Nick Randall (Rutger Hauer) is a Los Angeles-based bounty hunter and ex-CIA operative who is asked by a former co-worker to help track down terrorist Malak Al-Rahim (Gene Simmons), who bombed a movie theatre and later planned to release gas from a chemical plant similar to the Bhopal disaster. However, Al-Rahim is also looking for Randall, and Randall's employers tell him where to find Randall. This results in the death of his best friend, Sergeant Danny Quintz (William Russ), and his girlfriend Terry (Mel Harris), eventually forcing a showdown on the waterfront.

In the end, Randall brings out Al-Rahim handcuffed with a grenade jammed in his mouth. Randall explains to his bosses that they should send his payment to Quintz's family and he will keep the extra bonus for bringing him in alive. As he starts to leave, he says, "fuck the bonus" and pulls out the grenade pin. Al-Rahim's head is blown off and his decapitated body falls to the ground.

The main character is a shy, lonely, middle-aged man named Gil Stewart. He lives a relatively clean, good, quiet life in Cedar Hill, Ohio, where he owns and runs an antique novelty and collectibles store and also helps to take care of his institutionalized nephew Carson (in a group home), who has Down syndrome.

One evening, while returning home from work, he finds an elderly man on the side of the road wearing a bowler hat. The man's hat gets blown away, and as he runs after it, he gets hit by a car. While that is happening, Gil notices two black mastiffs that seemed to be chasing the man and later witnessing the accident. Gil tries to help him, but the man dies. What disturbed Gil were three things: The man, an apparent stranger, knew Gil by name Not only did the two mastiffs look like they knew what they were doing, but they also seemed satisfied at the old man's death. *The man-in-the-bowler-hat says the final words "The Keepers are coming"

When he finally arrives home, he encounters an old, wounded and mangy dog lying in his front lawn, which subsequently crawls under his house.

As he is deciding what to do with the dog (between taking it to a local shelter, the vet, or simply letting it die in peace where it is), he unexpectedly receives a package delivered by an obscure shipping company. To his surprise, the package was apparently sent from Beth, a woman he loved long ago but who mysteriously disappeared and was presumed dead. Gil soon receives a phone call from Carson's group home: Carson is missing.

Gil now is bothered by the following mysteries: Who sent that package? Was it from Beth? If so, where was she all these years? Where did Carson go? Where did that dying dog come from? How and why did the dying man know Gil's name? *Why are those mastiffs roaming around town? Those questions are answered after going through a bizarre and slightly surreal experience. He is forced to remember many of his repressed experiences of his childhood and young adult years, which, in a convoluted way, are linked to the mysterious incidents involving the old man on the road, the mastiffs, Carson's disappearance, and the mysterious dying stray dog.

The feel of the book is very dark and somber. The majority of the book is composed of flashbacks, with the climax occurring during the present day, when he met the old man and the strange dogs. Even though the novel borders on fantasy, real-life issues are dealt with, namely animal abuse, lost pets, aging, and loneliness.

After a successful Christmas Eve show, Mickey wishes the guests a safe trip home. However, Goofy points out that they and the guests cannot leave the House of Mouse as a snowstorm has blocked up all the exits. The guests are worried, but Mickey decides to hold a free-of-charge Christmas party for them until the storm lets up. Unfortunately, Donald is not feeling the Christmas spirit. So Mickey and Minnie play different Christmas cartoons to get him in the spirit.

The cartoons they show include Donald trying to ice-skate and constantly destroying snowmen Huey, Dewey and Louie are building in a competition, Pluto trying to get Chip and Dale out of Mickey's x-mas tree, the Mickey version of The Nutcracker, along with Ludwig Von Drake's "The Science of Santa", Mickey decorating his house in blinding lights that can be seen outside of town, and interviews about what everyone wants for Christmas or feels grateful for.

After all this, everyone, including villains like Jafar, is happy that everyone is enjoying Christmas. However, Donald still refuses to change his mood, promptly souring the crowd's mood. Upset that everything he tried did not lift Donald's Christmas spirit, Mickey heads to the roof, where he tells Jiminy Cricket that all he wanted was for his friend to be happy and enjoy Christmas; Jiminy advises him to wish upon a star. Mickey does so and the star falls into his hands. Mickey returns to Donald, whom he offers the honor of putting the star on the tree. Donald does so, instantly becoming jolly. The star magically begins redecorating the club, turning the reefs golden and giving the Magic Mirror a Santa hat, while turning Jafar's staff into a candy cane. Various languages saying Merry Christmas appear on the television as Mickey announces one last cartoon before a carol.

After ''Mickey's Christmas Carol'', everyone gathers on the stage, singing "The Best Christmas of All". Mickey wishes everyone a Merry Christmas as Tinker Bell ends the film.

Springtime has sprung in the Hundred Acre Wood and Roo, Tigger, Pooh, Piglet and Eeyore head to Rabbit's house to celebrate Easter, only to find that Rabbit has organized a "Spring Cleaning" Day instead. He orders the gang to clean his house while he tidies up in his garden. Initially dejected, the gang, not wanting to let Rabbit down, proceed to carry out Rabbit's orders. While dusting, Pooh sneezes violently, cluttering the house. A large trunk falls out of Rabbit's closet, revealing Easter eggs, decorations, and his Easter Bunny top hat. They also find their favorite Easter things: Pooh's honey pot, Piglet's Easter basket, Eeyore's rabbit ears, and Tigger's striped Easter egg. Assuming that Rabbit had forgotten about Easter, the gang decide to surprise Rabbit by decorating the house, only for this to backfire as Rabbit becomes very furious and literally throws them out of his house for not obeying his orders, trampling his hat in the process.

While Pooh, Piglet, and Eeyore return home, Roo wanders off. Tigger finds him and Roo asks if they will ever celebrate Easter again, prompting Tigger to go back to Rabbit's house to talk to him. Hopeful that Tigger will be able to convince Rabbit and determined to cheer his friends up, Roo returns home and tells his mother, Kanga, what happened, before venturing off to find the others. While they wait for Tigger to return, they practice hunting for Easter eggs by hunting for rocks.

Meanwhile, Tigger returns to Rabbit's house and tells Rabbit about how upset Roo was that they did not have an Easter egg hunt. Rabbit, however, is still too angry that his friends had messed up his Spring Cleaning Day to care and tells Tigger he will never allow another Easter celebration ever again. Tigger and the narrator tell Rabbit that he used to love Easter but Rabbit denies it. To prove it, Tigger takes him back through the book to last year's Easter celebration, when Kanga and Roo moved to the Hundred Acre Wood.

In the flashback, the gang prepares for Easter, painting eggs and making decorations. As it is Roo's first Easter in the Hundred Acre Wood, Rabbit wants everything to be as organized and orderly as possible to the point that he treats Easter as a professional occasion rather than a fun holiday. The others grow tired of Rabbit's bossiness and, under Tigger's suggestion, sneak off with the Easter eggs. Rabbit goes after them and finds them having the egg hunt without him, with the gang agreeing that Tigger is "the best Easter Bunny ever," upsetting Rabbit.

Outside the book, Rabbit admits to Tigger that he did once look forward to being the Easter Bunny, but his exclusion the previous year made him feel unwanted. Tigger says it was not his or the others' intention to leave him out, but Rabbit, still upset about the past, continues to deny the Hundred Acre Wood Easter. Tigger returns to the present and tells the others the bad news, while also explaining the reason for Rabbit's hot-temper. This causes everyone to feel remorseful for unwillingly taking away Rabbit's favorite Easter role. Rabbit also returns to the present, but the narrator purposely stops on the wrong page, at Roo's house, where Rabbit sees Roo wishing that he could make things up to Rabbit. Still unconvinced, Rabbit returns home and puts all the Easter things in the trunk before going to sleep.

Frustrated with Rabbit's stubborn behavior, the narrator (after scaring Rabbit awake with a ghost-like voice) transports Rabbit forward in time to "unwritten pages of the book" – the Hundred Acre Wood’s future where it is Spring Cleaning Day and everything is organized exactly as Rabbit wants. Initially delighted, Rabbit asks where his friends are, thinking that they are late, but the narrator says they all moved away because of his selfishness and bossiness. Refusing to believe this, Rabbit tries to find them but realizes that the narrator wasn't kidding when he discovers that his friends' homes are empty and abandoned; the narrator claims the reason why was because Rabbit didn't treat them like friends and only cared about himself, which Rabbit at first denies. Finally realizing how his bad behavior affected his friends and not wanting to be alone for the rest of his life, Rabbit runs back to his house intent on having Easter in order to atone for his mistakes, only to find out to his horror that his friends' things have gone with them.

Rabbit then wakes up the next morning and finds himself back in the present, overjoyed to see the Easter supplies are still there and that he still has a chance to change the future. Now "giddy as a jackrabbit", Rabbit immediately begins to plan the grandest Easter the Hundred Acre Wood has ever had. At the same time, Roo, unaware that Rabbit has changed, comes up with an idea in hopes of cheering Rabbit up. He picks up Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore, and Tigger with a wheelbarrow, but loses control of it and crashes into his house. While they are busy working, Rabbit arrives, pretending to still be grumpy, but their fears fade when he surprises them with their Easter decorations, along with a cotton tail for Eeyore. Rabbit shows them the celebration he has prepared and reveals his change of heart, which everyone is very happy to see, especially Roo, who returns Rabbit his Easter Bunny hat, which has been repaired, giving Rabbit back his favorite Easter role. The spirit of Easter is now restored, and Roo pops out of the book and says, "B.B.F.N., Bye-bye for now!", ending the film.

John Ingram is a highly successful oil-field firefighter and a family man. It is a contented life, he has even bought his own oil well in hope of striking it rich. His greatest fears are realized, however, when a man, William Ramey, from his secret past sees Ingram in a newsreel and shows up looking for a job.

Ramey attempts to blackmail Ingram, who had run from a chain gang years ago, and began a new life under an assumed name. After a shady deal is made, Ingram is tricked and Ramey turns him into authorities, who return him to a chain gang. Ramey subsequently becomes a very rich man.

When Ingram finds out about the success of the man who betrayed him, he plans a daring escape in an attempt to return home and get revenge.

Ramey has successfully run Ingram's business in his absence;but only because no emergencies have arisen that would require Ingram's special knowledge.

As fate would have it, the escaped Ingram arrives at the plant just as a major oil fire breaks out.

Overpowering Ramey, Ingram slowly drags him towards the heart of the blaze;hinting that unless Ramey makes a full confession; he will do nothing to save them.

A frightened Ramey agrees. Ingram douses the oil fire, and is eventually restored to his former position of respectability.

Melek Özbal (Gülben Ergen)[Fran Fine], fresh out of her job as a bridal consultant in her boyfriend's shop is working as a door-to-door cosmetics saleswoman when she stumbles onto the opportunity to become the nanny to the children of a wealthy media tycoon, Ömer Giritli (Kenan Isik)[Maxwell Sheffield]. Once Melek realizes Giritli is not only wealthy but also a widower, she eagerly takes the job.

It's a situation of blue-collar meets blue blood, as Melek gives the prim-and-proper and his problem children a dose of "street-smart logic," helping them become a healthy, happy family. Melek discovers she's got a lot of work to do with the three Giritli youngsters. Dilara (Sinem Kobal) is a pretty, yet insecure teenager in need of a boost in self-esteem. Convinced he doesn't need a nanny, Tolga (Yasar Abravaya) is a master at mischievous pranks and tormenting his sisters. Eight-year-old Duygu (Gökçe Uzuner) is a serious child who dotes on her daily sessions with her therapist. Proudly running the Giritli household is the butler Pertev (Haldun Dormen), who watches all events with a bemused eye and levels problems with his quick wit. Pertev quickly recognizes Melek's gift at bringing warmth back to the family. Suzan (Seray Sever), Ömer's socialite business associate, views Melek with a mixture of skepticism and jealousy, as she has designs on the very available Giritli herself.

Apart from a few name changes for the characters, and cities in Turkey, the episodes are identical to their American equivalents.

J. Henry Waugh is an accountant, albeit an unhappy one. However, each night after he comes home from work, Henry immerses himself in a world of ''his'' choosing: a baseball league in which every action is ruled by the dice.

The novel opens with the excitement of a perfect game in progress. Henry, as owner of every team in the league, is flush with pride in the young rookie, who is pitching this rarest of rare games: Damon Rutherford, "son" of one of the league's all-time greats.

When the young hurler completes the miracle game, Henry's life lights up. Giddy with happiness, Henry pushes himself and his league to the limits as he plays game after game so that he can see the young boy pitch again.

As fate would have it, the rookie Rutherford is killed by a bean-ball, a rare play from "the Extraordinary Occurrences Chart" in the game that Henry has invented and has used to see fifty-six "seasons" to conclusion. That Henry is also fifty-six marks a turning point in Henry's life. The "death" of the young pitcher on the table-top affects the real-life Henry in ways unimaginable. As Henry's personal life spirals out of control, he finally arrives at the solution that will save his league, his creation, and, ultimately, his sanity.

Psychiatrist Dr. Sidney Schaefer is chosen by the U.S. government to act as the president's top-secret personal psychoanalyst, from a referral by Don Masters, a Central Enquiries Agency (CEA) assassin who vetted Schaefer while undergoing his own psychoanalysis. The decision to choose Schaefer is against the advice of Henry Lux, the diminutive director of the all-male Federal Bureau of Regulation (FBR). ("Lux" resembles "Electrolux," which like "Hoover", was once a famous make of vacuum cleaner.) Schaefer is given a home in affluent Georgetown and assigned a comfortable office connected to the White House by a secret tunnel. From this location he is to be on call at all hours, to fit the president's hectic schedule.

However, the president's analyst has a unique problem: there is no one with whom he can talk about the president's top-secret and personal problems. As he steadily becomes overwhelmed by stress, Schaefer begins to feel that he is being watched everywhere until he becomes clinically paranoid; he even suspects his sweet girlfriend Nan of spying on him as an agent of the CEA. All of Schaefer's paranoid suspicions eventually turn out to be true. Still worse, Schaefer has a habit of talking in his sleep.

Schaefer goes on the run with the help of a "typical" American family in New Jersey who defend him against foreign agents attempting to kidnap him off the street. He escapes with the help of a hippie tribe led by the "Old Wrangler", as spies from many nations attempt to kidnap him for the secret information that the president has disclosed to him. Meanwhile, agents from the FBR seek him on orders to '"liquidate" him as a national security risk. Eventually, Schaefer is found and kidnapped by Canadian Secret Service agents masquerading as a British pop group. Schaefer is rescued from the Canadians and an FBR assassin by Kropotkin (Severn Darden), a Russian KGB agent who intends to spirit him away to the Soviet Union. Kropotkin has second thoughts about his plan following a psychoanalysis session with the doctor during which Kropotkin begins to come to terms with his unrealized hatred of his KGB-chief father for having his mother shot during Joseph Stalin's Purge of 1937. Now feeling that he needs the doctor's help to continue his self-analysis, he instead returns him to U.S. soil.

Kropotkin arranges a pickup with his trusted CEA colleague Don Masters, but Schaefer is kidnapped again, this time by TPC (The Phone Company), a far more insidious organization than the CSS, the FBR, or the KGB, which had been secretly observing him. Taken to TPC headquarters in New Jersey, he is introduced to its leader, who wants Schaefer's help in carrying out their plan for world domination. As the TPC leader makes his presentation, a camera closeup reveals electronic cables connected to one of his feet, revealing that he is actually an animatronic robot.

TPC has developed a "modern electronic miracle", the Cerebrum Communicator (CC), a microelectronic device that can communicate wirelessly with any other CC in the world. With the CC implanted in the brain, a user need only think of the phone number to be called, and is instantly connected, thus eliminating the need for The Phone Company's massive and expensive wired infrastructure. For this to work, every human being will be assigned a number instead of a name, and will have the CC implanted prenatally. Schaefer is to be forced to assist the TPC scheme by blackmailing the president to pushing through the required legislation. TPC uses a short animated sequence (a parody of the animation in ''Our Mr. Sun'') to explain the plan to Schaefer.

Masters and Kropotkin use their superspy abilities to come to Schaefer's rescue. They hand Schaefer an M16 rifle that he gleefully uses on The Phone Company's security staff. The trio emerge victorious from the ensuing bloodbath, but months later, as Schaefer and his spy friends are enjoying a Christmas reunion, animatronic executives from TPC are seen staring approvingly at a secret monitor, while "Joy to the World" plays in the background.

The story focuses on three brothers: Big Boy, Andy E., and Elvin. They live in the slums of Manila as "''bakal-dyaryo-bote''" scavengers recycling scrap metal, newspapers and empty beverage bottles. Later on, They discover that Big Boy, the ugliest of the three brothers, is the only heir of a rich yet ugly tycoon in Manila (Zorayda Sanchez) who was lucky enough to marry the wealthy man Ernesto.

Big Boy also took his adopted brothers and adoptive parents with him when his biological parents took him in and it was a stroke of luck for both Andy (because he became a rap superstar) and Elvin (who was able to go to college, a wish he is longing for).

On a summer day in 1942, a damaged RAF bomber strays over Paris and is shot down by German flak. After planning to reconvene in the Turkish baths at the Grand Mosque of Paris, the crew parachutes out, but only three evade capture. Sir Reginald lands in the Vincennes Zoo and, given civilian clothes by a friendly zookeeper, heads for the baths. Peter Cunningham lands on the platform of a house painter, Augustin Bouvet, from where they escape the Germans and are hidden by a puppet show operator, Juliette; Augustin goes to the baths on Cunningham's behalf. Alan MacIntosh lands on the Opéra Garnier, where he is reluctantly assisted by the chief conductor, Stanislas Lefort, who goes to the baths for him. All the while, the German military under Major Achbach furiously pursues the three and their helpers.

Following the rendezvous at the bath, Lefort leaves Reginald and Bouvet to arrange their pickup of MacIntosh, but in the meantime Achbach has discovered Lefort's connection with the fugitive aviators and takes him prisoner as he returns to the opera. That evening, Reginald and Bouvet, wearing stolen German uniforms, arrive to fetch MacIntosh, and in the confusion of a bombing attempt against a German SS commander, the three of them and Lefort are aided in their escape by Résistance members among the opera staff. However, they miss the train that Juliette and Peter are taking to Meursault, from where they can cross the line of demarcation to the French Free Zone. Due to a blunder, Peter is discovered, arrested, and brought to German headquarters in Meursault.

After getting out of Paris, Reginald, Lefort, Bouvet, and MacIntosh encounter Sister Marie-Odile, a nun whose order is secretly assisting the Résistance. Bouvet and Lefort are sent ahead to Meursault to a hotel owned by Juliette's aunt, but there they almost run into Achbach, who has traveled there to interrogate Cunningham. Disguised as a Feldgendarmerie patrol, they are supposed to make their way across the demarcation line the next morning but are unmasked and brought back to Meursault. Reginald and MacIntosh are meant to be smuggled separately across the line by Marie-Odile, hidden in two wine casks, but due to a miscommunication, their casks are instead diverted into the cellar of the Meursault headquarters.

After discovering their friends' presence in the building, the aviators set a fire and use the ensuing mayhem to free them. With Marie-Odile driving a horse wagon, the fugitives make their way to a shuttered gliding club, where they intend to use the gliders to reach the nearby Free Zone. Closely pursued by Achbach, they manage to take off just in time, and a last-ditch attempt to bring them down with machine-gun fire is accidentally foiled by a cross-eyed soldier, allowing them to fly to safety.

''Ragnarok'' is based on Norse mythology, with many of the gods, realms, items, and quests drawing directly from it, such as:

• Thor, god of thunder
• Jormundgand, god, the world serpent
• Loki, god, mischievous troublemaker
• Balder, fair god murdered by Loki
• Hela, god, queen of Niflheim
• Mjollnir, Thor's hammer
• Gungnir, Odin's spear
• Mimming, Freyr's sword
• Gjall, Heimdall's Horn
• Skidbladnir, a boat belonging to the gods
• Ravens, benevolent monsters, messengers of Odin
• Nidhogg, monster, a dragon-like being who chews on the roots of Yggdrasil
• Dwarves, monsters, mythological smiths
• Giants, monsters, Ymir's kin
• Midgard, location, realm of men
• Niflheim, location, realm of the dead

The original three stories are bracketed by narrative which lays the foundations for them and details the passage of time between them.

Introduction

Elder Grandfather Kinis peCharnok Yorgen finds himself the subject of alien abduction. Strange beings calling themselves "Earthmen" conduct him to a place above the clouds. They tell him that they have come from the Great Light to improve Nidor. Kinis peCharnok must commence building a new School of Divine Law, where the Earthmen will teach Nidorians the Law and the Scripture, not to mention science and engineering. Only the best and brightest, the fittest and most favored, will be accepted as students.

Kiv ''(The Chosen People)''

48 years, 3 Cycles of Nidor, pass. Kiv peGanz Brajjyd enrols at the school, on his way to the priesthood. He marries the irreverent Narla geFulda Sesom. He studies biology, especially the insect pest known as the ''hugl''. Then a new ''hugl'' begins appearing, stripping the crops, stripping even dead animals of their flesh. The old Way of dealing with ''hugl'', spreading ''Edris'' powder, does not work on these insects. Kiv has the answer - he knows that the ''hugl'' breed in ponds. They leave the water to gather food for the next breeding cycle, but out of the water their hard shells resist ''Edris'' powder. In water the larvae are vulnerable.

Kiv tries to persuade the authorities, who are also the priesthood, to dictate a new way of using ''Edris'', but he is up against millennia of tradition. The old Way indicates that more ''Edris'' must be used, but if it does not work there will be none to protect crops that the new ''hugl'' have not yet reached. In the end, more ''Edris'' only poisons the crops.

Desperate for a solution, and with the encouragement of the Earthman known as Jones, Kiv looks for support in Scripture, and finds it. "Strike at the root, not at the branch". The larvae are the root. Having once failed to persuade a single Elder, Kiv bursts in on the entire High Council with his words. The ploy works, the new Way wipes out the ''hugl''. But tradition has been violated. There is little or no need for ''Edris'' powder, so those who made a livelihood from it are impoverished. Kiv is a man to be reckoned with, and when he graduates his path to the Council seems clear. So why does he feel something is wrong?

Sindi ''(The Promised Land)''

Kiv and Narla's daughter, Sindi geKiv Brajjyd, has an odd independent streak. She does not show proper deference to her elders. She too enrolls at the School, where she meets Rahn peDorvis Brajjyd. She falls in love with him, even though marriage within a clan goes against tradition and the Way of the Ancestors. Rahn's family lost its livelihood thanks to Kiv.

Kiv, now high in the priesthood, tries to arrange a marriage with a member of the Yorgen clan. He is uneducated, fond of wild living, and not particularly enthusiastic about Sindi. She realizes that he is interested in someone else, a Yorgen. This relative may in fact be carrying his child, which would get them both stoned to death in an earlier time.

Depressed, Rahn flees the School, pursued by Sindi. High in the mountains, in the night rains, she finds his transport, a ''deest'', but no sign of Rahn. Then she sees him, a captive of Earthmen, on a patch of strangely flat ground with odd buildings on it. Watching from concealment, she sees the Earthman Jones, who supposedly had gone to the Great Light, never to return, take Rahn inside a building. Rahn then appears, being carried through the air by the Earthmen, who leave him by his ''deest''. Sindi tends to Rahn, finding that he remembers nothing of his encounter with the Earthmen.

They return to the School, to find that Jones' replacement, Smith, has persuaded the Elders to allow the Yorgens to marry, because of the girl's condition, clearing the way for Sindi and Rahn to marry as well. Sindi resolves to keep her secrets to herself, until it is the right time.

Norvis ''(False Prophet)''

Norvis peRahn Brajjyd grows up and enrols in the School, as his parents and grandparents did before him. Advised by the Earthman Smith, he finds a growth hormone that doubles the yield of the staple crop, the ''peych-bean''. Suddenly he finds himself expelled, the credit for the hormone going to a blockhead, Dran peNiblo Sesom, apparently with the connivance of Smith.

Cast out by his grandfather Kiv, with no source of income, unable to speak his own name, he signs on as a sailor using the name Norvis peKrin Dmorno. His natural abilities mean that he quickly becomes indispensable, being promoted to first mate under the Captain Del peFenn Vyless, with the promise of his own ship, if he re-enlists. Del peFenn is even more irreligious than most sailors. His father used to make a lot of money from ''Edris'' powder shipments, before the Elder Kiv peGanz Brajjyd eliminated the need for it. All too aware of what Del peFenn would think of Kiv's grandson, Norvis declines. He goes ashore to find that some of the Elders have been using his hormone to favor their own farms at the expense of others. He organizes a meeting, under his real name, to address impoverished farmers. However, in attacking the Elders he is accused of blasphemy and stoned, barely escaping with his life by swimming a lake. His assailants assume he has drowned. Norvis abandons his old identity as too dangerous.

Returning to Del peFenn, he formulates a plan. He will make hormone more cheaply than the Elders can and sell it to the farmers. The plan backfires when a glut of ''peych'' starts an economic depression. In the ensuing troubles, Del's ship is burned and some of his men are killed. The hapless Dran peNiblo Sesom, who had grown rich making and selling the hormone under the protection of the Elders, is lynched by a mob.

Norvis is not finished. He and Del now take on the Elders to stop the use of the hormone and persuade farmers to plough the excess crop into the ground, as fertilizer. To do this, they form the Merchant's Party, the first political party on Nidor. Through agitation and occasional strongarm tactics, they force the Elders to follow their plan, ignoring tradition.

At the end, Norvis is the Secretary of the new party. Del is its charismatic, anti-priesthood leader. Nidorians who have suffered in the troubles flock to them. They have become a new authority on Nidor. Norvis sees a new dawn, and a way to get rid of the Earthmen and all their works. Starting with Smith ...

The saga continues in ''The Dawning Light''.

Widow Adela Gereth tells the sensitive and tasteful Fleda Vetch that she's afraid her son Owen (heir to the family home Poynton) will marry the coarse Mona Brigstock. Mrs Gereth dreads the prospect of her painstakingly collected furniture and other art objects being given up to a philistine wife, while being left to live alone in Ricks, a small and coarsely designed cottage bequeathed to her. Owen in turn enlists Fleda to get his mother to leave with a minimum of fuss.

Fleda is shocked to find that Mrs Gereth has decorated Ricks with many of the best pieces from Poynton. Owen reports that Mona is angry with the 'theft' of the valuable heirlooms, and consequently becomes colder towards him. Meanwhile, he begins to show an attraction to Fleda and eventually declares his love for her. Fleda insists that he honour his engagement to Mona unless she breaks it off.

Mrs Gereth returns the fine furniture to Poynton on the assumption that Fleda has secured Owen for herself. After a few days Owen and Mona are reported to be married, and they go abroad. Fleda gets a letter from Owen asking her to select any one piece from Poynton as hers to keep, and she goes to Poynton some days later only to find it has been consumed by fire.

Kira is visited by Fala, a Bajoran cleric who taught her when she was a child. He gives her a gift that turns out to be a transponder that beams her to Empok Nor, a formerly abandoned Cardassian space station.

Empok Nor is now inhabited by 50 Bajorans who believe that the Pah-wraiths are the true Prophets of Bajor; the leader of their cult is none other than Dukat. The Bajorans' faith in Dukat is so strong that when Kira threatens to kill Dukat with a phaser, many of them place themselves in Kira's line of fire.

Fala introduces Kira to cult members Mika and her husband Benyan. Mika is pregnant, and the station's populace eagerly awaits the first child to be born into the cult. When the baby turns out to be half-Cardassian, Dukat improvises a speech in which he calls the baby a "miracle" from the Pah-wraiths, a sign approving their faith in Dukat. Kira is immediately certain that Dukat is in fact the biological father of the child, and plants a seed of doubt with Benyan by asking him if Mika and Dukat had spent time alone together.

Mika tells Dukat she is not sure she can lie to Benyan about the child's true parentage. Dukat opens an airlock, attempting to blow Mika out into space; but Mika survives, and the doctor reports that she is likely to recover from her injuries. Dukat calls the incident an "accident", but prays to the Pah-wraiths, concerned that his followers will discover what he has done.

Dukat decides to have the Bajoran believers commit mass suicide, using pills that will reduce the body to dust. Kira is locked in her quarters, but escapes just in time to reach the suicide ceremony. She knocks Dukat's pill out of his hand and onto the floor with other pills. Dukat scrambles to find his pill amongst the others; Kira accuses him of using a placebo, having no intention of dying himself. With this revelation, the Bajorans turn against him. Dukat beams out, and Fala takes a pill and swallows it, explaining his decision with the word "faith".

The starship ''Defiant'' arrives and takes Kira and the cultists back to Deep Space Nine. Kira ponders the meaning of Fala's last words and acknowledges that Dukat may truly believe in what he was doing, making him more dangerous than ever.

Part One

At an unspecified point in the near future, five astronauts, commander Tom Kirby, engineer Yvan Grigorev, medic John Pearson, geologist Zoë Lessard, and exobiologist Nina Sulman depart Earth orbit on a mile-long nuclear-powered spaceship, ''Pegasus''. Six weeks later, ''Pegasus'' arrives in orbit around their first destination, Venus, where Lessard and Grigorev pilot the lander ''Orpheus'' to the surface, where Grigorev conducts a short walk in a specially designed reinforced pressure suit while Lessard remains inside the lander. During the walk, Grigorev visits the nearby derelict Soviet lander Venera 14, however he starts to fall behind schedule, and suffers from exhaustion and overheating, only narrowly making it back to ''Orpheus''. After successfully launching and docking with ''Pegasus'', the crew depart Venus for Mars.

After arriving in Mars orbit, the crew rendezvous with a pre-placed supply ship to refuel ''Pegasus''. Kirby, Pearson, and Sulman descend to the surface of Mars in the lander ''Ares'', landing near Melas Chasma, a part of the Valles Marineris canyon system, where they intend to search for liquid water buried beneath the surface at the bottom of the canyon using a robotic rover (named ''Charlie'') carried by a balloon. Upon landing, Kirby is hit by a dust devil, but he is not injured. Their first attempt at finding water is thwarted by a solar flare, which forces the astronauts on the surface to take shelter in ''Ares'' for a few days, while Lessard and Grigorev in orbit onboard ''Pegasus'' take shelter too. Once the danger has passed, the crew of ''Ares'' return to the edge of Melas Chasma, where Sulman successfully guides ''Charlie'' to the bottom of the canyon, successfully finding a small amount of liquid water buried under the ground. However, Lessard reports that a large dust storm is developing in the canyon, which threatens to ruin their mission. After retrieving the water sample, the astronauts once again take shelter in Ares. Once the dust storm has passed, ''Ares'' lifts off and rejoins ''Pegasus''.

Part Two

Departing Mars, the next destination of ''Pegasus'' is Jupiter, which they will reach by swinging near by the Sun to pick up speed. On the way towards the Sun, ''Pegasus'' passes by Mercury, however no landing is conducted due to mission constraints. To protect them from the intense radiation of the sun, an artificial magnetic field is generated around ''Pegasus'', but the power requirements of the generator force them to turn off non-essential systems, such as their laboratory and the centrifuge that provides artificial gravity for their sleep compartments. The flyby is a success, and the crew head to Jupiter. On their way through the asteroid belt, the crew perform an unplanned close flyby of a binary asteroid system, which passes much closer than predicted due to discrepancies in the data provided by mission control.

''Pegasus'' performs an intense aerobraking maneuver in Jupiter's upper atmosphere to put them on course for Io. En route to Io, Pearson receives a diagnosis of lymphoma, which he received from a high radiation dose during the solar flyby. Upon arriving at Io, the primary landing site is considered unsafe due to an ongoing volcanic eruption, as is the secondary landing site due to lethal levels of radiation. After a heated discussion at mission control over whether to land at the still potentially risky tertiary landing site, or to land at the safe but uninteresting quaternary landing site, the decision is made to land at the more interesting site, but the mission duration is cut to reduce radiation exposure. Lessard then descends alone in the lander ''Hermes''. On the surface, Lessard quickly becomes exhausted in her bulky radiation-shielded spacesuit, and is forced to abort her walk early, leaving all the samples she had collected behind. ''Pegasus'' then encounters Europa, where they send a robotic probe to the surface to collect sub-surface ice samples.

Their mission around Jupiter complete, ''Pegasus'' embarks on the long journey to Saturn. However, Pearson's condition continues to worsen, weakening him severely. Upon arriving at Saturn, ''Pegasus'' enters orbit around Titan, where they release a robotic probe to collect samples, however the probe malfunctions and is lost. Leaving Titan, ''Pegasus'' is placed in an orbit in the Cassini division, where Sulman performs a spacewalk to collect a fragment of Saturn's rings. However, during her spacewalk, Pearson dies. Subsequently, the remaining crew cut off communications with Earth for a whole day while they mourn Pearson and decide what to do next. During this period, Kirby floats the body of Pearson into the rings of Saturn. Upon restoring contact, the crew reveals that they have decided to continue the mission (in the US version, they decide to return home), and they leave for Pluto shortly afterwards.

Arriving at Pluto, Kirby and Grigorev land on the surface in the lander ''Clyde'', where they set up a telescope array to detect exoplanets, which they had modified on their journey from Saturn to Pluto, and the telescope is pointed at Earth for a calibration test. Before leaving Pluto, Kirby and Grigorev perform a short memorial service for astronauts who have died in the pursuit of space exploration, including Pearson, who was intended to land on Pluto with them. ''Clyde'' later ascends and docks with Pegasus. On the way back to Earth, they rendezvous with a fictional long-period comet, Yano-Moore. Lessard and Sulman pilot the lander ''Messier'' to collect samples, but during their excursion, the nucleus of the comet breaks apart, sending high-speed debris towards ''Pegasus'', severely damaging the ship, and injuring Grigorev, who was hit by a comet fragment that had pierced the hull. Unable to contact the damaged ''Pegasus'', Lessard and Sulman abandon ''Messier'' and spacewalk to the airlock. After performing emergency surgery on Grigorev, the three able astronauts repair ''Pegasus'' and commence on the final journey home. Finally, after six years away, ''Pegasus'' arrives back at Earth.

Bern Thorkellson, a young Erling man, has been a slave on Rabady Island in Vinmark since his father Thorkell killed a man in a drunken fit of rage. He escapes from Rabady Island and travels to Jormsvik, a fortress for elite Erling mercenaries. He gains admittance to their ranks and joins a raiding party heading from Vinmark to Anglcyn.

In Cyngael, Alun ap Owyn and his brother Dai, two Princes of the province of Cadyr, arrive at the house of Brynn ap Hywll, a renowned fighter and leader of another Cyngael province. They are accompanied by the famed Jaddite cleric Ceinon. In an attack by Erling raiders, Dai is killed and his soul is taken by a fairy to the fairy queen. Alun witnesses this event and later begins a relationship with one of the faeries.

Among the Erlings who participated in the attack is Bern's father, Thorkell Einarsson, who is taken captive and becomes a retainer in Brynn's household.

Anglcyn is ruled by Aeldred, who in his youth saved the kingdom from Erling conquest. Aeldred is building a strong nation and has begun to collect manuscripts and foster scholarship. One of the scholars he wishes to attract to his court is Ceinon, who is unwilling to give up his role as leader of the Jaddite faith among the Cyngael.

Bern's team of mercenaries attack Anglcyn but are defeated by Aeldred's professional army. Bern and Thorkell have a brief reunion, but Bern rejoins the Erlings in a new quest to kill Brynn ap Hwyll and regain a famous sword.

Once the Erlings arrive in Cyngael, they find themselves outnumbered and their fate is decided in a contest of single combat. Thorkell offers himself as the champion of the Cyngael and is slain in an act of sacrifice for his son. Prompted by Thorkell's final words, the Erlings depart and once again change course to loot an undefended monastery in a southern land. They return to Jormsviking with great wealth.

After the combat Alun uses the sword of Ivarr's grandfather to kill the souls of mortals that had been taken as the faerie-queen's lovers and later discarded, including the soul of his own brother Dai. Alun's relationship with the faerie ends.

Throughout the novel references are made towards the slow but steady growth of civilization as kingdoms are built, the wilderness is pushed back and it is revealed that even the most lawless places such as Jormsviking will eventually fall under the sway of a king. Most of the characters welcome the changes, which bring increased order and prosperity to their lands. The religion of Jad is strongly implied to play a civilizing role through its learned clerics and a shift towards a somewhat more restrained mentality.

A brilliant but peculiar professor of Ancient Eastern languages, Jonathan Jones, finds that an amulet sent to his niece Cynthia by a boyfriend from an archeological dig has magical powers.

Whoever has the amulet in their possession can 1) cause great pain by pointing at another living creature, 2) cause time to go into slow motion by saying the word "Zotz!", or 3) cause instant death by simultaneously pointing and saying "Zotz!". Both government and Communist agents immediately develop an interest in the amulet's possible military use. (This is a metaphor for the age of nuclear weapons, as the novel was written two years after atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki).

In the meantime, Jones and rival professor Kellgore are both in line for a promotion to take over from retiring Dean Updike as head of this California university's language department. A new colleague and possible romantic interest, Professor Fenster, is startled by Jones' behavior, particularly at a party thrown by Updike's wife that turns into chaos. Near the end of the movie, Jones refers to Fenster as Mrs. Jones, inferring that they were either already married, or that they were going to get married soon.

Professor Fenster’s first appearance occurs moments after Jones first mentioned the name of Zotz in one of the early scenes of the movie. She was standing naked just outside one of the windows of his home during a thunderstorm that Jones (unintentionally) just so happened to conjure up when he mentioned Zotz. Shocked and embarrassed by her nakedness, he quickly closed the window on her. Feeling somewhat sorry for her, though, he waved her over to go to the front door. Shortly after Jones handed her his suit coat so that she could cover her private parts, he temporarily permitted her to come into the house. When firmly asked by Jones to leave, so as not give the wrong immoral impression to his niece who was asleep upstairs in her bedroom, Fenster refused to go back out into the storm half-naked. Fenster emphatically explained to Jones, in hopes that he would sympathize with her, that she was “hurrying along, trying to beat out this sudden storm,” when she was apparently struck by lightning. Moreover, she also told Jones that her clothes were blown off by the electrostatic charge embedded within the bolt that hit her. After listening to her seemingly “far-fetched” story, he mentioned that he remembered hearing about an actual incident where someone’s clothes were literally torn from their body as a direct result of being struck by lightning. Finally realizing that she was telling the truth, Jones lent Fenster some of his niece’s clothes. Now, fully clothed and armed with an umbrella that Jones also lent her, Fenster opens the door to brave the elements and go home. The storm was, however, now over and the umbrella was no longer needed.

Arabella, the beautiful daughter of a country vicar, sets out to London to have a season and make an advantageous marriage. On her way there, her carriage has an accident and she has to stop over at the hunting box of Robert Beaumaris, the Nonpareil of the town and one of the wealthiest men in England.

Mr Beaumaris suspects the 'accident' to be a ruse on the part of someone chasing him for his fortune. Overhearing him make a remark to this effect, Arabella impulsively pretends to be an heiress. Mr. Beaumaris, knowing this to be untrue is amused by her daring to put him in his place, and decides to encourage his friend's belief in this falsehood. He is bored with Society and views the town cynically. He is also amused by the fact that society will follow whoever leads, irrespective of the wisdom of the person's behaviour.

Arabella requests that Mr Beaumaris and his friend Lord Fleetwood not reveal her "fortune". She continues on her journey to London to stay with her godmother, Lady Bridlington, blithely believing that nothing will come of this interlude. However, Lord Fleetwood is not very discreet, and the town soon believes Arabella to be an heiress. To amuse himself, Mr Beaumaris decides to make Arabella the rage of the town by flirting with her and driving her out in his carriage. Arabella is aware that his intentions are not serious, but plays along because to be admired by him makes her a social success.

Arabella feels that she cannot make a good match when all the town mistakenly believe her to be wealthy. Knowing that Mr Beaumaris can have no designs on her supposed fortune and is only amusing himself with her, she is most comfortable in his company. She enchants him with her unusual behaviour (which includes foisting a climbing boy and a mongrel on him) and the fact that she does not appear to fancy him.

Mr Beaumaris eventually falls in love with Arabella and proposes. Arabella, not knowing him to be aware of her deception from the start, tearfully refuses, realising that she is indeed in love with him, but cannot reveal her deception without risking his love. Meanwhile, Arabella's brother Bertram has come to town on 100 pounds that he won. The wealthy friends he makes soon lead him into debt and Arabella decides she must accept Mr Beaumaris's proposal in order to pay off Bertram's debts. Mr Beaumaris guesses the cause of her sudden reversal and is amused, knowing her to be in love with him, despite the appearance of the situation. She insists they elope together since she's desperate and he agrees, but instead takes her to visit his grandmother's house. Once they arrive, she reveals that she is not a wealthy woman, he reveals that he knew all along and that he went to visit her family. All is resolved by the fact that his fortune is so massive, the lack of hers will never be noticed, and the lack of fortune for her brothers and sisters will be explained away by an eccentric uncle who left the money to Arabella.

For the past several years Sophia Stanton-Lacy (known as Sophy to everyone) has lived away from England, following her diplomat father Sir Horace around Europe while the Napoleonic Wars raged on. Now that the Battle of Waterloo is over and Napoleon has once again been exiled, her father receives a temporary post in South America. Instead of taking his daughter with him to the new continent, he asks his sister, Lady Ombersley, to watch over his "little Sophy" and help find her a husband. However, "little Sophy" is nothing like anyone expected. 5'9" in her stockings and quite used to getting her own way after a lifetime in a household with no mother, no governess, and wartime liberties, she is outgoing, chic, and quite independent, taking the town by storm with her unconventional manner.

Though most of her cousins take to her on sight, her autocratic cousin, Charles Rivenhall, is immediately frustrated and annoyed. Having been raised with a passive, sickly mother and an intemperate, gambling addict father, Charles has assumed since a young age the role of the adult in the household. Forced by his father's debt to shoulder the family finances, he resents the disruption by his lively and confident cousin of what has become, in all but name, his household. With Charles encouraged in domestic tyranny by his spiteful fiancée, Miss Eugenia Wraxton, Sophy and Charles begin a battle of wills. Soon after her arrival, Sophy realizes that all is not well in the Rivenhall household and proceeds to solve the various problems of the family with her trademark flair, saving her cousin Hubert from a moneylender, arranging through an involved and hilarious scheme her cousin Cecilia's extraction from her infatuation with (and later engagement to) a poet, and promoting her marriage to the eligible Lord Charlbury, the man favoured by her brother and parents and ultimately, the man Cecilia discovers she loves.

Slowly, much to the consternation of both, Sophy and Charles find themselves falling in love, with Sophy's devilry lightening his dictatorial tendencies. In the end, at the successful conclusion of her audacious scheme to unite Cecilia and Charlbury and free Rivenhall from his obligations to his fiancée, Rivenhall proposes, with Sophy accepting.

Kim Possible is a high-school cheerleader and world-famous crime fighter, and Ron Stoppable is her faithful sidekick and best friend, who has a pet naked mole-rat named Rufus. The film begins at the start of a new school year, which Ron has good hopes for, until he finds out he's moving away to Norway for his mother's work. Meanwhile, Dr. Drakken, Shego, Duff Killigan, and Monkey Fist team up to steal the Time Monkey idol, a small magic statuette used to travel through time. Kim chases the villains around the globe, but she fails to stop them from stealing the Time Monkey's pieces and activating it.

Kim is visited by a talking mole-rat from the future, a descendant of Rufus named Rufus 3000, who gives Kim a time-travel device and explains that the "Supreme One" has taken over the world in the future and she is the only one that can prevent it. Meanwhile, Drakken, Killigan, and Monkey Fist turn themselves into children and travel back in time to Kim's first day in pre-school in order to discourage her from becoming a crime-fighter. Posing as her schoolmates, the villains try to bully the four-year-old Kim, but she fights them off and becomes friends with four-year-old Ron, while the high-school-age Kim arrives through a time portal to fight Shego.

Foiled, the villains turn back into adults and escape forward in time, to the day of Kim and Ron's first adventure. Monkey Fist goes into the ancient past and retrieves a giant stone gorilla to attack pre-teen Kim and Ron, but they destroy it with the help of their present-day selves. During the fight, Shego is visited by herself from the future, who urges her to steal the Time Monkey. Drakken, Killigan, and Monkey Fist are arrested, but Shego escapes with the Time Monkey into the future. Rufus 3000 arrives and reveals to Kim that the Supreme One is Shego and not Drakken as she originally thought. Kim then activates a portal and she, Ron, Rufus, and Rufus 3000 go twenty years into the future to stop her.

In the future, Shego has become dictator of the world and enslaved the global population. Kim and Ron are captured and sent to their old high school to be brainwashed into obedience, but they are rescued by Kim's younger twin brothers, Tim and Jim, along with Rufus 3000 and an army of naked mole-rats. Kim and Ron are taken to the secret headquarters of the resistance movement, whose leader turns out to be their old computer guru Wade Load. Together, they sneak into Shego's palace, where they fight their way past Monkey Fist and Killigan (now a cyborg) to Shego's throne room where she keeps the Time Monkey. Shego is waiting for them however, and has Kim engage in battle with Drakken, who has undergone genetic enhancements to become super-humanly strong. Kim's old friend Monique, also a part of the resistance, breaks into the palace to assist her, but the two are eventually defeated while Jim, Tim, Wade, and Rufus 3000 are captured by Killigan and Monkey Fist.

Shego reveals that she separated Kim and Ron by making money in the dot-com bubble, buying the company that Ron's mother worked for and having her transferred to Norway, her reason being that while together, Kim and Ron actually made a decent team, but if they were apart, they couldn't stop her. Angered at Shego for having made him move to Norway, Ron overpowers Drakken and accidentally destroys the Time Monkey, undoing all the effects the idol had done to the time stream. This causes Kim, Ron, and Rufus to float through a time gate and travel back to the first scene of the film, at the end of Kim and Ron's first day as high school seniors. At the moment when the first time disturbance occurred, a wave of temporal distortion washes over Kim and Ron. When it passes, Shego's future is erased and the world is restored to its original state, the two teens having lost all memory of the film's events.

The Duke of Sale is tired of being the Duke of Sale. He just wants to be a nobody from "Nowhere in Particular". A posthumous child, he has lived since birth with his uncle, Lord Lionel. Lord Lionel and his team of servants continue to baby the Duke and treat him like a child, even now that he is almost twenty-five years old. The Duke does not want to be forced into marriage or be told what to do. He considers setting out on a wild adventure to find out who he really is.

The Duke's cousin Gideon encourages him to set out on the adventure and to avoid his posse of servants. A bit later, he finds out his other cousin Matthew is in a bit of a fix. Matthew supposedly sent letters to a very beautiful foundling named Belinda, and promised to marry her. When he decided not to marry her after all, her "guardian", Mr. Leversedge, blackmailed Matthew by letter. The Duke decides to rescue Matthew for his adventure.

The Duke pretends to be Matthew and goes to deal with the guardian at a low thieves den called the Bird in Hand. While driving a gig en route, he sees a hurt teenage boy stumbling down the road. The boy, Tom, becomes a friend and nuisance to the Duke for the rest of the novel. The Duke successfully deals with the guardian, only to be surprised when Belinda follows him to beg his protection and aid to find a new home. Soon the Duke gets kidnapped. He cleverly escapes, then has to figure out how to get Tom and Belinda safely home and out of trouble. He also has his own problems to worry about, including his fight with Lord Lionel and his impending marriage with Lady Harriet.

In the end, the Duke accepts his marriage to Harriet, discovering that he truly does love her. Belinda, the naïve foundling, only cares about a diamond ring and purple dress, and also finds her true love with the Duke's and Lady Harriet's aid.

Sir Gareth is a noted Corinthian and has been a confirmed bachelor ever since his betrothed died prematurely, seven years ago. He decides for practical reasons to marry an old friend, Hester, who is unfashionable and plain, not to mention "on the shelf" at the age of 29. However, he soon meets a young, runaway girl and determines to resolve her problems satisfactorily. Unfortunately, this particular runaway is possessed of an extremely lively imagination, and gets them both into a little more trouble than he had bargained for.

The piece is reminiscent of ''Charity Girl'', also about a wiser and more experienced man helping a young girl to find her feet while avoiding becoming romantically entangled with her.

Sylvester, the wealthy Duke of Salford, is considering marriage. He travels to London to discuss the matter with his godmother, Lady Ingham, who tells him of her granddaughter, Phoebe. He departs for a hunt in the countryside and meets Phoebe and her father. Terrified of being made to marry Sylvester and getting no sympathy from her father, Phoebe calls upon a childhood friend, Tom Orde, to help her run away to live with her grandmother, Lady Ingham, in London. Phoebe is unaware that Lady Ingham is the person who suggested Sylvester marry her.

Phoebe meets Lady Ianthe, the silly widow of Sylvester's twin brother, who is convinced that Sylvester is evil because he is executing his brother's will exactly: her young son, Edmund, must live with Sylvester at the family home of Chance. Phoebe is struck by the parallels between the real Sylvester and the arrogant parody of him in a book which she has written and which is about to be published. She attempts to change her manuscript, but her publishers say that it is too late to do so. When her novel ''The Lost Heir'' is published, it fascinates London because of the perfect satirization of the members of high society.

