The police arrest Raymond and Eugene by mistake. After a short stint in jail, they find out that Grimes had put Valerie on a plane to Mexico City which never arrived, and Valerie is presumed dead in a plane crash.

They charter a plane to look for Valerie's wreckage, hoping that she might have survived. During the flight, Eugene is stung by a bee and swells to an enormous size, due to an allergy. As he recovers at a field hospital, he talks to a local man who tells about a strange woman who wandered into their village one day. She was so grateful for being taken in by the villagers that she offered to make them all breakfast in the morning, but she ended up burning the village down by accident. Musing that she might be Valerie, Raymond shows the man her picture, and he screams in terror.

Raymond and Eugene head towards the burned village in search of Valerie. Eugene nearly drives them off a cliff. After barely escaping, Raymond has had enough of Eugene's dreadful luck. In a rage, he reveals to Eugene that the only reason he was hired to find Valerie was because Monosoff thought Eugene's bad luck would somehow combine with Valerie's to create some good luck. Eugene tries to fight Raymond, but he only manages to knock himself out.

Raymond takes Eugene to a local hospital. Realizing that he has befriended Eugene, he asks the nurse to take extra care with him. When Eugene wakes up, he is in a bed next to Valerie, who has also suffered a head wound. They blithely walk off hand in hand. Raymond discovers their empty beds and spots them on the end of a pier. He shouts at Eugene to let him know that he has found Valerie. Eugene stares at her in a daze and asks, "Valerie?" Hearing her name, Valerie recovers her memory. The film ends with the pair floating down the river on a piece of the pier that has broken off and is headed towards a massive waterfall.

The book focuses on the adventures of its main character and hero Alodar in the fictional land of Procolon. Alodar's self-imposed quest for much of the book is to distinguish himself sufficiently to wed Queen Vendora, which will restore his family's honor.

The book is divided into six parts, the first five of which correspond to the five disciplines of magic learned by Alodar in that portion of the narrative. The final part is entitled "The Archimage" and corresponds to Alodar's mastery of all other forms of magic.

In the first three parts, Alodar learns enough of a particular type of magic to make a notable achievement, but the antagonist of that part usurps Alodar's credit and becomes a recognized suitor to the queen. Alodar is then left with an artifact of some type that allows him to begin learning a new discipline of magic. The first part also introduces , a female character important in the second half of the book.

The fourth part does not feature an artifact; instead, Alodar discovers an ancient wizard placed in suspended animation, who reveals the basics of his craft to Alodar at the start of the fifth part.

The fifth part of the book reveals that Alodar's journey was planned by the ancient wizards, who predicted the now-imminent demonic invasion.

In the sixth and final part, Alodar uses his knowledge of all five magical disciplines in combination to defeat the leader of the demon army. However, Alodar spurns both marriage to the queen and an offer by his previous antagonists to support a coup placing Alodar on the throne; instead, he chooses to marry and continue his apprenticeship.

Lee Yu-rim is a high school English teacher. He's cute, clever... and shameless. Choi Hong is a student teacher, even though she is one year older than Yu-rim. She's cynical and always plays hard-to-get when a man shows interest in her. While going out for drinks one night, Yu-rim suddenly tells Hong that he wants to have sex with her. Hong is hardly impressed. And so begins a battle of will and wits, both between each other and within themselves, as both Yu-rim and Hong are unsure of what each other wants and what they want themselves. Dating and desire mix explosively. What is the point of this strange relationship? What is the object of their desire?

The film is presented in the style of a Laurel and Hardy comedy, with Nixon in the Oliver Hardy role, and Agnew in the Stan Laurel role.

Kitty Bellairs (Claudia Dell), a famous flirt of her day, comes to Bath for the season. Early on in the film she declares that "in spite of her thirty or forty affairs, I've lost not a bit of my virtue." Her path is strewn with a number of conquests, including an enamored highwayman, a lord and some others who hang on her every word. A highwayman stops her coach as she is on her way to Bath and is immediately raptured by Kitty Bellairs. He trades the loot from the passengers for a kiss from Kitty who feels she should "yield" in order to save the life of Lord Varney (Walter Pidgeon), who has gallantly come to defend her honor.

In spite of this, Lord Varney draws his sword and ends up losing the fight when he loses his sword, upon which the highwayman declares, "Blood is not a pretty sight for tender eyes, Retrieve your sword while I go about my business." He proceeds to kiss Kitty who declares she considers herself not to have been kissed at all, upon which the highwayman kisses her several times and slips a ring on her finger leaving her enraptured. Lord Varney, however, is in love with Kitty himself but is extremely bashful and shy. The film then progresses to the city of Bath, where the inhabitants sing an amusing song about their daily lives, and the proceeds to a dance which Kitty is attending. She meets Captain O'Hara (Perry Askam) who declares his love for her. When Lord Varney approaches and asks for his dance from Kitty, Captain O'Hara declares that "it 'was' his dance" and whisks her away. Lord Varney is approached by his friend who laughs at his shyness.

Nevertheless, Lord Varney declares his love for her and decides to write a love poem to Kitty. The film then proceeds to the next day and we see Kitty being tended to by her maid while chatting with her hairdresser about her three lovers. She describes them and asks his opinion on whom she should choose. The film then proceeds to the house of Lady Julia Standish (June Collyer) on whom Kitty is paying a call. Lady Julia's husband is neglecting her and Kitty gives her advice on how to make her husband interested once again. Her husband, Sir Jasper Standish (Ernest Torrence) arrives from a trip to find her dressed elegantly as if expecting a caller. Meanwhile, Kitty places a love note addressed to her in a conspicuous place with a lock of red hair and leaves the house. Through a welter of songs into which the principals break at short intervals she at length decides on a lord instead of a highwayman.

Lord Varney, hearing that Kitty was visiting Lady Standish, comes to call on Kitty at Lord Standish's house. Lord Standish immediately assumes that he is fooling around with his wife and insults him so that he must fight a duel "according to the code" in order to uphold his honor. The report of the scandal soon flies through the town and we are taken to a bath where everyone is talking about the supposed affair. Kitty happens to be there and as soon as she hears the story she begins to fear for the life of Lord Varney, whom she now realizes is the one she really loves. Through a welter of songs into which the principals break at short intervals, as well as outrageous Pre-Code comedy, satire and drama, Kitty and Lord Varney are at length united.

Pre-Code sequences

The film contains several examples of Pre-Code humor. In one scene, an obviously gay hairdresser is talking to Kitty Bellairs about her love affairs. Kitty asks him which man she should choose and the hairdresser says she should choose the highwayman because he prefers "a manly man."

In another scene, Kitty teaches her friend how to get her husband to pay attention to her. Her instructions include wearing Parisian negligee and finding another lover.

On the morning after Sigmund Freud arrives in New York City on his first – and only – visit to the United States in 1909, a stunning débutante is found bound and strangled in her penthouse apartment, high above Broadway. The following night, another beautiful heiress, Nora Acton, is discovered tied to a chandelier in her parents' home, viciously wounded and unable to speak or to recall her ordeal. Soon Freud and his American disciple, Stratham Younger, are enlisted to help Miss Acton recover her memory, and to piece together the killer's identity. It is a riddle that will test their skills to the limit and lead them on a journey into the darkest places of the city, and of the human mind.

Humanity is under attack by a technologically superior alien race known as "Waisters", who threaten to exterminate the human race. Unlike McCarthy's later books, which focus on how technology might change the definition of what it means to be human, ''Aggressor Six'' is military science fiction. The novel is, however, set apart from many other military science fiction novels in that it maintains McCarthy's strict adherence to technical scientific realism. This is particularly evident during the combat scenes – the technological superiority of the aliens renders impractical the standard naval models of combat used in many works of science fiction, requiring a re-examination of the mechanics of space combat. The novel also proposes that aliens, if encountered, will be truly alien – that is, driven by desires and motives which are not immediately obvious to humans.

Letters in the archive correspondence of Chaim Weizmann, first president of Israel, hint that, in his profession as a distinguished organic chemist, Weizmann had stumbled on a method for the cheap synthesis of petroleum. Now, decades later, a world buffeted by oil shocks and perpetually rising prices would welcome such a chemical miracle. But Weizmann's laboratory notebooks must be found first, and an unseen and powerful enemy will stop at nothing to keep them hidden.

Category:1976 novels Category:Thriller novels Category:Novels set in Israel Category:Jonathan Cape books

Someone is killing residents of the hip bohemian London neighborhood of Chelsea, home to literary giants of the past like Virginia Woolf. What thread connects them in someone's mad mind? The only clue is a fragment of film, which accidentally caught images of the murderer, dressed in an outlandish costume and mask.

The narrator, Autumn Moon, is a high school drop-out whose father has abandoned his family for his mistress. He has nightmares about a classmate who committed suicide. Moon works with his friend, Sylvester, as a debt collector for a Triad member and falls for Ping, the daughter of a debtor. She has a fatal kidney disease, so the teenager accepts an assassination contract to pay her medical fees. When Ping dies, Moon decides to take revenge on the world.

Julie Cullen is a young divorced parent, on her own for the past four years since her husband abandoned her and their daughter, Ellen, only a year old at the time. At work, Julie, who is white, meets Frank Richards, who is black, and the two strike up a friendship that blossoms into a romance. Their relationship is strained by the racial prejudices of many around them, including Frank's parents, William and Martha, who oppose the pairing. But ultimately, Frank and Julie decide to persevere through such difficulties. Later on, they get married which leads Julie and Ellen to move in with Frank and his parents. Ellen's arrival immediately softens Martha's heart, but William remains cool toward Julie, steadfast in his belief that Frank and Julie's marriage is a foolish endeavor. His attitude changes only when Frank and Julie have a son together. When William first holds his new grandson, he loses any remaining animosity and the household becomes a happy one for all.

Eventually, Julie's ex-husband, Joe, returns, seeking to establish a visitation relationship with Ellen. However, when he finds that Julie's and Ellen's new family is black, he finds this unacceptable and petitions the court for legal custody of Ellen. Frank's lawyer tells him that Joe is likely to win. Agreeing with the lawyer's analysis, William advises Frank to take Julie and the children and flee the state. Frank, however, decides to stay and fight the case in court. When Julie appeals to Joe directly, it only angers him, and he even briefly attempts to force himself on Julie physically. When Frank learns what has happened, he is intensely frustrated by his inability to defend his wife by directly confronting Joe, since he knows that if he does, that will be the end of whatever small chance he and Julie have of winning the custody case.

The judge in the case looks carefully into Ellen's family situation, including interviewing her directly. She affirms how much she loves Frank and she seems oblivious to the racial issues at play. When the judge asks her about her baby brother being "different" from her, the only thought that occurs to her is that her brother is a boy, while she is a girl. The judge recognizes that the family situation in the Richards home is superior for Ellen in every way except for the fact that she is white, growing up in a black household. While the judge does not condone racial prejudices and agrees that they should be fought, he also says that he cannot ignore that they exist and, if Ellen remains with Frank and Julie, will negatively impact her when she reaches adulthood. For that reason, he grants Joe's petition for custody.

When Joe arrives to pick up Ellen, she is excited, initially under the impression that her father is taking her for a short visit from which she will soon return. When she finally realizes that she's being sent to live with him permanently and that her brother is remaining behind, she assumes that she is being punished for having misbehaved in some way. Joe loads Ellen and her clothes into a taxi as the family looks on in sorrow. As the taxi drives away with Joe and Ellen in the back seat, she helplessly presses her face against the car's rear window, shouting back to her mother, pleading to be allowed to stay and promising that she will be a good girl.

Namson Lau (Andy Lau) is a ballroom dancing instructor. On stage, he is a refined and suave gentleman, but in reality, he is cunning and greedy, and dancing has become a mean to strike fortune for him, without any other levels of significance. Kam (Sandra Ng) possesses mediocre qualifications and have been living a dull life in toil, but is optimistic in nature. One time in a ball held by aristocrat Tina Cheung (Anita Mui), Namson performs a dance with Tina which Kam witnesses, who is enchanted by Namson's elegant dance movements, and decides to enroll in Namson's dance courses, hoping to fulfill of dream of dancing elegantly with him. Meanwhile, Namson was also entrusted by Tina's younger brother, Jimmy (Edison Chen), to instruct his sister in tango. On one hand, Kam works hard in part-time jobs to pay her dance tuition, while on the other hand, Namson works to fulfill his dream of buying his dream dance studio in Central and participate in the Blackpool Dance Festival in England. Because of this, Namson have been neglecting the influence that dance brings to his students, and only cares about making money from his students, like the time where he met Tina at the ball, where his cool was to lure Tina into taking dance lessons from him and earning high tuition fees.

While teaching Tina and Kam, Namson gradually realizes how he has been lost about the art of dance. Seeing him in this condition, Kam organizes a party with her fellow dance students for Namson to be happy. The joy of the students dancing in the party gave a positive influence to Namson and the unsociable Tina, who becomes more outgoing. Afterwards, Tina also teaches Kam tango that she learned from Namson, and also purchases Namson's dream studio as a gift to him. At this time, Namson realizes he had fallen in love with Kam. Namson also gets into a moral dilemma of whether to be with Tina in order to fulfill his dream, or Kam, whom he truly loves and who has been highly supportive of him.

In a rich-boy/poor-girl story along the lines of ''Love Story,'' college students Michael Hillyard (Collins) and Nancy McAllister (Quinlan) are in love. While visiting a park overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, they hide a costume jewelry necklace under a large rock, promising that they will love each other as long as it remains undisturbed—which they expect to be forever.

Michael goes to his mother, Marion (Straight), and announces his plans to marry Nancy, but she thinks Nancy will hurt Michael's career with their family business. Michael storms out of his mother's home, calls Nancy and makes plans to elope. He asks his best friend Ben Avery (Michael O'Hare) to be best man.

On the way to the ceremony, the three are involved in a horrific car crash. Ben escapes with minor injuries, but Michael is rendered comatose, and Nancy suffers severe facial injuries. While Nancy is still groggy and heavily bandaged, Marion makes an underhanded deal with her: Marion will send Nancy to California and pay a plastic surgeon to restore her face; Dr. Peter Gregson (Luckinbill) is the surgeon Marion has chosen, since she can also, and eventually does, bribe him heavily to serve as her barrier against Michael. The catch is that Nancy will not be permitted to return to Boston or contact Michael again unless he contacts her, with the implication being that he will decide if he wants the relationship to continue after the trauma of the accident. Believing that Michael will find her once he wakes up, Nancy agrees. However, when Michael comes out of his coma, Marion lies to him, telling him that Nancy had died in the accident.

Time passes, and Nancy undergoes a series of successful surgeries to repair her face (although she looks significantly different than before the accident). Once healed, she changes her name to Marie Adamson and becomes a successful photographer. Michael becomes a successful architect with his family's business, designing multimillion-dollar business skyscrapers. His company takes a contract to design a building in San Francisco. Ben, who also now works for the company, visits a gallery where Marie's photographs are being displayed. He approaches Marie; she recognizes him, but he does not recognize her. He tries to talk to her about her doing photographs to be displayed in new buildings being designed. Once she learns of Michael's involvement, she refuses to have anything to do with the project.

Michael sees samples of Marie's work and finds himself inexplicably drawn to it. He begins pursuing Marie to engage her to do the project, unaware that she is actually Nancy. Initially, Marie refuses, but eventually Michael starts to wear her down. Marie asks him about the scar above his eyebrow (from the accident). Michael becomes visibly tense, and stoically dismisses it, saying it was from "a small accident" that he has now forgotten. Marie takes his comments to mean that he has forgotten about her (Nancy). She tells Michael she will have nothing to do with him, leaving him in confusion. She goes to Dr. Gregson, the plastic surgeon who repaired her face and with whom she is now involved romantically, and tells him she will be finished with her old life after making one last trip to the east coast.

Later that evening, Michael searches for Marie. Eventually he goes to the home of the plastic surgeon. There, he sees a completed painting which Nancy had started during their romance. He finally realizes "Marie Adamson" is actually Nancy McAllister, and that his mother Marion had lied to him.

In the climactic scene, Nancy reaches the rock. After a struggle, she dislodges it, only to discover that the necklace is not there. While she tries to understand, Michael appears with the necklace in hand, having gotten there first. They clear the misunderstanding and reunite with a passionate kiss.

Halsy Knox, a professional dirt bike racer, runs into Little Fauss, an amateur racer, after a race held near Phoenix, Arizona. They strike up a friendship as Fauss is attracted to Halsy's carefree lifestyle. However, Fauss's father regards Halsy as a bad influence on his son and refuses to help Halsy when his truck breaks down. When Halsy arrives later at the motorcycle repair shop where Fauss is employed, he tricks the admiring Fauss into repairing his motorcycle for free.

When Fauss breaks his leg in a desert race, Halsy, who has been barred from racing due to drinking at the track, proposes that they form a partnership in which Halsy would race under Fauss's name with Fauss serving as the mechanic. Fauss joins Halsy on the motorcycle racing circuit despite his parents' disapproval. Fauss is constantly confronted with his inferiority to Halsy, both on and off the racetrack. Their partnership is finally broken when Rita Nebraska, a drop-out from a wealthy background, arrives at the racetrack and immediately attaches herself to Halsy, despite the attention Fauss pays her. Fauss returns home to his parents to find his father has died. Several months later, Halsy visits him and attempts to ditch Rita, who is now pregnant. Fauss, however, refuses to take her. He informs Halsy that he plans to reenter the racing circuit. The two men race against each other a short time later at the Sears Point International Raceway. Halsy's motorcycle breaks down. As he leaves the track, he hears the announcement that Fauss has taken the lead. The story is human variation on the children's fable of the plodding turtle beating the swift, but cocky rabbit in a race due to character, not talent.

In addition to the above Plot summary, at the Sears Point meeting Fauss tells Halsy that he has been drafted. The difference between these two characters is further defined.

Jeanne and Jean are newlyweds in a rural village in Medieval France. But on Jeanne's wedding night, she is brutally gang-raped in a ritual deflowering by the local baron and his courtiers. She returns to Jean terrified and he attempts to calm her by saying they can start over from that moment. Shortly after they embrace, however, Jean strangles Jeanne to a state of unconsciousness. Ashamed, he flees outside their home.

That night, Jeanne begins to see visions of a phallic-headed spirit who promises her power. The spirit tells her it heard her calling for help, and that it can grow as big and powerful as she wants it to. As a result, the couple's fortunes rise even as famine strikes the village and the baron raises taxes to fund his war effort. Formerly exhausted by his life of menial labor, Jean is elevated to the role of tax collector. But the baron cuts off Jean’s hand as punishment when he could not extract enough money from the village, leaving him miserable and drunk.

The spirit visits Jeanne once again (having grown in size) and rapes her in exchange for more riches. Although she submits her body, she attests that her soul still belongs to Jean and to God. Shortly after, Jeanne takes out a large loan from a usurer and sets herself up in the same trade, eventually becoming the true power in the village. The baron returns victorious from his war, and his wife, envious of the respect and admiration Jeanne received, calls her a witch and turns the villagers against her. Running from the mob, Jeanne tries to return home to Jean, but he refuses to open the door and she is assaulted.

