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The Siege of Trencher's Farm

Straw Dogs

George Magruder, an American professor of English, moves with his wife Louise and eight-year-old daughter Karen, to Trencher's Farm in Cornwall, England, so that George can finish a book he is writing. George accidentally hits a child killer with his car and takes him back to the farm, not knowing who he is. When the locals find out, they form to a mob to break into George's house and the professor has to fight them off and protect his family.

David Sumner , a timid American mathematician, leaves the chaos of college anti-war protests to live with his young wife, Amy ([[Susan George , in her hometown of Wakely, a fictional village in Cornwall, England. Almost immediately, there is tension between the couple as David becomes immersed in his academic work and differing ideas regarding the nature of their relationship come to light: David wants the traditional division of tasks, with the man earning wages, and the wife satisfying his needs in the kitchen and bed. Amy wants greater participation from David if she is going to accept such a role: she wants him to perform all the traditionally male tasks, like fixing the toaster, but also to involve himself in her community. Chris Cawsey ([[Jim Norton , Norman Scutt , Riddaway , and Amy's former lover, Charlie Venner , are Wakely locals hired to renovate the Sumners' isolated farmhouse. They openly resent David for his intellectual pursuits, and persistently harass him. When Amy discovers their cat strangled and hanging by a light chain in their bedroom closet, Amy claims the workmen did it to intimidate David. She presses him to confront the villagers, but he refuses. David tries to win their friendship, and they invite him to go hunting in the woods the next day. During the trip, David is taken to a remote forest meadow and left there, after the workmen promise to drive the birds towards him. Having ditched David, Venner returns to the couple's farmhouse where he rapes Amy. Scutt arrives, forces Venner to hold Amy down, and rapes Amy as well. After several hours, David realizes he's been tricked and returns home to find a disheveled and withdrawn Amy. She does not tell him about the rapes. The next day, David fires the workmen, claiming that they have performed poorly and wasted time. Later that week, the Sumners attend a church social where Amy becomes distraught after seeing the men who raped her. They leave the social early, and, while driving home through thick fog, accidentally hit the local village idiot Henry Niles ([[David Warner , whom they take to their home. David phones the local pub about the accident. However, earlier that evening Niles had accidentally strangled a flirtatious young girl from the village, Janice Hedden , and now her father, the town drunkard, Tom , and the workmen looking for him are alerted by the phone call to Niles's whereabouts. Soon the drunken locals, including Amy's rapists, are pounding on the door of the Sumners' home. After a few minutes of their breaking the windows and hammering on the door, the local magistrate, Major John Scott , arrives and after attempting to defuse the situation, is shot dead by Tom. At this point the father and the workmen agree that they cannot go back on what they have done, but only continue. David realizes that they will not allow anyone in the house to live and begins preparing to defend his home. First he heats two saucepans of cooking oil. Then, when one of the locals attempts to enter through the window, he ties his hands together at knifepoint. As more men appear at another window, he scalds them with the boiling oil, temporarily incapacitating them. Then he lays down a large mantrap in his living room and sends Amy upstairs to hide. When Tom and Cawsey enter and attempt to shoot David, he knocks the shotgun out of Tom's hands, causing it to fire and mangle the man's foot, mortally wounding him. He then engages in a fight with Cawsey, beating him to death with a fire poker. Finally, Charlie appears and holds David at gunpoint, but before he can shoot him, the two hear Amy screaming. As they both run upstairs, the fifth man, Scutt, is there. He tells Charlie to take David downstairs and kill him, so they can rape Amy again. Instead, Charlie shoots Scutt and David begins to fight Charlie. As they reach the living room, David, despite Amy's pleas not to, kills Charlie by springing the mantrap over his head, crushing his neck. As David looks at the carnage around him, he murmurs, "Jesus, I got 'em all." He is then attacked by another villager and, losing the struggle, asks Amy to fetch the shotgun and shoot him. Amy hesitates before retrieving the weapon and shooting the villager. David is driving Niles to town when the latter turns and says, "I don't know my way home." David smiles and replies, "That's okay. I don't either."

positive

positive

Journey to the West

The Forbidden Kingdom

The novel has 100 chapters. These can be divided into four very unequal parts. The first, which includes chapters 1–7, is really a self-contained introduction to the main story. It deals entirely with the earlier exploits of Sun Wukong, a monkey born from a stone nourished by the Five Elements, who learns the art of the Tao, 72 polymorphic transformations, combat, and secrets of immortality, and through guile and force makes a name for himself, Qitian Dasheng (), or "Great Sage Equal to Heaven". His powers grow to match the forces of all of the Eastern (Taoist) deities, and the prologue culminates in Sun's rebellion against Heaven, during a time when he garnered a post in the celestial bureaucracy. Hubris proves his downfall when the Buddha manages to trap him under a mountain, sealing the mountain with a talisman for five hundred years. Only following this introductory story is the nominal main character, Xuanzang (Tang Sanzang), introduced. Chapters 8–12 provide his early biography and the background to his great journey. Dismayed that "the land of the South knows only greed, hedonism, promiscuity, and sins", the Buddha instructs the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara (Guanyin) to search Tang China for someone to take the Buddhist sutras of "transcendence and persuasion for good will" back to the East. Part of the story here also relates to how Xuanzang becomes a monk (as well as revealing his past life as a disciple of the Buddha named "Golden Cicada" (金蟬子) and comes about being sent on this pilgrimage by Emperor Taizong, who previously escaped death with the help of an official in the Underworld). The third and longest section of the work is chapters 13–99, an episodic adventure story in which Xuanzang sets out to bring back Buddhist scriptures from Leiyin Temple on Vulture Peak in India, but encounters various evils along the way. The section is set in the sparsely populated lands along the Silk Road between China and India, including Xinjiang, Turkestan, and Afghanistan. The geography described in the book is, however, almost entirely fantastic; once Xuanzang departs Chang'an, the Tang capital, and crosses the frontier (somewhere in Gansu province), he finds himself in a wilderness of deep gorges and tall mountains, inhabited by demons and animal spirits, who regard him as a potential meal (since his flesh was believed to give immortality to whoever ate it), with the occasional hidden monastery or royal city-state amidst the harsh setting. Episodes consist of 1–4 chapters and usually involve Xuanzang being captured and having his life threatened while his disciples try to find an ingenious (and often violent) way of liberating him. Although some of Xuanzang's predicaments are political and involve ordinary human beings, they more frequently consist of run-ins with various demons, many of whom turn out to be earthly manifestations of heavenly beings (whose sins will be negated by eating the flesh of Xuanzang) or animal-spirits with enough Taoist spiritual merit to assume semi-human forms. Chapters 13–22 do not follow this structure precisely, as they introduce Xuanzang's disciples, who, inspired or goaded by Guanyin, meet and agree to serve him along the way in order to atone for their sins in their past lives. * The first is Sun Wukong, or Monkey, whose given name loosely means "awakened to emptiness" (see the character's main page for a more complete description), trapped by the Buddha for defying Heaven. He appears right away in chapter 13. The most intelligent and violent of the disciples, he is constantly reproved for his violence by Xuanzang. Ultimately, he can only be controlled by a magic gold ring that Guanyin has placed around his head, which causes him unbearable headaches when Xuanzang chants the Ring Tightening Mantra. * The second, appearing in chapter 19, is Zhu Bajie, literally "Eight Precepts Pig", sometimes translated as Pigsy or just Pig. He was previously the Marshal of the Heavenly Canopy, a commander of Heaven's naval forces, and was banished to the mortal realm for flirting with the moon goddess Chang'e. A reliable fighter, he is characterised by his insatiable appetites for food and sex, and is constantly looking for a way out of his duties, which causes significant conflict with Sun Wukong. * The third, appearing in chapter 22, is the river ogre Sha Wujing, also translated as Friar Sand or Sandy. He was previously the celestial Curtain Lifting General, and was banished to the mortal realm for dropping (and shattering) a crystal goblet of the Queen Mother of the West. He is a quiet but generally dependable character, who serves as the straight foil to the comic relief of Sun and Zhu. * The fourth is the third son of the Dragon King of the West Sea, who was sentenced to death for setting fire to his father's great pearl. He was saved by Guanyin from execution to stay and wait for his call of duty. He appears first in chapter 15, but has almost no speaking role, as throughout the story he mainly appears as a horse that Xuanzang rides on. Chapter 22, where Sha Wujing is introduced, also provides a geographical boundary, as the river that the travelers cross brings them into a new "continent". Chapters 23–86 take place in the wilderness, and consist of 24 episodes of varying length, each characterised by a different magical monster or evil magician. There are impassably wide rivers, flaming mountains, a kingdom with an all-female population, a lair of seductive spider spirits, and many other fantastic scenarios. Throughout the journey, the four brave disciples have to fend off attacks on their master and teacher Xuanzang from various monsters and calamities. It is strongly suggested that most of these calamities are engineered by fate and/or the Buddha, as, while the monsters who attack are vast in power and many in number, no real harm ever comes to the four travellers. Some of the monsters turn out to be escaped celestial beasts belonging to bodhisattvas or Taoist sages and deities. Towards the end of the book there is a scene where the Buddha literally commands the fulfillment of the last disaster, because Xuanzang is one short of the 81 tribulations he needs to face before attaining Buddhahood. In chapter 87, Xuanzang finally reaches the borderlands of India, and chapters 87–99 present magical adventures in a somewhat more mundane (though still exotic) setting. At length, after a pilgrimage said to have taken fourteen years (the text actually only provides evidence for nine of those years, but presumably there was room to add additional episodes) they arrive at the half-real, half-legendary destination of Vulture Peak, where, in a scene simultaneously mystical and comic, Xuanzang receives the scriptures from the living Buddha. Chapter 100, the last of all, quickly describes the return journey to the Tang Empire, and the aftermath in which each traveller receives a reward in the form of posts in the bureaucracy of the heavens. Sun Wukong and Xuanzang achieve Buddhahood, Sha Wujing becomes an arhat, the dragon horse is made a nāga, and Zhu Bajie, whose good deeds have always been tempered by his greed, is promoted to an altar cleanser (i.e. eater of excess offerings at altars).

In this film, which is based loosely on the ancient Chinese novel Journey to the West, South Boston teenager Jason Tripitikas is a fan of martial arts films and he awakens from a dream of a battle between the Monkey King, played by Jet Li and celestial soldiers in the clouds. He visits a pawn shop in Chinatown to buy Wuxia DVDs and discovers a golden staff. On his way home, Jason is harassed by some hooligans, who attempt to use him to help them rob the shop-owner Hop. Hop tries to fight the thieves with the staff, but is shot and wounded. He tells Jason to deliver the staff to its rightful owner and Jason flees with the staff. He is cornered on the rooftop by the hooligans and almost shot too, but he is pulled off the roof by the staff and falls backwards onto the asphalt. When Jason regains consciousness, he finds himself in a village in ancient China that is under attack by armored soldiers. The soldiers see his staff and attempt to seize it. He is saved by the inebriated traveling scholar Lu Yan , a supposed "immortal," who remains alert and agile even when drunk. Lu brings Jason to a teahouse and tells him the story of the rivalry between the Monkey King and the Jade Warlord. The Jade Warlord tricked the Monkey King into setting aside his magic staff Ruyi Jingu Bang and transformed him into a stone statue, but the Monkey King cast his staff far away before the transformation. Being an immortal, the Monkey King did not die, but got captured inside the statue. Lu ends the tale with a prophecy about someone, a "Seeker", who will find the staff and free the Monkey King. Just then, they are attacked by the Jade Warlord's men again but manage to escape with the help of Golden Sparrow, a young girl who refers to herself in the third person. She reveals that her family was murdered by the Jade Warlord, against whom she has therefore sworn revenge. Meanwhile, the Jade Warlord , upon learning that the staff has been sighted, sends the White-Haired Witch Ni-Chang to help him retrieve it in exchange for the elixir of immortality. Jason, Lu Yan and Golden Sparrow meet a strange man dressed in white, also played by Jet Li, who takes the staff away from them. Lu Yan fights with the man for the staff until the latter realizes that Jason is the prophesied Seeker, and he joins them in their quest to free the Monkey King. As the four travel to Five Elements Mountain, Lu Yan and the Silent Monk teach Jason Kungfu along the way. After crossing a desert, they encounter Ni-Chang and her henchmen and a battle ensues, in which Lu Yan is mortally wounded by Ni-Chang's arrow. The protagonists take refuge in a monastery, where they learn that Lu is actually not an immortal as he failed the test to become one. Only the Jade Warlord's elixir can save his life. In desperation, Jason goes to the Warlord's palace alone to exchange the staff for the elixir. In the palace, the Jade Warlord asks Jason to fight with Ni-Chang to the death, because he had promised to give the elixir to only one of them. Jason is defeated by Ni-Chang and the Warlord taunts him for his foolishness, and is about to decapitate him when the other protagonists and monks from the monastery arrive to join in the battle. Jason manages to grab the elixir and he tosses it to Lu Yan, who drinks it and recovers. The Silent Monk is wounded by the Jade Warlord's Guan Dao during the fight and he passes the staff to Jason, who uses it to smash the Monkey King's statue. The Monkey King is freed and the Silent Monk is revealed to be actually one of the Monkey's clones. Lu Yan battles Ni-Chang and kills her by throwing her off the cliff hundreds of feet below. After another long battle between the Monkey King and the Jade Warlord, the Warlord is eventually stabbed by Jason and falls into a lava pit to his death. However, Golden Sparrow has been seriously injured by the Warlord and she dies in Jason's arms, thanking him in the first person before dying. By then, the Jade Emperor has returned from his meditation and he praises Jason for fulfilling the prophecy and allows him for one wish, which he asked is to return home. Jason finds himself back in 21st century Boston after passing through a magical portal at the exact moment and location of his earlier fall. He defeats the hooligans easily by using the Kungfu moves he was taught and drives them away. He alerts the police and calls an ambulance for Hop, who survives from the gunshot wound and brushes off Jason's concerns, claiming that he is immortal. . Before the film ends, Jason is delighted to see a girl who resembles Golden Sparrow and speaks to her briefly, before she heads back to her shop, called "Golden Sparrow Chinese Merchandise". The final scene shows Jason on a rooftop at night practicing his staffwork and continuing to hone his kung fu skills.

positive

positive

The Beast Master

Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time

It tells the story of Hosteen Storm, an ex-soldier who travels to a distant planet with his comrades, a group of genetically altered animals with whom he has empathic and telepathic connections. The team are hired to herd livestock, but Storm still harbors anger at his former enemies the Xik, and has sworn revenge on a man named Quade for actions against Storm's family in the past. In this novel and the following series, Norton explores aspects of Native American culture (specifically that of the Navajo) through metaphors in Storm's life and in the culture he adopts on his new home world.

Dar, the Beastmaster , is back and now he has to deal with his half-brother, Arklon , and a sorceress named Lyranna who have escaped to present day Los Angeles. Despite the name, the movie is not about traveling through a time portal, but traveling through a portal to a parallel universe that 1991 Earth exists in. Dar must follow them through the portal and stop them from obtaining a neutron bomb. During his visit, Dar meets a rich girl named Jackie Trent and they become friends.

positive

positive

The Blessing

Count Your Blessings

It is set in the post-war World War II period and concerns Grace, an English country girl who moves to France after falling for a dashing aristocratic Frenchman named Charles-Edouard who lusts after other women. Their son Sigi aims to keep his parents apart by engineering misunderstandings.

While visiting Grace Allingham in wartime London at the behest of Hugh Palgrave, his friend, Charles is charmed by her and abruptly proposes marriage. They marry, but during the honeymoon Charles reports back to military duty. He reportedly is shot and taken prisoner. Grace waits for his return while raising their young son. Charles returns after eight years, but over time, Grace comes to learn that during his long absence he has been seeing other women. She turns for comfort to her old love, Hugh. A divorce seems imminent while 8-year-old Sigi is torn between the two parents and their very different ways of life. Because of their commitment to him, Grace and Charles ultimately reconcile.

positive

positive

The Last Song

The Last Song

Veronica “Ronnie” Miller’s life was turned upside down when her parents divorced and her father, Steve, moved to Wrightsville, North Carolina. Three years later, she remains distant from her parents, particularly Steve, until her mother decides it would be everyone’s best interest if she and her brother spent the summer with him. Resentful and rebellious, Ronnie rejects Steve’s attempts to reach out to her and threatens to return to New York before the summer’s end. But soon Ronnie meets Will, the last person she thought she’d ever be attracted to, and finds herself falling for him, opening herself up to the greatest happiness – and pain – that she has never known. Ronnie finds out that Steve has stomach cancer. She and her brother, Jonah, finish the window that Jonah started with Steve for the church. Jonah goes back to New York with their mother, but Ronnie stays back with Steve until his death. She completes the song on the piano that he began to write. She and Will part after the funeral and she believes that they will never meet properly again, she thought it was over, but after Christmas, he transfers and goes to college in New York, near where Ronnie goes to college, so he can spend more time with Ronnie.

