The protagonists are an American millionaire, Theodore Racksole, and his daughter Nella (Helen). While staying at the supremely exclusive Grand Babylon Hotel, Nella asks for a steak and Bass beer for dinner, but the order is refused. To get her what she wants Racksole buys the entire hotel, for ÂŁ400,000 "and a guinea" (so the previous owner can say that he haggled with the multi-millionaire businessman).
Strange things are happening in the hotel. First, Racksole notices the headwaiter, Jules, winking at his daughter's friend, Reginald Dimmock, while they consume their expensive steak. He dismisses the headwaiter. The next day Miss Spencer, the pretty, efficient hotel clerk who has been employed there for years, disappears. It appears that she just took her things and left, no one knows when or where. And Prince Eugen, a prince regnant of Posen, who was to come to the hotel and meet his youthful uncle Prince Aribert (he and the nephew are of the same age), never turns up. Then the body of Dimmock, who was an equerry to the princes, come ahead to prepare for their visit, is found. He was obviously poisoned. And soon after, Dimmock's body disappears.
The same evening the hotel is having a ball in the Gold Room, hosted by a Mr and Mrs Sampson Levi. There is a special secret window though which one can observe the room and the guests. Racksole looks out of it and sees among the guests the dismissed headwaiter, Jules. Racksole runs out to confront him and throw him out, but can't find him. He comes back to the secret window to find Jules, staring intensely into the ball room. Racksole orders him out of the hotel for the second time.
Prince Aribert, who met Nella in Paris while he was travelling incognito under the name of Count Steenbock, confides the whole story to her. He tells her that Prince Eugen never arrived, and no one knows where he is. He was last seen at Ostend. His Majesty the Emperor sent a telegram to Aribert, requesting the whereabouts of Eugen. Aribert, who does not know whether there might be a secret love affair, or an abduction, is facing a dilemma. At last he decides to go to Berlin and state the facts to the Emperor. Nella promises him help and support in London.
After the departure of Aribert, an old lady signs into the hotel under the name of 'Baroness Zerlinski'. Some chance remarks about hotel rooms convinced Nella, who was substituting for the hotel clerk, that it was, in fact Miss Spencer in disguise. When she finds out that Miss Spencer suddenly checks out and departs for Ostend, Nella too goes to Ostend, leaving a short message for her father as to her whereabouts.
In Ostend, Nella follows Miss Spencer into a house, and tries to find out what's going on, threatening the latter with a revolver. Miss Spencer says that she was under orders of Jules, the headwaiter, whose real name is Tom Jackson and who is, she claims, her husband. She says that Jackson/Jules quarrelled with Dimmock and that he had some "money business" with Prince Eugen. She admits that the Prince was a captive in that same house, and she looked after him. He was abducted to prevent him arriving to London, for it would have "upset the scheme". Then Miss Spencer fakes a faint, and Nella, who comes nearer to see if she can help her, is overpowered. Nella loses consciousness.

Question: How much does Racksole spend to buy the hotel?


Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) returns to his logging home town of Lumberton, North Carolina from Oak Lake College after his father suffers a near-fatal stroke. While walking home from the hospital, he cuts through a vacant lot and discovers a severed ear. Jeffrey takes the ear to police detective John Williams (George Dickerson) and becomes reacquainted with the detective's daughter, Sandy (Laura Dern). She tells him details about the ear case and a suspicious woman, Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini), who may be connected to the case. Increasingly curious, Jeffrey enters Dorothy's apartment by posing as an exterminator, and while Dorothy is distracted by a man dressed in a yellow suit at her door (whom Jeffrey later refers to as the Yellow Man), Jeffrey steals her spare key.
Jeffrey and Sandy attend Dorothy's nightclub act, in which she sings "Blue Velvet", and leave early so Jeffrey can sneak into her apartment to snoop. He hurriedly hides in a closet when she returns home. However, Dorothy, wielding a knife, discovers him and threatens to kill him. Believing his curiosity is merely sexual and aroused by his voyeurism, Dorothy makes Jeffrey undress at knifepoint and begins to fellate him before their encounter is interrupted by a knock at the door. Dorothy hides Jeffrey in the closet. From there he witnesses the visitor, Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), inflict his bizarre sexual proclivities—which include inhaling an unidentified gas (possibly amyl nitrite), dry humping, and sadomasochism—upon Dorothy. Frank is an extremely foul-mouthed, violent sociopath whose orgasmic climax is a fit of both pleasure and rage. He continually refers to her as "Mommy" and to himself as both the "Daddy" and the "Baby", who "want to fuck." Frank has kidnapped Dorothy's husband and son to force her to perform sexual favors; to "Do it for van Gogh." When Frank leaves, a sad and desperate Dorothy tries to seduce Jeffrey again and demands that he hit her, but when he refuses, she tells him to leave. When Jeffrey moves to leave, she asks him to stay, though he leaves anyway.
Jeffrey relays his experience to Sandy, asking her why there are people like Frank. Sandy in turn tells him of a wonderful dream she had about robins that she interprets as a sign of hope for humanity. Jeffrey and Sandy find themselves attracted to each other, though Sandy has a boyfriend.
Jeffrey again visits Dorothy's apartment and she tells him that although she knows nothing about him, she has been yearning for him. Jeffrey attends another of Dorothy's performances at the club, where she sings the same song. At the club, Jeffrey spots Frank in the audience fondling a piece of blue velvet fabric he cut from Dorothy's robe. Jeffrey follows Frank and spends the next few days spying on him. Shortly afterwards, two men that Jeffrey calls the Well-Dressed Man and the Yellow Man exit an industrial building that Frank frequently visits. Jeffrey concludes the men are criminal associates of Frank, and tells his new findings to Sandy. The two briefly kiss, though she feels uncomfortable about going any further. Jeffrey immediately visits Dorothy again, and the two have sex. However, when he refuses to hit her, she pressures him, becoming more emotional. In a blind rage he knocks her backwards and is instantly horrified, but Dorothy derives pleasure from it.
Afterwards, Frank catches Dorothy and Jeffrey together and forces them both to accompany him to the apartment of Ben (Dean Stockwell), his suave, effeminate partner in crime who is holding Dorothy's son. Ben lip-syncs a performance of Roy Orbison's "In Dreams", sending Frank into maudlin sadness, then rage. Frank takes Jeffrey to a lumber yard and when he molests Dorothy, Jeffrey stands up to Frank by punching him. Frank's cronies drag Jeffrey out of the car and Frank kisses Jeffrey's face, intimidates him, and then savagely beats him to the overture of "In Dreams". Jeffrey wakes the next day at the same place and walks home, overcome with guilt and despair. He goes to the police station, where he notices that Sandy's father's partner is the Yellow Man—an officer named Lieutenant Detective Tom Gordon (Fred Pickler). Later, at Sandy's home, her father is amazed by Jeffrey's story, but warns Jeffrey to stop his amateur sleuthing lest he endanger himself and the investigation. Jeffrey and Sandy go to a dance together and profess their love, only to be confronted by Sandy's boyfriend. A confrontation is averted when the group finds Dorothy—naked, battered, and distressed—on Jeffrey's front lawn. Barely conscious, Dorothy reveals her intimacy with Jeffrey, causing Sandy to become upset and to slap Jeffrey, although she later forgives him.
Jeffrey insists on returning to Dorothy's apartment and tells Sandy to immediately send the police there, including her father. At Dorothy's apartment, Jeffrey finds Dorothy's husband (Don Vallens), who is dead from a gunshot to the head and identifiable by his missing ear, as well as the Yellow Man (Gordon), who bears a gruesome head wound and appears to have suffered a crude lobotomy. When Jeffrey tries to leave, he sees the Well-Dressed Man coming up the stairs and recognizes him as Frank in disguise. Jeffrey talks to Detective Williams over the Yellow Man's police radio, but lies about his location inside the apartment. Frank enters the apartment and brags about hearing Jeffrey's location over his own police radio. While Frank searches for him in the wrong room, Jeffrey retrieves the Yellow Man's gun and hides in the same closet in which he hid during his first visit to the apartment. Frank fires sporadically, knocking over the dead Yellow Man, who had still been standing up, and when he opens the closet door, Jeffrey fatally shoots him in the head. Detective Williams, gun drawn, enters with Sandy a moment later. Jeffrey and Sandy now go ahead with their relationship and note the unusual appearance of robins in their town. A montage sequence ends the film, which shows Dorothy and her son reunited.

