Summary:

Manlius is a 5th C Roman patrician living in Provence who has studied with the wise, reclusive Sophia. He writes his understanding of her teaching in his essay, 'Dream of Scipio,' which trades on an essay by the great Roman orator, Cicero. Sensing that the Empire is gravely threatened, he makes a pact with barbarians, sells out his neighbors, slays his adopted son, and becomes a bishop of the Christian religion, which he has long despised. Late in this ruthless and doomed attempt to salvage what he values most in his world, Sophia makes it clear that he has misunderstood her teaching.

Olivier is an astonishingly gifted 14th century Provencal poet whose intolerant father tries to stifle his love of letters, among which is Manlius's 'Dream'; his father destroys the manuscript, but Olivier recopies it from memory. As plague advances on their region, Olivier finds a mentor in the high churchman, Ceccani, who is bent on keeping the papacy in Avignon. He plans to destroy Jews as symbolic expiation for plague, widely construed to be a form of divine punishment. Olivier befriends a Jewish scholar and falls in love with his beautiful heretic servant.

The 'Dream' and the imprisonment of his friends lead Olivier to question and then betray his mentor. Either because of his efforts to save them, or for his role in a murder, he is mutilated--his tongue and hands cut off to rob him of speech and writing. The brutal mutilation appears early in the book--it is not fully explained until the end.

Julien is a French historian who has studied the poet, Olivier, and the rendition of Manlius' manuscript. He finds solace in his erudition as his county falls to the Nazi occupation. An old school friend who is a collaborator, gives him work as a censor and tolerates Julien's Jewish lover, the artist Julia. In the end, Julien is forced to choose between saving either another school friend in the Resistance or Julia. He chooses Julia, looses her anyway, and commits suicide in a vain attempt to warn his friend.

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The narrator, Rick, is let out of rehab to live with his older brother, Philip, who is a doctor in Detroit. He will work at a mundane job in Philip's lab. The awkwardness of their encounter slowly evaporates and Rick begins to enjoy life with his family, especially his two young nephews. But he is concerned about Philip's weary appearance, so reminiscent of their father.

It emerges, quickly and to Rick's surprise, that Philip runs an abortion clinic. The clinic is subject to constant harassment by a persistent group of religious, "right-to-lifers," who taunt the doctors, the workers, the patients, and their families at home. Rick struggles to control--even avoid--his feelings; and he tries (unsuccessfully) to suppress the desire to befriend patients.

Eventually, he is reconciled to his new task through an unwelcome fixation on one patient. But angry urges to protect her and his brother well up. After weeks of pent-up rage and fear, he hides a gun, loses control, and begins shooting aggressive protestors. The murder is "nothing"; it's "just like killing babies."

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At a flower sale on Count N.'s estate, the head gardener tells the story of Thomson, a doctor who lived in a certain village and who was such a good man that no one could conceive of wishing him harm. Even the bandits held him in such high esteem that they wouldn't rob him.

One day Thomson was found dead in a ravine. Even though it looked like murder--he was stabbed--the people thought he must have died in a strange accident because no one would be evil enough to kill the doctor. Later, a vagrant was caught trying to sell Thomson's snuffbox. The police found the doctor's bloody shirt under his bed.

Thus, the vagrant was put on trial for the doctor's murder. At the last minute, however, the judge acquitted him because, "I cannot admit the thought that there exists a man who would dare to murder our friend the doctor."

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The haunting eyes of a beautiful young woman stare directly at us as we witness the final moment of her plummet from a New York skyscraper to the sidewalk, a stage-like platform in the lower foreground. Her barefoot body and its shadow protrude into the inscription panel where blood-red lettering records the facts: "In the city of New York on the 21st day of the month of October, 1938, at six o'clock in the morning, Mrs. Dorothy Hale committed suicide by throwing herself out of a very high window of the Hampshire House building. In her memory [words apparently painted out] this 'retablo,' executed by Frida Kahlo." Though her blood flows from her morbidly erotic body and seeps through the canvas into the painted wood frame, the bright yellow corsage of tiny roses pinned to the black velvet dress on her intact, virtually undamaged body and face eerily insinuate vitality and sensuality.

Two stages of her fall from the window of her apartment building, as in a multiple-exposure freeze-frame photograph, are surrealistically softened by swirling blue, white and gray cloud-like sky coloring which covers the entire background and the rest of the wooden frame. Barely visible, in the top of the frame is the suggestion of an angel holding a banner on which [now erased or whited-over] was proclaimed "The suicide of Dorothy Hale, painted at the request of Clare Boothe Luce, for the mother of Dorothy."

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Summary:

This is a collection of related stories, sketches, poems, and a one-act play by Jean Toomer, a little-known writer of the Harlem Renaissance. The book is divided into three sections. The first part of the book is a series of stories that portray the lives of poor black women in rural Georgia. They deal with such subjects as infanticide ("Karintha"), miscegenation ("Becky"), hysteria ("Carma"), lynching ("Blood-Burning Moon"), and religious mysticism ("Fern" and "Esther"). Taken together, these stories portray an intuitive, violent, spontaneous, and pre-rational culture.

The second part of Cane takes place in Washington, DC, where Toomer depicts the life of urban black Americans in the early 1920's. Here we encounter the conflict between rationalism, as represented by the well-educated "intellectuals," and traditional lifestyle and morality. The best stories in this section include, "Avey," "Theater," and "Box Seat."