At seventeen, Veronica "Ronnie" Miller remains as rebellious as she was the day her parents divorced and her father moved to North Carolina three years prior. Once a classical piano child prodigy under the tutelage of her father, Steve Miller , Ronnie now ignores the instrument and has not spoken with her father since he left. While Juilliard School has been interested in her since she was young, Ronnie refuses to attend. Now, Steve has the chance to reconnect with his estranged daughter when her mother, Kim Miller sends the rebellious teen and her younger brother, Jonah , to spend the summer with him. Steve, a former Juilliard School professor and concert pianist, lives a quiet life in Wrightsville Beach, the small beach town in North Carolina where he grew up, working on a stained glass window for the local church to replace the one the church lost in a fire. According to the locals, it was Steve who had set fire to the church one night. After arrival, Ronnie becomes miserable, defiant, and defensive toward all those around her, including handsome, popular Will Blakelee whose introduction involved crashing into her during a volleyball match, and accidentally spilling Ronnie's strawberry shake on her. She shrugs him off and meets Blaze, an outcast who lives with her boyfriend Marcus. While at a beach campfire, Marcus hits on Ronnie and Blaze mistakes this for Ronnie flirting with him. Angered by this, Blaze later frames Ronnie for shoplifting, causing her arrest. Later on, Ronnie discovers a Loggerhead Sea Turtle nest at the beach by her house and while protecting it, she meets Will again on his volunteer work for the aquarium. After a night of staying up to defend the turtle eggs from predators with Will, she discovers he is deeper than she believed, and begins to develop feelings for him. As Ronnie falls in love with Will, she also manages to form a better and stronger bond with her father. As their relationship deepens, Will invites her to his sister's wedding. Later that day, the turtle eggs hatch and her father collapses. Ronnie immediately has Steve rushed to a hospital and learns that he has stomach cancer that has spread to his lungs. She decides to start spending more time with her father since he is unlikely to survive much longer. Around the same time, Ronnie and Will get into an argument after Will confesses that Scott, his best friend, had actually set fire to the church. She is outraged that he let everyone believe that her father was the culprit. With Will soon leaving for college, there is no time to patch things up. Fall arrives and Jonah returns to New York for the school year, but Ronnie stays behind to take care of her father. Leading a slow life, she tries to make up for the time with her father that she's lost. She continues work on a composition he's been writing , after he loses the steadiness of his hands due to his illness. He dies just as she finishes it. At his funeral she stands to make a speech but declares that no words would ever be able to show how wonderful her father really was. Instead, she decides to share with them the song she helped finish. Before she sits down to play, sunlight shines through the stained glass window, making her smile, knowing that her father is with her. Later on, while talking to the attendants, she runs into Will. He says that he liked the song she played and that he knows her dad did too and Ronnie thanks him for coming. Having decided to attend Juilliard, Ronnie is packing up to return to New York when she sees Will standing outside. She goes outside to see him and Will apologizes to her for everything that had happened and Ronnie forgives him. Will surprises Ronnie by revealing that he will be transferring to Columbia in order to be with her and they share a kiss.

positive

positive

For Love of the Game

For Love of the Game

On the second to last day of the season, Chapel's team, the Atlanta Hawks, are about to play against the New York Yankees. Chapel receives news from a friend in the media that he is about to be traded. Just the night before, his girlfriend Carol did not show up at his hotel room, and Chapel reaches the conclusion that it is time to move on and finally make the transition from boyhood to manhood. Over half the book tells the story of that final game, with flashbacks from the pitching mound and dugout to incidents throughout Chapel's life. Chapel is determined that his last game will also be his greatest, even though, with all the young new players on the Yankees, they are a far superior team. As he strikes out his opponents one after the other, he soon becomes aware of the fact that he has held the Yankees at bay thus far, not allowing one hit from the more talented Yankees team. He soon becomes determined to pitch a perfect game. Meanwhile, he reflects on his personal life, and especially on Carol, whom he finally realizes that he loves, even though he has never shown her that he really does. That morning Carol told him she was going to London and was leaving immediately, so the two key passions of his life, Carol and baseball, are about to vanish forever. As the game proceeds, Chapel feels the sharp pain in his arm that comes with age. Nevertheless, he refuses to give up the pitching mound, and chooses instead to divert his attention by delving deeper into his life and his relationship. At the end of the game, he has pitched a perfect game and retires from baseball with a new dignity. After the celebrations, he heads to the hotel and dials Carol's home, where he plans to go to tell Carol his feelings. With baseball behind him, he has grown from a boy who has led a life into manhood. This short book was discovered after Shaara's death, and publishing was arranged by his son, author Jeffrey Shaara. The book was made into a movie by Sam Raimi. it:La partita perfetta nl:For Love of the Game

The Detroit Tigers travel to New York to play a season-ending series against the New York Yankees. At 63-97, the team has long since been eliminated from playoff contention and are playing for nothing but pride against the Yankees, who have a chance to clinch the American League East with a win. For 40-year-old pitcher Billy Chapel , however, this may end up being the most significant 24 hours of his life. In his Manhattan hotel suite, Billy awaits his girlfriend Jane Aubrey , but she doesn't show. The next morning, Billy is told by Tigers' owner Gary Wheeler ([[Brian Cox that the team has been sold and that the new owners' first move will be to end Billy's 19-year tenure with the Tigers by trading him to the San Francisco Giants. Billy also learns from Jane that she is leaving that same day to accept a job offer in London. Billy is a famous, accomplished pitcher, but has a losing record this season, is near the end of his career and is also recovering from a hand injury. Wheeler hints that Billy should consider retiring rather than join another team. As he goes to Yankee Stadium to make his last start of the year, Billy begins reflecting about Jane, detailing how they met five years prior. These flashbacks are interspersed within the game, along with glimpses of Jane watching the game on a television at the airport. As the game progresses, with friend and catcher Gus Sinski aware that something is on Billy's mind other than baseball, Billy dominates the Yankees' batters, often talking to himself on how to pitch each one. While in the dugout resting between innings, Billy also reflects how his relationship with Jane was strained by his shutting her out of his life after he suffered a career-threatening injury in the off-season. The pain of pitching is getting worse as the game goes on. Billy is so caught up in his thoughts that he does not realize he is pitching a perfect game until the bottom of the eighth inning. Gus confirms this and says that the whole team is rallying behind him to do whatever it takes to keep the perfect game bid alive. Before the Tigers take the field for the bottom of the ninth inning, Billy has final ruminations about his career and his love for Jane. He autographs a baseball for Wheeler, who has been like a father to him for many years. Along with the signature, Billy also writes on the ball that he will retire "for love of the game." After finishing the perfect game, Billy sits alone in his hotel room as the realization sinks in that everything he has been and done for the past 19 years is over. Despite his amazing accomplishment, Billy weeps not only for the loss of baseball, but for the other love of his life, Jane. The next morning, Billy goes to the airport to inquire about a flight for London. Jane has missed her flight so she could watch the end of his perfect game. Finding her there waiting for her plane, they embrace and reconcile.

positive

positive

The Scarlet Pimpernel

The Elusive Pimpernel

The Scarlet Pimpernel is set in 1792, during the early stages of the French Revolution. Marguerite St. Just, a beautiful French actress, is the wife of wealthy English fop Sir Percy Blakeney, a baronet. Before their marriage, Marguerite took revenge upon the Marquis de St. Cyr, who had ordered her brother to be beaten for his romantic interest in the Marquis' daughter, with the unintended consequence of the Marquis and his sons being sent to the guillotine. When Percy found out, he became estranged from his wife. Marguerite, for her part, became disillusioned with Percy's shallow, dandyish lifestyle. Meanwhile, the "League of the Scarlet Pimpernel", a secret society of twenty English aristocrats, "one to command, and nineteen to obey", is engaged in rescuing their French counterparts from the daily executions (see Reign of Terror). Their leader, the mysterious Scarlet Pimpernel, takes his nickname from the drawing of a small red flower with which he signs his messages. Despite being the talk of London society, only his followers and possibly the Prince of Wales know the Pimpernel's true identity. Like many others, Marguerite is entranced by the Pimpernel's daring exploits. At a ball attended by the Blakeneys, a verse by Percy about the "elusive Pimpernel" makes the rounds and amuses the other guests. Meanwhile, Marguerite is blackmailed by the wily new French envoy to England, Citizen Chauvelin. Chauvelin's agents have stolen a letter incriminating her beloved brother Armand, proving that he is in league with the Pimpernel. Chauvelin offers to trade Armand's life for her help against the Pimpernel. Contemptuous of her seemingly witless and unloving husband, Marguerite does not go to him for help or advice. Instead, she passes along information which enables Chauvelin to learn the Pimpernel's true identity. Later that night, Marguerite finally tells her husband of the terrible danger threatening her brother and pleads for his assistance. Percy promises to save him. After Percy unexpectedly leaves for France, Marguerite discovers to her horror that he is the Pimpernel. He had hidden behind the persona of a dull, slow-witted fop in order to deceive the world. He had not told Marguerite because of his worry that she might betray him, as she had the Marquis de St. Cyr. Desperate to save her husband, she decides to pursue Percy to France to warn him that Chauvelin knows his identity and his purpose. She persuades Sir Andrew Ffoulkes to accompany her, but because of the tide and the weather, neither they nor Chavelin can leave immediately. At Calais, Percy openly approaches Chauvelin in a decrepit inn (the Chat gris), whose owner is in Percy's pay. Despite Chauvelin's best efforts, the Englishman manages to escape by throwing pepper in Chavelin's face. Through a bold plan executed right under Chauvelin's nose, Percy rescues Marguerite's brother Armand and the Comte de Tournay, the father of a schoolfriend of Marguerite's. Marguerite pursues Percy right to the very end, resolute that she must either warn him or share his fate. Percy, heavily disguised, is captured by Chauvelin, but he does not recognise him, and he is enabled to escape. With Marguerite's love and courage amply proven, Percy's ardour is rekindled. Safely back on board their schooner, the Day Dream, the happily reconciled couple returns to England. Sir Andrew marries the Count's daughter, Suzanne.

During the French Revolution, the Scarlet Pimpernel, , who is really Sir Percy Blakeney in disguise, risks his life to rescue French noblemen from the guillotine and take them across the English Channel to safety. As cover, Sir Percy poses as a fop at Court, and curries favor with the Prince of Wales by providing advice about fashion, but secretly he leads The League, a group of noblemen with similar views. Chauvelin, French Ambassador of the Revolution to England wants to find out who the Pimpernel is and bring him in to meet his fate under French justice. When evidence points to Sir Percy, Chauvelin blackmails Blakeney's wife, Marguerite by threatening to expose her criminal brother Armand , but Marguerite doesn't believe her husband is capable of being the daring Pimpernel.

positive

positive

Nevada

Nevada

A young boy, Meade Slaughter, works along with his uncle Charlie Brent as a carny barker at a carnival and amusement park in early 1900s San Diego. Charlie had retrieved Meade from the custody of a sheriff of a small Texas town where his mother, working in a whorehouse, was killed by a John. The story follows Meade and Charlie as they work various games of chance in various amusement parks all over the U.S. Meanwhile, Meade meets, falls for, courts and marries a comely young lady named Shirley Reed. By 1929, Meade is invested heavily in the Stock Market, and loses a great deal of money. Meade is in trouble because he owes thousands of dollars. Charlie bails him out, same as Meade did when Charlie's wife wanted half of their bankroll to divorce him a few years earlier. With only a few hundred dollars between them, Charlie and Meade start over running some new concessions. They run into long-time friend Bob Terhune, a major Nevada politician who tries to convince them to set up shop in Reno. Both Charlie and Meade believe that Nevada doesn't really have enough potential to be worth going there. Low on funds, and with his and Charlie's business hurting because of low turnout, Meade decides to go to Chicago and run a series of amusements while Charlie continues to run their spots in San Diego. The rigors of the trip are so severe that Shirley and David, Meade's new son, would not be able to go. Meade returns home months later with only a few hundred dollars. On the way back he decides to take a side trip through Reno, and after a short visit to the town deciding that the place is still lacking adequate interest to be worth starting business there. While working one day, Meade returns home early due to stomach flu to discover that his wife has been with a lover. Meade leaves in a hurry, then goes to see Charlie, only to discover not only that Charlie knew about it, but that she has had more than one. Meade realizes it is partially his fault, if he had given her more attention this would not have happened. A few months later, in a moment of tenderness he lets Shirley discover he knew about it, and holds no bitterness. Realizing they need to make a clean break, a few months later Meade takes his half of the money in their business, and moves his family to Reno to try to make it on his own. Meade starts a small gambling club, called the Plush Wheel, and is almost bankrupted his first day. One of the customers he meets is a very smart man who decides to let Meade know that some of his employees have been rigging the game to rob him blind. The man realizes that Meade is an honest operator, and he doesn't want to see his type chased away. Meade learns that the man who helps him is Frank Smith, a well-known wealthy Nevada real estate investor known as Smitty. As Meade builds his business, his family life suffers. His wife, unhappy by her lack of friends and activities to be interested in, becomes seriously depressed and turns to alcohol for solice. One of the issues that drove her to acoholism include a serious incident in which two thugs, in attempting to beat up and rob Meade, are killed by Meade while defending himself. He even asks Charlie to come to Reno to help run his club so he can spend more time with her. Unable to breach the gulf between himself and Shirley, they drift further apart, until, at one point, she is killed in a tragic accident while drunk in public. Smitty convinces Meade to visit Las Vegas for the Helldorado celebration, and to scout out possible future places to open a Las Vegas Plush Wheel. While there, Meade spots an extremely attractive lady named Sandra Farley. The two hit it off and over a few weeks become lovers. They make plans to marry. Janice Terhune, Bob's wife and friend of Meade and Charley, takes David under her wing, feeling that Meade really isn't capable of taking proper care of him. In the mean time, Carlo Guiliano, owner of a number of casinos, who has been the cause of sending "crossroaders" (crooked gamblers) to try to bankrupt Meade, and was responsible for sending the thugs who were killed tried to break up Meade's club, decides he wants to drive Meade out of the business. He sends some more thugs, who attack Meade on a side street. Sandra, waiting for Meade, sees the men and tries to stop them, but is murdered by one of them. Meade sees the face of one of the killers and realizes it's one of the top enforcers for Carlo. The men run, leaving Meade severely injured and paralyzed from the waist down. Meade decides to sell his business and move to San Francisco. Living in San Francisco, Meade's hatred and anger over the murder of his fiancee Sandra, drives him to hire a local carpenter to build him various devices to allow him to strengthen his wasted body. Over time, his body heals and he secretly regains the ability to walk, hiding his ability. He decides that he wants to be able to walk by August 10. A few days before, he goes back to Reno, and lying in an alley, pretends to be a bum as Carlo Guliano exits his casino. He pulls out a sawed-off shotgun, shoots and kills the man who killed Sandra, then speaks to Guliano, letting him recognize who he is, and to make him realize that he must die too. Meade shoots and kills Guliano a few minutes after midnight, August 10, 1938, two years to the day that Sandra was murdered by Guiliano's men. Smitty picks up Meade and they hole out for a few days until the police stop looking for the killer. Meade decides to come back to Nevada, only to stay away from Tony Guiliano, Carlo's son, Meade decides to reopen his business in Las Vegas. As Meade is believed to be crippled, Tony figures it was a mob hit. Later discovering that Meade is able to walk again, he is incensed and wants to have him killed, but because Meade now has bodyguards, he can't get to him. Tony decides to wait to exact revenge. Over the years, Meade meets a number of people involved in the gambling trade, including Moe Sedway, whom Meade literally throws out of his office when he discovers that Sedway wants kickbacks in exchange for anyone wanting race results for bookmaking. Meade becomes friends with Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, a mob-connected casino operator. Because of knowing Siegel, Meade meets an extremely attractive woman named Cindy Guest. They become attracted to each other and start a romance. This sours David because he sees Cindy's relationship with his father forcing a wedge between him and Meade as well. At one point, David, miserable, gets into a fight with Meade and when Meade confronts him about his attitude, asks Meade if he is going to "blow him away" like he did to Carlo Guliano, then turns white realizing he didn't mean to admit it. The fight can't be reconciled and David grows even more distant from his father; he runs home to "mama", that is, to Janice Terhune, who has been defacto mother to him and her own kids over the years. Meanwhile Tony Guliano tells one of his employees, Carlo Gatori, to become friends with David so Carlo can use it as an edge to try to go after Meade. Cindy discovers she's pregnant, then decides if she wants more out of her relationship with him, then decides to ask Meade (without telling him that she's pregnant) if he would want to get married. Meade asks for a day or two to think about it. He comes to the conclusion that no matter how much he loved Sandra, he does love Cindy and would want to marry her. He heads home to find a "Dear John letter"; Cindy has confused his reticence, believes she pushed too hard, and decides that since he doesn't want to get married, that it's best she leave. After considerable fruitless searches by detectives, Meade decides to give up looking for her: she has effectively dropped off the face of the earth. David joins the Marines, fights in the Korean War, and is wounded in his left arm. He returns and meets a Vegas Showgirl named Gari Carter, with whom he strikes up a romance. David and his father reconcile when Meade tells David everything, including why he had killed Carlo. David decides to ask Gari to marry him; she figures it would be a bad idea, in view of the fact that as a showgirl, it was well known that she also did part-time work as a high class hooker. David is persistent, until she tells him to stop asking or he won't see him any more. Meade goes to meet Gari, and tries to talk her into taking a bribe to leave town. A fight ensues and Meade, after unintentionally insulting her, leaves hastily. Realizing she does care about David, she later calls Meade, not wanting to drive a wedge between him and David, tells him that she told David she would marry him. Janice Terhune is killed in an automobile accident, which devastates her family as well as close friends, especially David, who saw her as his mother. Gari has a baby girl, named Ann. David's war injury becomes worse, requiring him to take pain pills. Tony Guliano has plans for a large casino in Lake Tahoe, only he is unable to buy the land after its owner died because Meade had bought it from the owner's daughter, who was executor of his will. In a rage, Tony decides to strike at Meade by paying Carlo Gatori to do something to David. Meade and Gari notice David's physiological and psychological deterioration, and decide to try to find out what is wrong, even going so far as to become friends as a result of their concern over him. They suspect Gatori may have something to do with it, David's friendship with him seeming unsavory. Charlie dies of a massive heart attack. David goes missing, and a few weeks later, Meade is informed by the San Francisco police that David has been picked up, suffering from an addiction to heroin. Meade puts David in one of the best sanitoriums in the country so he can go through withdrawal. Meade hires the best private detective he can find to discover who got David addicted. David will be in Holton Sanitarium for at least six months, so Meade convinces Gari to move out to his ranch and rebuild the place. He decides also to give her a job as Vice President of Special projects for the casino, because of her ability to get things done. Meade goes back to San Francisco to meet with Thorton, the private investigator he hired, who has discovered that Gatori had gotten David hooked. Meade goes to see Smitty, who knows some tough characters. Smitty asks Meade what he thinks should be done. Meade admits "Gatori can't live after what he's done." Tony Guliano is kidnapped and taken out to the desert, where he is forced by two men at gunpoint to dig a grave in the desert; he figures they are going to bury him in it. When he is forced at gunpoint to get in the hole, and believes his captors are about to kill him, another man appears above him. The man is Meade. He asks Tony about David; he claims not to know him. Meade says that Gatori said otherwise while being tortured, as Gatori's bullet-ridden corpse is dumped into the hole next to Tony. He then tells Tony that he's not killing him because he wants him to remember this if he ever tries to evoke revenge against Meade. David comes out of the sanitarium; Meade and Gari decide to try to make things easy for him, hopefully so he can go back into some work he can handle. The attempt fails and Meade ends up having to re-commit David to the sanitarium.

A feared gunfighter named Nevada breaks his friend Cash Burridge ([[Ernie Adams from the Lineville jail. When they reach the town of Winthrop, the two men decide to take respectable jobs on a ranch owned by Ben Ide , an Englishman they rescued from Cawthorne's gang of cattle rustlers. Fearing the rustlers, Ide hires Nevada to protect his daughter, Hettie , angering the ranch foreman, Clan Dillon , who is in love with Hettie. The villainous foreman spreads a rumor of his rival's dark past to the sheriff, and soon Nevada and Cash join up with Cawthorne's gang in order to escape the sheriff. Unknown to Nevada, Cawthorne's gang takes its orders from Dillon, who is the leader of the rustlers. During a raid, Dillon shoots both Cash and Cawthorne, but Nevada learns of his treachery from his dying pal. Later in a confrontation, Nevada is wounded by Dillon but is saved by the arrival of the posse and the evidence given by the wounded Cawthorne against the leader. With his reputation restored, Nevada is free to marry Nettie.

positive

positive

Nevada

Nevada

Ben Ide, restless with the rancher life, moves his family to Arizona, ostensibly for his mother's health, but also to search for his missing partner Nevada. He buys a beautiful ranch, in a territory known for cattle rustling. The deal soon sours as he struggles to keep his cattle and prize horses from the network of rustlers about the wild country of Arizona, not sure who he can trust and who he can't. Hettie Ide pines away for the missing Nevada, meanwhile fending off a horde of suitors. Nevada, having escaped the end of Forlorn River with only his life, resumes the life of an outlaw, seeking a way out of his situation, but working his way deeper amidst the labyrinthine social network of Arizona, in which everyone is a rustler and no one will say who leads the gangs.

A feared gunfighter named Nevada breaks his friend Cash Burridge ([[Ernie Adams from the Lineville jail. When they reach the town of Winthrop, the two men decide to take respectable jobs on a ranch owned by Ben Ide , an Englishman they rescued from Cawthorne's gang of cattle rustlers. Fearing the rustlers, Ide hires Nevada to protect his daughter, Hettie , angering the ranch foreman, Clan Dillon , who is in love with Hettie. The villainous foreman spreads a rumor of his rival's dark past to the sheriff, and soon Nevada and Cash join up with Cawthorne's gang in order to escape the sheriff. Unknown to Nevada, Cawthorne's gang takes its orders from Dillon, who is the leader of the rustlers. During a raid, Dillon shoots both Cash and Cawthorne, but Nevada learns of his treachery from his dying pal. Later in a confrontation, Nevada is wounded by Dillon but is saved by the arrival of the posse and the evidence given by the wounded Cawthorne against the leader. With his reputation restored, Nevada is free to marry Nettie.