Question: Where is Jeffrey's home town located?

Lumberton, North Carolina
In North Carolina


In 2001, Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) is released from prison after serving eight years for insider trading and securities fraud. Seven years later, Gekko is promoting his new book Is Greed Good?, warning about the coming economic downturn. His estranged daughter, Winnie (Carey Mulligan), runs a small, non-profit news website and is dating Jacob Moore (Shia LaBeouf), a top proprietary trader at Keller Zabel Investments (KZI). Jacob is a protĂŠgĂŠ of managing director Louis Zabel (Frank Langella), and is trying to raise money for a fusion research project which would create massive amounts of clean energy for the world. Jake is also financially assisting his mother (Susan Sarandon), who has begun a new career selling real estate.
When the recession of 2008 hits, Keller Zabel's stock loses more than 50% of its value. Louis Zabel tries to arrange a bailout for KZI from other Wall Street banks but is blocked by Bretton James (Josh Brolin), head of rival firm Churchill Schwartz, which Louis Zabel had refused to bail out eight years earlier. Zabel kills himself by jumping in front of a subway train because he cannot handle the stress and embarrassment of losing his company.
A distraught Jacob proposes marriage to Winnie, who accepts, then attends a lecture given by Gordon Gekko and introduces himself afterward. Gekko tells him that Keller Zabel's collapse started when rumors of the company having toxic debt started to spread. Jacob and Gekko arrange a trade: Jacob will try to reconcile Winnie's and Gekko's relationship, and Gekko will gather information to destroy Bretton's career to seek revenge for Zabel's suicide.
Jake, aided by Gekko, learns that Bretton James profited from the Keller Zabel collapse. In revenge, Jake spreads rumors about the nationalization of an Equatorial Guinea oil field owned by Churchill Schwartz. The company loses $120 million, but Bretton offers Jake a job, impressed by his initiative. In his new position, Jake convinces Chinese investors to fund the fusion research by Dr. Masters (Austin Pendleton) he has been supporting. Bretton is impressed even more.
Jake attends a fundraiser with Winnie and pays for a seat at a table for Gekko priced at $10,000. Gekko confronts Bretton about what he did to him and also to Zabel. Bretton mocks him that no one cares what Gekko knows or thinks anymore. Gekko also bumps into Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen), and they discuss their shared experience going to jail. Gekko then follows Winnie outside, where she explains why she blames him for everything that went wrong, particularly her brother Rudy's suicide. Gekko claims he paid for the best therapists and even paid off a drug dealer to stop selling to Rudy, who died from an overdose. Winnie forgives him somewhat.
As the economy starts to crumble, Bretton and business mentor Julius Steinhardt (Eli Wallach) advise federal regulators what drastic actions must be taken. Jake's mother continues to come to him for large sums of money. Winnie then announces to Jake she is pregnant with a boy. After riding motorcycles together, Bretton reveals to Jake that the Chinese investment is going into solar panels and fossil fuels instead of fusion research, leaving Jake furious and feeling betrayed.
Gekko proposes a solution, using a $100 million trust fund account in Switzerland, which Gekko set up for Winnie in the 1980s, to fund the research and save the company. She signs the money over to Jake, who then entrusts it to Gekko to legitimize the funds for investment in the fusion research company. However, the money never arrives, and Gekko betrays his daughter and Jake by leaving the country with Winnie's $100 million. Jake realizes that Gekko has been using him to get the money in the account for his own gain. Winnie then tells Jake to leave, no longer trusting him.
Gekko is now in London, running a hugely successful hedgefund-like financial company, capitalized by the $100 million. Jake travels there to propose one last trade: Winnie gets her money back, and Gekko can participate in his grandson's life. Gekko, however, refuses.
Jake pieces together everything from Keller Zabel's collapse to the economic bailout of Bretton's company and gives the information to Winnie, telling her that revealing it will bring her website publicity and credibility. Winnie runs the story, and Bretton James is exposed. The investors, including Steinhardt, promptly abandon Bretton and go to Gekko on the back of his $1.1 billion return as Bretton finds himself under intense legal scrutiny by the government.
Jake has successfully reunited with Winnie in New York, when late one night Gekko appears and tells them that he deposited $100 million into the fusion research's account anonymously. He apologizes to them. One year later, Gekko is seen at his grandson Louis's first birthday party, along with Jacob's mother and Jacob and Winnie's friends.

Question: Why is Gekko estranged from his daughter Winnie?

Winnie blames him for the suicide death of her brother, Rudy.


When their father dies, Doctor Thomas Thorne and his younger, ne'er-do-well brother Henry are left to fend for themselves. Doctor Thorne begins to establish a medical practice, while Henry seduces Mary Scatcherd, the sister of stonemason Roger Scatcherd. When Scatcherd finds out that Mary has become pregnant, he seeks out Henry and kills him in a fight.
While her brother is in prison, Mary gives birth to a girl. A former suitor offers to marry her and emigrate to the United States to start a new life but refuses to take the baby. Doctor Thorne persuades her to accept the generous offer, promising to raise his niece. He names her Mary Thorne but wishing neither to have her illegitimacy made public nor to have her associate with the uncouth Roger Scatcherd, he keeps her birth secret. He tells Scatcherd that the baby had died.
After his release, Scatcherd rises quickly in the world as a railway project undertaker. In time, his skills make him extremely rich. When he completes a seemingly-impossible important project on time, he is made a baronet for his efforts. Throughout his career, he entrusts his financial affairs to Doctor Thorne. When Thorne becomes the family doctor to the Greshams, he persuades Scatcherd to lend ever growing sums to the head of the family, the local squire, who has troubles managing his finance. Eventually, much of the Gresham estate is put up as collateral.
Meanwhile, Mary grows up with the Gresham children and becomes a great favourite with the whole family. As a result, Thorne feels obliged to tell his friend the squire the secret concerning her birth.
Mary falls in love with Frank Gresham, the only son and heir of the squire of Greshamsbury and nephew of the Earl and Countess de Courcy, and he with her. His parents desperately need him to marry wealth, to rescue them from the financial distress resulting from the squire's expensive and fruitless campaigns for a seat in Parliament. As Mary is penniless and of low birth, such a marriage is frowned upon by his mother Lady Arabella and the de Courcys.
His snobbish mother and maternal aunt bearing the aristocratic de Courcy family name wish him to marry a thirty-year-old eccentric but intelligent and kind-hearted, heiress, Martha Dunstable. He reluctantly visits Courcy Castle and they become friends. He foolishly and playfully proposes. She demurs, knowing that he does not love her and he tells her about his love for Mary.
Sir Roger is a chronic drunkard and Doctor Thorne tries in vain to get him to curtail his drinking. In his will, he stipulates that the bulk of his estate go to his odious, dissolute only son Louis Philippe but he leaves Doctor Thorne in control of the inheritance until the heir reaches the age of twenty-five. Should Louis die before then, Scatcherd stipulates that the estate go to his sister Mary's eldest child. Thorne is forced to divulge Mary's history but Scatcherd leaves the will unchanged.
Sir Roger eventually dies of drink and Sir Louis inherits his vast wealth. The son proves just as much an alcoholic as the father and his weaker constitution quickly brings him to the same end, before he reaches twenty-five. After consulting with many lawyers, Doctor Thorne confirms that his niece Mary is the heiress, richer than even Miss Dunstable.
Unaware of these proceedings, the still resolute Frank finally persuades his doting father to consent to his marriage to Mary. When all is revealed, everyone is elated, even Frank's mother and Countess de Courcy and their wedding becomes a much talked of event after the marriage of Mr Oriel and Beatrice Gresham, Frank's younger sister and Mary's best friend.