That evening, when soldiers come to arrest her, she flees into the nearby forest. In the wilderness, she finally makes a pact with the spirit, who reveals himself to be the Devil. She is granted magical powers, and returns to find the village has been infected with the Bubonic plague. Jeanne uses her powers to create a cure for the disease, and the village flocks to her for aid. Having won their favor, Jeanne presides over orgiastic rites among the villagers.

A page, who is in love with the baron's wife, begs Jeanne to help him seduce her. She gives him a potion that causes the baron's wife to accept his advances, but the baron catches his wife sleeping with the page and kills them both. Perturbed by Jeanne's power, the baron sends Jean to invite her to a meeting. The couple reconcile and Jeanne accepts the invitation. In exchange for sharing her cure for the plague, the baron offers to make Jeanne the second-highest noble in the land, but she refuses, saying she wishes to take over the entire world.

Angered at her refusal, the baron orders Jeanne burnt at the stake. Jean is killed by the baron's soldiers when he tries to retaliate, which angers the villagers. As Jeanne is burned, the faces of the villagers transform into Jeanne's, fulfilling a priest's warning that if a witch is burnt while her pride is intact, the evil in her soul will survive and spread to influence everyone around her. Centuries later, the influence of Jeanne's spirit initiates The French Revolution.

In Budapest in 1880, two twin daughters, Dóra and Lili, are born. After their mother dies, the twins support themselves by selling matches in the street. When they fall asleep one night, two men take their matches and, after a coin flip, each takes a girl and they go their separate ways.

On New Year's Eve 1900, Dóra, a drifter, finds herself aboard the Orient Express trying to scam two men out of money. In Austria, Lili, now a revolutionary, boards the train where she is briefly seen by Dóra, who is drunk and instantly forgets her.

At a library, Lili encounters Z, a man who will not stop staring at her. The two become acquainted and Z falls in love with her, but Lili, who is carrying a bomb which she plans to use to kill the minister of the interior, remains focused on her politics even when her plot fails.

Later, Z encounters Dóra on a boat. Believing her to be Lili, he gives her the number of his cabin where she robs him and the two later have sex.

When Z and Lili meet again, he takes her to his apartment. Lili, who had previously sexually rejected Z, apologizes to him and tells him she regrets her previous decision. Believing that Lili is apologizing for robbing him, Z takes her to his apartment and they have sex. The following evening Lili attacks the minister with a bomb, but after looking into his eyes she blows out the bomb and runs away. Seeking refuge from a crowd of police, Lili hides in a fun house where, turning a corner, she sees Dóra. Z finds his way there as well and briefly sees them both together before the two run away from him.

A narrator explains that there is a test hidden in the SATs which measures an applicant's ability to fight, cheat, lie and kill. Female students who score well on this hidden test are selected to become members of the secret paramilitary group D.E.B.S. which stands for Discipline, Energy, Beauty and Strength.

Focusing on one squad of D.E.B.S. composed of the team captain Amy, the tough Max, French exchange student Dominique, and the prissy and insecure Janet, all of whom face off against a ruthless villain named Lucinda Reynolds, also known as Lucy in the Sky.

Spoofing television prime time shows, a recap shows the team's boss Mr. Tibbs explaining that Lucy in the Sky was spotted entering the United States again. Max is frustrated knowing that for some reason Lucy keeps capturing Amy and the team has to rescue her. Amy is captured, leading to Max to take over the team to lead them to Lucy's hideout in a dockside warehouse. Max, Janet, and the chain-smoking Dominique make entry into Lucy's hideout and soon are facing off in a gun battle with Lucy's henchmen, led by her right-hand man Billy Skids.

Meanwhile, unknown to either Lucy's henchmen or the D.E.B.S., Lucy and Amy are lovers and Lucy keeps capturing Amy so that the two of them can have sex, with Amy timing them to know when her colleagues will appear to "rescue" her. This time Lucy becomes frustrated over the same routine they have to go through over their secret romance each time. Amy then tells Lucy that she really loves her, and Lucy is happy.

Elsewhere, Max, Janet, and Dominique defeat Lucy's henchmen (with Dominique never dropping the cigarette she's smoking, and Max having an all-too-brief meeting of minds with Skids during their fistfight, while Janet is just determined not to get her favorite sweater ruined). The three D.E.B.S. arrive at a locked door to Lucy's quarters where they hear Amy screaming out, leading them to try to break down the door. But Amy is not screaming in pain, but in passion as she climaxes from the sex. Lucy and Amy quickly dress where Amy tells Lucy that she can capture her again next week during the D.E.B.S. mission to Uganda. On cue from Amy, Lucy punches her out and makes her escape as Max, Janet, and Dominique arrive, none of them aware to Amy's secret tryst with the enemy. Amy thanks them for rescuing her—again. The four D.E.B.S. walk out of the warehouse and into the sunset as Janet asks Amy if that is her sweater that she's wearing and if she got blood or any dirt on it.

A story that Robin did on her news channel was nominated for a Local Area Media Award (or as Lily calls it, a LAMA – pronounced LAME-a), and Robin has invited everyone to come to the awards banquet. Since she notified everyone three months in advance, Ted told her he would be bringing Victoria. Right before the awards banquet, Ted ended his relationship with Victoria and ruined his chances with Robin at the same time, and is wondering if he should still bring a date. Barney suggests getting Ted a prostitute as a date, which Ted immediately dismisses. Barney shows up a bit later with a stunning blonde-haired woman named Mary for Ted, and Ted again refuses until he sees Robin's date for the banquet: Sandy Rivers, the guy who reads the newspaper on the news show every morning and requests that he always be referred to by his full name. Ted then agrees, and Mary is his date for the evening.

At the banquet, Ted finds himself more and more attracted to Mary, who says she is a paralegal at a law firm downtown. Ted tries to talk to Robin to restore their friendship, but fails. Robin wins the award, and thanks all of her friends for coming and supporting her, except Ted. Meanwhile, Barney has got Ted a room in the hotel for the night, and Ted is beginning to think about whether he and Mary should go up to the room. Marshall tries to stop him, but without success. Ted and Mary head up to the room, while Robin and Sandy Rivers get a cab. Shortly afterward, Robin returns, reiterating that she does not date co-workers, and she brought Sandy Rivers only to make Ted jealous, and Marshall tells her that Ted brought Mary to make Robin jealous. Marshall then telepathically tells Lily that Mary is a prostitute, and Lily, who is asleep, wakes up and asks if Mary is indeed an escort. After a minute, Barney reveals that Mary is not really a prostitute, but a paralegal who lives in his building. Ted does not know this, and Mary eventually slaps him and leaves when Ted insists that she's a prostitute.

At the bar, Barney insists to Ted that the reason he got on so well with Mary the 'paralegal' was because he thought he was on to a sure thing anyway, but Ted reveals that he's had the last laugh by never checking out of the hotel room, and leaves to increase the already hefty bill on Barney's credit card.

Issue #1 – Denial

Wolverine confronts the Winter Soldier about the improbability of Captain America dying from the gunshot wounds suffered at the court house; especially since both Captain America and Winter Soldier, the former Bucky, have both been thought to be dead at one time yet survived. Unable to get Winter Soldier to agree on a trip to S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters to see with their own eyes whether or not Cap is dead, Wolverine recruits the aid of Daredevil whose enhanced senses would enable him to sort out the truth from the deception. Using some enchantments created by Doctor Strange, the duo make their way into the main S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier and to the holding cell of Crossbones, the man who made the first shot on Captain America. After a brief interrogation, Wolverine attempts to intimidate Crossbones into attacking him and therefore granting him an excuse to seek revenge but Daredevil refuses to allow it, stating that everything Crossbones told them was the truth.

As Daredevil departs, Wolverine makes his way to where S.H.I.E.L.D. is keeping Captain America's body to determine once and for all the truth of the matter, only to be confronted by Iron Man and Hank Pym. Wolverine looks inside the coffin and notices to his disgust that Cap's shield is missing; accusing Stark of planning to create a replacement. Although Pym attempts to detain him, Iron Man lets Wolverine go for the simple reason that he can tell the others that Steve Rogers, Captain America, is indeed dead. As he leaves, Wolverine warns Iron Man that if he learns that Stark had anything to do with Cap's death, he would kill him.

Issue #2 – Anger

As Wolverine and Daredevil infiltrate the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier, Iron Man contacts the Mighty Avengers who are en route to prevent the super-villain Tiger Shark from attacking a coastal missile base. Tiger Shark has stolen the so-called "Horn of Gabriel" from Atlantis, which can summon terrible sea monsters to his side. During the fight Tiger Shark boasts that he'll finally gain the respect he deserves and a furious Ms. Marvel begins to savagely beat him until the Sub-Mariner arrives to calm the raging monsters. Condemning the brutality used by them against both Tiger Shark and the sea monsters as an outlet for their anger regarding Cap's death, Namor takes Tiger Shark into custody and reveals he learned there are missiles hidden in the coastline of Maine. As Namor warns the Mighty Avengers that he will retaliate if Atlantis is ever attacked, Ares asks Ms. Marvel if they won and if so then that was all that mattered.

Meanwhile, the Thing joins a poker game organized by the New Avengers along with Young Avengers Patriot and Hawkeye at the Sanctum Sanctorum. Tensions are running high and conversation soon turns to Cap's death and recent events caused by the Civil War. Sensing how close things are to boiling over, Patriot and Hawkeye leave the game to take out their frustration on some bad guys just as Wolverine returns from his quest aboard the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier. Wolverine informs the other Avengers that he saw Cap's body. Wolverine and Spider-Man get into a dispute, and The Thing separates them, then points out that fighting each other won't alleviate either of their pain regarding the loss of someone like Cap. Spider-Man leaves the game and Wolverine shadows him to make sure the webslinger gets home safe while the others decide to resume playing rather than discuss it any further.

Issue #3 – Bargaining

Clint Barton summons Tony Stark to the deserted old Avengers' Mansion and confronts him over the death of Steve Rogers. Stark then takes Barton into custody at the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier to confirm that he is, in fact, Clint Barton – back from the grave. Upon confirmation of his identity, Stark reveals Captain America's real shield and Barton has the chance to take the shield for a spin (literally) on the helicarrier deck. When he proves he can handle it effectively, unlike others who have tried, Stark makes Barton an incredible offer: to restore Captain America to the people of the United States.

Stark takes Barton out on patrol and they discover Elijah Bradley and the new Hawkeye, Kate Bishop, defeating Firebrand. Stark confronts the duo about their violation of the Superhuman Registration Act to which Hawkeye replies by disabling Iron Man with an E.M.P. arrow. As Hawkeye and Patriot attempt to flee into the sewers, they find themselves approached by Barton as Captain America. Barton confronts Kate Bishop about her assumption of the Hawkeye mantle to which she claims that she did so to honor him but would never disgrace his memory by attempting to copy or replace him, as she and Patriot accuse Barton of trying to do with Captain America. As Stark's Iron Man armor reboots, Barton allows Patriot and Hawkeye to escape and he immediately returns the shield to Stark, realizing that Iron Man's desire to find a replacement Cap was more an attempt to alleviate Stark's own guilt over Rogers' death rather than the comfort of the American people. Barton promises to mail Stark back Rogers' costume and Iron Man vows to pursue Barton if he sides with the New Avengers. Barton doesn't reply and Stark is left to stand alone in the rain.

Issue #4 – Depression

Spider-Man visits his Uncle Ben's grave, reflecting that while a true hero's legacy is judged by the lives he's saved, his will be judged by those he's lost; citing Uncle Ben, his parents, Harry Osborn, Gwen Stacy, her father, and now Captain America. He laments that although Uncle Ben told him that there would be 'days that would test him', he does not know if he can bear it anymore. Just then, his thoughts are interrupted by his spider-sense which alerts him to the presence of the Rhino. Believing that Rhino is somehow up to something, Spider-Man attacks him and in an attempt to defend himself, Rhino accidentally breaks his mother's headstone. As he reveals that he was only visiting his mother's grave, Spider-Man realizes his mistake but is too late to prevent Rhino from going into a rage. As Rhino proceeds to beat him to a pulp, Spider-Man recalls a time when he went against the Hulk and was nearly killed until Captain America came to his aid. Realizing he won't be saved this time, Spider-Man wills himself to his feet and defeats Rhino much in the same way Cap defeated the Hulk.

At that moment, Wolverine reveals himself and begrudgingly congratulates Spider-Man who brushes him off before heading to the Brooklyn Bridge where Gwen Stacy died. Wolverine follows him and an angry Spider-Man accuses him of being incapable of understanding what he's feeling. Wolverine then describes a condition like having a cannon shot through one's stomach, leaving a hole that has a tendency to reopen again and again, though the hole heals back faster each time it is reopened. Spider-Man asks if the pain ever goes away and Wolverine explains that you never 'get over' a death. You simply have to learn to live with the pain, and life will get better... someday.

Issue #5 – Acceptance

Captain America is given a funeral with full military honors (in a ceremony usually reserved for the president), and many thousands are in attendance, not to count the people watching on TV. Among the audience and speakers are Tony Stark, Sam Wilson, Hank Pym, Janet van Dyne, Ben Grimm, and a number of other heroes both old and modern, as well as their loved ones and the people Cap inspired. Tony is given the first opportunity to speak, but a wave of emotion renders him incapable of speaking anything besides "It wasn't supposed to be this way...". Sam then gets up and takes over, starting with a history of the names Cap was once called by, and pointing out that despite that, it was always Steve Rogers who really mattered. He speaks of how soldiers and heroes of yesteryear were inspired to be what they are simply by watching Cap in action. He asks them to stand up, and recounts the events that froze Cap and helped him survive to the modern day. He mentions—with emphasis on why he couldn't be in attendance—how Namor was involved in bringing him back. Then he asks all those inspired by Cap's return to stand up as well, including heroes and those who supported the heroes. He references the New Avengers (not by name), who wanted to be there, but couldn't. At Dr. Strange's house, they are watching the funeral and discussing why they didn't go; Spider-Man says it would have been worth the risk. Sam concludes by saying that with everyone in attendance proving they were inspired by Cap—since by this point literally everyone is standing—it shouldn't be a sad day, but one of celebration of all the things Steve Rogers would have wanted.

Three days later, in the arctic, Iron Man, Wasp and Yellowjacket land in a S.H.I.E.L.D. ship with Rogers' casket. Tony mentions that the body in Arlington isn't really Cap's, but a decoy to please the public, and that this funeral would have been what Steve really wanted. The real body is here, and it will rest in the Arctic forever, the rationale being that he was preserved in peace here for decades until he could be revived, and so it was the best place for him to rest forever. Tony says a heartfelt good-bye, reflecting on their past together in the Avengers, and showing that despite their conflict during Civil War, he still cared for him. Namor appears, revealing that he too is touched by the death, and that as long as he rules the oceans, Steve Rogers will rest in peace. Janet then asks Tony whether everyone must now accept that the old era is finally over and a new one is beginning. The casket sinks slowly into nothingness without an answer.

Mavis Turner conducts instruction in tap dancing inside a Buffalo, New York church basement. Once an aspiring Broadway hoofer, Mavis is now merely trying to make ends meet, while also struggling with a personal relationship with a career-frustrated musician boyfriend.

With the glum Mrs. Fraser accompanying on piano, Mavis tries to teach tap to a class of colorful women and a solitary man, the bashful Geoffrey. Few are aware at first that one woman, Andi, is seeking a form of escape from a physically abusive husband. Others with a variety of extroverted personalities attend class simply for their own amusement, occasionally getting on each other's nerves.

Concerned about money and keeping the class going, Mavis learns of a talent competition and persuades the group that it can compete. While dealing with their personal issues, the "Mavis Turner Tappers" end up performing a glamorous, glitzy number on stage, flawed but rewarding to all.

Danny Hogan, a truck driver disaffected with his job at Torgus Trucking, meets beautiful Velma Reed in a seedy Los Angeles bar where she has been working as the bartender's shill, enticing lonely men to buy drinks. Danny doesn't recognize Velma, but the two of them attended the same high school in a distant city, where they were only casually acquainted.

Danny was expelled from high school after being caught using loaded dice in an after-school craps game. A short time later, and unbeknownst to Danny, Velma became pregnant and also left school and their home town. Now, a dozen years later, Velma recognizes Danny and renews their acquaintance. Appealing to his greed and his masculinity, she convinces him to use his skills with crooked dice in a confidence game to help her separate convention-goers from their money. At first reluctant because of a beating he received in the Army after being caught using altered dice, Danny eventually agrees, hoping to amass enough money to start his own trucking company. He soon comes to realize that Velma, too, has a loftier purpose in mind—buying a motel in Las Vegas that she can operate, in order to become "legit" and no longer feel ashamed of the way she earns money to support her young son, whom she has placed in a boarding school.

The bulk of the novel's action surrounds Velma's artful pickup of likely suckers at conventions, mostly in California cities, and Danny's subsequent fleecing of them in craps games. Their adventures bring them into contact with a number of ordinary and extraordinary characters, including a gay con artist toward whom Danny displays a disdain that was probably more politically correct in 1957 than it seems now. Various close calls ensue, and Danny loses some of his enthusiasm for the con. He tells Velma he wants to quit, but she convinces him to run the con with her one last time.

Along the way, and unbeknownst to Danny, Velma and another male friend, Joe Lovelli, have committed blackmail. Velma has twice enticed men to her hotel room, where Joe waited in a closet with a camera. Using infrared film, Joe snapped photographs of the men in compromising positions with Velma. The blackmailers then extorted—or attempted to extort—hush-up money from their victims. Danny remains unaware of Velma and Joe's sideline until near the end of the book, when Velma's second blackmail victim, a mob-related big shot, propels the novel to its climax in a fatal car chase.

After struggling with a conflict between conscience and ambition, Danny mails the bulk of his dishonest gambling earnings to Velma's young son, keeping only enough to buy a good used truck so that he and Jill Conner—the pretty, young, former office manager at Torgus Trucking—can start their own trucking firm.

Category:1957 American novels Category:Novels by Al Fray Category:Novels set in California

On a stormy night, a group of members of London's high society got stuck in the mud. They seek refuge in a remote country house. There they are received by the mysterious Uriat and his taciturn mother. Uriat explains to the guests that his mother has media skills and can communicate with the dead. Some guests are amused and persuaded to take part in a spiritualistic session. But when the old woman begins to tell those present details from the past, the mood quickly changes. It turns out that everyone present has a dark secret with them and the group is entangled in a web of mutual deception, affairs and acts of violence. The hosts are also part of this network, as it finally turns out. You were once charged with a double homicide for which those present are responsible, and seek revenge. None of the guests survived.

The script is based on Robert Grave's enigmatic poem, Beauty in Trouble and it begins with these words set to music sung by a chanteuse who accompanies herself with an accordion.