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negative

The Queen of the Damned

Queen of the Damned

Part One follows several different people over the same period of several days. Several of the characters appear in the two previous books, including Armand, Daniel (the "boy reporter" of Interview with the Vampire), Marius, Louis, Gabrielle and Santino. Each of the six chapters in Part One tells a different story about a different person or group of people. Two things unify these chapters: a series of dreams about red-haired twin sisters, and the fact that a powerful being is killing vampires around the world by means of spontaneous combustion. Pandora and Santino rescue Marius, having answered his telepathic call for help. Marius informs his rescuers that Akasha has been awakened by Lestat, or rather his rock music, for he has joined a rock band of mortals whose names are Alex, Larry and Tough Cookie. Having been awakened by Lestat's rebellious music, Akasha destroys her husband Enkil and plots to rule the world. Akasha is also revealed as the source of the attacks on other vampires. Part Two takes place at Lestat's concert. Jesse, a member of the secret Talamasca and relative of Maharet, is mortally injured while attending the concert, and is taken to Maharet's Sonoma compound where she is made into a vampire. The vampires from Part One later congregate in the Sonoma compound. The only vampires not present are Akasha and Lestat. Akasha has abducted Lestat and takes him as an unwilling consort to various locations in the world, inciting women to rise up and kill the men who have oppressed them. Part Three takes place at Maharet's home in a Sonoma forest. There Maharet tells the story of Akasha and the red-haired twins (who are, in fact, Maharet and her sister, Mekare) to Pandora, Jesse, Marius, Santino, Eric, Armand, Daniel, Louis and Gabrielle. Also present are Mael and Khayman, who already know the story. In Part Four, Akasha confronts the gathered vampires at Maharet's compound. There she explains her plans and offers the vampires a chance to be her "angels" in her New World Order. Akasha plans to kill 90 percent of the world's human men, and to establish a new Eden in which women will worship Akasha as a goddess. If the assembled vampires refuse to follow her, she will destroy them. The vampires refuse, but before Akasha can destroy them, Mekare enters. Mekare kills Akasha by severing her head. Mekare then consumes Akasha's brain and heart, thereby saving the lives of the remaining vampires and becoming the new Queen of the Damned. In Part Five, the vampires leave Maharet's compound and assemble at Armand's resort, the Night Island, (according to Anne Rice, inspired by Fire Island) in Florida to recover. They eventually go their separate ways (as told in The Tale of the Body Thief). Lestat takes Louis to see David Talbot in London. After their brief visit with Talbot they depart into the night, an incensed Louis and his angry words filling Lestat with glee. The Queen of the Damned, deals with the origins of vampires themselves. The mother of all vampires, Akasha, begins as a pre-Egyptian queen, in a land called Kemet (which will become Egypt), many thousands of years ago. During this time two powerful witches (Maharet and Mekare) live in the mountains of an unnamed region. The witches are able to communicate with invisible spirits and gain simple favors from them. During this period there is a bloodthirsty, invisible spirit known as Amel who continually asks the two witches if they need his assistance, although they prudently decline the offer. The witches' village is destroyed and they are incarcerated by the king and queen, who desire their knowledge. When the witches offend Akasha, the Queen condemns the twins. Enkil then orders his chief steward (who is Khayman as a mortal man) to rape the twins in his stead, which would prove their lack of power, before the eyes of the court. Afterward the witches are cast out into the desert. While making her way back home with a pregnant Maharet, Mekare curses the king and queen secretly with the bloodthirsty spirit. Eventually this spirit inflicts such torment on Akasha and Enkil that they again demand advice and help from the two witches. Conspirators, unhappy with the young king's policies, assassinate the royal couple in Khayman's house whilst they were attempting to exorcise Amel, who had been tormenting Khayman. While the king and queen lie dying, the evil spirit sees its chance to ensnare the soul of the dying queen and pulls it back into her body. The spirit combines itself with the flesh and blood of the queen, transforming her into a vampire. Akasha allows the king to drink her blood, which saves his life. They then order Khayman to find the witches and bring them back to Egypt so that they could use their knowledge of spirits to help them, as they feel guilty because of their thirst for blood. However, when the witches admit that they cannot help the monarchs, Akasha orders the mutilation of the witches: Maharet loses her eyes and Mekare her tongue. Afterward, Khayman, who had been turned into a vampire by Akasha, comes to the witches' cell and turns them too. The three flee together, but are caught by Akasha's soldiers. Khayman escapes, but Maharet and Mekare are further punished. The witches are put into two separate coffins which are then set afloat on two separate bodies of water. They are only reunited near the end of the novel Queen of the Damned. In Mekare's absence, Maharet returns to watch over her daughter and her descendants. Maharet's descendants become what she calls the Great Family. A maternal line, the Great Family includes every culture, religion, ethnicity, and race. The Great Family represents all humanity and shows the vampires what Akasha would destroy with the creation of her New World Order. As the source of all vampires, Akasha is connected to all vampires by the blood and spirit they collectively share. In an experiment by the first Keeper, Akasha and Enkil are exposed to sunlight when they are several thousand years old. This merely darkens their skin. However, the result on all other vampires is extreme, and many of the weakest vampires die, thus confirming the legend that anything that harms Akasha will also directly affect all of her progeny.

Vampire Lestat is awakened from decades of slumber by the sound of a Nu Metal band, which he proceeds to take over as lead singer. Achieving international success and planning a massive live concert, Lestat is approached by Marius, and warned that the vampires of the world will not tolerate his flamboyant public profile. Jesse Reeves, a researcher for the paranormal studies group Talamasca, is intrigued by Lestat's lyrics and tells the rest of the group her theory that he really is a vampire. Her mentor, David Talbot, takes her aside and tells her they know he is and that a vampire called Marius made him.In the novels, an alchemist named Magnus is Lestat's creator. He also shows her Lestat's journal that he recovered and is now in the Talamasca library. In a flashback to his origins, Lestat recalls how he awoke Akasha, the first vampire, with his music. Jesse tracks him down to a London vampire club where he confronts her, and she follows him to Los Angeles for the concert, where she gives him his journal. Shortly after they leave London. Akasha, awakened by Lestat's new music, arrives and torches the club, and all the vampires inside, who want Lestat dead. At the concert in Death Valley, a mob of vampires attack Lestat and Marius. Akasha bursts through the stage and takes Lestat with her as her new King. Empowered by Akasha's blood, Lestat and the Queen confront the Ancient Vampires at the home of Maharet, Jesse's aunt, who is an Ancient Vampire herself. The Ancient Vampires were planning to kill Akasha, to save the human world from demise. Akasha then commands Lestat to kill Jesse. Lestat ostensibly obeys but then turns and begins to drain Akasha's blood with the help of the Ancients. Mael and Pandora are killed by Akasha's power, and Armand is almost killed, but is saved as her powers diminish. Maharet is the last to drink Akasha's blood, and thereby ends up becoming a marble "statue". Lestat then turns and walks to where Jesse is lying lifeless, and cradling her in his arms, gives her his blood, turning her into a vampire. Jesse, now a vampire, and Lestat then return the journal to the Talamasca, and walk away, among mortals, into the night. As they exit, Marius enters the Talamasca. The film closes with a scene of David reading the journal as Marius's voice catches his attention, cheerfully saying, "Hello, David."

positive

positive

My Friend Flicka

My Friend Flicka

Ken McLaughlin is a ten-year-old boy who lives on a remote Wyoming ranch, the Goose Bar, with his father, Rob; his mother, Nell; and his older brother, Howard. Rob is often unsatisfied with Ken because the boy daydreams when he should be attending to practical matters; Nell, however, shares her son's sensitive nature and is more sympathetic. Howard, the older son, was allowed to choose and train a colt from among the Goose Bar herd but, although Ken loves horses, Rob doesn't think his wool-gathering son deserves such a privilege yet. At the beginning of the novel, Ken has again angered his father by returning home from boarding school with failing grades, and will therefore have to repeat fifth grade, an expense Rob can ill afford. Nell persuades Rob to let Ken choose a colt of his own. Ken is unable to decide which of that year's yearlings he wants until one day he sees a beautiful sorrel filly running swiftly away from him, and makes his choice. Rob, once again, is annoyed with his son; this particular filly has a strain of mustang blood that makes her very wild – "loco", in ranch idiom. All the Goose Bar horses with this same strain have been fast, beautiful, but utterly untameable, and after many years of trying to break just one of them, Rob has decided to get rid of them all. Ken persists, however, and Rob reluctantly agrees to let him have the filly. When Rob and Ken go out to capture her, she lives up to her family reputation: she tries to escape by attempting to jump an impossibly high barbed wire fence and injures herself severely. Ken spends the rest of the summer nursing the filly. He names her Flicka – Swedish for "girl" – and spends hours every day tending to her needs and keeping her company. Flicka comes to love and trust the boy, but her wounds from the barbed wire fence fester and cause a dangerous blood infection. She begins to waste away and grows so thin and weak that Rob decides that she must be shot to put her out of her misery. The night before the order is to be carried out, Flicka wades into a shallow brook, stumbles, falls, and is unable to rise. Ken finds her there and spends the rest of the night sitting in the water, holding her head in his arms so she doesn't drown. Although Ken nearly dies from exposure, the cold running water cures Flicka's fever, and all ends well.

Wyoming ranchers Rob and Nell McLaughlin somewhat reluctantly give son Ken, 10, a chance to raise a horse and learn responsibility. He chooses a year-old filly and names her Flicka, which ranch hand Gus informs him is a Swedish word for "little girl." Rising debts and a "loco" strain have created problems for the McLaughlins. They accept a $500 offer from a neighboring rancher for the filly's mother, Rocket, but the mare is accidentally killed while being loaded into a van. The situation gets worse when Flicka is badly cut by barbed wire. Ken cares for her best he can, but the infection leads father Rob to conclude that the horse must be put down. A gunshot by his father makes Ken fear the worst, but it turns out he was warding off a mountain lion after being warned by Flicka. The filly's life is spared, and young Ken nurtures her back to health.

positive

positive

Laura

Laura

Like Wilkie Collins' groundbreaking detective novel The Moonstone (1868), Laura is narrated in the first person by several alternating characters. These individual stories all revolve around the apparent murder of the title character, a successful New York advertiser killed in the doorway of her apartment with a shotgun blast that obliterated her face. Detective Mark MacPherson, assigned to the case, begins investigating the two men who were closest to Laura: her former lover, a narcissistic middle-aged writer named Waldo Lydecker, and her fiance, the philandering Shelby Carpenter. As he learns more about Laura, Mark – not the most sentimental of men – begins to fall in love with her memory. When Laura turns out to be very much alive, however, she becomes the prime suspect. The novel has some autobiographical elements; Caspary, like Laura, was an independent woman who earned her living as an advertiser and who struggled to balance career and romance.

New York City police detective Mark McPherson is investigating the murder of beautiful, and highly successful, advertising executive, Laura Hunt . Laura has been killed by a shotgun blast to the face, just inside the doorway to her apartment, before the start of the film. He interviews charismatic newspaper columnist Waldo Lydecker , an imperious, decadent dandy, who relates how he met Laura, became her mentor, and used his considerable influence and fame to advance her career. McPherson also questions Laura's parasitic playboy fiancé, Shelby Carpenter , her wealthy socialite aunt, Ann Treadwell , who'd been carrying on with Carpenter and giving him money, and her loyal housekeeper, Bessie Clary . Through the testimony of her friends, and the reading of her letters and diary, McPherson comes to know Laura and slowly becomes obsessed with her, so much so Lydecker accuses him of falling in love with the dead woman. He also learns that Lydecker was jealous of Laura's suitors, using his newspaper column and influence to keep them at bay. One night, the detective falls asleep in Laura's apartment, under her portrait, and is awakened by the sound of someone entering the apartment. He is shocked to discover it is Laura. Laura finds a dress in her closet belonging to one of her models, Diane Redfern. McPherson concludes that she, Diane Redfern, was the victim, brought there by Carpenter, while Laura was away in the country. Now it becomes even more urgent to unmask the murderer. A party is thrown to welcome Laura's return. At the party, McPherson arrests Laura for the murder of Diana Redfern. Upon questioning her, he is convinced of her innocence and that she does not love Shelby. He returns her to her apartment, and then goes to search Lydecker's apartment. There he finds a clock that is identical to the one in Laura's apartment. On closer examination he finds a secret compartment. He returns to Laura's apartment. Lydecker is there and it is apparent there is a growing bond between Laura and the detective. Lydecker insults McPherson and is sent away by Laura. After Lydecker has left, McPherson examines Laura's clock and finds the shotgun that killed Diane. Laura is confronted with the truth that Lydecker was the murderer. McPherson locks Laura in to her apartment, warning her not to let any one in. After he has left, Lydecker gains access to the apartment. Lydecker attempts to kill Laura, claiming if he cannot have her, no one can. He is shot down by McPherson's sergeant, who had told McPherson that Lydecker had never left the building, causing the two policemen to return to the apartment. Lydecker's last words are: "Goodbye, Laura. Goodbye, my love."

positive

positive

The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side

The Mirror Crack'd

Marina Gregg is a famous, temperamental, much loved movie star who has come to settle down in the village of St. Mary Mead after the death of Colonel Bantry, who used to live at Gossington Hall where Marina has taken up residence with her husband Jason Rudd. Heather Badcock, an ordinary albeit annoying woman, dies after drinking a cocktail at a party hosted by Marina. Shortly before her death, Heather was in conversation with Marina, giving her a long boring account of how she had met Marina many years ago - getting out of bed despite her illness and putting on lots of makeup, in order to seek Marina's autograph. Marina is seem with a 'frozen'look on her face for a moment while Heather talks to her; a look likened to the Lady of Shalott, as though 'doom has come upon her'. It then comes to light that Marina had handed her own drink to Heather after Heather's drink was spilled. Therefore it is surmised that Marina must be the intended victim. As a famous star who has married five times, she is a far more likely murder target. Suspicion is cast on many people including Marina's seemingly devoted husband, a big-shot American TV producer who is a former admirer, and an American actress who was previously Marina's rival in love. (Both Americans turn up unexpectedly at the party). It also comes to light that an arty photographer at the party is actually one of three children that Marina had adopted in the past for a while and then 'got tired of' (Marina does not recognize her as such at the party). It is known that 11-12 years before the events in the book, Marina desperately wanted children of her own but had difficulties conceiving. After adopting three children, she became pregnant but her baby was born mentally handicapped and abandoned to a lifetime of institutions, leaving Marina emotionally scarred. This misfortune was due to Marina contracting German measles in the early stages of her pregnancy. While police search for clues, two other murders take place - one of Marina's social secretary and the other of Marina's butler (both of whom were serving drinks at the party). Finally, Miss Marple deduces what Marina had instantly realised at the party, that Heather is the woman who was responsible for infecting Marina with German measles all those years previously when she put on make up to cover the rash and went to meet Marina for her autograph. Overcome by rage and grief at seeing her unwitting tormentor looking so happy and proud of her act, Marina impulsively poisons her own glass and hands it to Heather after making Heather spill her own drink. At the end of the book, Marina is found dead from a drug overdose.

Set in the fictional English village of St. Mary Mead, home of Miss Jane Marple , in 1953, a big Hollywood production company arrives to film a costume movie about Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I with two famous movie stars, Marina Rudd and Lola Brewster . The two actresses are old rivals who hate each other. Marina, who is making a much heralded comeback after a prolonged "illness" and retirement, when she, in reality, has had a nervous breakdown, and her husband, Jason Rudd , who is directing the movie they are making, arrive with their entourage. When she learns that Lola will be in the movie as well, she becomes enraged and vents her anger. Lola and her husband, Martin N. "Marty" Fenn , who is producing the movie they are making, then arrive. Excitement runs high in St. Mary Mead, as the locals have been invited to a reception held by the movie company in a manor house, Gossington Hall, to meet the celebrities. Lola and Marina come face to face at the reception and exchange some potent and comical insults, nasty one-liners, as they smile and pose for the cameras. The two square off in a series of hilarious and cleverly written and performed cat-fights throughout the movie. Marina however, has been receiving anonymous death threats. After her initial exchange with Lola at the reception, she is cornered by a gushing, devoted fan, Heather Badcock , who bores her with a long and detailed story about having actually met Marina in person during World War II. After recounting the meeting they had all those years ago, when she arose from her sickbed to go and meet the glamorous star, Babcock drinks a cocktail that was made for Marina and quickly dies from poisoning. The incident is unfortunate for Marina's mental state, and she is beside herself. Everyone is certain she was the intended murder victim. Once filming begins on the movie, she discovers that apart from threatening notes made up of newspaper clippings, her cup of coffee on the set has also been spiked with poison, sending her into fits of terror. The police detective from Scotland Yard investigating the case, Inspector Dermot Craddock , is baffled as he tries to uncover who is behind the attempt on the life of the actress and the subsequent murder of the innocent woman. The suspected are Ella Zielinsky , Jason's production assistant who is secretly having an affair with him and would like Marina out of the way, and the hotheaded actress Lola Brewster. Inspector Craddock asks his aunt, the renowned amateur detective Miss Jane Marple, who injured her foot at the reception and is confined to her home, for assistance. The main suspect, Zielinsky, is then killed by a lethal nose spray after going to a pay phone in the village, where she called the murderer and threatened to expose him. Miss Marple, now back on her feet, visits Gossington Hall, where Marina and Jason are staying, and views where Babcock's death occurred. Working from information received from her cleaning woman, Cherry Baker (played by [[Wendy Morgan , who was working as a waitress the day of the murder, the determined elderly sleuth begins to piece together the events of the fatal reception and solves the mystery. By the time she has collected all the evidence to indicate who committed the crime, however, another death occurs at Gossington Hall, which sadly closes the case on who the murderer in St. Mary Mead actually is: Marina Rudd, who has apparently committed suicide. In the film's denouement, Miss Marple explains the murders that have occurred. Heather Babcock's story was Marina's initial motive. Ms. Babcock suffered from German measles — a rather harmless disease to most adults, but problematic for a pregnant woman. Heather Babcock innocently infected Marina when she met her during World War Two. Marina was pregnant at the time; the disease caused her child to be born with mental retardation. Upon hearing Heather cheerfully tell this story, Marina was overcome with rage and poisoned her without thinking. She then spread the idea that she was the intended victim, delivering the death threats and poisoning her own coffee. Ella, who made phone calls to various suspects from the pay phone, accidentally guessed correctly, prompting Marina to murder her. As Marina is now dead, she will not be brought to justice. Jason, her devoted husband, confesses to Miss Marple that he actually administered the dosage of poison to save her from prosecution. However, Marina didn't touch the hot chocolate he made for her and rather poisoned herself.