Question: Who does Thorne try to get to stop drinking?


The play begins with the coquettish Charlotte and Letitia talking about the forthcoming marriage and Maria’s distress due to her father’s marriage plans for her. Billy Dimple's father was Van Rough's business partner. Before the death of Dimple’s father, a marriage between Van Rough’s Daughter, Maria, and Dimple was settled. While Dimple becomes snobbish in England, Maria betakes herself to books that "improve her taste": "The contrast was so striking betwixt the good sense of her books, and the flimsiness of her love-letters, that she discovered that she had unthinkingly engaged her hand without her heart."
In the second scene, Maria bemoans the "helpless situation of [her] sex": "Reputation is the life of a woman - and the only safe asylum a woman of delicacy can find, is in the arms of a man of honor." Even though Maria reveals to her father a lack of love towards Dimple, old Van Rough still wants her to marry Dimple, stressing that “money makes the mare go”. For him his daughter’s feelings are nonsense and money is the most important thing she should look out for. In a time when women usually were detained from enlightening their opinions by means of literature (biographies were acceptable, but no novels, since they were thought to produce a wrong world view), her father concludes that her sadness comes from “these vile books”. Not wanting to disappoint her father, Maria consents.
In Act II, Charlotte discovers that her brother, the good and honorable Colonel Manly, is in town. Manly fought in the Revolutionary War and is dressed in a soldier’s coat, which seems totally unfashionable to the city’s high society. Without knowing from each other’s affair, Letitia and Charlotte, secretly reveal to the audience that they are also courted by Dimple. Snobbish Jessamy meets simple Jonathan, who has never been to such a big town and almost kissed a “harlot” without realizing it. Jessamy convinces “almost married” Jonathan to pursue some maids in the city. Jessamy introduces Jonathan to Jenny, and after the former takes his leave, Manly’s manservant tries to kiss the girl. Jenny refuses angrily, since she thinks Jonathan much too unfashionable for her.
In Act III, Dimple says he loves Charlotte for her lively character, but needs Letitia's money. He also wants Maria to decline the match. Then Dimple, the villain, meets Manly and finds out that the Colonel is Charlotte’s brother – just in time to prevent himself from telling Manly about his detestable attitude towards women. Dimple has an extensive monologue where he declares his love for European culture, despite living in America.
In Act IV, Maria tells Charlotte that Dimple insults and disgusts her and that she met a lovely man full of honor (Manly) this morning. Charlotte, being interested in Dimple, unsuccessfully “endeavour[s] to excite her to discharge him.” Manly and Dimple enter and the family relations are revealed to all characters. Van Rough meanwhile finds out about Dimple having lost seventeen-thousand pounds due to gambling and decides not to have his daughter been married to such a fool. In that moment he more or less accidentally overhears a conversation between Manly and Maria revealing their love and affections to each other.
In Act V, Jessamy fails to teach high society’s rules of laughing to Jonathan, who just laughs too naturally. Dimple meets Letitia, telling her that he loves just her and that Charlotte is nothing else than a “trifling, gay, flighty coquette”. Charlotte enters and Letitia pretends to leave. She observes the following happenings. After Letitia seemed to be gone, Dimple tells Charlotte that he is in love with her and that Letitia is an “ugly creature!” When Dimple forcefully tries to kiss her, Charlotte screams and Manly comes in to help her quarrelling Dimple. Old Van Rough prevents the men from stabbing each other and Letitia enters to reveal the happenings to everyone. After Dimple is gone dishonored, Van Rough agrees to Manly’s marriage proposal and Maria ends up with Manly.

Question: What war did Manly fight in?

The Revolutionary War
The Revolutionary War.


Mademoiselle de Chartres is a sheltered heiress, sixteen years old, whose mother has brought her to the court of Henri II to seek a husband with good financial and social prospects. When old jealousies against a kinsman spark intrigues against the young ingénue, the best marriage prospects withdraw. The young woman follows her mother's recommendation and accepts the overtures of a middling suitor, the Prince de Clèves. After the wedding, she meets the dashing Duke de Nemours. The two fall in love, yet do nothing to pursue their affections, limiting their contact to an occasional visit in the now-Princess of Clèves's salon. The duke becomes enmeshed in a scandal at court that leads the Princess to believe he has been unfaithful in his affections. A letter from a spurned mistress to her paramour is discovered in the dressing room at one of the estates—a letter actually written to the Princess' uncle, the Vidame de Chartres, who has also become entangled in a relationship with the Queen. He begs the Duke de Nemours to claim ownership of the letter, which ends up in the Princess' possession. The duke has to produce documents from the Vidame to convince the Princess that his heart has been true. Eventually, the Prince de Clèves discerns that his wife is in love with another man. She confesses as much. He relentlessly quizzes her—indeed tricks her—until she reveals the man's identity. After he sends a servant to spy on the Duke de Nemours, the Prince de Clèves believes that his wife has been unfaithful in more than just her emotions. He becomes ill and dies (either of his illness or of a broken heart). On his deathbed, he blames the Duke de Nemours for his suffering and begs the Princess not to marry him. Now free to pursue her passions, the Princess is torn between her duty and her love. The duke pursues her more openly, but she rejects him, choosing instead to enter a convent for part of each year. After several years, the duke's love for her does finally fade, and she, still relatively young, passes away in obscurity.

Question: What is found in the dressing room of one of the estates that causes strife between the characters?