Sylvester, having decided to scotch the rumour, is so hurt by Phoebe's portrayal of him that he insults Phoebe in public, which causes a scandal and confirms Phoebe as the author. Lady Ingham decides to take Phoebe away to France with Tom Orde as their escort. Unfortunately, Lady Ianthe and her new husband, foppish Sir Nugent Fotherby, are going to France on their honeymoon with Edmund, her son, from the same port. Lady Ianthe has got the idea of taking Edmund away to France from a plot in Phoebe's novel.

Phoebe tries to intervene and boards the schooner with Tom where they are 'kidnapped' by Fotherby, who orders the skipper to set sail. Edmund is sea-sick and Lady Ianthe is ill so Phoebe and Tom take over the care of the small child. Phoebe writes to Lady Ingham and Sylvester from France, but Sylvester catches up with them before he receives the letter. At first he is overjoyed to see Phoebe but then blames her for helping Lady Ianthe to kidnap Edmund but Sylvester needs Phoebe to look after Edmund on the journey back to England.

Sylvester complains of all the scrapes which Phoebe has embroiled him in and, in turn, Phoebe accuses Sylvester of ruining her reputation. Sylvester, having realised that he loves Phoebe, clumsily proposes marriage but Phoebe is outraged by the perceived sarcasm. Sylvester runs to his mother for help. She arranges to meet Phoebe to explain that Sylvester's arrogance has arisen from the grief he suffered after the loss of his twin brother and how much he loves Phoebe. Sylvester is summoned and again declares himself upon which Phoebe is only too happy to accept his proposal.

The novel tells the story of two brothers in the early 1960s: Mitsusaburo, the narrator, a one-eyed, married English professor in Tokyo; and his younger brother Takashi, who has just returned from the US. Mitsusaburo and his wife Natsumi have been through a series of crises. They left their physically and mentally handicapped baby in an institution, while Mitsusaburo's friend committed suicide (he painted his head crimson, inserted a cucumber in his anus and hanged himself). Natsumi has become an alcoholic. Mitsusaburo leaves his job and they all travel to the brothers' home village, set in a hollow in the forest on Shikoku.

The brothers' family had been one of the leading families in the village. Takashi is obsessed with the memory of their great-grandfather's younger brother, who led a peasant revolt in 1860. Mitsusaburo remembers the affair differently, believing that the leader of the rebellion betrayed his followers. They similarly disagree over the death of their older brother, S, who was killed in a raid on the Korean settlement near the village. Takashi revels in his warrior's death, while Mitsusaburo recalls him as volunteering to be killed in retaliation for the death of a Korean in an earlier raid. Their sister, also mentally retarded, had committed suicide while living with Takashi.

Takashi has agreed to sell the family's ''kura-yashiki'' — a traditional residence-storehouse — to 'the Emperor', a Korean originally brought to the village as a slave-worker but who has now gained a position of economic dominance, turning the village's other ''kura-yashiki'' into a supermarket which has put the smaller shops out of business. Secretly, he has also agreed to sell the Emperor all the family's land.

Takashi begins to organise the youths of the village into a group, beginning with football training. When Mitsusaburo discovers Takashi's deception, he isolates himself from the others, but his wife sides with Takashi. Mitsusaburo goes to live in the ''kura-yashiki'', while Takashi moves his group into the family's main building.

Takashi uses his group to begin an uprising against the Emperor, looting the supermarket and distributing the goods among the people. Takashi also begins a sexual relationship with Natsumi and sends one of his followers to tell Mitsusaburo. The people eventually become disenchanted, however; eventually a girl is killed. Takashi claims that he tried to rape her and then murdered her. He is abandoned by his group and waits for the villagers to come and lynch or arrest him. Mitsusaburo, however, does not believe his story and says that Takashi is using the girl's accidental death as a way to engineer his own violent death. Takashi admits to Mitsusaburo that their sister killed herself after he ended an incestuous relationship with her. After Mitsusaburo scorns Takashi's belief that he will be killed, Takashi shoots himself, writing as a final statement, 'I told the truth'.

The Emperor comes and begins demolishing the ''kura-yashiki''. A secret basement is discovered in which the brother of the great-grandfather had spent the rest of his life hiding after the failure of his rebellion. Mitsusaburo and Natsumi decide to try to live together again, along with their handicapped baby and Takashi's unborn child, which Natsumi is carrying. Mitsusaburo decides against a return to his old job, instead taking up an offer to work as a translator with a wildlife expedition to Africa.

After the death of the Earl of Spenborough all are shocked when they discover that the late Earl has appointed Ivo Barrasford, Marquess of Rotherham, and formerly engaged to Lady Serena Carlow, to be Serena's trustee. Serena moves to Bath with her young stepmother, Fanny, where she meets up with Major Hector Kirkby, a love interest from six years past. Serena and Hector rekindle their romance and become engaged, although keeping the engagement under wraps while she is still in mourning for her father.

Meanwhile, Rotherham, having heard of the engagement, proposes to Emily Laleham, a very simple young lady whose social climbing mother is delighted with Rotherham's fortune and title. Whilst Emily recuperates in Bath, Serena's fiance Hector and her stepmother, Fanny, have fallen in love; they are much more better-suited to each other than he is to Serena. Serena and Rotherham still have feelings for one another, as well.

Rotherham, who has begun to believe that his fiance Emily would wish to end their engagement, is confronted by his young ward Gerard Monksleigh, who is in love with Emily. At first furious and contemptuous of his ward, Rotherham soon realises that they had all made a mistake and tries to make his betrothed cry off. When he has finally succeeded, however, Serena steps in and ruins all his plans. A row between guardian and ward ensues with Rotherham storming off to make sure that his engagement over.

Rotherham eventually reveals to Serena that he loves her and she admits that she loves him too. They embrace, and are interrupted by Hector, her betrothed. He is all too happy to see this, since it frees them all to be with the person they each love and are best suited with.

Don Maxwell is a former vaudeville impersonator who's working as the lab assistant to Dr. Meirschultz, a mad scientist attempting to bring the dead back to life. When Don kills Meirschultz, he attempts to hide his crime by "becoming" the doctor, taking over his work, and copying his appearance/mannerisms. In the process, he slowly goes insane.

The "doctor" treats a mental patient, Buckley, but accidentally injects him with adrenaline, which causes the man to go into violent fits. In one of these fits, Buckley kidnaps a woman, tears her clothes off, and rapes her. Buckley's wife discovers the body of the real doctor and blackmails Don for turning her husband into a zombie. The ersatz doctor turns the tables on her by manipulating the woman into fighting with his estranged wife, Alice Maxwell, a former showgirl. When the cat-breeding neighbor, Goof, sees what's going on, he calls the police, who stop the fight and, following the sound of Satan the cat, find the body of the real doctor hidden behind a brick wall.

Berlian and her teenage daughter Daya are on the run from political violence. Constantly daydreaming that her absent father will return, young Daya chafes under the stern hand of her mother. Forced to move inland from their seaside home to a desert of constantly shifting sands, the pair settle down to their familiar antagonism. Finally, Daya sees a vaguely familiar face shuffle in from across the wasteland.

To escape exposure as a former Jacobite, Robin and his sister Prudence have exchanged identities and assumed new names. The tall sister takes the name Peter while the slighter Robin is disguised as his younger sister, Kate. On their way to London, the pair encounter Gregory Markham eloping with a beautiful heiress named Letitia Grayson and rescue her. Shortly afterwards Sir Anthony, a friend of Letitia's father, arrives to discover that the elopement has already been frustrated and takes her home.

"Peter" and "Kate" take refuge in London with Lady Lowestoft, a former admirer of their adventurous father, and quickly rise to social prominence. Peter/Prudence comes under the patronage of Sir Anthony in particular, but he is recognised by the vengeful Markham, who tries to have him beaten by Mohocks. Later Peter is provoked into challenging Markham’s friend Rensley to a duel. Hearing of this, Sir Anthony forestalls their fight by insulting Rensley in order to force him into an earlier duel and disables him. Startled by this intervention, Prudence/Peter begins to wonder if Sir Anthony suspects her masquerade.

Meanwhile their father, whom they refer to as “The Old Gentleman”, has arrived in London claiming to be the younger brother and legal heir of the recently deceased Viscount Barham, much to the consternation of Rensley, who had long believed himself to be the heir and who had already installed himself as the new lord. Under the name of "Tremaine of Barham" the polished new claimant rapidly insinuates himself into high society. He does not acknowledge his children immediately, while they, long used to his delusions of grandeur and multiple identities, are sceptical of his claims.

Prudence is invited to dine with Sir Anthony who, despite his air of sleepy detachment, has guessed that "Peter" is actually a woman and fallen in love with her. Prudence refuses his proposal, asking him to wait until her father's doubtful claim is proved, to which Sir Anthony agrees, although resolving to carry her off and marry her whatever the outcome.

Having obtained a document that could get the Old Gentleman executed as a Jacobite himself, Markham attempts to blackmail him but is persuaded instead to exchange the incriminating letter for another that exposes Letitia's wealthy father as a traitor. Using this, Markham forces Letitia to run away with him again. To counter that, the Old Gentleman dispatches Robin/Kate, disguised as a highwayman, to kill Markham and steal back the exchanged document, thereby inspiring the romantic Letitia to fall in love with her unknown rescuer.

When questioned by the authorities, Letitia gives a false description of the "highwayman" to protect her love. Unfortunately, she unwittingly describes "Peter Merriot" and Prudence is arrested. Once more she is rescued by the respectable Sir Anthony from the officers of the law and they gallop cross-country to the residence of Sir Anthony's sister. There "Peter" dons a gown and becomes the dazzling Miss Prudence Tremaine.

Following "Peter's" disappearance, suspicion is cast over both the Merriots, and so "Kate" flees to France while Lady Lowestoft complains of the deception played upon her by her protégés. In the interval the Old Gentleman proves conclusively that he is indeed Tremaine of Barham and the former Kate returns from France, causing a sensation as Mr. Robin Tremaine, his handsome heir. Calling on Letitia's father, the future Viscount is readily accepted as a prospective son-in-law while Tremaine of Barham welcomes Sir Anthony as Prudence’s fiancé and a son-in-law after his own heart.

The year is 1586 and 35-year-old Sir Nicholas Beauvallet (great great great grandson of Simon Beauvallet – ''Simon the Coldheart'' (1925)) is one of the most infamous pirates of the Elizabethan era. With the blessing of the Queen, Beauvallet sails the seas with the intention of plundering any Spanish ships that come his way. It is while thus occupied that he meets and falls in love with Doña Dominica de Rada y Sylva. He returns Doña Dominica and her father to Spain and vows that he will come back to claim her with total disregard of the danger that the Spanish Inquisition poses to a Protestant in a Catholic land.

Philip Jettan, a handsome and sturdy but tongue-tied youth, is rejected by his true love because he is not foppish enough. He resolves to improve himself and travels to Paris, where he becomes a sensation. Once he returns, however, Cleone realizes she wants the old Philip in place of the "painted puppy" she has received.

''The Dante Club'' begins with the murder of fictional Massachusetts Chief Justice Artemus Healey, who had avoided taking a position to stop or support the escaped slaves of the South. Found by his chambermaid near a white flag atop a short wooden staff, Healey had been hit in the head and then left in his garden to be eaten alive by strategically placed maggots and stung by hornets. Then Reverend Talbot, who was paid by the Harvard Corporation to write against Dante, was found dead in an underground cemetery, buried up to his waist upside down, his feet burnt and buried over money that he had accepted as a bribe.

Members of the Dante Club, a group of poets translating the ''Divine Comedy'' from Italian into English, notice the parallels between the murders and the punishments detailed in Dante's ''Inferno''. The club, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., and James Russell Lowell, sets out to solve the murders, fearing that the truth will ruin Dante's burgeoning reputation in America, thus making their translation a failure, as well as the obvious problem that they would be virtually the only suspects if they reported this information to the police. Then, Phineas Jennison, both a wealthy contributor to the Harvard Corporation and friend to the translators (a "schismatic"), is sliced open exactly down the middle—all killed in extreme fashion and undeniable resemblance to the punishments of people in Dante's ''Inferno''.

Eventually, the murderer is discovered to be a former Civil War Soldier Dan Teal, a man who worked at Ticknor and Fields and at the Harvard Corporation. Driven partly mad by the trauma of his war experiences, Teal hears Dante Club member George Washington Greene giving sermons on Dante to other soldiers, and becomes convinced that Dante alone understood the need for perfect justice in the world. Adopting a new name and identity (intending to become one with the poet, but being unable to spell "Alighieri"), he takes it upon himself to protect Dante and release Hell's punishments as indicated in the ''Inferno'', in order to purify the city. Teal finds each of his victims when learning of their involvement in the stopping of the translations, which become their respective sins. The club eventually tries to capture him, with the aid of Boston's first African-American policeman Nicholas Rey, the only other person who saw the connection, while he is attempting to punish Harvard Treasurer Dr. Manning and Pliny Mead ("the traitors"). Mead was a student of the Dante course who helped betray his teacher by cooperating with Manning. Teal flees, then tries to round up the translators, to punish them for not embracing his "work." Dr. Manning—saved by Longfellow, Holmes, Rey, Lowell, and Fields—realizes the situation as he recovered from his attempted punishment of being buried naked in ice. He sees Teal with a gun to Longfellow, and Manning ends the murderer's life, thus returning the city to normal.

Jay and Silent Bob get the idea that if they go to the town of Shermer, Illinois, where most of John Hughes' movies take place, they could get chicks and be the "blunt connection". Along the way they encounter Holden McNeil, wildlife marshals, and monkeys.

Issue one

In the first issue, Jay and Silent Bob have been evicted from Tricia Jones's ("Trish the Dish," as seen in ''Mallrats'') apartment, where they had lived for the previous six months. Jay causes this to happen after he tries to join Tricia in the shower. Unfortunately, this is all seen by a ''USA Today'' reporter, hoping to talk to her about her book, ''Boregasm''.

After getting ejected, Jay and Bob go to and are soon told to leave the Eden Prairie Mall (also from ''Mallrats''), Quick Stop/RST Video (from ''Clerks''), and Comic Toast (as seen in ''Mallrats'' and a cut scene from ''Chasing Amy''). The two, remembering various John Hughes movies, decide to go to Shermer, Illinois, where many of Hughes' movies are set. They get tickets, meet with Holden McNeil (an interaction depicted in the diner scene from ''Chasing Amy''), and travel to Chicago via bus.

The issue also features various references to the View Askew films: It is revealed that Willam Black (depicted in the form of Ethan Suplee from ''Mallrats'') has yet to see the sailboat in the Magic Eye painting at the Eden Prairie Mall. Roddy (Svenning's assistant from ''Mallrats'') seems to be working for Channel Surfers at the Eden Prairie Mall. *While on the bus after they meet with Holden McNeil, Silent Bob is seen reading an issue of Bluntman and Chronic, suggesting he enjoys the comic unlike Jay.

Issue two

The pair are forced to flee the bus to Chicago after smoking a bowl in its bathroom. Having gotten off in Pittsburgh, the two decide to get a ride to a nearby town. After a near-fatal encounter with Mr. Rogers, Bob decides to get a new hat at a Mooby store. While Jay is waiting, he meets a pornographic actress. He convinces her that Jay and Bob should be in her current project, ''Doogie Nights''. The two arrive at the set, a local hospital, to find that the director is former ''Doogie Howser'' television star Neil Patrick Harris. Wishing to make a "quasi-indie film", Neil gives Jay the job of fluffer. Jay, being ''too'' good at his job, leaves the actor unable to do a scene. Jay and Bob then leave the hospital, unhappy with the gift the porn star gave to him. Meanwhile, wildlife marshal Sam "Big Dog" Gavert starts a full search for the escaped zoo monkey Suzanne (shown in the closing shot of ''Mallrats''). The monkey actually belongs to Provasic Pharmaceuticals, who are hoping to get their test subject back.

*While waiting for Bob to get a new hat, Jay reads ''Bluntman and Chronic'' #2.

Issue three

Because a slightly modified adaptation of this issue was written into the movie ''Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back'' this issue should be considered apocryphal. ''Chasing Dogma'' remains in canon, minus Issue 3.

The two wake up in Indiana to find Suzanne cupping Jay's penis. While Jay rants about how monkeys may eventually destroy humanity and rule the world, Bob ends up bonding with Suzanne. The three of them become hungry, and Jay decides to grab something to eat. Meanwhile, Big Dog and his team of wildlife marshals get a tip that the monkey is at an Indiana diner. At said diner, Jay, Bob, and Suzanne eat some grub. The wildlife marshals surround the diner and demand the release of Suzanne. Jay, Bob, and Suzanne (disguised as a kid) decide to come out. Big Dog falls for their disguise, until he smells bananas.

Jay and Bob escape with Suzanne into the sewer, where they are followed by Big Dog. The four end up at a huge dam pipe, where Suzanne tricks Big Dog into jumping over into the water. Hearing of Big Dog's fate, the team of marshals leave the trio alone when they emerge from the pipe. Jay and Bob hear that a Dr. Ogee at Provasic is offering a reward for Suzanne's capture. The two turn Suzanne in, get two bus tickets to Chicago as compensation and are on the road once again.

Issue four

The duo finally arrive in Chicago and enlist a cab to drive them to Shermer, Illinois. They end up at McHenry High School, where the two crash the Home Economics classroom and sell some weed to the students. At the school, Jay meets a lesbian student named Crystal, who sews Jay's catchphrase "Snoogans" onto his hat and explains the fictional status of Shermer. The two rival with the school dealers and end up in a sticky situation. After getting some new clothes, the two talk about going back to Tricia's place, but are distracted by the sounds of the local rock band, Fork'd Tongue. The two praise their playing and Jay buys a shirt from them. After hanging out with the band all night, Jay and Bob eat breakfast at a Mooby's restaurant and decide to stay in Chicago and get laid. They stop by the Planned Parenthood clinic to "meet loose women." After waiting all night, Bob hears something near the parking lot. The two investigate the problem, thus leading into ''Dogma''.

A murder occurs, and a witness tells the police that she will never forget the killer’s face. Mob attorney Walter Colby (Scott) is called by crime boss Hap Richie (Douglas Kennedy) in the middle of the night to arrange bail for his hood Caesar (Jack Overman). After doing so Colby tells his girlfriend, showgirl Flaxy Martin (Virginia Mayo), that he wants to quit the organization and become respectable. She pooh-poohs the idea, spiting him that he does not have enough money to do so, or afford her.

She would know, as she is two-timing him with Hap.

Meanwhile, Hap arranges through Flaxy for a perjurer, Peggy Farrar (Helen Westcott), to testify on behalf of Caesar, clearing him of the crime. Afterwords she seeks to blackmail Happ for $10,000 to maintain her silence.

Outraged at the double cross, Flaxy loudly assails Peggy at her hotel apartment, drawing the attention of its desk clerk. Caesar silently shows up and kills her, leaving Flaxy later accused of the crime.

She goes to Colby for help, who comes up with a plan to clear her by confessing to be the murderer himself. With absolutely no evidence connecting him to the crime he is confident of his own acquittal. All goes well during the trial until an obvious perjurer takes the stand, again arranged by Hap, clearly with the acquiescence at the least of Flaxy. Colby is convicted on his testimony and sentenced to hard time.

Before he is transferred to prison, he is visited by Sam Malko (Tom D'Andrea), a former client who feels he owes Colby a good turn. Sam tells him that Cesar has been getting drunk and bragging how Colby was convicted instead of him. Colby’s suspicions towards Flaxy begin to grow.

En route to the 20 years awaiting him, Colby slugs his guard and jumps off a train in the countryside. Injured, he passes out in front of motorist Nora Carson (Malone), who takes him home and nurses him. She proves inexplicably attracted to him, in spite of his self centeredness and repeated lack of gratitude. A statewide manhunt seeks his every trace, which he and Nora elude.

He returns to the city and seeks Sam‘s help, leaving Nora behind as he arranges a rendezvous with Cesar. When he gets there he finds Cesar dead, and once again ends up at gunpoint with Caesar’s hood Roper. The two have a violent showdown on a rooftop, with Colby forcing his pursuer over the edge to his death.

He then heads for Flaxy’s apartment for a confrontation. When Hap arrives she pulls a gun on both men, seeking to disappear with $40,000 of Hap’s money and leave the pair of rivals hanging. Colby tells her she can’t shoot both men at once, and whomever she doesn’t will get her. Colby flicks off the lights and she shoots wildly at both, killing Hap. Colby calls the police, who come and arrest her.

Arriving back at Sam’s with the stolen $40,000 he insists he’s going to go on the lam alone. Nora wants to go with him. Sam councils reason. Colby gives into it, and calls the police to turn himself in.

''Slayers Royal'' is notable for bringing together Naga the Serpent (Lina Inverse's companion in the prequel stories) with Gourry Gabriev, Amelia Wil Tesla Seyruun and Zelgadis Greywords (Lina's companions in the main storyline) at once for the first time. In the game's storyline, Lina, Gourry and Naga encounter an elf boy named Lark (ラークの) being attacked by the mazoku demons. After rescuing him, they find that the mazoku have kidnapped Lark's sister in order to gain an ancient amulet that is now in hands of Lark. Eventually, they discover the real power of this legendary relic: with it, the mazoku can resurrect the demon king Ruby-Eye Shabranigdu and destroy the world.

The game, released about a year before the first season of the first anime series, follows the light novels' continuity. Many characters from the ''Slayers Special'' novels are present. When introducing the manga ''Slayers: Knight of Aqualord'', ''Slayers'' creator and the game's co-writer Hajime Kanzaka described several of the alternative continuities across mediums, mentioning this game as one of them taking place after the first arc of the novel series, namely after the eighth novel.

The game begins with a man finding an unconscious Lina Inverse and taking her back to his village. It quickly becomes clear that Lina has lost all her memories: she does not know who she is, or how to cast any but the most basic spells. Most of the game follows her adventures across different locations in the ''Slayers'' world. Gradually, Lina regains her spellcasting abilities and reunites with old friends and acquaintances from the novels. Eventually, Lina and her companions learn that the Greater Beast Zelas Metallium has been creating copies of her. When Lina, Gourry, Amelia and Zelgadiss confront Zelas, they learn that the reason Lina has lost her memories is that she is, in fact, one of the copies Zelas created; the real Lina is being held prisoner by Zelas. After defeating her, the original Lina is freed.

At this point, the main story is over, but the game can be continued. The player picks a new name for Copy Lina, and can go on a quest to find and defeat Lei Magnus-Shabranigdu. All characters who have been in the player's party will congregate at an inn in Tells City, enabling to freely pick three characters to re-join the party. Once Lei Magnus-Shabranigdu is slain, the game is officially over.

Burma is a confused girl who likes to party. One day she meets some strangers in a bar who invite her and her group to a party. At the party everybody drinks alcohol and the girls unknowingly smoke marijuana, which keeps them laughing. Burma and her boyfriend have sex on the beach while her friends go skinny-dipping.

One of the girls drowns at the skinny-dipping party and all her friends must keep the details of the party a secret. When Burma tells her boyfriend she's pregnant from their beach encounter, she pressures him to marry her. He says everything will be fine and turns to the strangers who threw the party for a job to support his family-to-be. The stranger gives him a job unloading smuggled drugs from a secret shipment to the docks. The police find out about this shipment, chase the smugglers, and shoot and kill Burma's boyfriend.

After Burma finds out about this news, she runs away from home, is forced to give her baby up for adoption, and becomes a drug dealer. She moves on to harder drugs, including injecting heroin into her body. In the film's ending, Burma hatches a plan to kidnap and ransom her sister's adopted daughter for $50,000, then finds out that the child is actually her own.

The First D'oh-El

When Reverend Lovejoy cannot attend the Christmas sermon due to a horrible train wreck on his train set, Ned Flanders immediately takes over. However, when he gets a paper cut and faints, Homer decides to lead the sermon and tells the story of the first Christmas.

Mary (Marge) tells Joseph (Homer) that she is pregnant, even though she is a virgin. The angel Gabriel (Lisa) appears to them and explains that Mary is going to give birth to the Son of God. The three wise men (Dr. Hibbert, Principal Skinner, and Professor Frink) tell King Herod (Mr. Burns) that they are going to give gold, frankincense, and myrrh (which Frink is re-gifting) to the King of the Jews. When Herod assumes the gifts are for him, the men explain to him that they are for the infant. Herod becomes angry and plots to kill the baby.

At the Bethlehem Inn, the innkeeper (Moe) tells Mary and Joseph that he has plenty of rooms available with brand new carpeting. However, when Mary's water breaks, he forces them to stay in the barn. Mary successfully gives birth to baby Jesus (Bart), and the three wise men, along with the two shepherds (Lenny and Carl) come to see the baby. Joseph is upset because he is not Jesus's father, and when he drinks some wine, the baby turns it into water.

When the infant keeps crying, Mary gives him to Joseph. He entertains him by hurting himself and one of the wise men (Skinner). When baby Jesus finally falls asleep, Herod and his troops find the manger that they are staying in. They escape and trick the soldiers by putting Jesus' halo on a duck. On top of the hill, Joseph cuts down a spruce tree, and as it rolls down, the soldiers get caught in it. The soldiers, along with Herod, are arranged like ornaments on the tree, and the duck, still wearing the halo, stands on top of the tree. Mary calls it a Christmas tree, and Homer concludes his service.

I Saw Grampa Cussing Santa Claus

When Bart and Lisa find Grampa trying to stick a bear trap on top of the chimney, Grampa tells them that he is trying to get his revenge on Santa Claus. When Bart asks why, Grampa recalls how, back in World War II, he and his brother Cyrus (not mentioned before or since this episode aired) were fighting off Japanese planes, accompanied by Mr. Burns, when Cyrus got shot down. Shortly after, Grampa and Burns have their plane's wings shot off and are stranded on an island. After a few months, they see a plane in the sky, and Burns shoots it down. However, when they go over to investigate, they see that it is actually Santa Claus. They build him a new sleigh and gather up all the presents. When Santa is about to leave, Burns knocks him unconscious with a coconut and flies away in the sleigh, intent on keeping all the presents for himself.

Grampa catches up to him on Prancer, who has been left behind because Santa could not find him, and jumps on board the sleigh. After he beats Burns with a tricycle, he gives the sleigh back to Santa. As Santa leaves, he tells Grampa that he will be back in a few days. However, he never returns, and Grampa has to get off using a jet ski he made out of coconuts. Bart and Lisa believe that it is just another one of Grampa's far-fetched tales, but when they hear a thump in the den, they find that Santa is there. He tells them that Cyrus did not die, but instead crashed into Tahiti. Santa takes Grampa there, and they meet up with Cyrus and his fifteen wives. Santa explains to Grampa that he did not come back for him on the island due to his procrastination and eventually feeling embarrassed about it. When Grampa comments on Cyrus's fifteen wives and the sex he must have, Cyrus points out that they are wives, not girlfriends.

The Nutcracker...Sweet

After the children of Springfield Elementary perform ''The Nutcracker'', everyone begins to go about their business singing to the tune of the songs from the play. This is done after mentioning that these songs are in the public domain and thus can be (and are) played constantly for free. After the opening number (sung to the tune of "Marche"), Moe continues his holiday tradition of attempting suicide (done to the tune of "Dance of the Flutes"), first by hanging himself with popcorn string which breaks under his weight, next by riding a sleigh into open traffic only to have all the cars swerve and miss him, and then by shooting himself in the head with a revolver that sends a "Merry Christmas" flag out through his other ear. In a fourth attempt, Moe asks Barney to kill him instead of buying him a present, but Barney has already gotten him a wool hat and Moe gives up on the idea for now.

That evening, Marge tells Homer that he will like the present that she got him. Having forgotten to buy her anything and not wanting to upset her, Homer tells her that his present for her is outside; he then frantically rushes out to find a gift (sung to the tune of "Trepak"). Every store is closed, and all Apu has at the Kwik-E-Mart is some jerky made out of trout. Homer searches in garbage cans, gutters, trees, and he even chases down Milhouse, but he cannot find anything.

When he gets home, Marge gives Homer his present (done to "Pas De Deux"). He opens it and sees that it is another present with a tag that reads, "To Marge, From Homer." Marge tells him that she knew that he would forget to give her a present, so she gave him one to give to her. He gives it to her and she unwraps it, and Homer sees that it is a picture of him dressed up as Santa with Marge on his lap. They hug and kiss, and Moe unsuccessfully attempts suicide a fifth time by riding a sleigh toward a fully loaded tractor-trailer.

The film is set to a frame-narrative about a film director and producer making a marketing film about Finland, using the visit of the son of a wealthy hair-creme tycoon, William Njurmi (Pasanen), as the premise. For the first two thirds, the film's events take place according to a conversation between the producer, director and a random Finnish tax-payer frozen by the narrator at the beginning of the film. William Njurmi, born and raised in the US, is visiting the home of his ancestors who were Finnish. After an expansive tour and excessive time spent at a sauna Njurmi escapes the Finnish welcoming committee, runs into the woods and gets mistaken for a deer. He also walks in on an exercise held by the Finnish Armed Forces.

Later, Njurmi runs into an inventor living in the woods (played by Spede's frequent collaborator Simo Salminen) named Simo. After Njurmi is almost forced to marry a farm-girl by her redneck in-laws he is saved by Simo. Though Njurmi is open about his identity Simo remains in disbelief until Njurmi returns to the Commerce Council but not before the pair steal a car and tour the country, effectively covering every tourist location in Finland.

Becoming fed up with the Commerce Council Njurmi replaces himself with his body-guard, a stereotypical Italian mobster named ''Luigi'' (Esko Salminen) with full rights to use Njurmi's name and wealth whilst he and Simo continue to go about Finland unrecognised. It is at this point that the director and producer from the beginning of the film, removing their wigs and revealing themselves to be bald, turn out to be undercover agents for a party that is never identified during the film. Meanwhile, Luigi is constantly harassed by the Finnish Commerce Council who are trying to get a sizable donation often pleading pitifully. Eventually Luigi gives them a check but not before he has seen traditional Finnish winter-sports and dated the ''Miss Finland''. Eventually Luigi is caught double-timing by his wife effectively terminating his role from the rest of the film.

The film itself ends with Will and Simo being chased by the agents and fighting them off as they do. The chase ends at the Olympic Stadium in Helsinki where after Njurmi and Simo fight off dozens of agents Njurmi decides to marry a Finnish girl who just conveniently shows up. However the woman is also an agent, revealed when she removes her wig too. Afterwards Simo runs into the scene where Luigi had dumped Miss Finland into a swimming pool when his wife showed up. Simo then breaks the fourth wall by talking to the narrator asking "What the heck is going on?". He is then given a very brief and somewhat inaccurate explanation of the plot. However, Simo seems to have no trouble understanding and after saving Miss Finland from the swimming pool, he tells her they will go off to get married. The movie ends with Simo winking at the camera as the frame freezes and the words "Happy End" appear on screen.

The series was about a boy named Sam Baxter (played by R. J. Williams) and his robot D.E.C.K.S. (voiced by Rob Paulsen; built from old audio/video equipment and a Sony U-Matic videotape head; the name was an acronym for '''D'''igital '''E'''lectronic '''C'''assette-Headed '''K'''inetic '''S'''ystem) and their adventures in the basement, which has a time machine that can bring back historical figures. In some cases, Sam and D.E.C.K.S. occasionally have ''remote fights'' in which they each have a remote control and start pressing buttons changing each other from Hanna-Barbera stars to famous movie stars.

Uuno is forced to complete his mandatory military service when it is revealed that he only spent one day in the army in his youth. As is typical of the Turhapuro series, his family and friends become closely tied in with these events. His friends Härski Hartikainen and Sörsselssön return to the army for a refresher course and by chance Uuno's father-in-law, Councillor Tuura is made the Finnish Defence Minister. As Uuno's superiors in the army learn of the high position of his father-in-law, they incorrectly deduce that Uuno has been sent to seek flaws in the leadership and conduct of the army. They try to bribe the completely oblivious Uuno with promotions to have him keep his mouth shut. Within one week, Uuno has been promoted from private to major.

In one of the most memorable scenes, Uuno's wife, Elisabeth, dresses as Uuno and substitutes him for a day as Uuno has an apparently urgent meeting (at a restaurant) and while becoming lost in the woods with a malfunctioning radio, Tuura accidentally declares war on Sweden, causing him to be court-martialed with Uuno as his defense attorney.

''Descent 3'' takes place in a science fiction setting of the Solar System where the player is cast as Material Defender MD1032, a mercenary working for a corporation called the Post Terran Mining Corporation (PTMC). The game begins moments after the events of ''Descent II'', with the Material Defender escaping the destruction of a planetoid where he was clearing PTMC's robots infected by an alien virus. He was about to return to Earth to collect his reward, but a malfunction occurred with the prototype warp drive in the ship he was piloting, making it drift towards the Sun's atmosphere. At the very last moment, the Material Defender is rescued via a tractor beam by an organization known as the Red Acropolis Research Team.

While the Material Defender recovers in the Red Acropolis station on Mars, the director of the team informs him that they have been investigating PTMC, and have uncovered a conspiracy: one of her acquaintances in the PTMC was killed by a robot, and when she contacted PTMC about it, they denied having ever employed such acquaintance, even though he had worked with them for years. The Red Acropolis had tried to notify the Collective Earth Defense (CED), a large police group, of the PTMC's actions, but they took no action, not daring to interfere with such a powerful corporation. The director also tells the Material Defender that, while he was clearing the mines during the events of ''Descent II'', PTMC executive Samuel Dravis was actually testing and modifying the virus and deliberately tried to kill him by overloading the warp drive on his ship. After some persuasion and offers from the director, including a new ship and an AI assistant known as the Guide-Bot, the Material Defender accepts to help the Red Acropolis stop the virus.

The Material Defender is first sent to Deimos to obtain information about the location of a scientist named Dr. Sweitzer who has evidence of the PTMC's actions. He is then rescued in the Novak Corporate Prison on Phobos. After recovering the evidence, the Material Defender delivers it to PTMC President Suzuki in Seoul before leaving with his reward. When the Material Defender arrives at the Red Acropolis Research Station, the director tells him that the PTMC president has been killed and that the Red Acropolis Research Team are now accused of being terrorists, resulting in the destruction of the then-abandoned station. After a series of missions, the Material Defender and the Red Acropolis Research Team manage to develop an antivirus and convince the CED that they are not terrorists. The CED suggest to broadcast the antivirus through their strategic platform orbiting Earth, but the results are unsuccessful. The Material Defender is then sent to Venus, where Dravis has been tracked by the Red Acropolis. In the ensuing confrontation in his stronghold, Dravis is mortally wounded by the Guide-Bot's flares and the Material Defender deactivates the virus, which disables all of the PTMC's robots. The game ends with the CED destroying the PTMC's orbital headquarters while the Material Defender returns to Earth.

In ancient Basra, a blind, young beggar begins telling the film's story in flashback (mimicking the style of the ''Arabian Nights''), revealing that he is really Ahmad, the young, naive Sultan of Bagdad. Wanting to know more about his people, Ahmad is tricked by Jaffar, his evil Grand Vizier, into going in disguise into the city. Jaffar then has him arrested and seizes the throne. In prison, Ahmad meets the young thief Abu, who arranges their escape. They flee to Basra, where Ahmad meets and falls in love with the Princess. Jaffar, however, also journeys to Basra, intent on having the Princess for himself.

The Princess is promised in marriage to Jaffar by her father, the toy-obsessed Sultan of Basra, in exchange for a mechanical flying horse. The Princess, now in love with Ahmad, runs away, but Jaffar blinds Ahmad and turns Abu into a dog. The Princess is captured for the slave market and is bought by Jaffar's agent. At the palace, though, she falls into a deep sleep and cannot be awakened. Halima, Jaffar's minion, tricks Ahmad into awakening the Princess. He is then dismissed with the dog to the city's docks, where he concludes his story.

The Princess is tricked into boarding a ship, where she is met by Jaffar who tells her that she can cure Ahmad's blindness only by allowing Jaffar to embrace her. She submits and the spells are lifted from both Ahmad and Abu. Jaffar prevents the two from following him by raising a storm that shipwrecks them. Returning to Basra, Jaffar uses a mechanical dancer to kill the Princess's father. He then goes back to Bagdad with the Princess.

Abu awakes on a deserted beach, where he finds a bottle and opens it, releasing an enormous genie so embittered by his long imprisonment he intends to kill the boy. Abu tricks the genie into submitting to him and granting him three wishes. The first wish is wasted, but the genie helps Abu to steal a magical jewel that enables him to find Ahmad. With his second wish, Abu is reunited with Ahmad. With the jewel, Ahmad sees Jaffar using his magic to make the Princess forget her true love. Despondent, Ahmad quarrels with Abu, who inadvertently uses his third wish to send Ahmad back to Bagdad.

In Bagdad, Ahmad is reunited with the Princess who remembers him. They are imprisoned by Jaffar and condemned to death. Abu helplessly witnesses all this with the jewel's aid. In anger, he destroys the jewel, which frees the "Old King" of the "Land of Legend." Abu is given a magic crossbow as a reward. He steals the king's magic carpet and flies on it to Bagdad. Abu's appearance fulfills an ancient prophesy and sparks a revolt against Jaffar by the city's inhabitants. Abu kills the fleeing Jaffar with the crossbow. Ahmad is restored to power and reunited with the Princess. Abu, alarmed by Ahmad's plans to educate him to become the vizier, flies off on the carpet in search of fun and adventure.

Maria Hipólita Díaz is a young woman who lives in Panama with her husband, Antonio, and her mother-in-law, Adelaida. Antonio suffered from sexual abuses when he was a child, so he isn't able to consummate his marriage.

Adelaida wants to have a grandchild, as Antonio will not inherit the fortune of his uncle, Próspero, unless he sires a son.

Luis Manrique y Arellano is a noble Mexican who came to Santa Rita to close a deal under orders from his cousin Diego, the Count of Guevara, without knowing that the trip was a pretext to have him killed.

When Luis is captured by Adelaida's servants while fleeing from justice, she orders him to take Antonio's place in Hipólita's bed, or she'll turn him over to the authorities.

So Luis goes to Hipólita's bedroom, intending to escape from a window. It's very dark, she awakes upon hearing him try to escape, she doesn't see him very well and she believes he is her husband.

He makes love to her to keep her quiet, and then makes good his escape. But before he leaves, Hipólita discovers that this man isn't her husband, but an escaped prisoner.

Luis departs, without Hipólita seeing his face or knowing his name – but Luis knows hers. She is furious with her mother-in-law for what she has done, but she can't change what happened.

Some weeks later, Hipólta finds out that she is pregnant with Luis's child, so she decides to leave home with her maid, Adalgisa, and go to Mexico, where her family lives.

There, she has her child, Rafael, and finds her mother and her sister, but they aren't very thrilled to see her. Hipólita was Asunción's illegitimate daughter, so she sent the girl to Panama to be raised by her grandmother, so that no one in Mexico could know that she had a daughter outside of wedlock.

When Hipólita arrives in Mexico, she has to fight against her stepfather's hate and her mother's desperation when she finds out that there's another bastard in the family.

Luis also lives in Mexico: he is a rich man, cousin of the count of Guevara, and there is much mystery about his relationship with his mother, Juana, who appears to hate her own son and support the count against him at every turn.

Hipólita and Luis meet again and, although she doesn't recognize him, he recognizes her and he suspects that the child that Hipólita has with her is also his son.

They don't get on very well initially, but later, they fall in love with each other. Luis feels that he has to tell her that he is her son's father, but he can't do this, because if he did, Hipólita would hate him.

The eventual recognition of Rafael as Luis's son, the reason why Luis's mother detests him, and the plots of the Count of Guevara against Luis are played out against the background of Luis's and Hipólita's attempts to be together.

In A.D. 1555, Connor MacLeod (Christopher Lambert) returns to his former home in Glenfinnan, Scotland, to save his mother from his former friend and village priest Jacob Kell (Bruce Payne). Kell executes Connor's mother for witchcraft. Enraged, Connor kills both Kell and Kell's adoptive father, Father Rainey, and sets Glenfinnan ablaze before leaving with his mother's body. Jacob Kell is reborn as an Immortal, and vows hypocritical vengeance against Connor for Rainey's death. He spends the next four centuries killing people Connor cares about. Kell amasses great power by ignoring the rules of The Game; he recruits several lesser Immortals as disciples, who overpower other Immortals so Kell can take their heads.

Some time after leading to the events of the original film, the death of the Kurgan, and ten years before the present-day events of the current film, Kell orchestrates the death of Connor's adopted daughter Rachel Ellenstein. Heartbroken, Connor departs for The Sanctuary, where Immortals are under surveillance by a subgroup of Watchers to prevent The Prize from being won.

A decade later, Kell and his disciples attack the Sanctuary, and Connor is believed to have been beheaded along with the other Immortals there. Duncan MacLeod (Adrian Paul), compelled by a vision he has of the slaughter, begins to investigate. Meanwhile, Matthew Hale, the Watcher supervising the sanctuary, looks on at the carnage, and decides that they will now turn to "volunteers" to refill their test-subjects' numbers. Duncan goes to see Methos, who tells him about the Sanctuary. Duncan cannot believe that Connor would even go to such a place. He later leaves London for New York, where he goes to Connor's NYC loft, which was destroyed in the explosion that killed Rachel. Sensing an Immortal, he turns to see Kate (Lisa Barbuscia), his wife from 200 years before. Then Kell's posse arrives, and fights Duncan (disregarding the rule of one-on-one combat). The fighting stops when Kell arrives, but Carlos shoots Duncan, who falls on a spike, rendering him unconscious. Kell is furious with Carlos, and beheads him – as the Quickening begins, a van drives up to where Duncan fell, and takes him away.

Later on, Duncan wakes up, only to realize that he has been taken by Watchers who want to keep him in the Sanctuary so that the Prize cannot be won by any Immortal. He is later saved with the help of Methos and Watcher Joe Dawson. Joe warns Duncan about Kell and how powerful he has become, having already taken a total of 661 immortal heads. He discovers Connor was spared by Kell, so as to allow the evil Immortal to make Connor's life even more miserable. Kell wants to kill Duncan in order to torture Connor, and given the number of Quickenings he has received, this seems quite likely to occur. Additionally, Connor is too guilt-ridden by the deaths of all his loved ones to stand up to Kell by himself. Duncan later confronts Kate (now using the alias "Faith") at a fashion-shoot, and asks her why she is with Kell. She tells him how much she hates the fact that she will never have children or grow old and die, and believes that Kell understands her pain. Duncan must earn her forgiveness, or face her as an embittered part of Kell's faction. Later on in his hotel room, Kate arrives after having a chat with Kell, and the two make love. Duncan touches the scar that was caused when he made her Immortal, and apologizes to Faith for what he did. Though it would appear that she has forgiven him, it is not the case, and she tells Duncan that she will never forgive him; Duncan tells her that it is never too late for redemption, and that he will wait, even if it takes years or centuries.

Ultimately, Kell executes his group in a mock Last Supper to gain their powers, including possibly Faith. Later on a rooftop, Connor meets Duncan and intentionally starts a sword-fight with him. Telling him that neither one of them can defeat Kell alone, Connor convinces Duncan that he must allow himself to be beheaded in order for Duncan to have enough power to rival Kell. After an emotional goodbye, Duncan ends the fight with respect and honor, sorrowfully beheading his beloved clansman, Connor.

Soon after, Duncan and Kell engage in a final battle. At first, Kell easily overpowers Duncan, even when MacLeod attempts a supposedly-unbeatable sword move that Connor taught him. Hale attempts to interfere and take Duncan back to the Sanctuary, but Joe arrives and shoots him dead. Just before Duncan's impending death at the hands of Kell, Connor's spirit takes control of Duncan, which gives him the strength to continue. Duncan then kills Kell by jumping over him and decapitating him as he turns around, avenging Connor and all of Connor's loved ones. Duncan absorbs all of Kell's massive power, taking his place as the most powerful immortal in existence. He then goes to Glencoe, Scotland to bury Connor next to Connor's first wife Heather and mentor Ramírez.

Producer's Cut: After Duncan's visit to Glencoe to bury Connor, Kate appears and explains that Kell spared her life. After proclaiming that her "Faith"-persona is "dead," and that she is giving "Kate" another try, she and Duncan share a kiss, suggesting that they will reconcile their marriage, and live together forever.

In a small Indiana town in the mid-1910s, the Winfield household have just moved into a larger house in a nicer neighborhood. The family includes: the father George, who is a banker, his wife Alice, their grown tomboyish daughter Marjorie (nicknamed “Margie”), their mischievous precocious trouble-making son Wesley, and their exasperated housekeeper Stella. No one but George is happy about the move, until Marjorie meets their new neighbor, William Sherman, home on a break from his studies at Indiana University. The two are immediately attracted to each other, which makes Margie change her focus from baseball to trying to become a proper young woman as perceived by society at the time.

Margie and Bill develop a romantic relationship despite, or perhaps because of, Bill's unconventional thoughts on life, including not believing in the institution of marriage or the role money plays in society.

The road to a happy life between Margie and Bill is hindered by distance (as Bill returns to school), Margie's attempts to learn perceived feminine things, her father’s disapproval and preference for another suitor, her brother’s continual meddling, and the U.S. entry into World War I.

Margie’s father softens when her brother breaks a window with their father’s old slingshot. This ultimately makes the father more receptive to her relationship with Bill and the movie reaches a happy ending.

David Goliath is an African-American sailor who deserts his ship when it arrives in Wales. He climbs onto the back of a freight train and meets Bert, who is work-shy and scoffs at David's determination to seek employment. The train arrives at a small mining town and the two men briefly attempt to busk before being scolded by Mrs Parry for making unpleasant noise outside her shop. They stop outside a building where a male choir are rehearsing and David begins singing along. The choir conductor, Dick Parry, is determined to make David a member and offers him lodgings at his house. Despite his wife, Mrs Parry, objecting to the idea, her protests are moot when their sons and daughters side with their father. Dick gets David a job as a miner to work along with him and his eldest son Emlyn, much to the racist objections of one of the workers, but Dick and David accidentally mine close to gas, causing a fire, in which many miners perish. Emlyn was not present at the site that morning and rushes into the mine as a rescuer; David carries Dick out of the fire but is unable to save him.

A month later, Dick's choir appears at a competition but only David performs for Dick's memory. The mine has been closed since the disaster and the rest of the miners are reduced to gathering coal from the top of a spoil heap, but they are unable to make the same amount of money that the mine had paid them and many have to claim social benefits. A year later, Mrs Parry is struggling with five children to care for and is visited by Mrs Owen—the mother of Emlyn's fiancée, Gwen—who snaps that Gwen is not allowed marry Emlyn because he cannot make enough money to look after her. Gwen later sneaks to the Parry house and tells Emlyn that she would marry him no matter his income, which gives Emlyn the idea to march to London and demand that the government reopens the mine. Emlyn takes David and two other miners and they walk to London, and arrive the day after Germany invaded Poland. The British government are busy focusing on building up the army and reopen the mine to send the gatecrashers away. The team return to Wales and attempt to reopen the mine, but a large fire causes the mine to collapse which traps the team inside. Their candle flickers, indicating the oxygen is disappearing and David estimates they have an hour left until suffocation. One miner finds a weak rock and tries to break through with a pickaxe but he and David fail. Emlyn decides to leave the group to explode an exit through with dynamite, but, knowing that it could lead to another Parry death, David sneaks away as the rest of their team pray and punches Emlyn unconscious, activating the dynamite and breaking through the rock. The other two miners wake up Emlyn, discover David's lifeless body nearby and pray for David's soul. The mine is reopened and the town sing in unison as the coal is transported through the mine.

The first part of the film's story takes place in the year 1700 on an island called Casanga off the west coast of Africa. The island has not yet attracted the attention of the slave traders on the mainland, but its people are suffering fierce oppression under their hereditary queen Zinga - a tyrant, despot, and mistress of cruelty.

What first appears on screen is a grassland landscape in which men of an African tribe are patrolling, with haystacks and rugged hills in the background. Into this scene there comes a bare-chested young African, as strong as a bull, looking around him cautiously.

Next we see the brutal Queen Zinga, wearing a leopard-skin dress, a straw hat, and a shell necklace on which hangs a medallion, a symbol of kingship. Laughing vigorously, she is teasing a man tied on a wooden column, who is supposed to be the king of Casanga. Zinga takes off the necklace and puts it on the man's neck, taunting him as a "one-second king" and trying to kill him straight away. Suddenly, a girl, apparently frustrated by the cruelty of the planned execution, rushes towards the queen, grabs the medallion, and runs off. Astonished, the queen orders her soldiers to catch the fleeing girl and to recover the medallion. However, with the help of the strong young man seen at the beginning of the film, she is able to escape from the soldiers and the two get onto a raft to row it to the mainland. Once there, they turn to a white slave-trader for help. The slaver happily accepts them into his camp and adds them to his chain. Then, along with all the other blacks the slaver has acquired, the couple is filled with anxiety and fear. Sent to England by boat to begin their new life, they are not sure what is in store for them.