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Red Alert

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

In paranoid delusion, a moribund U.S. Air Force (USAF) general, thinking to make the world a better place, unilaterally launches an airborne, preemptive, nuclear attack upon the USSR, from his command at the Sonora, Texas, Strategic Air Command (SAC) bomber base, by ordering the 843rd bomber wing to attack, per war plan "Wing Attack Plan R"—which would authorize a lower-echelon SAC commander to retaliate after an enemy first strike has decapitated the U.S. Government. He attacks with the entire B-52 bomber wing of new airplanes each armed with two nuclear weapons and protected with electronic countermeasures to prevent the Soviets from shooting them down. When the U.S. President and Cabinet become aware the attack is underway, they assist the Soviet defense interception of the USAF bombers; to little effect, because the Soviets destroy only two bombers and damage one, the Alabama Angel, that remains airborne and en route to target. The U.S. Government re-establishes the SAC airbase chain-of-command, but the suicidal general who launched the attack—the only man knowing the recall code—kills himself before capture and interrogation; however, his executive officer correctly deduces the recall code from among the general's desk pad doodles. The code is transmitted to and received by the surviving bomber airplanes and are successfully recalled, minutes before bombing their targets in the Soviet Union—save for the Alabama Angel—whose earlier-damaged radio prevents its recalling, and it progresses to its target. In a last effort to avert a Soviet–American nuclear war, the U.S. President offers the Soviet Premier the compensatory right to destroy a U.S. city, offering Atlantic City, New Jersey, however, at the final moment, the Alabama Angel fails to destroy its target and nuclear catastrophe is averted.

United States Air Force Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper is commander of Burpelson Air Force Base, which houses the SAC B-52 airborne alert bomber force just hours from the Soviet border. Ripper orders his executive officer, Group Captain Lionel Mandrake of the RAF , to put the base on alert, asserting that it is not a drill. The alert is sent to the patrolling aircraft, including one piloted by Aircraft commander Major T. J. "King" Kong and his crew. All the aircraft commence an attack flight on Russia, and lock out unauthorized external communications through the CRM 114 Discriminator. Mandrake discovers that no order for war has been received, and tries to stop Ripper, who locks them both in his office. Ripper reveals to Mandrake that he believes the Soviets have been using fluoridation of United States' water supplies to pollute the "precious bodily fluids" of Americans. At The Pentagon, General Buck Turgidson briefs President Merkin Muffley in the "War Room" along with several other top officers and aides about the attack. Muffley is shocked to learn that such orders could be given without his authorization, although he had OK'ed this in the case of Soviet first-strike attack on Washington D.C. Turgidson reports that his men are trying to cycle through every CRM code to issue the stand-down order but this could take over two days. Muffley orders Turgidson to storm the base and seize Ripper, though Turgidson warns that Ripper may have already alerted his men to this possibility. Gen. Turgidson attempts to convince Muffley to let the attack continue, as their first strike on the Soviets would wipe out the majority of the Soviet missiles, and the little they could retaliate with would only cost a few million American lives. Muffley refuses, and instead brings in the Soviet ambassador Alexei de Sadeski to get Soviet premier Dimitri Kisov on the "Hot Line". The President alerts the Premier to the situation, and authorizes the USSR to fire upon the US planes to stop the attack. After a heated discussion, the ambassador explains that the Soviet Union has created a doomsday device consisting of 50 buried bombs with "Cobalt Thorium G" set to detonate should any nuclear attack strike their country; the Soviets had conceived of this after reading a New York Times article claiming the United States was also working on such a device. The President's wheelchair-bound scientific advisor, a sinister German named Dr. Strangelove , considers that this is a ploy, as a secret doomsday device would be an ineffectual deterrent. Sadeski admits they had plans to reveal its existence the following week, as a surprise for the Premier's birthday. U.S. Army airborne forces arrive at Burpelson, but as predicted, the base's troops consider the troops to be Soviets in disguise and open fire. Despite many casualties, the Army forces eventually overtake the base. Before he can be restrained, Ripper shoots himself. Colonel "Bat" Guano forces his way into Ripper's office. He initially suspects Mandrake of being an enemy, but Mandrake convinces him otherwise. Mandrake has identified the proper recall code for the bombers from Ripper's desk blotter doodles, and SAC is able to contact the bomber planes and send them away from Soviet air space. The War Room celebrates. However, Sadeski reports that of the four planes that the Soviets had believed shot down, they cannot account for one of them - that of Major Kong. Anti-aircraft fire had ruptured the fuel tank and caused the CRM aboard Kong's plane to self-destruct, leaving the crew no way to receive the counter-order. President Muffley gives the plane's original destination to the Soviets, to allow them to concentrate on finding it. However, due to the fuel loss, Major Kong has changed the destination to a closer high-priority target, a ICBM complex at Kodlosk. On approaching the new target, the crew discovers that the bomb release mechanism has been damaged. Major Kong tries to repair the damage, but ends up falling out of the plane along with the bomb; he straddles the bomb and rides it like a rodeo cowboy as it falls and detonates. While discussing the aftereffects of the activation of the doomsday device, Sadeski notes that, within ten months, the surface of the earth will be uninhabitable. Dr. Strangelove recommends that the President gather several hundreds of thousands of people, with a high female-to-male ratio, to live in deep mineshafts in order to escape the radiation, and to then institute a breeding program to allow the United States to repopulate the surface after a hundred years have passed. Gen. Turgidson warns that the Soviets will likely do the same. At this point, Dr. Strangelove suddenly shouts that he has a plan, and miraculously gets up from his wheelchair, takes a few halting steps and shouts, "Mein Führer! I can walk!" The film then cuts to a montage of nuclear detonations, accompanied by Vera Lynn's recording of "We'll Meet Again."

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Zorba the Greek

Zorba the Greek

The book opens in a café in Piraeus, just before dawn on a gusty autumn morning in the 1930s. The narrator, a young Greek intellectual, resolves to set aside his books for a few months after being stung by the parting words of a friend, Stavridakis, who has left for the Caucasus in order to help some ethnic Greeks who are undergoing persecution. He sets off for Crete in order to re-open a disused lignite mine and immerse himself in the world of peasants and working-class people. He is about to dip into his copy of Dante's Divine Comedy when he feels he is being watched; he turns around and sees a man of around sixty peering at him through the glass door. The man enters and immediately approaches him to ask for work. He claims expertise as a chef, a miner, and player of the santuri, or cimbalom, and introduces himself as Alexis Zorba, a Greek born in Romania. The narrator is fascinated by Zorba's lascivious opinions and expressive manner and decides to employ him as a foreman. On their way to Crete, they talk on a great number of subjects, and Zorba's soliloquies set the tone for a large part of the book. On arrival, they reject the hospitality of Anagnostis and Kondomanolious the café-owner, and on Zorba's suggestion make their way to Madame Hortense's hotel, which is nothing more than a row of old bathing-huts. They are forced by circumstances to share a bathing-hut. The narrator spends Sunday roaming the island, the landscape of which reminds him of "good prose, carefully ordered, sober… powerful and restrained" and reads Dante. On returning to the hotel for dinner, the pair invite Madame Hortense to their table and get her to talk about her past as a courtesan. Zorba gives her the pet-name "Bouboulina" and, with the help of his cimbalom, seduces her. The protagonist seethes in his room while listening to the sounds of their impassioned lovemaking. The next day, the mine opens and work begins. The narrator, who has socialist ideals, attempts to get to know the workers, but Zorba warns him to keep his distance: "Man is a brute.... If you're cruel to him, he respects and fears you. If you're kind to him, he plucks your eyes out." Zorba himself plunges into the work, which is characteristic of his overall attitude, which is one of being absorbed in whatever one is doing or whomever one is with at that moment. Quite frequently Zorba works long hours and requests not to be interrupted while working. The narrator and Zorba have a great many lengthy conversations, about a variety of things, from life to religion, each other's past and how they came to be where they are now, and the narrator learns a great deal about humanity from Zorba that he otherwise had not gleaned from his life of books and paper. The narrator absorbs a new zest for life from his experiences with Zorba and the other people around him, but reversal and tragedy mark his stay on Crete, and, alienated by their harshness and amorality, he eventually returns to the mainland once his and Zorba's ventures are completely financially spent. Having overcome one of his own demons (such as his internal "no," which the narrator equates with the Buddha, whose teachings he has been studying and about whom he has been writing for much of the narrative, and who he also equates with "the void") and having a sense that he is needed elsewhere (near the end of the novel, the narrator has a premonition of the death of his old friend Stavridakis, which plays a role in the timing of his departure to the mainland), the narrator takes his leave of Zorba for the mainland, which, despite the lack of any major outward burst of emotionality, is significantly emotionally wrenching for both Zorba and the narrator. It almost goes without saying that the two (the narrator and Zorba) will remember each other for the duration of their natural lives.

Basil is a half-English half-Greek writer who has been raised in Britain and bears all the hallmarks of an uptight, middle-class Englishman. He is waiting at a port in mainland Greece one day when he meets a gruff, yet enthusiastic peasant and musician named Zorba . Basil explains to Zorba that he is traveling to a rural Cretan village where his father owns some land, with the intention of opening up a lignite mine and perhaps curing his writer's block. Zorba relates his experience with mining and convinces Basil to take him along. When they arrive at Crete, they take a car to the village where they are greeted enthusiastically by the town's impoverished peasant community. They stay with an old, French war widow named Madame Hortense in her self-styled "Hotel Ritz". The ever audacious Zorba tries to persuade Basil into making a move on Madame Hortense, but when he is reluctant, Zorba instead seizes the opportunity, and they form a relationship. Over the next few days, Basil and Zorba attempt to work the old lignite mine, but find it too unsafe and shut it down. Zorba then has an idea to use the forest opposite as a kind of logging area , however the land is owned by the powerful monastery of the village, so Zorba goes over there and befriends the monks by getting them drunk. Afterwards, he comes home to Basil and begins to dance in a way that mesmerizes Basil. Meanwhile, Basil and Zorba get their first introduction to "the Widow" , a young, widowed woman, who is incessantly teased by the townspeople for not remarrying, especially to a young, local boy who is madly in love with her, but whom she has spurned repeatedly. One rainy afternoon, Basil offers her his umbrella, which she reluctantly takes. Zorba suggests that she is attracted to him, but Basil, ever shy, denies this and refuses to pursue the widow. Basil hands Zorba some money, as he sends him off to the nearby town of Chania, where Zorba is to buy cable and other supplies for the implementation of his grand plan. Zorba says goodbye to Basil and Madame Hortense, who is by now madly in love with him. While in Chania, Zorba entertains himself at a cabaret and strikes up a brief romance with a much younger dancer. In a letter to Basil, he details his exploits and indicates that he has found love. Angered by Zorba's apparent irresponsibility and the squandering of his money, Basil untruthfully tells Madame Hortense that Zorba has declared his love to her and intends to marry her upon his return — to which she is ecstatic to the point of tears. Meanwhile, the Widow returns Basil's umbrella by way of Mimithos , the simple-minded village idiot. When Zorba eventually returns with supplies and gifts, he is surprised and angered to hear about Basil's lie to Madame Hortense. He also asks Basil concerning his whereabouts the night before. That night, Basil had finally gone to the Widow's house, made love to her and spent the night. The brief encounter comes at great cost. A villager catches sight of them, and word spreads, until the young, local boy who is in love with the Widow is taunted mercilessly about it. The next morning, the villagers find his body by the sea, where he has drowned himself out of shame. The boy's father holds a funeral which all the villagers attend. The widow attempts to come inconspicuously, but is blocked from entering the church. She is eventually trapped in the courtyard, where she is beaten and stoned by the villagers, who hold her responsible for the young boy's suicide. Basil, meek and fearful of intervening, tells Mimithos to quickly fetch Zorba. Zorba arrives just as a villager, a friend of the boy, tries to pull a knife and kill the widow. Zorba overpowers the much younger man and disarms him. Thinking that the situation is now under control, Zorba asks the Widow to follow him and turns his back. At that moment, the dead boy's father pulls his knife and cuts the widow's throat. She dies instantly, as the villagers shuffle away apathetically, whisking the father away. Only Basil, Zorba and Mimithos show any emotion at her murder. Basil proclaims his inability to intervene whereupon Zorba laments the futility of death. On a rainy day, Basil and Zorba come home and find Madame Hortense waiting for them. She expresses anger at Zorba for making no progress on the wedding. Zorba conjures up a story that he has ordered a white satin wedding dresses, lined with pearls and adorned with real gold. Madame Hortense pulls out two golden rings she had made and proposes their immediate engagement. Zorba tries to delay, but eventually agrees and goes along with gusto, to Basil's surprise. A while later, Madame Hortense who apparently has contracted pneumonia, is seen on her deathbed. Zorba stays by her side, along with Basil. Meanwhile, word gets round that "the foreigner" is dying, and that since she has no heirs, the State will take all her possessions and money. The desperately poor villagers crowd around her hotel, impatiently waiting for her demise so they can steal her belongings. Two old ladies enter her room and gaze expectantly at her, hoping to get first hands on all her belongings. Other women try to enter and raid her belongings, but Zorba can fight them off. In an instant of her death, the women re-enter Madame Hortense's bedroom to steal her most valued belongings. Zorba leaves with a sigh, as the hotel is ransacked and stripped bare by the shrieking and excited villagers. When Zorba returns to Madame Hortense's bedroom, the entire room is stripped bare apart from her bed and the bird in her birdcage. Zorba takes the birdcage with him. Finally, Zorba's elaborate contraption to ferry timber down the hill is complete. A festive ceremony is held, and all the villagers have turned out to see it. After a blessing from the local priests, Zorba gives the signal to start by firing a rifle in the air. A log comes hurtling down the zip line at a worrying pace, destroying the log itself and slightly damaging part of the contraption. Zorba remains unconcerned and gives orders for a second log. This one also speeds down and shoots straight into the sea. By now the villagers and priests have become fearful and run for cover. Zorba remains unfazed and orders a third log, which accelerates down with such violence that it dislodges the entire contraption, destroying everything the men had worked for. The villagers flee, leaving only Basil and Zorba behind. Basil and Zorba sit by the shore to eat a rack of lamb for lunch. Zorba pretends to tell the future from the lamb shank, saying that he foresees a great journey to a big city. He then asks Basil directly when he plans to leave, and Basil replies that he will leave in a few days. Zorba declares his sadness about Basil's now imminent return to England and tells Basil that he is missing madness. Basil asks Zorba to teach him how to dance. Zorba teaches him the sirtaki and Basil begins to laugh hysterically at the catastrophic contraption. The story ends with both men enthusiastically dancing the sirtaki on the beach.

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The End of the Affair

The End of the Affair

The novel focuses on Maurice Bendrix, a rising writer during World War II in London, and Sarah Miles, the wife of an impotent civil servant. Bendrix is loosely based on Greene himself, and he reflects often on the act of writing a novel. Sarah is based loosely on Greene's mistress at the time, Catherine Walston, to whom the book is dedicated. Bendrix and Sarah fall in love quickly, but he soon realizes that the affair will end as quickly as it began. The relationship suffers from his overt and admitted jealousy. He is frustrated by her refusal to divorce Henry, her amiable but boring husband. When a bomb blasts Bendrix's flat as he is with Sarah, he is nearly killed. After this, Sarah breaks off the affair with no apparent explanation. Later, Bendrix is still wracked with jealousy when he sees Henry crossing the Common that separates their flats. Henry has finally started to suspect something, and Bendrix decides to go to a private detective to discover Sarah's new lover. Through her diary, he learns that, when she thought he was dead after the bombing, she made a promise to God not to see Bendrix again if He allowed him to live again. Greene describes Sarah's struggles. After her sudden death from a lung infection brought to a climax by walking on the Common in the rain, several miraculous events occur, advocating for some kind of meaningfulness to Sarah's faith. By the last page of the novel, Bendrix may have come to believe in a God as well, though not to love Him. The End of the Affair is the fourth and last of Greene's explicitly Catholic novels.

{{Expand section}} Maurice Bendrix , is the clandestine lover of married Sarah Miles .http://www.allmovie.com/movie/the-end-of-the-affair-v90464

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Sheep

The Dark

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

While in Wales visiting her husband James , Adele tries to fix her relationship with her daughter Sarah . By the side of a cliff, they see a strange memorial with evidence of a plate missing and with the name "Annwyn" marked on it. A local man Dafydd explains that, according to traditional Welsh mythology, Annwyn is a sort of afterlife. Later, Sarah vanishes on the beach, and another similar looking girl, named Ebrill , appears in her place. Ebrill is the long-dead daughter of a local shepherd who also served as the town's pastor fifty years prior. When Ebrill, who was a sickly child, died, her father gave her to the ocean, sending her to Annwyn. He then convinced his followers to throw themselves into the ocean, claiming that it was the way to Paradise, while he privately hoped that their sacrifice would return Ebrill to him from Annwyn. Ebrill did come back, but, as the film states, something came back with her. That something killed the sheep, something upon which the local newspapers remarked upon. Her father tried to draw the evil out of her, through trepanning and locking her in her room. Dafydd was one of the followers who did not throw himself off the cliff, though both his parents did. Ebrill's father took him in, and when Dafydd could no longer bear witnessing the shepherd hurting Ebrill, he set her free, which in turn allowed the evil within her to lash out and shove her father over the cliff. Realizing that Ebrill never should have been brought back from Annwyn, a young Dafydd sent her back by drowning her. Adele makes the connection that Ebrill is back once more because she has found a living substitute in Sarah, hence the film's tagline "One of the living for one of the dead". In an attempt to rescue her daughter, Adele throws both herself and Ebrill over the cliffs, despite James' protests, and sends them both to Annwyn, a sepia-toned, misty version of reality. While in Annwyn, the film reveals that Sarah attempted suicide following an argument with her mother, resulting in their trip to Wales. Adele begs for a second chance with her daughter. Ebrill informs her that the dead don't get second chances. Ebrill and her father perform trepannation on Adele, to draw out the evil within her. Adele eventually escapes her bonds and rushes to find Sarah, who is locked behind a door. Adele finds a key and tearfully apologizes for being so selfish. In unlocking the door, Adele is able to rescue Sarah from Annwyn, though, in doing so, Adele sacrificed herself, only to realize too late that the Sarah she brought back was tainted by the same evil that had tainted Ebrill all those years ago.