a letter from a spurned mistress to her paramour


Foreword
The novel opens with a fictitious foreword, a brief note dated 1876, in which the purported editor of the memoirs, Daniel Clapsaddle Carvel, claims that they are just as his grandfather, Richard Carvel, wrote them, all the more realistic for their imperfections.
Volume One
The first volume concerns Richard Carvel's boyhood and schooldays. Orphaned at an early age, Richard is raised by his grandfather, Lionel Carvel of Carvel Hall, a wealthy loyalist respected by all sections of the community. Richard describes their way of life, his growing love for his neighbor, Dorothy Manners, and the hostility of his uncle, Grafton Carvel. Richard witnesses a demonstration against a tax collector in Annapolis as a result of the Stamp Act 1765 and grieves his grandfather by his adoption of revolutionary political views.
Volume Two
Mr Allen, Richard's new tutor, tricks him into deceiving his ailing grandfather. Richard is tormented by the coquettishness of Dorothy. At Richard's eighteenth birthday party, he learns that she is to go to England.
Volume Three
With the third volume, the main action of the novel begins. Through the scheming of Grafton Carvel and Mr Allen, Richard fights a duel with Lord Comyn. He is wounded, but becomes fast friends with the lord. His grandfather learns that his political opinions are unchanged but forgives him, partly through the intercession of Colonel Washington. After his recovery, Richard is attacked on the road and kidnapped. He is taken aboard a pirate ship, the Black Moll. There is a fight with a brigantine, in which the pirate ship sinks.
Volume Four
In the fourth volume, the protagonist continues to meet with sudden reversals of fortune. Richard is rescued and befriended by the captain of the brigantine, John Paul, who is sailing to Solway. In Scotland, John Paul is shunned, and vows to turn his back on his country. They take a post chaise to London, and in Windsor meet Horace Walpole. In London they are imprisoned in a sponging-house, from where they are rescued by Lord Comyn and Dorothy.
Volume Five
Volumes five and six are set in London, where the glamor and corruption of fashionable society forms a contrast with the plain and honest values of the emerging republic, embodied in the protagonist. Richard is introduced to London society, where Dorothy is an admired beauty. He makes friends with Charles James Fox and incurs the enmity of the Duke of Chartersea. Richard declares his love to Dorothy but is rejected.
Volume Six
Richard risks his life in a wager but survives against the odds. He visits the House of Commons, and hears Edmund Burke and Fox speak. At Vauxhall Gardens he is tricked into a duel with the Duke, while Lord Comyn is injured saving him from a second assailant. Later he hears that his grandfather has died, and that his uncle Grafton has inherited the estate, leaving him penniless.
Volume Seven
Richard returns to America, where he learns his grandfather had believed him dead. Rejecting Grafton's overtures, he accepts a place as Mr Swain's factor, and for the next few years faithfully tends the Swain estate, Gordon's Pride. In 1774, the discontent among the colonists begins to escalate.
Volume Eight
The final volume sees the dual, interlinked fruition of the two principal aspects of the novel: the political and the romantic. With the coming of war, Richard sets out to fight for his country. He meets John Paul, now calling himself John Paul Jones, and plans to join the nascent American navy. The early years of the war are represented by a summary by Daniel Clapsaddle Carvel, and Richard's narrative resumes at the start of the North Sea action between the Bonhomme Richard, captained by Jones, and the Serapis. Richard is severely wounded, and Jones arranges for him to be nursed by Dorothy. The end of the book sees Richard back in Maryland as master of Carvel Hall, married to his childhood sweetheart.

Question: Where is Richard tricked into a duel?


In December 1958, Norville Barnes (Tim Robbins), a business college graduate from Muncie, Indiana, arrives in New York City looking for a job. He struggles due to lack of experience and becomes a mailroom clerk at Hudsucker Industries. Meanwhile, the company's founder and president, Waring Hudsucker (Charles Durning), unexpectedly commits suicide during a business meeting by jumping out of a top-floor window. Afterwards, Sidney J. Mussburger (Paul Newman), a ruthless member of the board of directors, learns Hudsucker's stock shares will be soon sold to the public; he mounts a scheme to buy the controlling interest in the company by temporarily depressing the stock price by hiring an incompetent president to replace Hudsucker.
In the mailroom, Norville is assigned to deliver a "Blue Letter", a top-secret communication from Hudsucker, sent shortly before his death, to Mussburger. However, Norville takes the opportunity to pitch an invention he's been working on which turns out to be a simple drawing of a circle and his cryptic explanation, "you know, for kids." Believing Norville to be an idiot, Mussburger selects him as a proxy for Hudsucker. Across town, Amy Archer (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a brassy Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Manhattan Argus, is assigned to write a story about Norville and find out what kind of man he really is. She gets a job at Hudsucker Industries as his personal secretary, pretending to be yet another desperate graduate from Muncie. One night, Amy searches the building to find clues and meets Moses, a man who operates the tower's giant clock and knows "just about anything if it concerns Hudsucker". He tells her Mussburger's plot, and she takes the story back to her Chief (John Mahoney), but he does not believe a word of it.
The other executives decide to produce Norville's invention in hopes that it will flop and depress the company's stock. The invention turns out to be the hula hoop, which initially fails but then turns into an enormous success. Norville allows success to go to his head and becomes yet another uncaring tycoon. Amy, who had fallen for his naive charm, is infuriated over Norville's new attitude and leaves him. Buzz, the eager elevator operator, pitches a new invention: the flexi-straw. Norville dismisses it and fires Buzz. Meanwhile, Aloysius (Harry Bugin), a Hudsucker janitor, discovers Amy's true identity and informs Mussburger. Mussburger reveals Amy's secret identity to Norville and tells him he will be dismissed as president after the new year. Mussburger also convinces the board that Norville is insane and must be sent to the local psychiatric hospital.
On New Year's Eve, Amy finds Norville drunk at a beatnik bar. She apologizes, but he storms out and is chased by an angry mob led by Buzz, whom Mussburger had convinced that Norville had stolen the hula hoop idea. Norville escapes to the top floor of the Hudsucker skyscraper and changes back into his mailroom uniform. He climbs out on the ledge, where Aloysius locks him out and watches as he slips and falls off the building at the stroke of midnight. All of a sudden, Moses stops the clock and time freezes. Waring Hudsucker appears to Norville as an angel and tells him the Blue Letter that was supposed to be delivered to Mussburger contains a legal document indicating that Hudsucker's shares would go to his immediate successor, who is now Norville. Moses fights and defeats Aloysius inside the tower, allowing Norville to fall safely to the ground. Norville and Amy reconcile. As 1959 progresses, it is Mussburger who is sent to the asylum while Norville develops a new invention "for kids", an enigmatic circle on a folded sheet of paper that will ultimately turn out to be a frisbee.

Question: What did Barnes do when Buzz pitched his new invention?


Margot (Nicole Kidman) is a successful but neurotic writer who brings her 11-year-old son Claude (Zane Pais) to spend a weekend visiting her free-spirited sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) on the eve of her wedding to Malcolm (Jack Black) at Pauline & Malcolm's home on Long Island. Margot disapproves of Pauline's choice of fiancĂŠ, which will become one of several sources of tension between the two sisters. Malcolm is also free-spirited, but also unsuccessful, unmotivated, socially inappropriate and "completely unattractive". Because much of Malcolm's time is spent dabbling in painting, playing music and writing letters to magazines, Margot feels that Pauline could do better. While in town, Margot will also be interviewed in a local bookstore by Dick Koosman (CiarĂĄn Hinds), a successful author with whom Margot is collaborating on a screenplay. Dick's teenage daughter Maisie (Halley Feiffer) also visits the house.
Although Pauline is happy that Margot showed up, the two share a wellspring of tension. Margot disapproves of Pauline's life-choices - besides marrying Malcolm, Pauline is pregnant, a fact that she hasn't shared with Malcolm or her pre-teenage daughter Ingrid. Pauline resents how her life experiences have been used in Margot's writing. She is also incensed when Margot shares secrets told to her in confidence - including her pregnancy. Each of the sisters feels unfairly picked on by the other. Rather than take their frustrations out on each other, the sisters target those around them. Pauline twits her fiancĂŠ's sense of inadequacy. Margot skewers her son's physical and emotional awkwardness. As he grows up, Claude becomes more of a target of her merciless powers of observation.
Tensions come to a head twice. Margot's interview goes disastrously wrong when Dick's questions become personal. While Pauline interrogates him about emails he received from one of her 20-year-old students, Malcolm admits he kissed Maisie. Returning to the house, Pauline finds Maisie inside. Though Pauline says nothing, it's obvious to Maisie that Pauline knows the truth. Learning of Malcolm's inappropriate behavior with Maisie, Dick angrily beats Malcolm. After that Pauline and Ingrid escape Malcolm and the house with Margot and Claude.
Fleeing to a motel, Pauline angrily confronts Margot about how her life has been used in Margot's writing. The next day, as Margot advises her to finish her relationship with Malcolm, Pauline calls him. His misery keeps her from rejecting him outright, though it's not clear that she will abandon him.
Margot decides to stay with her sister, even as she sends Claude by bus to Vermont, to live with his father. As the bus pulls away with Claude, Margot has a change of heart and chases after it. Taking a seat next to a surprised Claude, Margot catches her breath.