The film is a naturalistic love story about the sex life of a beautiful woman, Marcela, and her concurrent relationships with three men; Jarda, her abusive husband, Risha, her abusive step-father, and Evzen, a dashing, older man she meets shortly after the film begins. With her husband, Jarda, she enjoys lustful sex and his physical abusiveness is an extension of a chauvinism that powers strong sexual encounters, but he is vain and not particularly bright about this. Richard, her mother's husband is unwittingly cruel, like an obnoxious and malicious child. He is played like one of Steve Martins "wild and crazy guys" but more repulsively. Evžen, who becomes Marcela's benefactor/meal ticket, is a man of sophisticated tastes and fortunate parentage, a Czech who has inherited vineyards in Tuscany, to which home he takes Marcela and her two children.

At the beginning of the story, Marcela, Jarda and their children are living in Prague above the garage where Jarda operates his chop shop. She isn't happy with this situation. Jarda couldn't care less how she feels about their situation and is even less interested in the health of their son, who is suffering because of their living conditions. By chance, Jarda's associate steals Evžen’s car, which is equipped with a satellite tracking device and when Jarda goes to prison, Marcela takes her children to her mother's apartment, where they are met with Risha's venomous attention. Marcela despises her mother’s lecherous boyfriend and it eventually comes out that Risha fathered her first child and she escaped into marriage with Jarda at the age of seventeen.

Evžen and Marcela meet at the police station, when they both came to deal with the fate of Jarda. Taken by her, although she doesn't encourage it, Evzen offers to help her and eventually, her children move into Jarda's empty manse in Prague when life with Risha becomes unbearable. Marcela gives herself to Evzen and they move to Italy but when Marcela’s mother dies, she and the children come back to Prague to the funeral where she sees Jarda, now released from prison. She and Jarda have one of their typical sexual encounters and when he speaks to her as he did during their marriage she pushes him away and leaves. Jarda's character is patently chauvinistic, which turns her on but insults her afterwards. When they return to Italy, ironically, Evjzen invites Risha to come with them to live in their guest house.

After Kevin, a high school senior, is dumped by his girlfriend Gina for being too boring, he does not want to go to the freshman orientation weekend at Fieldmont University, which they had planned to attend together. However, Kevin's best friends Carter and Morris convince him that the weekend away will help get his mind off her, having been told by their friend Fletcher about a weekend visiting his brother at college in which he got laid by three college chicks at once. This convinces Kevin to go to Fieldmont for the freshmen orientation to prove to his ex-girlfriend that he can be fun instead of boring. Once they are there, one of the rowdiest fraternities on campus pretends to recruit them as pledges in return for granting them access to the college party scene. Though forced to put up with the disgusting antics of fraternity brothers Teague, Bearcat, and Cooper, the guys meet sorority girls Kendall, Heather, and Amy, and sparks fly. But once Teague feels threatened by Kevin's new relationship with Kendall, who once dated Teague, he takes the pre-frosh humiliation to a greater level and make their lives miserable and start bullying them out of their college. The guys decide to fight back and get payback for ruining their weekend, and Morris's college scholarship, and Kevin's chance to attend Fieldmont. During the climax, Teague is arrested, Bearcat is superglued to a toilet, and Cooper is duct taped to a statue naked. After Kevin sent Gina a video of him having fun at a party at Fieldmont, she asks him to get back together with her, but he refuses. Kevin tells his friends about a new college weekend they can visit; Morris is being punished by his parents for messing up his college scholarship, but he says he can sneak out. All three of them decide to go.

Rosalie Greenspace is an expatriate German woman living in rural Arkansas with her eccentric American husband Ray (Liebling), who works as a crop-duster airplane pilot. They have seven children: Kindi, the eldest son who is a US Army soldier stationed out of state; Barbara, the eldest daughter who is a good-natured overachieving college student; Schatzi, an underachieving high school student; Schnucki, a flamboyant gourmet cook; teenage twin girls who are never named; and Herzi, the youngest child. Rosalie loves to shop too much to let a little thing like no money stop her. Every day she goes on lavish shopping sprees in the nearby small town of Stuttgart (the same name of her hometown in Germany) where she forges checks, uses false credit cards, and other means to supplement her livelihood with purchases of fancy foods for Kindi to cook and various clothing and appliances for her large house. A devout Catholic, she has a twisted view on religion when she goes every day to a small church and confesses her sins of stealing and swindling to a local priest, believing that if she confesses her crimes to her priest, her "sins" will not become sins anymore.

Schatzi is dating April, a girl from his high school whom he brings over to the house one day to meet the family for dinner. April is awkward about the Greenspace family's antics as well as their obsession with watching videotaped TV commercials as their only form of entertainment. She soon leaves Schatzi, finding his family too weird.

Rosalie's parents come for a visit one day from Germany, and Kindi also arrives for a visit after taking a leave of absence from the military. During the week of the visits, both of Rosalie's parents, as well as Kindi, find her self-indulgent spending of other people's money illegal, but Rosalie appears oblivious to her own actions. However, when the local shopkeepers no longer take her bad checks or bad credit cards, Rosalie is reduced to stealing from her eldest daughter, Barbara's, checking account to buy gifts for her parents, which earns Barbara's wrath and contempt as she finally realizes that her mother is out of control with stealing and spending.

After Rosalie's parents leave to return to Germany, and Kindi returns to the Army, Rosalie is left all by herself as she ponders an end to her spending lifestyle. Rosalie is even forced to abandon her daily food shopping sprees to purchase expensive food for Schnucki to cook and instead is forced to bring home cheap fast food and take-out pizza for the family in place of the fancy daily dinners that Schnucki prepares. In the meantime, Ray begins having problems with his eyesight and nearly crashes his crop-duster biplane during a routine run which gets him fired from the aviation company he works at.

Life now begins looking pretty bleak for Rosalie until Barbara pushes her into buying a "guilt gift" of a PC; a modern-for-the-time desktop computer, complete with a modem. After first using the computer for some Internet and Prodigy surfing skills, Rosalie gets an inspiration when she has a talk with her friendly mailman, where after she confides in him about her financial predicament, he tells her: "when you're $100,000 in debt, it's your problem. But when you're $1 million in debt, it's the bank's."

Impersonating a wealthy German businesswoman, Rosalie travels to the state capital of Little Rock and meets with a bank president for a large loan to open a new multinational corporation which she receives due to her falsified credentials she forged. Afterwards, Rosalie now has access to the bank's financial records and, with the help of her new PC, she evolves from a "master shopper" into a "master hacker", and Rosalie is soon back spending money once again.

As the film comes to an end, Rosalie, using her new ill-gotten wealth of $2 million that she steals from the large bank, buys for Ray a new crop-dusting airplane so he can open his own crop-dusting business, and has him visit an eye doctor where he gets a pair of eyeglasses which cures him of his vision problem. She also goes back to her church where she confesses her latest crimes to the bewildered priest and plots to flee the country with her family with her new millions to use abroad. As a farewell gift for the priest, she purchases a large and brand-new copper bell for the church.

Dr Monja is a scientist, who is curious about the nature of the legendary "Elixir of Life" which grants the user eternal lifetimes and forever youth. He built a device called the "Time Tunnel" in order to let a team of youngsters to start a quest down the timeline and various spaces to find an exact answer. The Akudama Trio, however, is also seemingly after exactly the same thing. Who will get it first?

Millionaire Otis Jarrell offers to hire Wolfe to get his daughter-in-law Susan out of his house. He is convinced that she has ruined several of his business deals by leaking confidential information to his competitors, and he suspects her of infidelity toward his son Wyman. Wolfe refuses to get involved in what he sees as a marital disagreement, but accepts a $10,000 retainer from Jarrell to hire Archie as a live-in secretary. Taking the alias "Alan Green," Archie is to replace the previous secretary, whom Jarrell had fired one week earlier on suspicion of being the source of the leak.

Arriving at the Jarrell penthouse on the following Monday, Archie meets the rest of the family and associates, including Jarrell's wife Trella; his grown children, Wyman and Lois; Wyman's wife Susan; Trella's brother, Roger Foote; and Jarrell's stenographer, Nora Kent. Over the course of the week, Archie learns from Trella that Jarrell had made a pass at Susan but was rejected; he also encounters James L. Eber, Jarrell's former secretary, having a private conversation with Susan. Nora explains that he had visited the penthouse in order to retrieve some papers from his desk.

Shortly after Archie sees Eber, Jarrell discovers that someone has sneaked into his library and stolen a .38 revolver from his desk, holding up a rug to foil a security camera at the doorway. Jarrell believes that Susan is responsible for the theft, but Archie reports to Wolfe the next day and is dispatched to investigate Eber's apartment. There he finds Eber's body, shot in the head; news of the murder reaches Jarrell the following morning, throwing him into a panic that the police may begin digging into his private affairs. Archie learns from Lon Cohen that the fatal bullet is a .38, and Wolfe has him bring everyone involved to his office that evening. Included in the group is Corey Brigham, a rival of Jarrell who benefited from the information leaks and who had been to dinner at the penthouse when the gun was stolen.

Nora arrives by herself, well ahead of the scheduled meeting. With Archie observing through the office peephole and Orrie Cather posing as him, Wolfe tries to allay Nora's suspicions that Jarrell hired Archie to investigate the family. During the actual meeting, Wolfe appeals to the group to produce the gun, without success. Over the weekend, Inspector Cramer visits the brownstone demanding to know why Archie is working for Jarrell under an assumed name. Wolfe tells Cramer nothing except that he had not been hired by Eber, but Cramer questions the family and learns about the arrangement. With the pretense dropped, Archie is called in for questioning by the district attorney; not long after he returns to the penthouse, a news report announces that Brigham has been found dead, shot in the chest.

Returning to the brownstone, Archie is soon called in for another round of questioning, during which he learns that Brigham was also killed with a .38. This fact prompts Wolfe to summon the principals to his office again and question them about their movements over a time period covering both murders. He returns Jarrell's retainer, then calls Cramer to get permission for Archie to copy the statements they have given the police, reassuring him that Wolfe does not currently know the identity of the murderer. Lois tries to persuade Archie to corroborate a claim that she took Jarrell's gun and threw it in a river in order to prevent anyone from using it, but he quickly realizes that she is not telling the truth.

Once Wolfe has the statements, he sends Archie, Orrie, Saul Panzer, Fred Durkin, Dol Bonner, and Sally Colt to investigate every location visited by the principals. Four days later, a man delivers a small package to the brownstone; it proves to contain a spent .38 bullet, which Wolfe turns over to Cramer for testing. Following a night of repeated attempts by the police to call Wolfe or gain entry, Wolfe learns from Cramer that the bullet came from the same gun that killed both Eber and Brigham. He announces that he is ready to deliver both the weapon and the murderer and has Cramer bring everyone to his office.

The group is joined by Cramer, Sergeant Purley Stebbins, and all five free-lance detectives. Dol hands over the missing gun, which she found in a locker at a women's health spa and test-fired in order to obtain the bullet that was delivered to Wolfe. The locker belongs to Susan, who tries unsuccessfully to get Wyman to back her claim of being with him at the time the gun was stolen. Based on Jarrell's testimony at her trial, the prosecution theorizes that she had persuaded Eber to steal information which she then passed on to Brigham. After Eber was fired, he learned of Brigham's profit on the deal and realized what Susan had done; she killed him to keep him quiet, then did the same to Brigham. She is convicted, but Archie expresses doubts as to whether she will receive the death penalty.

As he pays Wolfe's fee, Jarrell reiterates his belief that Susan is a "snake," but Wolfe does not share it.

The film tells of the relationships in a dysfunctional family.

Dorotea (Dolores Fonzi) is a young girl in her teens who works in a laundry and takes care of her grandmother (Eugenia Bassi) she lives with.

Her father, Eduardo (Eduardo Couget), is released from prison.

Eduardo is indigent and stricken with Parkinsons and lives in the Salvation Army shelter and panhandles from passing motorists as well.

Dorotea becomes Eduardo's caregiver.

In 1975, Steve, "Doc", Charlie, and Dorothy are astronauts on a spacecraft approaching Mars. Following a scheduled cutoff of communications, they collide with something in orbit around the Red Planet. They are forced to jettison the main stage and land in their vehicle's control section. They disembark from the ship, wearing pressure suits and taking with them inflatable boats, oars, and a rifle. As they paddle down a canal, they are attacked by water creatures and escape into a cave system. The cave comes to an end near a lava flow, and they are forced to leave their boats and edge around a lava lake, eventually finding a passage to the surface just before the volcano erupts in a lava fountain. Believing they hear the signal of their ship's main stage, they instead discover an automated biolab that had been sent beforehand to determine the habitability of Mars. Charlie becomes hysterical and fires the rifle at the lab, inadvertently revealing that it contains enough oxygen to replenish their dwindling air supply. A sandstorm then blows in, and they take shelter in the lee of the lab.

The sandstorm uncovers a golden stone road, which they follow to an abandoned stone city with breathable atmosphere. This enables them to remove their suits and explore two charred outlines beside a cutting torch near a wall with a partially cut hole and a column with a hole in it. This column proves to be hollow, but a second one nearby turns out to conceal a desiccated Martian, with a transparent braincase. Mental communication between it and Steve guides them to a hall which contains a projection of a head. It reveals that it represents the collective consciousness of all Martians. They were an old race who once ruled a good part of the galaxy, but who retreated to Mars to ponder. To give themselves time to think, they took their city out of time, in an eternal present. Eventually they discovered that they had a further destiny, but could not reverse the process, being then incapable of physical effort. The city had been previously entered by other sentient aliens, who thought to plunder, instead of help. It directs them to a sphere, which must be replaced in the mechanism, in order for time to begin moving forward once again. Steve drops the sphere, revealing a model of the city. They return to where the others have been cutting a hole in the wall and complete the task. Behind the wall is a giant metal pendulum. Charlie, with help from Steve, manages to replace the sphere in the clockwork above the pendulum. The pendulum begins to swing once again. They escape as the city begins to crumble, eventually fading away. They eventually collapse by the stone road and vanish. They then reappear in their orbiting spacecraft, dirty and exhausted, where they discover to their surprise that only two minutes have ticked by.

At first glance the Ristuccia family is apparently normal and close-knit, but all of its members are hiding something. Carlo, the head of the family, would like to become a writer rather than continue working in an insurance company. Giulia, his wife, is a schoolteacher who aspires to become an actress. Paolo is an insecure teenager who cannot successfully assert himself in front of girls whom he likes. Valentina desires to become a television showgirl at any cost. This silence is broken when Carlo meets his old love Alessia, with whom he starts an extra-marital affair. As a result, he almost ruins the family balance although Giulia tries to save the marriage.

The movie follows a man (Paul Jones) who is unnamed. The movie starts out with the central character in a car with a man (Tom Kempinski) who just picked him up. The victim talks to him, but he is uninterested. The victim decides to pull over because he does not like the sound of the engine. While he is looking under the bonnet of the car the central character slams the bonnet down on his head several times, decapitating him in the process. The central character eventually sews the head back on, and the victim wakes up. The central character tells him he does not want to drive anymore that day and to leave without him.

A few years later the central character is called on to be part of a committee, groups that supposedly keep the system running but really do not do much of anything. The committee consists of 300 people who meet in a country estate, where there is swimming, tennis and boating during non-working hours, and a dance with a live band one evening. The man feels paranoid that the committee was called on account of him, and runs into the victim while there, who does not seem to remember him.

The central character talks about this with a man listed as 'The committee director' (Robert Langdon Lloyd) in the credits. This conversation lasts for the duration of the movie, and features most of the music Pink Floyd wrote for the film. At the end of the committee's weekend retreat, the man checks out, meeting a young woman whose bags he helps carry out. She offers him a lift and they drive off. She asks him if he plays bridge, but he does not answer her.

Giulia (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) and Carlo (Stefano Accorsi) have been happy together for three years, but Giulia's announcement that she is pregnant sends him into a secret panic. Terrified at his imminent entry into the adult world of irreversible responsibilities, Carlo finds himself tempted by a bewitching 18-year-old girl, Francesca (Martina Stella), whom he meets by chance at a wedding. The possibility of one last youthful crazy fling before the impending prison of parenthood proves to be too attractive to resist.

But a short-term fling with Francesca comes with serious consequences that threaten to damage his three-year relationship with Giulia, who is expecting a baby girl. At the same time, it also dashes the idealistic hopes of Francesca, who dreams of a beautiful future with him. After a raucous quarrel in the night, Carlo goes to Francesca's house, where they have sex. However, the morning after, reality sinks on Carlo and the enormity of what he had done surfaces. But it is not easy for Giulia to forgive, or to trust him again.

The films tells of father, Juan Denevi (Victor Laplace), who gets the surprise of his life on his fiftieth birthday when he finds out that he's become a grandfather. The movie opens in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Juan is cooking individual personal favorite dishes for his friends, the patrons of his restaurant.

A young woman named Manuela (Virginia Innocentti) appears with a 3-year-old boy (Lucas) and announces that Lucas is Juan's grandson. Juan hasn't seen his son Facundo (Pablo Rago) for many years, and during this time, Facundo has married and had a son.

Facundo's wife and son find Juan at his birthday party and beg him to come help Facundo with a family crisis.

Marshall and Lily visit Marshall's family in St. Cloud, Minnesota for Thanksgiving. Marshall plays a game of "bask-ice-ball" (a no-rules, brawling combination of basketball and ice hockey that the Eriksen family invented) with his father and older brothers while Lily helps her future sister-in-law and mother-in-law in the kitchen. The talk turns to babies, and Mrs. Eriksen reveals that her first-born son was abnormally almost fifteen pounds at birth; this frightens Lily, who is dwarfed not only by Marshall, the shortest of his brothers at 6'4", but his entire family, and she fears the idea of trying to give birth to at least one baby that size.

At dinner, Lily gets into an argument with Marshall and the Eriksens when she reveals she does not want to either change her surname after the wedding, nor raise their kids in Minnesota. Increasingly worked up, she drives off to a convenience store, where she is arrested for public urination. Marshall goes to the station, and finds out Lily was using a home pregnancy test. Lily tells him of her concerns about raising a family of "mayonnaise-guzzling giants in Minnesota", but Marshall, faced with the very real possibility of having a child, assures her that they will not settle down in Minnesota, and alleviates Lily's fears. Suddenly an officer walks in and holds out Lily's possessions, which includes the pregnancy test. They find out that Lily is not pregnant and they return to the Eriksen home, much relieved, and the Thanksgiving dinner concludes amicably.

Meanwhile, Robin and Ted have no plans for Thanksgiving, and decide to help out at a soup kitchen. When they arrive, they are shocked to find Barney volunteering there already, highly regarded as one of the best volunteers on staff. The organizer tells Ted and Robin that they have enough volunteers, but after being vouched for by Barney, they are allowed to help. Soon after, they find out that not all the food received as donations to the soup kitchen is actually distributed to the needy; many volunteers selfishly take the better, more expensive donations for themselves. When Ted complains to Barney about this, he discovers that Barney has been working there as mandatory community service after being arrested for public urination on the judge's church, but has since continued and become the volunteer of the year.