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Lolita

Lolita

The novel's fictional "Foreword" states that Humbert Humbert dies of coronary thrombosis upon finishing his manuscript, the events of the novel. It also states Mrs. Richard Schiller dies giving birth to a stillborn girl on Christmas Day, 1952. Humbert Humbert, a literary scholar, has harbored a long-time obsession with young girls, or "nymphets". He suggests that this was caused by the premature death of a childhood sweetheart, Annabel Leigh. After an unsuccessful marriage, Humbert moves to the small New England town of Ramsdale to write. He rents a room in the house of Charlotte Haze, a widow. While Charlotte shows him around the house, Humbert meets her 11-year-old daughter, Dolores, affectionately known as "Lo", "Lola", or "Dolly" with whom he immediately becomes infatuated, partly due to her uncanny resemblance to Annabel, and privately nicknames her "Lolita". Humbert stays at the house only to remain near her. While he is obsessed with Dolores, he disdains her crassness and preoccupation with contemporary American popular culture, such as teen movies and comic books. While Dolores is away at summer camp, Charlotte, who has fallen in love with Humbert, tells him that he must either marry her or move out. Humbert agrees to marry Charlotte in order to continue living near Lolita. Charlotte is oblivious to Humbert's distaste for her, as well as his lust for Lolita, until she reads his diary. Learning of Humbert's true feelings and intentions, Charlotte plans to flee with Lolita and threatens to expose Humbert as a "detestable, abominable, criminal fraud." However, fate intervenes on Humbert's behalf, for as she runs across the street in a state of shock, Charlotte is struck and killed by a passing car. Humbert picks Lolita up from camp, pretending that Charlotte has been hospitalized. Rather than return to Charlotte's home, Humbert takes Lolita to a hotel, where he gives her sleeping pills. As he waits for the pills to take effect, he wanders through the hotel and meets a man who seems to know who he is. Humbert excuses himself from the strange conversation and returns to the room. There, he tries molesting Lolita but finds that the sedative is too mild. Instead, she initiates sex the next morning, having slept with a boy at camp. Later, Humbert reveals to Lolita that Charlotte is dead, giving her no choice but to accept her stepfather into her life on his terms or face foster care. Lolita and Humbert drive around the country, moving from state to state and motel to motel. Humbert sees the necessity of maintaining a common base of guilt to keep their relations secret, and wants denial to become second nature for Lolita. He tells her if he is arrested, she will become a ward of the state and lose all her clothes and belongings. He also bribes her for sexual favors, though he knows that she does not reciprocate his love and shares none of his interests. After a year touring North America, the two settle down in another New England town, where Lolita is enrolled in a girls school. Humbert becomes very possessive and strict, forbidding Lolita to take part in after-school activities or to associate with boys. However, most of the townspeople see this as the action of a loving and concerned, though old-fashioned, parent. Lolita begs to be allowed to take part in the school play, and Humbert reluctantly grants his permission in exchange for more sexual favors. The play is written by Clare Quilty. He is said to have attended a rehearsal and been impressed by Lolita's acting. Just before opening night, Lolita and Humbert have a ferocious argument, and Lolita runs away while Humbert assures the neighbors everything is fine. He searches frantically until he finds her exiting a phone booth. She is in a bright, pleasant mood, saying that she tried to reach him at home and that a "great decision has been made." They go to buy drinks and Lolita tells Humbert she doesn't care about the play, rather, wants to leave town and resume their travels. As Lolita and Humbert drive westward again, Humbert gets the feeling that their car is being tailed and becomes increasingly paranoid, suspecting that Lolita is conspiring with others in order to escape. She falls ill and must convalesce in a hospital while Humbert stays in a nearby motel, without Lolita for the first time in years. One night, Lolita disappears from the hospital, with the staff telling Humbert that her "uncle" checked her out. Humbert embarks upon a frantic search to find Lolita and her abductor, but eventually gives up. During this time, Humbert has a two year relationship (ending in 1952) with an adult named Rita, who he describes as a "kind, good sport." She "solemnly approve[s]" of his search for Lolita. Rita figuratively dies when Humbert receives a letter from Lolita, now 17, who tells him that she is married, pregnant, and in desperate need of money. Humbert goes to see Lolita, giving her money in exchange for the name of the man who abducted her. She reveals the truth: Clare Quilty, an acquaintance of Charlotte's, the writer of the school play, and the man Lolita claims to have loved, checked her out of the hospital after following them throughout their travels and tried making her star in one of his pornographic films. When she refused, he threw her out. She worked odd jobs before meeting and marrying her husband, who knows nothing about her past. Humbert asks Lolita to leave her husband, Dick, and live with him, to which she refuses. He gives her a large sum of money anyway, which secures her future. As he leaves she smiles and shouts goodbye in a "sweet, American" way. Humbert finds Quilty, whom he intends to kill, at his mansion. Before doing so, he first wants Quilty to understand why he must die, for he took advantage of Humbert, a sinner, and he took advantage of a disadvantage. Eventually, Humbert shoots him several times (throughout which Quilty is bargaining for his life in a witty, though bizarre, manner). Once Quilty has died, Humbert exits the house. Shortly after, he is arrested for driving on the wrong side of the road and swerving. The narrative closes with Humbert's final words to Lolita in which he wishes her well, and reveals the novel in its metafiction to be the memoirs of his life, only to be published after he and Lolita have both died.

Set in the 1950s, the film begins with a confrontation between two men: one of them, Clare Quilty , drunk and incoherent, plays Chopin's Polonaises Op. 40 on the piano before being shot. The shooter is Humbert Humbert , a 40-something British professor of French literature. Four years earlier, Humbert arrives in Ramsdale, New Hampshire, intending to spend the summer before his professorship begins at Beardsley College, Ohio. He searches for a room to let, and Charlotte Haze , a blowsy, sexually frustrated widow, invites him to stay at her house. He declines until seeing her daughter, Dolores , affectionately called "Lolita". Lolita is a soda-pop drinking, gum-snapping, overtly flirtatious teenager, with whom Humbert falls in love. To be close to Lolita, Humbert accepts Charlotte's offer and becomes a lodger in the Haze household, but Charlotte wants all of "Hum's" time for herself and soon announces that she will be sending Lolita to an all-girl sleepaway camp for the summer. After the Hazes depart for camp, the maid gives Humbert a letter from Charlotte, confessing her love for him and demanding he vacate at once unless he feels the same way. The letter says that if Humbert is still in the house when she returns, Charlotte will know that her love is requited, and he must marry her. Though he roars with laughter while reading the sadly heartfelt yet characteristically overblown letter, Humbert marries Charlotte. Things turn sour for the couple in the absence of Lolita. Humbert becomes more withdrawn while Charlotte becomes more whiny. Charlotte then discovers Humbert’s diary entries detailing his passion for Lolita and characterizing her as "the Haze woman, the cow, the obnoxious mama, the brainless baba". She has an hysterical outburst and, while Humbert hurriedly fixes martinis in the kitchen to smooth over the situation, she runs outside, is hit by a car, and dies. Humbert drives to the camp to pick up Lolita, who doesn't yet know her mother is dead. They stay the night in a hotel that is handling an overflow influx of police officers attending a convention. One of the guests, Quilty, pretends to be a policeman and insinuates himself upon Humbert and keeps steering the conversation to his "beautiful little daughter," who is asleep upstairs, while repeating, too often, that he thinks Humbert is "normal." Humbert escapes the Quilty's advances, and, the next morning, Humbert and Lolita enter into a sexual relationship. The two commence an odyssey across the United States, traveling from hotel to motel. In public, they act as father and daughter. After several days, Humbert tells Lolita that her mother is not sick in a hospital, as he had previously told her, but dead. Grief-stricken, she stays with Humbert. In the fall, Humbert reports to his position at Beardsley College, and enrolls Lolita in high school there. Before long, people begin to wonder about the relationship between father and his over-protected daughter. Humbert worries about her involvement with the school play and with male classmates. One night he returns home to find Dr. Zempf, a pushy, abrasive stranger, sitting in his darkened living room. Zempf, speaking with a thick German accent, claims to be from Lolita's school and wants to discuss her knowledge of "the facts of life." Humbert is frightened and decides to take Lolita on the road again. He soon realizes they are being followed by a mysterious car that never drops away but never quite catches up. When Lolita becomes sick, he takes her to the hospital. However, when he returns to pick her up, she is gone. The nurse there tells him she left with another man claiming to be her uncle and Humbert, devastated, is left without a single clue as to her disappearance or whereabouts. Some years later, Humbert receives a letter from Mrs. Richard T. Schiller, Lolita's married name. She writes that she is now married to a man named Dick , and that she is pregnant and in desperate need of money. Humbert travels to their home and finds that she is now a roundly, expectant woman in glasses leading a pleasant, humdrum life. Humbert demands that she tell him who kidnapped her three years earlier. She tells him it was Clare Quilty, the man that was following them, who is a famous playwright and with whom her mother had a fling in Ramsdale days. She states Quilty is also the one who disguised himself as the policeman and Dr. Zempf as well as well as the anonymous phone caller from earlier. Lolita herself carried on an affair with him and left with him when he promised her glamor. However, he then demanded she join his depraved lifestyle, including acting in his "art" films. Humbert begs Lolita to leave her husband and come away with him, but she declines. Humbert gives Lolita $13,000, explaining that it is hers from the sale of her mother's house and leaves to shoot Quilty in his mansion, where the film began. The epilogue explains that Humbert died of coronary thrombosis awaiting trial for Quilty's murder.

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The Witches

The Witches

The book's witches, described as "demons in human form" are revealed in the opening chapters to be a constant threat to global security. While they look human, and look and act like normal human women, they are secretly plotting to kill every single child on Earth. No other reason for this is given, other than the foul stench children produce for witches. A young boy (whose name is never mentioned) goes to stay with his grandmother (also unnamed) after his parents are killed in a tragic car crash in the Norwegian mountains when they are on vacation. The boy is comforted by his grandmother, and then she says she will adopt him. The next night, she begins to warn him about witches, which she says are demons in human form, which seek to kill human children. The boy thinks she is bluffing, but she tells him the signs of how to recognize a witch, which include: hair which looks like a wig, because the witches, despite being female, are actually bald, and have to wear wigs to look human; gloves, because the witches actually have inch-long claws which they hide under gloves; inhuman eyes, because the eyes of a witch have a red-white glow; blue spit; and toeless feet, which force the witches to squeeze their feet into pretty tight women's shoes which causes them to limp very slightly. The grandmother also tells the boy that four of her childhood friends were taken and killed by witches, but one girl survived for a while because the witches only managed to turn her into a chicken. Another boy was turned into a porpoise and swam out to sea. The boy and his grandmother return to England, as per his parents' will. The grandmother warns the boy to be on his guard, since English witches are known to be among the cruellest in the world. Shortly afterward, the boy is building the roof on his treehouse and spots a strange woman in black staring up at him with an eerie smile. When he sees that she is wearing gloves, he instantly recognizes her as a witch; and he also notices her inhuman lips and teeth; her gums resemble "raw meat." When the witch offers him a snake to entice him, he climbs up the tree which he is in and stays there until his grandmother comes and gets him for supper. This persuades the boy and his grandmother to be wary. The boy then becomes conscious of all women he encounters in public and studies them from a distance to check whether they are witches or not. When the grandmother later becomes ill with pneumonia, the doctor orders her to cancel a planned holiday in Norway. Instead, they go to a luxury hotel in Bournemouth on the southern English coast. The boy goes to train his pet mice in the hotel ballroom when the members of the "Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children" show up for their annual meeting. The boy notices one of the women reaching under her hair (with a gloved hand) to scratch at her scalp, and instantly realizes that the "RSPCC" is really the yearly convention of England's witches. A young woman shows up on stage, and removes her face mask to reveal a hideously deformed face underneath. The boy instantly recognizes her as the Grand High Witch. On her cue, the witches reveal their true, demonic forms: bald heads, clawed hands and toeless feet. The Grand High Witch was angry at her English minions' failure to destroy all of the country's children, and orders all of them exterminated by the end of the year. One brave or foolish witch states the obvious; that killing every child in the country is impossible; and the Grand High Witch instantly incinerates her using lasers which shoot from her eyes. The terrified witches do not dare to protest further. To help them along, she unveils a master plan calling for the witches to purchase sweet shops (with "homemade" money given to them by the Grand High Witch by her money-making machine) and give away free chocolate (for the grand opening) laced with Formula 86 Delayed-Action Mouse Maker, a potion which will change anyone who eats it into a mouse at a specific time. The witches are instructed by the Grand High Witch to set the formula to activate at nine a.m. the day after the children have eaten the chocolate, when they are at school. The teachers, she hopes, will panic and kill the mice, thereby doing the witches' work for them. She warns her followers to only put one dose on each bit of candy that they sell. An overdose could break the delay barrier and even cause a child (especially an adult) to turn into a mouse instantly. The Grand High Witch turns a gluttonous child named Bruno Jenkins (lured to the convention hall by the promise of free chocolate) into a mouse as a demonstration of her potion. The witches hurriedly put on their disguises as Bruno arrives. At precisely three thirty p.m., Bruno turns into a mouse. Shortly after, the witches smell the narrator's presence, forcing him to make a break for it. He is quickly captured by the witches and turned into a mouse immediately with an overdose of the formula which has the effect of instantly turning him into a mouse. The formula turns out to have a lucky change: the transformed child retains his or her sentience, personality and even his or her voice. After tracking down Bruno, the transformed boy returns to his grandmother's hotel room and tells her what he has learned. He suggests turning the tables on the witches by slipping Formula 86 into their food. With some difficulty, he manages to get his hands on a bottle of the potion from the Grand High Witch's room. After a failed attempt to return Bruno to his parents, the grandmother takes Bruno and the narrator to dinner in her handbag, whereupon after ordering her meal she slips the narrator onto the floor, allowing him to run to the kitchen. He espies the witches coming in to dinner on his way and enters the kitchen, where he pours the potion into the soup intended for the witches' dinner. The witches all turn into mice within a few minutes, having had massive overdoses. The hotel staff panic and, unknowingly, end up killing all of England's witches. The boy and his grandmother then concoct a plan to destroy all of the world's witches. Learning the location of the witches castle from the hotel's records, they will travel to the Grand High Witch's Norwegian castle (having stolen her notebook), use the potion to change her successor and retainers into mice, then release cats into the castle to kill them. Using the Grand High Witch's money-making machine and information on the whereabouts of all of the world's witches, they will repeat the process all over the world. The grandmother also reveals that as a mouse, the boy will probably only live about another nine years, but the boy doesn't mind it, because he doesn't want to live any longer than his grandmother.

{{plot}} An old Norwegian woman named Helga warns her American grandson Luke about witches, demonic females who hate and destroy children. Helga explains that witches reside in every country in the world. While they look and act like ordinary women, it is really an elaborate facade. About the only way to tell them apart when undisguised is by their purple eyes. She tells him of her childhood friend, Erika, who was ensnared by a witch and trapped inside an oil painting until the day she died. It is also hinted that Helga herself was nearly destroyed by a witch when she was younger, losing one of her fingers in the process. After Luke's parents are then killed in a car crash, he and Helga move to England. While playing in his treehouse, a black-clad woman approaches him from below, and from her purple eyes he realises that she is a witch. The woman tries to entice Luke with a snake. Luke hopes for his grandmother to come and get him, but then, the woman offers him a chocolate bar instead. Suddenly, Helga interrupts the witch's coaxing and the witch walks away. On Luke's ninth birthday, Helga falls ill and is diagnosed with diabetes, and the doctor recommends a holiday by the seaside to recover. They visit a hotel in Cornwall where it happens that a children's charity group called "The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children" is holding its annual meeting. Shortly after Luke and Helga arrive, the RSPCC's chairwoman Eva Ernst also books into the hotel. Helga first spots Miss Ernst at tea, and recognizes her from her past, although she cannot remember exactly who she is or where she knew her from. Luke wanders around the hotel with his pet mice. He ends up in a wide, deserted ballroom and hides behind a screen to train his mice. Suddenly, the RSPCC's members flood into the room. When Luke notices one woman with purple eyes, and another scratching under her wig , he realizes that the "RSPCC" is really a convention of witches. After the doors are securely locked, the witches unveil their true selves - peeling off their gloves to reveal their clawed hands and their wigs to reveal bald, pimpled scalps. "Miss Ernst" removes her beautiful human face mask to reveal a hideous and hunchbacked hag-like body beneath her elegant exterior. Luke now realizes that she is the witches' feared ruler, the Grand High Witch. The Grand High Witch reveals she has had enough with her English underlings' dithering and failure to eliminate enough children. She orders that all of the country's children be exterminated, and has come up with a master plan to help them along. A witch named Beatrice quietly scorns the idea, but the Grand High Witch overhears her. As punishment for the witch's insolence, the Grand High Witch incinerates Beatrice with magic beams projected from her eyes. Afterwards, the Grand High Witch goes on to discuss specifics of her plan. She orders the witches to resign from their jobs when they return to their homes and buy candy stores with money she will give them. She then tells them to lace their confectionery with a magic formula she has just brewed up, called "Formula 86," a potion which turns anyone who ingests it into a mouse. She plans to give each witch a bottle containing 500 doses — enough to wipe out an entire small town's population of children. The Grand High Witch explains that ingesting one dose of the formula causes delayed transformation two hours after it has been taken. However, more than five doses causes the formula to work instantly. To show how the formula works, the Grand High Witch lures another boy at the hotel called Bruno Jenkins , whom Luke had met earlier, to the conference room with the promise of chocolate. The Grand High Witch had given him one dose of a contaminated chocolate bar two hours earlier in the day and promised him more chocolate if he met her in the conference room later. His arrival time planned perfectly as a demonstration for the witches to see how the formula works. After the witches hurriedly put their disguises back on, Bruno walks in. At precisely 6:15 pm, Bruno turns into a mouse on the stage. Just as the witches are about to leave, one of them, a maid at the hotel, catches Luke's scent. The other witches sniff Luke out as well, forcing him to make a break for it before they can corner him. The witches chase him, hellbent on eliminating someone who has spied on their affairs, but Luke initially escapes back to his grandmother's hotel room after fleeing through a fire escape and onto the beach before re-entering the building. Helga remains in a deep sleep . The Grand High Witch then appears in Helga's room, and identifies Helga as a "very old adversary." She kidnaps Luke and returns to the conference room, somehow avoiding being caught on her way down. With all of the witches watching, she pours an entire bottle of Formula 86 down his throat, thus instantly transforming him into a second mouse, leaving behind his shirt, pants and underwear. He escapes through a hole in the wall before the witches can trample him to death. Luke finds Bruno, and the two reach Helga, now awake. They explain to her that all of England's witches, as well as the Grand High Witch, are in the hotel. Later, with Helga's help, Luke steals a bottle of Formula 86 from the Grand High Witch's room. Luke plans to turn the tables on the witches by slipping Formula 86 into their food. Helga then tries to tell Bruno's parents ([[Bill Paterson what has happened, but they don't believe her. All the witches attend the banquet, except the Grand High Witch's mistreated assistant Anne Irvine , who resigns after an argument. Helga slips Luke into the kitchen, and Luke drops the Formula 86 into a batch of cress soup specially prepared for the "RSPCC" party. Luke detects that one of the cooks in the kitchen preparing the soup is also a witch. She taste tests the spiked batch before it is served. Having ingested a massive overdose, she turns into a mouse several minutes later. The witch-cook races into the dining room to warn the other witches not to eat the soup. Mistaking the talking mouse for a transformed child, a witch seated next to the Grand High Witch squelches the mouse under her boot. Helga notices Bruno's father is about to eat the soup which he demanded from the manager, Mr. Stringer even though it was not on the standard menu. After Helga tips out his soup and returns Bruno to his parents, she offers to reveal to them who is responsible for Bruno's alteration. As she is preparing to tell them who did it, chaos breaks out as all the witches start turning into mice. The Grand High Witch is petrified as she watches all of her witches transform around her, as she herself seems to be unaffected at first. Noticing Helga across the room, the Grand High Witch advances menacingly upon Helga until Bruno leaps onto her and bites her. The formula finally begins to work and the Grand High Witch turns into a repulsive, snarling, hairless mouse. Soon both hotel staff and guests are attacking and killing the rodents, unknowingly getting rid of England's witches. After Helga traps the Grand High Witch under a water jug, she points her out to Mr. Stringer, who kills her with a meat cleaver. As Luke and Helga then return home from the hotel, Miss Irvine watches from a window and smiles as the taxi departs. Later on, Luke surprises Helga when a trunk is delivered to their house. In it is all of the money the Grand High Witch planned to use to turn England's children into mice, as well as an address book filled with the names and addresses of every witch in America. They discuss their plans to return there by ship. Later that night when both have gone to sleep, Miss Irvine drives up to Luke and Helga's house. She uses her magic to turn Luke back into a human and returns his glasses, clothes, underwear and pet mice. As Miss Irvine is in the car about to drive away, it is observed that she no longer wears gloves or square-toed shoes or wears a wig, as she has turned over a new leaf and decided to use her powers to do good. While Miss Irvine leaves to help Bruno, Luke and Helga look out of the window and wave goodbye.