Question: What does Margot do for a living?


In the middle of the Great Depression, Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty) and Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway) meet when Clyde tries to steal Bonnie's mother's car. Bonnie, who is bored by her job as a waitress, is intrigued by Clyde, and decides to take up with him and become his partner in crime. They pull off some holdups, but their amateur efforts, while exciting, are not very lucrative.
The duo's crime spree shifts into high gear once they hook up with a dim-witted gas station attendant, C.W. Moss (Michael J. Pollard), then with Clyde's older brother Buck (Gene Hackman) and his wife, Blanche (Estelle Parsons), a preacher's daughter. The women dislike each other on first sight, and their feud only escalates from there: shrill Blanche has nothing but disdain for Bonnie, Clyde and C.W., while gun-moll Bonnie sees Blanche's flighty presence as a constant danger to the gang's well-being.
Bonnie and Clyde turn from pulling small-time heists to robbing banks. Their exploits also become more violent. When C.W. botches a bank robbery by parallel parking the getaway car, Clyde shoots the bank manager in the face after he jumps onto the slow-moving car's running board. The gang is pursued by law enforcement, including Texas Ranger Frank Hamer (Denver Pyle), who is captured and humiliated by the outlaws, then set free. A raid later catches the outlaws off guard, mortally wounding Buck with a gruesome shot to his head and injuring Blanche. Bonnie, Clyde and C.W. barely escape with their lives. With Blanche sightless and in police custody, Hamer tricks her into revealing C.W.'s name, who was up until now still only an "unidentified suspect."
Hamer locates Bonnie, Clyde and C.W. hiding at the house of C.W.'s father Ivan Moss (Dub Taylor), who thinks the coupleâand an ornate tattooâhave corrupted his son. The elder Moss strikes a bargain with Hamer: In exchange for leniency for the boy, he helps set a trap for the outlaws. When Bonnie and Clyde stop on the side of the road to help Mr. Moss fix a flat tire, the police in the bushes open fire and riddle them with bullets. Hamer and his posse then come out of hiding, looking pensively at the couple's bodies.

Question: What is the name of the Texas Ranger who goes on the hunt after Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker's crime ring?


Ali Rose (Aguilera) moves to Los Angeles after she quits her bar job when her boss refuses to pay her. Once in L.A., she tries and fails at every audition she does until one night, she finds herself unknowingly in a burlesque club when she hears the music on the street. She finds Tess (Cher) and the dancers performing “Welcome to Burlesque” and decides to pursue a career on stage once she meets Jack (Gigandet). Jack refers her to Tess for an audition, but she is rejected instantly and ushered out by Sean (Tucci). Instead of leaving, Ali begins serving customers at the club as a waitress, while Tess and Sean observe with Jack asking Tess to give Ali a chance.
When Georgia (Hough) becomes pregnant, auditions are held to replace her. Ali begins her audition when everyone leaves, and after performing "Wagon Wheel Watusi", persuades Tess to allow her to become one of the club's dancers, much to the annoyance of Nikki (Bell), a performer who is always late and caught drinking before numbers. One day Ali has to replace Nikki on stage because Nikki is too drunk to perform. Nikki sabotages the performance by turning off the music that the dancers usually lip sync to but before the curtain is dropped down, Ali impresses everyone with her amazing singing skills. Tess immediately decides to have Ali be the star of a whole new show at the club. It becomes increasingly popular and Ali enjoys her newfound stardom while Nikki fumes in the background. Despite the club's growing success, Tess is still unable to pay the bank all the money that she owes it.
One night after the club closes, Tess, worried with the club's economic prospects, sings "You Haven't Seen the Last of Me". A very jealous Nikki shows up drunk and picks a fight with Tess, calling Ali a "slut with mutant lungs". Tess, who has grown frustrated with Nikki, questions her gratitude for the help she has received. Angered, Nikki quits on the spot (before falsely claiming that she slept with Vince after his and Tess's honeymoon), and the altercation ends when Tess angrily retaliates by smashing the passenger side window on Nikki's convertible with a crowbar.
Tensions arise between Ali and Jack as Marcus grows increasingly infatuated with Ali, making Jack jealous. At Georgia's wedding, Jack appears to call off his engagement, getting drunk. That night, Ali and Jack sleep together, but the following morning Jack's fiancé, Natalie (Agron), returns unexpectedly from her play in New York and tells Ali that the engagement is still on. Jack denies this, and while trying to fix things, he asks Ali to leave. Feeling heartbroken and betrayed, Ali runs to Sean for support, who prompts her to go with Marcus after his phone call.
While spending time with Marcus, Ali finds out about "air rights", which refers to the empty space above a building and what can be done with it. Ali breaks things off with Marcus after she sees his plans to build a skyscraper on the property the club is on. Ali tells Tess, and together they inform the owner of the new million-dollar condos across the street; fearing the loss of business that would result from the obstruction of his prospective tenants' view, he purchases the air rights to the club's property. The resulting money is enough for Tess to buy out Vince's share, pay off the bank, and re-fashion the club to her own vision. She also makes up with Nikki and rehires her at the club. In the end Ali, having reunited with Jack and earned Nikki's respect, performs "Show Me How You Burlesque" with all of the dancers, a song which Jack wrote and finally finished.

Question: When she was rejected for being a dancer, what did Ali do at the club?


Kim (Kimball O'Hara) is the orphaned son of an Irish soldier and a poor Irish mother who have both died in poverty. Living a vagabond existence in India under British rule in the late 19th century, Kim earns his living by begging and running small errands on the streets of Lahore. He occasionally works for Mahbub Ali, a Pashtun horse trader who is one of the native operatives of the British secret service. Kim is so immersed in the local culture, few realise he is a white child, though he carries a packet of documents from his father entrusted to him by an Indian woman who cared for him.
Kim befriends an aged Tibetan Lama who is on a quest to free himself from the Wheel of Things by finding the legendary River of the Arrow. Kim becomes his chela, or disciple, and accompanies him on his journey. On the way, Kim incidentally learns about parts of the Great Game and is recruited by Mahbub Ali to carry a message to the head of British intelligence in Umballa. Kim's trip with the lama along the Grand Trunk Road is the first great adventure in the novel.
By chance, Kim's father's regimental chaplain identifies Kim by his Masonic certificate, which he wears around his neck, and Kim is forcibly separated from the lama. The lama insists that Kim should comply with the chaplain's plan because he believes it is in Kim's best interests, and the boy is sent to a top English school in Lucknow. The lama funds Kim's education.
Throughout his years at school, Kim remains in contact with the holy man he has come to love. Kim also retains contact with his secret service connections and is trained in espionage (to be a surveyor) while on vacation from school by Lurgan Sahib, at his jewellery shop in Simla. As part of his training, Kim looks at a tray full of mixed objects and notes which have been added or taken away, a pastime still called Kim's Game, also called the Jewel Game.
After three years of schooling, Kim is given a government appointment so that he can begin his role in the Great Game. Before this appointment begins however, he is granted time to take a much-deserved break. Kim rejoins the lama and at the behest of Kim's superior, Hurree Chunder Mookherjee, they make a trip to the Himalayas. Here the espionage and spiritual threads of the story collide, with the lama unwittingly falling into conflict with Russian intelligence agents.
Kim obtains maps, papers and other important items from the Russians working to undermine British control of the region. Mookherjee befriends the Russians under cover, acting as a guide and ensures that they do not recover the lost items. Kim, aided by some porters and villagers, helps to rescue the lama.
The lama realises that he has gone astray. His search for the "River of the Arrow" should be taking place in the plains, not in the mountains, and he orders the porters to take them back. Here Kim and the lama are nursed back to health after their arduous journey. Kim delivers the Russian documents to Hurree, and a concerned Mahbub Ali comes to check on Kim.
The lama finds his river and achieves Enlightenment. The reader is left to decide whether Kim will henceforth follow the prideful road of the Great Game, the spiritual way of Tibetan Buddhism, or a combination of the two. Kim himself has this to say: "I am not a Sahib. I am thy chela." (Meaning, "I am not a master. I am your servant.")