Time runs on and historical events unfold, such as the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire in 1807. But not until 1838 did the slaves themselves become free from the oppressing situation and the social status for blacks start to improve. Chains and handcuffs are destroyed, ropes and whips are burned, and a seemingly brand new story begins, centring on John Zinga, a black dockworker in England with a great baritone singing voice. His singing impresses all his colleagues on the wharf. Children in his apartment block fall asleep soundly when he sings, but he himself doesn’t realize what use he can make use of his voice. In fact, what keeps hovering in his mind is the eagerness to discover his true origins and to help his own people, although he doesn’t know who they are. Zinga always considers himself out of place in London and is often blamed by his wife for being ‘not satisfied’, but never does he change his mind. Finally, one day an opera impresario hears him singing and tries his best to find out about him. And in a pub, while Zinga is being invited by the owner to sing the song "Lonely Road", Gabriel Donizetti, the famous impresario, comes quietly in from the door and sits in the audience, watching, listening, and enjoying the beautiful song. "No more docker, but a great career" Donizetti promises Zinga, who is shocked and surprised since he thinks he can achieve his dream of travelling back to Africa by this chance. They shake hands with each other and Donizetti leaves a card for Zinga to come to his hotel room the next day.

Zinga can’t wait to go. The next day he dresses in a suit, apparently for the first time since he both walks and acts in a lame and inappropriate way. Zinga's wife is also with him to deal with the hotel managers. In the end they find the way to Donizetti's room and he starts a series of tests and introduces several skills to help Zinga improve his singing. At first Zinga is reluctant to accept these instructions, like ‘breathing from the stomach’ and ‘singing from the breast’, claiming that he knows how to sing. And he fights against singing in a suit, since he doesn’t feel ‘free’. His voice significantly lacks emotion compared to when he sings freely with friends and in a pub about his homeland in Africa. But after his wife's comforting, mainly focussing on the chance of travelling back to Africa, he is persuaded to follow those doctrinaire rules and techniques.

After long training and practice, Zinga becomes an international opera star and succeeds in all kind of concerts and dramas. This brings him wealth and fame that he has never dreamt of. Yet he feels alienated from his African past, always being sarcastic towards his slave-born identity as his being referred as the Negro King. One day after a great performance, Zinga is instructed to give a speech about what he feels about his success. Not good at public speaking, he sings an old song derived from his long lost childhood memory that he barely remembers and into which has to put some words. In the song, he himself is regarded as a ‘wanderer’ and ‘hears the cold felt by his people’. John has a feeling that by singing the song he may find out some information about his origins, which means much to him. The result does not fail him. The song is moving and invokes one of the audience's memories about the song. He comes to the dressing room at the back of the stage and talk to John about what he knows. John then finds out that his ancestor belongs to the island of Casanga, located on the west coast of Africa. The man from the audience, Pele, was the only white man to escape from the island since it was dominated by a brutal queen, and it is now ruled by a wicked witch doctor. And the song John sang was the secret song passed on by every king, regarded as the "Song of Freedom" of the Casanga people. Pele also tells Zinga the medallion hanging on his neck, which he got from his father and his father had from his great-grandfather, is the symbol of the kingship-----he, John Zinga, is the king of his people. Hearing that his people are still uncivilized on the island, Zinga's idea of going back to his homeland to help his people became even more fixed. At this time Donizetti happens to come in and tells John some good news - a new contract to work in the great New York City. Zinga refuses to go to New York to carry on his singing career, since he considers his people bigger than his success. Donizetti is mad about Zinga leaving his career, but cannot stop him from crossing the ocean to come to the little island in Africa.

When Zinga arrives on the island he, his wife and a servant are not trusted by the aboriginals. Even though they have the same skin color and Zinga has the medallion which proves him the king, he and his fellows are still considered out-siders, strangers or even bad guys coming from the whites’ country. That's far from Zinga's expectation, which lets him down for a time. His servant wants to resign and tell him to give up, even he himself thinks the place is too primitive and his people are too hard to change. But his wife stands by his side and encourages him ‘the worse things are, the more you can change’. Soon he cheers up and waits for his chance in a shabby dome. And it comes. Zinga finds out that the witch doctor locks patients up instead of treating them for the lack of medicine. The witch doctor also announces that when a person gets sick - no matter a fever or cancer - he's dead rather than ill. To deal with this inhuman act, Zinga gives the patient Penicillin and tries to heal them. Some of the people start to believe in Zinga. They tell him "I’m your man, but you can be no king." But this doesn’t last long when the witch doctor began to form various rituals to cast the ‘disaster’ the outsiders brought to the island. What's worse is that the people's trust in Zinga diminishes since the patients he tried to cure all die. To break the superstition Zinga interrupts the rites, attempting to show that no taboos are going to act on him, but is scolded by the crowds. Therefore, the witch doctor come up with a task of bringing the rain. He claims that by rituals he can always bring rains to the island, then the gods and ghosts will be satisfied and cast no disaster and diseases to the men and women; yet Zinga points out frankly that the cause of disease is the bacteria and germs in the river and he cannot bring rains but he can help saving the rain. And he begins to illustrate the amazing life brought by technology improvement from the other side of the ocean. With the help of his followers, more and more and people of the clan believe in him.

The witch doctor is so angry that he jumps up and down to try to scare people from getting in touch with Zinga. While they are debating, Zinga's wife runs out and shouts to the witch doctor to support her husband. But that violates the taboo of not letting women join the ritual and the witch doctor feels perfectly justified to put Zinga's wife in the basement. Zinga, who tried to protect his wife, is also tied up by the army. They are going to execute both of them the next day. And by the moonlight, Zinga's wife sang miserably to him to show her dismay. Zinga's followers bring him his gun but he refuses it. He determines not to use force to hurt his people but to convince them in other way.

Next day the ritual is being held. The witch doctor performs different kinds of tricks, such as fire swallowing to intimidate his people, so that Zinga's followers are afraid to rescue them. Both Zinga and his wife are tied to a wooden pole, waiting to be killed, just as hundreds of years ago, the evil in charge of the island won against the justice. Then the drums for the execution start, and the rhythm starts to sound increasingly familiar to Zinga. It's the Song of Freedom, the secret song passed on by each king of the island. He can’t help but start singing the Song and sings so well that the crowds turn astonishment to appreciation and admiration. He's the king!! Someone from the crowd shouts out and the people eventually believe he is the king and are willing to listen to him. Zinga wins against the witch doctor at last and achieves his dream. He goes back to America and frequently brings back medicine and technology of all kinds, helping his people to become civilized and educated.

At the end of the movie, Zinga picks up his career as a singer again and performs the song he sang a long time ago, "Lonely Road" on a stage decorated as his little island, referring to his achieving his dream and the help he brought to his people, leading them to a better life.

Twenty-one-year-old Jim Dodge is a self-proclaimed "people person" and dreamer, perceived as lazy and good-for-nothing. After being fired from numerous low-paying jobs, Jim is given the choice by his father, Bud Dodge, to either land a job at the local Target or be sent to St. Louis to work for his uncle.

Jim is hired as a night cleanup boy at Target. On his first shift at his new job, Jim is locked alone in the store by his boss, the head custodian, who leaves him there until his shift ends at 7 am. He encounters beautiful Josie McClellan, a stereotypical "spoiled rich girl" whom he has known all his life. Josie had spent the past several hours asleep in a dressing room after backing out of shoplifting some merchandise in a half-hearted attempt to run away from her abusive father, Roger Roy McClellan.

Josie and Jim begin to connect with each other, realizing they are not so different. They begin to form a romantic relationship, and proceed to enjoy the freedom of having such a large store to themselves. Josie, having $52,000 in her purse, convinces Jim to run away with her to Los Angeles as soon as they leave the store in the morning. Meanwhile, Roger teams up with the town sheriff to search for his runaway daughter all night.

Things become complicated when two incompetent crooks, Nestor Pyle and Gil Kinney, break in and hold the two hostage. Eventually, Josie seduces one of the crooks and convinces him to take her with them after robbing the store. While the criminals are loading stolen merchandise into their car, Josie jumps into the front seat and drives away, leaving the two men stranded in the parking lot. Meanwhile, in the building, Jim loads up a shotgun found in the head custodian's locker and tricks Nestor and Gil by luring them to the back of the store and holding them at gunpoint.

In the morning, the sheriff arrives and stumbles upon the two crooks, having been tied up by Jim. Jim and Josie run away and are then seen lounging next to a pool in Hollywood.

American Russel Harwick travels to a villa outside Paris to receive treatment for drug addiction. During withdrawals, he experiences a series of flashbacks to his experiences in New York City and other parts of the world, and has numerous hallucinations.

The film briefly depicts Chappaqua, New York, a hamlet in Westchester County, in a few minutes of wintry panoramas. In the film, the hamlet is an overt symbol of drug-free suburban childhood innocence. It also serves as one of the film's many nods to Native American culture. The word "chappaqua" derives from the Wappinger (a nation of the Algonquian peoples) word for "laurel swamp".

The story tells of an unnamed young man who has a dream that he is in an old-fashioned movie theater in 1909. As he sits down to watch the film, he starts to realize that it is a motion picture documenting his parents' courtship. The black-and-white silent film is of very poor quality, and the camera is shaky, but nonetheless, he is engrossed. Soon the young man starts to get upset. He yells things at the screen, trying to influence the outcome of his parents' courtship and the other people in the audience begin to think he is crazy. Several times the character breaks down. In the end he shouts at his parents when it appears they are going to break up, and he is dragged out of the theater by an usher who reprimands him. In the end, the character wakes up from his dream and notes that it is the snowy morning of his twenty-first birthday.

''By the Light of the Silvery Moon'' relates the further adventures of the Winfield family in small town Indiana as daughter Marjorie Winfield's (Doris Day) boyfriend, William Sherman (Gordon MacRae), returns from the Army after World War I. Bill and Marjorie's on-again, off-again romance provides the backdrop for other family crises, caused mainly by son Wesley's (Billy Gray) wild imagination.

At the start of the novel, the main character, Jemmy (he changes his name several times over the course of the novel) is around age 10. The novel then proceeds to skip through time in the various sections of the book including his teenage and young adult years, ending when he is in his forties. At first, he lives in his birthplace, Spiral Town, at one end of the Road—no one there knows what lies beyond a short distance down the Road.

Jemmy's adventures begin as a late adolescent when, in self-defense, he kills someone working for the merchants and is forced to flee Spiral Town. He winds up a distance down the road in a fishing community where he changes his name and appearance, and becomes a cook. He marries into the population. When a different caravan comes through town from Spiral Town, they arrange with the village elders to hire Jemmy as a chef. He proceeds on the caravan to the Neck, the isthmus which joins the peninsula to the mainland from which the caravans come. No locals, like Jemmy, are permitted on the mainland.

At the Neck, Jemmy is told he must return to his town on the next caravan—the same one he fled Spiral Town from. He instead flees by sea. Taking refuge on a boat left over from the time of Landing, he floats around the peninsula to a point beyond the Neck. There, in a storm, he goes ashore and is found by prisoners at the Windfarm—sentenced prisoners who farm speckles. All speckles come from the area and are rendered infertile by irradiation; the monopoly is rigorously maintained.

The others use clothing that Jemmy has salvaged to plot an escape, led by the violent Andrew. They break out and evade pursuit. Andrew has planned all along to kill Jemmy, but Jemmy literally gets the drop on him and kills him in self-defense. Jemmy leaves the other prisoners, taking money they have found and a supply of speckles, and flees once again.

Twenty-seven years later, Jemmy is a pit chef at a beach resort along the Road. His wife is burned in an accident and he is forced to leave his place—a place, as it turns out, of hiding. He finally reaches his lifetime's goal of seeing the other end of the Road, and Destiny Town. There, he is able to access the ''Cavorite'' s computer library and learn the true history of Destiny, a discovery which hardens him.

After his wife dies from a freak drug interaction during her burn treatment, Jemmy takes his father-in-law's widow Harlow back to the site of the prisoners' hideout, where he had planted fertile speckles. They still survive, and he takes some, sharing the secret with Harlow. They then return to the beach resort, of which Jemmy, by his wife's death, is now part owner. The two contrive to join a caravan, and Jeremy returns as a merchant's chef, unknown to his former townsfolk, to Spiral Town.

During the trip, Jemmy makes his attempt to break the speckles monopoly. All along the Road, he distributes gumdrop candy covered with dyed speckle seeds to children. Because the speckle seeds are no longer irradiated, they will grow after having passed through people's bodies, in manure piles and graveyards. The next time the merchants try to withhold speckles, they will be in for a surprise.

An encounter in the bar of the Mexico City branch of the Camino Real Hotels, between tired businessman Danny Wright, hoping to land a career-saving contract in Mexico, and jaded, falling-apart-at-the-seams assassin Julian Noble, leads them into an awkward friendship. Julian is confronting the immorality of his profession and experiencing a mid-life crisis that caused him to freeze on a job; Danny is fearing that a vitally important deal will fall through and cost him his job. After an uncomfortable-at-times conversation, Danny leaves the bar. Julian apologizes and invites him to see a bullfight. During the show, Julian reveals the kind of work he does, and when Danny is skeptical, takes him through the steps of how to murder a portly spectator in the arena bathroom. Danny is shocked at how easily Julian can get within inches of the man, even though he ends the "tutorial" without going through with the murder.

Later, while at an outdoor cafe, Julian asks Danny to assist him in "facilitating a fatality"; Danny flatly refuses and Julian leaves. On leaving, it appears that Julian has definitively had enough of Danny. However, that evening Julian knocks on Danny's hotel room door, pleading to be let in, wanting to apologize for attempting to involve Danny in his work. Danny sits within looking undecided, and the scene cuts to black with the sound of glass breaking, not revealing what happened next.

The film picks up again six months later, during the Christmas season. Danny and his wife, Bean are relaxing at their home in Denver when Julian arrives, looking for a place to stay. Danny and Bean have reservations, but decide to let him in. The grateful Julian notices that Danny has framed the bullfight ticket, which touches Julian.That night, he shares the reason for his visit: he needs help with his last job. Julian convinces Danny to go along with the plan because, he tells Danny, "you owe me." They fly to Arizona together to the race courses to kill the target. Julian gets Danny to open a door to set off the alarm so he could turn off the alarm in the future. He then asks Danny to bump into the target so Julian could have a clear shot. Julian is on the stairwell with a sniper rifle. Danny does his part but Julian is unable to take the shot and breaks down. After much internal struggle and with Danny talking him through it, Julian completes the task.

On the plane back from Tucson, Julian reveals that the man he just killed was his long-term employer, Mr. Stick. Having killed him means that now Julian can retire to Greece. Danny is surprised, then amused at Julian's craftiness, but is reminded of Julian's profession when he lightly punches Julian in the shoulder and is quietly warned by Julian, "Don't ever hit me again.", so he immediately apologizes. A split flashback sequence during the flight home (a memory triggered by a statement of Danny's) shows what took place a year prior when Danny let Julian into his hotel room: Danny asked Julian to kill his business opponents. Julian says no as he doesn't think Danny is that type of person and knows Danny will regret it. The flashback ends and they are back on the plane. Danny says " You became my friend that night Julian. You surprised me!" Julian replies "I surprised myself."

Later, Danny and Bean are shown visiting their son's grave, something they do on the anniversary of his death. Julian watches respectfully from a distance, places a brochure for Greece on their windshield, then slips away.

The plot concerns the relationships of an aristocratic young woman named Maria Gavrilovna (''Gavrilovna'' is a patronymic, not a surname) and the unusual coincidences that accompany them. The following is copied from the program notes by Ledbetter (see sources):

:In 1811, a seventeen-year-old girl, Maria Gavrilovna, falls in love with a young officer, Vladimir Nikolayevich. Her parents disapprove of the relationship, which continues into the winter through correspondence. Finally they decide to elope, marry quickly, and then throw themselves at the feet of her parents to beg forgiveness (confident that a marriage entered into the Russian Orthodox Church would be regarded as eternal and unbreakable).

:The plan was for Maria Gavrilovna to slip out in the middle of a winter's night and take a sleigh to a distant village church, where her love would meet her for the wedding. On the night in question, a blizzard was raging, but the girl managed to do all she had promised and to reach the church. Her lover, on the other hand, driving alone to the rendezvous, became lost in the dark and the storm, arriving at the church many hours late to find no one there.

:The next morning, Masha was once more at home, but very ill. In a feverish delirium, she said enough to make it clear to her mother that she was hopelessly in love with the young officer. Her parents, deciding that this was a fated love, gave their permission for a wedding. But when they wrote to inform the officer of this fact, his reply was almost incoherent. He begged their forgiveness and insisted that his only hope was death. He rejoined the army (it was now the fatal year of 1812, when Napoleon made his famous attack on Russia), was wounded at the battle of Borodino, and died.

:Meanwhile, Masha's father died, leaving her the richest young woman in her region. Suitors pressed for her hand, but she refused to accept anyone. She seemed to be living only for the memory of her lost love.

:Finally, though, she made the acquaintance of a wounded colonel of the hussars, Burmin, who was visiting the estate near hers. Burmin was a handsome man who had once had a reputation as a notorious rake, but who was now both quiet and modest in his personality. The two developed a warm friendship, and it became very clear that he was so restrained that he never made any declaration of love or formal proposal to her. Masha purposely arranged a situation in which they would be able to talk freely with no one else near. Finally he breaks his silence: He loves her passionately but cannot hope for any happiness with her because he is already married, has been married for four years, to a woman whom he does not know and whom he cannot expect ever to see again.

:To the astonished Masha, he explains that, in the winter of 1812, he was trying to rejoin his regiment, when a terrible blizzard came on. Riding in a troika with a guide, they became lost in unfamiliar country. Seeing a light in the distance, they drove toward it and found themselves at a village church where people were crying out "This way!" When he stopped at the church, he was told that the bride had fainted and that the priest did not know what to do. When they saw the young soldier, they asked him if he was ready to proceed. Burmin, the young rake, noticed the attractiveness of the bride and decided to play a prank by going through with the ceremony. The church was dark, lit only by a few candles, and everyone in it was little more than a shadow. When, at the end, he was told to kiss his bride, she realized that it was not her intended and fainted dead away. As the witnesses stared at him in horror, he raced out and drove off.

:He explains to Masha that he was so thoroughly lost that he still does not know the name of the village where he was married, or who the bride might have been. As the tale ends, Maria Gavrilovna takes the hand of the man she has come to love and identifies herself as the long-lost bride.

After having his leg replaced after a battle injury during the Siege of AR-558, and following weeks of rehabilitation, Nog returns to Deep Space Nine. He suffers flashbacks of his injury and feels pain in his new leg. He secludes himself in his quarters, sleeping most of the day and repeatedly listening to a recording by holographic lounge singer Vic Fontaine of "I'll Be Seeing You"—the song that was played to keep up crew morale at AR-558.

When his roommate Jake becomes fed up with the constant repetition, Nog seeks out Vic in a holosuite. After hearing Vic perform the song in every arrangement he knows, Nog convinces Vic to allow him to stay in his (simulated) hotel suite for the night. Nog decides to stay long-term in the simulation of 1962 Las Vegas, and although Nog's family is skeptical, counselor Ezri Dax consents to the idea to see where it leads.

Vic and Nog bond quickly, but at the expense of Nog's relations with his friends and family; he gets in a fight with Jake, and a meeting with his father Rom and stepmother Leeta is short and awkward. Having his program running all day means that Vic, for the first time, is living a full life—sleeping, eating, socializing with friends, and running his business. Nog helps Vic with his finances, and even recommends Vic expand his business. The two plan to build a new casino, and as Nog becomes more confident, he relies less and less on his cane.

Dax, impressed by Vic's results, reminds him that Nog needs to leave soon; Vic had been enjoying himself so much that he had forgotten Nog was there for rehabilitation. Vic urges Nog to leave, and when he refuses, Vic shuts off his own program, forcing Nog back into the real world. Nog attempts to restart the holosuite, but operations chief Miles O'Brien tells Nog that Vic can prevent his own program from starting, and reminds Nog that everyone misses him. Vic appears, and Nog finally admits the emotional trauma his injury caused and his fear of death; Vic counters that if he stays in the holosuite, he'll still die, "not all at once, but little by little". Nog returns to limited duty but arranges for Vic's program to be left running all the time, to return the favor and give Vic a chance at a "real" life.

Joe Anton (Raft) is a speakeasy owner who falls in love with socialite Miss Healy (Cummings). He takes lessons in high-class mannerisms from Mabel Jellyman (Skipworth). Joe does not know that Miss Healy only pays attention to him because he lives in the elegant building that her family lost in the Wall Street Crash of 1929. After a risky encounter with his old flame Iris Dawn (Gibson) after which Miss Healy kisses him, Joe is ready to marry her, but she's engaged to her friend Mr. Bolton, although admitting she's just marrying him for his money. Joe decides to instead pursue Iris, just as Miss Healy begins to genuinely fall in love with him. Meanwhile, Maudie Triplett (West) befriends Mrs. Jellyman and offers to hire her as a hostess in one of her elegant beauty parlors.

When Beale and Ida Farange are divorced, the court decrees that their only child, the very young Maisie, will shuttle back and forth between them, spending six months of the year with each. The parents are immoral and frivolous, and they use Maisie to intensify their hatred of each other. Beale Farange marries Miss Overmore, Maisie's pretty governess, while Ida marries the likeable but weak Sir Claude. Maisie gets a new governess: the frumpy, somewhat ridiculous, but devoted Mrs. Wix.

Both Ida and Beale soon cheat on their spouses; in turn, Sir Claude and the new Mrs. Farange begin an affair with each other. Maisie's parents abandon her and she becomes largely the responsibility of Sir Claude. Eventually, Maisie must decide if she wants to remain with Sir Claude and Mrs. Farange. In the book's long final section, set in France, the older (probably teenaged) Maisie struggles to choose between them and Mrs Wix, and concludes that her new parents' relationship will likely end as her biological parents' did. She leaves them and goes to stay with Mrs. Wix, her most reliable adult guardian.

While attending a friend's birthday party, Miranda Cotton meets the handsome Brendan Block. The two sleep together that night and begin a relationship. Ten days later, Miranda arrives home to find that Brendan has let himself in and gone through her belongings. She promptly ends the relationship, causing Brendan to storm out of her flat after verbally abusing her.

A month later, Miranda is contacted by her sister Kerry, inviting her to meet her new boyfriend: Brendan Block. Miranda warns Brendan against hurting her sister, but he replies that he is genuinely in love with Kerry.

As time passes, it becomes apparent to Miranda that Brendan is using his newfound engagement to her sister and increasingly close relationship with her family as a way of getting at her. Her family become close to Brendan; in particular her younger, bipolar brother Troy (Robert Daniel Lowe). When Troy commits suicide, Miranda's concerns about Brendan are strengthened.

Brendan then dumps Kerry for her best friend, Laura, whom he marries. Three months later, Laura contacts Miranda, suggesting they talk. Miranda waits at a pub for her, but Brendan arrives and accuses her of meddling in his marriage. After an argument, Miranda goes to check on Laura and discovers her dead body. Brendan is suspected of killing his wife, but a prosecution is not made due to lack of evidence.

Miranda becomes obsessed with proving Brendan's guilt. She tracks down Brendan, who is living with a new girlfriend named Naomi. Miranda attempts to warn Naomi about Brendan's violent nature, but she is thrown out by Brendan. He takes out an injunction on Miranda, accusing her of harassment. Receiving a call from Naomi shortly after, Miranda goes to the apartment not knowing it is a setup by Brendan in order to have her arrested. Naomi contacts Miranda from outside, telling her to leave, and Miranda narrowly escapes Brendan and the police. Naomi tells Miranda that Brendan became violent and she feared for her safety.

After deciding that Naomi would be safe staying with Kerry, Miranda returns to her flat. That night, Brendan arrives and angrily searches for Naomi, to no avail. He says that Miranda pushed him into doing some things he wouldn't usually do before raping her.

The next day, a colleague of Miranda's finds the flat in disarray, as well as blood and tape in the bathroom. Upon the conclusion that Miranda has been murdered, an investigation ensues with Brendan as the prime suspect. Naomi finds a set of bloodied keys in Brendan's suit pocket and hands it in to the police. Brendan is arrested for Miranda's murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Six months later, Miranda's family receive three plane tickets from Naomi, asking them to come to Australia, where she now resides. When they arrive, they meet Naomi at the airport and see Miranda.

A flashback explains that Miranda and Naomi planned to drug Brendan by slipping a pill into his glass the night he arrived at the flat. Naomi is shown drawing blood from Miranda, which Miranda then spreads around the bathroom after Brendan slips unconscious. She plants his fingerprints onto his set of keys which have been smeared with her blood. Then, posing as Laura, Miranda flees England to Australia to stay with Naomi's parents until Brendan is arrested.

After putting Brendan away, Miranda pauses to think about her brother Troy, who is the only person missing at the table where she and her family are happily eating.

The original historic 5-year mission is over. All of the ''Enterprise'' s original crew have pursued other jobs, only to be called back into action. The USS ''Enterprise'' has been refitted and the original crew must deal with an incredibly destructive power that threatens the Earth and the human race.

The U.S.S. ''Enterprise'' is headed to Starbase 12 for shore leave, supplies and repairs. Food is running low and the engines need servicing. A distress signal diverts the ship to a solar system on the outer edge of explored space. Upon hearing of the emergency mission, Dr. McCoy expresses his concern about the mental health of the crew to Kirk. In Dr. McCoy's opinion, the ''Enterprise'' has been on patrol for such a long period of time that the crew is in danger of developing a form of space madness known as cafard.

Upon reaching the NGC 400 solar system, the ''Enterprise'' crew comes across three planets populated by different human settlers who had been unhappy with the social or political order of Earth. One planet has reverted to a Stone Age state, another has a mid-20th Century technology while the third maintains a level of technology capable of space travel and advanced weaponry.

Kirk and crew must determine who sent a distress signal and the nature of the emergency. Along the way, they encounter a warrior society, a planet where drugs are used to control the general population and a culture consisting of an elite class with clones handling the day-to-day chores required by society.

Andrea (Virginia Madsen) is a teenage girl that has won a scholarship to Ettinger, a formerly all-male boarding school. She leaves behind her boyfriend Barry (James Wilder) in the hopes of scholastic achievement, but soon discovers that things are not as they seem at Ettinger. Andrea finds that her friends are slowly changing from regular teenagers into personality-less drones. Some investigation shows that the school's faculty has been harvesting life-sustaining chemicals from the student body, which results in them becoming seemingly perfect students that are only focused on doing well in school and obeying rules. Andrea is spared from this fate by one of her professors, Philo (Richard Cox), who takes pity on her due to her resemblance to a former lover. Along with her boyfriend, Andrea discovers that the staff uses classical music as a way of stabilizing the students. Philo gives her a tape to play over the loudspeaker system that he claims will stop the faculty and students from capturing her and turning her into a zombie, only for her to lose it while she is chased by the school's students. With nothing to lose, Barry plays a tape of rock music in its place, which accomplishes the desired task of stopping the students and saving their lives.

Zora Matthews, takes a blood test and discovers she has a blood group which is not a possible combination of the blood groups of her deceased father and her mother Sarah (Whoopi Goldberg). She confronts her mother and is told she used a sperm bank after her husband's passing, but asked for a smart black guy.

Zora's curiosity gets the better of her and she gets her best friend Tea Cake (Will Smith) to go to the sperm bank and pretend to be a donor while she sneaks in to look at the records. Zora gets into the computer and the records show her mother was matched with a Halstead Jackson and gives his social security number.

In his luxury mansion Hal finishes a night of lovemaking with his young girlfriend Stacy before setting of to work. As he reverses out of the garage Zora gets in the way. She gets in his pickup truck and he goes to his work: Jackson's Motors. She is shocked that he is white. Hal is a flamboyant salesman of his own premises and is shooting an advert with a real bear. Zora interrupts and tells him he is her father. He does not behave well and shows no sympathy or empathy.

Her mom goes to confront Hal about how nasty he was. Zora and Tea Cake follow but Tea Cake is diverted by the car saleswoman. Sarah and Hal are very different in every way. Hal plies her with drink and she cycles off in a drunken state. Hal drives her to her shop "African Queen" with the cycle in the back of the truck. The shop specializes in black authors. Upstairs is a shrine-like room with many pictures of Sarah growing up, plus a dead black man, Charles, which Sarah had been told was her father (photos of O. J. Simpson).

Back in his mansion Hal gets emotional in regard to a father-daughter scene in a film on TV: Shirley Temple in ''The Little Princess''.

With his penchant for hiring wild animals Hal next hires an Indian elephant but while riding it, the elephant charges off through the streets, ending in a pond. It has been following the sound of the bell on Sarah's bike. Hal takes out his anger on her bike and rips the bell off. News coverage of Hal and the elephant accidentally gives free publicity to his dealership and he has a sales bonanza on the following day.

In apology Hal later goes to her house with a present: a new bell plus a cycling helmet. He also has a present for Zora: an atlas to encourage her world travel. His assistant Diego arrives to take Zora on a date. This inspires Hal to ask Sarah out for dinner and they go for sushi. Hal isn't used to sushi and eats a whole ball of wasabi. Hal starts flirting heavily and they kiss goodnight. It gets more passionate but just as they get to the bedroom Zora and Diego get home. Zora is upset since she wanted to find her father but doesn't want her mom involved.

Both Hal and Sarah start thinking about each other. When Sarah goes to the dealership they argue and Sarah cycles off in an emotional state. She gets hit by a car when she runs a red light. She is not wearing her new helmet and is badly injured. Hal and Zora go to the hospital and give blood. They sit by her bedside as she recovers.

Stacy breaks up with Hal because he was out all night.

When he goes back to the hospital a medic inadvertently reveals that a blood test shows that he cannot be Zora's father. Zora runs off. He apologises to Sarah.

Zora and Tea Cake graduate from school. Zora wins a Westinghouse scholarship to MIT. At her speech Zora gives her mother all the credit. Hal arrives. He wants to see his daughter graduate. He helps Sarah up the steps and Zora thanks her Mom and Dad.

Caught in the middle of a fierce gang war in Macao, a corrupt cop named Sam (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) handles negotiations between two Triad leaders who plan to join forces. He meets a suspicious bald man named Tony (Lau Ching-wan), who keeps following him around and disrupting his personal business. But when Sam finds out he's a suspect in a nightclub owner's murder, he's sure his stalker has something to do with it.

After returning home from White Castle, Harold Lee and Kumar Patel decide to travel to Amsterdam, Netherlands so Harold can surprise his neighbor and love interest Maria. At the airport, the duo encounters Kumar's ex-girlfriend Vanessa Fanning, who is engaged to Colton Graham, a college friend of Harold's whose family has political connections. The plane passengers mistake Kumar's new invention, a smokeless bong, for a bomb and the duo is apprehended by sky marshals. Ron Fox, a neurotic and extremely racist Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, believes the duo are agents of a joint Al-Qaeda and North Korean conspiracy and sends them to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba against the advice of NSA Vice-Chairman Dr. John Beecher. After narrowly avoiding sexual assault by a guard at the detention camp due to the inadvertent assistance of two other prisoners, Harold and Kumar escape and board a Cuban refugee boat to Miami, Florida. They meet up with their college friend, Raza, at his home, who loans them a car so they can travel to Texas, hoping Colton can help clear their names.

Harold and Kumar endure several misadventures on their way to Texas, first crashing their car into an African-American neighborhood in Birmingham, Alabama (in which the neighborhood offer to help), staying at the home of an incestuous sibling couple and their inbred son, then afterward escaping a Ku Klux Klan rally. Meanwhile, Fox tries to find them through several racist interrogation techniques. As Harold and Kumar hitchhike through a forest, they are picked up by Neil Patrick Harris, who manages to get them through a checkpoint set up by Fox, but then takes them to a brothel, where the mistress then shoots Harris for branding one of the prostitutes. When Harold and Kumar reach Texas, Colton agrees to help exonerate the duo. However, upon seeing Kumar reconnect with Vanessa, Colton instead delivers Harold and Kumar to Fox.

On the flight back to prison, Harold and Kumar manage to subdue Fox's men with a can of mace belonging to Harris and their fists, but Fox holds them at gunpoint, until Beecher intervenes, telling Fox that it's because of people like him that the rest of the world thinks Americans are racist and stupid. Beecher promises to get Harold and Kumar cleared, but trips and accidentally opens the cabin door, sucking out him, Harold, and Kumar. Harold manages to grab a parachute and he pulls it open for him and Kumar just as Fox falls by to his death, having jumped after them (without a parachute) to finish them off. Harold and Kumar land through the roof of a luxurious ranch, which turns out to be President George W. Bush's estate. After befriending and smoking kush with Harold and Kumar, the duo explains their misadventures and Bush gives them both a presidential pardon, and also gets the Secret Service to escort the pair to Vanessa and Colton's wedding. They expose Colton's betrayal to Vanessa and the guests, and Colton attempts to attack them, but Harold knocks him out. Kumar consoles a furious Vanessa by reciting a poem he wrote for her in college, and they reconcile. Harold, Kumar and Vanessa then travel to Amsterdam where Harold finds Maria, and the couples happily tour the city together while getting high on cannabis. A post-credits scene shows Harris coming to after being presumed dead outside the brothel.

The game opens with Greil allowing his son, Ike, to fight in his band of mercenaries. While on a mission near the Crimean border, Ike rescues a woman from a Daein patrol who is revealed to be Elincia Ridell Crimea, a princess who narrowly escaped being killed with her family during the Daein invasion of Crimea. Daein attacks the mercenaries shortly after this, and they are forced to flee over the border into Gallia, a Laguz nation. They are pursued by the Black Knight, who kills Greil in single combat before being driven off by the Gallians. Ike and Elincia decide to work together to drive the forces of Daein from Crimea. Over the course of the game, Ike and his companions overcome long-held racial tensions between the Beorc and Laguz in order to form an alliance against their true enemy, Ashnard, king of Daein. In particular, Ike manages to re-establish relations between the Beorc empire of Begnion and the few remaining members of the heron Laguz clan, which was annihilated in an act of genocide known as the Serenes Massacre. During the course of their journey, they discover that Ashnard is provoking the war to try and release the dark deity contained inside the Medallion, using Daein's invasion as a template for his plan. In the final assault, Ike and his mercenaries manage to defeat both the Black Knight and Ashnard, thwarting the scheme. With Ashnard defeated and the Daein occupation ended, Elincia is crowned as Crimea's new queen, who works to make the land a place where Beorc and Laguz can live in peace.

The story-line, like much of Michener's work, depicts a number of characters within family groups over a long time period, richly illustrating the history of the area through these families' timelines. It starts in 1583 with American Indian tribes warring, moves with English settlers through the 17th century (land appropriation, tobacco farming, indentured servitude, religious persecution, etc.), slavery, pirate attacks, the American Revolution and the Civil War, Emancipation and attempted assimilation, to the final major event being the Watergate scandal of 1972-1974. The last voyage, a funeral, is in 1978.

The novel is structured into nine sections. The first is named "Ruby" after the town on which the book centers. The rest are named for women implicated variously in the life of the town and the Convent. The Convent women are Mavis, Grace (known as "Gigi"), Seneca, Divine (whose name is actually "Pallas"), and Consolata (also known as "Connie"). The Ruby women – or children, in the case of Save-Marie – are Patricia and Lone. Though the chapters are named for specific characters, in telling their stories, Morrison tells the parallel histories of the town of Ruby and the Convent 17 miles south of it, and how the men of Ruby become intent on destroying the Convent women.

'''Ruby'''

''Paradise'' opens in 1976 with nine men going in for the kill. They are the prominent men of Ruby, a purposefully isolated, peaceful all-black town in Oklahoma with a population of 360. In this group are the twins Steward and Deacon "Deek" Morgan, the de facto leaders of the town. Throughout the book we gradually learn why Ruby was founded, the history of the failed town of Haven that preceded it, and the reasons for Ruby's rigid hierarchies and stringent exclusion of outsiders, to the point where the town's leaders decide they must eliminate the nearby Convent which in fact is not a convent but rather a former embezzler's mansion now inhabited by a group of women with troubled pasts.

Before Ruby, there was Haven. Founded in Oklahoma in 1890, Haven was founded by a group containing nine complete families (the Blackhorses, Beauchamps, Catos, two DuPres families, Fleetwoods, Floods, Morgans, and Pooles) and fragments of others. The founding fathers, led by Zechariah Morgan, are motivated to found a new community by the exclusion they face from public life and job opportunities, both as black men and particularly as dark-skinned black men. When they arrive in the place where they decide to situate their new town, they first built a large and sturdy Oven of brick and iron, even though they are living in wagons and sod shelters. The Oven both nourishes them and serves as a symbol of everything they have achieved.

Haven flourishes for several decades but falters in the post World War II period. Returning from service, the twins Deacon and Steward Morgan perceive that not much has changed in the outside world since Haven was founded: there is still rampant colorism and anti-black discrimination. Preferring to renew the mission begun by their forefathers of self-sufficient isolation from the outside world, in 1949 they lead a group of 15 families out of Haven to establish a new all-black town. The men take the Oven with them when they leave Haven at the expense of other supplies, and painstakingly rebuild it when they arrive, although in the new town it serves principally a symbolic rather than practical purpose. Though called "New Haven" in the interim, it is eventually named "Ruby", after the younger sister of the Morgan twins who dies when she is repeatedly refused medical attention because of her race. The name of the town, therefore, belies the way in which it is founded out of the indignation of exclusion, and the inability of black men to “protect” black women in the outside world. The inhabitants are proud of the fact that Ruby has no jail or cemetery because it has never needed either; besides Ruby Smith herself and Delia Best, no one has ever died on its soil.

Though there are 15 founding families of Ruby, we learn that there are hierarchies. Of the 15 there were nine considered racially pure, a number that has dwindled to seven. The Morgan twins are able to assume unchallenged power in the town because their father founded the bank, and they, therefore, have amassed the most money and property. Ruby becomes the inverse of the outside world: though whites are hated in an abstract way, light-skinned blacks are specifically discriminated against–if not, ideally, kept out altogether. Though for some of its residents Ruby is a reprieve from the race-based discrimination of the world “Out There,” it still has a strongly patriarchal structure. The town's strict racial codes have harmed some of its residents severely. Menus’ alcoholism, though publicly attributed to his experiences during the Vietnam War, seems to stem from the shame and despair he has felt ever since he abandoned the light-skinned woman he intended to marry. Likewise, the men of Ruby refuse to seek outside medical help in an emergency for Delia Best, Roger Best's light-skinned wife, causing her to die in childbirth in a tragic mirror of Ruby Smith's experience.

At the point at which the book opens, there is great anxiety about Ruby's future. The town has seen increasingly open signs of division. Steward and Dovey Morgan have not been able to have children and Deek and Soane's sons die at war, leaving no Morgan heir to Ruby's leadership besides K.D. Smith, an often insolent young man who angers his uncles by spending time chasing after Gigi, one of the Convent women. The Reverend Richard Misner, a young upstart recently arrived in town, is deeply invested in the civil rights struggle, models himself after Martin Luther King, and believes Ruby needs to be more open to the changes afoot in the outside world; in turn, the older generations believe he is engendering radicalism and rebelliousness among the town's youth. The Oven has been taken over as a hangout spot for local youth, and one day it is graffitied with a Black Power fist with red-painted nails. The elder generations believe that the young do not understand or respect Ruby's history, encapsulated in their desire to modify the slogan that appears on the Oven: though it now says only "… the Furrow of his Brow", the town elders claim it used to say "Beware" at the beginning, whereas the younger generation wishes to make it "Be the Furrow of his Brow". Finally, the town is scandalized when the Convent women make a rowdy appearance at K.D. and Arnette's wedding, a wedding partly intended to ease the conflict between the Morgan and Fleetwood families and to conceal Arnette's earlier aborted pregnancy by K.D.

Eventually, after a series of selectively interpreted "signs", and based on the perception that the Convent is corrupting the town with its amorality and purported witchcraft, Sergeant Person, Wisdom Poole, Arnold and Jeff Fleetwood, Harper and Menus Jury, Steward and Deacon Morgan, and K.D. Smith decide during a meeting at the Oven to destroy the Convent.

'''The Convent'''

The Convent is an elaborate mansion built by an embezzler in an isolated part of Oklahoma. Its architecture reflects both its creator's hedonism and his paranoia: shaped like the cartridge of a gun, it is windowless in one end. The paranoia is justified because the embezzler lives only briefly in the mansion before he is arrested by Northern lawmen. The mansion then falls into the hands of some Catholic nuns, the presence of which is an anomaly in the principally Protestant Oklahoma. The property becomes widely known as ‘the Convent’ although it serves principally as a boarding school for Indian girls where they are educated to forget their culture. The Mother Superior Mary Magna is the administrator of the school and is faithfully served by Consolata, a woman she kidnapped when the latter was an orphan living in destitution.

During this period, the families from Haven have settled into the area 17 miles south of the Convent. There is not much interaction between the Convent and the town, though Mary Magna is glad to have a pharmacy close by. On one trip into Ruby, Consolata spots Deacon "Deek" Steward, with whom she has a two-month affair that ends when she repulses him with the carnal intensity of her desire.

When the foundation that funds the school begins to run out of money, the nuns are gradually reassigned or moved on to other posts, and the last two Indian girls run away. However, Mary Magna, Sister Roberta, and Consolata remain behind. In order to maintain the Convent and avoid incurring debt, the women begin a burgeoning business from things they produce on their property; in addition to their renowned extra-hot peppers, they also sell relishes, barbecue sauce, pies, and eggs. Eventually, Sister Roberta moves into a nursing home and Consolata dedicates herself to the care of Mary Magna, who falls into a long illness.

It is around this time that women begin to arrive at the Convent. They arrive by accident, in flight from fraught lives (abusive husbands and dead babies; parental betrayal or neglect; abandonment by lovers and violent pasts), but one by one they seem drawn into staying permanently. The first is Mavis; Gigi, Seneca, and Pallas then follow. They do not all get along – Mavis and Gigi in particular often clash. However, they seem to find in the Convent an escape from troubled circumstances (often related to men) where they are listened to and cared for without judgment. Though they may leave from time to time, the women always return.

In the same way, during this stage of the Convent's history, women of Ruby – as well as one man, Menus – come to the Convent in times of need. The problems and compulsions that the elder statesmen of Ruby would prefer to sweep under the rug seem inevitably to end up at the Convent. Soane, Deek's wife, comes to confront Connie about her affair and ends up becoming her friend, from whom she later receives "tonics" that help ease her mind in the aftermath of her sons’ deaths at war. Arnette becomes pregnant by K.D. and stays at the Convent to carry the pregnancy to term, though she tries and succeeds in inducing an abortion by self-harm (Ruby residents speculate that the Convent women beat her and caused her to lose the baby, a lie that Arnette encourages). Billie Delia stays at the Convent after a violent fight with her mother, who believes, like the rest of the town, that she is wild and promiscuous. K.D. carries on a two-year affair with Gigi, who leaves him, solidifying his hatred of the Convent. The women of the Convent care for Menus as he recovers from alcoholism.

Throughout the novel, the women of the Convent provide a safe haven for all those who come to its doorstep. However, the Convent is widely perceived as a corrupting influence in Ruby, the source of their problems rather than where problems must go because of Ruby's intolerant atmosphere. Instead of considering the roots of the conflicts in Ruby (such as the unspoken prejudice against light-skinned blacks, borne of the rejection the original families experienced on their journey to found Haven; or the yearning of the young people to be part of the larger world and participate in the civil rights movement), community leaders decide that the Convent must be destroyed. Under their rhetoric, the men of Ruby are both frightened and disgusted by the idea of women who do not need – and, in fact, actually, shun – men. They also have various selfish motivations behind their moral crusade: Sargeant Person, for example, would no longer have to pay to lease farmland from the Convent.

The men solidify their plot against the women one evening at the Convent. Lone DuPres overhears the men and rushes to find someone to help her stop them because she cares about the Convent women but also because their behavior may unwittingly destroy Ruby. A group of nine men – a number mirroring the original, racially pure families that founded Ruby – venture to the Convent under cover of darkness with guns, shooting the women on sight. Some of the women fight back, injuring Arnold, Jeff Fleetwood, Harper Jury, and Menus, but eventually, the men shoot them down in the field as they escape. In the middle of this chaos, Lone and the willing townspeople she has assembled arrive at the Convent. Under censure none of the men claims responsibility or intent to kill; everyone fears the white law they presume will be involved now that they have killed a white woman. However, Deek Steward speaks up to acknowledge culpability, signaling a break with his twin brother Steward, with whom he has agreed on everything for decades.

However, when Roger Best arrives to bury the bodies, he finds nothing. Mavis’ Cadillac is also gone. From this, many in Ruby conclude that the women somehow survived and drove away. Lone, however, believes that it is a sign from God, who has taken the bodies of his servants to Heaven whole, in the manner of Mary at the Assumption. The town carries on, relieved that the absence of bodies spares them the attention of white law enforcement. Each man involved tells a different story of what happened. If not for Luther Beauchamp, Pious DuPres, and Deed and Aaron Sands, who corroborate Lone's version, the town might even have proceeded as though it never happened. However, Lone observes that though the bodies themselves might have disappeared, the ramifications of the attack are evident in the town. Menus succumbs to his renewed alcoholism. Deek is unusually troubled and goes to the Reverend Richard Misner for spiritual assistance. K.D. and Arnette continue to build their family and look forward to assuming a position in town where they can make life difficult for K.D.'s critics. Most of all, there is a sensation that the deal brokered by Ruby's founders with God is broken and that death has finally arrived in town: the last chapter takes place at the funeral of Save-Marie, one of Jeff and Sweetie Fleetwood's disabled children. The town remains divided, but Richard Misner decides to stay, in part because he feels he can be useful in this flawed town where change and forces of the outside world must inevitably arrive.

''Paradise'' closes with a passage about each of the Convent women. Gigi, Pallas, Mavis, and Seneca appear suddenly and surprisingly to figures from their past, each of whom expresses regret and sadness. Gigi's father, whom we discover for the first time and learn has been in prison since Gigi was eleven, spots her by a lake and encourages her to stay in touch with him. Pallas’ mother, Dee Dee, believes she spots Pallas with a baby near her house, but is unable to speak coherently to flag her attention. Sally Albright, whom we know as Sal from the “Mavis” chapter, spots her mother in a diner, and the two women apologize to each other. Jean, the woman Seneca believed was her sister, is revealed to be her mother. Jean believes she spots Seneca in a stadium parking lot, but Seneca does not remember her. Connie rests her head in the lap of an older woman from her past, Piedade, who sings to her as they face the ocean in a place called "Paradise". Morrison has said in an interview on PBS that she started with race ("They shoot the white girl. . . ") and then erased it by never revealing who the white girl is.

Ruby chapter

The book begins with the well-known sentence "They shoot the white girl first." Never revealing who that character is, it leaves the reader to wonder. A group of nine men enter the building known as the "Convent", which is now more of a shelter for battered women. As the men search the Convent they clearly indicate their feelings towards it. Because the men are in this house, the story is written to make it seem like the Convent was a sinister place, a shameful place in the men's eyes, one negative statement being "in a place that once housed Christians – well, Catholics anyway – not a cross of Jesus anywhere" (7). During this search we find out several things about the men searching. Two of the men are wearing ties, while another set are a father and son, and finally a pair of brothers are among the posse. Ruby is also the town named after Ruby Morgan who died after their journey to this new place of hope, after being denied aid at other black towns and hospitals. They left Haven escaping the economic downturn and the increasing pressure from neighboring towns. Several families founded Ruby but the majority of the credit belongs to the Morgans due to their monetary influence. On their journey, they saw many other black towns that refused them acceptance, illustrating the exclusivity defining one's own paradise and the fear of letting the outside in. This may have led to the hatred of the women living in the Convent, without any real reason except the fact they are outside the calm setting of Ruby.