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And Then There Were None

Ten Little Indians

Ten people—Lawrence Wargrave, Vera Claythorne, Philip Lombard, General Macarthur, Emily Brent, Anthony "Tony" Marston, Dr. Armstrong, William Blore, and the servants Thomas and Ethel Rogers—have been invited to a mansion on the fictional Soldier Island ("Nigger Island" in the original 1939 UK publication, "Indian Island" in the 1964 U.S. publication), which is based upon Burgh Island off the coast of Devon. Upon arriving, they are told that their hosts, a Mr and Mrs U.N. Owen (Ulick Norman Owen and Una Nancy Owen), are currently away, but the guests will be attended to by Mr. and Mrs. Rogers. Each guest finds in his or her room a framed copy of the nursery rhyme "Ten Little Soldiers" ("Niggers" or "Indians" in respective earlier editions) hanging on the wall. {| class="toccolours" style="float: left; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; font-size: 85%; background:#E2DDB5; color:black; width:30em; max-width: 28%;" | style="text-align: left;"| The currently published, not the original, version of the rhyme goes: Ten little Soldier Boys went out to dine; One choked his little self and then there were nine. Nine little Soldier Boys sat up very late; One overslept himself and then there were eight. Eight little Soldier Boys travelling in Devon; One said he'd stay there and then there were seven. Seven little Soldier Boys chopping up sticks; One chopped himself in halves and then there were six. Six little Soldier Boys playing with a hive; A bumblebee stung one and then there were five. Five little Soldier Boys going in for law; One got in Chancery and then there were four. Four little Soldier Boys going out to sea; A red herring swallowed one and then there were three. Three little Soldier Boys walking in the zoo; A big bear hugged one and then there were two. Two little Soldier Boys sitting in the sun; One got frizzled up and then there was one. One little Soldier Boy left all alone; He went out and hanged himself and then there were none. |} After dinner that evening, the guests notice ten soldier boy figurines on the dining room table. During coffee, a gramophone record, unknowingly turned on by Mr Rogers, plays, accusing each of the ten of murder. Each guest acknowledges awareness of (and in some cases involvement with) the deaths of the persons named (except Emily Brent, who tells only Vera, who later tells the other guests what happened to Brent's former maid), but denies any malice and/or legal culpability (except for Lombard and Blore, the latter telling only the former). The guests realize they have been tricked into coming to the island, each of them lured with something special to them, like a job opportunity or mention of a mutual acquaintance. Unfortunately, they soon find they cannot leave: the boat which regularly delivers supplies has stopped arriving because of the storm. They are murdered one by one, each death paralleling a verse of the nursery rhyme, with one of the figurines being removed after each murder. The first to die is Anthony Marston, who chokes to death when his drink is poisoned with cyanide ("one choked his little self"). No one thinks much of this, although some people are suspicious. That night, Thomas Rogers notices that a figurine is missing from the dining table. Mrs Rogers dies peacefully in her sleep that night, which Dr. Armstrong attributes to a dose of sleeping aid, which the killer later comes in and attributes a sleeping aid, which she then overdosed,("one overslept himself"). Rogers reports another figurine gone. The guests become more on edge. General Macarthur fatalistically predicts that no one will leave the island alive, and at lunch, is indeed found dead from a blow to the back of his skull by a life preserver ("one said he'd stay there"). Finally, the point is driven home that these three deaths have been murder. Meanwhile, a third figurine has disappeared from the dining room. In growing panic, Armstrong, Blore, and Lombard search the island in vain for the murderer. Justice Wargrave establishes himself as the decisive leader of the group and asserts one of them must be the murderer playing a sadistic game with the rest. The killer's twisted humor is evidenced by the names of their "hosts": "U.N. Owen" is a pun and a homophone for "unknown". The next morning, Rogers is missing, as is another figurine. He is found dead in the woodshed, struck in the back of the head with an axe ("one chopped himself in halves"). Later that day, Emily Brent is killed in the dining room by an injection of potassium cyanide that leaves a mark on her neck ("A bumblebee stung one"), which at first appears to be a sting from a bumble bee placed in the room. The hypodermic needle is found outside her window next to a smashed china figurine. The five remaining people, Armstrong, Wargrave, Lombard, Claythorne, and Blore, appear to become increasingly frightened and paranoid as the noose tightens, both psychologically and in reality. Wargrave suggests they lock up any potential weapons, including Armstrong's medical equipment and the judge's own sleeping pills. Lombard admits to bringing a revolver to the island, but immediately discovers it has gone missing. Resolved to keep the killer from catching anyone alone, they gather in the drawing room and only leave one at a time. Vera goes up to her room for a shawl and is frightened by a strand of seaweed hanging on a hook in her bedroom in the dark: an allusion to the boy the gramophone alleged that she had drowned. Her screams attract the attention of Blore, Lombard, and Armstrong, who rush to her aid. When they return to the drawing room, they find Wargrave in a mockery of a judicial wig and gown with a gunshot wound in his forehead ("one got into Chancery"). Armstrong confirms the death, and they lay Wargrave's body in his room and cover it with a sheet. Shortly afterward, Lombard discovers his revolver has been returned. That night, Blore hears someone sneaking out of the house. He and Lombard investigate and, discovering Armstrong missing, assume the doctor is the killer. In the morning, Blore leaves for food and does not return. Vera and Lombard soon discover his body on the terrace, skull crushed by a bear-shaped clock ("a big bear hugged one"). At first, they continue to believe Armstrong is the killer until they find the doctor in the sea, drowned ("a red herring swallowed one"). Paranoid, each assumes the other is the murderer. In the brief but tense standoff that follows, Vera feigns compassion and gets Lombard to help her move Armstrong's body away from the water, using the opportunity to pick his revolver from his pocket. She kills Lombard with a shot through the heart on the beach ("one got frizzled up") and returns to the house. Dazed and disoriented, she finds a noose and chair waiting for her in her room. In an apparent trance, she hangs herself, kicking the chair out from underneath her, thus fulfilling the final verse of the rhyme. Inspector Maine, the detective in charge of the Soldier Island case, discusses the mystery with his Assistant Commissioner, Sir Thomas Legge, at Scotland Yard. There are no clues on the mainland—Issac Morris (mentioned to be responsible for crimes unprovable by the law), the man who arranged "U.N. Owen's" purchase of the island and sent out the invitational letters, covered his tracks quite well, and was killed the day the party set sail. Times of death cannot be found through autopsies, and the police have failed to link the nursery rhyme to the deaths. While guests' diaries establish a partial timeline that establish that Marston, Mrs. Rogers, Macarthur, Mr. Rogers, Brent and Wargrave were the first 6 to die (in that order), the police cannot determine the order in which Blore, Armstrong, Lombard, and Vera were killed. Blore could not have dropped the clock on himself, and it would also be a highly uncommon method of suicide; Armstrong's body was dragged above the high-tide mark; Lombard was shot on the beach, but his revolver was found on the floor in the upstairs hallway. Vera's fingerprints on the gun, the fact that hanging is a highly sensible method of suicide, and the clock that killed Blore having come from her room all point to Vera as "U.N. Owen"... but someone had to have been alive after she died because the chair Vera used to hang herself had been righted and replaced against the wall. Inclement weather, combined with the fact that Fred Narracott (the man who ferried the guests to the island) sent a boat to the island as soon as weather allowed (sensing something to be amiss), would have prevented the murderer from leaving or arriving separately from the guests: he or she must have been among them. But since the first six murders at least appear to be accounted for, and since the last four victims cannot have been the last ones alive, the inspectors are ultimately left dumbfounded, asking themselves: Who killed them? A fishing trawler finds a letter in a bottle off the Devon coast; it contains the confession of the late Justice Wargrave. He reveals a lifelong sadistic temperament juxtaposed uneasily with a fierce sense of justice: he wanted to torture, terrify, and kill, but could never justify harming an innocent person. As a judge, he directed merciless jury instructions/summations and guilty verdicts, but solely in those cases in which he had satisfied himself of the guilt of the defendant(s), thrilling at the sight of the convicted person crippled with fear, facing their impending death. He also saved a few defendants from suffering punishment when he was convinced they were innocent of their accused crime. But the proxy of the bench was unsatisfying: Wargrave longed to commit murder by his own hand. Prompted to action by the discovery that he was terminally ill, he sought out those who had caused the deaths of others but managed to escape justice, finding nine (not including Isaac Morris), whom he lured to the island using his financial resources to investigate his victims' backgrounds to come up with plausible invitations from sources they trusted or from people with whom they were acquainted. After the phonograph accusations were made the first night he carefully watched, as he had in the courtroom for so many years, the reactions of his guests to the accusations. Seeing their fear or anxiety, he was certain of their guilt. He decided to start with the less serious offenders (i.e. Marston, whom Wargrave determined was "amoral" and had committed the crime by accident, as well as Mrs. Rogers, who had acted under her husband's direction and had clearly been traumatized by guilt ever since), and to save "the prolonged mental strain and fear" for the colder-blooded killers. Wargrave arrived at the island with two drugs: potassium cyanide and chloral hydrate. After the gramophone recital, Wargrave slipped cyanide and chloral into the drinks of Marston and Mrs. Rogers respectively. Marston choked to death, and Mrs. Rogers was given another sleep medication, leading to death by overdose. The next day, after Macarthur made his fatalistic prediction, Wargrave sneaked up on him and killed him, although the specific weapon was never found or discussed. The next morning, he killed Rogers in the woodshed as he was cutting firewood. During breakfast, he slipped the rest of his chloral into Miss Brent's coffee to sedate her, and after she was abandoned at the table, Wargrave injected her with the rest of his cyanide using Armstrong's syringe. Having disposed of his first five victims, the judge persuaded the trusting Armstrong to fake Wargrave's own death, "the red herring", under the pretext that it would rattle or unnerve the "real murderer". Since Armstrong was the only person who would closely examine the judge's body, as well as having done preliminary autopsies for the other victims up to that point, the ruse went undetected. That night, he met Armstrong on the cliffs, distracted him by pretending to see something and pushed him into the sea, knowing the doctor's disappearance would provoke the suspicions of the others. From Vera's room, Wargrave later pushed the stone bear-shaped clock onto Blore, crushing his skull. After watching Vera shoot Lombard, he then set up a noose and a chair in her bedroom in the belief that after having just killed Lombard she was in a psychologically post-traumatic state and would hang herself under the right circumstances, i.e. a noose and chair waiting for her. He was right and watched (unseen in the shadows) as she hanged herself. Wargrave then pushed the chair she had stood on against the wall, wrote out his missive/confession, put the letter in a bottle and tossed it out to sea. Wargrave admits to a "pitiful human" craving for recognition that he had not initially counted on. Even if his letter is not found (he decides there is about a 1 in 100 chance of it being found), he believes there are three clues which implicate him, although he surmises (correctly) that the mystery will not have been solved: # Wargrave was the only one invited to the island who had not wrongfully caused someone's death, initial public speculation around the time of the trial of Edward Seton, whom the gramophone accused Wargrave of murdering, notwithstanding. Seton was, in fact, guilty of the murder for which he had been convicted, and overwhelming proof emerged after Seton's death confirming this. (When questioned about the Seton matter by his guests after the gramophone recital, Wargrave actually told the truth—albeit not very convincingly and not mentioning the posthumous evidence against Seton—to wit, that Seton was guilty and he had instructed the jury accordingly. Wargrave knew his fellow "guests" would not believe that and would, despite his judicial vocation, consider him a fellow escapee from justice.) Thus, ironically, the only innocent guest must be the murderer. # The "red herring" line in the poem suggests that Armstrong was tricked into his death by someone he trusted. Of the remaining guests, only the respectable Justice Wargrave would have inspired the doctor's confidence. # The red mark on Wargrave's forehead received from shooting himself is similar to the one God bestowed upon Cain as punishment for killing his brother Abel. He says the brand of Cain might lead the investigators to realize he was the murderer. Wargrave describes how he planned to kill himself: he will loop an elastic cord through the gun, tying one end of the cord to his eyeglasses, and looping the other around the doorknob of an open door. He will then wrap a handkerchief around the handle of the gun and shoot himself in the head. His body will fall back as though laid there by Armstrong. The gun's recoil will send it to the doorknob and out into the hallway, roughly where Vera dropped it while she walked to her room, detaching the cord and pulling the door closed. The cord will dangle innocuously from his glasses, and the stray handkerchief should not arouse suspicion. Thus the police will find ten dead bodies and an unsolvable mystery on Soldier Island.

The plot remains the same as in all previous adaptations. As he did in his other versions, producer Towers has yet again changed the locale of the action, this time to the African savanna. A group of 10 disparate people, strangers to each other, have all traveled to Africa believing they have won a fabulous vacation safari. Things turn ominous from the beginning, however. First their native guides abandon them, more natives cut a bridge line across a deep canyon , and their host is strangely absent. Then events go from being unsettling to deadly when the guests start dying one at a time, and those who remain realize that they are being slaughtered one by one — but who is responsible?

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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Tom Sawyer

In the 1840s an imaginative and mischievous boy named Tom Sawyer lives with his Aunt Polly and his half-brother, Sid, in the Mississippi River town of St. Petersburg, Missouri. After playing hooky from school on Friday and dirtying his clothes in a fight, Tom is made to whitewash the fence as punishment all of the next day. At first, Tom is disheartened by having to forfeit his day off. However, he soon cleverly persuades his friends to trade him small treasures for the privilege of doing his work. He trades the treasures he got by tricking his friends into whitewashing the fence for tickets given out in Sunday school for memorizing Bible verses, which can be used to claim a Bible as a prize. He received enough tickets to be given the Bible. However, he loses much of his glory when, in response to a question to show off his knowledge, he incorrectly answers that the first disciples were David and Goliath. Tom falls in love with Becky Thatcher, a new girl in town, and persuades her to get "engaged" by kissing him. Becky kisses Tom, but their romance collapses when she learns that Tom has been "engaged" previously;— to a girl named Amy Lawrence. Shortly after being shunned by Becky, Tom accompanies Huckleberry Finn, the son of the town drunk, to the graveyard at night to try out a "cure" for warts with a dead cat. At the graveyard, they witness the murder of young Dr. Robinson by the Native-American "half-breed" Injun Joe. Scared, Tom and Huck run away and swear a blood oath not to tell anyone what they have seen. Injun Joe frames his companion, Muff Potter, a helpless drunk, for the crime. Potter is wrongfully arrested, and Tom's anxiety and guilt begin to grow. Tom, Huck and Tom's friend Joe Harper run away to an island to become pirates. While frolicking around and enjoying their new found freedom, the boys become aware that the community is sounding the river for their bodies. Tom sneaks back home one night to observe the commotion. After a brief moment of remorse at the suffering of his loved ones, Tom is struck by the idea of appearing at his funeral and surprising everyone. He persuades Joe and Huck to do the same. Their return is met with great rejoicing, and they become the envy and admiration of all their friends. Back in school, Tom gets himself back in Becky's favor after he nobly accepts the blame for a book that she has ripped. Soon, Muff Potter's trial begins, and Tom, overcome by guilt, testifies against Injun Joe. Potter is acquitted, but Injun Joe flees the courtroom through a window. Summer arrives, and Tom and Huck go hunting for buried treasure in a haunted house. After venturing upstairs they hear a noise below. Peering through holes in the floor, they see Injun Joe enter the house disguised as a deaf and mute Spaniard. He and his companion, an unkempt man, plan to bury some stolen treasure of their own. From their hiding spot, Tom and Huck wriggle with delight at the prospect of digging it up. By an amazing coincidence, Injun Joe and his partner find a buried box of gold themselves. When they see Tom and Huck's tool, they become suspicious that someone is sharing their hiding place and carry the gold off instead of reburying it. Huck begins to shadow Injun Joe every night, watching for an opportunity to nab the gold. Meanwhile, Tom goes on a picnic to McDougal's Cave with Becky and their classmates. That same night, Huck sees Injun Joe and his partner making off with a box. He follows and overhears their plans to attack the Widow Douglas, a kind resident of St. Petersburg. By running to fetch help, Huck forestalls the violence and becomes an anonymous hero. Tom and Becky get lost in the cave, and their absence is not discovered until the following morning. The men of the town begin to search for them, but to no avail. Tom and Becky run out of food and candles and begin to weaken. The horror of the situation increases when Tom, looking for a way out of the cave, happens upon Injun Joe, who is using the cave as a hideout. Eventually, just as the searchers are giving up, Tom finds a way out. The town celebrates, and Becky's father, Judge Thatcher, locks up the cave. Injun Joe, trapped inside, starves to death. A week later, Tom takes Huck to the cave and they find the box of gold, the proceeds of which are invested for them. The Widow Douglas adopts Huck, and, when Huck attempts to escape civilized life, Tom promises him that if he returns to the widow, he can join Tom's robber band. Reluctantly, Huck agrees. The book leaves off where The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn begins.

After arguing with his sweetheart, Becky Thatcher, Tom Sawyer seeks solace from his friend Huck Finn, who tells him about a mysterious cure for warts that requires them to visit the local cemetery at midnight. While there they witness a murder committed by Injun Joe, who convinces Muff Potter, who also was there but in an inebriated state, that he is guilty of the crime. Tom and Huck promise each other they will not divulge what they have seen. When Tom is caught lying about stealing his half-brother Sid's crabapples, his Aunt Polly punishes him by making him whitewash the fence on a Saturday morning. The boy leads his friends to believe he is enjoying the task, and before long they are giving him their treasures in exchange for the privilege of joining in the fun. Together with Huck and Joe Harper, Tom runs away from home to become a pirate. The three set off on a raft to Jacksons Island in the Mississippi River, where they remain for three days. Upon returning home, Tom discovers it was thought the three had drowned, and the boys attend their own funeral service at the church. At Muff Potter's trial, Tom admits the truth about the murder, but Injun Joe manages to escape. While attending the school picnic near a cavern, Tom and Becky decide to explore it and get lost. As they try to find their way out, they stumble upon Injun Joe and a chest of gold. While angrily pursuing the two children, he falls into a crevasse and is killed. Huck finds Tom and Becky and leads them to safety, together with the treasure.

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Man on Fire

Man on Fire

In Italy, wealthy families often hire bodyguards to protect family members from the threat of kidnapping. When Rika Balletto urges her husband Ettore, a wealthy textiles producer living in Milan, to hire a bodyguard for their daughter Pinta, he is doubtful but agrees. After some searching, he finally settles for an American named Creasy. Creasy, once purposeful and lethal, has become a burnt-out alcoholic. To keep him occupied, his companion Guido suggests that Creasy should get a job, and offers him to set him up as a bodyguard; thus he is being hired by the Ballettos, where he meets his charge, Pinta. Creasy barely tolerates the precocious child and her pestering questions about him and his life. But slowly, she chips away at his seemingly impenetrable exterior, his defenses drop, and he opens up to her. They become friends and he replaces her parents in their absences, giving her advice, guidance and help with her competition running; he is even spurred to give up his drinking and return to his former physical prowess. But Creasy's life is shattered when Pinta is kidnapped by the Mafia, despite his efforts to protect her. Creasy is wounded during the kidnapping, and as he lies in a hospital bed Guido keeps him informed of the goings on. Soon enough, Guido returns with the news that the exchange went bad, and Pinta was found dead in a car, suffocated on her own vomit. She had also been raped by her captors. Out of hospital, Creasy returns to Guido's pensione, and outlines his plans for revenge against the men who took away the girl who convinced him it was all right to live again; anyone who was involved, or profited from it, all the way to the top of the Mafia. Told by Guido he can stay with in-laws on the island of Gozo in Malta, Creasy accepts the offer, in order to train for his new mission. While on Gozo, Creasy trains for several months, getting into shape and re-familiarizing himself with weaponry. But, to his surprise, he also discovers he has another reason to live after his suicidal mission against the Mafia; he finds himself accepted by and admiring the Gozitans, and falls in love with Nadia, the daughter of his host. Soon enough, he is fit and leaves for Marseille where he stocks up on supplies, weapons and ammunition; from there he travels back to Italy, and then the war between Creasy and the Mafia begins. From low-level enforcers to the capos in Milan and Rome, and all the way to the head Don in Sicily, Creasy cuts through their organization, murdering anyone who had something even remotely to do with Pinta's kidnapping. After Creasy reveals to Rika that Ettore allowed her to be kidnapped for the insurance money, Ettore commits suicide. Finally, after killing the Don, a severely wounded Creasy is taken to hospital, but pronounced dead; a funeral is held and Creasy is thought to be gone. But, unknown to all, Creasy was in fact alive, and makes it back to Gozo where he is reunited with Nadia.