Question: Who is Mahbub Ali?

A member of the British SS and a horse trader.

A native operative of the British Secret service.


Chārudatta is a generous young man who, through his charitable contributions to unlucky friends and the general public welfare, has severely impoverished himself and his family. Though deserted by most of his friends and embarrassed by deteriorating living conditions, he has maintained his reputation in Ujjayini as an honest and upright man with a rare gift of wisdom and many important men continue to seek his counsel.
Though happily married and the recent father of a young son, Rohasena, Chārudatta is enamored of Vasantasenā, a courtesan of great wealth and reputation. At a chance encounter at the temple of Kāma she returns his affection, though the matter is complicated when Vasantasenā finds herself pursued by Samsthānaka, a half-mad brother-in-law of King Pālaka, and his retinue. When the men threaten violence, Vasantasenā flees, seeking safety with Chārudatta. Their love blossoms following the clandestine meeting, and the courtesan entrusts her new lover with a casket of jewelry in an attempt to ensure a future meeting.
Her plan is thwarted, however, when a thief, Sarvilaka, enters Chārudatta’s home and steals the jewels in an elaborate scheme to buy the freedom of his lover, Madanikā, who is Vasantasenā’s slave and confidant. The courtesan recognizes the jewelry, but she accepts the payment anyway and frees Madanikā to marry. She then attempts to contact Chārudatta and inform him of the situation, but before she can make contact he panics and sends Vasantasenā a rare pearl necklace that had belonged to his wife, a gift in great excess of the value of the stolen jewelry. In recognition of this, Chārudatta's friend, Maitreya, cautions the Brahmin against further association, fearing that Vasantasenā is, at worst, scheming to take from Chārudatta the few possessions he still has and, at best, a good-intentioned bastion of bad luck and disaster.
Refusing to take this advice, Chārudatta makes Vasantasenā his mistress and she eventually meets his young son. During the encounter, the boy is distressed because he has recently enjoyed playing with a friend's toy cart of solid gold and no longer wants his own clay cart that his nurse has made for him. Taking pity on him in his sadness, Vasantasenā fills his little clay cart with her own jewelry, heaping his humble toy with a mound of gold before departing to meet Chārudatta in a park outside the city for a day’s outing. There she enters a fine carriage, but soon discovers that she is in a gharry belonging to Samsthānaka, who remains enraged by her previous affront and is madly jealous of the love and favor she shows to Chārudatta. Unable to persuade his henchmen to kill her, Samsthānaka sends his retinue away and proceeds to strangle Vasantasenā and hide her body beneath a pile of leaves. Still seeking vengeance, he promptly accuses Chārudatta of the crime.
Though the Chārudatta proclaims his innocence, his presence in the park along with his son's possession of Vasantasenā's jewels implicate the poverty-stricken man, and he is found guilty and condemned to death by King Pālaka. Unbeknownst to all, however, the body identified as Vasantasenā’s was actually another woman. Vasantasenā had been revived and befriended by a Buddhist monk who nursed her back to health in a nearby village.
Just as Chārudatta faces execution, Vasantasenā appears and, seeing the excited crowd, intervenes in time to save him from execution and his wife from throwing herself onto the funeral pyre. Together the three declare themselves a family. Reaching the courts, Vasantasenā tells the story of her near death and, following her testimony, Samsthānaka is arrested and the good Prince Āryaka deposes the wicked King Pālaka. His first acts as the newly declared sovereign is to restore Chārudatta’s fortune and give him an important position at court. Following this good will, Chārudatta demonstrates in the final act his enduring virtue and charity, appealing to the King for pardon on behalf of Samsthānaka who is subsequently declared free.

Question: What is Samsthanaka to King Palaka?


His beloved wife having died in childbirth, Phineas Finn finds Irish society and his job as a Poorhouse Inspector dull and unsatisfying after the excitement of his former career as a Member of Parliament. Back in England, the Whigs are determined to overturn the Tory majority in Parliament. As Finn had been considered the most promising of the younger set, he is encouraged to stand for parliament again.
Returning to London, he renews his acquaintance with the wealthy widow, Madame Max Goesler. In the past, she had offered to marry him and had been gently turned down; after an awkward first encounter, they renew their friendship.
In the political arena, Finn loses the election by a narrow margin, but his luck does not desert him. On appeal, it is found that his opponent had bribed some of the voters, enough to give Finn the victory. He does however make one enemy within his own party. Mr Bonteen makes disparaging remarks about his political trustworthiness (referring to an incident described in Phineas Finn). The conflict spirals out of control when neither man will back down, and they become bitter foes.
When Bonteen is murdered, suspicion falls on two men. One is the Reverend Mr Emilius, husband of Lady Eustace (the main character of The Eustace Diamonds). At her urging, Bonteen had discovered that Emilius had been married when he wed Lady Eustace, thus annulling the marriage and safeguarding her wealth. The other suspect is Phineas Finn. He and Bonteen had been seen to quarrel violently the night of the murder and all the circumstantial evidence points to him, while Emilius did not even have a key to exit his lodgings that night. Finn therefore is brought to trial. Not unexpectedly, the murder of one Member of Parliament allegedly by another quickly becomes the sensation of all England.
While the trial goes on, Madame Max travels to the Continent looking for evidence, and she succeeds. She finds a locksmith who had made a duplicate key for Emilius. This, along with other developments, convinces everyone that Finn is innocent and Emilius guilty. Unfortunately, it is not enough to convict the latter.
Afterwards, Finn, worn out by the ordeal and disillusioned with politics, refuses an invitation to take office in the government, and marries Madame Max.

Question: Why does Finn lose the election?

On appeal, it was found his opponent bribed some of the voters.

His opponent had bribed some of the voters.