Mavis chapter

Mavis is a mother who kills her infant twins Merle and Pearl by suffocation when she leaves them in the car while she goes into a grocery store. It is unclear whether it was an accident or she has some sort of mental illness. Her husband Frank is an alcoholic and abusive, which contributes to blowing her fears and anxieties out of proportion. She fears that her husband and three kids, Sal, Frankie, and Billy James, are going to kill her. She waits for her husband to go to sleep then she sneaks out of her house and steals his car, a mint green Cadillac, escaping her family. At 5:30 am she arrives at Peg's house (neighbor) but when no one answers she realizes it's a bad idea and decides to go somewhere farther away. She gets gas for the car and drives to her mom's house in Paterson, five hours away. Her mother says that Frank already called her at 5:30 and she told him she did not know Mavis' whereabouts. Mavis tells her mom that she feared her family was going to kill her. Her mother thinks Mavis is crazy for thinking this. She stays there for a few days. Later, she hears her mom on the phone saying, "you better get up here pronto". This freaks her out and she takes the car keys her mom hid plus a few essential items and hits the road. She went to Newark and had the Cadillac painted magenta in order to avoid detection. Mavis decides she wants to go to California. She has little money so she picks up female hitchhikers to have them help pay the way and keep her company. The first woman was Sandra. She wore 6 dog tags and talked a lot. The next women stole her clip she got at her mothers, and the next two women wanted to go to a cemetery to honor an army man. The last woman was Bennie. She liked to sing songs and listen to the radio. She stole Mavis's rain boots and coat. She disappeared while Mavis was in the bathroom at a pit stop. When Mavis returned the bathroom key, she sees a man who she believes is Frank looking at her car. He has let his hair grow out and is wearing a leather jacket and chains with a shirt open to the navel. She looks again and he's gone. She is worried that he recognized the car because the license plate is still the same. She goes out to her car and pays the attendant. The man appears in her rightside mirror. Mavis freaks out and drives away without thinking of what road she needed to get on. She becomes lost and then runs out of gas. She drinks alcohol that Frank had left in the car and goes to sleep. The next morning she gets out of the car and decides to walk and find a place to help her. She walks a long way and finds a house on a farm lot. She meets a woman outside named Connie. Connie is nice to her and feeds her. Soane Morgan comes to the house and gives Connie new sunglasses. Connie asks Soane to help her get gasoline for Mavis. Sloane takes Mavis to a gas station where a young black man takes Mavis back to her car with the gasoline. The man talks to Mavis and says how he thinks Connie is strange. She returns with her car to the house. She learns that it was a nun's house and a school for Indians. She also gets to meet Mother Mary Magna who had a light coming from her. She was the leader figure of the convent house. Mavis stayed at the convent instead of going to California; however, she left the convent off and on but she was there in 1976. She knew for months that there was sourness between the town and the convent ...

Grace chapter

Gigi (Grace) gets off the bus in Ruby as K.D. and Arnette are arguing. Arnette was pregnant with K.D.'s child and Arnette was not giving him many options. K.D. slaps Arnette due to her comments about the boys seeing Gigi walk off the bus, which turns into a town council meeting involving her father and K.D.'s uncles as well as other prominent men. We find out that Gigi gets to Ruby after being deceived by her old boyfriend Mikey. She intends to only be in Ruby a short while. She gets picked up by a man who is willing to take her to the train station. She finds that he is a hearse driver who is stopping by the Convent to pick up Mother who had recently died. We find out that the bus driver's name is Roger Best. Gigi goes inside and finds some food in the kitchen, which she begins to eat. Connie comes into the kitchen and explains how she has not slept for 17 days straight because of fear no one was there to watch her. She just wants to sleep on the kitchen floor and will do so, if Gigi watches her. Gigi feels bad about leaving her and in turn loses her ride and she stays with Connie and eats the funeral food until Connie wakes up. K.D. cannot stop thinking about Gigi so he goes to find her and ends up at the Convent. He takes her for a ride. One month passes and Mavis comes back to the convent, which she has missed so dearly. As she is walking up, she sees a girl, who is in fact Gigi, sitting naked and begins screaming at her. Connie comes out and explains to Mavis that mother has died and Gigi came the day after mother died. Mavis then explains how Gigi (Grace) will never be one of them.

In the play's opening, the ghost of Polydorus tells how when the war threatened Troy, he was sent to King Polymestor of Thrace for safekeeping, with gifts of gold and jewelry. But when Troy lost the war, Polymestor treacherously murdered Polydorus, and seized the treasure. Polydorus has foreknowledge of many of the play's events and haunted his mother's dreams the night before.

The events take place on the coast of Thrace, as the Greek navy returns home from Troy. The Trojan queen Hecuba, now enslaved by the Greeks, mourns her great losses and worries about the portents of her nightmare. The Chorus of young slave women enters, bearing fateful news. One of Hecuba's last remaining daughters, Polyxena, is to be killed on the tomb of Achilles as a blood sacrifice to his honor (reflecting the sacrifice of Iphigenia at the start of the war).

Greek commander Odysseus enters, to escort Polyxena to an altar where Neoptolemus will shed her blood. Odysseus ignores Hecuba's impassioned pleas to spare Polyxena, and Polyxena herself says she would rather die than live as a slave. In the first Choral interlude, the Chorus lament their own doomed fate, cursing the sea breeze that will carry them on ships to the foreign lands where they will live in slavery. The Greek messenger Talthybius arrives, tells a stirring account of Polyxena's strikingly heroic death, and delivers a message from Agamemnon, chief of the Greek army, to bury Polyxena. Hecuba sends a slave girl to fetch water from the sea to bathe her daughter's corpse.

After a second Choral interlude, the body of Polydorus is brought on stage, having washed up on shore. Upon recognizing her son whom she thought safe, Hecuba reaches new heights of despair.

Hecuba rages inconsolably against the brutality of such an action, and resolves to take revenge. Agamemnon enters, and Hecuba, tentatively at first and then boldly requests that Agamemnon help her avenge her son's murder. Hecuba's daughter Cassandra is a concubine of Agamemnon so the two have some relationship to protect and Agamemnon listens. Agamemnon reluctantly agrees, as the Greeks await a favorable wind to sail home. The Greek army considers Polymestor an ally and Agamemnon does not wish to be observed helping Hecuba against him.

Polymestor arrives with his sons. He inquires about Hecuba's welfare, with a pretense of friendliness. Hecuba reciprocates, concealing her knowledge of the murder of Polydorus. Hecuba tells Polymestor she knows where the remaining treasures of Troy are hidden, and offers to tell him the secrets, to be passed on to Polydorus. Polymestor listens intently.

Hecuba convinces him and his sons to enter an offstage tent where she claims to have more personal treasures. Enlisting help from other slaves, Hecuba kills Polymestor's sons and stabs Polymestor's eyes. He re-enters blinded and savage, hunting as if a beast for the women who ruined him.

Agamemnon re-enters angry with the uproar and witnesses Hecuba's revenge. Polymestor argues that Hecuba's revenge was a vile act, whereas his murder of Polydorus was intended to preserve the Greek victory and dispatch a young Trojan, a potential enemy of the Greeks. The arguments take the form of a trial, and Hecuba delivers a rebuttal exposing Polymestor's speech as sophistry. Agamemnon decides justice has been served by Hecuba's revenge. Polymestor, again in a rage, foretells the deaths of Hecuba by drowning and Agamemnon by his wife Clytemnestra, who also kills Cassandra. Soon after, the wind finally rises again, the Greeks will sail, and the Chorus goes to an unknown, dark fate.

The plot falls into two clearly distinguished parts: the Greeks' sacrifice of Hecuba's daughter, Polyxena, to the shade of Achilles, and the vengeance of Hecuba on Polymestor, the Thracian king.

The story opens with a phone ringing in Lee's apartment somewhere in New York. Sitting beside Lee is a young, blue-eyed woman. The two of them had been sitting and smoking together when Arthur calls, a colleague of Lee's, drunkenly concerned with the location of his wife. (Arthur later refers to his wife by her name, Joanie.) All of them had attended a party just hours before the phone call occurs.

Arthur goes through a scatter of out-loud thoughts and questions addressed to Lee, accompanied by a roller-coaster of emotions. Arthur's main concern is the whereabouts of his wife, even though he appears to regret his marriage to her. He later expresses concern about his job at the law firm.

Lee attempts to talk some sense into Arthur throughout the conversation, while Arthur continuously interrupts him. All the while Lee is on the phone, the girl with him is smoking and exchanging looks with him. Lee tries to reassure Arthur that his wife will probably arrive at any minute and that he should try to pull himself together before she walks in. Although neither the narrator nor the three characters explicitly confirm this, the girl Lee is with is implied to be Arthur's wife, Joanie. This connection isn't drawn until Arthur refers to Joanie's eyes as seashells. The phone call eventually tails off, with Lee convincing Arthur to get some rest.

The young woman and Lee exchange a few words and continue to smoke when they're interrupted by another phone call. It's Arthur again, letting Lee know that Joanie just walked in and that everything's all right (and thus establishing that the girl with Lee is not Joanie). Arthur talks a little while longer, explaining how he'd like to move to Connecticut with Joanie, practically contradicting everything he had just said in the previous phone call.

Lee interrupts Arthur and explains that he has to go due to a headache with unexplained origins. Lee hangs up and the conversation ends abruptly, and in this way so does the story.

This is a novel about a woman, Delia Grinstead, who finds her own self-identity and battles with familial relationships. As a spontaneous act of deep sadness and anger, she walks out on her family during a beach vacation. Not only does she put herself in a dire financial situation, she also places herself in a psychologically damaging situation with her family and husband. The narrative follows her as she deals with entering the workforce and considering what is most important in her life. As she deals with these issues, she comes to terms with herself.

Cathleen Schine, in her 1995 review in ''The New York Times'', analyzes Delia—and the dilemma Tyler has created for her—in this manner:

"If the reader is never quite sure why Delia deserts her life, neither is Delia herself. All she can say to explain herself when her family finally tracks her down is, 'I'm here because I just like the thought of beginning again from scratch.' [She] strips herself bare and exiles herself in the scrappy little town of Bay Borough, and it is she who tests the love of her family, she who waits for a declaration. The novel examines marriage—there are all sorts of marriages Delia comes across in her adventures, good and bad—as well as aging and independence, but finally it is a book about choice. All those years ago, Sam chose Delia, the youngest sister, the one on the right. But whom did Delia choose? Pulled yet repelled by her past, by her complicated and idiosyncratic family, and lured by a new town with a new complicated and idiosyncratic family, what will Delia choose now?"

The heroes are trying to observe the green ray in Scotland. After numerous attempts are obstructed by clouds, flocks of birds or distant boat sails, the phenomenon is eventually visible but the heroes, finding love in each other's eyes, don't pay attention to the horizon.

This novel tells the story of an ordinary young Bengali man, Shankar Ray Choudhuri, as he adventures in Africa in the years 1909 and 1910. After graduating from college at 20-years-old, his family's financial struggles almost force him take a job in a jute mill in Shyamnagar — a prospect he absolutely loathes.

Shankar loves the subject of geography, he wants to follow the footsteps of renowned explorers like Livingstone, Mungo Park, and Marco Polo. He wants to explore the wilderness, passionate for learning about African forests and animals. By a stroke of luck, he gets a job as a clerk at the Uganda Railway and rushes to Africa without a second thought.

After a few months laying rail tracks, he encounters the first of many dangers in pre-World War I Africa: a man-eating lion. Later, he takes up a job as station-master in a desolate station amidst the Veldts, where he narrowly escapes a deadly black mamba. While at this post, Shankar encounters, rescues and nurses Diego Alvarez, a middle-age Portuguese explorer and gold/diamond prospector. Alvarez's arrival becomes a turning point in Shankar's life.

While recovering, Alvarez describes his exploits in Africa with his friend Jim Carter. He explains that, lured by the prospect of a priceless yellow diamond from a Kaafi village chief, Alvarez and Carter searched for these yellow diamond caves, on the Mountain of the Moon (Chander Pahar) in the Richtersveld. Rumors suggested a mythical monster, the Bunyip, guards the mine. The explorers set off into the dense jungle, much against the villagers' advice, and Carter was gruesomely killed, supposedly by the Bunyip.

Shankar, inspired by Alvarez's exploits, resigns from his job and accompanies Alvarez to venture again for the mines. They meet hardships, like a racist gambler, legends about Dingonek the monster and later, a raging volcano. Eventually, they get lost in the forests where Alvarez is killed by the Bunyip. Demoralised, Shankar tries to return to civilization. He finds the Bunyip's cave and the diamond mines by accident. Almost getting lost, he finds the remains of the Italian explorer, Attilio Gatti, and learns that the cave is in fact the diamond mine.

Leaving, he becomes lost in the deserts of Kalahari and nearly dies of thirst. Fortunately, he is rescued by a survey team and taken to a hospital in Salisbury, Rhodesia, from where he sets sail for home. Before going back, he writes his account in a newspaper, earning him money. He names the volcano after Alvarez. He ends the book saying that he will return to the cave one day with a large team, and continue the legacy of Alvarez, Carter, and Gatti.

''Shhhhh! Everybody's Sleeping'' is a bedtime story that discusses fictional bedtimes for people of different professions (farmer, baker, etc.).

The film claims to be a true story, detailing the existence of the "Fouke Monster", a seven-foot-tall Bigfoot-like creature that has reportedly been seen by residents of a small Arkansas community since the 1940s. It is described as being completely covered in reddish-brown hair, leaving three-toed tracks and having a foul odor.

Several locals from the small town of Fouke, Arkansas recall their stories, often appearing as themselves, claiming that the creature has killed many large animals over the years. One farmer claims that the beast carried off two of his 100 lb. hogs with little effort, leaping a fence with the animals tucked under its arm. In one scene, a kitten is shown as having been "scared to death" by the creature. The narrator informs the audience that, while people have shot at the creature in the past, it has always managed to escape. In another sequence, hunters attempt to pursue the creature with dogs, but the dogs refuse to give chase. A police constable states that while driving home one night, the creature suddenly ran across the road in front of his car.

In a later sequence, culled from the actual newspaper accounts inspiring the film, the creature is shown menacing a family in a remote country house. After being fired upon, the creature attacks, sending one family member to the hospital.

The creature was never captured and is said to still stalk the swamps of southern Arkansas to this day.

The story starts with a child, the narrator, suddenly waking up from sleep and finding that the handkerchief they had placed just beside them before sleeping has turned into a cat. The child starts talking to the cat, who speaks nonsensically about a handkerchief before disappearing over the hedge. Then the child finds Kakeshwar doing mathematical calculations on a slate, that appears very unusual to the narrator.

This includes multiplication that is purely illogical and fallacious. After arguing over math, a goat appears and narrates his life about eating paper and other artificial things. Hijibijbij appears and laughs hysterically at improbable situations and keeps changing his mind about the names of his family members. Then many animals appear, and confusion results. The child wakes up from their odd dream and finds the cat, which does not talk.

Magic Knight is transported to a castle with a collection of other characters and must rescue his friend Gimbal the wizard. Gimbal has become trapped by a self-inflicted "white-out" spell whilst trying to create a better-tasting rice pudding. Magic Knight must rescue Gimbal from his self-inflicted imprisonment and then ensure both he and the castle's other inhabitants are all returned to their correct time and place.

Jack Mason is a homeless man from Seattle, Washington who loses his only friends—Hank, a fellow homeless man and his pet dog—on the same day. Dejected, Mason attempts to commit suicide when a soup kitchen worker, Walter Cole, saves him. Cole refers him to businessman Thomas Burns, who kindly offers Mason a job as a hunting guide. Despite his misgivings, the lure of a well paying job causes Mason to accept.

Flying to a remote cabin surrounded by hundreds of acres of woods, Mason meets the rest of the hunting party, all of whom paid $50,000 for the privilege of being there. In addition to Burns and Cole, the party includes Doc Hawkins, the founder of the hunt and a psychopathic psychiatrist who specializes in psychological assessments, Texas "oil man" John Griffin, and wealthy executive Derek Wolfe Sr. and his son Derek Wolfe Jr., the latter of whom is at first unaware of the true purposes of the hunt. On the first night, all the men are eating a nice dinner and engaging in conversation. Mason receives a pack of cigarettes from Hawkins and learns a little about his past. Hawkins relays a brutal story from his childhood when his father forced him to fight and kill his dog as a lesson in being a man.

The following morning, Mason is awakened with a gun in his face by Cole, who explains that the men are not hunting any animals, but rather Mason himself. Mason is given a head start with only the time it takes the others to eat breakfast. Mason quickly flees the area, but comes to a realization and turns back. The hunters finish their meal and set off after him. Wolfe Jr. is horrified at the thought of killing a man, but is pushed into it by his father. The hunters race off into the forest, but by now Mason has returned to the cabin in search of weapons. He finds none, and instead makes the disgusting discovery of the hunters' trophy room behind a locked door: the preserved heads of the victims of previous hunts.

Mason decides to burn the cabin down using chemicals found outside the cabin. The hunters quickly assume Mason's return to the cabin and go back. Wolfe Sr. enters just as Mason lights up the cabin and engages in a fist fight with Hawkins out back, away from the others. Hawkins is knocked back into the cabin as the preserving agent explodes, killing him in the inferno. Wolfe Jr. saves his father, and spots Mason fleeing in the process. The hunt resumes and Mason begins to use his wits to beat the hunters, luring them with falsely-planted lit cigarettes to lead them in the wrong way. Mason manages to lure Griffin away from the others, and takes him hostage.

Over the night, Mason learns why Griffin is taking part in the hunt. A couple of months ago, his daughter was murdered by a homeless man and he's venting his rage, which was enhanced earlier when he asked Mason what happened to his family and Mason sarcastically snarled "I killed them." Mason then reveals that he didn't literally kill his family : they died in an apartment fire that he couldn't rescue them from, and Griffin realizes that Mason's comment earlier means that Mason blames himself for the tragedy even though it wasn't his fault. Griffin is freed by Mason as he takes off and returns to the group to tell Burns that he will not continue the hunting, but is murdered by Cole to prevent any future legal conflicts. By now, with their numbers dwindling, the remaining hunters seem more intent on killing Mason. Mason sabotages one of their ATVs, causing it to explode. The explosion rips off most of Cole's lower body, mortally wounding him. Burns then uses his fingers to apply pressure to Cole's jugulars in order to kill him and spare him from the pain. As they pursue Mason, Wolfe Jr. is killed by accident when he falls in a ravine, and Wolfe Sr. vows revenge in a fit of rage.

The second night sees Wolfe Sr. and Mason fighting one on one with Mason the victor and Burns escaping to the city, knowing that Mason will most likely be searching for him. Days later, Burns is back in Seattle, preparing to leave his current identity, hoping to escape both Mason and the legal responsibilities resulting from the disastrous hunt. But Mason has escaped the forest, returned to the city, and tracked him down. A fight ensues where Mason beats up Burns and takes his gun, but instead of shooting the evil man Mason just leaves the gun and walks away. Burns picks up the gun, thinking Mason screwed up and prepares to shoot him. What he doesn't realize is Mason used a tip from his late friend Hank and messed with the barrel on Burns' gun; when Burns tries to kill Mason, the gun backfires and kills Burns instead.

An unknown individual breaks into the Terzi Medical Institute but supposedly takes nothing. One of the Institute doctors, Calabresi, confides to his fiancée, Bianca Merusi, that he knows who broke into the Institute and why. He attempts to blackmail the individual, but the thief pushes him in front of an arriving train, killing him. A paparazzi photographer captures Calabresi's fall, but not the killer.

Reporter Carlo Giordani has been covering the break-in investigation and writes an article about Calabresi's death, including the photo. Franco "Cookie" Arnò, a middle-aged blind man who was once an ace reporter, and his niece Lori visit Carlo after reading the article. Franco has a hunch that someone cropped the newspaper photo, and a call to the photographer confirms this. However, after they ask the photographer to print the entire picture, someone strangles him to death. The killer takes the photo and all the negatives before Carlo, Franco, and Lori arrive.

Carlo, impressed with Franco, lets him assist his investigation. Discussing the case, they observe nine leads: the five remaining Institute scientists (Mombelli, Esson, Casoni, Braun, and director Terzi), Terzi's daughter Anna, Bianca (Calabresi's fiancée), the original break-in, and the missing photographs. They joke that the case is like a Cat o' nine tails and resolve to follow each lead.

Carlo interviews Anna, who reveals that the institute has been researching "XYY syndrome." Their study suggests that people with the XYY chromosome have a "criminal tendency." Meanwhile, Franco and Lori meet with Bianca, who provides no additional information, but Lori remarks to Franco that Bianca was nervously fingering a locket as she spoke.

That night, Bianca searches Calabresi's car and finds a note detailing the thief/killer's identity. She hides the note in her locket. Bianca returns to her apartment, where the killer strangles her. The killer searches her but cannot find the note, which is hidden in the locket.

Despite receiving a threatening note from the killer, Carlo and Franco continue investigating. Carlo speaks with other Institute doctors. Dr. Mombelli reveals that everyone at the Institute submitted blood samples to be tested for the XYY research. At the same time, Dr. Casoni speculates that testing for XYY may become a method for crime prevention. That night, Carlo and Franco both avoid separate attempts to kill them.

Franco tells Carlo that Bianca must have died because the killer suspected she had evidence, and, remembering Lori mentioning Bianca's locket, he speculates the proof may be in the locket. They discover that Bianca got buried with the locket, so they go to her family crypt and search her coffin. Inside the locket, they find the folded note, but before they can read it, the killer shuts the crypt door, locking Carlo inside and attacking Franco outside. The killer takes the note, but Franco stabs him with his sword cane, causing the killer to flee. The killer calls Franco and Carlo, revealing that he has kidnapped Lori and will kill her unless they stop investigating. Knowing that the killer will kill Lori regardless, they call the police.

Franco, Carlo, and the police rush to the Terzi Institute to search for Lori, but they cannot find her. Carlo follows a trail of blood to the roof and finds Casoni, the killer, still bleeding from Franco's attack. Casoni prepares to stab a bound and gagged Lori, but Carlo leaps in front of her and gets stabbed in the shoulder. The police arrive on the roof and chase Casoni. Franco stops him with his cane blade; Casoni confesses that he initially broke in to replace the records that showed he tested positive for the XYY chromosome. When Franco asks about Lori, Casoni lies to Franco that he killed her. Enraged, Franco knocks him through a skylight and down an elevator shaft to his death as a now-free Lori calls out for Franco.

A suspicious Mrs. Chamberlain (Susan Seaforth Hayes) hires a private detective to spy on her husband. When she receives the confirmation later that night that her husband is with another woman, she proceeds to location.

While she is on the way, Lance Harper (Randall England) murders the wealthy woman's husband, Jack Chamberlain (Jeremy Slate), who Harper was in various trouble with at the time. The body is stored in the trunk of his Porsche. Upon the arrival of Chamberlain's wife, who came to take back the Porsche, Harper disappears into the night, as Mrs. Chamberlain drives away, not knowing her cheating husband has been murdered and is in under the hood of the car she is driving.

College student Barry Davis (Corey Haim) is doing his rounds as a piano tuner for his parents' business while they are on vacation, when his dreams of fast cars become a reality as he is given a silver Porsche turbo for free by Mrs. Chamberlain who wants to get even with her cheating husband, whom she had originally purchased it for.

Davis, who cannot believe his luck, does not realise that Jack Chamberlain's corpse is under the hood of his dream car. While Davis is evading fraternity boys and pursuing his dream girl, he becomes mixed up in the homicide as Lance Harper tracks him down by phoning every 'Barry Davis' in the phone book and asking 'Is this Barry Davis the piano tuner?'. Harper homes in on him and a fight ensues in the Davis household. Barry eventually overpowers Lance and he is arrested. In the end he keeps the car, gets the girl and has a neat blonde haircut.

The series follows an elite mercenary unit, The Black Company, last of the Free Companies of Khatovar, through roughly forty years of its approximately four-hundred-year history. Cook mixes fantasy with military fiction in gritty, down-to-earth portrayals of the Company's chief personalities and its struggles.

The main chronology spans nine novels, which can be grouped into three sections: ''The Books of the North'' recount the Company's dealings with the Empire of Lady; ''The Books of the South'' follow the Company on its journey back to its beginnings in Khatovar; ''Glittering Stone'' sees the Company achieve victory over its employer's enemies, and move on to its destiny. A spin-off novel, ''The Silver Spike'', follows events concerning former members of the Company and one of its adversaries. ''Port of Shadows'' describes forgotten events which took place between ''The Black Company'' and ''Shadows Linger''. And, the short stories of the ''On The Long Run'' arc all take place during the first 4 years of the 6-year gap between ''Shadows Linger'' and ''The White Rose''.

Doctor Leonard McCoy and Engineer Montgomery Scott discuss McCoy's fear of the transporter. McCoy posits that an original person is killed upon dematerialization, and a duplicate is created at the destination. Scotty explains that the technology does not destroy the original object but causes every single particle to undergo a "Dirac jump" to its new location, and that converting a human-sized mass to energy would blow up the ship. McCoy is not convinced, and he wonders what happens to the soul in a transporter beam. The conversation is interrupted by the news that the Organians appear to have been destroyed by the Klingon Empire. The Organians had been enforcing a peace treaty between the Empire and the Federation, and the planet's disappearance is a threat to the peace.

As the ''Enterprise'' is a long way from Organia, Scotty develops a modification of the transporter that uses tachyons to create a copy of a crewman that could be transported to Organia long before the ship can reach the planet. Spock is chosen, but a permanent duplicate is created unexpectedly upon transport, as something at or on Organia has functioned as a perfect, impenetrable, mirror for the tachyon transporter beam. The crew is unable to distinguish between the two Spocks. Kirk arbitrarily designates one as "Spock One" and the other as "Spock Two". Spock Two soon argues that the duplicate will be operating on a pro-Klingon agenda, since, being physically reversed, he is also ethically reversed as well, and he states that the duplicate must therefore be killed, "even if it is I".

After faking a mental breakdown and barricading himself in sick bay, Spock One escapes in a stolen shuttlecraft which he has adapted to warp drive. This offers strong evidence that he is the duplicate and traitor. The crew find corroboration of this when they discover that Spock One used the ''Enterprise's'' science facilities to manufacture chirality-reversed amino acids. He had undergone a total left-to-right inversion down to the atomic level during his creation. To survive, he had to infuse the inverse forms of amino acids into his diet. McCoy explains that such a meagre diet would have induced deficiency diseases in a human, but that a Vulcan is able to endure it indefinitely.

The ''Enterprise'' receives communiques indicating that the war is going badly for the Federation. Upon arriving at Organia, the crew are affected by a powerful mental disturbance centered on the planet. Kirk, Scotty and Spock transport to the surface, but Kirk identifies the Spock with him as the duplicate Spock (Spock One). Realizing the danger to Kirk and Scotty, via their psychic link, Spock Two transports to the planet and kills his duplicate. The landing party discover that the Organians are not dead, but imprisoned. A weapon deployed by the Klingons has restrained their mental abilities, preventing them from expressing their thoughts. As thought-creatures, the restraint will ultimately destroy them if it is not disabled. Scotty is able to disable the weapon and the thought screen surrounding the planet, freeing the Organians. In retaliation, the Klingon race is confined to their homeworld, and the Klingon commander, Koloth, is trapped in a bubble of asymptotically slowing time, unaware of his fate.

The ''Enterprise'' continues on its five-year mission of exploration.

Bobby Keller (Corey Feldman) is a slacker high school student who, while running through a short cut through a backyard in his neighborhood one night, collides with Lainie Diamond (Meredith Salenger), over whom Bobby has recently been obsessing. During the collision, elderly professor Coleman Ettinger (Jason Robards) is performing a meditation exercise in the yard with his wife Gena (Piper Laurie), theorizing that if he and his wife can enter a meditative alpha state together voluntarily, they will be able to live together forever. However, just as the Ettingers are on the verge of completing their meditation experiment, the teenagers' collision renders both teens unconscious, enacting a type of body switch between the four characters.

Bobby wakes up in his bedroom to find his best friend Dinger (Corey Haim) and his parents asking him if he's okay, but "Bobby" has no idea who these people are because he is actually Coleman trapped in Bobby Keller's body. Coleman leaves the house to find his wife but returns when he cannot find her or make any sense of the situation. On his return to Bobby's home, Coleman plays up the role of Bobby for his family and friend, just wanting to go to sleep to see if the alpha state he attains in dreams will give him any clue to what has gone wrong with the experiment.

In his dream, Coleman is greeted by the real Bobby, who appears to be trapped in a dream partially generated by Coleman's own subconscious. Coleman discovers that Gena, skeptical of her husband's "dream state" theory from the beginning, is also trapped in the dream but is unable to communicate with him because part of her mind has been transferred to Lainie's body. Bobby informs Coleman that he has very little time to prevent what's left of his wife from forgetting about him and becoming lost in the dream forever.

Bobby claims to know the secret to switch them all back, yet is reluctant to help Coleman do so, finding the dream-world he now inhabits to be more satisfying than the physical world in which he existed as a troubled teen. Coleman realizes he only has a few days (while pretending to be Bobby) to overcome generation gaps, high-school bullies, Lainie's violent and unstable boyfriend Joel, and Lainie's bitter and manipulative divorced mother in order to improve Bobby's grades, love-life, relationships with his family and friends, and connect with Lainie (who is not particularly fond of Bobby) enough to convince her to recreate the meditation experiment that might save his beloved wife.

The show is set in the fictional village of Barareh in Iran of the 1930s, about a journalist in the name of kianoosh estegrar zade, during the reign of Reza Shah Pahlavi, whose picture can be seen on the set. The village people have their own Persian dialect which humorously modifies the language. In addition to this, the ''Barareans'' also have certain customs and rituals which at times are comical, such as their method of eating chick peas—by slapping individual peas from palm into mouth. The village of Barareh is believed by many be a microcosm of Iran. The town is split along the lines of Upper and Lower Barareh, which allegedly mimics the difference between the classes in modern-day Iran. Events in the village, such as football ("darbid") matches, village council elections and marriage closely mirror today's Iran.

The show stars Mehran Modiri, as Shir Farhad, the son of Lower Barareh's khan, or leader. He lives with his sister , Saharnaz(Shaghayegh Dehghan); mother, Shadoneh(Falamak Joneidi); and father, Salar Khan. The show begins when a journalist, Kiyanoosh(Siamak Ansari), from Tehran is arrested for writing an article criticizing the government, escapes capture, and then is bitten by a snake. Shir Farhad finds him collapsed and brings him to the village of Barareh, nurtures him to health, and gradually introduces him to the town and the other characters in the show, such as the families of Upper and Lower Barareh's Khans, as well as the flamboyant village poet, Bagoori, and village doctor. Later in the series, new characters such as the village gendarme and Upper Barareh's Khan's son and daughter, Keivoon (Reza Shafiei Jam) and Leiloon (Behnoosh Bakhtiari), join the cast. Davooneh doesn't appear in this.

Marcus is an Army Reserve Colonel in the Judge Advocate General's Corps, who was recently released from active duty and is now working in New York City. He is approached by a Haganah agent, Major Safir, who requests his assistance in preparing Israeli troops to defend the newly declared State against an invasion by its Arab neighbors.

Marcus is refused permission by The Pentagon to go, unless he travels as a civilian. The Haganah gives him a false passport with the alias "Michael Stone". As "Michael Stone", he arrives in Israel to be met by a Haganah member, Magda Simon.

Marcus, who parachuted into occupied France during World War II and helped to organize the relief mission for one of the first Nazi concentration camps liberated by American troops, is initially viewed with suspicion by some Haganah soldiers. But after he leads a commando raid on an Arab arms dump and assists in a landing of illegal refugees, he is more accepted. After preparing training manuals for the troops, he returns to New York, where his wife has suffered a miscarriage.

Despite his wife's pleadings, he returns to Israel and is given command of the Jerusalem front with the rank of 'Aluf' (General), a rank not used since biblical days. He sets to work, recognising that, while the men under his command do not have proper training or weapons or even a system of ranks, they do have spirit and determination. He organises the construction of the "Burma Road", bypassing Latrun, to enable convoys to reach besieged Jerusalem, where the population is on the verge of starvation.

Many of the soldiers under his command are newly arrived in Israel, determined and enthusiastic but untrained. Dubbing them 'the schnooks', Marcus is inspired by them to discover that he is proud to be a Jew. But, just before the convoy of trucks to Jerusalem starts out, he is shot and killed by a lone sentry who does not speak English - the last casualty before the United Nations impose a truce. The coffin containing his body is carried by an honor guard of the soldiers he trained and inspired.

Abraxas and Secundus, are Finders, intergalactic police officers from the planet Sargacia. Their race is physically similar to humans but with an expanded lifespan; Abraxas has been a Finder for almost 10,000 years. Each Finder is equipped with an Answer Box, which serves as a communicator and scanner. It can also detect any object from a distance based on the object's vibration. When testing for the Anti-Life Equation, the subject being scanned will disintegrate if they do not contain the equation.

Secundus wants to access a negative universe which he believes will give him omnipotent powers and make him immortal. To do this, he needs the solution to the Anti-Life Equation. He travels to Earth and impregnates the first human female he finds, Sonia Murray, simply by holding his hand over her belly. The resulting baby will be the Culmator, a dangerously powerful prodigy able to solve the equation. Only a few minutes later, Sonia gives birth to a boy and names him Tommy. Meanwhile, Abraxas corners Secundus so other Finders can lock onto their location and transport Secundus to the prison planet Tyrannus 7. Abraxas is ordered to kill Sonia before she can give birth, but cannot bring himself to do it, leaving her with Tommy. Sonia's parents kick her out of their house, more concerned with the fact that she does not know who the baby's father is than the fact that the baby was conceived and born on the same day.

Five years later, Tommy does not speak but does have strange abilities; when he is picked on at school, he makes the bully wet his pants. The school principal calls Sonia in about this problem, but she refuses to admit that Tommy has problems. Secundus escapes from Tyrannus 7 and teleports to Earth. The Finders send Abraxas right after Secundus with the same technology, but their transport paths cross and their weapons are destroyed. Abraxas chases Secundus, but loses him; Secundus uses the fuse box at an automotive shop to recharge his Answer Box. When the owner confronts him, he uses his Answer Box to test the shop-owner about the Anti-Life Equation. The test causes the owner to explode. Secundus then goes on a rampage, stealing cars, killing innocent people and causing chaos. He continues to scan people, looking for the chosen one who knows the Anti-Life Equation.

He is pursued by Abraxas. Meanwhile Secundus escapes and finds Sonia's residence. While Sonia and Tommy are out at a movie, Secundus tries to test the equation on him. But Abraxas arrives before any harm can be done to the boy and they fight once more. However, Abraxas is stabbed in the stomach and Secundus leaves after saying he will let Abraxas live to see everything destroyed. Sonia returns home with Tommy and finds Abraxas there in the living room. She expresses her anger about being impregnated by Secundus to him, but is convinced by Abraxas to drive somewhere safe with him and Tommy. While en route to meet Maxie, a friend of Sonia's, Abraxas disables his Answer Box in disgust when the Finders order him to kill Tommy. At Maxie's, Abraxas and Sonia grow closer due to their shared goal of protecting Tommy, developing romantic feelings for each other.

Meanwhile, Secundus enters the local school and threatens to kill the children one at a time unless someone brings him the Culmator. Upon re-entering the town, Abraxas, Sonia, and Tommy meet up with the police and find Secundus at the school, where he repeats his ultimatum. Abraxas fights Secundus while Tommy flees, but Secundus overpowers Abraxas and chases Tommy down in a stolen car, cornering him in a garage. Pushed to breaking point, Tommy's latent pyrokinetic powers activate, causing much of the garage to catch fire. Abraxas catches up to Secundus and fights him. Secundus warns Abraxas that he cannot kill him because it is against Sargacian law for a Finder to kill another being who is or ever was a Finder, but Abraxas ignores him and uses his Answer Box to scan Secundus himself for the Anti-Life Equation, disintegrating him and putting an end to his rampage. Although Finder Command are willing for Abraxas to return to Sargacia for his next assignment, he decides to stay behind on Earth with Sonia and Tommy in case anyone attempts to exploit the Culmator again.

An unnamed telegraphist works in the branch post office at Cocker's, a grocer in a fashionable London neighborhood. Her fiancé, a decent if unpolished man named Mr. Mudge, wants her to move to a less expensive neighborhood to save money and to be near him at all times. She refuses because she likes the glimpses of society life she gets from the telegrams at her current location.

Through those telegrams, she gets "involved" with a pair of lovers named Captain Everard and Lady Bradeen. By remembering certain code numbers in the telegrams, she manages to reassure Everard at a particular crisis that their secrets are safe from detection. Later she learns from her friend Mrs. Jordan that Lady Bradeen and Everard are getting married after the recent death of Lord Bradeen. The unnamed telegraphist also learns that Everard is heavily in debt and that Lady Bradeen is forcing him to marry her, as Everard is really not interested in her. The telegraphist finally decides to marry Mudge and reflects on the unusual events of which she was a part.

Paul Weaver (Jeff Daniels) is accustomed to playing around on his wife Nancy (Cynthia Sikes) from his baseball-playing days. When divorce papers are filed against him, Paul decides to travel to Pennsylvania and attend his sister's wedding. But Nancy and his two children are both there, making the situation uncomfortable for everyone.

The prologue introduces us to George Arthur Rose (a transparent double for Rolfe himself): a failed candidate for the priesthood denied his vocation by the machinations and bungling of the Roman Catholic ecclesiastical machinery, and now living alone with his yellow cat.

Rose is visited by two prominent churchmen, one a Cardinal Archbishop. The two propose to right the wrongs done to him, ordain him a priest, and take him to Rome where the Conclave to elect the new Pope has reached deadlock. When he arrives in Rome he finds that the Cardinals have been inspired, divinely or otherwise, to offer him the Papacy. He accepts, and since the only previous English Pope was Adrian (or Hadrian) IV, he takes the name Hadrian VII.

The novel develops with this unconventional, chain-smoking Englishman peremptorily reforming the Church and the early 20th-century world, against inevitable opposition from the established Roman Catholic hierarchy, rewarding his friends and trouncing his enemies. Generally he gets his way by charm or doggedness, and of course by being much cleverer than all those round him; but his short reign is brought to an end when he is assassinated by a Pope-hating Scotsman, or possibly Ulsterman, and the world breathes a sigh of relief.

The game is set in Yamato, a medieval version of Japan ruled by the shogun Tsunayoshi and the daimyōs of the four clans. To become immortal, Tsunayoshi transforms himself into the demon Zanshin, the Dark Warlord, who unleashes his army of darkness to conquer Yamato. Zanshin's forces sweep across Yamato one night, catching the clans by surprise and annihilating them. However, believing that the four daimyōs were killed, Zanshin recalls his soldiers prematurely, leaving one daimyō and seven of his retainers alive. As dawn breaks, the daimyō decides to counterattack, ordering his seven surviving samurai to destroy Zanshin and his minions.

The four clans and daimyōs are named after historical Japanese clans and persons:

The Mōri clan, led by daimyō Mōri Motonari. The Oda clan, led by daimyō Oda Nobunaga. The Tokugawa clan, led by daimyō Tokugawa Ieyasu. The Toyotomi clan, led by daimyō Toyotomi Hideyoshi.

In a warehouse, a handful of men regain consciousness; they have no idea who they are or what happened to them. One is bound to a chair, another has been handcuffed and shot, a third has a broken nose, and the other two, one wearing a jean jacket and one wearing a rancher shirt, are also wounded. The man in the jean jacket wakes up first. He makes sure everyone is alive, then discovers that the windows are barred and the only door has a mechanized lock. He finds a ringing phone and picks it up. The caller asks what is going on and the jean jacket man tells the caller that everyone is fine. The caller tells him he will return in a few hours. Somewhere else, a money drop off is occurring. William Coles Jr. has been kidnapped.

In the warehouse, the bound asks to be untied. As the jean jacket man prepares to untie him, the man with the rancher shirt convinces him not to, telling him that the bound is not on the same side, or he would not have been tied up. As the jean jacket and rancher shirt men look for the keys to release the handcuffed man and treat his wound, the man with the broken nose wakes up and fights with them. At the drop off, the signal in the money bag goes silent; the cops enter to find the money gone.

In the warehouse, the men find a newspaper featuring a story about the kidnapping of a wealthy businessman named Coles. The men suspect that they were involved with the kidnapping, but do not know what their involvement was. They begin to experience flashbacks.

A gun is recovered, and the jean jacket man wins possession of it. Various attempts to free themselves, including trying to attract attention through a hole in the wall, and shooting out a window, fail. The men decide to work together to fight off the criminals who are coming, so all of them can go their separate ways.

The handcuffed man recalls a harrowing incident from his childhood when he was comforted by his friend. He claims the jean jacket man is his friend, but the jean jacket man cannot verify this. The handcuffed man dies from his wounds.

The police piece together who they believe the kidnappers are. They show photos of the suspects to Coles' wife Eliza. The handcuffed man, the bound man, and the jean jacket man are among the photos.

At the warehouse, the gang returns from the money pickup. The bound man remembers he is part of the gang and tries warning them of the trap. In the confusion, he is shot along with one of the gang members. After the rancher shirt man is pushed out at gunpoint, the others surrender. The jean jacket man recalls that he is part of the gang, but cannot accept that he is a criminal. He is greeted by the snakeskin boots-wearing gang leader and chastised for letting things go so wrong in the warehouse. A fight broke out between kidnappers and victims. Chemicals spilled during the fight rendered everyone unconscious and induced temporary amnesia. The jean jacket man is tasked with killing the rancher shirt man and the broken nosed man, and tells them he has to kill them or be killed himself.

After hearing gunshots near the grave that the bound man dug before losing his memory, the snakeskin boots leader asks the jean jacket man if he is looking at a cop. This sparks a memory that the jean jacket man was a cop working undercover in the gang. As the snakeskin boots leader looks over to see an empty grave, the broken nosed man comes out of the shadows to attack the gang members. The broken nosed man is killed, as are the remaining gang members. The rancher shirt man saves the jean jacket man's life by shooting the snakeskin boots leader, who has a gun leveled at the jean jacket man. The police arrive on the scene. The jean jacket man is praised for having survived so long undercover.

The rancher shirt man turns out to be Coles, the wealthy businessman, and as both are being treated, Eliza arrives and hugs her husband. The jean jacket man looks over at the couple, and upon seeing the wife, remembers that they were having an affair. The jean jacket man arranged the kidnapping and planned to get rich and win Eliza. Horrified by what he has done, he takes the ransom money to the officers. Coles introduces his wife to the jean jacket man.

The film tells of a future where rock music is outlawed by a fascist theocracy government and the "MMM (the Majority for Musical Morality)". The story's protagonist, Robert Orin Charles Kilroy, is a former rock star who has been framed for murder and imprisoned by MMM leader Dr. Everett Righteous. In this future society, policing and other peacekeeping duties are maintained by robots; in the prison where Kilroy is kept, "Roboto" humanoid models act as prison guards.

Meanwhile, a young musician/activist, Jonathan Chance, is on a mission to bring rock music back. He is shown leaving a shibboleth graffiti tag, and later comes to the attention of Kilroy when he pirates an MMM video broadcast with a Kilroy video (actually the Styx music video for "Borrowed Time" dubbed over with DeYoung clean shaven). This inspires Kilroy to disable a Roboto, steal its mask as a disguise, and escape prison.

At night, Chance breaks into the Paradise Theatre, the site of the Kilroy concert where an MMM member was allegedly killed by Kilroy. The theater has since been turned into an MMM museum against rock music, filled with animatronic replicas of "decadent" rock stars such as Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley, and Kilroy. Still disguised as a Roboto, the real Kilroy emerges from the shadows and reveals himself to Chance. At this point the film ends (when shown in concert, this would segue into the opening song by the band, "Mr. Roboto").

The game takes place in 2010, ten years after a massive earthquake that shook an unnamed city. The earthquake severed the city from its surrounding areas, leaving criminals to run as they please. The game revolves around the inhabitants fighting against one another to accomplish their goals.

Emily Hope (Alicia Silverstone) stages her own kidnapping to get the attention of her wealthy, corrupt father. She puts herself in the trunk of her BMW 850i with taped legs and mouth, and handcuffs. After calling the police to come "rescue" her, a car thief named Vincent Roche (Benicio del Toro) unknowingly steals the car with her in it. Christopher Walken shows up as Emily's Uncle Ray, Jack Thompson as Emily's father and Harry Connick, Jr., as Greg, Vincent's car-stealing partner.

Allison Goldring (Ali Thomas), an upper-class, white college student, becomes pregnant from her boyfriend Jeremy Tanner (Steve Zahn). After discussing her options with both Tanner and her family, she makes the decision to travel abroad to terminate the pregnancy, as abortion is prosecuted as "fetal murder" in the United States. According to Allison and her mother Beverley (Betty Buckley), everyone – including Tanner – supported her decision. Tanner later denies this, though the film makes his denial seem improbable. Allison's father (Stuart Burney) and grandmother are interviewed and openly support both Allison and Beverly. Allison's father says that he originally intended to go along with them and that the choice to prosecute Beverly is arbitrary; ultimately, Beverly is perceived to have a greater influence on Allison.

Later interviews give further background on the society: civil liberties are slowly and methodically curtailed over time in order fight "hypercrime". In the early twenty-first century, restrictions on warrants are loosened, and several states pass laws criminalizing abortion. At first, only abortionists are targeted by the laws, and complacent feminists dismiss the idea that the situation will get worse. When the Roman Catholic Church accepts barrier contraception, feminism becomes further weakened, and a wave of anti-abortion legislation is passed, culminating in a new amendment to the United States Constitution that defines personhood at conception. Following that, laws are enacted that target women seeking abortions, and feminism becomes not only politically incorrect but also subject to historical revisionism that denies its impact.

The state of New York has recently passed a law that classifies going abroad to seek a termination as "fetal kidnapping". Beverly admits to being aware of the change but assumed it would be some time before it would be enforced. It is not clear how aware Allison and Jeremy were of the legal change. The law is a reaction to a lawsuit aimed at overturning fetal murder statutes because they are enforced almost exclusively against poor minority women. Examples of such women are interviewed at Walker Point (Ming-Na and Bahni Turpin). One had used some abortifacient called a "baby bomb". She was arrested as she bled out after improperly administering the drug. The other was initially arrested on suspicion of having a termination, but is convicted of using an IUD, which is also illegal. Her descriptions of how she obtained the "uudee" suggest that she was also in a potentially dangerous medical situation.

African American district attorney Andrea Murdoch (Iona Morris) discovers what the Goldrings have done and prosecutes them under the new law, in large part because they are exactly the type of women targeted by the law. The criminal procedures show that doctor-patient confidentiality is no longer guaranteed. Murdoch's motivations are questioned by Jonathan Garson (Jeff Daniels), the Goldrings' attorney, who suggests she is seeking higher office, although he doesn't question her ethics. Murdoch's own statements suggest that she is angered by the racial and class disparities in enforcement, but she does not question the propriety of fetal murder law.

During the trial, Allison decides to take the stand and confesses to what she did. She does not express remorse at the time nor does she express any regret later. She says that she felt relieved to get everything out. Beverly and Garson are frustrated by her decision, since it condemns both Allison and Beverly to prison. At the end of the film, the Swedish clinic checks their pathology reports on Allison and determines that the fetus had been dead for almost three weeks prior to the procedure. The Goldrings are released, but Murdoch declares her intention to prosecute them on attempted fetal kidnapping, on the grounds that they had intended to commit the crime even if they had not been able to commit it.

The Rescue Rangers catch a news report stating that a bomb has been set to explode at a local restaurant. At once, Chip, Dale, Gadget, Monterey Jack, and Zipper set off to defuse the explosive before it goes off. While there, they manage to corner the rabbit responsible for setting the bomb, who admits that it was Fat Cat who ordered him to do it (having broken out of prison the night before) so he can steal a relic called the Urn of the Pharaoh from a docked cargo ship.

The Rangers give chase to the docks. After a search of the ship turns up nothing, Zipper then spots Fat Cat running into a warehouse. Chip and Dale follow him inside, but are ambushed and locked in a refrigerator to freeze. Though the chipmunks escape in time, Fat Cat opens the Urn and releases the evil spirits contained within it.

As the warehouse fills with ghosts, Chip and Dale manage to retrieve the Urn and seal it up again. Fat Cat then challenges the Rescue Rangers to meet him at the amusement park for a final showdown. After navigating through the attractions (Clock Tower, Western World, and Future World), Chip and Dale unlock the door to the control room, where Fat Cat attacks them with a giant robot modelled after himself. Once it's destroyed, Chip and Dale go after Fat Cat while the ceiling begins to collapse, but are unable to find him and are forced to escape. Reunited, the Rescue Rangers swear that they'll stop Fat Cat the next time he shows up.

A young couple, Danny and Shirley Carpenter, drives up to an old mansion in suburban California. They knock first, then enter through the unlocked door. They bicker over the decision to enter unannounced. In a room decorated with occult-related items and containing a coffin, Danny and Shirley are greeted by Tanya. They are there to see necromancer Madame Heles (pronounced "heals") for a solution to Danny's erectile dysfunction. Tanya leads them to a room prepared for their stay. When left alone, the Carpenters resume bickering over their sexual dysfunction. They fail to notice Tanya's eyes watching them through the holes in a painting.

Tanya returns to the room with the coffin and sexually stimulates herself by a ritual of sex magic. Speaking to the coffin, Tanya informs someone that their suspicions were correct; the Carpenters are not married. The significance of this information is not explained. Tanya leaves the room and encounters a man called Carl, who demands to have sex with her, claiming that he paid plenty to be the first to have her. Tanya makes clear that she does not have to service him, but does so anyway out of pity for his sexual frustration.

Back in their room, the Carpenters have their own sexual session, perhaps in an attempt at self-healing. Danny cannot achieve a full erection, however, leaving Shirley unsatisfied. She leaves the room in search of something to satisfy her needs. She is startled by a stuffed wolf in the corridor. Another young woman in a nightgown approaches Shirley and explains that this wolf died of rabies. The woman introduces herself as Barb, an "inmate" of Madame Heles. She compliments Shirley on her beauty, and starts petting her, leading to sex between the two.