Ted, determined to be selfless, begins to distribute the rare food items to the needy, which results in him, Robin, and Barney being kicked out of the kitchen. To make it up to an irate Barney, Ted and Robin take him to the strip club, the Lusty Leopard, where Ted pays for a homeless man to get a lap dance, which he realizes is the one act of charity he performed on Thanksgiving. Another stripper named Tracy (Katie A. Keane) introduces herself to Ted and compliments him on his generosity, and Ted tells his kids that is "the story of how I met your mother", shocking them before Ted reveals, to their relief, that he is joking.

Pete Carlton is a young Montreal boy with terminal cancer. He has a love for butterflies, and often watches entomologist Alan Osborne's television show. His mother, Teresa, meets with Osborne, to try to get him to take her son to Costa Rica to find the rare blue morpho butterfly. However, he dismisses her, but later comes to their home upon receiving a phone call from Pete saying he would go to Central America himself. The two arrive at a small village when they learn the blue morphos have already migrated. Heartbroken, they prepare to leave, until they find one is still in the jungle. They chase after it several times, but are unable to catch it. Pete is determined to find the "magical" butterfly so his cancer can be cured, which leads to them falling into a cavern, injuring Osborne badly. Pete escapes to get help (recalling the earlier words of Mr. Osborne, "You run faster in the jungle without your pants") but it only leads to him being lost, suffering from hallucinations. Osborne is rescued, and as they are leaving to a hospital for Osborne, a friendly villager reveals she has caught the butterfly, giving it to Pete. As he is about to kill it for his collection, he lets it go so it can make more of the magical butterflies. An epilogue shows that at the next visit to the doctor, Pete's cancer had miraculously disappeared.

Museum curators Dr. Powell (Bud Jamison) and Professor Wilson (James C. Morton) hire the Stooges as private detectives to locate Professor Tuttle of Egyptology, who went missing while attempting to find the mummy of Egyptian King Rootentooten in Cairo. The Stooges check the basement and help a man take a box onto a truck, not aware that Tuttle is bound and gagged inside. They are then told by the curators to find the tomb and bring back the mummy, for which they will be paid $5,000. They hail a taxicab in New York City, and inform the bewildered driver they are bound for Egypt.

Once in Egypt, the boys, under the duress of a mirage, believe an empty patch of sand is a lake of cool water, and dive in, inadvertently diving into a series of tunnels that may lead to the tomb of Rootentooten. They begin to investigate, but end up separated, as Curly runs afoul with a living mummy. He takes off running, and he and his pals reunite.

Upon reuniting, the Stooges learn that Tuttle is being held hostage by a group of thieves; they have him bound and gagged as the Stooges wander through the tunnels. Curly finds what the Stooges believe to be the mummy of Rootin' Tootin' in a secret room, activated by a trap door. When Curly tries to pick it up (the mummy, that is), he clumsily drops it, crumbling it to dust.

They then hear gang boss Jackson (Dick Curtis) threatening the professor in the hopes of getting him to tell the crooks where the mummy is. The frightened professor tells them, and is warned that if the mummy is not there, he and the Stooges will be killed. The Stooges realize they will be killed if Jackson discovers the crushed mummy, so Moe gets the idea to make a mummy out of Curly. Curly responds by stating, "I can't be a mummy, I'm a daddy!", but he relents when warned of the alternative. He lies on the stone slab in disguise when the crooks arrive. Jackson decides to search for the jewels by cutting Curly open, causing Curly to open the bandages on his chest when Jackson turns his head away. Jackson then searches in Curly's jacket, pulls a newspaper out and reads "'Yanks win World Series' — can you beat that!" Curly blows his cover by replying, "Yeah, and I won five bucks!" Realizing he has been tricked, Jackson charges Curly, but in the process of chasing the Stooges, he and his cronies fall into a well Curly had fallen into earlier and hid using a carpet. The Stooges admit to Professor Tuttle that Curly had destroyed the mummy; it turns out, however, that the mummy which was destroyed was not that of Rootentooten, but of his wife, Queen Hotsy-Totsy. He holds up a small mummy case, containing the real mummy of Rootentooten, who was a midget. Professor Tuttle and the Stooges are frightened away by a Nile crocodile (inaccurately referred as an "alligator" in this short).

In autumn of 1526, Emperor Charles V sends his German landsknechts led by Georg von Frundsberg to march towards Rome. The inferior papal armies, commanded by Giovanni de' Medici, try to chase them in the midst of a harsh winter. Nevertheless, the Imperial armies manage to cross the rivers along their march and get cannons thanks to the maneuvers of its Lords.

In a skirmish, Giovanni de' Medici is wounded in the leg by a falconet shot. The attempts to cure him fail and he dies. The Imperial armies assault Rome.

The film is beautifully but unassumingly set, and shows the hard conditions in which war is waged and its lack of glory. It ends straightforwardly with the declaration made after the death of Giovanni de' Medici by the commanders of the armies in Europe of ceasing to use firearms because of their cruelty.

''Proposition Player'' tells the story of Joey Martin, a Las Vegas proposition player employed by casinos to join dull card games in order to liven up the gaming. Years of experience have made Joey an expert, if unsatisfied, card player.

One night, during a round of drinks, he is pushed into a proposition that sees him buy the souls of thirty-two people for the price of one free beer each. It is not long before those who sold their souls are suffering fatal accidents one by one, and the forces of Heaven and Hell show up trying to put a price on the purchased souls for themselves.

Alessa Woo (Sook-Yin Lee), an art gallery employee in Toronto, has built an image as a rich heiress, but is in dire financial straits. She attempts to court rich men to feed her lifestyle, but is prone to changing partners. One day, talented aboriginal artist Ben Crowchild (Adam Beach) moves into the apartment next door, leading to the two sharing a bathroom. In order to spurn a persistent suitor, Nathan (Don McKellar), Woo takes hold of Crowchild and kisses him. The two later become friends with benefits.

Soon, Woo is approached by the idly rich art collector Patrick Aucoin (Joel Keller), who proposes to her; Woo becomes tempted. However, she has developed feelings for the seemingly unwealthy Crowchild. Crowchild, who has similar emotions, reveals to her that he was adopted by Aucoin's father and that he himself is rich, but posing as a poor artist to be better received by the community. Woo and Crowchild become a couple.

It is December 31, 1982, and the Saturn Theater is preparing for its big New Year's Eve concert under the direction of owner and master showman Max Wolfe (Allen Garfield, credited as Allen Goorwitz), who has operated the Saturn since 1968. Assisting Max are stage manager Neil Allen (Daniel Stern), and visiting former stage manager Willy Loman (Gail Edwards). Also caught up in the wild activity is beleaguered stagehand Joey (Dan Frischman), temperamental lighting director Violetta (Mary Woronov), and Neil's younger sister Susie (Stacey Nelkin).

Max Wolfe holds a 30-year lease to the theater, but reptilian concert promoter Colin Beverly (Ed Begley Jr.) has other ideas. Beverly offers to buy Max out of his lease with what seems to be a generous deal at Beverly's concert auditorium and stadium, but Max refuses, ultimately becoming so incensed that he collapses of an apparent heart attack. Outside, Max's ingratiating nephew Sammy (Miles Chapin) informs Beverly that he stands to inherit the theater from his uncle, and Beverly offers Sammy the same deal he offered Max—if Sammy can get Max's signature on an agreement to transfer the Saturn's lease before midnight.

The various performers for the show are introduced: Captain Cloud (the Turtles' Howard Kaylan) and the Rainbow Telegraph—Max Wolfe's favorite band and a spoof of Strawberry Alarm Clock—arriving in an aging bus that is painted à la the Merry Pranksters' Furthur. Nada (Lori Eastside from Kid Creole and the Coconuts) and her 15-member band (a spoof of such girl groups as the Bangles and the Go-Gos) playing an amalgam of many disparate styles of music that appeared on MTV in the early 1980s—part bubble-gum pop, part New Wave, part garage rock. They are joined by "Special Guest Star" Piggy (Lee Ving of the L.A. punk band Fear). King Blues, the King of the Blues (Bill Henderson), a spoof of Muddy Waters (and, to a lesser extent, Bo Diddley and B. B. King). Auden (Lou Reed), "metaphysical folk singer, inventor of the '70s, [and] antisocial recluse", a spoof of Bob Dylan. Auden, who initially complains of writer's block, is coaxed to appear thinking Max is close to death, but after blithely asking a taxi driver to take the "scenic route," he spends the majority of the movie on his cab ride, improvising lyrics for the song he intends to perform. *Reggie Wanker (Malcolm McDowell), "20 years of rock and roll and still on top", a spoof of Mick Jagger; featuring his drummer Toad played by John Densmore of The Doors. Wanker is beset by a general malaise, unable to fully enjoy his lavish situation of easily available women and drugs.

King Blues opens the show, performing two of his "own" hit songs, "The Blues Had a Baby and They Named it Rock and Roll" (by Muddy Waters) and "Hoochie Coochie Man" (by Willie Dixon). Next the Nada Band take the stage and perform "I'm Not Going to Take It No More." Piggy leads the band in a viciously punk-rock version of "Hoochie Coochie Man," complete with stage dives and slam dancing. Reggie sings a celebration of egotism, "Hot Shot," then moves on to his own version of "Hoochie Coochie Man".

As the show proceeds, Sammy tries to find ways to sabotage the theater, including fueling a fire in the basement and cutting the fire hose. Colin Beverly's henchmen, Mark and Marv (former teen heartthrobs Bobby Sherman and Fabian), give Sammy a bomb, which he plants in the rocket ship that Max will ride during the final countdown to midnight.

Willy overhears Mark and Marv talking about the bomb, and is captured by them and locked in the trunk of Colin Beverly's limousine. She escapes when the limo collides with Auden's taxicab, and runs back toward the theater. Only moments before midnight, Willy reaches the theater and tells Neil about the bomb. As the seconds tick away, the bomb is thrown from person to person out of the building, landing in Colin Beverly's limo just as it pulls up to the curb. The last second ticks away, the bomb explodes, everyone shouts "Happy New Year", and Captain Cloud leads the crowd in "Auld Lang Syne".

Quickly after, the crowd and bands exit the theater, just as Auden finally walks in. Max gives Neil the lease to the theater, saying he intends to retire. Neil offers partnership to Willy. The end credits roll while Auden sings "Little Sister" to the sole remaining patron, Susie. The dedication at the end of the film reads, "Thanks for the memories to the entire staff of the Fillmore East 1968–71."

Disgruntled with the service, in part because he was disciplined instead of decorated for a hazardous mission, Lt. Willard Francis "Will" Slattery (Richard Widmark) left the US Navy to become a private pilot for candy manufacturer R. J. Milne (Walter Kingsford), on the recommendation of his girlfriend, Dolores Grieves (Veronica Lake), Milne's secretary. He lives an easy life, until the day he literally bumps into Lt. "Hobby" Hobson (John Russell), an old Navy buddy. Amused that Hobson stayed in the Navy, he, nonetheless, accepts an invitation to fly along on a weather flight into the heart of a hurricane. Slattery is disturbed to find that Hobby is married to his former lover, Aggie (Linda Darnell), who ended their unhappy relationship years before. At dinner for the two couples, he pretends to have just met her, but Dolores immediately suspects their past attachment. Slattery invites Hobby to fly with him the next day, maneuvering Aggie into coming along, to show off his lifestyle, and introduces them to Milne and his shady partner, Mr. Gregory (Joe De Santis).

Slattery tricks Aggie into meeting him alone while Hobby is away, and although she initially rejects his "fast one", he seduces her. Dolores confronts Slattery and they argue over his betrayal of Hobby and the effect his job is having on him. He soon discovers Dolores not only moved out, but quit her job as well, alarming Milne and Gregory, who fear she knows too much about their dealings. In the meantime, Slattery's affair with Aggie continues. Milne has Slattery fly him to a remote Caribbean island, where Milne has a heart attack. Slattery tries to save his life on the flight back, and discovers that Milne is smuggling drugs, taped to his chest. Milne dies and Slattery keeps the "parcel". Dolores telephones him and warns him again to get out, but he gets drunk instead. Gregory beats him up to get back the "parcel", but Slattery counters with a warning that he has hidden information about the smuggling ring in a safe deposit box, should anything happen to him.

The Navy unexpectedly awards Slattery the Navy Cross from his wartime heroics. Dolores attends the ceremony, but when she sees Slattery embrace Aggie afterwards, collapses and is hospitalized in a psychiatric ward for "pharmacopsychosis," or drug addiction. Slattery is called in by her doctor and castigated for his role in her illness. He leaves his Navy Cross with Dolores and goes to Aggie's to end the relationship. A drunken Hobby is there, however, having discovered the affair. He beats an unresisting Will, but is ordered to report for a hurricane mission. Slattery sees that Hobby is in no condition to fly the mission and knocks him out to prevent it. He then steals his employer's plane and flies into the storm...

Slattery flies into the eye of the hurricane and reports its position. His warning is instrumental in saving Miami from serious loss of life and property, but in returning to Miami, he loses an engine. Believing he will crash, he also radios the tower about the location of the drug-smuggling information. When the aircraft does crash, he unexpectedly survives. Slattery is accepted back on active duty, and by Dolores.

Hanna Kang is an overweight phone sex part-timer and a ghost singer for Ammy, a famous pop singer who actually lip syncs her songs instead of singing live. Hanna has a crush on Sang-jun, a director whose arrogant father owns the record company Ammy is signed to. One day, Hanna receives an outfit from Sang-jun with a note to wear it to his birthday party. However, it actually came from Ammy, who wears the same outfit just to humiliate Hanna. While crying in the restroom, Hanna overhears Sang-jun telling Ammy that even though they are just using Hanna for her voice, they must be kind to her so she will not abandon them. Heartbroken, Hanna attempts suicide but is interrupted by a phone call from one of her phone sex regulars, a top plastic surgeon, and persuades him to perform extensive plastic surgery on her.

After a year of seclusion while recovering from the surgery and weight loss, Hanna is so incredibly beautiful and slender that even her best friend Jung-min cannot recognize her at first. With Jung-min's help, Hanna creates a new identity for herself as a Korean-American from California named Jenny. After re-auditioning to be Ammy's secret vocalist, she earns her own recording contract instead. Meanwhile, Ammy fears her own secret in being unable to sing will be exposed if the release of her second album is delayed. She desperately tries to find Hanna by spending time with Hanna's father who is in hospital due to Alzheimer's, but Sang-jun orders her to give up her search, threatening to terminate her contract if she does not stop. After many encounters with Jenny, they both realize that Jenny is actually Hanna.

Jenny's debut single "Maria" becomes a hit and at the release party, Ammy brings Hanna's father in an attempt to blow her cover. Desperate to keep her true identity a secret, Hanna ignores her father, infuriating Jung-min with her indifference. After the party, Sang-jun tells Hanna he knows her true identity. He cannot forgive her for lying to him but says he will conduct her concert scheduled the next day. Hanna confesses her love for him and reveals she got plastic surgery in order to make him love her back. After realizing how worthless she was to him even as Jenny, Hanna tearfully refuses to have anything to do with him.

Before the concert, Ammy threatens to reveal Hanna's deception unless Sang-jun cancels the concert. Though his father agrees, Sang-jun stands up to them and refuses, and encourages a distraught Hanna to do this concert, not for her fans or the record company but for herself. Before performing, Hanna apologizes to Jung-min for her earlier behavior. She coldly rejects her apology, rebuking Hanna for the way she treated her own father. At the concert, Hanna tearfully confesses to the large crowd her story of being a ghost singer to an ungrateful Ammy while she was overweight, going into a year of seclusion to heal from the changes from the surgery and abandoning everything that is dear to her, including her best friend and father, for her career. Sang-jun plays a tape of the old, obese Hanna, singing. Hanna remarks that the person on the video is the real her. The crowd are moved by her sincere confession and praise her for showing her true identity. Hanna reconciles with her father and Jung-min. She drops the stage-name Jenny and re-releases a CD with her own name, Hanna, and becomes a highly successful music artist. Sang-jun realizes the very thing about her that had always drawn him to her was Hanna's innocence, and continues to promote her in hopes of pursuing a relationship with her.

During the post-credits, Jung-min also asks to get extensive plastic surgery from the surgeon.

Five gangsters escape in a van after a bloody confrontation with the rival Chunno gang. They realize that they have a snitch in their own gang and that they can't get out of the country because the police will be looking for them. So they go to the mountains and hide in a Buddhist monastery.

But the monks there don't want the gangsters as their guests. They decide that if the gangsters can win three out of five contests, the gangsters can stay, but if they lose, they must leave immediately. The gangsters win enough contests, the last of them being suggested by the eldest monk: a challenge to fill up a broken water pot without plugging up the hole. The gangsters come up with the idea of putting the pot into the river. They are allowed to stay for a week. But the younger monks still can't tolerate the gangsters, and attempt to persuade them to leave.

Meanwhile, the boss among the gangsters realizes who betrayed them but goes ahead and contacts him anyway, disclosing his location. The former colleagues, now defected to the Chunno gang, show up near the monastery, dig a shallow mass grave and throw the gangsters they betrayed into it. But the monks come to the rescue of their unwanted guests.

Back at the monastery, both the monks and the gangsters are saddened to learn of the death of the eldest monk. After the funeral, the gangsters leave. Months later, they make varied donations to the monastery in gratitude for their hospitality.

Ghyl Tarvoke grows up on the planet Halma with his father Amiante. Their people are ruled by two hundred lords whose forefathers arrived 1500 years earlier and rebuilt a world devastated by many wars. In return, they were granted a 1% tax. Later, all mass manufacturing was outlawed and the people became artisans, selling their handmade work to a single company controlled by the lords. Amiante is a master woodcarver, and his son follows in his trade.

When he is eight, Ghyl attends a puppet show; part of the entertainment is the traditional drama of Emphyrio, a legendary hero. The proprietor points out a young girl in the audience and informs the boy that she is the daughter of a lord. Some time later, he and a friend sneak aboard a space yacht out of curiosity and are caught by the same girl. She has them beaten and thrown out.

As time passes, Ghyl comes to realize that his father is dissatisfied with the constraints of their society. Twice, Amiante is caught by the authorities illegally duplicating ancient documents; the second time, he is taken away for four days. Soon after his release, he died.

A few years later, Ghyl goes to a ball and encounters the girl, now an appealingly attractive woman, for the third time and finally learns her name, Shanne. That night, they become lovers. But she tells him that she is leaving soon to travel to the stars.

An acquaintance persuades Ghyl and three other friends to hijack a space yacht and hold the passengers for ransom. The scheme is only made possible because Ghyl knows the departure date and the particular ship (the same one he sneaked aboard years before) that Shanne is leaving on. However, no ransom is forthcoming. When Ghyl wants to release their captives, there is violent opposition from his fellow kidnappers, resulting in several deaths. In the end, they reach an uneasy compromise: Ghyl is left on a planet with the lords, while the rest take the ship.