Rob Gordon (John Cusack) is a self-confessed music loving everyman with a poor understanding of women. After getting dumped by his latest girlfriend, Laura (Iben Hjejle), he decides to look up some of his old partners in an attempt to figure out where he keeps going wrong in his relationships.
He spends his days at his record store, Championship Vinyl, where he holds court over the customers that drift through. Helping Rob in his task of musical elitism are Dick (Todd Louiso) and Barry (Jack Black), the "musical moron twins," as he refers to them. Armed with an encyclopedic knowledge of all things musical, they compile "top five" lists for every conceivable occasion, openly mock the tastes of their customers, and, every so often, sell a few records.
Rob and the staff have a strong dislike for two shoplifting skateboarder teenagers, Vince (Chris Rehmann) and Justin (Ben Carr). One day, he listens to a recording that they made and offers them a record deal, starting his own label called Top 5 Records. During his off hours, he pines for Laura and does his best to win her back.
Rob soon hears that Laura's father, who liked Rob, has died, and attends his funeral with Laura. Shortly after the reception, Rob realizes he never committed to Laura and always had one foot out the door. This made him realize he neglected his own future in the process. Afterward, he and Laura move back in together again. Rob meets a music columnist whom he soon develops a crush on, but while making a mixtape for her, wonders if he'll always just be jumping rock to rock. Laura meets with Rob in a bar where he explains how other girls are just fantasies, and while Laura is a reality, he never gets tired of her. He then proposes marriage to her, and she thanks him for asking. Later, she organizes an evening where he has the opportunity to revisit a love of his youth: dee-jaying. It is also a celebration of the recently released single by the two delinquents, where Barry's band plays "Let's Get It On". Surprised that Barry's band is not a disaster, Rob holds Laura, and they both sway to the music. Rob makes a mixtape for Laura, feeling like he's finally learned how to make her happy.

Question: Who did Rob offer a record deal?


A woman in a wedding dress, the Bride, lies wounded in a chapel in El Paso, having been attacked by the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad. She tells their leader, Bill, that she is carrying his baby. He shoots her.
Four years later, having survived the attack, the Bride goes to the home of Vernita Green, planning to kill her. Both women were members of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, which has since disbanded; Vernita now leads a normal suburban family life. They engage in a knife fight, but are interrupted by the arrival of Vernita's young daughter, Nikki. Not wanting to kill Vernita in front of Nikki, the Bride agrees to meet Vernita at night to settle the matter, but Vernita tries to surprise the Bride with a pistol hidden in a box of cereal. The Bride dodges the shot and throws a knife into Vernita's chest, killing her.
Four and a half years earlier, police investigate the massacre at the wedding chapel. The sheriff discovers the Bride is alive but comatose. In the hospital, Deadly Viper Elle Driver prepares to assassinate the Bride via lethal injection, but Bill aborts the mission at the last moment, considering it dishonorable to kill the Bride when she cannot defend herself.
In the present, the Bride awakens from her four-year coma and is horrified to find she is no longer pregnant. She kills a hospital worker who has been raping her while she was comatose, takes his truck, and teaches herself to walk again. Resolving to kill Bill and all four members of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, she picks her first target: O-Ren Ishii, now the leader of the Tokyo yakuza. O-Ren's parents were murdered by the yakuza when she was a child; she took vengeance on the yakuza boss and replaced him after training as an elite assassin.
The Bride travels to Okinawa, Japan, to obtain a sword from legendary swordsmith Hattori HanzĹ, who has sworn never to forge a sword again. After learning that her target is Bill, his former student, he forges his finest sword for her. The Bride tracks down O-Ren at a Tokyo restaurant, the House of Blue Leaves, and defeats her yakuza army, including the elite Crazy 88 and O-Ren's bodyguard, schoolgirl Gogo Yubari. She duels with O-Ren in the restaurant's Japanese garden. During the duel O-Ren apologizes to the Bride, who tearfully accepts. They continue and the Bride slices O-Ren's scalp off with a sword stroke. Afterwards, she tortures Sofie Fatale, O-Ren's assistant and Bill's protege, for information about Bill, and leaves her alive as a threat. Bill asks Sofie if the Bride knows her daughter is alive.

Question: Who does the Bride vow to kill?

Bill and the members of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad.

Bill and 4 memebers of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad


The protagonist of The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman is Lady Harman, nĂŠe Ellen Sawbridge. The moral, emotional, and intellectual conflicts that this tall, sensitive, graceful woman confronts arise in the context of a loveless marriage with Sir Isaac Harman, a self-made man who has grown rich as the proprietor of International Bread and Cake Stores and Staminal Bread. Sir Isaac meets his future wife when she is only seventeen and still a student in a boardinghouse in Wimbledon; she marries him largely out of pity. But the marriage is not a happy one, despite great wealth and the birth of four children. Sir Isaac is inherently domineering, and in an age of Suffragettes he encounters a desire for greater freedom in his wife.
The plot of the novel turns on Lady Harman's relationship with George Brumley (invariably "Mr. Brumley" in the text), a successful genteel novelist whose wife has died three and a half years earlier. Lady Harman meets Mr. Brumley because the Harmans buy his house, Black Strand, in the countryside outside London. Mr. Brumley falls in love with Lady Harman at first sight. His interest in her leads him and a number of acquaintances to pay Lady Harman a visit. This results is invitations to luncheons and committees for Lady Harman, and despite all his efforts the possessive Sir Isaac is unable to quell his wife's desire to accept. Through many twists and turns Mr. Brumley's attachment to Lady Harman increases until, after the death of Sir Isaac, he appears to win her love on the novel's conlcuding page. (This comes after she has definitively refused to marry him, and the reader is left uncertain whether her passionate kiss signifies that she has changed her mind on this question.)

Question: How many children did they have together?


The beginning of the book establishes the framework in which a 17th-century gentleman, mourning the death of his beloved, Lady Mirdath, is given a vision of a far-distant future where their souls will be re-united, and sees the world of that time through the eyes of a future incarnation. The language and style used are intended to resemble that of the 17th century, though the prose has features characteristic of no period whatsoever: the almost-complete lack of dialogue and proper names, for example. Critic Ian Bell has suggested that John Milton's epic poem "Paradise Lost" (1667) is probably a partial literary inspiration for Hodgson's novel, especially due to the hellish visions of sombre intensity which mark both works, and other similarities including the use of massive structures (the Temple of Pandemonium in Milton and the Last Redoubt in The Night Land).
Once into the book, the 17th century framing is mostly inconsequential. Instead, the story focuses on the future. The Sun has gone out and the Earth is lit only by the glow of residual vulcanism. The last few millions of the human race are gathered together in a gigantic metal pyramid, nearly eight miles high â the Last Redoubt, under siege from unknown forces and Powers outside in the dark. These are held back by a shield known as the "air clog", powered from a subterranean energy source called the "Earth Current". For millennia, vast living shapesâthe Watchersâhave waited in the darkness near the pyramid. It is thought they are waiting for the inevitable time when the Circle's power finally weakens and dies. Other living things have been seen in the darkness beyond, some of unknown origins, and others that may once have been human.
To leave the protection of the Circle means almost certain death, or worse an ultimate destruction of the soul. As the story commences, the narrator establishes mind contact with an inhabitant of another, forgotten Lesser Redoubt. First one expedition sets off to succour the inhabitants of the Lesser Redoubt, whose own Earth Current has been exhausted, only to meet with disaster. After that, the narrator sets off alone into the darkness to find the girl he has made contact with, knowing now that she is the reincarnation of his past love.
At the conclusion of the adventure, the narrative does not return to the framework story, instead ending with the happy homecoming of the couple and his inauguration into the ranks of their most honoured heroes.

Question: What is the gentalman morning?