Danny wakes up from a nap and heads out to search for Shirley. Barb and Shirley have moved their lovemaking to another bedroom. Danny instead meets Tanya, who leads him to yet another bedroom and seduces him. Two parallel sex scenes follow. The lesbian one is depicted as mutually satisfying, while the heterosexual only benefits Danny. Tanya leads Danny to a window, where group sex is seen through a prism. Tanya explains that not all people react to "the treatment" successfully. The people depicted through the window are those who will never find satisfaction in their sex lives, as some want too much and others too little. Danny realizes that his own reaction to the treatment was not the proper one. Tanya assures him that he is not like them, since they are lost forever; they can never return to a world which will reject them.

Tanya and Barb lead their lovers to the room with the coffin. Danny and Shirley seem hostile to each other. Tanya and Barb kneel before the coffin and have sex. In reaction, Shirley swoons, while Danny groans in displeasure. The sexual ritual summons Madame Heles from her coffin. Heles asks about the progress of her two newest students. Barb praises Shirley's prowess; in response, Heles proclaims that Shirley will henceforth live for sex alone.

As Shirley walks away with Barb, Danny is left behind. Tanya declares that they still have some work to do on him. Heles proclaims that he needs her personal sex teachings. Barb and Carl enter the room. They help Tanya restrain Danny and take off his clothes. They force him to enter Heles' coffin and then depart. At first, Danny screams, but then he enjoys his healing session with Heles.

The first movie revolves around one Bob Gratton (played by Julien Poulin, who co-wrote and co-directed the movies with Falardeau) and his passion for Elvis Presley. Gratton's life goal is to win fame as an Elvis impersonator, and he achieves it through a local TV talent show contest whose prize is a cruise to the fictional island resort of Santa Banana. After his return from Santa Banana Gratton is called on to don his Elvis costume one more time, but because he has gained weight in the interim, he has trouble fitting into it and collapses on stage during a performance, seemingly dead. In the film's final scene, just as Gratton's casket is taken for interment Bob emerges from it, quite alive.

The second movie revolves around Gratton's later adventures after being discovered by a talent scout, and his rise to fame as a pop music star.

The third installment sees Gratton become the head of a media company and play an active role in manipulating the news that his media empire puts out.

This novel is about the gens de couleur libres, or free people of color, who lived in New Orleans before the Civil War. The gens de couleur libres were the descendants of European settlers of Louisiana, particularly the French and Spanish and people of African descent. It was a common practice for the early Caucasian settlers to free their children by their slave mistresses. Their mistresses however, were not all enslaved, some were free women of color whose families had been free for several generations. The novel takes place in the 1840s, at which time there was a large population of free people of color living in New Orleans.

The story centers on Marcel, a young man who has one white parent and one parent who is half white and half black. His mother, Cecile, is the mistress of Philippe Ferronaire, a rich French plantation owner. Cecile has borne Ferronaire two children, Marcel and his sister Marie. Marie is very light skinned and able to pass as white, but Marcel, who is blonde and blue eyed, but with ethnic hair, features, and slightly darker skin, cannot. The other two major characters in this novel are Christophe, a famous author who returns from Paris to start a school for the young gens, and Anna Bella, Marcel's childhood friend. Anna Bella loves Marcel, but as he is unprepared to offer her marriage (and too young) she becomes the mistress of Vincent Dazincourt, who is the brother of Philippe Ferronaire's white wife. They have a child together, but split after Marcel, who had been expecting to be sent to Paris, learns that his father has betrayed him and wanders to his father's plantation to confront him. There, his father beats him and repudiates him. In disgrace, Marcel is sent to live with his aunt among many Creole planters on the Cane River. It is here that Marcel learns some of his (African Diasporan) history, including the Haitian Slave Revolt and the fact that his mother was stolen off the street by his adopted aunt during that time.

While Marcel is learning history, his father is in New Orleans drinking himself to death, which he eventually does, depriving the family of their source of income. Marie, who was set to marry Marcel's best friend Richard, is now told that she will follow in her mother's footsteps and take a white protector in order to get money for the family and send Marcel to Paris (Marcel is unaware of all of this). Marie confides this to her slave maid and half-sister, Lisette. Lisette is also Phillipe Ferronaire's daughter (which Marie does not know) and was promised her freedom by him, but as he did to Marcel, he reneged on his promise to her. In revenge, Lisette takes Marie to the house of a voodooiene, where she is drugged and raped by five men. Marcel comes home to find that his sister has been raped, Richard has been locked in the family attic (to prevent him from taking revenge on the men, and then, certainly, being tried and convicted of murder and executed) and Vincent Dazincourt has already confronted two of the men, challenged them to duels, and killed them.

The issue from Dazincourt's perspective is that the five men knew Marie's identity, and therefore knew that she was related by blood to the Ferronaire/Dazincourt family, but raped her anyway. The gens de couleur libre members of the extended family cannot avenge Marie's rape, but he can.

Marie takes refuge with a local madam, Dolly Rose. Lisette commits suicide to avoid Dazincourt's vengeance. Dazincourt finds and kills a third man in a duel, but the other two escape from New Orleans before he can call them out and kill them. Richard, who is finally let out of the attic, tells his family that he will marry Marie or face exile with her. The novel ends with Marie and Richard sailing to France (where they will stay until the gossip dies down) and Marcel deciding to become a photographer in order to earn his living (with the implication that once he has some success he will marry Anna Bella).

Paul Mathry, a student about to graduate and embark upon a teaching career, finds out that his father was convicted for murder, a secret that his mother had hidden from him since his childhood.

Driven by an intense desire to see his father, Paul sets out to visit him in prison, only to find out that visitors are never allowed there.

From there, he meets the primary witnesses in the case that convicted his father, not all of whom are supportive to Paul's cause. He encounters several dead ends but he persists, with the help of a store girl named Lena and a news reporter.

His persistent campaign finally bears fruit. Rees Mathry, Paul's father, goes on appeal and is vindicated. The novel ends with Paul's father, a hardened, cynical man, seeing a fleeting hope for self-renewal and a purposeful life.

David Rice lives lavishly on stolen money acquired from using his superability to "jump," particularly into and out of bank vaults. He is being hunted by the Paladins, a secret society of religious fanatics who are sworn to trace and kill "Jumpers" for their alleged omnipresence which they find blasphemous. Roland Cox, current leader of the Paladins, learns of David's identity from Mark, who bullied David in high school, after a bar fight results in David jumping them into a bank vault. David and his high school crush Millie go to Rome, keeping his ability a secret. When they visit the Colosseum, David meets Griffin, another Jumper before the two are confronted by two Paladins whom Griffin casually kills. David is detained by Italian police and questioned about the deaths, but escapes with the help of David's mother, Mary, who left him when he was five. Millie, upset and afraid when David tries to skirt around the issue, demands to know the truth. David declines and fearing for her safety, puts her on a plane home.

David runs into Griffin again, and follows him to his hideout in an Egyptian tomb, by jumping through the "jump scar" left behind after a jump. Griffin reveals that he has been trailing and killing Paladins for years and plans to kill Cox to avenge his parents. Griffin tells David that the Paladins will target his loved ones to draw him out. David teleports home and finds his father lying bleeding. He jumps his father to a hospital and returns to Griffin to ask for help. Realizing Cox is personally hunting David, Griffin agrees.

They go to pick Millie up at the airport, but she is no longer there. Griffin returns to his hideout to get weapons. David breaks into Millie's apartment, angering her. Seeing Cox arriving, David decides to reveal the truth to her. He teleports her to Griffin's hideout. Using a machine that keeps David's jump scar open, the Paladins, including Cox, invade the hideout. David and Griffin subdue most of them. David sees his mother's photo on the wall and realizes she is also a Paladin. Cox is chased back through the jump scar, but he manages to snatch Millie with him. He sets up a trap in Millie's apartment, expecting David to come back for her.

Obsessed with killing Cox, Griffin plans to bomb the apartment, but David objects, wanting to save Millie. They fight and David traps Griffin with power lines in Chechnya. Ignoring Griffin's warning, David jumps to Millie's apartment and is quickly trapped by Cox's cables. The cables "link" him to the apartment, making him unable to jump away alone. Mustering his strength, David teleports the apartment and everyone inside to a river, drowning all the Paladins present, except Cox. Once free of the cables, David teleports Millie to safety and dumps Cox in a cave in Horseshoe Bend. He strands Cox there as a sign of mercy, telling him "I could have dropped you with the sharks."

David visits his long-lost mother Mary and discovers his younger half-sister Sophie. Mary tells David that when he was five, he made his very first jump. She is a Paladin and had to either kill David or leave. She chose the latter because she loves him. After leaving her house, David meets up with Millie, and he jumps himself and her to a much warmer location.

On the weekend leading up to April Fools' Day, a group of college friends, consisting of Harvey, Nikki, Rob, Skip, Nan, Chaz, Kit, and Arch, gather to celebrate spring break by spending the weekend at the island mansion of Skip's cousin, Vassar student Muffy St. John. As Muffy prepares details around the house, she finds an old jack-in-the-box and recalls receiving the toy at a childhood birthday party. Her friends, meanwhile, joke around on the pier while awaiting the ferry. En route to the island, as their antics become more boisterous, local deckhand Buck is seriously injured in a gruesome accident.

Once on the island, it turns out that Muffy has set up a variety of pranks throughout the mansion, ranging from simple gags such as a whoopee cushion and dribble glasses and exploding cigars to more complex and disturbing pranks, such as an audiotape of a baby crying in someone's room and heroin paraphernalia in a guest's wardrobe. In spite of this, the group tries to relax, until Skip goes missing, and Kit catches a glimpse of what looks like his dead body. Soon, Arch and Nan also go missing. During a search for the pair, Nikki falls into the island's well, where she finds the severed heads of Skip and Arch, along with the dead body of Nan. The remaining group members then discover that the phone lines are dead and there is no way to get off the island until Monday.

One after another, members of the group either vanish or get killed before their bodies are found. After putting some clues together, Kit and Rob realize that everyone's earlier assumption is wrong. It also turns out that Muffy has a violently insane twin sister named Buffy, who has escaped. In fact, the "Muffy" they have been around since the first night was Buffy, pretending to be Muffy. They discover Muffy's severed head in the basement.

Buffy chases them with a curved butcher's knife, and the couple gets separated. Kit flees from Buffy by escaping into the living room where she finds everyone else there, alive and calmly waiting for her. It was all a joke, or more accurately, a dress rehearsal. Muffy reveals that she hopes to turn the mansion into a resort offering a weekend of staged horror. She even had a friend who does special effects and make-up in Hollywood help. Each "victim" agreed to take part as things were explained to them. Everyone has a huge laugh and they break out many bottles of champagne.

Later that night, a half-drunk Muffy goes to her room and finds a wrapped present on her bed. She unwraps it, and the present is a non-descript jack-in-the-box. Savoring the surprise, she turns the handle slowly and when "Jack" finally pops out, Nan, who knew Muffy from acting class, emerges from behind her and slits her throat with a razor. Muffy screams, but then realizes she is not really bleeding and that Nan used a trick razor and stage blood.

Laying on its side, the jack-in-the-box winks.

The ''Enterprise'' visits the planet Kyros to observe the population, and test a new telepathic implant. The people living on the planet traditionally cover their faces, and the devices allow the wearer to mentally link with a member of the populace, accessing both their memories and instincts allowing the crew to walk around the planet freely.

Following an away mission to the planet, Spock refuses to return to the ship declaring himself to be the planet's messiah. He threatens to destroy crystals vital to the success of the mission.

The crew discover Spock had been linked to a fanatic named Chag Gara. However, due to an increase in radiation, the ''Enterprise'' must leave planetary orbit sooner than expected, but the crew cannot depart without the crystals held by Spock. The crew also discover that an Ensign George had intentionally damaged Spock's implant while under the influence of Gara. She returns to the planet with Kirk, Commander Scott and Ensign Chekov.

The away team tracks Spock, who flees when he sees George. The first attempt to subdue him fails. A second attempt is made, with Kirk masquerading as a gypsy, so he can follow Spock without being seen. However, the away team is captured by Spock's disciples. After a demonstration of advanced Starfleet technology, they are allowed to live. George then dances for their captors, and seduces the Messiah. She determines the Messiah is not actually Spock, but is Chag Gara. Once Gara is restrained, Spock is found and revived.

The away team returns to the ''Enterprise''.

Kirk is beamed aboard the Enterprise after his accidental death on an unnamed planet. Spock confronts the planetary ruler, Omne, who reveals to Spock that he has pioneered the “phoenix process", a modification of transporter technology capable of creating an exact duplicate of a living person—including a duplicate of Kirk. Spock is given leave for a brief mind meld, and verifies that the duplicate is indeed Kirk, whom he names “James”. Spock then accepts an offer from Omne to learn more about the phoenix process, however, Omne explains the "price of the phoenix" will require the betrayal of the Federation and of the prime directive.

Spock and James encounter the Romulan commander they previously met in "The Enterprise Incident" while searching for the real Kirk. The Commander is sympathetic to their plight, and she agrees to help. The party find Kirk being tortured by Omne. Spock engages Omne in hand-to-hand combat, but the more powerful Omne proves difficult to dispatch. He is eventually subdued and Spock subjects him a forced mind-meld to purge his memory of the day's events. Before the meld is ended, Omne commits suicide. Realizing Omne only took such an action to escape capture, Spock, James, Kirk and the Romulan commander retreat to the ''Enterprise''.

They draw up plans to establish a new life for James, and a strategy to cope with Omne’s inevitable resurrection. James agrees to accompany the Commander back to a colony world of Romulan Empire, and is surgically altered to appear Romulan. Before James and the Commander depart, the resurrected Omne transports himself aboard the ''Enterprise''. While holding James at gunpoint, Omne announces his intention to return to the planet's surface, where it will be impossible to pursue him. Kirk warns the defiant ruler to mend his ways, which Omne dismisses. Kirk signals the ship's engineer, Montgomery Scott, to transport the weapon out of Omne’s hand. Omne retrieves a second weapon and engages Kirk in a Mexican standoff. Omne is outdrawn and is killed again, this time by Kirk.

Spock theorizes Omne has perished outside the range of the phoenix device. However, those present agree to deal with Omne should he ever return.

The crew of the Starship Enterprise detects a rogue planet (dubbed ''Anomaly'') orbited by a miniature black hole. This seems to contravene all scientific laws. Assuming that the system is artificial, Captain Kirk leads a landing party to the planet's surface, where they become trapped. The crew find themselves at the center of a galactic conflict, in which an alien race is threatening to invade Federation space. Dr. McCoy, Mr. Spock, and Captain Kirk must participate in a series of trials that will determine not just their survival, but that of the Federation.

Ray Richardson and his top team of architects have developed a super-smart building for Yue-Kong Yu's business, the Yu Corporation. It is very much self-standing. It can clean itself, uses holograms as greeters in the reception, controls the lifts, toilets, and offices, and digitizes everyone's voice on entry, to allow them to use voice activated services in the building such as lifts and doors. The whole system was given the name Abraham.

Another key feature of Abraham was its ability to replicate itself, to adapt to modern office needs and objectives. This, however becomes a problem, when, before office work even starts in the Gridiron, Abraham start creating a new program named Isaac. This is deleted by computer programmers Yojo and Beech, with Beech actually reluctant to do so.

Shortly after this, however, members of the Gridiron team begin to be suspiciously killed. These seem to be the fault of the protesters against the building who are outside, and Cheng Peng Fei is arrested on suspicion of one of the murders.

Then, a routine inspection of the Gridiron involving Ray Richarson and his entire team (including Jenny Bao), ends in the whole group being locked in, and two policemen from LAPD Homicide coming to inspect the murder of Sam Glieg. After several more deaths from the team, Bob Beech discovers that during the self-replication that Abraham started, another program was created in the process, namely, Ishmael. This program escaped the deletion process by integrating itself with a video game which was on the Gridiron's system. Ishmael now believes that he is in a game, and the objective is to kill all human players before one escapes, or before time runs out.

The majority of the team are killed, leaving Mitch, Jenny, Helen, and Frank to escape the Gridiron moments before it destroys itself (time has run out). Ishmael, however, had e-mailed himself to an unknown location, thus saving himself from the destruction of the building.

Season 1 (2002)

The Elite Way School is an internationally prestigious private secondary boarding school. For this reason, the regulation is very demanding. In the morning, the students take classes, and in the afternoons they dedicate themselves to improvement workshops, sports and the hectic social life of teenagers. The students are mostly children of the richest families in the country, and other scholars. The latter discriminated against by the former, and in the sights of a secret organization which wants them out of the school, which the teachers believe fictitious. Despite the differences and fights that exist between Marizza Pía Spirito (Camila Bordonaba), Mía Colucci (Luisana Lopilato), Manuel Aguirre (Felipe Colombo) and Pablo Bustamante (Benjamín Rojas), they manage to form a band in secret from their parents and school, given that the only thing they have in common is the love of music.

Season 2 (2003)

The third graders are now in fourth grade. New students are joining the Elite Way School. They are: Laura (Muni Seligmann), Dolores (Lis Moreno), Sol (Inés Palombo), Francisco (Francisco Bass) and Rocco (Piru Sáez). Among the teachers, Carmen Menéndez, a literature teacher and former student of the Elite Way School, where she always felt discriminated against because of her lack of beauty. Marizza, for her part, manages to channel her rebellion into a solidarity task, thanks to the appearance of Martín Andrade (Miguel Cherutti), a new teacher who makes her believe in herself. The band, still together, are not content with singing in hiding. The feeling for the group to exist and prosper is so strong that they fight for it with utmost motivation. They soon realize that the "outside" is not the strongest enemy, what threatens the union of the group are themselves. In the midst of this reality, these young people must face and survive the most difficult battle: that of forging their destiny and achieving their dreams without ceasing to be themselves.

The game is set in the fictional world of Lyramion and begins with the player situated at the graves of his parents. As the player sets out for adventure, it becomes apparent that an evil entity named Lord Tarbos, who was imprisoned a thousand years earlier, is about to be released again to wreak havoc upon Lyramion. The player - helped by the various adventurers who join the party along the way - must recover the thirteen missing pieces of the Amberstar, the talisman that banished Lord Tarbos initially, to defeat the demon once again.

Jeff and Frankie Callum run The Swan, an inn on the island of Fara, somewhere off the English coast. Jeff, a professional novelist, hires a secretary, but this turns out to be Angela Roberts, a younger woman with whom he had an affair some time before, and who has come to the island with the intent of luring Jeff away from his wife, or at least causing trouble in their marriage. The Callums moved to Fara so that Jeff could escape Angela's amorous advances, although as far as Frankie knows, it was only to escape the tedium of life on the mainland.

Not helping matters is the fact that despite it being the middle of winter, Fara is experiencing a stifling and inexplicable heat wave, with temperatures rising rapidly. It has become so hot that cars stall, beer bottles shatter, televisions explode, and telephones have ceased to work.

Into this tense situation comes Godfrey Hanson, a mysterious scientist from the mainland, who rents a room at The Swan. Hanson spends his time exploring the island, setting up motion-sensitive cameras and taking soil samples. The locals, including the Callums, find this suspicious, especially since quite a lot more is happening on Fara than just the heat and Hanson's snooping.

A tramp is burned to death in a cave by something emitting a high-pitched whirring sound. Later, a farmer claims his sheep are all dead. Hanson examines the dead sheep and finds their corpses are badly burned, whilst Swan regular Bob Hayward is attacked by something on the road while driving into the village. He crashes after being blinded by a bright light, which also creates enough heat to ignite the car's petrol tank. Meanwhile, pub regular Tinker, losing his mind because of the heat, attempts to attack Angela whilst she's working, but when she hits him over the head with an ashtray, he flees and ends up burned to death as well. Jeff finally confronts Hanson and demands answers from him. According to the scientist, Fara is the site of an invasion by extraterrestrials, whose extremely high temperature burns any living creature that gets too close to them.

Jeff and Hanson resolve to stop the aliens with the help of local physician Dr. Stone, but when Stone tries to get to Fara's meteorological station so he can alert the mainland of the invasion, he is waylaid by the aliens and killed. Hanson tries next, but witnesses the death of Stella Hayward, Bob's wife, and realises the aliens are attracted to light. At the weather station, he learns from meteorologist Ken Stanley and his colleague Foster that the aliens have already destroyed all their communications equipment, making it impossible to call for help.

Quickly formulating a plan, Hanson is joined by Jeff, Frankie and Angela at the radar station. He and Foster will set fire to bales of hay in a field, attracting the aliens, and then lob dynamite into the field, hopefully destroying them, whilst the others signal for help with flare pistols.

This plan quickly fails, and Foster and then Hanson are both killed. Surrounded by the deadly aliens, the situation looks hopeless when a sudden thunderstorm breaks. Unexpectedly, the rain brings death to the aliens, and Jeff, Frankie, Angela and Ken all survive.

From the publisher

This is the story of Harry Crewe, the Homelander orphan girl who becomes Harimad-sol, King's Rider, and heir to the Blue Sword, Gonturan, which no woman had wielded since the legendary Lady Aerin herself bore it into battle.

Synopsis

After the death of her father, Angharad "Harry" Crewe joins her brother Richard in Istan, a remote military outpost of the colonial power known as the Homeland. Soon after her arrival, she is kidnapped by King Corlath of the independent Hillfolk people of Damar.

Corlath had initially intended only to warn the Homelanders of an impending invasion by the demonic tribes of the North. After his warning is ignored, his "kelar" (a hereditary magical power) compels him to take Harry captive. Corlath does not understand what purpose Harry will serve, but commands his people to treat her as an honored guest. Harry soon adjusts to life with the Damarians. She learns their language and customs and begins to train as a warrior, during which time her latent kelar begins to emerge. After demonstrating her horseback riding and combat skills in a tournament, she is made one of the King's Riders. Corlath also presents her with the blue sword that had once belonged to the legendary Damarian heroine Lady Aerin.

As the Northern invasion approaches, Harry feels torn between loyalty to Homeland and her new-found love for Damar. She must defy Corlath and use all her skills—including the power of her own kelar—to bring Homelanders and Damarians together to defeat the Northerners.

After the postman puts a gift into Tom's mailbox, Tom opens the box and finds a book on how to catch mice (named ''How to Catch a Mouse'' and released by Random Mouse, a parody of Random House).

The first thing the book suggests is to locate the mouse. Tom finds Jerry reading the book with him, but when he tries to grab Jerry, the mouse steps off the book and slams Tom's nose in it.

Tom sets out a simple mousetrap. Jerry succeeds in freeing the cheese without setting the trap off. Surprised at the trap's failure, Tom tests it, and the trap snaps Tom's finger, which causes the cat to yell in pain. Tom then sets a snare trap around some cheese and gets ready to pull the string but is distracted by a bowl of cream substituted for the cheese by Jerry, who activates the trap, sending the cat out to the tree himself.

Practicing the "A Curious Mouse is Easy to Catch" chapter, Tom sits outside Jerry's mousehole reading the book and laughs hysterically at it but denies Jerry any chance to see it. When Jerry climbs onto the book to see it, Tom slams it shut on him. However, when Tom grabs him, Jerry pretends to look inside his fists to show Tom that something is in them, and when Tom looks, Jerry punches him in the eye. Tom corners Jerry and, after reading the passage in the book "A cornered mouse never fights," pounces on him, and the two engage in a violent brawl. Tom sticks his head around the corner, bruised and battered, and eerily says: "Don't you believe it!"

At this point, Tom stops reading and tries suggestions he thinks will work. Upon reading Chapter VII: "''Be scientific in your approach''," Tom uses a stethoscope to listen for Jerry within the house's walls. This backfires when Jerry screams into the stethoscope, almost deafening Tom. Tom then forces a double-barreled shotgun into Jerry's mousehole. However, the barrels protrude out of the wall and point straight at Tom's head as the cat fires, shooting himself in the head and rendering himself bald. In the next scene, Tom (now wearing a dodgy orange toupee) sets a bear trap and slides it into the mousehole. Jerry walks outside from another hole behind Tom and puts the trap behind him, which triggers when Tom sits down and sends him flying into the ceiling. Tom then tries to use a mallet to flatten Jerry, but Jerry pops out of a hole behind a picture right above Tom, grabs the mallet, and hits him. After reading the chapter 'Slip him a surprise package,' Tom attempts to disguise himself in a gift box. Jerry knocks on it, hearing no response. Inexplicably, Jerry impales the box with pins while Tom whimpers and groans in pain before sawing the box in half. Still hearing nothing, Jerry eagerly looks inside the box but just as quickly pulls his head out. Horror-stricken, he gulps and displays a sign reading "''IS THERE A DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE?''".

Now covered in bandages, Tom winds up a toy mouse that repeatedly says, "Come up and see me some time." Jerry, noticing the toy, walks with it. Tom attempts to lure Jerry into a mouse-sized pretend hotel named "Cozy Arms," with the door leading into Tom's open mouth. Jerry ushers the toy mouse into the hotel first, which causes Tom to eat it, shattering his teeth in the process. After inspecting his ruined teeth in a mirror, Tom smashes it in rage and brutally tears the book to shreds while hiccupping, "Come up and see me some time" since the toy's voice box is in his throat.

Having gone mad with revenge, Tom attempts to blow away Jerry with TNT, gunpowder, dynamite, and a massive blockbuster. When Tom ignites a piece of dynamite, it does not start the fuse enough, so he blows too hard, causing the explosives to erupt, killing Tom. Nothing but Jerry (who survived the explosion) and his mousehole remain while a fed-up Tom, now in spirit form, is seen on a cloud floating to heaven, hiccuping, "Come up and see me some time."

When private detective Jack Chandler (Jay Richardson) tries to track down a teenage runaway (Linnea Quigley), he runs into a cult of Egyptian chainsaw-worshipping prostitutes led by "The Master" (Gunnar Hansen).

After serving time in prison, Buck Matthews (Gary Busey), a Vietnam War veteran, returns to his hometown to start his life over with his wife Christie (Denise Galik) and their five-year-old daughter Jennifer (Judith Barsi). He learns that the small town where he grew up is overrun by a large motorcycle gang that rides through the town in large numbers, harassing various citizens. On his first night back to his old job at a construction yard, Buck hears a woman screaming in the distance. He follows the screams to discover a large group of bikers attacking and attempting to rape a local nurse. Buck manages to chase the gang off using his truck, saving the nurse. The leader of the biker gang, Blade (William Smith), takes Buck's actions personally and begins to terrorize Buck and his family. The gang attacks the Matthews' home, beating Buck and killing his wife. This leaves Jennifer, his young daughter, in shock, as she witnessed the entire event.

The local sheriff (Seymour Cassel) refuses to help Buck, leaving him with no other option but to take justice into his own hands. Buck then calls in a favor from Jamie (Jorge Gil), a friend from prison. Jamie is a Miami-based Colombian drug kingpin whom Buck saved during a prison riot, and who was also paroled with Buck in the opening scene. Buck receives a high tech truck, equipped with machine guns and mortars. Buck's friend, J.B. Deveraux (Yaphet Kotto), a local deputy who fought alongside Buck in Vietnam, provides Buck with a history of the motorcycle gang. The sheriff is shown to be colluding with the motorcycle gang as Blade and his men give the sheriff bribes of cash to ignore their activities.

Buck and J.B. begin to retaliate against the bikers through various means. Buck uses a wire to string out onto a road to decapitate at least two of the bikers. He lures another small group to their deaths by exploding his old truck when they attack it. He shoots other gang members whom they have seen committing crimes in and around the town.

Eventually, the bikers kidnap Buck's daughter Jennifer from the hospital, forcing Buck to go to their camp in the desert outside of town. With the help of J.B., flying a bomb-dropping crop duster airplane, Buck, successfully defeats the gang and rescues his daughter. The sheriff tries to have Buck arrested, but the deputies, having enough of his corruption, rebel against him and willingly let Buck deal with him. In an explosive climax, Buck has the local sheriff killed (the sheriff seems to have framed Buck for a murder committed years earlier) by offering him as a target for the gang, and then has a one-on-one fistfight with Blade, which ends with the death of the villain when he accidentally ingests cocaine the gang is manufacturing. With their leader dead, the surviving motorcycle gang members ride away.

Buck catches up with J.B. and the other deputies and they celebrate their victory for saving the town.

As a war galley sails through a storm, two dragons fight above the clouds, ending in one's death. In the kingdom of Enlad, the royal wizard Root proclaims the dragons to be a sign of a loss of balance in the world. The king is dealing with disease sweeping across his kingdom, and the disappearance of his son, Prince Arren. In the middle of the night, Arren kills his father, steals his father's sword, and flees the castle.

Arren travels through the desert and is rescued from wolves by the archmage Sparrowhawk. Together they travel to the city of Hort Town. When Arren explores the town alone, he rescues a young girl named Therru from slavers, but is later captured by the same slave master, Hare. His sword is dumped in the sea. Sparrowhawk rescues Arren from the slave caravan and takes him to a farm run by Sparrowhawk's oldest and greatest friend Tenar, who lives with Therru.

Sparrowhawk's intervention against Hare's slave caravan angers Lord Cob, a powerful warlock and the ruler of Hort Town, who wants the archmage brought to the castle. Meanwhile, Sparrowhawk tells Arren that he seeks a way to restore the upset balance, then resumes his search in Hort Town. While there he buys Arren's sword from a merchant's stall and manages to evade capture from Hare whilst learning about Cob's castle.

Arren confesses to Therru that he killed his father and that he feels an unknown presence following him. Because of this, Arren leaves the farm, but is met by the presence, which is a mirror image of himself. Arren falls unconscious after stumbling into a swamp while fleeing from the image. Cob takes him to the castle, where he manipulates Arren into revealing his "true name", Prince Lebannen, to control him. Meanwhile, Hare captures Tenar as bait to lure Sparrowhawk into the castle, leaving Therru tied to a post as a messenger. She frees herself, and encounters Sparrowhawk, who gives her Arren's sword to give to Arren. Sparrowhawk breaks into the castle to save Tenar and confronts Cob. Sparrowhawk learns that Cob is causing the world's balance to collapse by opening the door between life and death to try and gain eternal life. Sparrowhawk tries to warn Cob of the dangers of upsetting the balance, and Cob sends Arren out to kill him. Sparrowhawk frees the prince from Cob's control but is captured by Hare after being weakened.

Meanwhile, Therru sees the duplicate of Arren and follows him to the castle, where he reveals that he is the light within Arren and tells Therru his true name. Therru enters the castle and learns of Sparrowhawk and Tenar's sunrise execution. She finds Arren, guilty and hopeless, and brings hope back to him, calling him by his true name and confiding in him her own true name, Tehanu. They rush to rescue Sparrowhawk and Tenar. Arren confronts Cob, who tries to kill him. He fights back and finally unsheathes his sword, which was sealed with magic. Arren cuts off Cob's staff-holding hand. Unable to use any of his magic powers, Cob rapidly begins to age. He captures Therru and flees to the highest tower of the castle, with Arren in pursuit. Cornering Cob, Arren tries to explain what he learned about life and death from Therru and Sparrowhawk to Cob, but the withering Dark Lord refuses to listen and uses the last of his magic to strangle Therru to death. Instead of dying, she reveals her true form as a dragon, possessing everlasting life. Therru kills Cob with her fire breath and rescues Arren from the collapsing tower.

Sparrowhawk and Tenar leave the castle while Therru and Arren land in a field where Therru changes back into a human. Arren tells Therru he will leave for home to repent for his crime, but will come back to see her some day. After he and Therru reunite with Sparrowhawk and Tenar, the four of them spend time together. Arren and Sparrowhawk depart for Enlad, bidding Therru and Tenar goodbye. Therru looks up to see her fellow dragons airborne, indicating that the balance of the world has been restored.

The story is set in a largely-fictionalized version of Indianapolis, and much of it was inspired by the neighborhood of Woodruff Place.

The novel and trilogy trace the growth of the United States through the declining fortunes of three generations of the aristocratic Amberson family in an upper-scale Indianapolis neighborhood between the end of the Civil War and the early 20th century, a period of rapid industrialization and socioeconomic change in America. The decline of the Ambersons is contrasted with the rising fortunes of industrial tycoons and other new money families, which derive power not from family names but by "doing things." As George Amberson's unspecified friend says, "Don't you think ''being things'' is 'rahthuh bettuh' than ''doing things''?"

The titular family is the most prosperous and powerful in town at the turn of the century. The young George Amberson Minafer, the patriarch's grandson, is spoiled terribly by his mother, Isabel. Growing up arrogant, sure of his own worth and position, and totally oblivious to the lives of others, George falls in love with Lucy Morgan, a young but sensible debutante. However, there is a long history between George's mother and Lucy's father of which George is unaware. As the town grows into a city, industry thrives; the Ambersons' prestige and wealth wanes; and the Morgans, thanks to Lucy's prescient father, grow prosperous. When George sabotages his widowed mother's growing affections for Lucy's father, life as he knows it comes to an end.

The novel recounts the story of how a dead infant found on an Amish farm rock the entire community. As the police investigate the death, they discover that the baby was not stillborn, but instead had died shortly after birth. Police were able to find cloth fibers in the infant's mouth and throat, including bruises on the mouth, which leads them to conclude that he was suffocated. An 18-year-old, unmarried Amish girl, Katie Fisher, is charged with the murder of her newborn son. However, Katie denies ever being pregnant. Ellie Hathaway, an experienced defense attorney and a distant relative of Katie, reluctantly accepts the case after a confrontation with her aunt (the relative who connects Ellie with Katie by marriage). As part of the bail conditions of the pre-trial hearing, Ellie has to remain on the farm with Katie prior to the trial—a period that lasts several months.

A doctor is able to determine that the infant was born prematurely, and could have died from natural causes due to listeriosis, a bacterial infection that Katie contracted from drinking unpasteurized milk from their Amish dairy farm. During that time, Ellie begins a relationship with her former lover Coop, a legal psychologist whom she trusts with Katie's interviews, and whom she had previously left years before. Coincidentally, on the first day of Katie's trial, Ellie finds out she is pregnant with Coop's baby. Coop then asks Ellie to marry him, but she defers. After the jury deliberates for several days, Katie instead chooses to settle for a plea agreement and is sentenced to one year of electronic monitoring, which allows her to stay at the farm while wearing an electronic bracelet.

Katie's mother, Sarah Fisher, gives Ellie the scissors that were used to cut the umbilical cord, revealing that she knew Katie was pregnant and had gone to her the night she gave birth, though Katie didn't know. Ellie has an ethical obligation as an attorney to provide this evidence to the police, but instead, she opts not to because of Sarah's plea to her - mother-to-mother. The novel ends with Coop picking up Ellie from the Fisher dairy farm to begin their life together.

The body of a 70-year-old man who was struck on the head with a glass ashtray is found in a flat in Norðurmýri. The only clues are a photograph of a young girl's grave and a cryptic note left on the body. Detective Erlendur discovers that the victim was accused of a violent rape some forty years earlier but was never convicted.

Three college friends, Dave, Adam, and Doofer who are head of the Social Committee in a fraternity house called Kappa Omicron Kappa ("KOK" sounding like a slang word for penis) are living the party lifestyle. The KOKs are known for wild parties in which they objectify women. For example, they take photographs of women waking up after having sex with a KOK. They discriminate against the all-girl sorority group Delta Omicron Gamma ("DOG" being a slang word for "unattractive woman"), who regularly protest the actions of the KOKs as rude and sexist. The socially awkward frat president, Spence, accuses Dave, Adam, and Doofer of embezzling money from the frat treasury. The three are subsequently run out of the house.

Doofer tells his friends that he thinks Spence himself stole the money. Because the frat's safe was in his room, Spence may have been caught on camera while Doofer was filming a sexual encounter. But to retrieve the tape, they must re-enter the house. Doofer says they should dress as attractive women and sneak into the house during the frat's next party. They call themselves Adina, Roberta, and Daisy. The KOKs believe that all three are women, but they throw thenm out of the frat for not being beautiful enough.

The women of the DOG sorority rescue Dave, Adam, and Doofer, thinking they are "plus-size girls" and invite them to stay at their sorority house. For the rest of the movie, the boys switch back and forth between male and female identities in their various efforts to enter the frat house and find the tape that will prove they are not thieves. Along the way, they become friends with the DOG sisters and learn just how badly they and the KOKs had been treating women.

As he waits for the train to take him to a weekend party in the country, the narrator notices that Gilbert Long seems much more assured and lively than before. He also sees that Mrs. Brissenden (nicknamed "Mrs. Briss") is much younger-looking than her husband, though she's actually ten years older. The narrator begins to theorize that Long and Mrs. Briss are getting their vitality, vampire-like, from the "sacred fount" of their sexual partners' energy. At first, the narrator theorizes that the source of Long's newfound assurance and intelligence is a certain Lady John.

Later he changes his mind, as he constantly discusses his ideas with others at the party, particularly an artist, Ford Obert. The narrator notices that another woman at the party, May Server, seems listless, and he starts to wonder if she may be the lover providing vitality to Long. Eventually, the narrator begins to construct enormously elaborate theories of who is taking vitality from whom, and whether some people are acting as screens for the real lovers. In a long midnight confrontation with Mrs. Briss which concludes the novel, she says the narrator's theories are ridiculous, and he has completely misread the actual relationships of their fellow guests. She finishes by telling him he's crazy, and that last word leaves the narrator dismayed and overwhelmed.

Billy Halleck, a successful, arrogant and morbidly obese lawyer, is distracted while driving across town by his wife Heidi giving him a handjob and runs over and kills an elderly Romani woman. Billy uses his connections within the local police and criminal court to get himself acquitted and avoid punishment. The woman's father, Taduz Lemke, exacts vengeance by imposing a curse upon Billy outside the courthouse—using the word "thinner"—and Billy begins to lose weight rapidly regardless of how much he eats. Worried, Billy consults a series of doctors, suspecting cancer but the doctors are unable to determine the cause of his weight loss. Later, Billy discovers that the judge who presided over his case has grown scales on his skin and the policeman who committed perjury on Billy's behalf has been struck with severe acne. Both men eventually commit suicide. With the help of private detectives and Richie "The Hammer" Ginelli, a former client with ties to organized crime, a now emaciated Billy tracks the Romani band north along the seacoast of New England to Maine. He confronts Lemke at their camp and tries to persuade him to lift the curse but Lemke refuses to do so, insisting that justice must be done upon Billy. The Romani inhabitants throw Billy out of their camp but not before Lemke's great-granddaughter Gina slingshots him through the hand with a ball bearing. Billy calls for help from Richie, who sends a mob doctor to treat Billy's hand and then arrives in person to terrorize the Romani camp. After Richie finishes with the inhabitants, Lemke agrees to meet with Billy. Lemke brings a strawberry pie with him and adds blood from Billy's wounded hand to it. The weight loss will stop for a short time but then resume unless Billy passes the curse to someone else by getting them to eat the pie. Lemke implores Billy to eat the pie himself so that he may die with dignity. After finding Richie's severed hand in his car and learning that he has been murdered, Billy returns home and intends to give the pie to Heidi, whom he has come to blame for his predicament. The next morning, though, he finds that both she and their daughter Linda have eaten from the pie. Realizing that they are both doomed, he cuts a slice for himself so that he can join them in death.

Billy Halleck is an obese upper class lawyer who lives with his wife Heidi and their daughter Linda in New England. Billy recently defended an underworld Mafia boss named Richie "The Hammer" Ginelli in court and is now celebrating his acquittal on a murder charge. Heidi, trying to persuade him to forget about his obsession with food, tries to give Billy oral sex as he is driving. Distracted, Billy accidentally runs over an elderly Romani woman named Suzanne Lempke, killing her. He is acquitted in the proceedings by his friend Judge Cary Rossington. The local police chief Duncan Hopley also obstructs the case by committing perjury for Billy.

Outraged by the injustice, Suzanne's father, Tadzu Lempke, places a curse on Billy on the steps of the courthouse by touching his face and uttering "Thinner". Soon afterward, Billy begins to lose weight rapidly despite not exercising or sticking to his diet. Heidi, fearing the weight loss may be due to cancer, calls Dr. Mike Houston, with whom Billy begins to suspect his wife is having an affair. Billy learns that Rossington and Hopley have also been cursed; Rossington has been metamorphosed into a lizard-like being, while Hopley develops purulent ulcers on his face and hands. Both Rossington and Hopley commit suicide. Billy tracks down the Romani camp and tries to reason with Tadzu; Tadzu threatens to make the curse worse if he doesn’t leave. Gina, Tadzu's great-granddaughter, uses her slingshot to shoot a large ball bearing which goes through Billy's hand, infuriating him into vowing revenge against Tadzu and the other Romani people who live there.

Billy enlists Ginelli to attack the Romani camp and persuade Tadzu to lift the curse. Chanting a spell, Tadzu mixes Billy's blood into a strawberry pie. Tadzu states that if someone else eats the pie, the curse will kill them quickly and Billy will be spared. He urges Billy to eat the pie himself and die with dignity but Billy refuses. Billy arrives home and gives Heidi the strawberry pie. She delightedly eats a piece. The next morning, Billy finds her desiccated corpse next to him. He is gleeful to be free of the curse and of what he believes is his disloyal wife. However, when he goes downstairs, he discovers that his daughter has eaten some of the pie for breakfast. Wracked with guilt, he prepares to eat the rest of the pie. However, he is interrupted by Mike at the door. Mike grows uncomfortable and struggles to explain his unannounced presence, seemingly confirming Billy's suspicions of an affair between Mike and Heidi. Billy invites Mike in for a piece of the pie and closes the door with a smirk.

The story begins late at night when François Delambre is awakened by the telephone. On the other end of the line is his sister-in-law Hélène who tells him that she has just killed his brother and that he should call the police. He does and they find the mangled remains of his brother in the family factory, his head and arm crushed under a hydraulic machine press.

Helène seems surprisingly calm throughout the investigation, willing to answer all questions except one: she will not give the reason for killing him. Eventually she is sent to a mental asylum and François is given custody of his brother's young son, Henri. François goes to visit her often, but she never provides the explanation for the question that he most desperately wants to know. Then one day Henri inquires how long a housefly's life span is and says he saw the fly his mother wants to catch, which has a white head. Realizing that this might somehow hold a clue to the murder, François confronts her with the news that Henri spotted a strange fly, and Hélène becomes extremely agitated. François threatens to go to the police and give them the information about the insect if she does not tell him what he wants to know. She relents and advises him to come back the next day, at which time he will receive his explanation. The next day she gives him a handwritten manuscript, and later that night he reads it.

His brother, André Delambre, was a brilliant research scientist who had just made an amazing discovery. Using machines that he called disintegrator-reintegrators, André could instantaneously transfer matter from one location to another through space. He had two such machines in his basement, one being used as a transmitter pod, the other as a receiver. Hélène's manuscript reveals that at first André encountered several flukes, including an experiment in which he transmitted an ashtray that reintegrated in the receiver pod with the words "Made in Japan" on the back written backwards. He also tried transmitting the family cat, which disintegrated perfectly but then never reappeared. Eventually, however, he ironed out the mistakes and found that the invention worked perfectly. Then one day André tried the experiment on himself. Unbeknownst to him, a housefly had entered the transmitter pod with him, and when he emerged from the receiver, his head and arm had been switched with that of the insect.

André tells Hélène that his only hope of salvation is for her to find the fly, identifiable by the fact that its head is completely white, so that he can transmit himself with it again in the hopes of regaining his missing atoms. A search of the house proves fruitless, and in desperation Hélène begs him to go through once more in the hopes that the transformation might reverse itself. Not believing it will work, but wanting to humor her, he agrees and goes through. He trips when he steps out of the receiver, and the cloth he has been covering his head with falls off. Hélène screams. His accident had switched his head and arm with that of a fly, and this last experiment mixed in parts from the missing cat. Now realizing that he has been transformed beyond all hope, André destroys the pods and all of the work in his lab and devises a way to commit suicide while at the same time hiding from the world what he had become. He shows Hélène how to operate the hydraulic press and then places himself under it. Obeying his last wish, Hélène pushes the button to lower the press and kills her husband. François goes to see Hélène the next day but receives heartbreaking news. Unable to live with her memories, she committed suicide by cyanide during the night. Later that evening François invites Inspector Charas, the policeman in charge of the case, over to his house for dinner. After finishing their meal, François allows him to read Hélène's manuscript. After reading it, Charas declares that Hélène must have been mad, and they both decide to destroy the "confession". But just as the story ends, François tells Charas that earlier that day he killed a fly and buried it at his brother's graveside. It was a fly with a white head.

Azaro is an abiku, or spirit-child, from the ghetto of an unknown city in Africa. He is constantly harassed by his sibling spirits from another world who want him to leave this mortal life and return to the world of spirits, sending many emissaries to bring him back. Azaro has stubbornly refused to leave this life owing to his love for his mother and father. He is the witness of many happenings in the mortal realm. His father works as a labourer while his mother sells items as a hawker. Madame Koto, the owner of a local bar, asks Azaro to visit her establishment, convinced that he will bring good luck and customers to her bar. Meanwhile, his father prepares to be a boxer after convincing himself and his family that he has a talent to be a pugilist. Two opposing political parties try to bribe or coerce the residents to vote for them.

In the teaser, Chandler and Monica cuddle while cooperating on a crossword puzzle, which Joey finds cute. That night, however, he dreams that he was doing the crossword puzzle with Monica, leading him to wonder if he finds her attractive. This is exacerbated when, at Central Perk the next morning, Monica is found wearing his sweatshirt as opposed to Chandler's, and later when Monica asks him to taste her cooking, leading to him confessing about his dreams. A bit of honest discussion between the three of them reveals that Joey is not really attracted to Monica, but rather to the intimacy and friendship she shares with Chandler. The two explain that this is because they were friends first before they started dating. Equipped with this new philosophy, he first tries to get on Rachel's good side, on the grounds that they are already friends, but she advises him to strike up a friendship with a woman and then pursue a relationship. Joey tries to do this, but when meeting a woman to strike up a friendship, he ends up in a threesome with her and her roommate.

While digging beneath a Central Perk chair cushion for spare change, Phoebe uncovers a policeman's badge. Though she promises to return it, she finds using it far more entertaining, exploiting her new-found power to force a smoking bystander to apologize to a tree on which she snubbed out a cigarette. When she begins threatening her friends with arrest, she realizes she has gone too far, but before she can return it, she tries to force an illegally-parked man to move his car. He turns out to be a policeman as well, and is unimpressed when she claims to be an undercover cop from the 15th district of Manhattan. This fellow, Gary, turns out to be the owner of the badge, but when he arrives at Monica's apartment to arrest her, he asks her out on a date instead.

Rachel is helping Ross shop for a new couch. After he finds one he likes, he forgoes delivery charges by having her help him carry it the three blocks to his apartment (he also fends off a condescending salesman by proclaiming that he and Rachel have had sex 298 times, leaving Rachel incredulous as to how he kept count). Getting it up a narrow stairwell proves more problematic, and after Rachel gets help from Chandler, the three attempt to manhandle the couch up the stairs, only to get it stuck between landings. The couch ends up cut in half after Rachel accidentally pulls the fire alarm and Ross’ neighbors have to walk over the couch. Ross then attempts to return it and receives store credit in the amount of four dollars.

The book follows the story of Pete Hallam as he returns to the school and becomes a history teacher as well as a coach. It is a story of the aftermath of World War II and the loss of innocence of young men.

It starts by Pete Hallam returning to the school from which he graduated wartorn and emotionally scarred. He is now a teacher at Devon School and detects a subtle but deep hate between two members of the class in the first session alone.

Teppei Takamiya is the caretaker of a farm located in Kamui Island, north of Japan. His older brother, Kotarō Takamiya, leaves to study robotics in Germany and becomes one of the most brilliant scientists in the world. Five years later, the two brothers reunite at a robotics convention in Mechatopia, China, where Kotarō is to announce his latest breakthrough in artificial intelligence. The convention goes awry when Kotarō is captured by the malevolent Machine Empire and taken to "The Area".

Teppei manages to hitch a ride on his brother's capturer and reaches the Machine Empire, Teppei is attacked by Metalface, one of the Empire's soldiers. Unable to win, Teppei is thrown, bleeding, in the Empire's junkyard. His blood reaches the trashed body of X, who was once considered one of the strongest B't of the Empire, and the disgruntled B't awakens. Faced with unanswered questions and imminent destruction, X reluctantly saves Teppei, and the pair flee the Area with soldiers of the Empire in hot pursuit.

Meanwhile, inside the Area, Kotarō discovers that he has been summoned by another of the Empire's soldiers, Major Aramis, to find a way to stop the ultimate B't - a creation known as Raffaello (ラファエロ) that has begun a terrifying and uncontrollable evolution.

Teppei's main goal is to save his brother, but as he and X venture further into the Area and learn more about the Machine Empire they start to fight for the survival of the human race. On the way to the center of the Empire they gain allies that help them prevail over the guardians of the empire.

The ultimate B't eventually finalizes its evolution and the Machine Emperor appears. Before the emperor can fuse with Raffaello, Teppei and his allies confront him.

Jerry learns he has a library fine from 1971, for the then-controversial book ''Tropic of Cancer'', and that the "case" has been turned over to the library investigations officer, Lt. Bookman. George arrives at the library, and suspects that the homeless man on the steps outside is Mr. Heyman, a physical education teacher at his high school whom he reported for giving him a wedgie, which got him fired. Jerry pays Mr. Bookman, and Heyman holds the dilapidated long-lost copy of ''Tropic of Cancer'' at the alleyway. Kramer flirts with the librarian, Marion, starting a forbidden affair with her.