Ghyl guides his charges to civilization, but notices their odd behavior along the way. He then slips away before they have him arrested. By chance, he sees one of his father's works in a shop. He discovers that it is a reproduction and that the priceless original is in a museum. He talks the shop owner into financing a venture to buy artwork on Halma for more than the pittance the lords pay.

However, for some reason, no one is willing to sell to him. Then, though disguised, he is recognized and sentenced to death for his earlier crimes. Escaping a horrible execution undetected, he steals the best works from a warehouse, takes his cargo to Earth, and sells it for a fortune.

While there, he visits the Historical Institute and learns the true history of his homeworld. The alien Damarans were forced to abandon Halma by spacefaring invaders. They found refuge on its moon and eventually struck back with warriors they had bred, but by then, their enemy had departed and humans had arrived, only to be attacked. Emphyrio attempted to negotiate peace, but was killed by the Damarans. However, the warriors listened to his message and stopped fighting, forcing the Damarans to resort to other means.

Ghyl visits the Damaran moon and finds Emphyrio's place of execution. Seeing the Damarans firsthand, he deduces something of monumental importance. He goes to see the head of the lords on Halma and threatens to broadcast the truth about their relationship with the Damarans. With this leverage, he forces them to leave Halma. Soon afterwards, a human fleet lands on the Damaran moon and extracts payment for centuries of unwitting slavery.

Goni has lost his entire savings, and money stolen from his family, after being swindled by professional cheat gamblers. In order to regain the money, Goni begins training under one of the best gamblers in the country, Mr. Pyeong. He becomes well-known, wandering about different gambling places throughout the country with Pyeong. Madam Jeong, who runs an illegal gambling operation, begins to show interest in Goni. Goni leaves Pyeong and begins working for Jeong, whom he also has a love tryst with. When Madam Jeong is arrested, Goni meets fellow pro Gwang and the two become partners.

Ann Haven (Swanson), an aging movie actress, receives an urgent wire demanding that she immediately return to Hollywood to star in a new film.

She is not thrilled with the idea, but decides to go anyway. She plans to leave New York for Los Angeles by train, bringing along her bold young daughter, Barbara (Janine Perreau).
Unfortunately, the train is full so they have no choice but to stow away in a sleeping compartment.
The berth belongs to a shy and introverted biochemistry professor from Harvard, Ollie J. Thrumm (James Warren). He ends up boarding the train in Chicago. Romance and complications ensue — including havoc from Ann's agent Johnny Pizer (Fred Clark, who was also in Sunset Blvd.).

An alien envoy arrives on Earth to kidnap a porteño tango singer and she is taken to planet where there is no live. She and other aliens of the planet wish to feel love again and the computers inform her that she is well-suited to trying to accomplish this, and results in a series of tango performances. The aliens fall in love with the tango singer Jorge (Jorge Sobral).

The film tells the story of an old peasant who buys a young woman to live with him, but later realizes that she is sleeping with his son. The young people try to escape, but their bus is stopped by a river that has flooded. The old man follows and finds them, pleading with them to return. They agree, but the son insists that the old man relinquish the woman. The film has several memorable moments. One is the beautiful sequence of images of the couple walking down the road and waiting patiently for the bus in the rain. Some of the intensity of the movie may be due to the way in which it reflects the spirit of rebellion of the 1960s. As with all his films, ''Palo y hueso'' demonstrates Sarquis' enormous vocation for themes rooted in a microworld of men and women, creating tense narratives with the rigorous quality of epics.

The well known star of erotic movies, Isabel Sarli, plays Alicia a single mother who moves to Panama and starts working as a stripper deceiving men and making them the victims of her extortions.

A group of men commanded by an older man attempts to stop an invasion to the city of Aquilea. The invaders are met by common men who defend the city, ignored by the people in general, but with the development of the film it is understood that the invasion is absolute and impossible to define. The defeat of the defenders is evident from the beginning, as in the "Trojan War." Map of Aquilea

A top-secret conference is to be held at Lake Toma, Switzerland to discuss a proposed return to the Mysterons' planet, Mars. One of the conference delegates, astrophysicist Dr Conrad, will be flying to Geneva Airport accompanied by two bodyguards: Spectrum Captains Scarlet and Blue (voiced by Francis Matthews and Ed Bishop). The Mysterons (voiced by Donald Gray) have threatened to sabotage the conference.

During a pre-flight stay at the Adelphi Hotel, Scarlet and Blue encounter two journalists, Harry and Joe, whose editor is desperate for news stories. Recognising Conrad and sensing a scoop, Harry and Joe follow the Spectrum party to Novena Airport and try to book seats on Flight 104, which will be carrying Conrad, Scarlet and Blue to Geneva. Spectrum has anonymously booked all of the seats to ensure that the trio will be travelling alone. However, Scarlet and Blue ask the airport authorities to admit the journalists to prevent Conrad's movements from being published.

Shortly after Flight 104 takes off, its crew are found unconscious in a storage room. It is discovered that they were drugged by Captain Black and that the airliner is under Mysteron control. On Cloudbase, Colonel White (voiced by Donald Gray) orders the launch of the Angel squadron, who intercept Flight 104 over the Alps. Seeing the empty cockpit, the Angels emit warning smoke to alert Scarlet and Blue. After gaining entry to the cockpit by shooting out the door, the officers discover that Flight 104 is nosediving into the Alps. However, the electricity from a power station breaks the Mysterons' hold on the airliner, and Scarlet and Blue are able to pull out of the dive before they crash into a mountain.

Flight 104 makes its final approach to Geneva, piloted by Scarlet and Blue. However, one of Blue's bullets has damaged the circuit that operates the landing gear, which fails to deploy. Ordering Blue and the others to the back of the plane, Scarlet makes a successful crash landing but is killed when the front of the plane collides with a bunker. Aware of Scarlet's retro-metabolic powers, Blue assures Harry and Joe that the officer is all right.

The two passions of a woman: horses and the man who caused her husband's suicide.

A wealthy man repents and traces his son from his first wife whom he abandoned while pregnant.

Bernard Milan, the second-in-command of France's Counter-Espionage department, is out to discredit his chief Louis Toulouse so that he can supplant him. When a French heroin smuggler who has been arrested in New York claims that the drug smuggling was a secret mission on the orders of French Counter-Espionage (actually on Milan's orders), the resulting bad press reflects on Toulouse, who cannot prove that Milan was responsible. In retaliation, Toulouse hatches a plot to deal with his ambitious subordinate: in a room which he knows is filled with hidden microphones, he sends his assistant Perrache to Orly airport at 9:30AM the next morning, making Milan (who has been listening) believe that Perrache has gone to meet a master spy who will expose Milan's treachery. However, Toulouse secretly instructs Perrache to choose someone at random from the crowd of travelers arriving at that time.

After considering several possibilities from the flight arriving at the specified time, Perrache selects François Perrin, an unsuspecting violinist, who is noticeable because, as the result of a practical joke played on him by his fellow orchestra members, he has arrived wearing a black shoe on one foot and a reddish-brown one on the other. Milan takes the bait and immediately begins a series of attempts to discover what Perrin knows—never realizing the fact that Perrin knows nothing at all about espionage (although he is an expert on music). Milan's machinations place Perrin in a series of increasingly peculiar adventures which he either avoids or escapes from by pure luck (which only confirm Milan's increasingly paranoid suspicions), and although Perrin is largely oblivious to the mayhem occurring around him, he cannot help noticing Milan's top agent, the beautiful ''femme fatale'' Christine. Adding to the confusion is the fact that Perrin is having an affair with Paulette Lefebvre, the wife of his best friend Maurice (both of whom are musicians in the same orchestra as Perrin), and Maurice, upon accidentally hearing a recording of Perrin and Paulette having torrid sex (made by Milan's agents and listened to inside a floral delivery truck), jumps to the mistaken conclusion that Paulette is having an affair with a florist. All the time, Toulouse and Perrache watch the chaos serenely, although Perrache is troubled by his chief's callousness toward the risk that Perrin might be killed.

Christine greets Perrin at her apartment's front door in a demure high-necked black-velvet dress, then turns around and shows that the dress is backless, displaying discreet buttock cleavage. A slapstick love scene (watched by Milan and his cohorts on a television monitor) ensues, concluding with Milan's decision (despite Christine's belief that Perrin could not possibly be an agent) to have Perrin eliminated. More mayhem (including Maurice's learning the truth about his wife's affair) and treachery (including Christine's defection from Milan's group to save Perrin, with whom she has fallen in love) follow, climaxing in the deaths of not only agents from both Toulouse's and Milan's groups but also Milan himself, who only learns the truth about Perrin from Perrache just before he dies. Realizing how he has been fooled, Milan dies with a smile of appreciation. Maurice, who has repeatedly walked in on the aftermaths of the shoot-outs in Perrin's apartment, suffers a total mental breakdown.

The film ends as it began, at Orly airport. Perrin pushes a huge Louis Vuitton steamer trunk in an airport luggage cart, talking softly to Christine, who is hidden inside. Their destination is Rio de Janeiro. Toulouse, who has been watching Perrin's departure on a monitor, instructs Perrache to contact Perrin when Perrin returns, remarking, "After all, he handles himself pretty well."

People engaged in sex—Rachel and her boyfriend, four hippies, two lesbians, and a woman with photos of naked men—are systematically kidnapped by a hideous monster and taken away by hearse. George, a newspaper reporter, and Police Inspector Benedict investigate. A barman remembers seeing the monster at his club just before the stripper was abducted. The police sketch is published in the paper and the monster is spotted trying to buy aphrodisiacs at a pharmacy. George follows the hearse and is captured trying to break into the estate where everyone is being held.

George wakes to find himself a prisoner, too. He is befriended by Rachel, who helps him overpower Dr. Humpp's Nurse. After George has sex with the Nurse, she agrees to help him escape, but is that just a ploy? Dr. Humpp is trying to give mankind eternal life using the power of the human libido. Can he succeed?

The premise was of an extremely advanced future society called the Terminus, who attempted to alter the past by sending genetic information back through time, to give certain human beings super-powers (and a compulsion to use them) in order to enable them to stop some unnamed disaster. In the late 20th Century, a future inhabitant known only as "Vandervecken" or "The Dutchman" (both names for The Flying Dutchman) downloaded his mind into the body of a hobo who later becomes the owner of the Future Dynamics corporation; Vandervecken then began gathering up those who had been empowered to begin preparing them for their historic battles.

The film consists of a series of sketches on the themes of infidelity, sexuality and divorce. In one scene, a man dons a long beard and impresses an attractive female sunbather at a local park and later spies on a woman in the shower. A man fails miserably at a yoga class full of women.

A man orders seafood at a restaurant, hoping that it will prove to be an aphrodisiac. Unfortunately is advances towards his partner in his car are disturbed by a gunman. When a child is born Japanese, he looks for a would-be father.

Later, a couple arrive at the solicitors office requesting a divorce. Another man, a museum curator, has an unhealthy habit of discussing his paintings as a means of seducing young women.

Cartman has developed a hobby of getting Butters Stotch to spend the night at his house and taking degrading photos of him as he sleeps. The next morning Cartman then shows Stan, Kenny and Kyle a photo of him with Butters's penis in his mouth, thinking that this makes Butters homosexual. However, Kyle points out that a male who performs oral sex on another male is the one perceived to be the homosexual, thus making Cartman the homosexual. As a practical joke, Kyle then convinces a horrified Cartman that taking a similar picture with his and Butters's positions switched would "cancel out the gay polarity".

Cartman goes over to Butters's house, then tricks him into allowing himself to be blindfolded and opening his mouth. As he is about to insert his penis into Butters's mouth, Butters' dad Stephen walks in on them and panics. After Cartman flees without waiting to explain, Stephen declares that Butters is bi-curious. Butters, totally unaware of what Cartman was planning to do, just asks him what that means. Stephen explains that it means that Butters is "confused". Butters, having no idea what he is talking about, admits that this is so. Stephen takes him to Camp New Grace, a Christian conversion therapy camp, whose organizers repeatedly reinforce the idea that the boys there are "confused".

At camp, the boys are miserable, the counselors are uncaring, and suicide is common. Butters befriends his roommate and "accountabili-buddy", a nervous and insecure boy called Bradley. When camp authorities find Bradley's 1979 male underwear catalog they are both punished. After Bradley realizes that he has a crush on Butters, he comes to the conclusion that he is beyond hope and decides to end his life. Butters and the staff of the camp find Bradley on the outer ledge of a bridge and try to persuade him to come down. When Butters finds the staff to be unsympathetic, he excoriates them, telling them that he is sick of people telling him he is confused, and that he was never confused until he was brought to the camp. He also voices his belief that the staff's assertions of "confusion" are simply a projection of their own confusion. Somewhat encouraged by this expression of confidence and pride, Bradley decides not to commit suicide and comes down. Seeing that Butters is happy being bi-curious, Stephen admits that he is bi-curious as well and that he enjoys his curiosity. The statement prompts a shared laugh between the two, but Butters winds up legitimately confused as he has no idea what his father was referring to.

Meanwhile, having discovered that Kyle was tricking him, Cartman decides to throw away the picture of him with Butters's penis in his mouth and never bring it up again. However, Stan, Kyle and Kenny, pointing out that they already know about it, blackmail Cartman into being nice to them or they will tell everyone. Cartman refuses and decides to photoshop the picture so it would be Kyle with the penis in his mouth. When Cartman cannot find it, he convinces himself that Kyle has stolen it in order to show it at school during show and tell. Kyle's attempts to convince Cartman that he has not stolen it are unsuccessful, as are the other avenues through which Cartman attempts to recover it from him. Resolving to prevent Kyle from having the satisfaction of showing it off, Cartman himself shows a copy of the photo to the entire class during show-and-tell, attempting to pass it off as an 'artistic statement against the War In Iraq', but even Mrs. Garrison is shocked. Suddenly, Mr. Mackey comes to the classroom and relays a message to Cartman from his mother: she found the original photograph under his desk at home. Cartman's humiliation is completed as Kyle simply glares at him with a look of bored disdain.

During Kratos' ten years of service to the Olympian Gods, he is sent to the city of Attica to help defend it from the invading Persian army. After successfully killing the Persian King, decimating his army and slaying their pet basilisk, Kratos observes the Sun fall from the sky, plunging the world into darkness. As he fights his way through the city of Marathon, the Spartan witnesses the black fog of the Olympian Morpheus cover the land. He hears a haunting flute melody, which he recognizes as a melody once played by his deceased daughter Calliope. Finding the Temple of Helios, Kratos learns from Athena that Morpheus has caused many of the gods to fall into a deep slumber due to the absence of light. Before she succumbs to the slumber, Athena tasks Kratos to find Helios, return him to the sky, and break Morpheus’ grasp on the world. The Spartan eventually locates Helios' sister, Eos, who tells Kratos that the Titan Atlas has abducted her brother. Eos advises Kratos to seek the Primordial Fires, which he uses to awaken the fire steeds of Helios. The steeds take the Spartan to the Underworld, where he has two encounters with Charon at the River Styx. Although Charon initially defeats Kratos and banishes him to Tartarus, the Spartan returns and destroys the ferryman.

After locating the Temple of Persephone and confronting the Queen of the Underworld, Kratos is given a choice: renounce his power and be with his deceased daughter (at a cost to mankind) or proceed with his mission. Kratos sacrifices his weapons and power to be reunited with his daughter, but discovers that Persephone is embittered by Zeus' betrayal and her imprisonment in the Underworld with her husband Hades. While he was distracted by his reunion with Calliope, Persephone's ally Atlas was using the power of the kidnapped Helios to destroy the Pillar of the World, which would also end Olympus. As the resulting destruction of the Pillar will also cause the souls of the Underworld, including Calliope, to be lost, Kratos abandons his daughter forever in order to save her life. Taking back his power, Kratos battles Persephone and Atlas, binding the Titan to the Pillar before slaying the goddess. Although victorious, he is warned by a dying Persephone that his suffering will never end. Atlas, forced to hold the weight of world on his shoulders for eternity, also warns Kratos that he will eventually regret helping the gods and that he and Atlas will meet again . Kratos then rides the Sun Chariot back to the mortal world and into the sky as Morpheus retreats.

In a post-credits scene, Kratos is still riding Helios' chariot back into the sky and after seeing the return of the Sun, Kratos loses consciousness from the exertion and plummets to the ground. At the last moment, Kratos is saved by Athena and Helios, and Athena tells Helios that "He will live."

Sandro plays Rolo Medina, a young athlete, who despite a life of luxury, pleasure and beautiful women, feels his life has no meaning. That feeling will change abruptly when he randomly meets Laura (Elena Sedova), who is the partner of a renowned physician, Dr. Mariano Fuentes (Juan José Miguez). The attraction between Rolo and Laura is immediate, and for the wealthy young athlete. seems to have given the desire to live. However, an unexpected event changes his life forever.

A man named Beto Sánchez, seeing his father dying in hospital, decides to get revenge on those who according to him made his life worse: his elementary school teacher, his childhood friend, his first wife, his superior in the military service and his first job's boss.

Five girls from different Latin American countries join young people in a house in Delta del Tigre. The troupe of young girls is headed by actress Linda Peretz.

A young man on holiday, drawing at the beach to pay for his expenses, meets an attractive woman with long, honey blonde hair. While sketching her, they develop a friendship. They take a swim together and have refreshments before she departs. A romance blossoms and they have sex at his apartment, as his portraits on the walls look on. Besotted with her, he draws many pictures of her in the nude during his spare time on the beach.

While on a boat trip one day, the woman invites him to her mansion to meet her wealthy middle-aged husband, Luis, and he is asked to stay with them at their mansion. It becomes evident to the young man that her husband is homosexual and they have no chemistry together, and their relationship continues and an odd dynamic evolves between the three. Despite having a boyfriend, Luis becomes increasingly uneasy, driving the boat excessively fast and crumpling up a portrait the young man draws of him. Luis orders them to dance in front of him on the beach and they end up frolicking in the sand together, which angers him. He questions the young man on if he is in love with his wife, leading to the two men fighting as the waves crash around them. Luis drives off in his boat, and he is later found dead washed up on the shore. The two continue their romance.

By 1930, Evaristo, a humble worker who lives near the Riachuelo river in Buenos Aires, is preparing to go to work with two partners. His daughter Mary calls him from her bed; the girl has a fever and this forces Evaristo back. The tram that the three workers missed falls into the river and almost all the passengers die. For this and other episodes, Mary earns the reputation that she can predict the future.

By 1940, Mary is now a very happy but very chaste young woman. One afternoon, in a bus, she sees a young man who smiles at her. When she gets off the bus, the man follows her to find out where she lives. That night Mary tells her father Evaristo that she had already chosen a husband, but does not know his name or where he lives.