The opening portrays a man being declared dead in an Italian hospital by a police chief. The man is an ex-CIA agent, John Creasy. Eleanor Ringel of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution says that Creasy "introduces himself to us in a "Sunset Boulevard"-style opening."<ref nameAT&p_themesearch&p_maxdocs1&p_text_direct-0document_id&p_perpageYMD_date:D&s_trackvalc24sAAAAIBAJ&sjid6754,4500807&dqen Man on Fire]." Spartanburg Herald-Journal. Friday November 27, 1987. B7. Google News 11/28. In Italy, wealthy families often hire bodyguards to protect family members from the threat of kidnapping. A wealthy family that needs a bodyguard hires Creasy, a burned-out ex-CIA agent, to protect their daughter, Samantha "Sam" Balletto. Creasy has been broken down from all of the death and horror of combat he witnessed in the Vietnam War and in Beirut, Lebanon. Although Creasy is not interested in being a bodyguard, especially to a twelve year old youngster, he accepts the assignment because he has no better job offers. Creasy barely tolerates the precocious child and her pestering questions about him and his life. But slowly, she chips away at his seemingly impenetrable exterior, his defenses drop, and he opens up to her. They become friends and he replaces her parents in their absences, giving her advice, guidance and help with track. Creasy's life is shattered when Sam is kidnapped. Despite being seriously wounded during the kidnapping, Creasy vows her safe return, and vows vengeance on the kidnappers. Ringel said that the film "is actually two movies rather clumsily stitched together. The first - and better - half is a likable character study in which Sam and Creasy get to know and like each other and thereby get to know and like themselves. The second half, alas, is a routine vigilante flick, with Creasy surviving gunshots, explosions, car crashes and a most distracting production design in his quest to rescue Sam." The Lexington Herald-Leader said that the film "veers erratically between existential meditation and conventional vengeance drama.""GOOD, MEDIOCRE COMEDIES ARRIVE." Lexington Herald-Leader. Sunday March 5, 1989. H4 Arts and Leisure. Retrieved on April 2, 2012.

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Treasure Island

Pirates of Treasure Island

The novel is divided into 6 parts and 34 chapters: Jim Hawkins is the narrator of all except for chapters 16-18, which are narrated by Doctor Livesey. The novel opens in the seaside village of Black Hill Cove in south-west England (to Stevenson, in his letters and in the related fictional play Admiral Guinea, near Barnstaple, Devon) in the mid-18th century. The narrator, James "Jim" Hawkins, is the young son of the owners of the Admiral Benbow Inn. An old drunken seaman named Billy Bones becomes a long-term lodger at the inn, only paying for about the first week of his stay. Jim quickly realizes that Bones is in hiding, and that he particularly dreads meeting an unidentified seafaring man with one leg. Some months later, Bones is visited by a mysterious sailor named Black Dog. Their meeting turns violent, Black Dog flees and Bones suffers a stroke. While Jim cares for him, Bones confesses that he was once the mate of the late notorious pirate, Captain Flint, and that his old crewmates want Bones' sea chest. Some time later, another of Bones' crew mates, a blind man named Pew, appears at the inn and forces Jim to lead him to Bones. Pew gives Bones a paper. After Pew leaves, Bones opens the paper to discover it is marked with the Black Spot, a pirate summons, with the warning that he has until ten o'clock to meet their demands. Bones drops dead of apoplexy (in this context, a stroke) on the spot. Jim and his mother open Bones' sea chest to collect the amount due to them for Bones' room and board, but before they can count out the money that they are owed, they hear pirates approaching the inn and are forced to flee and hide, Jim taking with him a mysterious oilskin packet from the chest. The pirates, led by Pew, find the sea chest and the money, but are frustrated that there is no sign of "Flint's fist". Customs men approach and the pirates escape to their vessel (all except for Pew, who is accidentally run down and killed by the agents' horses).p. 27-8: "...{Pew} made another dash, now utterly bewildered, right under the nearest of the coming horses. The rider tried to save him, but in vain. Down went Pew with a cry that rang high into the night; and the four hoofs trampled and spurned him and passed by. He fell on his side, then gently collapsed upon his face, and moved no more." —Stevenson, R.L. Jim takes the mysterious oilskin packet to Dr. Livesey, as he is a &#34;gentleman and a magistrate&#34;, and he, Squire Trelawney and Jim Hawkins examine it together, finding it contains a logbook detailing the treasure looted during Captain Flint&#39;s career, and a detailed map of an island with the location of Flint&#39;s treasure marked on it. Squire Trelawney immediately plans to commission a sailing vessel to hunt for the treasure, with the help of Dr. Livesey and Jim. Livesey warns Trelawney to be silent about their objective. Going to Bristol docks, Trelawney buys a schooner named the Hispaniola, hires a captain, Alexander Smollett to command her, and retains Long John Silver, a former sea cook and now the owner of the dock-side &#34;Spy-Glass&#34; tavern, to run the galley. Silver helps Trelawney to hire the rest of his crew. When Jim arrives in Bristol and visits Silver at the Spy-Glass, his suspicions are aroused: Silver is missing a leg, like the man Bones warned Jim about, and Black Dog is sitting in the tavern. Black Dog runs away at the sight of Jim, and Silver denies all knowledge of the fugitive so convincingly that he wins Jim&#39;s trust. Despite Captain Smollett&#39;s misgivings about the mission and Silver&#39;s hand-picked crew, the Hispaniola sets sail for the Caribbean. As they near their destination, Jim crawls into the ship&#39;s near-empty apple barrel to get an apple. While inside, he overhears Silver talking secretly with some of the crewmen. Silver admits that he was Captain Flint&#39;s quartermaster, that several others of the crew were also once Flint&#39;s men, and that he is recruiting more men from the crew to his own side. After Flint&#39;s treasure is recovered, Silver intends to murder the Hispaniolas officers, and keep the loot for himself and his men. When the pirates have returned to their berths, Jim warns Smollett, Trelawney and Livesey of the impending mutiny. On reaching Treasure Island, the majority of Silver's men go ashore immediately. Although Jim is not yet aware of this, Silver's men have demanded they seize the treasure immediately, discarding Silver's own more careful plan to postpone any open mutiny or violence until after the treasure is safely aboard. Jim lands with Silver's men, but runs away from them almost as soon as he is ashore. Hiding in the woods, Jim sees Silver murder Tom, a crewman loyal to Smollett. Running for his life, he encounters Ben Gunn, another ex-crewman of Flint's who has been marooned for three years on the island, but who treats Jim kindly. Meanwhile, Trelawney, Livesey and their loyal crewmen surprise and overpower the few pirates left aboard the Hispaniola. They row ashore and move into an abandoned, fortified stockade where they are joined by Jim Hawkins, who has left Ben Gunn behind. Silver approaches under a flag of truce and tries to negotiate Smollett's surrender; Smollett rebuffs him utterly, and Silver flies into a rage, promising to attack the stockade. "Them that die'll be the lucky ones," he famously threatens as he storms off. The pirates assault the stockade, but in a furious battle with losses on both sides, they are driven off. During the night Jim sneaks out, takes Ben Gunn's coracle and approaches the Hispaniola under cover of darkness. He cuts the ship's anchor cable, setting her adrift and out of reach of the pirates on shore. After daybreak, he manages to approach the schooner and board her. Of the two pirates left aboard, only one is still alive: the coxswain, Israel Hands, who has murdered his comrade in a drunken brawl and been badly wounded in the process. Hands agrees to help Jim helm the ship to a safe beach in exchange for medical treatment and brandy, but once the ship is approaching the beach Hands tries to murder Jim. Jim escapes by climbing the rigging, and when Hands tries to skewer him with a thrown dagger, Jim reflexively shoots Hands dead. Having beached the Hispaniola securely, Jim returns to the stockade under cover of night and sneaks back inside. Because of the darkness, he does not realize until too late that the stockade is now occupied by the pirates, and he is captured. Silver, whose always-shaky command has become more tenuous than ever, seizes on Jim as a hostage, refusing his men's demands to kill him or torture him for information. Silver's rivals in the pirate crew, led by George Merry, give Silver the Black Spot and move to depose him as captain. Silver answers his opponents eloquently, rebuking them for defacing a page from the Bible to create the Black Spot and revealing that he has obtained the treasure map from Dr. Livesey, thus restoring the crew's confidence. The following day, the pirates search for the treasure. They are shadowed by Ben Gunn, who makes ghostly sounds to dissuade them from continuing, but Silver forges ahead and locates where Flint's treasure is buried. The pirates discover that the cache has been rifled and the treasure is gone. The enraged pirates turn on Silver and Jim, but Ben Gunn, Dr. Livesey and Abraham Gray attack the pirates, killing two and dispersing the rest. Silver surrenders to Dr. Livesey, promising to return to his duty. They go to Ben Gunn's cave where Gunn has had the treasure hidden for some months. The treasure is divided amongst Trelawney and his loyal men, including Jim and Ben Gunn, and they return to England, leaving the surviving pirates marooned on the island. Silver, through the help of the fearful Ben Gunn, escapes with a small part of the treasure, three or four hundred guineas. Remembering Silver, Jim reflects that "I dare say he met his old Negress [wife], and perhaps still lives in comfort with her and Captain Flint [his parrot]. It is to be hoped so, I suppose, for his chances of comfort in another world are very small."

The story opens on Skeleton Island, an uncharted island somewhere in the Falkland Islands chain, where Long John Silver and Billy Bones have staged a successful mutiny against Captain Flint . The group is attacked by gigantic insects, and retreats back to the ship. In the chaos, Long John has one of his legs torn off by a giant beetle. In the United States in 1782, Jim Hawkins is the owner of the Admiral Benbow Inn, but has grown tired of a life of monotony and seeks adventure. One of his customers, Billy Bones, dies in his inn and leaves Jim a treasure map showing the way to a treasure buried on Skeleton Island. After gaining the help of Dr. Livesey , Jim and Livesey recruit French mariner Captain Smollete , the captain of the schooner Hispaniola, to sail out to Skeleton Island, under the pretence of going to collect specimens of local wildlife. Jim and Livesey recruit Long John Silver, now using the alias of Barbecue, to act as ship's cook, with Long John providing the rest of the ship's crew. As the Hispanola makes its way to the island, Hawkins unintentionally discovers Long John's true intentions: to steal the map and to hijack the Hispaniola on behalf of his own band of pirates, whom make up the ship's crew. Long John plans to stage a mutiny upon arriving at Skeleton Island, and to kill the captain, Hawkins and Dr. Livesey so that all of the treasure will belong to the pirates. However, Hawkins is discovered, along with Anne Bonny , who had followed Jim from the inn, and gives him protection from Long John. On reaching Skeleton Island, the Hispanola is hijacked by Silver, with Smollette, Livesey and an American government official on the voyage kept prisoner on the ship whilst the others go ashore. With the help of marooned mariner Ben Gunn , Jim and Anne Bonney escape, and race to beat Long John and the pirates to the treasure.

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L.A. Confidential

L.A. Confidential

The story revolves around a group of LAPD officers in the early 1950s who become embroiled in a mix of sex, corruption, and murder following a mass murder at the Nite Owl coffee shop. The story eventually encompasses organized crime, political corruption, heroin trafficking, pornography, prostitution, institutional racism, and Hollywood. The title refers to the scandal magazine Confidential, which is fictionalized as Hush-Hush. It also deals with the real-life "Bloody Christmas" scandal. The three protagonists are LAPD officers. Edmund Exley, the son of legendary detective Preston Exley, is a "straight arrow" who informs on other officers in a police brutality scandal. This earns the enmity of Wendell "Bud" White, an intimidating enforcer with a personal fixation on men who abuse women. Between the two of them is Jack Vincennes, a flashy cop who is a technical advisor on a police television show called Badge of Honor (similar to the real life show Dragnet) and provides tips to a scandal magazine. The three of them must set their differences aside to unravel the conspiracy linking the novel's events.

In Los Angeles, California in 1953, three police officers become caught up in corruption, sex and murder following a multiple homicide at the Nite Owl coffee shop. Their story expands to encompass organized crime, political corruption, narcotics, pornography, prostitution, tabloid journalism and institutional racism. Sergeant Edmund Exley , the son of a legendary police detective, is determined to live up to his father's reputation. His intelligence, insistence on following regulations, and his cold demeanor contribute to his social isolation from other officers. He exacerbates this resentment by volunteering to testify in a police brutality case (based on the real-life [[Bloody Christmas , insisting on a promotion to Detective Lieutenant against the advice of Captain Dudley Smith . It is revealed that Exley's consuming ambition is fueled in large part by the murder of his father by an unknown assailant. Officer Wendell "Bud" White , whom Exley considers a "mindless thug," is a plainclothes officer violently obsessed with punishing woman-beaters. White comes to dislike Exley after his partner, Dick Stensland, is fired due to Exley's testimony in the "Bloody Christmas" scandal. White is sought out by Capt. Smith for a job intimidating out-of-town criminals trying to fill the void left in L.A. following the imprisonment of Mickey Cohen, the city's most successful and notorious gangster. The Nite Owl case becomes personal after Stensland is found to be one of the victims. Sergeant Jack Vincennes is a slick and likable narcotics detective who moonlights as the technical advisor on Badge of Honor, a popular Dragnet-type TV crime program. He is also connected with Sid Hudgens , publisher of Hush-Hush magazine, receiving kickbacks for tipping Hudgens off to celebrity arrests that will attract even more readers to the magazine. When a young actor winds up dead during one of these schemes, a guilt-ridden Vincennes is determined to find who did it. At different intervals, the three men investigate the Nite Owl killings and concurrent events which in turn begin to reveal indications of corruption all around them. Exley pursues absolute justice, all the while trying to live up to his family name. Bud White pursues Nite Owl victim Susan Lefferts, which leads him to Lynn Bracken , a Veronica Lake look-alike prostitute with ties to the case he and Exley are independently investigating. Meanwhile, Vincennes follows up on a pornography racket with ties to both the Nite Owl and Bracken's handler Pierce Patchett , operator of Fleur-de-Lis, a call-girl service that runs prostitutes altered by plastic surgery to resemble popular movie stars. All three men's fates are intertwined. A dramatic showdown eventually occurs with powerful and corrupt forces within the city's political leadership and the department.