The last section is a one-act play ("Kabnis") about two urban black writers attempting to establish a contemporary "Negro identity" in light of the repression and suffering of their people. One is overwhelmed by negativity and a sense of victimization, while the other man believes that the past can be transcended, especially through the power of art.

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For more than fifteen years, Irish-born Grace Marks has been confined for the 1843 murder of housekeeper, Nancy Montgomery, and her employer, Thomas Kinnear, at their home north of Toronto. Her convicted accomplice was hanged, accusing Grace with his last breath, but her sentence was commuted to life in prison at the last minute. Because of her amnesia and outbursts of rage and panic, she was held in the Lunatic Asylum before being sent to the Kingston [Ontario] Penitentiary.

Beautiful, intelligent, and strangely poised, Grace intrigues worthy townsfolk, spiritualists, and some of her jailers, who grant her the privilege of outside work, believe in her innocence, and strive for a pardon. In looking for medical approbation, they consult Dr. Simon Jordan, a young American doctor who is interested in insanity and memory loss. Without explaining his purpose, he brings her vegetables and other familiar objects, hoping to stimulate recollection of her life.

Interspersed with Jordan's own problems, Grace's story unfolds in her own words, from her poverty-stricken childhood in Ireland and the emigration voyage that killed her mother, leaving her and her younger siblings to a neglectful father, through her short life in service, to the dreadful events of autumn 1843. She has suffered many losses, including the death of her mother to ship fever, and that of her friend and fellow servant, Mary Whitney, from an illegally procured abortion. After many weeks, Jordan abandons his project in frustration and ambiguity. The novel ends years later with forty-six year-old Grace's discharge from prison in 1872, nearly thirty years after the crime.

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Martha Hale and her husband are taken by the sheriff with his wife to the isolated home of the Wrights. Hale tells the authorities that on the previous morning he found Mr. Wright strangled to death. Mrs. Wright claimed not to know who killed him. She was arrested and awaiting charges.

Mrs. Hale and the sheriff's wife are to gather clothing and see to her preserves. The men mock women's "trifles" and jokingly caution them not to miss any clues, before they turn to their "more serious" work of finding a motive. In a basket of patches destined for a quilt, the women find a strangled canary. In quilt-like fragments, they piece together the difficult life of the third woman and decide to conceal the evidence that could incriminate her.

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This is the fictional journal of four months in the life of Doctor Tyko Glas, a turn-of-the century Swedish physician, who writes, "How can it have come about that, out of all possible trades, I should have chosen the one which suits me least?" Though Doctor Glas is over 30 years old, he has "never been near a woman." In fact, he finds the physical aspects of sexual intercourse rather repulsive. Even more repulsive is his patient Rev. Gregorius, a nasty 57-year-old minister who happens to have a lovely young wife.

One day Mrs. Gregorius, also his patient, presents Doctor Glas with a strange request. Her husband's sexual advances have become onerous to her. Could the doctor tell him that she suffers from a pelvic disease and, therefore, must avoid sexual relations for several months? Doctor Glas agrees to do so, but the Rev. Gregorius is not easily put off. He believes that God has given married couples the duty to procreate, so sex is not simply a question of pleasure or preference. It is a question of duty. Thus, he rapes his wife, believing that their sacred marital duty is more important than her health.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Gregorius admits (to the doctor) that she has fallen in love with someone else, a handsome young businessman. As the summer progresses, it is clear that Doctor Glas has fallen in love with his patient, a love that is as tortured as it is silent and unrequited. Eventually Glas becomes convinced that he must save his patient from her repulsive husband's advances by murdering him.

Thus, the doctor carefully plans to poison the minister, using cyanide pills that he had once prepared for his own suicide. His plan is successful. The minister dies of an apparent "heart attack." Unfortunately, at around that time the handsome lover announces his engagement to another woman. The bereft Mrs. Gregorius, who sees nothing in the doctor, is left alone. Doctor Glas is also alone. "Life has passed me by," he ruminates.

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After seven years of research on children and adolescents diagnosed as "juvenile delinquents," psychiatrist Wertham concluded that crime comic books (mysteries, thrillers, horror, and police stories) are a harmful influence on young minds. In fourteen chapters, rife with the logic of comparison from the adult world, he analyzed the problem literature, its artwork, its advertising, and the so-called "educational messages" it contained.

Against the evidence of various "experts" and the champions of civil liberties, numerous anecdotes demonstrate how comic books glorify violent crime, link sexual love with physical abuse, permit illiteracy, and invite imitation. A series of vignettes demonstrates that violent child crime is on the rise and that actual crimes--even murder--have been connected to the reading of comics.

Wertham also provided statistics on comic book publishing, finances, and influence. A penultimate chapter is devoted to television. Emphasizing the public initiatives and legislative controls brought against American comics in other countries, such as Canada, Britain, Italy, Mexico, and Sweden, he demands action before yet another generation of youth is ruined.

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Summary:

In Edinburgh 1879, the famous actress Hermione Clery and her young lover are brutally murdered. A young man, Alan Lambert, stands accused of the crime, arrested after an expensive chase across the Atlantic. His brother, Graeme, appeals to Dr. Joseph Bell, professor of surgery and one of a dynasty in Scottish academic medicine. At first reluctant, Bell agrees to investigate the case and engages his medical student Arthur Conan Doyle in the task.

The story is told from Doyle's imperfect perspective. Beset by many obstacles from the police, the courts, and the Lambert family, Bell's investigation reveals a string of errors, including police sloppiness, suspicious evidence, and corruption in both government and law enforcement. On the day of the planned execution, Bell identifies the true killer and his motive, saving Lambert from wrongful death.

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