Rosita, a friend of Mary, announces her sudden wedding. During the wedding party, Tito, a pharmacist friend, reveals to Mary that Rosita is marrying because she is pregnant and an abortion was too dangerous. At hearing the word "abortion," Mary feels revolted, gets dizzy, and flees the party. Mary becomes hysterical. "They're all whores ... it's all shit," he shouts to Tito.

That summer, Mary is reunited with the man from the bus, Cholo, who works for a meat packing company with his brothers and is also a boxer. Mary invites him to her house and they quickly start a relationship. At New Year's Eve, Mary meets Cholo's family: Cholo's mother (a widow) Mrs. America, Cholo's brother Raul and Raul's wife Sofia, Cholo's brother Hector and his wife Luisa, and Cholo's sister Claudia and her husband Ariel. At Mary's request, Cholo leaves boxing behind.

Cholo and Mary make out passionately. Cholo tries to consummate the relationship, but Mary says she will marry a virgin, and when Cholo attempts to force himself on her, she rejects him. Five days later they reconcile and soon they plan their wedding. On the day of the civil wedding Mary announces that she will remain a virgin until the church wedding, to be held two days later. Again Cholo tries to force Mary, but she rejects him very violently. After the church wedding, Cholo and Mary have a passionate wedding night in a hotel in Buenos Aires and consummate their relationship.

Sofia, sister in law of Cholo announces worriedly that she is pregnant. The previous delivery had complications, and Sofia fears what will happen if she decides to continue with the pregnancy. Mary says that “it is better to sacrifice one's life rather than to kill a child ... it is very dangerous to play with fate." Sofia decides to have an abortion, but she dies as a result of the intervention. When Mary finds out, she feels revolted and repeats: “They're all shit.” After the funeral, Mary declares that Sofia deserved what happened to her, but then she decides to help raise Sofia's children and respect her memory. Cholo's sister Claudia said Mary prophesied the death of Sophia, but Mary says she only gave Sofia some advice.

Six months after becoming a widower, Cholo's brother Raul begins a relationship with a widow. Mary finds out and accuses Raul of desecrating Sofia's memory. Ariel, Claudia's husband and Cholo's brother-in-law, defends Raul's courtship. Mary says to Ariel: "I wonder what you would think if you were to die and Claudia were to find someone else." Claudia, who believes that Mary is a prophetess, tells her to shut up. Mary begins to move away from Cholo and asks Cholo to leave the business he has with his brothers.

Mary becomes increasingly sad and sullen. Cholo gets a day off. On the day that Ariel takes Cholo's place at work, an accident occurs with the delivery truck and Ariel dies. When Mary attends the wake, Claudia tells her to leave and they stop talking to each other.

Mary's "prophecies" continues to be fulfilled: After Ariel dies, Claudia finds a boyfriend and plans to remarry. Mary gets more depressed, retreats from Cholo's family and begins to wear black. Only Cholo's sister Luisa still visits Mary, but Mary prophecies Luisa's, and her own, death. Thus Mary imagines the progressive death of all of Mrs. America's children-in-law. Mary's rejection of her in-laws affects her relationship with Cholo. Mary has nightmares, suffers depression and isolates herself from the world.

When Luisa gets sick with food poisoning, Mary finally loses her mind. He says it is fate that Luisa, and then herself, die. Luisa recovers, but Mary is asleep when Cholo returns with the good news. When Cholo is asleep, Mary gets up, strips herself naked, puts on her wedding dress, and takes a knife. Mary goes to the bedroom and kills Cholo by stabbing him in the heart.

La Madre María is based on the life of María Salomé Loredo, a renowned Argentina healer (1854-1928). The film begins with an old Madre Maria on trial for quackery and deceit. On a series of flashbacks, her life is told, starting with a visit María paid to another famous Argentina faith healer, Pancho Sierra.

Pancho Sierra instructs Madre María to continue his work by helping the poor and praying with the sick. After her husband's death, Madre María establishes a mission or co-op in La Rioja Street in Buenos Aires. She teaches women how to sew, delivers food to the hungry, pays the debts of the poor. She prays with the sick and teaches a simple gospel of faith in God.

After the medical establishment begins to use the police and the judicial system to stop her work, María is exiled in Turdera, near Buenos Aires, where she starts her work among the poor and the sick one more time. She starts an orphanage and defends the workers from police brutality.

Maria's defense prevails in the trial, and a cheering crowd receives her in her home, but she faints and shortly after dies. The final scene shows a solemn funeral procession taking María's casket to the cemetery.

In medieval France, the Baron Gilles de Lancre becomes obsessed with alchemy and black magic, and his wife (the sadistic Georgelle) encourages his interests, fooling him into believing that an alchemist friend of hers named Simon de Braqueville can change lead into gold if the Baron will supply him with a quantity of virgins' blood to use as an ingredient. The Baron orders his soldiers to kidnap any young virgins in the area, and his wife has the girls violently sacrificed in ways that satisfy her own sadistic urges.

Gaston de Malebranch, a young military hero in the Baron's army, returns home from a long journey, and begins to hear bizarre stories about the Baron and his wife sacrificing young maidens. Georgelle is afraid that de Malebranch might mess up their routine if he learns the truth about what they've been doing, so she tries to get the Baron to kill him, but the Baron refuses since de Malebranch had saved his life in the past.

Georgelle tells the Baron that she can arrange for the Devil himself to appear, and she tricks the Baron by putting the severed head of a young man on an altar while the alchemist hides behind the structure and uses ventriloquism to make it appear as if the head is speaking. The Baron has become so naive that he actually believes that he is talking to the Devil.

In the end, de Malebranch leads a revolt against the Baron and he and his men lay siege to the castle. The Baron takes on the whole group of rebels, thinking he has become invulnerable. He winds up riddled with arrows and dies, in a definite visual reference to ''Throne of Blood''.

Set in the early Peron era, this rise and fall of a boxer is visibly inspired by the biography of José María Gatica and his experiences.

The movie begins with the assassination of Lieutenant Coronel Zavala presumably for the events that take place during the movie, after he awakes from a nightmare full of gunshots.

Workers in Patagonia, influenced by anarcho-syndicalist ideas, demand improvements in hotel pay and conditions. During one of the meetings, a boss pays back the workers salaries and an additional fee. He takes the money out of his wallet which illustrates that to the boss it is simply pocket change where as to the workers it is a lot of money. After employers initially agree to workers' demands, which are supported by workers in other sectors and areas, the regional governor, under pressure from local employers, order the paramilitary police to intervene to suppress union and political activity, despite the protests of a local judge. In response to such harassment, a general strike is declared, paralyzing the ports and wool production for export. The national Radical Civic Union government supports the workers' rights, and the workers call for union recognition and improvements to the conditions of agricultural workers. Employers reject the demands and bring in replacement workers, but the convoys are attacked by armed strikers who shoot down the soldiers guarding them. Workers use arson and sabotage to disrupt production and take hostages. More fighting erupts between armed police and strikers.

An army- and judge-led mediation attempt commissioned by President Yrigoyen and led by Lieutenant Coronel Zavala condemns police partiality and the exploitative nature of the company store system. After six weeks, the strike is settled in the workers' favor with the first ever collective agreement for Patagonian rural workers and they hand in many of the weapons they seized from the rural estates as part of the agreement. Employers are outraged by having the unfavorable terms imposed on them by the government and respond with selective sackings and denial of service at company stores. Workers respond with boycotts and the president dismisses the governor, who is close to many of the wealthy landowners. More importantly, the landowners refuse to implement the pay rise specified in the agreement.

With workers planning another strike to enforce the terms of the agreement, employers, backed by Chile and Britain, successfully force the government to round up union leaders and militants. Another general strike is called in response. While strikers take hostages to defend themselves, bandits known as the Red Council who had previously taken part in the attack on the convoy of replacement workers and refused to disarm, take advantage of the unsettled situation to raid isolated estates.

Zavala is told of the continuing unrest despite his efforts, that he workers had not upheld their bargain by disarming, and to "Think of Chile" implying a threat to their borders, and is ordered to restore order in such a way as to permanently remove the threat of rebellion due to socialist or anarchist ideas, which they do by using acting in force, opening fire on strikers without warning, surprising the strikers who had held him in high regard for settling the earlier dispute in their favor. Following this initial fight and others using similar tactics Zavala begins carrying out summary executions, especially of the leaders and even of delegations acting under a flag of truce, some of whom are made to dig their own graves. Eventually the Red Council is captured in a villa they were raiding and the anarcho-syndicalists decide to surrender to Zavala. Armed landowners participate in the suppression of the strikers, identifying the leaders with most of the leaders of the movement being executed with only one managing to escape. Others are tied naked to fences or made to run the gauntlet.

After the slaughter, the previous agreement is annulled and wages are reduced. The film ends with oligarchs congratulating the lieutenant colonel in charge of the massacre during a celebration and singing For He's a Jolly Good Fellow in English.

In an alternative reality, a man who is entering old age faces a society in which the young eliminate the old.

Alberto is a regular middle-aged man who lives with his elder mother and works at a factory. After a night out where he attends a show by transvestite artist Dominique, he develops an unexpected fixation with the artist. What started out as a loud reaction of disgust and bigotry, slowly turns into him realizing that he is in fact attracted to Dominique. This newfound interest fills Alberto's mind with guilt and doubt, while his coworkers start mocking him for dating a "weirdo", and his family grieve his lost decency. In the midst of Alberto's predicament, a revelation by Dominique will shake the board.

When San Francisco private detective Sam Spade dies, his son, Sam, Jr., inherits his father's agency, including the sarcastic secretary, Effie Perine (also known as "Godzilla"). He must also continue his father's tradition of "serving minorities". When Caspar Gutman is killed outside Spade's building, his dying words are, "It's black and as long as your arm."

Spade is given an offer by a member of the Order of St. John's Hospital to purchase his father's useless copy of the Maltese Falcon. A thug named Gordon Immerman has been hired to make sure Spade delivers the bird. Spade later gets an offer from Wilmer Cook for the Falcon, but before they can negotiate, Cook is killed. Shortly thereafter Spade meets a beautiful and mysterious Russian woman named Anna Kemidov, daughter of the general who once owned the real Maltese Falcon. She also wants Spade's copy and is willing to seduce him to get it. Spade is soon dealing with Litvak, a bald Nazi dwarf who is surrounded by an army of Hawaiian thugs. In the ensuing chaos, Immerman tries to become Spade's partner. Spade discovers that his "false" copy may be the real thing.

During a stormy night, the sparrow Salapin is about to drown in a mud pool due to exhaustion. Next to the mud pool hangs Trapito, a scarecrow, on his frame. Trapito is a living scarecrow. He picks up Salapin and puts him in his inside pocket where it is dry and warm. The next morning, Trapito admits he is lonely and confused. Salapin takes him to see the Patriarch of the Birds (a wise old owl), who deduces that Trapito lacks imagination since he has been standing in a field all his life. The Patriarch advises him and Salapin to see the world.

They meet Larguirucho, a friendly but clumsy farmer mouse with many animals, mainly his pigs (a mother and her son). They go into town where Larguirucho sells his cheeses and treats them to a meal, but a crow named Ataúlfo steals his money. The innkeeper gives Larguirucho a week to pay for the meal or he will butcher the mother pig. Larguirucho can't find a job until he is hired as an assistant carpenter. A pirate orders a peg leg for his Captain Mala Pata, a black-bearded ruffian. After the peg leg is made, the carpenter wraps it up and hands it to Larguirucho for delivery. However, they make a quick stop at the butcher where Larguirucho accidentally mixes up the wrapped peg leg with a few similarly shaped packaged hams. Larguirucho delivers one of the hams to Mala Pata by mistake. Mala Pata then orders his sailors, including Ataúlfo, who results to be his first mate, to shanghai Larguirucho and use Trapito as their figurehead. Mala Pata sails for a tropical island where a map shows that valuable crystal tears are to be found. A mutiny for the tears, is accidentally foiled by Larguirucho, Salapin, and the little pig. Mala Pata makes Larguirucho first mate and frees Trapito.

At the island, Larguirucho and Trapito are ordered to dive and search the sea bottom for the crystal tears. They learn the tears are being wept by a mermaid, Espumita. She and all the fishes were happy until they were attacked by the Cruel Octopus, a pirate giant octopus, and his pirate crew of crabs and swordfishes. Espumita's boyfriend, the Sea Horse, becomes the good sea creatures’ general, and they are defeating the Cruel Octopus until the Sea Horse is captured. Larguirucho and Trapito rescue him, scare away the Cruel Octopus and are rewarded by one of Espumita's crystal tears. They return to the pirate ship, where Mala Pata and Ataúlfo dive into the sea after more tears but are chased away by the Cruel Octopus. Larguirucho, now the captain, sails back to town where he uses the crystal tear to pay the innkeeper. Larguirucho and his pigs return to the farm, while Salapin meets a female sparrow, and falls in love with her, and they fly off, abandoning Trapito. The lonely scarecrow returns to his field, but Salapin and his mate return the next year with their chicks, and Trapito and the chicks become playmates.

In some countries, mainly Argentina and Spain, the movie was accompanied by with an introduction of Petete, a puppet penguin similar to Topo Gigio, and one of the director's most famous characters, telling to the audience about the creation of the scarecrow.

An orphaned girl lives with her maternal grandfather. When he is hospitalized due to a heart attack, the girl is taken to her paternal grandparents who will try to take her away from him.

The game roughly follows the plot of the movie, where The Shadow battles crime in New York city, until he is confronted by the evil mastermind Shiwan Khan. Khan intends to use an atomic bomb to blow up the city, culminating in a showdown at the hidden Hotel Monolith.

Marcelo makes a living as a painter in a Buenos Aires square, with other street artists. He's sad and lonely because his family's does not get along. He lives with his grandfather and becomes romantically involved with a budding actress. He devotes much of his time to her, and dreams of a happy future together.

She, however, has other plans, and events take a dramatic turn when she is forced to undergo an abortion. Marcelo also discovers the reasons for his family's separation and makes Marcelo face reality more clearly.

The film tells in a manners comedy tone, the reactions of young people and adults to the pregnancy of a teenage girl.

Patricia (Patricia Calderón) is a beautiful 17-year-old teenager who has become pregnant and, in desperation, befriended a friend of her hippie brother, Willy (Julio Chávez), in whom she finds support and understanding. When her father (Luis Politti), an Argentine classic of Italian descent, found out, first she hit Willy hard, believing her to be the father, and then she sought to marry her to her daughter to "save face"

A mother confronts the young woman who is going to marry her youngest son.

French-Canadian fur trapper Jean La Bête (Oliver Reed) paddles his canoe through wild water towards the settlement in order to sell a load of furs. At the settlement, a steamboat is landing and the trader and his foster-child Eve (Rita Tushingham) arrive at the seaport to fetch mail and consumer goods. The trader explains to Eve that the ship brings "Jailbirds ... from the east" and that "their husbands-to-be had bailed them out and paid their fines and their passages with a guarantee of marriage". Later, the captain is auctioning one of those women because her husband-to-be has died in the meantime. Jean La Bête decides to take his chance to buy the wife but he makes his bid too late.

Two Native Americans, Yellow Dog and No Name, have told the Trader that La Bête is dead. The Trader, heavily in debt, has spent money he owes La Bête so that when La Bête calls to collect his dues, the trader has to use own savings, to the fury of his wife. Next day, the trader's wife, to compensate for the loss of her savings, seizes the opportunity to offer her foster-child for a thousand dollars to the simple-minded, rough-cut trapper. She praises the qualities of the shy girl and explains, that her inability to speak is caused from the shock she suffered when she had to witness how her parents were barbarously murdered several years ago.

La Bête finally agrees to buy the mute girl and takes her against her will into the wilderness of British Columbia. Here the strange couple starts a difficult relationship characterized by mistrust and Eve's fear and dislike of the trapper. Eve vehemently rejects the advances of the gruff trapper. La Bête takes her for hunting and acquaints her with the beauty and the dangers of the wilderness but here, as well, he fails to win her trust. Eve defends herself from his advances with a knife.

One day, on checking his traps for caught animals, La Bête is threatened by a cougar. He shoots the cat but inadvertently gets his foot into his own bear trap. Badly injured, he tries to drag himself back to his hut, hunted by famished wolves. Eve is waiting at the cabin and hears the distant howling of the wolves approaching the hut. She takes a gun and sets out in search for La Bête; together they can get rid of the wolf pack. La Bête's lower left leg is broken, so he asks Eve to bring the medicine man from the next Indian village, a two days trip away. The Canadian winter has already come, so Eve puts on her snowshoes and starts a long, arduous walk over snow-covered hilltops. She finally reaches the village only to find it deserted.

Returning empty-handed, Eve finds La Bête already suffering from sepsis (blood poisoning). Having no time to lose, he urges the terrified girl to immediately cut off his poisoned leg using an axe. After La Bête has stunned himself by gulping the last drop of rum, Eve acts as commanded and her patient instantly passes out from pain. Eve nurses the trapper and of necessity learns to hunt on her own and becomes capable of providing for the couple. Eventually, after La Bête learns to say 'please' to her and then thanks her for saving his life and declares he could not live without her, they become intimate.

The morning after, Eve seems to regret her decision and leaves the cabin, holding a rifle against La Bête who follows her to the river, angry and perplexed. Eve flees in his canoe, leaving La Bête floundering in the shallows. Her journey is fraught and she is thrown from the canoe in white-water rapids. The empty canoe is found by native Americans and Eve is rescued, being taken to the settlement where other white people reside. Although welcome, she remains an outsider. The viewer is told that she remained in bed for two months and lost the child she was carrying. The settlers have arranged a marriage for her to a man who flirted with her early on in the film. Eve does not appear happy, however.

On the day of marriage, her foster 'sister' and foster mother dress her whilst the 'sister' demands to know how she lived in the wild and if she killed La Bête. Eve runs away again finally to return to the man she has come to love, Jean La Bête. She arrives on the river beach and La Bête touches her face gently, then welcomes her home by telling her to clean the house! Eve smiles. In the last scene, she stands in the doorway and watches La Bête hobbling into the forest singing a song. Eve chops wood and carries it into the cabin.

When I'm a man, I'll take me a wife; We'll live in a house on the hill, the hill; With carriage and horses all white, all white; And she shall have diamonds and pearls, and pearls; And she shall have diamonds and pearls.

A man and his daughter, tired of family feuding and their routines, miss school and work the same day.

As the novel begins, the position of CEO of one of America's largest banks, ''First Mercantile American'', is about to become vacant due to the terminal illness of Ben Roselli, the incumbent chief, whose grandfather founded the bank.

Two high-ranking executives groomed for the succession begin their personal combat for the position. One, Alex Vandervoort, is honest, hard-charging, and focused on growing FMA through retail banking and embracing emerging technology; the other, Roscoe Heyward, is suave, hypocritical, and skilled in boardroom politics, and favors catering more to business than to consumers. Heyward lives in a "rambling, three-story house in the suburb of Shaker Heights," Cleveland, Ohio.