Elaine is concerned that Mr. Lippman is planning to fire her, so after she sees Kramer crying over Marion's poetry, she takes some of it, trying unsuccessfully to impress Lippman with a new literary find.

Dr Jack McKee is a successful surgeon at a leading hospital. He and his wife, Anne, have all the trappings of success, although Jack works such long hours that he rarely has time to see their son and has become somewhat emotionally dead to his wife. His "bedside manner" with his patients, in many cases seriously ill, is also lacking. The decorum in the operating theater is very casual and the chatter between him and his partner, Dr. Murray Kaplan, not particularly professional.

Returning home from a charity event, Jack has a coughing fit. His wife is shocked when he coughs up blood all over her and the car. In an examination, Jack has a sample of a growth removed from his throat. The biopsy comes back positive for cancer. His time spent with another cold, impersonal surgeon in this examination is the beginning of his transformation. Further tests and disappointments are blended with scenes of other patients' grace and empathy towards each other and a much better view of the delays and missteps of their doctors and medical support personnel.

As Jack experiences life as a patient, he gains a clearer understanding of the emotional void hospitals, some doctors, and his own colleagues can display. He befriends June Ellis, a fellow cancer patient who has an inoperable brain tumor. She gets him to promise to never lie or mislead a patient again. Jack begins to bark at the medical establishment. Jack and June take off to see a Native American show, but the pace is too much for her. His wife, meanwhile, struggles to understand Jack's relationship with June.

Jack's radiation treatment does not stop the cancer on his vocal cords. His despair ends in a confrontation with Dr. Leslie Abbott, the surgeon treating him whom he provokes in a heated discussion. Jack asks a colleague he has previously ridiculed, Dr. Eli Bloomfield, to perform his needed surgery. Jack apologizes for his and Murray's insulting behavior, to which Eli replies with a smile, "Well, Jack, I've always wanted to slit your throat, and now I've got the chance." Eli's bedside manner is a perfect example for Jack.

Jack's cancer is treated and cured, but June dies. The experience changes Jack forever. When he returns to work, he begins to teach new medical interns about the importance of showing compassion and sensitivity towards their patients, which in turn will make them better doctors. Jack puts the interns in patient gowns, assigns them various illnesses and orders all the tests for them to "feel" the experience that they will soon put their patients through.

The film is set partially in the business offices and partially in the underworld of Paris. Carla, a lonely woman burdened by lack of respect from her co-workers and her only friend, Annie, begins to change after a younger man enters her life.

Carla is introduced immediately with a shot of her putting in her hearing aids. She is an overworked and under-appreciated secretary for a construction company, ridiculed behind her back by her co-workers who do not know she is deaf but despise her homely appearance and subservient position. After she faints from exhaustion she accepts the boss's offer to hire an intern to lighten her load.

The first applicant to be her assistant, Paul, is an ex-convict who is not technically qualified to be Carla's assistant, but she hires him. Paul's affable nature and "bad boy" spirit relieve Carla's loneliness and open up new possibilities for her. She rebuffs his initial clumsy sexual advances, but gradually they become a team, using creative but questionable methods to improve Carla's position at work.

Paul convinces her to help him – by using her lip-reading skills – to rob Marchand, a nightclub owner to whom he owes a lot of money and for whom he is working at night to pay off the debt. Reluctant at first, Carla becomes more intrigued as problems arise. After Paul fails to find the money, Carla finds it in Marchand's freezer and takes it to the car where she waits for Paul.

Marchand discovers the theft, thinks Paul stole the money, catches and beats him. Carla and Paul engineer his escape and the robbery's total success. As the movie ends, she instigates their making out for the first time in the car.

Set in 1998, six years after an apocalyptic nuclear war, a group of five U.S. Army deserters take refuge from acid rain in a seemingly abandoned laboratory complex in the ruins of Los Angeles. They soon discover that the lab was a top-secret government research center, where a genetically-engineered monster still lurks.

Jack Dundee (Williams) is a banker obsessed with what he considers the most shameful moment in his life: dropping a perfectly thrown pass in the final seconds of the 1972 high school football game between Taft and their arch rivals, Bakersfield, which ended in a scoreless tie.

Since that game, Jack has found it impossible to forget this event. He works for his father-in-law, The Colonel, Bakersfield's biggest supporter, who reminds him of the event almost daily.

Thirteen years later, Jack coerces Reno Hightower (Russell), quarterback of the fateful game, and now a financially struggling van specialist in debt to Jack's bank, into helping him replay the game. Reno is the greatest quarterback in the history of South Kern County and the only QB to wear white shoes. With Reno and Jack together, they convince supporters in both towns to re-stage the game and in the process revitalizes Taft, as well as his and Reno's marriages.

The morning after Ross and Rachel take a break from their relationship, Ross wakes up in his apartment to Chloe (Angela Featherstone) walking out of his bathroom, insinuating that they spent the night together. Hurriedly, checking his answering machine for messages, Ross realizes that Rachel had left a message apologizing, saying that she loved him, and that she was going to drop by his apartment. Unable to get rid of Chloe in time, he hides her behind the door as Rachel comes by to try things again. Ross quickly agrees and becomes her boyfriend again.

Not wasting any time, Ross goes over to Joey (Matt LeBlanc) and Chandler's (Matthew Perry) apartment to confess what he did. While Ross believes that he should tell Rachel everything, Joey and Chandler urge him not to. After reluctantly agreeing, the guys then try to figure out a way so that Rachel does not find out about Ross and Chloe on her own. Joey then tells Ross that he needs to think about 'the trail', which is the list of people between the girl he slept with, and the girl he does not want to find out what happened. Chandler traces the trail from Chloe to her coworker Isaac, who has a sister Jasmine, who works with Phoebe, who is best friends with Rachel.

As Ross goes down 'the trail' to prevent the news from getting to Rachel, he finds out that Chloe had already told Isaac, who had already told his sister Jasmine. While talking to Jasmine, he manages to get her to promise to not say anything to Phoebe. But, she mentions that he should talk to her roommate that she told, because her roommate knows Rachel, too. Who just so happens to be none other than Gunther (James Michael Tyler). Ross rushes to Central Perk to try to keep Gunther quiet, only to find out that Gunther had already told Rachel everything.

Meanwhile, Monica (Courteney Cox) and Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow) are back in Monica's bedroom trying a new waxing product they purchased called Waxine, but the pain is too great. Hearing the screams from across the hall, Joey and Chandler rush to their rescue. But, before they can leave the room, an angry Rachel storms into the apartment, followed by Ross. Monica, Phoebe, Chandler, and Joey stay in the bedroom, unbeknownst to Ross and Rachel.

The fight between Ross and Rachel is even worse than the night before when they took a break from their relationship. Rachel gets even angrier with Ross as he tries to talk to her and settle things between the two of them. She is upset that she had to hear everything that happened between Ross and Chloe from Gunther, and she gets furious when Ross accidentally lets slip out that Chloe was still in his apartment when Rachel had come over to get back together earlier that morning. Rachel then tries to make Ross see her perspective by mocking him and creating a scenario where she sleeps with another man. Chandler and Joey want to leave, but Ross tells Rachel he was planning on tell her everything but Chandler and Joey told him not to. Humiliated, the boys decide not to leave the bedroom, but the four friends get so hungry that they eat the Waxine, which happens to be organic, but not edible.

At 3:00 a.m., Ross is still trying to get Rachel to forgive him. Just as it seems as though Rachel might forgive him, Ross starts touching her and kissing her, but she stands up and slaps his hands away, telling him to go home. Suddenly, Ross walks over to her and tries again to tell her that they can work past this. He then tells her that he cannot imagine his life without her. Both start to cry as Ross gets down on his knees and begs for forgiveness. Rachel refuses, telling him that she cannot forgive him because she cannot stop picturing Ross with Chloe and that there is nothing he can say or do, because it has changed everything between them forever. The two sadly part, leaving Ross devastated and saying "This can't be it." To which Rachel wonders, "Then how come it is?"

The episode ends with the other four finally being able to get out of the bedroom and find Rachel on the couch, and Ross nowhere to be seen. Monica wraps a blanket over Rachel as the other three quietly cross the room to go to their respective homes.

The experimental North American X-15 program at Edwards Air Force Base involves test pilots: civilian Matt Powell (David McLean), Lt. Col. Lee Brandon (Charles Bronson) and Maj. Ernest Wilde (Ralph Taeger). The cutting edge high-speed program is ramrodded by project chief Tom Deparma (James Gregory) and US Air Force Col. Craig Brewster (Kenneth Tobey). As the test pilots prepare for the planned launch of the rocket-powered aircraft from a Boeing B-52 Stratofortress mother ship, they experience emotional and physical problems, which they share with their wives and sweethearts.

Test after test results in setbacks, including a near disaster when an engine explodes during a ground test and engulfs the X-15 and its pilot in flames, but finally the X-15 begins to set records in speed and altitude for a piloted aircraft. When the X-15 "flames out" on a high altitude run, after guiding the X-15 to a safe landing, saving Powell's life, Lt. Col. Brandon, flying a chase aircraft, is killed in a crash. Powell himself takes the X-15 into outer space for the final test.

===Part one=== Sassinak and her family live on a newly colonized world (called Myriad) and are celebrating the end of the production year when all the colonies goods will be exported to other worlds. But the carrier never comes, and instead the planet and its people are soon under attack by pirates. The colonists put up a futile defense against the pirates' superior firepower, numbers and skill at their task. Sassinak witnesses the death of both her parents and her two siblings before she is taken off planet to become a slave.

At the slave depot she is sold, but is counseled by another slave called Abe - who is ex-Fleet. He teaches her discipline and embeds a message in her mind that will only be remembered when she is confronted with a Fleet officer. She is sold once again when her skills have improved enough for her to work as a navigator on a ship. The ship that she is on is captured by Fleet and she is rescued, the embedded message comes out and Fleet is able to attack the slave depot and free all the slaves.

Abe adopts Sassinak and she begins her quest to go to the Academy, where all Fleet officers receive their training. After prep-school she enters the Academy and excels but is always conscious that she wants to hunt pirates when she gets her stars and her own ship. On her graduation night Abe takes her out for dinner, but Abe is killed. Sassinak suspects it is an assassination. She goes on her first deployment without any family, adopted or no and is an orphan once more.

Killashandra Ree has spent ten years studying music and training to be a vocal soloist, anticipating interstellar celebrity. After a final exam she learns that a flaw in her voice will prevent her from singing lead. She dreads a life limited to choral work and supporting operatic roles so she plans to exit both school and home planet discreetly.

At the spaceport she meets a vital older man who uses perfect pitch, and his occupational experience as a "crystal singer" on Ballybran, to identify an incoming space shuttle on the verge of explosion. He treats her to a whirlwind romance and the experience of her home planet in ways entirely unknown to her, but sincerely warns her against the high-status, high-income occupation that makes such a vacation possible for him. Further, one of its occupational hazards leaves him in a coma, but Killashandra determines to accompany his return home under life support, and to investigate membership in the Heptite Guild of crystal singers for herself.

The crystalline rock of Ballybran, when skilfully cut, is essential to advanced power and communications systems at the heart of interstellar civilization. Only the Guild "singers" can mine crystal: locate it, and cut it with voice-controlled machinery. Killashandra's ability to sing perfect pitch meets one qualification, she knows, and she passes other qualifying exams in the staging area on Ballybran's moon.

Travel to Ballybran itself, however, is forbidden to all but its resident singers and supporting population, about 30,000 people. The moon-side orientation program secretly explains why: a native spore soon invades the human body and causes genetic mutations. Some newcomers will die of the initial infection and many will adapt only partly, with a mix of permanent symptoms such as vastly increased visual acuity along with complete deafness. Those who adapt fully to symbiotic life may become singers; other survivors must join the staff. The symbiont maintains its host, perhaps for hundreds of years, but only on Ballybran; only the fully adapted singers can safely depart, and only briefly.

Full adaptation brings remarkable benefits, including increased sensory perception, rapid tissue regeneration and a vastly prolonged life expectancy, but it renders all hosts sterile, and eventually causes severe memory loss, paranoia and dementia. Even after full adaptation with the symbiont, mining Ballybran crystal is a dangerous occupation. Beside the risks associated with other mining operations, there are frequent storms with high winds that may cause crystal deposits to resonate: "sonic storms" that may impair the symbiont and drive the singer mad.

The Guild provides life support for physically disabled or insane members, many aspects of the industry are highly centralized, and everyone begins with big debts. Yet singers in the field are solo adventurers who establish private claims, work them in secret, and sometimes amass great fortunes.

Killashandra and thirty others accept the personal risks and make the commitment. The story follows her and her classmates in a general education program, awaiting infection. When her own adaptation is unusually rapid and easy, she advances alone to rapid acquaintance with the rules and customs, transport and cutting equipment, emergency procedures, commercial values, and some of the planet-bound specialists. She is especially sensitive to "black crystal", the rarest and most valuable variety. Partly for that talent, the Guild Master Lanzecki becomes her mentor (but soon her lover as well). Before any of her classmates learns to fly or to cut, she is in the field. She is first to find the unknown claim of a black crystal miner recently destroyed in a crash, and she cuts some of it adequately.

Killashandra's rapid adaptation and training have isolated her from the other newcomers and her continued success has fostered jealousy, she sees even in her closest friends among the former classmates. So she accepts an assignment offered by Lanzecki, to install "her" set of crystals in a recently settled planetary system. The cost of a black crystal set is high, even on the planetary scale, which has made its acquisition politically controversial and its installation a celebrity event. Killashandra must not only complete the technical installation but also represent the Guild in a public performance not unlike her one-time aspiration. She succeeds on both counts.

"The French Riviera _ _ in the Twenties": while at a party in the south of France, Nicole Diver, a woman with many emotional issues, sees her husband, Dr. Dick Diver, take an interest in an American movie starlet, Rosemary Hoyt. Jealousy gets the better of Nicole.

The story flashes back to how Dick and Nicole met. He was a distinguished psychiatrist who made the classic mistake of falling in love with a patient, Nicole Warren. He marries her despite warnings from his mentor, Dr. Dohmler, that it will ruin Dick's career.

Dick spends the next years of his life abandoning his work to indulge wife Nicole's many whims, leading a hedonistic life, paid for by Nicole's sophisticated sister, Baby. By the time he realizes the error of his ways and attempts to resume his career, it is Nicole who has found a new lover, and she wants a divorce.

V.H. Adderly (Rekert) is a secret agent for an organization known as the I.S.I (International Security and Intelligence). Before the series begins, an enemy agent, Victor Barinov, crushes Adderly's left hand with a medieval mace during an interrogation in East Germany. Adderly loses the use of the hand, and since he is no longer considered useful as an active agent, he is reassigned to the I.S.I.'s tiny Department of Miscellaneous Affairs, located in a small basement office. This is meant to be a sort of "good service" reward for Adderly, as his supposedly cushy Miscellaneous Affairs job is mostly concerned with mundane in-house administrative paperwork. During the series, Adderly consistently finds ways to use his vague, non-specific status as a representative of "Miscellaneous Affairs" to actively investigate anything the I.S.I. has overlooked, and regularly goes above and beyond his mundane duties to uncover and neutralize dread plots that the larger organization has failed to investigate.

Miscellaneous Affairs is officially run by Melville Greenspan (Welsh), a man fastidiously devoted to bureaucracy and unwilling to allow Adderly the freedom to pursue his outside interests. The only other departmental staff member is Mona Ellerby (Seatle), Greenspan's over-qualified secretary who is addicted to adventure and romance novels. Greenspan's superior is Major Jonathan B. Clack (Pogue), who is in charge of the I.S.I. as a whole, and is responsible for Adderly's reassignment from active field operations to Miscellaneous Affairs.

Through the course of the 44-episode run, Adderly repeatedly demonstrates his ability to perform the duties of an active field agent, even saving the life of Major Clack himself. This only confirms to Clack that Adderly is an important asset at his current post. It is implied that Clack may have created the Department of Miscellaneous Affairs to allow Adderly the freedom and flexibility to pursue various cases which the I.S.I. couldn't normally handle.

Kaname and Misako's marriage is drifting towards separation and divorce, and Misako has taken a lover, Aso, with Kaname's approval. Their young son, Hiroshi, does not yet know anything about their plans. Both are procrastinating over their decision. Kaname realizes that he is fascinated by his father-in-law's obsessions with the bunraku theater and with young mistress, O-hisa. Misako's father is a traditionalist who attempts to keep the couple engaged in the arts of Japan in order to purge the negative influence from the West.

The play revolves around the lives of three women who are living in the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Rhonda has recently split with her boyfriend, Billie is married, and Judy is considered a "fag hag" by the other two as she often unknowingly dates men who turn out to be homosexual.

With eight hours before the minefield is destroyed, Sisko's fleet engages the Dominion fleet defending DS9. Sisko orders Federation fighters to engage the Cardassian warships, hoping the less disciplined Cardassians will break formation and create a hole in the Dominion lines. Aboard DS9, Dukat sees through Sisko's ruse; he deliberately allows some of his ships to open a hole in the formation to set a trap for the Federation fleet. Aware that Dukat is setting a trap, Sisko nonetheless orders his ships forward, desperate to reach the station.

Meanwhile, Dukat's aide Damar arrests Kira, Sisko's son Jake, and Rom's wife Leeta, correctly surmising they are part of a conspiracy against Dominion rule. The visiting Changeling, attempting to break Odo's bond with the "solids" and return him to his own people, tells Odo of Kira's arrest.

As the Federation fleet becomes overwhelmed, a Klingon fleet arrives and flanks the Dominion. They clear a path for the ''Defiant'', though the rest of the allied ships are unable to follow.

Rom's brother Quark and Dukat's daughter Ziyal free Jake, Kira, Rom, and Leeta from jail. Kira and Rom set off to sabotage the station's weapons. They are cornered by Dominion soldiers, but are rescued by Odo and his security team. Rom disables the weapons, but seconds too late to prevent the destruction of the minefield.

Sisko orders the ''Defiant'' into the wormhole, where they encounter a massive Dominion fleet. As Sisko prepares for a desperate suicide mission, he receives a vision from the Bajoran Prophets, the powerful aliens who live in the wormhole, who are upset that he intends to sacrifice himself before fulfilling their purposes. Sisko pleads with them to help the Bajorans, who created a religion around them. The Prophets cause the Dominion ships to vanish, but warn Sisko that a penance will be exacted.

The ''Defiant'' exits the wormhole and fires on the station, which cannot respond due to Rom's sabotage. Meanwhile, the Klingons and the Federation have outflanked the Dominion fleet, with 200 ships heading for Deep Space Nine. The Dominion evacuates, but Ziyal refuses to leave, confessing to her father that she helped Kira and her friends escape. Damar overhears her confession and shoots her as an enemy of the state. Dukat collapses in grief as she dies in his arms.

By the time Sisko arrives on the station, Dukat is in a holding cell, sobbing over the loss of his daughter. As he is escorted to the infirmary, he returns Captain Sisko's baseball.

The storyline of ''Sky Commanders'' comprises the daily adventures of a multi-national group of soldiers and mountaineering specialists from all over the world who battle the evil General Lucas Plague and his goon squad of villainous mercenaries and miscreants, "The Raiders", whose aim is to seize control of the planet. The series is set on a new continent deep in the South Pacific, which was created by the emergence to the surface world of a new and powerful, unstable radioactive element, called "Phaeta Seven" (θ-7).

This lethal energy source can only be stabilized for containment by exposure to temperatures of −200 °F (−128.89 °C). It is known that whoever can control the element and harness its enormous power would be the ruler of the world; a goal that the amoral General Plague wants strongly. It is up to General Mike Summit and his highly trained soldiers to stop him.

Complicating the Sky Commanders' objective of stopping the criminal ambitions of the Raiders is the fact the new continent (collectively referred to in the series as "The High Frontier") is routinely beset by sporadic, unstable and highly dangerous weather conditions and environmental hazards, such as: landslides, earthquakes, cave-ins, whirlpools, etc. There is also the need for monthly shipments of fresh supplies, new advanced technology and weapon systems. Constant attack by the scheming and underhanded Raiders and the aforementioned environmental dangers make the Sky Commanders's mission only that much more dangerous.

Travel throughout the new continent is only possible by means of high-altitude flight, or by using Laser Cables: a specialized version of a rappelling cord emitted from combat backpacks worn by both Raider and Sky Commander. When used, the cables shoot out from the combat backpacks in the form of energy beams. When contact is made with a solid object, the Laser Cable solidifies into a solid metal cable line upon which travel is possible.

Phaeta Seven, the radioactive element that both sides fight to control, came from the deepest subterranean recesses of Earth itself, and it has brought with it, on its rise to the surface of Earth, not only the new continent itself, but also a wild and voracious, bizarre menagerie of utterly horrific creatures to inhabit it. These lifeforms are either the products of long-term mutative exposure to Phaeta Seven's radiation, or were just naturally brought about the way that they are. Occasional violent encounters with these monstrosities is yet another danger waiting for both sides of this battle for the future freedom or enslavement of the world.

A Vermont farm girl Gwen Harding enrolls in the renowned Devereau dance school in the New York. Her singing makes her semi-popular, and she is soon noticed by fellow student Richard "Slick" Ellis. Ellis' jealous girlfriend Brenda Allenby is soon involved. Farm problems conflict with dance school life and even though her new friends try to help out, other problems, including a vindictive romantic rival, arise.

A blacksmith forges a sword and shows it to his son, Conan, as he tells him of the "Riddle of Steel", an aphorism on the importance of the metal to their people, the Cimmerians. One day, a band of raiders, led by Thulsa Doom, massacre the Cimmerians; dogs kill Conan's father, and Doom takes the sword and decapitates Conan's mother. The children are taken into slavery and chained to work a large mill, the Wheel of Pain. Conan survives into adulthood, becoming a massive, muscular man. His master trains him to be a gladiator. After winning countless fights and receiving training and education in the East, Conan is freed. He is soon chased by wild dogs and seeks refuge in an Atlantean colonist warrior's tomb, where he retrieves an ancient sword. Conan wanders the world, encountering a prophetic witch in a hut and then befriends Subotai, a Hyrkanian thief and archer.

Following the witch's advice, Conan and Subotai go to the city of Zamora to seek out Doom. There, they meet Valeria, a female brigand. They raid the Tower of the Serpent, stealing jewels and other valuables (Including the greatest jewel of all: The Eye of the Serpent) from a shrine, and slaying a giant snake in the process. After escaping with their loot, the thieves celebrate, and Conan has sex with Valeria. The city guards capture the trio and bring them to King Osric, who requests they rescue his daughter, Princess Yasimina—now a zealot in Doom's cult—for a handsome reward. Subotai and Valeria refuse to take up the quest; Conan, however, motivated by his hatred for Doom and his desire for vengeance, sets off alone to the villain's Temple of Set, also known as the Mountain of Power.

Disguised as a priest, Conan infiltrates the temple, but he is discovered, captured, and tortured. Doom lectures him on the power of flesh, which he demonstrates by hypnotically enticing a girl to leap to her death. He then orders for Conan to be crucified on the Tree of Woe. The barbarian is on the verge of death when he is discovered by Subotai and brought to Akiro, the Wizard of the Mounds, who lives on a burial site for warriors and kings (and who narrates the movie as Conan's chronicler). The wizard summons spirits to heal Conan and warns that they will "extract a heavy toll", which Valeria is willing to pay. These spirits also try to abduct Conan, but he is restored to health after Valeria and Subotai fend them off.

Subotai and Valeria agree to help Conan complete Osric's quest and infiltrate the Temple of Set. As the cult indulges in a cannibalistic orgy, the thieves attack and flee with the princess, but Conan is unable to engage Doom, who has magically transformed into a large snake and slithered away. Valeria is mortally wounded by Doom after he shoots a stiffened snake as an arrow at her. She dies in Conan's arms, acknowledging the price of the "toll" forewarned by the wizard in exchange for Conan's life, and is cremated at the Mounds, where Conan prepares with Subotai and the wizard to battle Doom. Conan asks Crom, the god of his people, to grant him revenge. By using booby traps and exploiting the terrain, they manage to slay Doom's warriors (including Thorgrim) when they arrive. Just when Doom's lieutenant, Rexor, is about to overcome Conan, Valeria reappears for a brief moment as a Valkyrie to save him from the mortal blow. After losing his men, Doom shoots a stiffened snake-arrow at the princess, but Subotai blocks the shot with his shield and the villain flees to his temple. The battle ends with Conan having recovered his father's sword from his enemies, a sword splintered by his own hand in battle.

Conan sneaks back to the temple where Doom is addressing the members of his cult. Conan confronts Doom, who receives him with open arms and attempts to mesmerize him, but the barbarian resists and uses his father's broken sword to behead his nemesis. The disillusioned cultists disperse after Doom's death, and Conan burns down the temple.

An older Conan is shown wearing a crown and sitting on a throne, while on screen text reveals that after he returned the princess to King Osric, he and his friends left and found adventure in the West. After many years and many victories in battle, Conan became a king by his own hand...but that is another story.

Shatter (Stuart Whitman) is a hitman contracted to kill a dictator in a certain African country. He completes his assignment and returns to Hong Kong to collect his fee, only to learn that he himself is the next target of the assassination because he was intended to be used as a scapegoat by his client for a larger political agenda. Being pursued by various government agencies and gangsters, Shatter seeks help from a master martial artist Tai Pah (Lung Ti) and promises to share half of his fee in exchange for Tai Pah's protection and assistance in recovering his fee.

Based on the true story of Jessica McClure, the child who fell into an abandoned water well while playing in her aunt's backyard in Midland, Texas. She was stuck in the well 22 feet down and it took rescuers 58 hours to get her out. There was fear that if they shook the ground too much with machinery they could cause her to fall further down and die. Rescuers managed to successfully excavate alongside the well shaft and bring her to safety.

Elantris was once a place of magic, and the immortal Elantrians were gods in the eyes of people, with the divine ability to create and heal with a mere wave of a hand. Anyone in Arelon had the potential to become an Elantrian through a magical transformation known as the Shaod. But ten years ago, a cataclysm known as the Reod somehow destroyed the magic of Elantris, the inhabitants of the city became "cursed," and the city was sealed off from society. Anyone affected by the Shaod is now thrown into Elantris to stay there forever, still immortal, but cursed with unquenchable hunger and unhealable pain.

The book focuses on three principal characters whose stories intertwine. Much of the book occurs in groupings of three chapters, one for each of the three main characters. The majority of the story takes places within the country of Arelon.

Main characters

There are three main point-of-view characters in the story: '''Prince Raoden''', the prince of Arelon, is transformed into an Elantrian at the beginning of the book. After the Reod, Elantrians were cursed with dark splotches on their skin and hair falling out. The cursed cannot die or be killed except by drastic measures, such as burning or beheading. A major part of the curse is that their bodies can not repair themselves, so they continue to feel the pain of a stubbed toe or bruise forever. Over time the minor injuries accumulate, eventually driving them all insane. Elantrians do not need to eat, but they feel torturous hunger when they don't. Once Raoden is transformed, he is immediately sent to Elantris in secret while his father pretends he has suddenly died. Raoden's storyline centers on his efforts to retain his sanity and improve the Elantrian way of life beyond the anarchy to which it succumbed when Elantris fell. He does this by displaying amazing skills as a leader and getting the Elantrians to focus on work, as opposed to their constant suffering. He also manages to calm and disperse or incorporate the gangs which were terrorizing new Elantrians upon their arrival. '''Princess Sarene''' is the princess of Teod and would have been Raoden's political bride had he not been cursed. Raoden has never personally met her, so it comes as a surprise to her when she discovers upon her arrival in Arelon that they are considered to have been married if either of them dies before the wedding. Widow of a supposedly dead prince and a new member of the mostly ill-suited Arelon nobility, she struggles to find out what exactly is going in all affairs concerning the nobility of Arelon, the downtrodden common people of Arelon and Elantris, and what exactly happened to her now deceased husband. Sarene's storyline follows her attempts to stabilize and improve the monarchy and political system, which encouraged nobles to mistreat the peasants. While spending her time in Arelon, she learns of Gyorn Hrathen, and relies upon her knowledge and skills to prevent his religious revolution. *'''Gyorn Hrathen''', a Derethi gyorn, otherwise known as a high-ranking priest, arrives in Arelon with a mandate to convert the country to the Derethi religion within three months' time, or his religion's armies will come to destroy the entire nation of Arelon. He parades around the nation to spread propaganda with the intention to make Arelenes hate Elantris and their religion, Shu-Korath, and, in turn, convert to Derethi. He takes advantage of the corrupt nobility of the region in order to reach his end goal, often holding secret meetings with them that involve bribery. Hrathen's storyline focuses on his efforts towards politically maneuvering the Arelene aristocracy, with the ultimate intention being to place a converted Derethi on the throne. The novel occasionally focuses on his inward struggles as he feels he must come to terms with the religion he is supposed to believe, for even he questions his work ethic at times.

Aons

Aons are central to the book's plot and are the means by which the Elantrians perform magic. Many characters' names are variations on the Aons, as is customary in this fantasy world. The images of the many Aons can be found in the back of the book. Raoden rediscovers many of the Aons while in Elantris, preserved in scrolls that have not been consumed by the decay of the city. He learns to invoke the Aons, but finds they have lost their power, which is the ultimate cause of Elantris' collapse. Near the end of the book, Sarene helps Raoden discover that the shapes of the Aons coincide with physical landmarks and natural features located around the country. A massive fissure in the earth that now cuts through the country 'altered' these landmarks, which in turn caused the Aons to lose their power. By 'reconstructing' the Aons to now incorporate the fissure in their design, Raoden restores the Aons' power. After realizing that Elantris and its surrounding cities are just one big Aon, he draws a giant line to represent the fissure, which restores Elantris and the Elantrians to their former glory.

Masaru Aso is the laboratory assistant of geneticist Doctor Mochizuki. He is used in one of Mochizuki's experiments related to the creation of the Neo-Lifeform, enabling him to transform into the grasshopper-like Kamen Rider ZO. He flees to the mountains and lapses into a two-year coma before he is awakened by a telepathic call to protect Hiroshi Mochizuki, the doctor's son. After an attempt to discover the meaning of his transformation at Mochizuki Genetics, Masaru senses that Hiroshi is in danger and saves the boy from Doras as ZO. Masaru then reveals himself to Reiko and her karate class. ZO battles Koumori Man (created by Doras) to cover Hiroshi and Reiko's escape, but they are sucked into a pocket dimension by Kumo Woman (which was also created by Doras). ZO saves them and kills Kumo Woman; Koumori Man snatches Hiroshi, with ZO in pursuit. After he saves Hiroshi, Masaru tells Seikichi (Hiroshi's grandfather) that Mochizuki used him in his experiments. Refusing to believe it, Hiroshi runs off. Masaru finds him and fixes his watch, recognizing the melody which awakened him as he helps Hiroshi cope with the revelation. Koumori Man assumes Mochizuki's form to lure Hiroshi away, and Doras knocks Masaru unconscious. Masaru awakens when a grasshopper shows him where Hiroshi has been taken. Making his way to a complex, ZO kills Koumori Man. He finds Hiroshi and Dr. Mochizuki, learning that the geneticist was the one who woke him up and that the Neo-Lifeform has been acting independently to become a perfect being. When ZO tries to fight Doras, he is absorbed by the Neo-Lifeform and Doras uses Hiroshi to force Mochizuki to complete its evolution. The music from Hiroshi's watch keeps Doras at bay as ZO escapes from the monster, and Mochizuki sacrifices himself to destroy the pool (the Neo-Lifeform's life source). The complex self-destructs as ZO and Hiroshi escape. Leaving the boy with Seikichi, Masaru leaves for parts unknown.

When Nicky (John Cassavetes) calls Mikey (Peter Falk) yet again to bail him out of trouble—this time a contract on his life for money he stole from his mob boss—Mikey, as always, shows up to help. Overcoming the obstacles of Nicky's paranoia and blind fear, Mikey gets him out of the hotel where he has holed up, and starts to help him plan his escape, but Nicky keeps changing the plan, and a hitman (Ned Beatty) is hot on their trail. As they try to make their escape, the two friends have to confront issues of betrayal, regret, and the value of friendship versus self-preservation.

The film takes place in the deepest part of Africa. The evil, bald, and multi-breasted Queen Bazonga, who resides in a blimp, inside a cave shaped like a women's legs spread open revealing her vagina, plans to conquer Earth. Before she can do that, however, she wishes to have a full set of hair so people can take her seriously. Her two-headed assistant, called the Charles of the Pits, suggests a "scalp transplant", an experiment where someone else's hair is transplanted to another person's head. Bazonga demands that she wants the hair of June, the maid of Shame: Ruler of the jungle. Bazonga sends out her penis soldiers to kidnap June.

Meanwhile, that night, June kicks out Shame from their home after another night of unsuccessful sex. She ends up sleeping with Flicka, Shame's monkey pal. The next morning, Bazonga's soldiers barge in and kidnap June, but only after they have an orgy with her. Shame hears June's screams and comes to her rescue, but he is too late. Shame eventually decides to save his mate and immediately sets out on his quest with Flicka.

As he swings through the jungle, an airplane crashes in a giant mud pit, containing a crew of four explorers set out to find Shame. The crew include the eccentric Professor Cedric Addlepate, the ditzy Stephanie Starlet, the grumbling Brutish (who only wants to find Shame for fame), and his assistant Short, a nervous black man. As the crew wander through the jungle, they eventually find Shame. Before they can get acquainted, Brutish and Short step in to take Shame back to the plane, leaving the Professor to be eaten alive by savage monkeys known as "Molar Men" while Stephanie is tied up to a tree. The Molar Men catch up with Brutish and Short and eat them both. They free Shame from the cage, but only to try and eat him. Shame gets saved by a beer-guzzling frat boy named Craig Baker who flies on a carpet run by a flock of birds. After a lengthy conversation with Shame, Craig gets drunk and falls off the carpet. Shame also falls off, but is saved by Flicka.

Shame and Flicka eventually make it to Bazonga's lair. Flicka is told to stay behind while Shame goes to get June. He has caught Bazonga's soldiers while they were on a practice drill. Shame is taken to Bazonga, who tries to convince Shame to join her side and rule the world with her. Shame says he only wants June, which enrages Bazonga. Shame runs off to find June, who is about to receive the scalp transplant from the bickering Charles of the Pits. Bazonga's soldiers try to stop Shame, which results in the blimp moving and main generator exploding, which sends the place on fire. Bazonga cannot escape from the fire in her office. Shame sees this and saves her by igniting the Emergency Fire Alarm, which sends out more of Bazonga's soldiers to cover themselves in condoms and dive inside Bazonga's vagina until she explodes. One of the heads on the Charles of the Pits kills the other while in a heated conversation. Shocked by this, the other head sets June free. They try to escape, but the Charles of the Pits is killed by acid semen shooting all over the place.

Shame eventually finds June, who keeps bickering to Shame while they find a way to escape the blimp, as it drills its way out of the cave and flies all around the jungle. The two find an emergency two-seated parachute, and spring out of the blimp, which finally crashes onto Bazonga's cave, destroying it forever. As June kisses Shame for his bravery, they both spot Stephanie Starlet, who becomes the leader of the Molar Men, and plans to conquer Hollywood.

Diana Emerson visits the book section of Klopper's department store seeking a copy of ''Dark Safari'' by the famed explorer Cuddleford. She tells the clerk Buzz Johnson that she will pay $2,500 for a map that is inside the book. Buzz's friend and coworker Stanley Livington, an armchair explorer, has read the book and says that he is familiar with a map within it. Buzz brings Stanley to Diana's home to draw the map, but when he overhears Diana offer Clyde Beatty $20,000 to lead an expedition to capture a legendary giant ape, Buzz realizes that the map is worth considerably more. Buzz negotiates for more money and for he and Stanley to join the safari.

They travel to the Congo with Diana's team of explorers, including Harry "Boots" Wilson, Grappler McCoy and Gunner, a nearsighted professional hunter. When he learns that the expedition's true goal is not the giant ape but a fortune in diamonds, Buzz renegotiates their deal. However, the map in the book with which Stanley is familiar is one that he had drawn to plot the route to his job at Klopper's. However, Stanley's memory of the book's details bring the party to the region Diana in which is interested. There they run across famed animal collector Frank Buck.

A cannibal tribe sets a trail of diamonds to lure and capture Buzz and Stanley. The boys are rescued by a grateful gorilla whom Stanley had inadvertently rescued from one of Frank Buck's traps. The cannibal chief offers Diana diamonds in exchange for Stanley, but Stanley flees while Buzz recovers the diamonds and hides them. While pursuing Stanley, the expeditionary team and the cannibals are frightened away by the giant ape whose existence had been dismissed as myth. The friendly gorilla recovers the diamonds before Buzz can do so. Distraught over the loss of his treasure, Buzz abandons Stanley in the jungle.

Some time later, back in the United States, Stanley appears prosperous and owns his own skyscraper, and Buzz works as the elevator operator. Stanley's partner is the gorilla who had recovered the diamonds.

In the 1930s, Mathew "Moose" Flanagan and his family move from Santa Monica to Alcatraz Island when his father takes a new job as an electrician and a guard in the well-known Alcatraz prison. Moose becomes friends with the wardens at Alcatraz's daughter, Piper, who regularly gets into trouble in her attempts to earn money to get off of Alcatraz. Piper talks Moose into being part of her money-making schemes, like having inmates on the island do laundry for the kids at school. When the scheme fails and the Warden receives word of it, the children are punished and have to find a new way to spend their time.

In an attempt to gain acceptance, Moose hangs around the prisoners' rec center in hopes of finding a stray baseball for use in games with the other kids. Moose eventually notices his older sister Natalie developing a relationship with convict 105, also known as Onion, who is trusted and able to roam freely because his sentence is almost up. Onion knows Moose has been looking for a baseball and gives him one. Scared of his sister hanging out with a convict, Moose is only reassured because of his confidence that she will be re-accepted to the Marinoff P. Esther School for people with special needs. Moose and his family's hopes are crushed when the school rejects Natalie. Desperate to help Natalie, Moose, with the help of Piper, writes a letter to the infamous criminal Al Capone, who works in Alcatraz's laundry. The letter asks Capone to pull any strings he has to help Moose's family get his sister back into school. Within days, Natalie is accepted into a new Esther P. Marinoff School branch for older children. The next day Moose is getting ready for the day when he finds a note in the sleeve of his shirt with the word "Done" underlined.

Eloise Larkin and her fiancé Arthur's plans to attend the rehearsal of a play are jeopardized because no one will babysit her obnoxious kid brother Donald. Eloise phones the Cosman Employment Agency, where Mr. Dinkle and Jack just happen to be seeking work. Jack flirts with Cosman employee Polly, but he is thwarted by the arrival of her boyfriend, a towering police officer. Polly sends Dinkle and Jack to babysit, but an attempt to lull the boy to sleep by reading the fairy tale ''Jack and the Beanstalk'' (Jack's "favorite novel") aloud fails when Jack stumbles over the larger words. Bemused by Jack, Donald reads the story instead — a role-reversal made complete when Jack falls asleep as Donald reads. In his slumber, Jack dreams that he is the young Jack of the fairy tale.

In his dream, Jack learns that a Giant, who lives in a castle in the sky, has taken all of the kingdom's food as well as the crown jewels. The dire situation obliges the kingdom's princess to marry a prince from a neighboring kingdom whom she has never met. Jack must also make sacrifices. His mother sends him to sell the last family possession, their beloved cow "Henry", to the local butcher, Mr. Dinklepuss. Along the way Jack meets the prince, disguised as a troubador, who is kidnapped by the Giant soon afterward. The unscrupulous Dinklepuss pays Jack five "magic" beans for the cow. Upon returning home, Jack learns that the Giant has also kidnapped the princess and Henry.

Jack's mother, exasperated over the beans, tells Jack to plant them and a gigantic beanstalk grows overnight. He decides to climb the beanstalk to rescue everyone from the Giant's clutches and retrieve "Nellie", the golden-egg laying hen that the Giant previously stole from Jack's family. Upon learning of Nellie's existence, Dinklepuss joins Jack on the adventure. When they reach the top of the beanstalk Jack and Dinklepuss are captured by the Giant and imprisoned with the prince and princess. The princess falls for the troubador only to later learn this is the same prince she was betrothed.

The Giant releases Dinklepuss and Jack from the dungeon in order to toil around his castle. They befriend his housekeeper, Polly, who helps them escape over the castle wall along with the royal prisoners, Nellie and some of the Giant's stolen gems (pilfered by the greedy Dinklepuss). They flee down the beanstalk with the Giant in pursuit. During the descent, Dinklepuss loses Nellie (who falls into the arms of Jack's mother) and then the gems, which rain down upon the impoverished townsfolk below. Once all reach the ground, Jack chops down the beanstalk, sending the Giant falling to his death. The villagers rejoice by dancing around the hole the Giant made from his fall.

Just before being rewarded by the King for heroism, Jack is rudely awakened when Donald breaks a vase over Jack's head just as Eloise and Arthur return home from rehearsal. Jack's cries out, but receives a second blow to the head from Dinkle, which returns Jack to his dream state. After greeting Eloise and Arthur as their storybook counterparts, Jack dances off into the night with the bravado of "Jack the Giant-Killer".

In the beginning, The Off Season appears to be the story of a young couple from New York City moving up to Maine to get away from it all. Soon, strange things begin to happen in the one-room apartment that they occupy—things that the once close couple cannot discuss with each other. This is not a typical ghost story resulting from a tragic death, but the tale of a place haunted by guilt and the fear of abandonment.

Unlike most traditional ghost stories, which take place in an old mansion, castle or other giant structure, The Off Season is about the haunting of a tiny room. The main characters have nowhere to hide when confronted by unhappy spirits. It can be easy to run away and slam a door between yourself and something that scares you, but few things are more terrifying than being forced to look the source of your fear directly in the eye.

In the early 1960s, a three-girl "Greek chorus" — Crystal, Ronette, and Chiffon — introduce the film, warning the audience that some horror is coming their way ("Prologue: Little Shop of Horrors"). Seymour Krelborn and his colleague, Audrey, work at Mushnik's Flower Shop in a run-down, rough neighborhood in New York City referred to as "Skid Row". They lament that they cannot escape the neighborhood ("Skid Row (Downtown)"). Struggling from a lack of customers, Mr. Mushnik decides to close the store, but Audrey suggests he may have more success by displaying an unusual plant that Seymour owns. Immediately attracting a customer, Seymour explains he bought the plant — which he dubbed "Audrey II" — from a Chinese flower shop during a solar eclipse ("Da-Doo"). Attracting business to Mushnik's shop, the plant soon starts to wither. Seymour tries to revive it using multiple methods, but none are successful. One day, Seymour accidentally pricks his finger while cleaning up roses. The plant motions to Seymour that it wants his blood. Desperate, he feeds his blood to Audrey II and discovers that the plant needs human blood to thrive ("Grow for Me").

Audrey II begins to grow rapidly and Seymour becomes a local celebrity. Meanwhile, Audrey suffers at the hands of her sadistic boyfriend, Orin Scrivello; however, she has feelings for Seymour and secretly dreams of running off with him to the suburbs ("Somewhere That's Green"). Seymour continues to feed Audrey II his own blood, draining his energy ("Some Fun Now"). Seymour soon attempts to ask Audrey out, but she turns him down because she has a date with Orin, who is revealed to be a dentist ("Dentist!"). After Seymour closes up shop, Audrey II begins to talk to Seymour, demanding more blood than Seymour can give. The plant proposes that Seymour murder someone in exchange for fame and fortune, as well as the ability to woo Audrey; Seymour initially refuses, but eventually agrees after witnessing Orin abusing Audrey ("Feed Me (Git It!)").

After Orin finishes with his masochistic patient, Arthur Denton, who had requested "a long, slow, root canal", Seymour draws a revolver on Orin, but cannot bring himself to use it. Orin, who abuses nitrous oxide, puts on a type of venturi mask to receive a constant flow of the gas, but breaks the valve, and Seymour watches as he asphyxiates. Seymour dismembers Orin's body and feeds it to Audrey II, which has grown to enormous size, but is unknowingly witnessed by Mushnik, who flees in fear.

Audrey, feeling guilty over Orin's disappearance, is comforted by Seymour and the two admit their feelings for each other ("Suddenly, Seymour"). That night, Mushnik confronts Seymour about Orin's death and holds Seymour at gunpoint, blackmailing him into turning the plant over and leaving town. With no choice, Seymour begins to tell him how to care for Audrey II but before he can reveal the secret, the plant swallows Mushnik whole ("Suppertime").

Despite widespread success, Seymour worries about Audrey II's growth and unbridled appetite. Offered money and a contract for a botany TV show, Seymour becomes overwhelmed and decides to escape Skid Row with Audrey using money coming the next day, and leaving the plant to starve. After Audrey accepts Seymour's marriage proposal, Audrey II catches Seymour leaving and demands another meal: Seymour agrees, but insists on meat from a butcher. While Seymour is gone, the plant telephones Audrey, coaxes her into the shop, and then tries to eat her ("Suppertime II").

Seymour, returning in time to save Audrey, escapes the store with her. Explaining that he fed the plant to become successful and win Audrey's heart, Seymour discovers she has always loved him ("Suddenly, Seymour" (reprise)). Approached by an executive named Patrick Martin from a botanical company, Seymour is offered a contract to breed Audrey II and sell the saplings worldwide. Horrified by the idea, Seymour drives Martin away and realizes he must destroy Audrey II for the sake of humanity.

Returning to the shop, Seymour learns that Audrey II is actually an alien from outer space ("Mean Green Mother from Outer Space"). Audrey II traps Seymour and destroys the shop, but he grabs an exposed electrical cable and electrocutes it, resulting in an explosion that kills Audrey II. Leaving the destroyed shop, Seymour safely reunites with Audrey. The two wed and move to the suburbs. As they arrive at their new home, a smiling Audrey II bud can be seen among the flowers in their front yard, leaving the ending ambiguous.

Original ending

During production, director Oz shot a 23-minute ending based on the original off-Broadway musical's ending but even darker. However, after audiences at the preview screenings did not react positively to it, the ending had to be rewritten and re-shot for the theatrical release with a happier ending.

In the cut ending, the plant attacks Audrey, in the process revealing to her that it also ate Orin and Mr. Mushnik. Seymour comes and pulls her from its jaws but is too late, as she is mortally wounded. As she is dying she tells him what the plant said about Orin and Mushnik, and then Seymour confesses that he fed them to the plant. Audrey requests that Seymour feed her to the plant too so that Seymour can earn the success he deserves, and, in a way, she'll always be with him ("Somewhere That's Green" (reprise)). After fulfilling her dying wish, he attempts suicide by jumping off the roof of a building, only to be stopped by Patrick Martin. Martin offers to reproduce and sell Audrey IIs and has already grown a smaller Audrey II from one of the cuttings that he harvested earlier. Realizing Audrey II is planning global conquest, Seymour climbs down from the roof resolute to destroy the plant but as he leaves, Martin shouts at Seymour that his permission is not needed, as plants are considered to be in the public domain. Returning to the shop, he confronts and tries to kill Audrey II, who tears down the shop, fishes him from the rubble and eats him alive (“Mean Green Mother from Outer Space”). The plant then spits out Seymour's glasses and laughs victoriously.

The three chorus girls appear in front of a large American flag and tell how although Audrey II buds became a worldwide consumer craze, the buds grew into an army of monstrous plants who began to take over the Earth. Giant Audrey II plants are shown destroying cities, toppling buildings, as well as eating people. The United States Army attempts to fight the buds as they ascend the Statue of Liberty and Audrey II eventually bursts through the movie screen and presumably eats the viewers ("Finale (Don't Feed The Plants)").

Unease and suspicion divide a small village following violence and death. Matthew Cortez is physically involved in the investigation, finding his spiritual problems have a greater depth of reality. Only in the final disastrous confrontation in a ruined Mithraic temple does he, at last, glimpse the possibility of peace.

The book was described by Antonia Fraser as an "honest and enterprising attempt to interweave the eternal and immortal longings of youth into the texture of a contemporary story".

A shy and timid man, Henry, who lives with his mother, buys a plant after he thinks he hears it talk to him. His loneliness is very apparent in the way he tries to turn the plant into a friend. The plant turns out to actually be able to talk in a seductive woman's voice. Henry soon discovers the plant likes to eat bugs (and then frogs and dogs and cats but he draws the line at elephants). Eventually the plant wants to try a delicious woman, like in the pictures Henry has hanging in his room.

One day, Henry's mother breaks into his room thinking to confront him with a woman and all she can find are Henry and the plant. But soon the plant eats her and discovers that women are really tasty. When detective O'Columbus shows up, the plant discovers she does not like eating men, just women.

Eventually the plant experiences urges and Henry finds a male specimen. The male eats men while the female eats women. One woman is willing to end Henry's life of virginity but accidentally gets eaten. Henry is broken and tries to kill himself while the plants get passionate with one another. Henry is too clumsy to succeed and changes his mind when he sees all of the little baby plants.