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The Day of the Jackal

August 1

The book begins with the historical, failed attempt on de Gaulle's life planned by Col. Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry in the Paris suburb of Petit-Clamart. After Bastien-Thiry's arrest, the French security forces wage a short but extremely vicious "underground" war with the terrorists of the OAS, a militant right-wing group who have labeled de Gaulle a traitor to France after his grant of independence to Algeria. The French secret service, a.k.a. Action Service, is remarkably effective in infiltrating the terrorist organization with their own informants, allowing them to kidnap and neutralize the terrorists' chief of operations, Antoine Argoud. The failure of the Petit-Clamart assassination, and a subsequent attempt at the Ecole Militaire, coupled with Bastien-Thiry's eventual execution by firing squad, likewise cripples the morale of the terrorists. Argoud's deputy, Lt. Col. Marc Rodin, carefully examines their few remaining options and determines that the only way to succeed in killing de Gaulle is to hire a professional assassin from outside the organization, someone completely unknown to either the French authorities or the OAS itself. After inquiries, he contacts an Englishman (whose name is never given), who meets with Rodin and his two principal deputies in Vienna, and agrees to assassinate de Gaulle for the sum of $500,000 (about $2.4 million in 2012). The four men agree on his code name, "The Jackal." The remainder of Part One describes the Jackal's exhaustive preparations for the assassination. First, he acquires a legitimate British passport under a false name, under which he plans to operate for the majority of his mission. He also steals the passports of two foreign tourists visiting London who superficially resemble the Jackal, for use in an emergency. Using his primary false passport, the Jackal travels to Belgium, where he commissions a specialized sniper rifle of great slimness and an appropriate silencer from a master gunsmith, and a set of forged French identity papers from a master forger. When picking up his fake identity papers, the master forger attempts to blackmail the Jackal but the Jackal kills him and locks the body in a large trunk inside the forger's house, where he correctly deduces it won't be found for a long time. After exhaustively researching a series of books and articles by, and about, de Gaulle, the Jackal travels to Paris to reconnoiter the most favorable spot and the most likely day for the assassination. After orchestrating a series of armed robberies in France, the OAS is able to deposit the first half of the Jackal's fee in his bank in Switzerland. At the same time, the French secret service, curious about the actions of Rodin and his subordinates, fake a letter that lures one of Rodin's bodyguards to France, where he is captured and interrogated, before dying. Interpreting his incoherent ramblings, the secret service is able to piece together Rodin's plot, but without knowing the name or the exact description of the assassin. When told about the plot, de Gaulle (who was notoriously careless of his personal safety) refuses, absolutely, to cancel his public appearances, modify his normal routines, or even allow any kind of public inquiry into the assassin's whereabouts to be made. Any inquiry, he orders, must be done in absolute secrecy. Roger Frey, the French Minister of the Interior, convenes a meeting of the heads of the French security forces. Since Rodin and his men have taken refuge at a hotel in Rome under heavy guard, they cannot be captured and interrogated. The rest of the meeting is at a loss to suggest how to proceed, except a Commissioner of the Police Judiciare, who reasons that their first and most essential step is to establish the Jackal's identity, which is a job for a detective. When asked to name the best detective in France, he volunteers his own deputy commissioner, Claude Lebel. Granted special emergency powers to conduct his investigation, Lebel does everything he can to discover the Jackal's identity. He first calls upon his "old boy network" of foreign intelligence and police contacts to inquire if they have any records of a top-class political assassin. Most of the inquiries are fruitless, but in the United Kingdom, the inquiry is eventually passed on to the Special Branch of Scotland Yard, and another veteran detective, Superintendent Bryn Thomas. A search through Special Branch's records turns up nothing, however one of Thomas's subordinates suggests that if the assassin was an Englishman, but primarily operated abroad, he'd be more likely to come to the attention of the Secret Intelligence Service. Thomas makes an informal inquiry with a friend of his on the SIS's staff, who mentions hearing a rumor from an officer stationed in the Dominican Republic at the time of President Trujillo's assassination. The rumor states that a hired assassin stopped Trujillo's car with a rifle shot, allowing a gang of partisans to finish him off; and moreover, that the assassin was an Englishman, named Charles Calthrop. To his surprise, Thomas is summoned in person by the Prime Minister (unnamed, but likely intended to represent Harold Macmillan), who informs him that word of his inquiries has reached higher circles in the British government. Despite the enmity felt by much of the government against France in general and de Gaulle in particular, the Prime Minister informs Thomas that de Gaulle is his friend, and that the assassin must be identified and stopped at all costs. Thomas is handed a commission much similar to Lebel's, with temporary powers allowing him to override almost any other authority in the land. Checking out the name of Charles Calthrop, Thomas finds a match to a man living in London, said to be on holiday in Scotland. While Thomas confirms that this Calthrop was in the Dominican Republic at the time of Trujillo's death, he does not feel it is enough to inform Lebel. But then one of his junior detectives realizes that the first three letters of his Christian name and surname form the French (and Spanish) word for Jackal, Chacal. Thomas calls Lebel immediately. Unknown to any member of the council in France, the mistress of one of them (an arrogant Air Force colonel attached to de Gaulle's staff) is actually an OAS agent. Through pillow talk, the colonel unwittingly feeds the Jackal a constant stream of information as to Lebel's progress. The Jackal enters France by way of Italy, driving a rented Alfa Romeo sports car with his special gun hidden in the chassis. On receiving word from the OAS agent that the French are on the lookout for him, he decides his plan will succeed nevertheless, and forges ahead. In London, the Special Branch raids Calthrop's flat, finding his passport, and deduce that he must be travelling on a false one. When they work out the name of the Jackal's primary false identity, Lebel and the police come close to apprehending the Jackal in the south of France. But thanks to his OAS contact, the Jackal checks out of his hotel early and evades them by only an hour. With the police on the lookout for him, the Jackal takes refuge in the chateau of a woman whom he seduced while she was staying at the hotel the night before. When she goes through his things and finds the gun, he kills her and escapes again. The murder is not reported until much later that evening, allowing the Jackal to assume one of his two emergency identities and board the train for Paris. Lebel becomes suspicious of what the rest of the council label the Jackal's "good luck," and has the telephones of all the members wiretapped, which leads him to discover the OAS agent. The Air Force colonel withdraws from the meeting in disgrace and later resigns from his post. When Thomas checks out and identifies reports of stolen or missing passports in London in the preceding months, he closes in on the Jackal's remaining false identities. On the evening of August 22, 1963, Lebel deduces that the Jackal has decided to target de Gaulle on Liberation Day, on 25 August, the day commemorating the liberation of Paris during World War II. It is, he realizes, the one day of the year when de Gaulle can be counted on to be in Paris, and to appear in public. Considering the inquiry all but over, the Minister orchestrates a massive, city-wide manhunt for the Jackal under his false name(s), and dismisses Lebel with hearty congratulations. However, the Jackal has eluded them yet again. By pretending to be homosexual in one of his false guises, he allows himself to be "picked up" by another man and taken to his apartment, where he kills the man and remains hidden for the remaining three days, thus avoiding identification through hotel registrations, which are examined by the police. On the day before the 25th, the Minister summons Lebel again and tells him that the Jackal still cannot be found. Lebel listens to the details of the President's schedule and security arrangements, and can suggest nothing more helpful than that everyone "should keep their eyes open." On the day of the assassination, the Jackal, disguised as a one-legged French war veteran, passes through the police checkpoints, carrying his custom rifle concealed in the sections of a crutch. He makes his way to an apartment building overlooking the Place du 18 Juin 1940 (in front of the soon-to-be-demolished facade of the Gare Montparnasse), where de Gaulle is presenting medals to a small group of Resistance veterans. As the ceremony begins, Lebel is walking around the street on foot, questioning and re-questioning every police checkpoint. When he hears from one CRS officer about a one-legged veteran with a crutch, he realizes what the Jackal's plan is, and rushes into the apartment building, yelling for the CRS man to follow him. In his sniper's rest, the Jackal readies his rifle and takes aim at de Gaulle's head. Yet his first shot misses by a fraction of an inch, when de Gaulle unexpectedly leans forward to kiss the cheeks of the veteran he is honoring. The Jackal begins to reload. Outside the apartment, Lebel and the CRS officer arrive on the top floor in time to hear the sound of the first, silenced shot. The CRS man shoots off the lock of the door and bursts in. The Jackal turns and fires, killing the young policeman with a shot to the chest. At last, confronting each other, the assassin and the police detective — who had developed grudging, mutual respect for each other in the long chase — briefly look into each other's eyes, each recognizing the other for who he is. The Jackal scrambles to load his third and last rifle bullet, while Lebel, unarmed, snatches up the dead policeman's MAT-49 submachine-gun. Lebel is faster, and shoots the Jackal with half a magazine-load of bullets, instantly killing him. In London, the Special Branch are cleaning up Calthrop's apartment when the real Charles Calthrop storms in and demands to know what they are doing. Once it is established that Calthrop really has been on holiday in Scotland and has no connection whatsoever with the Jackal, the British are left to wonder "If the Jackal wasn't Calthrop, then who the hell was he?" The Jackal is buried in an unmarked grave in a Paris cemetery, officially recorded as "an unknown foreign tourist, killed in a car accident." Aside from the priest, the only person attending the burial is Police Inspector Claude Lebel, who then leaves the cemetery to return home to his family.

Just after the election, K.G. Ramachandran , popularly known as KGR is elected as the new Chief Minister. A young Turk with a clean image, KGR overshadowed Kazhuthumuttam , another strong aspirant for CM's chair. Just after the meeting, Kazhuthumuttam joins with Eranjoly Aboobakkar and Mathai Chacko Pappachan at a hotel room, to plan out the next move. Vishwanathan, commonly referred as Vishwam , a high profile business tycoon and political lobbyist joins them at the hotel. Vishwam, the political sponsor of Kazhuthumuttam is now in deep trouble as he has several business ambitions in the state. Vishwam has collected several million rupees from several businessmen, whom he had also given promises. If KGR continues in power, his plans would be tarnished. KGR, on the other hand leads a simple life along with his wife Vatsala, a home maker. He brings out several revolutionary changes in the state, including dismissal of corrupt officers and changes in liquor policy of the state. Even Kaimal ([[Janardhanan , his party president finds him too arrogant to tame. The popularity of KGR is on sudden rise. It was then, Vishwan, decides to assassinate KGR. He puts out the plan in front of his friends, who also agrees. Vishwan contacts Muniyandi Thevar, a Malaysian based businessman and smuggler in Madras, who introduces him to a professional hit man . But after the payment of the amount is done, Kazhuthumuttam feels cheated as again, he has been denied the CM's post. Kazhuthumuttam, in a state of intoxication, calls up Gopu , a journalist and spits out the information that 'the Chief Minister will be assassinated shortly', but without committing his identity. Even though the caller does not give his name, the journalist identifies him as Kazhuthumuttam. He therefore passes the information to a friend of his, Perumal , a police officer . Perumal doesn't seem to take this serious at first, and since the identification of the voice of the caller by the journalist is not positive, they conclude it is a prank call. Still they convey the message to the higher officials. Th IG of Police, still not thoroughly convinced, orders a routine investigation into the matter. Perumal is assigned the case and he begins his investigation by arresting Vishwam. But Vishwam couldn't give them any further details as he was also unaware about the whereabouts or name of the killer, except that the killer has introduced himself as Gomes, a fake name. Perumal reaches Madras, from where, he arrests Thevar and brings him to Kerala. According to an eyewitness, Perumal issues a sketch of the killer and gets it broadcast on TV, but he skips from police miraculously. On the day of August 15, when the CM is checking the guard of honor, Perumal waits eagerly with all police facilities to grab the killer. While scanning the CCTV feeds, Perumal observes Gomes among the police in uniform, in the line for the guard of honour. . Perumal sprints from the Control room and shoots down Gomes, before he can hit the CM, thereby saving KGR. The final scene shows the burial of the assassin Gomes, where a deputy questions Perumal how he knew he was a Christian. Perumal replies that he doesn't and actually he is an unknown man , but he is paying respect to the assassin going by the last name he was known to Perumal, subtly implying that the assassin had earned some grudging respect from him, possibly for his determination.

positive

positive

Battlefield Earth

Battlefield Earth

In the year AD 3000, Earth has been ruled by an alien race, the Psychlos, for a millennium. Humanity has been reduced to a few scattered tribes in isolated parts of the world while the Psychlos strip the planet of its mineral wealth. Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, a young member of one such tribe, lives in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains. Depressed over the death and disease affecting his tribe, he leaves his village to explore the lowlands and to disprove the superstitions long held by his people involving ancient gods and monsters. However, he is captured in the ruins of Denver by Terl, the Psychlo chief of security. The Psychlos, hairy high, 1,000-pound sociopaths, originate from a planet with an atmosphere very different from that of Earth. Their home world is in fact located in a different/parallel universe, and follows slightly different physical laws, with a slightly different table of elements. As a result, some interactions between the two worlds are problematic. Their "breathe-gas" explodes on contact with even trace amounts of radioactive metals, such as uranium. Terl, a Psychlo, had been assigned to Earth, and he eventually learns that his term has been extended with no word of relief. Fearful at the thought of spending several more years on Earth, he decides to con his way off the planet and return home a wealthy Psychlo. Terl has discovered a lode of gold up in the Rocky Mountains that he wants to get his hands on "off the company books". However, it is surrounded by uranium deposits that make Psychlo mining impossible. Terl captures Jonnie while searching for "man-animals" that he can train to mine the gold for him. After a time, Terl captures Jonnie's childhood friend Chrissie and her little sister and threatens to kill them unless Jonnie helps him. Jonnie is afterwards free to move around the mining area. Shortly thereafter, Terl and Jonnie travel to Scotland and recruit 83 Scottish youth, old women, a doctor, and a historian to help with the mining. Jonnie, however, has different plans. Because Terl does not understand English, Jonnie is able to convince the Scots to help him overthrow the Psychlo rule on Earth. During the next months, Jonnie and the Scots try to mine the gold as well as develop a means of defeating not only the Psychlos on Earth, but also nullifying the threat of counterattack from Psychlo (the Psychlos' home planet). During the semi-annual teleportation of personnel, goods, and coffins (all dead Psychlos are shipped home for burial) back to Psychlo, Jonnie and the Scots manage to pack several of the coffins with "dirty nukes" and "planet busters" in hopes of destroying the Psychlos' home planet. After the teleportation firing, the humans use the Psychlos' own weapons against them and regain control of Earth. This is, however, not the end of the story. Unsure as to whether the bombs sent even reached Psychlo and under the imminent threat of counterattack, Jonnie must now defend his newly-retaken planet against the predatory interests of several other interstellar races, including a race of intergalactic bankers seeking to repossess the Earth in lieu of unpaid debts, as well as a longtime rival seeking to wrest control of Earth from him. In order to ensure the security and independence of humanity, he does something that no other race in 300,000 years has been able to do: uncover the secret of Psychlo mathematics and teleportation, a difficult task compounded by the destruction of planet Psychlo.

In the year 3000, Earth has been ruled for 1,000 years by the Psychlos, a brutal race of giant humanoid aliens. The remnants of humanity are either enslaved by the Psychlos and used for manual labor or survive in primitive tribes living in remote areas outside Psychlo control. Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, a member of one such tribe, leaves his home in the Rocky Mountains on a journey of exploration. He joins forces with Carlo, a hunter, but both men are captured by a Psychlo raiding party and transported to a slave camp at the Psychlos' main base on Earth, a giant dome built over the ruins of Denver, Colorado. Terl, the Psychlo security chief on Earth, has been condemned by his superiors to remain indefinitely at his post on Earth as punishment for an unclear incident involving "the Senator's daughter." Aided by his deputy, Ker, Terl devises a plan to buy his way off the planet by making a fortune using human slaves to mine gold in radioactive areas. Psychlos are unable to visit such areas due to the explosive interaction of the gas that they breathe with radionuclide particles. Terl selects Jonnie as his "foreman" for the project and gives him a Psychlo education using a rapid-learning machine. Terl gives Jonnie a party of slaves and a Psychlo flying shuttle and orders him to go out and find gold. After learning the Psychlos' language, history, and myriad other educational forms from the rapid learning machine, Jonnie plots a human uprising against the Psychlos. He obtains gold from Fort Knox to satisfy Terl's demands, instead of mining gold as ordered. Jonnie and his followers find an abandoned underground US military base with working aircraft, weapons, fuel, and nuclear weapons. They use the base's flight simulators to train themselves in aerial combat. After a week of training, the rebels launch a mass uprising against the Psychlos using Harrier jump-jets and other weapons. Carlo sacrifices himself to destroy the dome over Denver, and the Psychlos inside suffocate in Earth's atmosphere, which they are unable to breathe. Jonnie captures a Psychlo teleportation device and uses it to teleport an atomic bomb to the Psychlo home world. The ensuing detonation causes the entire Psychlo atmosphere to explode, wiping out the planet. Ker and Terl survive on Earth but face different fates: Ker sides with the victorious humans, while Terl is imprisoned as a hostage within a vault in Fort Knox. The film ends with the humans in control of Earth but facing an uncertain future.

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positive

No Country for Old Men

No Country for Old Men

The plot follows the interweaving paths of the three central characters (Llewelyn Moss, Anton Chigurh, and Ed Tom Bell), set in motion by events related to a drug deal gone bad near the Mexican-American border in southwest Texas, in Terrell County. While Llewelyn Moss is hunting antelope, he stumbles across the aftermath of a drug-deal gone bad, which has left everyone dead but a single badly wounded Mexican who pleads with Moss for water. Moss responds that he doesn't have any and searches the rest of the vehicles, finding a truck full of heroin. He searches for the "last man standing" and finds him dead some ways off under a tree, with a satchel containing $2.4 million in cash. He takes the money and returns back home. Later, however, he feels remorse for leaving the wounded man and returns to the scene with a jug of water, only to find that he has been shot and killed since he left him. When Moss looks back to his truck parked on the ridge overlooking the valley, another truck is there. As soon as he tries to run, he is seen, which sparks a tense chase by gunmen in the other truck. This is only the beginning of a hunt for Moss that stretches for most of the remaining novel. After escaping from the gunmen at the scene of the drug deal massacre, Llewelyn sends his wife, Carla Jean Moss, to her mother in Odessa while he leaves his home with the money. Sheriff Ed Tom Bell investigates the drug crime while trying to protect Moss and his young wife, with the aid of other law enforcement. The sheriff is haunted by his actions in World War II, leaving his unit to die, for which he received a Bronze Star. Now in his late 50s, Bell has spent most of his life attempting to make up for the incident when he was a 21-year-old soldier. He makes it his quest to resolve the case and save Moss. Complicating things is the arrival of Anton Chigurh, a hitman hired to recover the money. Chigurh uses a captive bolt pistol (called a "stungun" in the text) to kill many of his victims (and to destroy several cylinder locks to open doors), as well as a silenced shotgun. Carson Wells, a rival hitman and ex-Special Forces officer who is familiar with Chigurh, is also on the trail of the stolen money. After a brutal shootout that spills across the Mexican border and leaves both Moss and Chigurh wounded, Moss recovers at a Mexican hospital while Chigurh patches himself up in a hotel room with stolen supplies. While recuperating, Moss is approached by Wells, who offers to give him protection in exchange for the satchel and tells him his current location and phone number, instructing him to call when he has "had enough." After recovering and leaving the hotel room, Chigurh finds Wells and murders him just as Moss calls to negotiate the exchange of money. After answering Wells's phone, Chigurh tells Moss that he will kill Carla Jean unless he hands over the satchel. Moss remains defiant and soon after, calls Carla Jean and tells her that he will meet up with her at a motel in El Paso. After much deliberation, Carla Jean decides to inform Sheriff Bell about the meeting and its location. Unfortunately for her and her husband, this call is traced and provides Moss's location to some of his hunters. At the motel, Sheriff Bell arrives to find Moss murdered by a band of Mexicans, who also were after the drug deal cash. Later that night Chigurh arrives at the scene and retrieves the satchel from the airduct in Moss's room. He returns it to its owner and later travels to Carla Jean's house and shoots her after flipping a coin to decide her fate. Soon after, he is hit by a car, which leaves him severely injured but still alive. After bribing a pair of teenagers to remain silent about the car accident, he limps off down the road. After a long investigation that fails to locate Chigurh, Bell decides to retire and drives away from the local courthouse feeling overmatched and defeated. For the rest of the book, Bell describes two dreams that he had the previous night. In one, he met his father in town and borrowed some money from him. In the second, Bell was riding his horse through a snow-covered pass in the mountains. As he rode, he could see his father up ahead of him carrying a moon colored horn lit with fire, and he knew that his father would ride on through the pass and fix a fire out in the dark and cold and that it would be waiting for him when he arrived. And then he woke up.

West Texas in June 1980 is desolate, wide open country, and Ed Tom Bell laments the increasing violence in a region where he, like his father and grandfather before him, has risen to the office of sheriff. Llewelyn Moss , hunting pronghorn, comes across the aftermath of a drug deal gone awry: several dead men and dogs, a wounded Mexican begging for water, and two million dollars in a satchel that he takes to his trailer home. Late that night, he returns with water for the dying man, but is chased away by two men in a truck and loses his vehicle. When he gets back home he grabs the cash, sends his wife Carla Jean to her mother's, and makes his way to a motel in the next countyThe sign in front of Moss' trailer park indicates its location in Sanderson, the seat of Terrell County. Del Rio is the seat of Val Verde County, approximately 120 miles from Sanderson. where he hides the satchel in the air vent of his room. Anton Chigurh is a hitman who has been hired to recover the money. He has already strangled a sheriff's deputy to escape custody and stolen a car by using a captive bolt pistol to kill the driver. Now he carries a receiver that traces the money via a tracking device concealed inside the satchel. Bursting into Moss' hideout at night, Chigurh surprises a group of Mexicans set to ambush Moss, and murders them all. Moss, who has rented the connecting room on the other side, is one step ahead. By the time Chigurh removes the vent cover with a dime, Moss is already back on the road with the cash. In a border town hotel, Moss finally finds the electronic bug, but not before Chigurh is upon him. A firefight between them spills onto the streets, leaving both men wounded. Moss flees across the border, collapsing from his injuries before he is taken to a Mexican hospital. There, Carson Wells , another hired operative, offers protection in return for the money. After Chigurh cleans and stitches his own wounds with stolen supplies, he gets the drop on Wells back at his hotel and kills him just as Moss calls the room. Picking up the call and casually raising his feet to avoid the spreading blood, Chigurh promises Moss that Carla Jean will go untouched if he gives up the money. Moss remains defiant. Moss arranges to rendezvous with his wife at a motel in El Paso to give her the money and send her out of harm's way. She reluctantly accepts Bell's offer to save her husband, but he arrives only in time to see a pickup carrying several men speeding away from the motel and Moss lying dead in his room. That night, Bell returns to the crime scene and finds the lock blown out in his suspect's familiar style. Chigurh hides behind the door of a motel room, observing the shifting light through an empty lock hole. His gun drawn, Bell enters Moss' room and notices that the vent cover has been removed with a dime and the vent is empty. Bell visits his Uncle Ellis , an ex-lawman. Bell plans to retire because he feels "overmatched," but Ellis points out that the region has always been violent. For Ellis, thinking it is "all waiting on you, that's vanity." Carla Jean returns from her mother's funeral to find Chigurh waiting in the bedroom. When she tells him she does not have the money, he recalls the pledge he made to her husband that could have spared her. The best he will offer is a coin toss for her life, but she says that the choice is his. Chigurh leaves the house alone and carefully checks the soles of his boots. As he drives away, he is injured in a car accident and abandons the damaged vehicle. Now retired, Bell shares two dreams with his wife , both involving his deceased father. In the first dream he lost "some money" that his father had given him; in the second, he and his father were riding horses through a snowy mountain pass. His father, who was carrying fire in a horn, quietly passed by with his head down, "going on ahead, and fixin' to make a fire" in the surrounding dark and cold. Bell knew that when he got there his father would be waiting.

positive

positive