Many characters and plot lines interweave. Senior bank teller Miles Eastin is discovered to be defrauding the bank whilst casting guilt on another teller, a young single mother named Juanita Nunez. He is dismissed, arrested, and convicted. While in prison, he is gang-raped by a gang of fellow inmates. In prison, his knowledge of counterfeiting brings him to the attention of a gang of credit card forgers, who offer him a job on his release. Owing money to loan sharks, and desperate not to have to go to work for a criminal organization, he tries going back to his former employer to ask for some kind of job. Nolan Wainwright, the bank's Head of Security, obviously won't hire him to work directly for the bank, but with the approval of higher management, is allowed to pay Eastin to go undercover as an affiliate of the forgers and secretly report back details of their operation to Juanita Nunez, who had forgiven him after he came to see her and apologize for what he did. She agrees to be the "cut-out" whom Eastin will contact, and she will report back what he tells her to Wainwright. Eastin is discovered to be a planted spy by the criminal organization and tortured, only to be rescued in the nick of time as a result of Juanita being captured by the forgers and forced to identify Eastin. She is released, but uses her photographic memory to count the amount of time she spent blindfolded in the car and the movements it made, and as a result is able to lead police to the safe house where Eastin was being held and tortured. At the end, Eastin, Juanita and her daughter, Estella, move out of the state where both get new jobs. Also featured is Edwina D'Orsey, the head of FMA's flagship downtown branch, through whom a reader gains much insight into day-to-day branch banking, and her husband, Lewis, who writes a financial newsletter.

As readers increasingly appreciate Vandervoort, the protagonist, they learn of his troubled personal life. His advancement in banking circles has come as his marriage is failing; his wife Celia is confined to an inpatient psychiatric facility. Vandervoort is shown as having developed a relationship with Margot Bracken, who is depicted as a radical attorney and political activist many years his junior; her attitudes sometime conflicts with Vandervoort's role at FMA. She is also related to Edwina D'Orsey, as she is her first cousin. Meanwhile, Vandervoort's antagonist, Heyward, is depicted as a devout Episcopalian who strives to maintain an air of personal integrity and morality, only to slowly sacrifice them both in his pursuit of the presidency of FMA.

As these men pursue their battle for the soon-to-be-vacant position of CEO, various issues involving the banking industry, such as credit card fraud, embezzlement, inflation, subprime lending, and insider trading are discussed. ''First Mercantile American'' is eventually revealed to have a doppelganger in the form of an organized crime family.

The fight for control of the bank continues under the darkening clouds of an approaching economic recession. Roscoe is manipulated into making a large, illegal and toxic loan to Supranational Corporation (SuNatCo), a multinational conglomerate (loosely based on International Telephone and Telegraph, with certain elements of Penn Central) run by the powerful, unscrupulous CEO, G. G. Quartermain. It turns out that SuNatCo is on the verge of bankruptcy, using the bank's loan in a vain attempt to keep afloat. The ensuing scandal causes a bank run and panic among depositors, shareholders, and employees, with the perpetrator committing suicide rather than facing the consequences of his actions. By the vote of the board of directors, Vandervoort assumes the position of CEO of the half-ruined bank.

Set in Shelbyville, Tennessee in 1978, the film centers on high school student Clancy Whitfield, whose family is facing financial ruin due to his father Billy's inability to hold a job because of his drinking. His mother Joan desperately is trying to make ends meet while their dining room furniture is repossessed and the bank is threatening to foreclose on the house. She finds herself the subject of gossip but supported by Sally Crowder, her friend since childhood.

A rumor that former resident Sondra Locke will be returning to town to attend the annual Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration and the opening of her film ''Every Which Way but Loose'' at the local movie house has Clancy and his friends Melora, Bobbie, Ray, and Glen eagerly anticipating her arrival. In the hope she'll see it and help them escape their small town and achieve fame of their own, the quintet decides to present a musical tribute to her at the Chamber of Commerce-sponsored talent show. Their performance is applauded wildly by the audience, but they have less success meeting the elusive Locke.

The story takes place during the period of the ruling military ''junta'' in Argentina from the mid-seventies to the early eighties, focusing on one particular family. The story is told from the viewpoint of Nicolas, a young boy.

By mistake the mother of the family is killed by right-wing extremists because they believe she had photographed a civilian protest march and the violent suppression by a military patrol in Buenos Aires. In fact, her twin sister actually took the pictures. She recognized its leader as the father of her nephew and she shows the pictures to her sister.

One day while the sister is out, the man shows up with his political thugs and murders the mother and then hunts for Nicolas who hides inside a large grandfather clock. Nicolas (Mario Pasik) is soon taken by his aunt to her home in the country, where he attends the local Catholic school, where most of the children's parents are in the military.

At the school the fascist bullies and kids who are frightened by them offer a parallel to Argentina's political situation at the time. The boys imitate their parents with dirty tricks toward a boy they call a ''mixto'' (born from a marriage of Jews and Christians) who they regularly beat and torment.

Nicolas develops a friendship with the mixto and confides in him about what happened to his mother.

A few years later, after the mixto has been taken away, Nicolas and the other bullies take part in the Malvinas/Falklands War. Afterward, Nicolas settles an old, old score.

It tells of a woman who, on board the ship ''Great Eastern'' with her abusive husband, finds that the man she loves is also on board.

"The Battle of Frederick"

The book picks up where the second volume, ''Grant Comes East'' left off, after the Confederate victory over the Army of the Potomac. Lee's army meets Grant's army in the bloody "Battle of Frederick".

Opposing forces

This book has Lee's army, fresh after defeating the Army of the Potomac at Gunpowder River, dealing with Grant's army of the Susquehanna as it marches through the Cumberland Valley and towards Virginia. Lee's army consists of three corps, two of Veteran Troops under James Longstreet and John Bell Hood. Longstreet's corps numbers around 15,000, with divisions under Allegheny Johnson, 4,000, Lafayette McLaws, 6,000, and Robert Rodes old division (Now under Pierce Doles), 5,000. His largest division under George Pickett is now much reduced since Gunpowder River, and it's now the garrison of Baltimore. Longstreet's corps largely bore the brunt of the fighting there, so it's mainly kept in reserve at Fredrick. Hood commands the II corps, he's been recently promoted. His performance is aggressive and at times sloppy, but always remains as dependable and brilliant. Commanding the largest corps, it numbered 21,000 men, with veteran divisions under Jubal Early 7,000 men, Jerome B. Robertson, 6,000, R.H. Anderson's small command, 3,000 and Alfred Scales's survivors from Fort Stevens, 5,000. Lastly there was Beauregard's new third corps who were mainly troops who used to garrison the Carolinas and Virginia. Divided into three divisions, the officers names are not mentioned. Most likely though, they would've been Robert Ransom, Samuel French and Roswell Ripley, the department commanders underneath Beauregard at the time. His corps numbered close to 20,000 men, but were mainly green troops. Beauregard was often at odds with Lee through this campaign, and jealous. This would take its toll during the battle.

On the Union side, Grant commanded all Union forces, and was directly in command of his troops sent from the west, The Army of The Susquehanna. This army consisted of the XIII corps, under Edward Ord. This was Grant's second largest corps, somewhere around 16,000 men full of veteran troops from Shiloh and before, these were the original core sector of Grant's army and its commander was legendary. His next Corps was only temporarily attached under Ambrose Burnside, the IX Corps taken from east Tennessee. It numbered around 16,000 men as well, including one division that is made up of colored troops who had never fired a shot. His third corps was the XVII Corps, his best unit of hardened veterans. His second in command, James McPherson, was in charge of those troops. This Corps also had Division commanders such as Blair or Logan. At 13,000 men though, it was the smallest corps in the army. His final Formation was the XIX corps, under Nathaniel P Banks. Made up of crack troops, this formation was the heaviest, numbering over 20,000.

Grant also had available to him four other commands, his cavalry, under Ben Grierson and George Custer numbered close to 6,000 sabers.

Darius Couch commanded 20,000 90-day volunteers and militia.

George Sykes commanded the fragment of the once proud Army of the Potomac which numbered close to 15,000-20,000.

Lastly, Winfield Scott Hancock commanded the garrison of Washington, close to 43,000 green troops and colored from Washington.

Build up to battle

The Campaign begins after Lee has smashed the Army of the Potomac at Gunpowder River and Grant has finally completed transporting his army from the west and refitting it in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Grant makes the first move, and begins to march his newly minted Army of the Susquehanna southward down the Cumberland Valley toward Virginia. He also sends a large force of Pennsylvania militia whose enlistments are about to expire under General Darius Couch with a strong cavalry screen directly toward Baltimore as a feint. Lee, in Baltimore with the Army of Northern Virginia, intuits that Grant may be moving his main body south toward Virginia, but he cannot be certain and, thus, cannot fully commit his army until his own cavalry can break through the Union cavalry screen and obtain more information about their order of battle. However, purely as a precautionary measure, Lee does agree to send a pontoon train that was captured from the Union army during the Gettysburg Campaign westward to the vicinity of Frederick, Maryland, where it would be in better position to assist in any rapid Confederate movements in that direction.

General George Armstrong Custer in command of a Union cavalry brigade screening Couch's force learns of Lee's movement of the pontoon train from a loyal Union railroad man, and decides it is an important enough prize that he must abandon his current mission, leaving Couch without proper screening forces. As a result, Lee quickly learns that, as suspected, Couch's force is a feint and of no military concern, and, also, that Custer is moving on Frederick. While the pontoons are not of critical importance, Lee realizes that the town of Frederick itself is extremely critical. Not only does it have critical railroad facilities and equipment that would expedite rapid movement of Confederate forces by rail, but it also sits at the base of the Catoctin Mountains and the passes through which he could launch a rapid attack on Grant's flank as his army marches down the Cumberland Valley. He immediately orders Stuart's three brigades of cavalry to Frederick to support the slim Confederate forces already holding the town, while his infantry follows close behind by rail and on foot (except for Pickett's division, which was decimated in the fight at the Gunpowder River, and is left behind as a rear guard in Baltimore). While this plays out, though, Custer's brigade of cavalry is able to reach Frederick and drive out the two regiments Confederate cavalry holding Frederick and retake the town as well as the critical rail facilities just minutes ahead of Stuart.

Custer quickly makes plans both for defense and for destroying critical bridges and rail facilities on the banks of the Monocacy River just east of Frederick, but, before he can complete either, Stuart arrives and immediately begins to attack. His troopers greatly outnumber Custer's, and those numbers soon begin to show. However, Custer leads a brilliant "last stand" and, although he is mortally wounded in the process, he is able to hold out long enough to destroy the critical railroad bridge east of Frederick in spectacular fashion (by exploding several trains' boilers in an intentional collision), and, thus deny the critical rail facilities to the Confederates, which would, in turn, greatly slow efforts to bring infantry forward by rail for the remainder of the campaign.

First day

As Custer's last stand reaches its climax, Lee himself feels the result of the destruction of part of the railroad as he nearly dies in a train derailment. Lee along with Alfred Scales's Division arrive at the town shortly after Stuart retakes it and push beyond to seize the passes through the Catoctins with the intention of holding there until the remainder of the Confederate army can come up. James McPherson brings his Union Corps up, driving them relentlessly. When they arrive, his first brigade immediately engages Scales' strong defensive line and suffers heavily. After a half hour, his entire first division was engaged. Fifteen minutes later, his second division arrives and begins to forces Scales' now outnumbered command back. Not wanting to be a hollow wreck, Scales slowly pulled back. By the time McPherson's third and fourth divisions arrive, Scales was in full retreat.

McPherson occupies the heights but needs reinforcements. However, Ambrose Burnside stops his corps to rest, which angers Grant. Burnside is relieved and Phillip Sheridan takes his place and tries to drive his men to the front.

McPherson advances down from the crest of the Catoctins toward the town of Frederick where Lee decides to set a trap, intending to lure McPherson into the town where he can engage his isolated corps in front while sending additional forces around both flanks before Union reinforcements can arrive. Scales builds defensive positions in the town while Jerome Robertson brings his men to the south of town to flank McPherson in that direction and Stuart brings his troopers to the north to come down on McPherson's northern flank. McPherson's corps enters the town and confused, bloody house-to-house fighting ensues between his forces and Scales'. McPherson's men are taken piecemeal by groups of Confederates, and casualties quickly rise. Then, Robertson smashes through McPherson's flank and bags most of his Corps, killing McPherson in the process. The remainder of his corps flees the town and the day's actions are mainly over, except for a small fight with the IX corps.

The first day's battle is a great tactical victory for the Confederates with over 7,000 casualties on the Union side versus only 2,000 on the Confederate side.

Second day

The next day begins with various skirmishes. Lee is dug in on a ridge to the east of the town. By now the rest of the army has arrived and is dug in, Longstreet on the right\reserve, Hood in the center, and Beauregard on the left. After Grant probes his line, (Banks on the left, Ord on the right, Sheridan in the center and McPherson in reserve in Frederick itself. Grant is on a long ridge, with the town in the center. A road goes up his entire line, which is on the banks of the Monacacy. Throughout the day, the Union make small attacks but to little effect and the fighting on that day is over.

Third day

The third day begins with Ord assaulting a Confederate salient on the river. After a fierce artillery barrage and duel, Ord attacks and suffers heavily. His first division is nearly destroyed at the ends of Hood's muskets. The second and third divisions redouble their efforts and temporarily push the confederates back to the ridge. Ord follows up on a frontal charge where he is defeated, until Jubal Early's men smash into Ord's line at the ford and after taking heavy casualties pushes Ord across the river for good.

At the end of the day, Lee has lost 6,000 men, many of them coming from Early's division, and the past three days add up to 10,000. Ord on the other hand lost all but three thousand of his Corps, which makes the total loss in the army the past three days 20,000 with two full Corps, Ord's and McPherson's, essentially destroyed.

Lee now feels his advantage and wants to use it. His plan is to send two of Beauregard's divisions as well as Robertson and Mclaws to assault the union right by going down south, cross the river, and roll up the road that longs along the Union line.

Grant on the other hand decides to wait, because he has a trap on a wider scale that is now being sprung. First, he has placed all the forces in the fortifications around Washington under the command of General Winfield Scott Hancock with orders to advance westward along the south bank of the Potomac to seize and fortify all of the crossings that Lee might use if he must retreat back to Virginia. Moreover, the surviving remnants of the Army of the Potomac, now under Sykes, are being transported to Baltimore by sea with the intent of retaking the city and eventually advancing on Lee's rear. Consequently, Grant need only keep Lee's army engaged at Frederick, while these other forces complete their maneuvers.

Lee, on the other hand, with his communications to the south soon to be severed will soon have little choice but to attack and defeat Grant here at Frederick.

The Hornet's Nest

After skirmishing throughout the morning hours, Grant shifts Sheridan's reserves to reinforce Ord. By twelve, Beauregard assaults union pickets at the ford with Stuart's cavalry. After defeating them, he continues up the road on a two division front. But instead of waiting for Mclaws and Robertson's veterans, he goes in without them. The battle drags out and becomes very costly. Beauregard eventually pushes Sheridan's and Ord's men back.

The section where Sheridan's and Ord's men are form in a rail road cut. Beauregard tries to rush the position but suffers heavily. He then tries to surround it and mass his attack that way, the same tactic he used at Shiloh in a similar position. This sector called the hornets nest, holds for hour after hour. Casualties mount as he fails to take the position. The colored troops in particular do well, by blunting Beauregard's attack. Eventually Robertson arrives and bayonet charges the position with the Texas Brigade in the thick of it. Robertson is killed and his division is torn to shreds. After hours of fighting, Ord surrenders, but not without inflicting over 10,000 casualties. Lee is furious with Beauregard and thinks of relieving him, for now Grant has bled Lee dry. Lee orders a frontal assault along the entire line and Early, Richard H. Anderson, Johnson, Doles and Scales to assault Sheridan and Banks. Sheridan and his men put up a fierce fight but retreat after tearing Early's division to shreds and wounding the commander. Banks pulls back as well, the onrushing confederates see victory in sight as they rush up Braddock's heights. Scores of Union are captured as Longstreet and Hood bring their forces upon the fleeing federals. Finally it seemed the road was over and there was a clear road all the way to Washington.

Hunt's battery

Hunt forms a massive battery along two roads in Frederick, with McPherson's old command behind him. After the hornet's nest, Lee directs personally McLaws and two of Beauregard's divisions along with Robertson's old command to assault the town. Going up the two roads, Stuart leads the advance against 160 guns. The assault is torn to shreds as scores fall on the road. McLaws is killed but his division along with Robertson's old division and Johnson seize the guns. The victory was nearly theirs until Banks and Sheridan counterattacked and made short work of the assault. Stuart is wounded and Hood was hit near the breakthrough in Sheridan's line earlier. The attack in Frederick was torn apart, divisions torn to shreds. Lee led the assault until taken custody of and sent to the rear. Lee nearly saw the enemy break another time, only to rally once again. The rest of Lee's forces withdrew across the river, ending the battle since they withdrew the next day.

Grant won, barely. He lost over 25,000 men killed, wounded and captured and two of his corps commanders were lost, McPherson killed. McPherson's, Sheridan's and Ord's corps were hollow wrecks, he lost over a third of his force.

Lee lost 25,000 men, half his infantry. McLaws, Robertson, Anderson, Johnson and all three of Beauregard's divisional commanders were dead. Early, Hood, Fitz Lee, Stuart, Jenkins, Beauregard and Jones were wounded. This was the turning point of the war, and it cost the south's last hope: The army of Northern Virginia.

Aftermath

At the same time as Lee was making his final desperate attacks at Frederick, the other parts of Grant's plan were coming together. Hancock's army seized all crossings of the Potomac to Lee's south and, with the assistance of volunteer work brigades composed of Washington D.C.'s African American population, constructed an impregnable line of fortifications literally overnight. Meanwhile, General Sykes with the remainder of the Army of the Potomac landed at Baltimore, routed Pickett's rear guard, and, after seizing the remainder of the Confederate Army's supplies, began to advance westward on Lee's rear.

With his army fought out and short of supplies and, now, facing threats to his flanks and rear, Lee was left with no choice but to retreat back to Virginia. He first tried to retake the Potomac crossings now held by Hancock, but he was driven back. Marching westward, while attempting to hold off Grant to his north and the now rapidly advancing Sykes to the west, Lee searched for and, eventually, found an undefended crossing. He began to build the pontoon bridge, but, as the bridge neared completion, Lee again found himself pressed on all sides. First, Hancock advanced artillery to a point close enough to begin a bombardment of the bridge, which greatly slowed progress and threatened to destroy the bridge before it could even be used. Then, Sykes attacked and was able to drive right to the bridge and seize it along with a number of prisoners.

Lee attempted to march the remainder of his army away, but his army was now greatly outnumbered, low on supplies and physically exhausted. By the following day, Grant's army caught up with Lee as well, leaving him surrounded on all sides. After briefly considering one final, desperate attack to push Grant aside and breakout to Virginia, Lee sees the futility of it and agrees to surrender.