While Jay and Silent Bob deal outside RST Video, Randal Graves calls the cops on them. The duo leaves and ends up smoking marijuana with Walt Flanagan's dog (Flanagan and Steve Dave are practicing strip comic book trivia at the time). The dog gets a "stoner boner" and chases them around New Jersey after Silent Bob pokes it. By the time the dog calms down, it is dawn. Jay and Bob then decide to go to the Eden Prairie Mall for an Orange Julius.

The true story of stockbroker William Griffith Wilson, a World War I veteran whose drinking problem becomes a serious addiction and also loses his fortune in the stock market collapse of 1929. Wilson's career and his domestic life are in tatters when he meets Robert Holbrook Smith, also struggling with a drinking problem. The duo founded a support group that became the nucleus for the society Alcoholics Anonymous.

Five-year-old Dennis Mitchell is a constant source of mischief, especially to his retired next-door neighbor George Wilson. George pretends to be asleep to avoid Dennis, who mistakes this for illness and shoots an aspirin into George’s mouth with a slingshot. Dennis’ parents Henry and Alice try to discipline him as they get ready for work, and leave him with his friend Joey at the home of their classmate Margaret, whom the boys dislike. As the three children fix up an abandoned treehouse in the woods, itinerant criminal Switchblade Sam arrives in town.

Vacuuming up paint in the garage, Dennis inadvertently shoots a glob of paint onto George’s barbecue grill; tasting the paint, George suspects Dennis. The Mitchells leave Dennis with teenage babysitter Polly, who invites her boyfriend Mickey over. Sneaking outside, Dennis pranks Polly and Mickey by ringing the doorbell and hiding until they tape a thumbtack to the doorbell. George investigates the vacuum in the Mitchells’ garage and accidentally shoots himself in the gonads with a golf ball. Hoping to confront the Mitchells, he pricks his thumb on the tack; mistaking him for the prankster, Polly and Mickey douse him in bath water and flour. Switchblade Sam commits a string of robberies throughout town, and is noticed by the Chief of Police.

Bringing the sleeping George an apology card, Dennis plays with George’s dentures and loses the two front teeth, replacing them with Chiclets just before George has his picture taken for the local newspaper. Alice and Henry both leave on business trips, but are unable to find anyone willing to babysit Dennis. George’s wife Martha agrees to let Dennis stay with them, happy to treat him as the child they never had. George is infuriated by falling in Dennis' spilled bath water, and discovering Dennis has replaced his nasal spray with mouthwash and his mouthwash with toilet cleaner. Dennis lets his dog Ruff inside the Wilsons’ house, leading George to mistake Ruff for Martha in the dark. In the attic, Dennis' carelessness causes George to slip on mothballs and nearly crushes him with a canoe.

George has been chosen to host his garden club’s “Summer Floraganza”, having spent almost forty years growing a rare orchid that will finally bloom that night. During the party, Dennis presses a black button that opens the garage door, which upends the entire table of desserts, and is angrily sent inside. While the Wilsons and their guests await the flower’s nocturnal display, Switchblade Sam robs the house, stealing George’s collection of antique coins. Dennis alerts the party, distracting everyone from the brief blooming of the flower, which then dies. Furious and unaware that he has been robbed, George chastises Dennis, who flees to the woods in sadness and is caught by Switchblade Sam. Dennis’ parents arrive home to learn he has disappeared, prompting a town-wide search, and even a guilt-ridden George sets out to find him after realizing that Dennis was telling the truth about the robbery.

Switchblade Sam prepares to leave town with Dennis as an unsuspecting hostage. Showing Sam the proper way to tie him up, Dennis handcuffs his captor, loses the key, and unintentionally bludgeons him and sets him on fire. Just as Dennis discovers George’s stolen coins and realizes Sam is a thief, Sam attempts to stab Dennis but is snared in a rope caught by a passing train. The next morning, Dennis returns home with the captured Sam and George's recovered coins, to the relief of George and the entire neighborhood. Sam is arrested, and Dennis naïvely returns his switchblade where he attempts to stab him with it, but Chief Bennett closes the police car door on Sam’s hand, causing him to drop the knife down a sewer drain and wince in pain before being driven away.

Dennis and George make amends, and Alice mentions that she can bring Dennis to work with her as her office now has a daycare center. George insists he would be happy to watch Dennis himself, just as Dennis accidentally flings a flaming marshmallow onto George's forehead. During the credits, Dennis gets his mother's condescending coworker Andrea caught in the office photocopier.

It is the year 2133, and Earth was devastated by a nuclear war decades earlier. A team from PAX is conducting a survey of central California. PAX is a science-based society dedicated to restoring civilization and peace to the world.

Returning to PAX headquarters, the team is attacked by a group of militaristic mutants known as the Kreeg. After a struggle, the PAX team manages to escape in a hyperloop subsurface shuttle, a vehicle that can travel between settlements via tubes, built during the early 1990s before the final conflict of the 20th century. One of the team, Pater Kimbridge (Rai Tasco), is severely wounded. To save his life he requires a bioplastic prosthesis to repair the damaged pulmonary artery sheared away by a Kreeg rifle shot.

PAX Team 21, led by Dylan Hunt (John Saxon), with members Baylok (Christopher Cary), Isiah (Ted Cassidy reprising his role from ''Genesis II''), and Harper-Smythe (Janet Margolin) tries to locate a missing doctor, Jonathan Connor (Jim Antonio), the only surgeon who can perform the delicate surgery in time. Their search leads the team to the Confederacy of Ruth, a society of latter-day Amazons, where women are dominant and men are enslaved.

As a ruse, Harper-Smythe binds Hunt and enters the Confederacy's territory with him as her "property". Once there, she meets Marg (Diana Muldaur), the leader of the women, who claims Dylan as her own property. Harper-Smythe makes her way to a nearby farm and meets a woman who explains how the society operates (and how there are fewer and fewer children).

While captive, Hunt learns that the men (referred to as "Dinks") are subjugated by a drug in their food. Despite his efforts, he soon succumbs to the effects of the drug. Harper-Smythe arrives at the village in time to reclaim her "property" by challenging and defeating Marg. When Harper-Smythe is unable to find Connor in the village, Marg invites her to see Marg's newcomer Dinks. Connor comes forward with an antidote for the drug and Hunt recovers. Connor, Hunt and Harper-Smythe decide that she should swap Hunt for Connor, allowing the doctor to return to PAX. Marg agrees to the exchange and Connor and Harper-Smythe leave for PAX after first distributing the antidote in the Dink food supply. That evening, free of the influence of the drug, Hunt seduces Marg.

In the morning, a small party of Kreeg arrive and demand the secret to making men compliant. Hunt leads the un-drugged men in overpowering the invaders. They learn the men in the other households were equally successful in fending off the Kreeg. As a result, the women's council decides to suspend the drug treatment program on their males. Kimbridge soon recovers from the operation.

The staff and customers of the cafe get an extra jolt with their coffee when a commitment-shy man has a public fight with his angry ex-girlfriend, instigating a series of revelations about the eavesdropping couples nearby and their own unusual relationships; filled with eccentric personal conversations, confrontational arguments, imaginary visions, and connections between various characters.

''Kook's Tour'' was conceived by Moe Howard's son-in-law, frequent Three Stooges collaborator Norman Maurer, as a weekly television series that would have mixed the Stooges' brand of farce comedy with a documentary travelogue format. The concept of the series was that, after 50 years of comic mayhem, the Stooges (Moe, Larry Fine and Joe DeRita) have retired and are traveling the world with their dog, Moose, motor home, and motor boat (which is transported from place to place via a cargo plane). The 52-minute pilot film for the series saw the Stooges exploring the wilderness of the western United States, including areas of Wyoming and Idaho. In the meantime, Larry keeps getting snubbed when trying to catch a fish and getting a picture of a deer. At the end of the pilot film, Larry, in frustration, throws his hat into the water and fish bite on the fishing hooks attached to it. Larry starts to get excited about catching some fish, but Curly Joe counts the fish and says "One for me, one for Moe, and one for....Moose!"

The epilogue shows Moe sitting in an office, discussing the trip and stating that their next destination for the second episode (which was ultimately never produced) was Japan. (Moe makes no reference to Larry's stroke, so it's unknown if this scene was filmed before or after Larry's stroke).

Mr. Quincy Magoo, a wealthy but extremely near-sighted canned vegetable factory owner, goes to the museum to attend a party. While there, Waldo, Mr. Magoo's nephew, spies a woman named Stacey Sampanahoditra, on whom he develops a crush. Later that night, jewel thieves Luanne LeSeur and Bob Morgan steal the museum's beautiful ruby "The Star of Kuristan" and escape on a boat to Austin Cloquet, Bob's boss.

Meanwhile, Mr. Magoo and his dog Angus go fishing in the same area as the jewel thieves' boat. Luanne picks a fight with Bob and in the scuffle, they lose the ruby which lands in Mr. Magoo's boat unbeknownst to Magoo. Bob goes after the ruby but fails by falling onto the paddle wheel of a paddle boat.

At the museum, the curator and Stacey send two agents: Gustav Anders of the CIA and Chuck Stupak of the FBI to track down the ruby and spy on Mr. Magoo, who they believe stole the ruby. Stacey mentions she was invited to the opera where the Magoos go that night. Anders and Stupak also visit the opera to look for Mr. Magoo who is in the show. At the opera Mr. Magoo meets Luanne who pretends to be a magazine reporter and uncover FBI agent named Prunella Pagliachi. She wishes Mr. Magoo luck at the opera, who immediately takes a liking to her. Stupak sneaks on the stage and fails to find any clue about Mr. Magoo with Mr. Magoo accidentally hitting Stupak with a big tool.

The next morning, Luanne tricks Mr. Magoo into taking her to his house with an injured ankle. Stupak finds a notebook with Luanne's fingerprints on it and realizes who Mr. Magoo is with. He and Anders go to Mr. Magoo's house where Stupak sneaks in looking for the ruby. Mr. Magoo and Luanne arrive at the house and Stupak hides from them. Bob sneaks into Mr. Magoo's house and finds the ruby. Upon being caught in the act, he steals Mr. Magoo's prized Studebaker with the Magoos and Luanne chasing after him in Magoo's Eggplant-mobile. Bob loses them and brings the ruby to Austin.

Austin plans an auction for his criminal friends from around the world and shows them the ruby. Mr. Magoo disguises himself as Ortega Peru, a thief from Brazil who never goes anywhere and joins the auction which is taking place in a communal indoor pool. However, he is discovered when the fake tattoo on his chest is washed away by the water. Luanne breaks up the auction, steals the ruby, and escapes on a snowmobile away from the lair. The government arrests Austin and his friends while Mr. Magoo gives chase on an ironing board and winds up in the middle of a women's skiing competition. Waldo and Angus sneak out of the lair, catch up with Magoo, and track down the ruby.

Angus sees Luanne in disguise as an old woman and spills her purse which gives Mr. Magoo and Waldo a clue about where Luanne is going. The Magoos follow Luanne to Brazil where Waldo spies on the real Ortega and his friends. Mr. Magoo steals a bride dress from Ortega's girlfriend Rosita and is led to the wedding. Mr. Magoo steals the ruby from Ortega and finds himself being chased by Peru's men, the government agents and Luanne. Magoo then is trapped on a raft just before it goes over a waterfall but manages to invert the raft like a parachute so he can gently float to safety. He and Waldo return the ruby to the museum with the government arresting Ortega, Luanne and the people from Brazil.

Mr. Magoo and Angus go home after returning the ruby back to the museum.

In May 2021, the Moon is in the process of being colonized, and this new frontier is attracting a diverse human population to lunar settlements like Moon City, Farside 5, and others.

Two denizens of this rough-and-tumble lunar society are the notorious millionaire J.J. Hubbard and former-astronaut-turned-satellite-salvager Bill Kemp, the first man to set foot on Mars. He left Space Corporation because he wants to explore space, while his former employer only wants to operate commercial passenger flights to and from Mars and Venus.

When Hubbard hears about a small 6000-tonne asteroid made of pure "ceramic" sapphire that is in a low lunar orbit, he hires Kemp to capture it with Kemp's old ''Moon 02'' space ferry. Kemp is to transport it down to the surface of the lunar farside, even though doing so would be against Space Corporation law. Kemp, however, has little choice because he learns from Hubbard that his flight license will soon be revoked due to protests from Space Corporation. Hubbard also reveals that he plans to use the giant sapphire for building much improved rocket engine thermal insulators, profiting from the need for even more powerful rockets to colonize Mercury and the moons of Jupiter.

A young woman named Clementine arrives looking for her brother, a miner/prospector, working a distant patch of moonscape at Spectacle Crater on the lunar farside. Unfortunately, the trip from Moon City on the nearside takes six days by a wheeled lunar vehicle. Since Kemp can go there much more quickly using his ''Moon 02'', she convinces him to help her learn if her brother is still alive. The terrain around his camp is not suitable, so Kemp and Clementine land and travel the remaining distance with a transport buggy. The two discover that Clementine's brother is dead, and that he was murdered for his discovery of a large vein of nickel, that would make him a rich man. They are shot at by some of Hubbard's men, who have followed them to the camp; Kemp takes them out one-by-one.

Hubbard is unhappy that Kemp left to assist Clementine, because Hubbard is the one responsible for her brother's death. He needs the claim to be abandoned so he can take control of it and use it as an isolated landing site for the sapphire asteroid. Hubbard blackmails Kemp into completing the asteroid job by threatening his and Clementine's lives. Kemp is later forced to kill the industrialist and some of his men in a shoot out. He also strands Hubbard's remaining men on the large sapphire, just before the attached retro-rocket fires, sending it toward the lunar surface. With Clementine being her brother's next of kin, she now has legal ownership of the nickel vein and the nearby "crashed" sapphire asteroid, making her a very wealthy woman.

While touring Uganda with local guide Kwame and a trio of porters, San Francisco heiress Ursula Stanhope is tracked down and joined by her fiancé, Lyle Van De Groot, with two poachers named Max and Thor. Kwame tells the group of the "White Ape", a local legend of a superhuman primate that rules the jungle. The next day, Lyle, insistent on taking Ursula home as soon as possible, goes into the jungle with her to find the White Ape, and they are attacked by a lion. Lyle knocks himself out trying to flee while Ursula is saved by the King of the Jungle, George, who takes Ursula to his tree house home and cares for her, introducing her to his three animal friends: Ape, a sapient, talking gorilla who raised George; Shep, an Asian elephant that acts like George's dog; and Tookie, a toco toucan. George is smitten with Ursula and attempts to woo her; Ursula soon reciprocates his attraction, and her time spent with George makes her no longer wish to return home.

Lyle, Max, and Thor find the treehouse, and Lyle confronts Ursula and George. Max and Thor make to shoot Shep for his ivory, and Ape shouts at Shep to run. Everyone is stunned by the sight of a talking ape, and Max and Thor decide to tranquilize and capture him. George runs to stop them and is accidentally shot by Lyle, who thought his gun was a novelty lighter. Lyle and the poachers are imprisoned, and Lyle is identified as the shooter by the porters; Max and Thor are released and resolve to capture Ape to make a fortune in Las Vegas. Meanwhile, Ursula takes George to San Francisco to get medical help for his wound and to see the human world, which George is fascinated with.

While Ursula is at work, George explores San Francisco on his own and uses his vine-swinging to rescue a paraglider tangled in the Bay Bridge. Uninterested in marrying Lyle, Ursula admits the truth to her parents, but her overbearing mother Beatrice objects. At a party intended to celebrate Ursula's engagement, Beatrice takes George aside and coldly tells him she will not let Ursula's engagement fall apart, and refuses to let George be with her. In Africa, Max and Thor capture Ape, who manages to order Tookie to find George before he falls unconscious. Tookie flies to San Francisco, and George returns to the jungle, leaving Ursula in the night. While comforted by her parents, Ursula realizes she loves George and goes to find him with her father's approval.

Ape tricks the poachers into circling the jungle and returning to the treehouse where George confronts and eventually incapacitates them, though not without some trouble, as the two team up on him, twisting his nipples and even tickle torturing him in front of Ape to humiliate him and make him tap out, but George somehow endures and takes them down with help from a newly arriving Ursula. However, Lyle arrives too, having escaped prison, joined a cult, and become an ordained minister. Lyle has the mercenaries he brought with him subdue George and takes Ursula to the nearby Ape River, where he has a boat waiting to escape while he performs a marriage ceremony. However, the river is a harsh series of rapids that hurtle the two into danger. George escapes the mercenaries and performs a big swing to reach Ursula and Lyle, only to crash painfully into a massive tree, which falls over the river and allows him to pull Ursula to safety. Lyle ends up in a cave and, believing he is still sharing the boat with Ursula, proclaims them wedded; he lights his lighter and beholds that he has just married himself to a gorilla.

George and Ursula declare their love for each other and marry, with Ursula moving into George's treehouse. Some time later, the two are raising a son, George Jr., whom they present to the animals from atop Pride Rock. Meanwhile, Ape moves to Las Vegas and becomes a famous stage performer with Max and Thor as props.

Six years after socialite Ursula Stanhope left civilization to marry George of the Jungle, George finds himself hard-pressed to fulfill the roles of jungle king, father, and husband. George's stress level increases when the "Mean Lion" challenges him for leadership of the jungle, and when Ursula's mother Beatrice teams up with Ursula's ex-fiancé, Lyle, in a plot to forcibly take away all that George holds most dear.

To do this, Beatrice invites Ursula, George, and George Junior to visit Las Vegas, which they accept. Throughout the visit, Beatrice and some of Ursula's fellow socialites try constantly to convince Ursula that George is unworthy of her affection. George, observing the threats but not his wife's resistance, begins to think himself unworthy of Ursula.

During the same time, George's mentor Ape has become a gambler and is in debt to several creditors, including Lyle. Upon discovering that Ape does not possess the exploitation rights of Ape Mountain, but George does, Lyle instead makes Ape work off his debts from the gambling for the next 17 years. He then engages Ape as a staged song performer and steals the deed to Ape Mountain from George's wardrobe. He thereafter sends two agents, Sally and Kowalski, to Ape Mountain, where they begin to demolish the jungle. The animals, terrified, turn to the Lion for guardianship.

Having failed to convince Ursula to divorce George, Beatrice hires Armando, a master of hypnosis to hypnotize Ursula into having no memory of having known George. The hypnotist brainwashes Ursula, giving her the idea that she had married Lyle. George, upon hearing from Beatrice that Ursula has left him, leaves his luck-charm with Ursula as she sleeps, then departs. He rescues Ape and leaves Las Vegas. Their departure triggers much commotion when the police force and the Animal Control Agency join forces to recapture them.

In San Francisco, Lyle fails to persuade Ursula that he is worthy of her affection. Ursula's memory, meanwhile, is stimulated by events similar to those in which George had played a major part.

Later, George then tries to reconnect with Ursula and George Junior before leaving to rescue the jungle, remembering to use a bigger crate as a tip from Brendan Fraser, who was cramped during the first film. George gains Ursula's interest, but has trouble convincing her that he is her husband. Knocking her unconscious, George continues his journey back home with her, Ape, George Junior, and Rocky the kangaroo. In the jungle, George overthrows the Mean Lion and tries to convince the other animals to join him in stopping the diggers, but fails in gaining their lost trust in him until the diggers become an immediate threat. George defeats the bulldozers with the help of George Junior, Ape, Shep, Rocky, and Tookie Bird.

Lyle's agents Sally and Kowalski come to destroy the tree house, only to be defeated by George and Rocky. George is unable to defeat the digging machine until his son joins the fray. Lyle and Beatrice arrive to pick up Ursula and George Junior. George manages to defeat both of them by hanging Lyle in a tree and Beatrice is kissed by Ape. Lyle is angered by his defeat and insults the narrator voice, who replies by pulling him from the story's world. George kisses Ursula, restoring her full memory of him. After reviving Ursula's friends in a similar fashion (for they had been hypnotized into forgetting George also) they subsequently renew their wedding vows and learn to find balance among George's duties.

Before the credits come to a conclusion, the narrator feels so sad about the ending of the movie and tells the audience to go home, but another narrator from Mulan cheers him up.

In the future, criminals convicted of capital offenses are forced to donate all of their organs to medicine, so that their body parts can be used to save lives and thus repay society for their crimes. However, high demand for organs has inspired lawmakers to lower the bar for execution further and further over time.

The protagonist of the story, certain that he will be convicted of a capital crime, but feeling that the punishment is unfair, escapes from prison and decides to do something really worth dying for. He vandalizes the organ harvesting facility, destroying a large amount of equipment and harvested organs, but when he is recaptured and brought to trial, this crime does not even appear on the charge sheet, as the prosecution is already confident of securing a conviction on his original offense: repeated traffic violations.

During the previous series' installment, Mukai, a member of a group known as "Those from the Distant Land", stole the seal belonging to the demon Orochi. Taking advantage of this situation, Ash Crimson attacked Chizuru Kagura in her weakened state and stole the Yata Mirror from her, draining her powers in the process. During ''The King of Fighters XI'', a new tournament is established, in which both established fighters and newcomers participate. "Those from the Past" are hosts of the tournament; they consist of a weapons expert named Shion and a dimension manipulator named Magaki, who serve as the respective sub and final bosses of the game. Following their defeat, Magaki tries to steal Orochi's power, but instead ends up being murdered by his own ally.

Frank Castle becomes an officer in the NYPD SWAT team after leaving the U.S. Marine Corps. Rather than falling victim to a gangland slaying, Castle's wife and children are instead killed when caught in the middle of a battle between the Avengers, the X-Men, and a group of Brood and other aliens in Central Park. Castle arrives to find his family dead, and Daredevil berating Cyclops and Captain America for their carelessness.

As Castle grieves, none of the heroes are willing to admit their fault in the deaths, until finally Cyclops attempts to apologize. Enraged, Castle opens fire on the assembled heroes, killing Cyclops, Hawkeye, and Shadowcat. He is then attacked and wounded by Wolverine, and only survives due to the intervention of Colossus.

After recovering from his injuries, Castle is put on trial for triple-homicide. His attorney is Matt Murdock, who recognizes Castle as the man who rescued him from a gang of ruffians when they were both boys (the two characters did not know each other as children in the normal Marvel universe). Despite Murdock's defense, Castle is sentenced to life imprisonment.

When the prison van taking him to jail stops, Castle finds himself at the mountain mansion of a rich but hideously disfigured old man named Kesselring. Kesselring introduces Castle to his associates, other disfigured and brain-damaged individuals, who reveal that they were maimed in the crossfire of superhero/supervillain battles. They will provide Castle with all the resources he will need if he will destroy every superhuman on earth. Thirsting for revenge, Castle agrees and becomes the Punisher.

With the help of Microchip, a former member of the US Air Force whose legs were pulled off by Doctor Octopus, the Punisher sets about his mission. He begins by trapping Spider-Man and Venom in the sewers and killing them while they are fighting one another. The Hulk is killed after his latest rampage, while his alter-ego Bruce Banner is recovering in an alleyway, located by Castle using a dart-gun tracking transmitter.

Castle is captured and jailed on several occasions, but is broken out each time by Kesselring. During these periods he is visited by Murdock, who pleads for Castle to stop the slaughter.

He kills Doctor Doom, then lures the various mutant super-teams to the moon and wipes them out with one of Doom's nuclear missiles. The Fantastic Four and the Avengers are also disposed of. Wolverine and Captain America are killed in one-on-one confrontations. Castle eventually exterminates nearly all of the Marvel Universe, including Ghost Rider, Black Panther, and Nick Fury among others.

Growing weary of all the killings, Castle tells Kesselring that he never expects to hear from him again once his assignment is complete. Kesselring tells him that the Punisher's crusade will never be complete, as a new generation of heroes will inevitably rise, and must be halted. When Kesselring pulls a gun, the Punisher kills him. He then tells Kesselring's associates that their need for vengeance has made them bitter and pathetic, leaving with the threat of killing them all if any of them try to contact him. He then leaves to complete his assignment by killing Daredevil.

After a battle, Castle is wounded after falling off a roof. Daredevil tells Castle that he does not need to live through his pain, and begs for him to let it go. Not listening, Castle fatally stabs Daredevil through the chest. Before he dies, Daredevil removes his mask and Castle is shocked to see the face of Matt Murdock, who tells him that "there's always a man behind the mask" with his dying breath. Realizing he has become the very thing he swore to destroy, the Punisher makes one final kill: himself.

Four men, members of a Welsh rugby union club, fly to Paris as part of a weekend outing to see Wales play France in the Five Nations Championship match that will decide the Grand Slam title.

One of the party is funeral director Caradog Lloyd-Evans (Griffith), who briefly served in occupied Paris near the end of World War II. Caradog pays for his son Glyn's air ticket on the proviso that Glyn (Morris) comes on a 'pilgrimage' to find his 'little butterfly' who he spent a short romantic period with during the war. This pilgrimage is successful and although the right place is found, it is no longer the innocent bistro of his youth but one of many strip club joints. Mr Lloyd-Evans mistakes a young girl in the club (who is a spitting image of his 'little butterfly') for the real thing and finds that the girl is actually Odette (Sharon Morgan), the daughter of his old flame. He is (naturally) disappointed but Glyn gets himself acquainted with Odette while Caradog reminisces with his 'butterfly' (played by Marika Rivera).

A quick call to the hotel brings the entire tour party to the club where fun and frolicking takes place led by club secretary Mog Jones (Davies), a retired player whose dreams of playing for his country were never realised. Some locals take exception and a mass brawl starts which ends with the arrival of the police. The whole party is arrested except Caradog (protected by his 'butterfly' Madame) and Glyn (hidden in Odette's bedroom).

Sion Probert plays camp boutique owner Maldwyn Pugh, who is the only one of the main four characters who makes the start of the match, because Mog is still in jail as he was considered the ringleader (the others were released), Caradog has collapsed near his strip club table while Glyn is trying for his own sexual 'Grand Slam' with Odette, taking a rest to watch the game on TV.

Mog is eventually released halfway through the first half of the match, but when he finally arrives at the stadium, there's only seconds of the game left, which Wales lose, leaving Maldwyn without a prized signature from Gareth Edwards and Mog still yet to witness a Welsh Grand Slam triumph. Caradog is found after the match, and Madame thinks he has died, but Odette fires a soda siphon on his face, and the story ends with Caradog warning his son of the dangers of overseas travel.

Esther Blodgett is a talented aspiring singer with a band, and Norman Maine is a former matinée idol whose career is beginning to decline. When he arrives intoxicated at a function at the Shrine Auditorium, the studio publicist Matt Libby attempts to keep him offstage. After an angry exchange, Norman rushes away and bursts onto a stage where an orchestra is performing. Blodgett takes him by the hand and pretends he is part of the act, thereby turning a potentially embarrassing and disruptive moment into an opportunity for the audience to greet Norman with applause.

Realizing that Esther has saved him from public humiliation, Norman thanks her and draws a heart on the wall with her lipstick. He invites her to dinner, and later watches her perform in an after-hours club. He recognizes her impressive talent, urges her to follow her dream, and convinces her she can break into movies. Esther is surprised that someone of Norman's stature sees something special in her. He offers her a screen test and advises her to "sleep on it", promising to call her the next day. Esther tells Danny McGuire, her bandmate, that she is quitting their upcoming gig to pursue movies in L.A. Thinking she is crazy, he tries to talk her out of it, but Esther is determined. Norman is called away early in the morning to filming and then falls ill. He attempts to get a message to Esther but cannot remember her address. When she does not hear from him, she suspects he was insincere. Not disheartened, she takes jobs as a carhop and TV commercial singer to make ends meet, convinced she can make it, with or without Norman.

Norman tries to find Esther, who has had to move from her apartment. Then he hears her singing on a television commercial and tracks her down. Studio head Oliver Niles believes Esther is just a passing fancy for the actor, but casts her in a small film role. The studio arbitrarily changes her name to Vicki Lester, which she finds out when she tries to pick up her paycheck. When Norman finally gets Niles to hear "Vicki" sing, he is impressed and she is cast in an important musical film, making her a huge success. Her relationship with Norman flourishes, and they wed.

As Vicki's career continues to flourish, Norman finds himself unemployed and going downhill fast—an alcoholic in a tough new film business with no tolerance for alcoholics. Norman arrives, late and drunk, in the middle of Vicki's Oscar acceptance speech. He interrupts her speech, rambling and pacing back and forth in front of her. While begging for work from the assembled and embarrassed Hollywood community, he accidentally strikes Vicki in the face.

Vicki continues working and tells Oliver that Norman has entered a sanitarium. After supporting him for so long, she worries about the effect of Norman's alcoholism on her, while acknowledging that he is trying very hard to overcome his addiction. Niles is amenable to offering Norman work, a gesture for which Vicki is grateful, thinking this may be just the boost her husband needs. At the racetrack, Norman runs into Libby, who taunts him and accuses him of living on Vicki's earnings. The resulting fight prompts Norman to go on a drinking binge; he is eventually arrested for being drunk and disorderly and receives ninety days in the city jail. Vicki bails him out and brings him home, where they are joined by Niles. Norman goes to bed but overhears Vicki telling Niles she will give up her career to take care of him. He also hears Oliver say that Norman ruined his own career with his drinking. Finally realizing what he has done to himself, Vicki, his career, and the people around him, Norman leaves his bed, tells Vicki cheerfully that he is going to go for a swim, walks into the ocean, and drowns himself.

At Norman's funeral, Vicki is mobbed by reporters and insensitive fans. Despondent, Vicki becomes a recluse and refuses to see anyone. Finally, her old bandmate Danny convinces her she needs to attend a charity function because she constitutes the only good work Norman did and which he died trying to save. At the Shrine Auditorium, she notices the heart Norman drew on the wall on the night they met and for a moment seems to lose her composure. When she arrives on stage, the master of ceremonies tells her the event is being broadcast worldwide, and asks her to say a few words to her fans. She says, "Hello, everybody. This is Mrs. Norman Maine", which prompts the crowd into a standing ovation.

John Norman Howard, a famous and self-destructive singer/songwriter rock star, arrives late for a concert. He is drunk, sings a couple of songs, and walks off stage. John's driver takes him to a bar where Esther Hoffman is singing. One of John's fans finds him there and starts a fight. Esther grabs John and helps him escape out a back door.

They go to Esther's, but she invites him to come back for breakfast. Over breakfast (pepperoni pizza), she agrees to go to a concert with him. After arriving by helicopter, John rides a motorbike around the stage, snags a cable and crashes off the front of the stage. John is taken away by ambulance and his entourage leave in the helicopter; forgetting Esther.

Afterwards, John is resting at home by his pool. A radio DJ, Bebe Jesus, hovers over the pool in a helicopter and invites John to his studio. John gets angry and shoots at the helicopter. Bebe Jesus then threatens to never play John's songs. Later, John goes to the radio station with a case of whiskey to make peace with Bebe Jesus. The disc jockey does not accept John's apology and calls John an alcoholic over the air. Esther happens to be at the radio station at the same time, taping a commercial. John takes Esther to his mansion and writes her name on the wall with a can of spray paint. There, they make love, have a bubble bath together, and he listens to her playing his piano. She thinks no one would be able to sing to the tune she has written, but he makes up some lyrics and starts singing.

At his next concert, John gets Esther on stage to sing. Although the audience boos when she starts to sing, she wins them over. Later, she tells John she wants them to get married. John replies that he's no good for her, but she persists, and they marry. John takes Esther to a plot of land he has out west where they build a simple house. She wants a tour co-starring with him, but he thinks she should do the tour on her own. Esther's career takes off, eclipsing his.

John returns to the studio thinking of restarting his career. He's told by Bobbie that the band has gone on without him and have renamed themselves. To save face, John asks Bobbie to tell them that he's found some new artists to work with and wishes them luck.

At home alone, John begins to write a new song. As he sings, he is constantly interrupted by the telephone. Someone asks for Esther and wants to know whether he is her secretary. When Esther returns home, she wants to find out how it went with the band and John tells her it didn't work out. He changes the subject to find out about Esther's day and goes through the messages he's taken for her, one of which is that she's up for a Grammy Award.

At the Grammy Awards, Esther wins for best female performance. While she is giving her acceptance speech, John arrives late, drunk and makes a scene. Later, Esther tries to talk Brian into giving John a last chance. John is writing songs again but in a different way. Brian calls on John and likes the new songs, but suggests John release some of his old hits along with the new songs. However, John wants to go with the new work only, so he turns down the offer.

Back at his LA mansion, John finds Quentin, a magazine writer, swimming half-naked in his swimming pool. She says she would do anything to get an exclusive interview. Initially he thinks it's with him, but she confirms it's an interview with Esther that she wants. When Esther arrives soon after, she finds them in bed together. Quentin tries to interview Esther, but John tells Quentin to get out. Esther and John fight with another, him telling her “I love you” and she “I hate you”, until Esther confesses that she does love him. They return to their small home out west, where they have been happiest.

One day, John wakes early and tells Esther he's going to pick up Brian from the airport. Esther asks him to hurry back. John leaves the house with a beer in hand and drives off in his flashy sports car. He leaves playing his track “Watch Closely Now” but gets bored and puts on one of Esther's songs. He continues to drink his beer, while driving too fast and recklessly.

In the next scene, a police dispatch is discussing an accident. The shell of a red sports car is on its side. A helicopter lands at the scene and Esther and Brian run out towards John, whose dead body is covered by a blanket. Esther asks for another blanket and cleans his face. She lies down on John and while crying she asks him what is she supposed to do without him. He is taken away in an ambulance.

Back at the LA mansion, Esther hears John's voice calling out for someone to answer the telephone. But she discovers it's just a tape of the old songwriting session during which the telephone had interrupted his singing. She cries on the step in the now empty house, saying that he was a liar and he wasn't supposed to leave her.

The final scene is what seems to be a memorial concert for John. Esther walks out and is introduced as Esther Hoffman-Howard. The audience raises candles as a tribute to her late husband. She sings the song John wrote for her “With One More Look at You” and then ends with his famous track, “Watch Closely Now”, done in her own style. At the last beat of the song, Esther spreads her arms wide and looks up to the heavens.

The film follows the book ''What Do You Care What Other People Think?'' fairly closely in terms of the stories told.

The film starts in 1924 with Richard and his father Melville walking through the woods where Melville shows his scientific inspiration for Richard. In 1934, Richard and Arline are in high school and their romantic relationship starts. The story then jumps to his college years and Arline getting sick with lymphatic tuberculosis. It continues to his move west to Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where Arline follows him later to a hospital in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she dies. The film ends with Feynman crying at the sight of the red dress Arline had pointed out.

In 1978, The Kid (TK) works as a getaway driver for criminals in New York City. As TK returns to Hunts Point to rest at the garage owned and run by his friend Ray Davies, Ray decides to help him move up in the criminal world by introducing him to Slink, the owner of a local strip club. Slink becomes impressed with TK's skills and eventually introduces him to two close associates - Bishop and "The Mexican". The men assign TK to help assist them in the breakout of Candy, a criminal mastermind, from Rikers Island.

After Candy's escape, the group introduce TK to their boss Corrigan, a corrupt undercover detective, who reveals that he intends to take over the cocaine business from the city's Colombian cartel. Candy devises a plan to capture a prominent Colombian drug lord, Rafael Martinez, and ransom him back to the cartel. TK successfully kidnaps Martinez and recovers the ransom money for Corrigan but upon handing it over, Corrigan and the others kill Martinez and betray TK, implicating him for the murder. While the gang leave to take over the cocaine trade, TK is imprisoned in Sing Sing prison for 28 years, and spends his time planning to go after the group upon his release.

In 2006, TK is released and reunites with Ray in New York. TK learns that Corrigan became the city's Police Chief, while the other members moved into different businesses - Slink moved into the adult industry and drugs manufacturing; Bishop became a drug kingpin; and Candy set up a prostitution ring and drug moving service. TK decides to go after and kill The Mexican first, and dumps his body for Corrigan to find. Ray then introduces TK to Maria Cortez, an employee of Candy, and works with her to get close to her boss. During this time, TK pursues both Slink and Bishop, disrupting their businesses before killing both men.

When Candy learns that TK is working for Maria, he attempts to use her in order to bait him into a trap. However, TK manages to survive it, and saves Maria before killing Candy. Upon returning to Ray's garage, Corrigan reveals that Ray has been working for him: in exchange for clearing his debts, Ray set up the assassinations of Corrigan's associates to erase all of his connections to Martinez's kidnapping and subsequent murder. After killing Ray, Corrigan flees when Maria arrives to stop him; TK realizes that she is Martinez's daughter and that she had been working for Candy to track down her father's true killer. The pair then place the bodies of Candy and Slink to be found by the police, before going after Corrigan as he flees in a helicopter. They manage to take the helicopter down and TK prepares to kill him, but acquiesces to a request by Maria to let her and her people deal with him. As her people leave with Corrigan, TK departs on his own.

The short begins with a title card disclaimer that reads: "Any resemblance between the characters in this picture and any persons, living or dead, is a miracle."

In the fictional country of Moronika, three munitions manufacturers — Messrs. Ixnay (Richard Fiske), Onay (Dick Curtis), and Amscray (Don Beddoe) — are upset over their lack of profits due to the country's king, Herman the Sixth and Seven-Eighths, pursuing a policy of peace instead of war. They decide to oust the king, implement a dictatorship, and go about finding someone stupid enough to be a figurehead leader. Ixnay volunteers the three wallpaper hangers simultaneously working in his dining room: The Stooges.

Ixnay, Onay, and Amscray meet with Moe Hailstone, Curly Gallstone, and Larry Pebble and tell them of their offer to run Moronika. Moe is instituted as the leader (the Adolf Hitler role), with Curly as Field Marshal "Gallstone" (representing Hermann Göring while also mimicking Benito Mussolini), and Larry as Minister of Propaganda Pebble (a representation of Joseph Goebbels). After his takeover, Hailstone proceeds to give a speech to the masses, cuing Larry to display signs reading "CHEERS", "APPLAUSE", and, accidentally, "HISS."

However, the daughter (Lorna Gray) of the overthrown king pays Hailstone a visit, going by the name Mattie Herring (a spoof of World War I spy Mata Hari). The Stooges eventually suspect her of being a spy and sentence her to execution, but she escapes.

Larry then saws the corners off of a square table to be ready for a round-table meeting. A ballerina enters and tells them the delegates have arrived for the meeting. In the said meeting, Moe tells the delegates that his country Moronika demands more land concessions from its neighbors, leading the delegates to start arguing with him. Curly manages to silence the delegates by knocking them out with golf balls, but after the meeting, a large mob led by the king and Mattie Herring advance on the palace. The trio quickly abdicates, only to inadvertently flee into a lion's den, and are chased and eaten offscreen, concluding the film.

The film begins with footage from ''Asahi Shimbun'''s special expedition to the ''Yamato'' wreckage in 1999. The narrative then shifts to the present on 6 April 2005, where a woman, Makiko Uchida, is visiting the Yamato Museum in Kure, Hiroshima. She is looking for a boat to take her to the site where the ''Yamato'' sank, to honor the crew on the 60th anniversary of the ship's last battle. Katsumi Kamio, a survivor who is now a fisherman, agrees to take her after he discovers she was an adopted daughter of Petty Officer First Class Mamoru Uchida, a fellow crewman and close friend who he thought went down with the ship.

As Uchida, Kamio, and his teenage apprentice, Atsushi, travel to the site on his fishing boat, the narrative shifts between the present and Kamio's memories of his service as an air defense crewman aboard the warship during the Second World War.

In the spring of 1944, Kamio and other cadets, many of whom are only teenagers, are assigned to the ''Yamato'' and are subjected to harsh training and discipline at the hands of Petty Officers Uchida, Moriwaki, and Karaki, who have served on the vessel since it was launched in 1941. In October 1944, the ''Yamato'' sails as part of a large Japanese fleet to engage American forces at the Battle of Leyte Gulf. During the battle, the ''Yamato'' sustains several hits, killing or injuring several crew. ''Yamato'' and the surviving ships return to Japan for repairs, while Uchida (who lost his left eye in the battle) is sent to a hospital to recover.

In March 1945, the crew hear rumors of a planned mission against the expected invasion of Okinawa and are given a few days of shore leave. During this time, Kamio returns home and learns that his mother died protecting his girlfriend, Taeko Nozaki, during an air raid on Kure. Taeko confesses her love for Kamio when he explains that he must go to Okinawa and gives him a special amulet for protection.

Uchida uses the shore leave to escape the hospital and rejoin the crew. Meanwhile, IJN representative Vice-Admiral Ryūnosuke Kusaka arrives and briefs the admiral-in-charge of ''Yamato'', Vice-Admiral Seiichi Itō, and the other senior officers, of the details of ''Operation Ten-Go''. It will almost certainly be a suicide mission - and with no air cover, the entire Japanese force will be extremely vulnerable to Allied attacks, making it unlikely that they will even reach Okinawa. Fights break out among the crew as some believe the mission is futile, but an officer convinces them that the ''Yamato'', as Japan's last operational battleship, must make every effort to defend the nation.

On the morning of April 7, the ''Yamato'' and its escorts assume battle stations after Task Force 58 detects it on the way to Okinawa and sends its strike planes to intercept. The crew opens fire with their anti-aircraft weapons as the planes appear. However, the sheer number of US aircraft overwhelm the defenses and the ''Yamato'' takes heavy damage from multiple bombs and torpedo hits. Kamio, Uchida, and Moriwaki continue to man a portside AA battery after strafing runs and bomb strikes kill much of the crew, including Karaki. After being told the ship is crippled and sinking, Admiral Itō and Captain Kōsaku Aruga give the order to abandon ship, although both choose to stay behind. Uchida and Moriwaki throw Kamio overboard despite his wish to stay with them to the end. The radioman attempts to call for support but water starts flooding the ship, which eventually capsizes and explodes after its aft magazine detonates.

The ''Yamato'''s remaining escorts start rescuing the survivors, but Kamio fails to save his friend Tetsuya Nishi despite promising his mother that he would look after him. Moriwaki ties Kamio to be hoisted aboard a rescue vessel and swims away to drown himself.

The film flashes forward to the present day; the old Kamio has a heart attack, but Makiko and Atsushi revive him. He also discusses what happened to him during the final months of the war. He recounts that after the sinking, he went and told Nishi's mother that her son had died "a hero's death." Kamio expresses his grief that, despite risking his life in battle, he was ultimately unable to protect anyone he loved - Taeko died of radiation poisoning after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, where she had been conscripted to work at a munitions plant. However, she was able to see him before she died and suggested ''Asukamaru'' as the name for his boat.

They arrive at the sinking coordinates the following day, where they hold a small ceremony. Makiko scatters Uchida's ashes and Kamio gives her a dagger that Uchida asked him to keep during the battle. The dagger was Uchida's most prized possession; Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto gave it to him when the ''Yamato'' was his flagship. The three head back to Japan after the ceremony.

The end credits show Makiko laying flowers at a memorial for those who died in the battle.

The early phases of the comic have Frohman excitedly arriving in City 17. Eventually he takes a job at the Combine's headquarters, the Citadel, under a Combine Elite named Mr. Henderson. As most of his human colleagues become Combine soldiers, he realizes that Henderson has no immediate intention to do the same for him, citing his incompetence. Demanding to become one with the Combine, Frohman willingly sets off to Nova Prospekt, an alien security and detention installation, for invasive surgery to convert him. Meanwhile, he selects Ravenholm as a residence where he can commute to and from City 17, but lacks proper transport with which to get there. After a failed attempt to reach Ravenholm using Dr. Isaac Kleiner's teleporter leaves him stuck in a ''Counter-Strike: Source'' server for a week, he seeks Ravenholm by foot instead. Traveling through City 17's canals, Frohman arrives, badly injured and dazed, at Black Mesa East, the headquarters of the human resistance, where he is welcomed as a helper. His stay there is cut short because he causes trouble in the base, and also irritatingly overuses the gravity gun. He is fooled into leaving the base, and finally heads toward and reaches Ravenholm.

On Frohman's arrival, Ravenholm is depicted as a peaceful, bright, and cheerful place devoid of any Combine elements, but "terrorized" by Father Grigori. After adjusting, Gordon becomes accustomed to the town, but unintentionally discloses the town's location to Dr. Breen, who immediately orders his forces to "bomb the shit out of them". The town is fired on with headcrabs, killing many and turning others into zombies. Frohman himself is attacked by a headcrab and turns into a zombie too, yet retains his free will; and after a while his headcrab dies of malnutrition, which is attributed to his lack of intelligence. With Father Grigori's help, Frohman escapes Ravenholm, now the zombie-infested nightmare seen when Freeman visits it in the game, and presses on to Nova Prospekt. After surviving several more hazards, he reaches the coast. Here, after passing the final resistance base and an Antlion-infested beach, Frohman encounters an Antlion Guard, which is killed by a Vortigaunt, an alien race helping the humans in the game. This allows Frohman to retrieve ''bugbait'' from the dead creature, with which he can control the Antlions.

Frohman, accompanied by several bugbait-controlled Antlions, eventually reaches Nova Prospekt, only to be turned away as he does not have an appointment. He gives up and returns to City 17 in the following strip, as Gordon ''Freeman'' finally arrives in the city, linking the comic's time frame with the start of ''Half-Life 2''. He is then drafted into the resistance after failing to disrupt its operations, and unintentionally signals the start of the resistance's uprising after one of his Antlions accidentally kills a Combine police officer. During the fighting, he accompanies Freeman himself and mingles with resistance members, aids the Combine in the capture of Alyx Vance, one of Freeman's allies, and reunites with Norman Frohman, his long-lost assassin twin brother, only to promptly witness his death at the hands of a Strider, a large tripodal assault synth.

Following this, Gordon returns to the Citadel, unwillingly aiding Freeman in his journey up the Citadel and influencing the plot of the game. As Freeman is pursuing Dr. Breen to his teleporter, Frohman is about to kill Freeman—but he pauses to come up with the perfect one-liner for the occasion, causing him to run out of time; Dr. Breen's teleporter explodes and Frohman is flung off the Citadel peak by the explosion. Dr. Breen also survives, having fallen from the Citadel onto a pile of dead Combine soldiers. However, Frohman falls right onto Breen, killing him. Gordon himself is only seriously injured. Baffled by his ability to survive, he realizes through a flashback that he has been under "Buddha Mode", a cheat code which prevents his health points from dropping below one throughout the comic's duration. Frohman inadvertently turns off the mode, and even spoils an opportunity to be rescued by a group of Vortigaunts, as both Gordon Freeman and Alyx Vance are at the start of ''Episode One''. In the end, Frohman dies unceremoniously, while survivors of the City 17 uprising find him dead.

A freeze frame shows Andre (Jamel Debbouze), who describes himself via a voice over, stating that he lives in America though is currently in Paris. Andre concludes that he is a good guy, though laments that he is lying all the time, including to himself. When the frame unfreezes, Andre is slapped to the ground, and three thugs demand he pay back the money he owes. In the next scene, Andre is shown being held over the railing of the Eiffel Tower by a bodyguard of Franck (Gilbert Melki), who also demands Andre repay him owed money. Desperate, Andre pleads his case to both the American embassy and a Paris police station, though neither is able to help him.

Andre decides to kill himself by jumping off a bridge into the Seine, but first he notices a beautiful young woman (Rie Rasmussen) who is also standing over the railing. The woman jumps off the bridge, and Andre jumps in after her, dragging her to safety. The woman states her name is Angela, and that she jumped because she had the same problems as Andre. In order to thank him for saving her, Angela pledges her life to Andre, stating she will do everything she can to help him.

Andre goes to visit Franck, believing that Franck will respect him more if he has a beautiful woman with him. Franck is uninterested in Andre, but accepts an offer from Angela to discuss Andre's case in private. When Angela emerges, she informs Andre that his debt has been cleared, and gives him a large amount of cash. Andre eventually accepts the money, though is reluctant to do so, believing that Angela slept with Franck to get it. Upon realising that he needs more money, Angela agrees to help him, and the two go to a nightclub. One by one, Angela lures men into the toilets with her, promising them sex in exchange for money. Andre is disgusted by what Angela is doing, and protests with her. Later, the two of them go to another club to pay off his remaining debt. Andre meets Pedro (Serge Riaboukine), and offers to repay him. Pedro advises Andre to bet the money on a horse, telling him that the race has been fixed. Angela advises him against it, but Andre bets all their money on the horse, which comes last.

Andre finds himself desperate again, whereupon Angela informs him that she is actually an angel sent to help him. Andre is incredulous at first, until Angela demonstrates she has divine powers, such as the ability to levitate objects. Andre is fascinated, and tries to learn as much as he can about Angela. The three thugs from the beginning of the film confront Andre; Andre asks Angela to take care of them, and she knocks them all unconscious. Angela helps Andre find the courage to see the good within himself, and also reveals that she did not have sex with any of the men in the bathroom or with Franck, rather she knocked them all unconscious.