Lee was only responsible for the Army of Northern Virginia, but its surrender became the death blow to the Confederacy. After the surrender, Grant paroled Lee and his army, and allowed them to "go home." Then, he declared a 30-day, unilateral truce, ostensibly to give the paroled Confederates time to return home, but more so to give Confederate President Jefferson Davis time to "come to his senses" and realize the war was lost. However, Davis tried desperately to build a new army to defend Virginia and continue the fight, but his plan consisted mostly of redrafting the now-paroled Lee and his troops back into service. Lee's honor would not permit him to fight again when it was strictly forbidden by the terms of his parole, so he resigned from the army and, due to the great respect his generals and soldiers had for him, they all followed suit. Without an army, Davis was left with no choice but to surrender, ending the war.

Presented as a letter from DS9's resident Cardassian spy and tailor Elim Garak to Dr. Julian Bashir, Garak recounts his life story, and also notes developments on Cardassia after the end of the Dominion War. According to the text, Garak has since assisted in the rebuilding and recovery of Cardassia, while also supporting democratic reforms for its government. He believes that the Dominion War and destruction of Cardassia were partially caused by Cardassia's military-led government.

The narrative of the novel happens on Cardassia after the end of the Dominion War where Garak, living in the ruins of his childhood home, is helping with relief efforts while reminiscing about a society that is gone. As he is writing a letter to Julian Bashir, he also goes over his own life through journal entries.

The first timeline follows him through his childhood in the home of Enabran Tain being raised as the gardener's son with Mila as his birth mother, his training as a youth at a brutal military academy called Bamarren Institute for State Intelligence, his recruitment into the Obsidian Order, his rise through the ranks as a skilled operative carrying out various covert missions, his enmity with Gul Dukat and his disobedience of Enabran Tain over Palandine, a woman he loves which leads to his downfall and exile.

The second timeline takes place in DS9 where he is preparing for his mission with Kira Nerys to join the Cardassian resistance under Damar.

Murder, homosexuality, nymphomania, and sadism are among the themes of this black comedy focusing on a brother and sister who become involved with a young, sexy, amoral drifter with a mysterious past.

Kath is a lonely middle-aged woman living in the London suburbs with her aging father Kemp, referred to as "DaDa". When she meets the Mr. Sloane sunbathing on a tombstone in the cemetery near her home, she invites him to become a lodger. Soon after he accepts her offer, Kath seduces him. Her closeted brother Ed makes him the chauffeur, complete with a tight leather uniform, of his pink 1959 Pontiac Parisienne convertible. Kemp recognizes Mr. Sloane as the man who killed his boss years before, and stabs him in the leg with a gardening tool.

Mr. Sloane takes delight in playing brother against sister and tormenting the elderly man. He gets Kath pregnant and a jealous Ed warns him to stay away from her. When Mr. Sloane murders Kemp to protect his secret, they blackmail him by threatening to report him to the police, unless he agrees to participate in a ménage à trois in which he becomes not only a sexual partner but their prisoner as well.

During World War II, a Marine battalion prepares to land on a large Japanese-held island in the Pacific. Lieutenant Colonel Gilfillan warns the men that it will be a tough mission, and that they have been ordered to take prisoners in order to gain information about the Japanese fortifications. Below deck, veteran Lieutenant Carl A. Anderson, a chemistry teacher in civilian life, questions his former student, Corporal Stuart Conroy, who complains that he is ill and cannot fight. Carl assures him that he has shown courage before and can do so again. In the landing boat heading to shore, Navy corpsman C. E. "Doc" Jones is worried because Carl has been suffering from "psychological migraines" for months. Carl and his platoon have been fighting since Guadalcanal, and now only seven men remain of the original platoon. Although Doc urged Carl to seek treatment in the United States, Anderson refuses to leave his men and has been relying on Doc to supply him with painkillers.

The men hit the beach and successfully dig in, despite an initial burst of resistance. As four days pass, the seven old-timers in Anderson's platoon, including Doc, Pigeon Lane, Sergeant Zelenko, Slattery, Coffman, and the unstable Riley "Pretty Boy" Duncannon, grow weary of the constant threat of hidden Japanese snipers. One day, the men try to take a ridge of hills, but are beaten back by Japanese rockets, which come as an unpleasant surprise to the commanding officers. When Coffman, who Carl saved from drowning at Tarawa is killed, Carl is forced to take some more of Doc's pills.

Anderson meets with other officers at battalion headquarters, where Gilfillan recounts the troubles they are having capturing prisoners and getting information from them. Sergeant Randolph Johnson, a Japanese-speaking linguist who uses psychology in interrogating prisoners, questions a POW who has been dubbed "Willie". As Gilfillan receives orders to stop the rockets within nine hours, before the next assault on the hills, Willie informs Johnson that the Japanese soldiers holding a cave stronghold are willing to surrender. Accompanied by Randolph, and war correspondent Sergeant Dickerman, Carl leads a patrol with the six remaining old-timers and replacement Whitney, to the cave, but they are ambushed and Zelenko is blinded.

The men capture the remaining Japanese, including a wounded officer, three laborers and a shell-shocked, elderly civilian. Carl finds a map on the wounded officer. On the return trip, a sniper shoots at Pretty Boy, who kills him during hand-to-hand combat. The confrontation further unbalances him and he attempts to murder the prisoners. Lane then accidentally shoots and kills Pretty Boy while attempting to stop him. Doc also dies from a wound in the shoulder, but not before giving Dickerman a message for Carl.

Anderson takes his prisoners to headquarters, where the wounded officer commits hara-kiri with a knife he stole from Randolph. While map expert Lieutenant Butterfield works on a Japanese map overlay found in Pretty Boy's personal effects, Carl and Randolph learn that one of the POWs is actually a highly educated officer, and famous Japanese baseball player before the war, pretending to be a private. From the officer's cryptic statements, he speaks perfect English, together with statements made from the officer who committed suicide, Randolph deduces where the rockets are located, and Lieutenant Butterfield matches the location on the map. When Carl and Dickerman make their way back to the platoon, they learn from Slattery that Conroy has been killed. Carl takes the news hard, questions the meaning of their sacrifice, and is ready to give up. Dickerman reads aloud Doc's note, however, and Carl, inspired by Doc's appeal for him to be strong for the sake of those whom he survives and the reciting of the Lord's Prayer by Whitney, throws away his painkillers, smashing them with the butt of his weapon, and again leads his men into battle. Then, as the film closes, U.S. Navy F4U Corsairs fly in and smash the Japanese position, which they were able to attack based on Carl's men's efforts, Carl screams to the advancing troops: "Give 'em Hell," which they echo in unison.

A French string quartet (Sébastien Zorn, Frascolin, Yvernes and Pinchinat), traveling from San Francisco to their next engagement in San Diego, is diverted to Standard Island. Standard Island is an immense man-made island designed to travel the waters of the Pacific Ocean. The wealth of residents of the island can only be measured in millions. The quartet is hired to play a number of concerts for the residents during their tour of the islands (Sandwich, Cook, Society) of the South Pacific. The island seems an idyllic paradise; however, it is an island divided in two. The left half's population is led by Jem Tankerdon and is known as the Larboardites. The right half's population is led by Nat Coverley and is known as the Starboardites. Despite the obstacles encountered on their journey, the two parties have a disagreement that threatens the future of the island itself.

With the story being set in 19th century France, Remi lives in a French village with his mother called Chavanon. His father Jerome Barberin works in Paris. When he is injured, he decides to return to his village, though he is a changed man and is much hard-hearted. Remi discovers that he is actually a foundling. Barberin sells Remi to a traveling artist named Vitalis and his animal group. Remi, who has lost the love of his father and his familiar environment accepts his fate. He leaves the house and confronts the harshness of a traveling artist's life. Along the way, he meets a lovely rich lady named Mrs. Milligan and her sick child named Arthur, who is actually turned out to be his real mother and younger brother. Life with them is great, but Remi didn't know the truth and he decided to leave to go with Vitalis. Tragedies strike one after another to leave Remi alone with only but the faithful dog, Capi. Between staying with a gardening family, where he becomes attached to the youngest mute girl Lise, and traveling with his rowdy best friend Mattia. Making a living playing the harp, Remi searches for a place in life, a place where he can belong. This is until he discovers his real parents may be alive, and undertakes a perilous journey to London, a city in England in search of his family. Remi and Mattia moved in with a man named Driscoll and his family, until after living there for a while, Remi and Mattia realized that the family are a criminal group for money. Later, the police arrest Driscoll and his family for larceny. Unfortunately, Remi is mistaken for being one of them. Mattia and a circus troupe by the names of Bob (a negro), Max and Peter rescue Remi, and Remi and Mattia travel back to France to finally found Remi's real family. Lise finally spoke, Arthur is able to walk and Mattia is adopted by the Milligan family and became Remi's adoptive brother. Remi's real name is revealed to be Richard since he was born. Then, 10 years later, Remi became a lawyer and marries Lise, and Mattia became a violinist.

A philosopher believes that he could understand everything in the world if he were to understand a single element in it. To this purpose he tries to catch a child's top as it spins, hoping that it would continue spinning in his hand, but it always stops the moment he grabs it.

A little island in the ocean changes as the seasons comes and go -- spring and summer bring flowers, seals, and birds, and days and nights. One day a kitten visits the island with a family on a picnic. This kitten opines that the island is small and isolated; however, the island retorts that it, like the kitten, is also a part of the world. When the kitten disputes the island's claim, the island suggests that it ask any fish. The kitten catches a fish and demands, on pain of being eaten, to know how the island is part of the bigger land. The fish invites the kitten down into the water to see, which the kitten of course cannot do. The kitten demands to be shown another way. 'Then you will have to take it on faith', says the fish -- 'to believe what I tell you about what you don't know." The fish then tells him "how all lands are one land under the sea." The cat realizes he has learned a great secret, which he loves, and lets the fish go before leaving the island. The island settles back into the timeless cycle of the seasons -- autumn, winter, storms, and calm.

Grace (Alex Reid) is washed up on a beach along with a man (Jamie Draven) whom she cannot recollect. But since it becomes quickly apparent that the man means to kill her, Grace is forced to resort to extreme measures to stay alive while putting her memory back together.

The picture tells of two prison friends who cope with life outside jail after being paroled.

Tito (Federico Luppi) and Castor (Ulises Dumont) are two robbers whose failed scheme landed them in the Rosario prison for 30 years. Before being jailed, however, the duo stashed much cash near the Paraná River. They plan on getting back to it as soon as they're released.

Thirty years later, however, their insecurities and the pressures of being re-adjusted to society, threaten to ruin their perfect crime.

In ''Idylls of the Rat King'', goblin bandits have taken up residence in an abandoned mine northwest of Silverton. Someone must get rid of them. But this is no ordinary abandoned mine. It was deliberately barricaded generations ago when the Gannu family, founders of Silverton, discovered an unspeakable evil on its lowest levels. And these are no ordinary goblins, for the curse of the Gannu family courses through their veins.

Yen Sid begins preparing seven Keyblade wielders as guardians of light to counteract Master Xehanort's plan of forging the χ-blade. Sora, accompanied by Donald Duck and Goofy, resumes his travels across other worlds to regain his "power of waking", the ability to restore lost hearts, which he lost after nearly being possessed by Xehanort. Sora's group is antagonized by members of Organization XIII, who are targeting the seven Princesses of Heart as substitutes while seeking a new member for their thirteenth and final spot. Meanwhile, Riku and King Mickey search the realm of darkness to recruit Aqua, while Kairi and Lea train as Keyblade wielders.

Sora and Riku are contacted throughout their travels by Ienzo, who uncovers research notes from Ansem the Wise revealing that the hearts of Roxas and two others – later identified as Ventus and Xion – are dormant within Sora's heart. Sora is inspired to restore Roxas by implanting his heart in one of Vexen's artificial replica bodies after learning that the Organization's time-traveling members are using the same method to exist in the present. Vexen later reveals himself to be a double agent within the Organization when he rescues Ansem the Wise from the Heartless Ansem, who abducted him from the realm of darkness after sending Aqua into its oceanic abyss. Vexen enlists fellow member Demyx to deliver a spare replica for Roxas to inhabit.

Riku and Mickey are attacked by Aqua, who has become corrupted by the dark realm's influence. Discovering Master Eraqus's Keyblade on the Destiny Islands, Sora uses it to come to Riku and Mickey's aid, defeating and restoring Aqua. Aqua then travels to awaken Ventus at Castle Oblivion, which she transforms back into the Land of Departure. When she is attacked by Vanitas, Sora rediscovers his power of waking and revives Ventus, who fends Vanitas off.

The seven guardians arrive at the Keyblade Graveyard to battle the Organization, only to be consumed by a swarm of Heartless summoned by the possessed Terra. Sustained by Kairi's power, Sora awakens in a limbo realm called the Final World, where a Chirithy guides him in restoring his fragmented body. He then uses the power of waking to revive his friends and travel back in time to the moment before their defeat, which is averted by the appearance of Terra's lingering will. In the guardians' ensuing battle against the Organization, Terra regains control of his body and reunites with Aqua and Ventus, while Roxas and Xion – the latter of whom was duplicated as the Organization's final member – regain their hearts from Sora and reunite with Lea.

After the other Organization members are defeated, Xehanort provokes Sora into attacking him by destroying Kairi's body, allowing Xehanort to acquire the χ-blade and unlock Kingdom Hearts. Sora, Donald, and Goofy hinder Xehanort by transporting him to his boyhood home of Scala ad Caelum, where they eventually defeat him. In Xehanort's dying moments, Eraqus's spirit emerges from Terra and convinces Xehanort to surrender the χ-blade. After sealing Kingdom Hearts, Sora decides to use the power of waking to save Kairi, despite being warned about the grave consequences of doing so. Afterwards, Sora's allies gathers at the Destiny Islands, where a revived Kairi stays beside Sora before he fades away.

In a post-credits scene, Xigbar summons the Foretellers and reveals himself to be Luxu, their fellow Keyblade apprentice. In a flashback to their youth, Eraqus and Xehanort – having finished a chess game reminiscent of Sora's final battle with Xehanort – begin a new game that predicts a battle with Luxu and the Foretellers.

''Kingdom Hearts III Re Mind''

''Kingdom Hearts III Re Mind'' is a downloadable expansion set during and after the climax of the game. It is divided into three separate scenarios—"Re Mind", the "Limitcut Episode", and the "Secret Episode"—which are unlocked in sequential order after the original game is cleared.

The titular scenario depicts Sora's rescue of Kairi during the game's ending scenes. Assuming an incorporeal form, Sora travels back in time to the battle between the guardians of light and the Organization, traveling through the guardians' hearts to reach Kairi. Despite his initial failure, Sora finds and assembles fragments of Kairi's heart in Scala ad Caelum before his past self's final battle with Xehanort, restoring Kairi. After revisiting the Final World to invite Chirithy to the realm of light, Sora visits his friends' worlds with Kairi before his disappearance.

The "Limitcut Episode" is set one year after Sora's disappearance; his allies have since lead an ongoing search for him, while Kairi has entered stasis after volunteering as Ansem the Wise's test subject to help Sora. During a visit to Radiant Garden, Riku analyzes digital copies of Sora and the Organization's members programmed into Cid Highwind's computer, hoping to uncover clues to Sora's whereabouts through their battles. After the analysis proves inconclusive, Riku is approached by the Fairy Godmother to meet with Yen Sid, who has determined a method of finding Sora through Riku and two others.

The "Secret Episode" focuses on Sora, who has become trapped in the Final World since his disappearance. There, Sora encounters Yozora, who claims that he has been requested to save Sora, but questions his identity and battles him atop a skyscraper in a modern-day metropolis. If Sora wins, Yozora fades away before Sora returns to the Final World; if Sora loses, Yozora crystallizes him and goes to the Final World instead. Afterward, regardless of who wins, Yozora awakens in a car while a closing narration ensues in his and Sora's voices, with the battle's victor saying, "None of this makes sense to me."

Childhood friends Tania (Laila Rouass), Sunita (Meera Syal) and Chila (Ayesha Dharker), now in their thirties, are each at a crossroads in life. Sunita, the eldest, used to be 'super swot' until she flunked out of university to marry her psychotherapist sweetheart, Akaash (Sanjeev Bhaskar). She now feels trapped by two kids and an unfulfilling job. 'Gob Almighty' Tania is the ambitious career girl who's left her family and community behind. The baby of the gang, Chila, is getting married to Deepak (Ace Bhatti), the man of her dreams. But he has a catalogue of former girlfriends, including Tania.

An American astronomer obtains images of Mars suggesting large-scale environmental changes are occurring at a pace that can only be accomplished by intelligent beings with advanced technology. Scientist Chris Cronyn (Peter Graves) and his wife, Linda (Andrea King) have been contacting Mars by a hydrogen powered radio transmitter, using technology based on the work of Nazi scientist Franz Calder. They communicate first through an exchange of mathematical concepts, like the value of pi, and then through answers to specific questions about Martian life. The transmissions claim that Mars is a utopia, which has led to great technological advancement and the elimination of scarcity, but that there is no fear of nuclear war.

This revelation leads to political and economic chaos, especially in the Western hemisphere, and is said to have "done more to smash the democratic world in the last four weeks than the Russians have been able to do in eleven years". The U.S. government imposes a news blackout and orders the transmissions to stop due to fears that the Soviet Union could pick up and decode their messages. This ends when the next message reveals that the Earth is condemned to the constant fear of nuclear war as a punishment for straying from the teachings of the Bible. Revolution sweeps the globe, including the Soviet Union, which is overthrown and replaced by a theocracy, which is met with celebration in America.

The messages cease. Calder, armed with a handgun, confronts the Cronyns in their lab. He wants to announce that he has been duping the world with false messages from a secret Soviet-funded radio transmitter high in the Andes mountains of South America. The transmitter was destroyed by an avalanche. There have been no transmissions since then. He shows them his log. When Linda raises the question of the religious messages, Calder is contemptuous. He says that he transmitted the original messages supposedly from Mars, but that the United States government made up the religious messages, which he allowed because he wanted to see the destruction of the Soviet Union. The Cronyns know that the religious messages were not hoaxes, but Calder's claim will be believed and it will mean disaster for a now peaceful Earth. Unseen by Calder, Chris opens the valve to the hydrogen supply and tells Linda to leave. Calder refuses to allow it. She asks her husband for a cigarette. He says quietly that in all their years together he has never seen her smoke. They both know the spark will ignite the hydrogen and destroy the lab. But before Chris can use his lighter, a message begins to come through and an enraged Calder fires into the screen, blowing up the transmitter, himself and the Cronyns before the message is complete. However, the first part is decoded, and later the President reads it aloud to the world: "You have done well my good..." the rest evoking the Parable of the Talents in the Gospel of Matthew: "You have done well, my good and faithful servant."