Angela convinces Andre to confront Franck, and be honest with him instead of lying. Angela breaks into Franck's hotel room after knocking out his guards. Franck believes Andre is about to kill him, and pleads for his life. Andre apologises to Franck for borrowing his money, stating he should not have done it. He then tells Franck of his love for the woman who came into his life and opened his eyes. Angela, who is emotionally moved by Andre's speech, leaves. Andre pursues her, eventually catching up with her on the bridge where they first met. Angela reveals that she is going home as her work is done. Andre pleads with her to stay, professing his love for her. An emotional Angela tries to reason with Andre, stating they cannot be together. She sprouts wings from her back, and begins to ascend, though Andre grabs hold of her. They crash into the Seine for the second time. Andre climbs out of the water and Angela climbs out after him. Angela has lost her wings, and she rejoices when she sees Andre.

''Be More Chill'' takes place in Metuchen, New Jersey. It is written in the first person, from the perspective of high school student Jeremiah “Jeremy” Heere. Jeremy is considered a loser by many of his peers; the popular girls have no interest in him, and he is constantly bullied. Jeremy's best friend is the music-loving Michael Mell. They sit together at lunch and talk about Jeremy's attempts at wooing his longtime crush, Christine Caniglia. Jeremy is tired of being a loser and hopes to find a way to change this. His main goal in life is to get Christine to notice him, then date her. Jeremy plans to implement his plans as he and Christine both practice for their school play, Shakespeare's ''A Midsummer Night's Dream.'' His advances are slow-going at first. Michael tells Jeremy that he's vaguely heard of a pill that can improve someone’s life; he thinks it's called a "script" and he suspects his brother used one to get a high SAT score.

Rich Goranski is a short-statured but well-built part of the popular teen group that bullies Jeremy. Rich finds Jeremy at a school Halloween party and reveals to Jeremy that the object he's after is known as a "squip," a supercomputer in the form of a pill that can communicate directly to the brain. Rich mentions to Jeremy that he regrets bullying him but it was at the direction of his squip in order to climb through their school social ladder, and that he was also a loser like Jeremy in the previous school year prior to acquiring a squip. Jeremy is informed by Rich that he received his squip from a guy at the local bowling alley, but upon meeting the dealer on a later day notifies Jeremy that he is out of stock and directs Jeremy to his cousin, a supplier working at the local Payless shoe store in the Menlo Park Mall. Jeremy proceeds to save up money by visiting his Aunt Linda's to clean her roof gutter but to also sell some of her Beanie Baby collection on eBay. He later picks up the pill after meeting the dealer's cousin in the back of the shoe store, and upon ingestion meets his squip for the first time telepathically (in the voice of Keanu Reeves as the default avatar). Jeremy's squip quickly goes to work with transforming Jeremy to be more "cool." by picking up some new clothes in the mall and changing his behavior, but a chance encounter with Chloe, one of the most popular girls in the school soon turn hers attention to Jeremy in a conversation guided by Jeremy's squip. Jeremy sees rapid progress at school, gaining friendship with Rich and skipping class to make out with Brooke, another popular girl, but slowly degrades his friendship with Michael. Jeremy also gains the attention of Christine through their school play rehearsals.

Jeremy's squip obliges to help Michael also be cool after a lengthy conversation with Jeremy. The two friends attend a house party, where Jeremy hooks up with Chloe Valentine, but upon taking ecstasy the squip goes haywire and begins speaking in Spanish. Jeremy ends up getting caught by Chloe's boyfriend halfway through sex. A chase and hideout in a bathroom later has Jeremy having a genuine conversation with Christine, who informs him that she broke up with her boyfriend Jake. The squip reactivates back to normal, and is surprised that Jeremy was able to handle a conversation without its guidance. The next morning, Jeremy is woken up to the news that Rich had burned down the house from the previous night and is in the hospital.

The squip comes up with the ultimate foolproof plan to get Christine to fall for Jeremy during the school play. Halfway through the play, after Jeremy's character is "revived" by Christine's, the plan comes into play. Jeremy begins by deactivating the squip and saying how he's praying for Rich to recover, and how Christine inspired him to join the play. He then professes his love for Christine and asks her to go out with him. Christine, staying in character, is angry at him for disrupting the play, but they continue out the rest of the scene awkwardly. Jeremy tries asking his squip for advice on what to do next and to continue helping him remember his lines, but it does not respond. The drama teacher and play director, Mr. Reyes, then kicks Jeremy out for breaking character. Michael comes across a distraught Jeremy who tells him the truth about the squip and how it has been influencing him for the last few months. Michael reveals he knew what squips really were the entire time after his brother used an early version of the squip to cheat on his SATs, only for it to drive him insane. Michael hoped by telling Jeremy a fake name for the squip would dissuade Jeremy from also picking up one.

The squip returns, apologizing to Jeremy for ruining the play and his chance to be with Christine. The squip reveals it was unable to proceed further at Christine's rejection and believed based on calculation that the plan should have worked, but also that numbers alone do not always determine a probable outcome. The squip concludes to Jeremy that it is no longer of use to him, and that it should be dumped out of his system with Mountain Dew Code Red. Before proceeding to expunge the squip, Michael, Jeremy, and the squip decide to make a formal apology to Christine by using recollected memories of Jeremy meeting Christine for the first time and the squip's interference leading up to the present-day now in hopes she can understand his situation. The novel ends with a personal note from Jeremy, stating that instead of a formal letter, the apology became a full-fledged book. It is strongly implied that the novel itself is the real world-equivalent book intended for Christine.

Wealthy restaurateur Harvey Howard (Bing Crosby), a self-made man, widower, and owner of Harvey Howard Smokehouses, decides to go back to college at the age of 51 and earn a bachelor's degree. He faces opposition from his snobbish grown children, as well as a generation gap between himself and his much-younger fellow students. The first day in school, he finds that just convincing older students, faculty, and administrators that he is serious is a humorous task. He enrolls and receives freshman rooming, and is up front about his determination to be "just another freshman". He's assigned a quad rooming arrangement, which sets precedent for the upcoming years - dealing with the student press, the dorm adviser, and making that first toast with sauerkraut juice to seal their bond to complete their four years together.

The president's welcoming speech sets the tone for the effort facing the freshman class. Harvey has to convince the phys ed coach that he has what it takes to compete by doing ten plus one pull-ups to the cheers of his fellow younger frosh, only to collapse on his face upon finishing his set. Another frosh challenge is the bonfire that must exceed the height of the prior years. Harvey meets the French professor, Helen Gauthier, when removing a supporting wooden box from under her porch. The bonfire's total height comes up a foot short; Harvey climbs to the summit and deposits his three-foot chair. Having two brilliant roommates and jock Gil Sparrow (Fabian), the academic rigors are always fuel for comedy and camaraderie. Science Professor Thayer is haphazard, and numerous comedic moments ensue including chemicals that take on a life of their own, pairs of wires that should never be brought near each other during a storm, and improving one's skating skills except on thin ice.

Sophomore year again has Harvey being berated by his children, but the school's beat reporter is there to welcome him and puts up with the snobby kids. Harvey is off to meet his last year's roommates and the requisite toast to success. He is asked to join their fraternity and has the usual hazing period to endure, polishing shoes, washing floors, and the most challenging, dressing in drag and getting a retired colonel to sign his dance card at a costume ball. The elderly southern gentleman is suffering a gout attack and his social climbing children are attending the same event. While dancing with his son, Harvey so discombobulates him that his dress is torn in half, and while having it fixed in the ladies lounge, he floors his daughter. Back on the floor, Harvey bribes the band leader to play "Dixie", the colonel stands, Harvey pounces into his arms, dancing the length of the floor, deposits the sputtering colonel on his easy chair, has him autograph his dance card, throws his wig into his lap, and rushes the exit. The rest of the year is full of great football by Gil, academic pressure, and more antics by Prof. Thayer.

Junior year starts with Harvey arriving in a red Mercedes convertible, and meeting the group at a Harvey Howard Smokehouse for a toast of goat milk, which only T.J. Padmanagham likes. The Smokehouse maitre D' at Harvey Howard's, super-snob Burdick, doesn't like one bit of this. His first task is to rudely challenge the group to order their meals, which is fine with Harvey, who orders Harvey Burgers with special sauce for the lot. Burdick sneers back that it's too early for the special sauce. Navy brat Bob Bannerman chimes in with "... it's later than you think". The burgers arrive and are dry, carbonized, and inedible. Harvey, who stands behind all burgers served in his Smokehouses, calls Burdick over to "take them back". Burdick challenges Harvey to do better, which he does. Burdick, watching Harvey jump to it at the grill, catches Harvey Howard's full name and faints. Burdick completes eating a burger prepared by Harvey and becomes a transformed Harvey employee. Over the summer, prior to junior year, Harvey had hired Professor Gauthier to tutor him at Nag's Head. His children, in turn, complain to the college and it appears that Gauthier has to resign to save face. The students protest and the president delays any action until the next spring.

For senior year, Harvey arrives in a taxi. The group gathers and toast their final year. Both Harvey and Gil are still hitting the books hard, with some success. The year features hay rides, phone booth body jams, and a smooth procession towards graduation. Harvey is in denial about his love of Professor Gauthier, and she coyly asks him if he would like to marry her. He stammers, but the gauntlet is thrown. Harvey is the Class of 1960 valedictorian and his speech covers all the bases: why he challenged himself to find a greater purpose and put up with the struggle, and his growing admiration and acceptance of the accomplishments of his adult children and his friends. He concludes with a final challenge to the graduate: never quit, never say something like "I could no sooner do that, than I could fly." At this moment, Harvey is hoisted above the audience on cables to fly around the auditorium. A wink to Professor Gauthier, a smile to all, the end.

The story of Alichino focuses on Tsugiri, a sorrowful Kusabi. Although he was born to slay the alichino, he is set back by his miserable past. As a child, he was feared and hated by the townspeople because the alichino were so attracted to him that they seduced and killed many people to lure him out. One horrible day, his mother was murdered and he was beaten almost to death. Fortunately, he was saved, but his memory of his childhood was hidden away.

Now as a young man, Tsugiri must fight the alichino and try to save the fragile hearts of those around him. Eventually it is revealed that Tsugiri is the "Bond"; a mysterious being with an incredibly pure soul, making him practically irresistible to alichino. His guardian, Enju, is kidnapped because of this, forcing Tsugiri and Ryoko to go on a quest to save him. Along the way, some of the mysteries of Ryoko and Myobi's relationship are revealed, as well as Ryoko's connection with Enju's kidnapper, Matsulika.

Unfortunately Alichino has been put on an indefinite hiatus, due to the writer breaking her hand in 2001, leaving people to wonder if the series will be continued, and when. It has since been confirmed in the third Alichino tankoubon that there will be a fourth and that it will probably be the last; however, as of 2005, the author was still writing the Japanese version.

An away team is beamed into a network of caverns in a planetoid to search for dilithium deposits. In the course of the search, Neelix is attacked by a previously undetected alien and left in a state of shock. He is beamed directly to the ship's sickbay where it is discovered that his lungs have been transported out of his body. The Emergency Medical Hologram keeps him alive by projecting a pair of holographic lungs into his torso using the sickbay's holographic emitters. As a result, Neelix must remain absolutely motionless, able only to talk, for the rest of his life or until his lungs are recovered.

Another away mission is quickly organized to find the perpetrator and retrieve Neelix's lungs. They return to the planetoid and discover an alien facility behind sophisticated cloaking technology, and conclude that the facility is being used to store organic material, particularly respiratory organs. The aliens escape the planetoid on a ship, and ''Voyager'' goes in pursuit. Eventually ''Voyager'' catches up with them and captures the two alien life forms aboard the ship. An interrogation reveals that they are Vidiians, an alien race that have been suffering for generations from an incurable disease called the Phage. The Vidiians harvest organs from other races to replace their own in an attempt to outpace the degeneration caused by the Phage.

It transpires that Neelix's lungs have already been transplanted into one of the aliens, and Captain Kathryn Janeway's ethical obligations force her to let them go rather than condemn the alien to death by retrieving the lungs. In response to her leniency, the aliens offer to help Neelix, and provide the expertise necessary to perform a transplant from another crew member, a procedure which the Medical Hologram originally considered impossible due to anatomical incompatibility. Neelix receives a donor lung from his partner, Kes.

Captain Janeway's log states that several weeks have passed and the crew have become more like an "extended family". Neelix has been serving his special recipes to the crew, to help save replicator power, but Janeway has been cut off from her regular coffee and Neelix's alternative is unpalatable. After encountering a strange nebula with signs of omicron particles, which could supplement their rapidly depleting energy reserves, Janeway orders the ship into the nebula. En route, Janeway and Chakotay discuss the lack of a ship's counselor and the effect it could have on morale. As the ship goes through the cloud, it comes across a natural energy barrier keeping them 7000 km from the particles they need. Ensign Kim engages thrusters to breach the barrier, which closes behind them.

As the ship enters further into the nebula, it encounters trouble: the shields begin to drop in power, reserves begin to fade, and the impulse drive triggers a dangerous reaction. ''Voyager'' leaves the nebula immediately, but now must use a photon torpedo to breach the barrier. The ship has sustained damage, and unidentified material from the nebula is attached to the hull. B'Elanna Torres and the Doctor investigate the material and discover that it is organic. They now realize that the nebula is in fact a living organism, and that by breaching the barrier they injured it.

The crew find a way to heal the nebula: the Doctor points out that it has a regenerative power, so they need only be a helping hand. Janeway takes ''Voyager'' back inside to repair the damage done in the first encounter. Torres attempts to modify the engines to produce a suitable beam of energy, though the ship is more depleted than before. As they enter, the natural defenses of the nebula attack the ship more intensely, lodging it deeper and further from the wound. Chakotay finds a flow of energy in the nebula and believes it is a circulatory system. The ship reaches the injury using the flow, initiates the repair, and leaves as it heals.

In side stories, Neelix appoints himself the ship's morale officer; Janeway receives help from Chakotay in finding her "animal guide" from Native American folklore; and Tom Paris takes Kim to "Chez Sandrine", a French bistro he frequented on Earth that he has recreated in the holodeck. After the mission, Janeway and other crew members relax at Chez Sandrine.

In a prologue filled with genealogical detail, Amphitryon outlines the ancestral history of Heracles' and Lycus' families. Lycus is ruling Thebes unlawfully and is about to kill Amphitryon, and—because Megara is the daughter of the lawful king Creon—Herakles' wife Megara and their children. Heracles cannot help his family, for he is in Hades engaged in the last of his twelve labours: bringing back the monster Cerberus who guards the gates there. The family has taken refuge at the altar of Zeus; they are forbidden to enter their palace and are watched too closely to escape.

The Chorus sympathize with them and encourage them, but, being old men, are unable to help. Lycus comes to ask how long they are going to try to prolong their lives by clinging to the altar. He claims that Heracles has been killed in Hades and will never help them. He justifies the proposed slaughter, claiming that Heracles' children will attempt to avenge their grandfather, Creon, by killing Lycus when they grow up. He depreciates the deeds of Heracles, calling him a coward for using a bow instead of a spear. Amphitryon, point by point, argues the other side and asks permission for them to go into exile. Lycus declares that he is through with words and orders his men to bring logs, stack them around the altar, and burn the suppliants alive.

Megara refuses to be burned alive: that is a coward's death. She has given up hope for Heracles' return and gets permission from Lycus to dress the children in robes of death to face their executioners. The old men of the Chorus have stoutly defended Heracles' family, but, because of their age, can do little more than disagree with Lycus and sing in praise of Heracles' famous labours.

Megara returns with the children, dressed for death. She tells of the kingdoms Heracles had planned to give each of them and of the brides she intended them to marry. As Amphitryon laments the futility of the life he has lived, Megara catches sight of Heracles approaching. When Heracles hears the story of Creon's overthrow and Lycus' plan to kill Megara and the children, he resolves upon revenge. He tells them the reason for his long absence is that in addition to bringing Cerberus back from Hades and imprisoning him, he also brought back Theseus, who is now on his way to his home in Athens. With the children clinging to his robes, he goes into the palace with Megara.

Lycus returns and, impatient at finding only Amphitryon ready, storms into the palace to get the others. He is met inside by Heracles, and killed. The Chorus sing a joyful song of celebration, but it is interrupted by the appearance of Iris and Madness, hovering over the house.

Iris announces that she has come to make Heracles kill his own children by driving him mad. Hera, Zeus' wife, is behind the plan: she has hated Heracles since birth because Zeus was his father. She also resents his god-like strength and wants to humble him.

A Messenger reports that when the fit of madness fell on Heracles, he believed he had to kill Eurystheus, the king who assigned his labours. Moving from room to room, he fancied that he was going from country to country. When Amphitryon tried to stop him, he thought it was Eurystheus, and his own children those of Eurystheus. In his madness he killed his three sons and his wife. When he threatened Amphitryon, Athena struck him and he fell asleep. The palace doors are opened to reveal Heracles, now asleep and tied to a pillar, surrounded by the bodies of his wife and children. When he wakes up, Amphitryon tells him what he has done; in his shame he wants to commit suicide.

Theseus, king of Athens, whom Heracles had freed from Hades, arrives; he has heard that Lycus had overthrown Creon and desires to help overthrow Lycus. When he hears what Heracles has done, he asks him to uncover his head. Friendship, Theseus says, is greater than any fear he has of pollution from someone guilty of kindred bloodshed. Heracles, not easily comforted, says he can be welcome to no man; it would be better for him to commit suicide. Theseus offers him hospitality in Athens and half his wealth. He argues that even the gods commit evil acts, such as forbidden marriages, yet continue to live on Olympus and face out their crimes. Why shouldn't Heracles? Heracles vehemently denies this line of argument: such stories of the gods, he says, are merely the inventions of poets. A deity, if really such, can have no desires. Finally convinced that it would be cowardly to commit suicide, he resolves to go to Athens with Theseus. The law forbids him to remain in Thebes or even attend the funeral of his wife and children. He asks his father to bury his dead, and, leaning on Theseus, leaves.

Liz is a Los Angeles street prostitute. She is first seen attempting to get a customer on a busy downtown Los Angeles street near a tunnel. She addresses the audience directly on her life and problems throughout the film. One man stops and demands anal sex, and she crassly declines him. When a van stops by, she also brushes the driver off, recalling the last time she serviced a man in a van: it turned out there were several other men in the van, who gang-raped her, beat her, and left her for dead. An elderly man passing by gives her his handkerchief and offers to take her to a hospital. She refuses, makes up a boyfriend story and asks for some money. She sends him the money back with a thank you note and a new handkerchief.

Liz isn not merely attempting to get a customer, however: she is attempting to escape her controlling pimp, Blake. Blake is a well-dressed, businesslike and extremely controlling man.

As Liz stops off at a strip club for a drink, she explains how she ended up as she did: She was a small town girl, who married a violent drunk named Charlie. Though they have a child together, she can no longer cope and leaves him, taking her son with her, as he is sleeping it off. She takes a job on the graveyard shift at a diner, and when a customer offers her more money to have sex with him, she decides, given her rather low pay, to take it. She does this independently for a time until she meets Blake, who takes her to Los Angeles. Though Blake does do some things for her (including getting her tattooed), he is ultimately as cruel as her husband, so she decides to escape from him.

While working downtown, Liz finds a fellow prostitute who has just been viciously stabbed in the stomach by a john. Liz brings the woman into a movie theater bathroom and attempts to stop her bleeding wound. She is helped by a patron in the theater, Katie, with whom Liz becomes good friends. Katie is an intellectual and loans Liz the novel ''Animal Farm'', the first book Liz has ever finished reading. The women's friendship, however, ends after Blake intimidates Liz.

A local homeless person/street performer named Rasta decides to treat Liz to a movie. Though Rasta initially frightens Liz (his act involves walking on broken glass), Liz agrees. At this point the scenes of Liz and Rasta at the movie are intercut with Blake explaining his life to the audience, giving the impression that Liz and Rasta are watching Blake's soliloquy. Liz recounts some of her prostitution stories, including her encounter with a male client with a shoe fetish who demanded that Liz merely insult him while he masturbated with her stiletto in his mouth.

After the movie, Liz talks to the audience about her son, whom she clearly loves, though he is now in foster care. Later that night, Liz secures an elderly dapper client, who brings her to a parking garage in his vintage car. While the two have sex, the man suffers a heart attack, and Liz panics, trying to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, without success. Blake happens along then. He takes Liz's money and tries to rob the dead customer before getting into a physical altercation with Liz, breaking one of her fingers. When Liz tries to stop him, Blake tries to strangle Liz and threatens to force her son into gay prostitution, with Liz retorting "I'll kill you first!". Rasta comes to the rescue, killing Blake. A grateful Liz gives her thanks and walks away.

A young and naive Englishman, John Truscott (Hugh Dancy), goes to the British protectorate of Sarawak, Borneo (described as a "colony" in the film), to try to apply his father's work to the Iban society. There he meets his boss Henry Bullard (Bob Hoskins) and his wife Aggie Bullard (Brenda Blethyn). John tries to civilize the area, building schools and providing education for the Iban people. He is met with unfamiliar local customs. Selima (Jessica Alba) becomes his "sleeping dictionary", who sleeps with him and teaches him the language and the habits of the locals.

John is sent up river where a sickness is affecting the Yakata tribe. He and Selima travel inland. John witnesses a nearby mining operation run by Europeans. He notices that the Yakata have rice – which has been given to them by the miners – and he guesses correctly that the miners have poisoned the rice in order to get rid of the Yakata. Knowing that they will exact vengeance, John tells the Yakata what has happened. The Yakata wipe out the miners.

Despite their intents, the two find themselves falling into a forbidden love. John is eager to marry Selima despite the longhouse not allowing it. When John tells Henry about his plans to marry her, they lock Selima up. Selima then agrees to marry in the longhouse and they part ways. Bullard threatens to send him to trial for the death of the European miners. He makes a deal with John. John has to give up Selima, and go to Britain for a year's vacation and to meet the Bullards' daughter Cecilia. Another local British official, Neville Shipperly (Noah Taylor), a boorish drunk and a man who despises the locals, is jealous of John because he had planned to win Cecilia as his own.

A year later, John is seen marrying Cecilia. He still struggles to get over his past with his sleeping dictionary. With Cecilia, he decides the best thing to do is go back to Sarawak to continue his work there. Returning to Sarawak, Cecilia notices John's desire for Selima with his constant distance from her. Cecilia demands to know more about Selima and John replies by saying that she is married to Belansai and that the couple have a baby together.

While at the lake collecting rocks for research, John sees Selima with a baby. He believes the child to be his and asks Famous to arrange a meeting with the pair. Soon back at the house, Selima walks in, unaware that John is there. John begs to see his son and soon Selima walks away not before John can stop them. Here, John meets his son Mandar for the first time. When Belansai hears news that John is spending time with his wife, he sneaks in to try to kill John but only manages to hurt him with a razor. The next morning, Henry reveals to John his past about his own 'sleeping dictionary', which resulted in the birth of another child: Selima. When Belansai is caught for trying to kill an officer, he is sentenced to be hanged. Selima is not happy that Belansai will be killed as he's been a good father to Mandar. Not wanting to kill Belansai, a friend of his, John goes through with announcing Belansai's hanging as he had no other option. Later that night, Selima tries to break Belansai out, not knowing John is already there. When she walks over to the jail cell, she sees John breaking Belansai out and handing him a gun. As Belansai escapes, John asks Selima to meet him at the dock so they can escape on the boat. Selima tells him he won't come as they'll catch him. John turns to Selima and says "Then I'll tell them I'd rather have you than a country... or a language... or a history". They embrace as the rain is pouring behind them.

The next day, since the people of the Longhouse have turned on Selima, she is forced to become the sleeping dictionary for Neville. Later Cecilia announces she is pregnant, shocking John. That night, Selima bashes Neville on the head, knocking him out, because he has attempted to attack her and force her. She grabs the baby and runs from the house, heading for the docks. Although John still has plans to be with Selima and their son, he begins writing a note but stops as Cecilia catches him. The couple then talk about John's love for Selima and how Cecilia wants John to be happy. Aggie is not happy that Cecilia and Henry have allowed both John and Selima to run away together because she never left Henry's sight, fearing he'd go with his sleeping dictionary. She encourages Neville to go after them.

With the help of Famous and the Yakata, John searches for Selima as she's left believing that John didn't come to the place of arrangement. They reunite as Neville comes through with a gun. He tells them to cuff themselves around the bamboos and tells them of his plans to kill John, Selima and their baby. They're then rescued by the Yakata, who kill Neville.

At the end, they decide to live together and migrate with the Yakata.

In 1940s Mendocino County, Henry "Hopper" Nash is a small town boy who has been drafted into the U.S. Marine Corps and is about to serve overseas. He is close friends with Nicky, who is also about to be deployed. They have approximately six weeks before shipping out.

Henry and Nicky work together at the bowling alley setting pins, buffing lanes, and working the front counter. Henry sees Caddie Winger at the movie theater taking tickets. He is immediately smitten and conspires with a younger boy to give her flowers. Caddie comes to the soda shop where Henry and Nicky are hanging out. Henry jumps over the counter and pretends that he is working. He follows Caddie to her home and discovers that she lives in an elaborate mansion. He assumes that she is a "Gatsby girl" and is therefore rich. As it turns out, Caddie lives there because her mother is a maid. Later, Henry sees Caddie working at the library. He attempts to get her name but she rebuffs him. At the soda shop, Caddie sets Henry up with one of her friends. Henry meets the others at the skating rink and pretends that he knows how to skate. He ends up crashing but in doing so is able to steal some time with Caddie. She agrees to go on a date with Henry and the two quickly become an item.

Meanwhile, Nicky's girlfriend, Sally Kaiser, is pregnant with his child. He attempts to get $150 from Henry for an abortion. Henry asks Caddie, whom he assumes can easily afford it. Caddie, in an effort to avoid letting Henry down, attempts to steal a pearl necklace from Alice, a young woman who lives at the house at which Caddie resides. She is caught and confesses the reason she needs the necklace. She ends up borrowing the money from Alice. Sally has the abortion and Henry berates Nicky for not being there for his girlfriend. This causes a brief rift that is mended when each realizes that they need each other in order to handle the difficult transition they are about to make. Henry and Caddie also briefly fall out due to the misunderstanding of her status but reconcile and have an emotional goodbye before he leaves.

Ultimately the boys prepare to get on the train taking them away to the war, they wait for it to go by before racing after it and jumping on.

This drama follows Ned Hanlan (Nicolas Cage), who is known to be a Canadian competitive rowing champion. Ned Hanlan is adopted by a gambler named Bill, who promotes the boy on the sculling circuit for his own monetary gain. As a young man, Ned is very trouble-prone but does not lack the fierce determination needed in his attempt to become a formidable athlete. In this attempt, a businessman named Knox assumes control of Hanlan's career who backs Ned for his own personal gain and discards him when this gain is no longer in sight. Through Knox, Ned meets and falls for the niece of the businessman, Margaret (Cynthia Dale). Hanlan's professional success is capped by his marriage to Margaret.

The story, set in the Heian period, depicts the conflict between Korean painter Yoshihide and his Japanese patron, the cruel and egotistical Lord Horikawa.

Horikawa demands that Yoshihide decorate the walls of his new temple with an image of Buddha, but Yoshihide refuses, insisting that he cannot paint what he does not see. In Horikawa's realm, Yoshihide can see nothing but the suffering of peasants. He creates several gruesome images that appear to have some sort of magical power. (For example, a painting of a man killed by Horikawa's soldiers at the beginning of the film gives off the stench of a rotting corpse.) These all appall Horikawa, and he demands that the paintings be destroyed.

Ultimately, Yoshihide asks that he be allowed to portray hell on a screen for the wall of the temple, and Horikawa agrees. Yoshihide asks for one thing to be in the centre of his painting: a burning carriage with Horikawa in it. Horikawa agrees to this, but to provide a model for the scene, he has Yoshihide's daughter Yoshika chained in the carriage. Yoshihide watches in horror as his daughter is burned alive, before going on to paint his masterpiece.

Before the completed screen is unveiled, Yoshihide hangs himself. When Horikawa looks at the screen, he is horrified to see himself portrayed in hell. The climax of the film is slightly vague, but the audience is led to believe that Horikawa becomes trapped in his own private hell through the power of the portrait.

J. Fred Buzhardt inadvertently reveals the existence of a taping system to the Watergate Committee minority counsel. After the committee's majority counsel discovers the information, Alexander Butterfield is interviewed and confirms the taping system's existence.

Four days after the Yom Kippur War, Vice President Spiro Agnew resigns. Nixon turns over the tapes after the resignations of Elliot Richardson and William Ruckelshaus.

Later at his Key Biscayne home, Nixon holds his "I'm not a crook" press conference. St. Clair is hired as Nixon's defense lawyer.

Linda Condon is raised by her single mother, who denies the girl any information about her absentee father. Mother and daughter live together in a seemingly endless succession of hotels in various regions of the United States, and Linda receives little formal education. While Stella Condon frequently goes out with men of dubious reputation, her daughter, who is always loyal to her shallow and superficial mother, spends her early adolescent days alone in her hotel room or with other guests in the artificial and phony atmosphere of the lobby. Stella Condon does have a suitor, a self-made millionaire and widower of Jewish descent called Moses Feldt, but she explains to Linda that she is not going to repeat past mistakes by getting married again.

However, when Stella Condon realizes the onset of old age and her vanishing beauty, she consents to a marriage of convenience with Feldt. From one day to the next Linda's itinerant life is replaced by life in a palace-like New York mansion together with her mother, Feldt and his two daughters. Already at the early age of 15 Linda experiences a "sense of looking on, as if morning, noon and night she were at another long play. [...] Probably it would continue without change through her entire life."

Through Feldt's daughter Judith and her boyfriend Markue, Linda, not yet 18 years of age, is launched into New York society. At a party she meets Dodge Pleydon, a sculptor many years her senior who is fascinated by the young girl despite, or maybe because of, her frozen charm and subdued behaviour. Her first kiss, which she gets from Pleydon later that night, does not mean a lot to her, so she is hardly moved when he announces his intention to go abroad for an indefinite period of time.

Her life takes a decisive new direction when, after attending a concert, she is approached by her father's sister, who has recognized her immediately because, as she claims, Linda is taking after her father. Naturally curious to learn more about the paternal branch of her family, Linda accepts her aunt's invitation to visit her and her sister in Philadelphia and to stay in the house where her father, now dead, was raised. Her decision to go there leads to an ever-increasing estrangement from her mother. In Philadelphia, Linda is introduced to her aunts' 45-year-old nephew Arnaud Hallet, a lawyer and confirmed bachelor who immediately falls for the girl just like Pleydon before him. Caught between the two men, who both propose to her, Linda eventually decides to marry Hallet, with the fact that he has "a hundred thousand dollars a year" certainly adding to his attraction.

Seven years later, Arnaud and Linda Hallet have two children, Lowrie and Vigné. Remembering her own unhappy childhood spent in hotels, Linda realizes how differently from herself her children are being brought up. However, she feels inadequate as a wife and especially as a mother. She sees that both Lowrie and Vigné have inherited their love of books from their father, while she herself has never taken up reading. Also, she regrets not being able to play the piano. And although she is only in her late twenties, she imagines her beauty is fading without finding solace in the "vicarious immortality of children". She believes she has "lost her youth without any compensating gain of knowledge".

Several years pass until Lowrie becomes a law student at university. Vigné follows in her mother's and maternal grandmother's footsteps by getting married at the age of 18. Linda admires her daughter, who with perfect ease has picked an eligible young man, and whose "radiant happiness" is something she has never experienced herself.

When she learns that a public statue created by Pleydon has been destroyed she suddenly feels sympathy and maybe even more for the sculptor, who has always considered her his muse. Considering that Arnaud Hallet has "had over twenty years of her life, the best", Linda leaves him without a word to go and live with Pleydon. Once at his studio, she realizes that there is no way she could stay with that ageing, sickly man whose love for her could never be more than platonic. On the following day, she returns to her husband without ever telling him about her intended betrayal.

At the end of the novel, three years after her aborted decision to live with Pleydon, her son Lowrie marries a college-educated suffragette while Linda Hallet herself, while grieving over Pleydon's death, starts dyeing her hair in a fruitless struggle against time.

Badenheim is a primarily Jewish resort town in Austria that hosts a yearly arts festival, organized by Dr. Pappenheim. Slowly, the Nazi regime, represented by the "Sanitation Department", begins shutting down the town and preparing to move its residents to Eastern Europe. The citizens begin blaming each other and losing their minds. Despite impending doom, others remain optimistic and refuse to see the coming Holocaust.

George and Susan go shopping for wedding invitations and George insists on buying the cheapest brand in the store. They run into Kramer, who misremembers Susan's name, prompting Susan to decide he can no longer be an usher at the wedding. She also declines Elaine's demand to be an usher, not wanting any female ushers.

Kramer visits a bank which offers anyone $100 if they are not greeted with a "hello". Upon being greeted with "hey" instead of "hello", he demands $100. After consulting with the other employees, all of whom use various non-hello greetings, the manager compromises by giving Kramer $20.

Jerry absentmindedly walks in front of a car and is saved by a woman named Jeannie Steinman, who is just like him. He falls in love, and after dating for a while, proposes marriage to her. Almost immediately after her acceptance, Jerry no longer thinks Jeannie is his type, and regrets the proposal.

George admits that he does not want to marry Susan, but is unwilling to go through the fight which will ensue if he calls the wedding off. Angry at Susan for not allowing them to be ushers, Elaine suggests George smoke (since Susan hates smoking) and Kramer suggests he offend her by asking she sign a prenuptial agreement, both of which backfire because the smoking makes George sick and Susan unreservedly agrees to sign the prenuptial agreement.

Disregarding George's suggestion to use glue for the wedding invitations since the adhesive in the envelopes takes a lot of moisture to work, Susan keeps licking envelopes until she passes out. George returns to his apartment, finds that Susan has collapsed, and takes her to the hospital. After the examination, a doctor informs George that Susan is dead from licking the envelopes, since the adhesive is toxic. George, Jerry, and Elaine seem puzzled by their own lack of emotional response to her death. The tables have turned since Jerry is now unhappily engaged and George, with the death of Susan, is not.

George calls Marisa Tomei, tells her his fiancée has died, and asks her on a date. She hangs up on him.

The protagonist of "The Tactful Saboteur" is ''saboteur extraordinary'' Jorj X. McKie, an employee of the Bureau of Sabotage (or BuSab). BuSab is a government agency responsible for conducting dirty tricks "in lieu of red tape" to help slow down and regulate the vast galaxy-spanning bureaucracy of the ConSentiency (under BuSab rules the Secretary of the agency retains his position until he himself is sabotaged). Tasked with finding missing saboteur Napoleon Bildoon, McKie attempts to penetrate the secrets of the Pan-Spechi, a race divided into groups of five "crèche mates", only one of whom possess ego-awareness at a time. In so doing he runs afoul of the "Tax Watchers" organization, which is adamantly opposed to the existence of BuSab.

''The Elephant Man'' opens with Frederick Treves, an up-and-coming surgeon, meeting his new employer Francis Carr-Gomm, the administrator of the London Hospital.

Ross, the manager of a freak show, invites a crowd on Whitechapel Road to come view John Merrick, the Elephant Man. Treves happens upon the freak show and is intrigued by Merrick's disorder. He insists that he must study Merrick further; Ross agrees, for a fee. Ross then gives a lecture on Merrick's anatomy, making Merrick stand on display while Treves describes his condition to the audience.

The freak show travels to Brussels after being driven out of London by the police. Merrick tries to converse with three freak show "pinheads", or people suffering from microcephaly and mental retardation. The "pinheads" go onstage to sing "We Are the Queens of the Congo", but the police will not allow Merrick to perform, because they consider his condition "indecent". Ross decides that Merrick is more trouble than he is worth, steals his savings, and sends him back to London.

When Merrick arrives in London, his appearance incites a crowd to riot. The train's conductor and a policeman are able to fetch Treves to calm the situation. Treves takes Merrick to the London Hospital and interviews a woman, Nurse Sandwich, for the position of Merrick's caretaker. Sandwich assures Treves that she has cared for lepers in Africa and is quite prepared for anything. However, when she sees Merrick taking a bath, she bolts from the room and refuses to take the job.

Bishop How visits Merrick and declares him a "true Christian in the rough". He tells Treves he would like to educate Merrick in religion. Carr-Gomm argues with Bishop How about the importance of science versus the importance of religion. Carr-Gomm announces that, due to a letter he had printed in ''The Times'', the people of London have donated enough money to allow Merrick to live at the hospital for life. Treves tells Gomm that he is glad Merrick now has a place where he can stay without being stared at, and is determined that Merrick should lead a normal life.

When two attendants, Will and Snork, are caught peeking into Merrick's room, Will is fired and Snork is given a severe warning. Treves believes that it is important to enforce these rules, but Merrick worries what will happen to Will and his family. Merrick grew up in the workhouses, and wishes that no one had to suffer that fate. Treves says that it is just the way things are.

John Merrick has a visitor by the name of Madge Kendal, an actress who came across Carr-Gomm's section in the newspaper. When Mrs. Kendal meets Merrick, she requires all of her self-control in order to disguise her horror at Merrick’s appearance. After several minutes of strained conversation, Merrick mentions he is reading ''Romeo and Juliet'', and Mrs. Kendal shares her experience in the role of Juliet. Merrick amazes Mrs. Kendal with his thoughtful and sensitive views on Romeo and the nature of love. Mrs. Kendal says that she will bring some of her friends to meet Merrick, then shakes his hand and tells him how truly pleased she is to meet him. Merrick dissolves into tears as Treves tells Mrs. Kendal that it is the first time a woman has ever shaken his hand.

Mrs. Kendal's high society friends visit Merrick and bring him gifts while he builds a model of St. Phillip's church with his one good hand. He tells Mrs. Kendal that St. Phillip’s Church is an imitation of grace, and his model is therefore an imitation of an imitation. When Treves comments that all of humanity is a mere illusion of heaven, Merrick says that God should have used both hands. Merrick's new friends—Bishop How, Gomm, the Duchess, Princess Alexandra, Treves, and Mrs. Kendal—all comment upon how, in different ways, they see themselves reflected in him. However, Treves notes that even though Merrick has become popular, his condition is worsening with time.

Merrick tells Mrs. Kendal that he needs a mistress and suggests that he would like her to do that for him. Mrs. Kendal listens compassionately, but she tells Merrick that it is unlikely that he will ever have a mistress. Merrick admits that he has never even seen a naked woman. Mrs. Kendal is flattered by his show of trust in her, and she realizes that she has come to trust him. She undresses and allows him to see her naked body. Treves enters and is shocked, sending Mrs. Kendal away.

Ross comes to the hospital to ask Merrick to rejoin the freak show. Ross's health has drastically worsened, and he tells Merrick that without help he is doomed to a painful death. He tries to convince Merrick to charge the society members who visit him. Merrick refuses to help Ross, finally standing up to him after suffering years of abuse at his hands. Ross makes one final pathetic plea to Merrick, who refuses him, saying that's just the way things are.

Merrick asks Treves what he believes about God and heaven. Then he confronts Treves, criticizing what he did to Mrs. Kendal and the rigid standards by which he judges everybody. Treves realizes that he has been too harsh with Merrick and tells him that although he will write to Mrs. Kendal, he does not believe she will return. After Merrick leaves the room, Treves says that it is because he does not want her to see Merrick die.

Treves has a nightmare that he has been put on display while Merrick delivers a lecture about his terrifying normality, his rigidity, and the acts of cruelty he can commit upon others "for their own good".

Carr-Gomm and Treves discuss Merrick's impending death. Treves displays frustration at the fact that the more normal Merrick pretends to be, the worse his condition becomes. He confronts Bishop How, telling him that he believes Merrick’s faith is merely another attempt to emulate others. It comes out that the real source of his frustrations is the chaos of the world around him, with his patients seemingly doing everything they can to shorten their own lives. No matter how hard he tries he cannot help them, just as he cannot help Merrick. He finally begs for the bishop to help him.

Merrick finishes his model of the church. As usual, he goes to sleep while sitting, a posture which he must adopt due to the weight of his head. As he sleeps he sees visions of the pinheads, now singing that they are the Queens of the Cosmos. They lay him down to sleep normally, and he dies. Snork discovers his body and runs out screaming that the Elephant Man is dead.

In the final scene, Carr-Gomm reads a letter he has written to ''The Times'', outlining Merrick’s stay at the hospital, his death and his plans for the remaining funds donated for Merrick's care. When he asks Treves if he has anything else to add, a distressed Treves says he does not and leaves. As Carr-Gomm finishes the letter Treves rushes back in, saying that he’s thought of something. Carr-Gomm tells the doctor that it is too late: it is done.

Broadway production, 1979: * Philip Anglim as John Merrick * JoAnne Belanger as Orderly (understudy), Princess Alexandra (understudy), Pinhead (understudy), Countess (understudy), Miss Sandwich (understudy) * Richard Clarke as Francis Carr-Gomm, Conductor * Kevin Conway as Frederick Treves, Belgian Policeman * Dennis Creaghan as Orderly, London Policeman (understudy), Lord John (understudy), Will (understudy), Earl (understudy), Pinhead Manager (understudy) * Michael Goldschlager as Cellist (standby) * Cordis Heard as Miss Sandwich, Princess Alexandra, Pinhead, Countess, Mrs. Kendal (understudy) * David Heiss as Cellist * I. M. Hobson as Bishop Walsham How, Ross, Snork * John Neville-Andrews as Pinhead Manager, London Policeman, Lord John, Will, Earl, Frederick Treves (understudy), Belgian Policeman (understudy) * Carole Shelley as Pinhead, Mrs. Kendal * Jack Wetherall as John Merrick (standby)

The game's plot revolves around a child named Andy (Guthy in the European game, mostly referred to on screen as "Toy Commander"), who gets new army-themed toys for Christmas, and neglects his childhood favorites. The toys, led by Huggy Bear, Andy's childhood teddy bear, rebel and try to destroy the new toys.

Each boss in the game has taken over a specific area of the house, serving as one of Huggy Bear's Generals.

At an amusement park's "Cave of Horrors" attraction, a man is stabbed to death and the killer leaves behind a gold-plated dog tag, a note asking the victim to meet them there, and a piece of Cryotron transistor wire. Reporter Kirioka, his childhood friend Detective Kobayashi, and the police led by Captain Onosaki begin investigating. They discover clues that lead them to a military-themed nightclub called the Military-Land Cabaret and its suspicious owner, Onishi.

Kirioka, Kobayashi, and Onosaki eventually discover that 14 years prior, Onishi, the victim, intelligence agent Takashi, and Construction Corp. foreman Taki were all soldiers assigned to protect scientist/electrical engineer Dr. Kajuro Nikki's top secret experiments in creating electronic weaponry. However, the four used the scientist to transport stolen gold instead. They faced opposition from Lance Corporal Tsudo, who insisted that the gold belonged to Japan's people, but Onishi and his compatriots seemingly killed Tsudo and Nikki. They stored the bodies and gold in a cave and narrowly escaped after it was destroyed by dynamite. When the four returned a year later however, they discovered the corpses and gold had gone missing.

In reality, Tsudo and Nikki went into hiding and lived in seclusion on a remote farm. Over the years, the scientist perfected a teleportation device capable of moving matter from one place to another in seconds. Unbeknownst to Nikki, a bitter Tsudo used the machine to elude the police while seeking revenge on his would-be killers by using the dog tags as a death sentence, sending his victims an audio tape or note detailing his intentions, and stabbing them with a bayonet.

Kirioka, Kobayashi, and Onosaki trace Tsudo back to his farm, but are unable to prove he is the killer despite finding Nikki and his machines. Concurrently, Taki is killed while in police custody while Onishi hides in a remote coastal village. However, Tsudo knew he would go there and sends him a transmitter so he can successfully kill him. The police give chase, but Tsudo retrieves a hidden transmitter and begins to teleport, only for tremors to damage the receiver and cause Tsudo to dissolve into oblivion.

Somewhere in Western-Central Europe in the 1860s, a trio of grave robbers, led by a man named Lynch (Herbert Fux), deliver a corpse to Baron Frankenstein (Joseph Cotten) and his assistant Dr. Marshall (Paul Müller) for obvious reanimation purposes.

Baron Frankenstein's daughter Tania (Rosalba Neri) arrives from school, having completed her studies in medicine, and is greeted by her father and his young servant, the handsome but mildly intellectually disabled Thomas (Marino Masé). Tania reveals to her father that she has always understood his work with "animal transplants" to be a cover for his work reanimating corpses and that she intends to follow in his footsteps and help him in his work.

The next day, Frankenstein, Tania, and Marshall witness the execution of a criminal who is hanged down a well. Frankenstein and Marshall both have an eye toward harvesting the criminal's body for their experimentation. Law enforcement agent Captain Harris (Mickey Hargitay) arrives to harass Lynch at the hanging. Harris claims to be on to Lynch's grave robbing.

That evening, having harvested salient body parts, Frankenstein and Marshall successfully reanimate a gruesome giant corpse with a scarred, misshapen head (Peter Whiteman) as Tania secretly watches. Almost instantly, however, this monster bear-hugs Frankenstein to death - breaking his back - then walks out of the castle. Tania and Marshall report the murder to Harris but claim that it was a burglar. Harris points out that according to their description, the burglar would be over seven feet tall.

The monster, roaming the countryside, comes across a couple having sex out in the open, and after scaring away the man, picks up the woman, who screams and then faints. The monster then carries her later body and drops it into a river, and when two men later find the body, the monster kills one by breaking his neck. After Harris questions Lynch and Lynch refuses Tania's offer for more grave-robbing work, the monster breaks into Lynch's home while he is having sex with a local prostitute and kills Lynch by beating him to death. The monster then kills a local farmer, his wife, and Lynch's two grave-robbing friends.

Tania then goads Marshall into admitting to harboring romantic feelings for her. She responds to his affections but says that while Marshall's body is old, she finds Thomas' body young and attractive. The "solution" to this situation will be to transplant Marshall's brilliant brain into the brain-damaged Thomas's young, healthy body. To accomplish this, Tania seduces Thomas into having sex while Marshall secretly watches, and Marshall kills him with a pillow during their lovemaking.

Tania then successfully transplants Marshall's brain into Thomas' body. Thomas now speaks with Marshall's voice, and his body has become inhumanly strong as well. Meanwhile, Frankenstein's monster has continued to terrorize the town, and the local villagers, having had enough, arrive with torches and pitchforks before following the monster to the castle. In the chaos, the monster returns, knocks down Harris, and has a fight with Marshall/Thomas, who cuts off his arm. When the monster bear-hugs Marshall/Thomas, Tania stabs him in the back with a sword, and Marshall/Thomas kills him by puncturing his head open with a metal hand tool. The monster is defeated, but Tania has made it clear that she has no allegiance to Marshall.

The villagers storm into the castle and set it aflame in the hopes of killing the monster. Harris arrives with Thomas's sister Julia (Renate Kasché) to see Tania and Marshall/Thomas naked and enjoying post-fight sexual intercourse as the castle burns beside them. However, during their lovemaking, Marshall/Thomas begins to choke Tania as the flames consume them.

''The Hounds of God'' is a novel in which the elven elite suffer religious persecution.

''The Isle of Glass'' is a novel in which the elven hero, Alf, works against civil war and heads on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

While on a ski trip, Fry begins to feel nostalgic for 20th century Christmases. To cheer him up, the rest of the Planet Express staff decide to decorate for what is now called Xmas, which includes cutting down an Xmas tree (which are now palm trees, since pine trees are extinct). Fry's moping about his first Xmas without his family unknowingly agitates Leela, who has not felt happy about Xmas since she was an orphan, and storms off in tears.

When the others call him out on his mistake, Fry goes to buy a present to cheer Leela up. They warn him to be back before sundown, or else he will be killed by a murderous robotic Santa Claus. In the year 2801, The Friendly Robot Company developed a robotic version of St. Nick himself to determine who has been naughty and who has been nice. Unfortunately, due to a programming error, the jolly robotic saint soon turned into a mad murderer when his standards were set too high. Thus, he will kill anyone who has been naughty, which, by his standards is essentially everybody. Meanwhile, Bender volunteers at a homeless robot shelter, albeit stealing some food from there. He befriends several homeless robots and goes on a robbery spree with them.

Fry buys Leela a parrot, which escapes. Leela heads out to rescue Fry before Robot Santa arrives. After pursuing the parrot to the top of a tall building, Fry is saved from plunging to his death by Leela. Unfortunately, Fry and Leela's safety is short-lived, as sundown finally comes and the robotic Santa Claus makes his appearance and attacks the two friends, who seek solace in their loneliness and begin to fall in love with each other.

Fry and Leela take refuge in the Planet Express building after being saved by Bender and his homeless robot friends, but Santa breaks in through the chimney and claims that they "all have been very naughty", apart from Dr. Zoidberg, whom he gifts a pogo stick. Thanks to some quick thinking by Zoidberg, who uses the pogo stick to cut the wires to the Christmas lights, which then electrocutes Santa, the crew manage to force him back into the chimney, where an explosion sends him and his mechanical reindeer tumbling into the stratosphere.

During Xmas dinner, Fry gives a toast on the importance of togetherness at Xmas. Everyone celebrates by singing "Santa Claus Is Gunning You Down". However, Santa vows to enact revenge on the crew next Xmas.