The death of lady Mirdath.
the death of Lady Mirdath, his beloved


The film opens in early 1980s Canada where teenager Martin Asher (Paul Dano) is seen ambling about a bus station, seemingly uncertain of his destination. He befriends another teen on the bus, Matt Soulsby (Justin Chatwin) and the two talk about their plans for the future. When their bus breaks down, the two acquire a car from a nearby garage. While Martin is driving, a tire blows. Matt struggles to change the tire and Martin comments on how he and Matt are both about the same height, and kicks Matt into the path of an oncoming truck. He is last seen toting Matt's guitar and walking away singing in a voice similar to Matt's.
Twenty years later, a successful FBI profiler, Illeana Scott (Angelina Jolie), is summoned to help out Canadian law enforcement in Montreal, to apprehend Asher, who has been killing people for years and assuming their identities as he travels across North America. Scott has to adjust to working in a strange city with a police team that she does not really fit in with.
On a ferry to Quebec City, Martin's mother (Gena Rowlands) recognizes her son. After docking she locates a police officer and tells him that she saw her son on the ferry. Upon telling the officer her son died 19 years ago, she discusses the matter with a city official. She is convinced the man she saw was her son, and exclaims to the officer that her son is "dangerous". Based on Mrs. Asher's statement, the body believed to be that of her son is exhumed for an autopsy.
The team meets with art salesman James Costa (Ethan Hawke), an eyewitness who saw Asher kill his last victim. Costa makes a drawing of Asher and, within a couple of days, Asher's apartment is found. Scott discovers Asher's next target is Costa, so protecting him is priority number one. During the time they spend together, Scott and Costa begin to develop feelings for each other, though Scott refuses to become involved with him because of the ongoing case.
Asher flees with Costa as a hostage and Scott pursues them. Scott sees Asher die in a car accident and the case is closed. As Scott is packing up, preparing to return home, Costa visits her in her hotel room. Without saying anything, he undresses her and they make passionate love on a chest of drawers and the bed, surrounded by gruesome crime scene photos. The next morning, Scott awakes to find herself partly covered in Costa's blood. At first, she fears he is dead, but then he awakes and they discover he had merely popped the stitches in his arm that he received after the auto accident.
As Costa's stitches are repaired in the hospital, Scott is called down to the morgue as Mrs. Asher has come to identify the burned body of her son, killed in the accident. She says the body is not her son. Mrs. Asher and Scott realize that Asher is still alive. Mrs. Asher is shocked, leaves the morgue, and goes to the elevator, and Scott chases after her. Before Scott can reach her, the elevator door closes. Scott descends the stairs, hoping to intercept Mrs. Asher on the ground floor. When the elevator door opens, Scott sees Costa covered in blood, having killed Mrs. Asher - who Scott realizes is Costa's mother. The police try to capture Asher who escapes the hospital. Scott returns to her hotel room and frantically washes herself, in a state of manic disgust. An investigation shows that the man who died in the car accident, who the real Asher had identified as Asher, was actually Christopher Hart (Kiefer Sutherland), a drug dealer and art thief to whom Asher owed $80,000, and whom Asher murdered. The Montreal police chase Asher, but he escapes in a train station and boards a train headed east of Montreal, meanwhile setting up his next victim, a sports talent scout. After that, he calls Scott on the phone and taunts her. Scott admits to having consensual sex with Asher, and is consequently fired from the FBI.
Seven months later, Scott is living in an desolate farmhouse by herself in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and looking heavily pregnant with Asher's twin boys. One day as she sits alone in her home, she discovers Asher has broken into her house. She frantically tries to escape, but Asher quickly overpowers her and then reveals he has found all the guns she had hidden throughout the house. Asher makes her tea and tells her they could start over and live together as a family, but a disgusted Scott tells him she does not want to. Enraged, Asher begins beating and choking her and eventually stabs her in her belly with a pair of scissors. Scott, seemingly unharmed by the stabbing, shocks Asher by quickly stabbing him in the heart with the same scissors. As Asher is on his knees looking at her in disbelief, Scott removes a prosthetic pregnant belly, and tells him the past seven months have been a carefully planned trap. He falls over, dead. The film ends with Scott calling the police, saying "It's over," and staring out her window.

Question: How does Scott trick Martin into coming to her home?

By pretending that she is pregnant with his twins.

She moved into a farmhouse to live by herself


The lives of two closely linked families dangerously intersect in a small Illinois town in the 1950s. Two brothers, Jacey and Doug Holt are growing up in Haley, Illinois, sons of a working single mother. Their father, a reckless risk-taker, has lost his life via a bet with Lloyd Abbott (Will Patton), his business partner. Abbott eventually becomes one of the town's foremost, wealthiest and most-admired citizens. The lives of the Holts and the Abbotts are intertwined through various entanglements. Lloyd Abbott and his distant wife, Joan, are the parents of three beautiful daughters, Alice, Eleanor and Pamela.
Because of a misunderstanding of the circumstances surrounding his father's death (a supposed bet with Abbott that took the elder Holt's life), J.C. (Billy Crudup) seeks revenge on the Abbotts through the calculated seduction of the Abbott daughters. At first, J.C. cannot wait to escape the suffocating life in Haley, later in the film, however, he is pulled back as he idolizes the Abbott family, as well as obsesses about the oldest daughter, Alice (Joanna Going), thus seeking to jockey his way into the Abbott family.
At first, Doug (Joaquin Phoenix), the younger brother, admires and worships his brother's libertine lifestyle. However, as he matures, he discovers that all that glitters is not gold. He eventually falls in love with the youngest, virginal Abbott, Pamela (Liv Tyler), who protests his early, fumbling sexual advances. She forces him to appreciate her for who she is, not what she may offer up to him. Meanwhile, Eleanor (Jennifer Connelly) is sent away to a mental hospital after she and J.C. are caught by Lloyd Abbott, who cannot keep them apart.
After two years of being apart from each other, Doug and Pamela meet again by chance while they are in college in Philadelphia. However, Doug and J.C. are brought back to Haley after their mother's death. They also find a letter from their late father that says he has sold their patent for a 1937 DeSoto Coupe convertible. Despite the obstacles that Lloyd Abbott places in the way of any of the Holt brothers ever seeing his daughters again, Doug convinces Abbott at the end of the story of his true love for Pamela and receives his blessing on a future relationship.

Question: Which Abbott daughter did Doug fall in love with?


Andrew Beckett (Tom Hanks) is a Senior Associate at the largest corporate law firm in Philadelphia. Beckett hides his homosexuality and his status as an AIDS patient from the other members of the law firm. On the day Beckett is assigned the firm's newest and most important case, a partner in the firm notices a lesion on Beckett's forehead. Although Beckett attributes the lesion to a racquetball injury, it is actually due to Kaposi's Sarcoma, a form of cancer marked by multiple tumors on the lymph nodes and skin.
Shortly thereafter, Beckett stays home from work for several days to try to find a way to hide his lesions. While at home, he finishes the paperwork for the case he has been assigned and then brings it to his office, leaving instructions for his assistants to file the paperwork the following day, which marks the end of the statute of limitations for the case. Later that morning he receives a call asking for the paperwork, as the paper copy cannot be found and there are no copies on the computer's hard drive. The paperwork is finally discovered in an alternate location and is filed with the court at the last possible moment. The following day Beckett is fired by the firm's partners.
Beckett believes that someone deliberately hid his paperwork to give the firm an excuse to fire him, and that the firing is actually as a result of his diagnosis with AIDS. He asks several attorneys to take his case, including personal injury lawyer Joe Miller (Denzel Washington). Miller knows little about AIDS and appears to be worried that he could contract Beckett's illness. After declining to take the case, Miller immediately visits his doctor to find out if he could have contracted the disease. The doctor explains that the routes of HIV infection do not include casual contact such as a business meeting.
Unable to find a lawyer willing to represent him, Beckett is compelled to act as his own attorney. While researching a case at a law library, Miller sees Beckett at a nearby table. After a librarian announces that he has found a book on AIDS discrimination for Beckett, others in the library begin to first stare and then move away, and the librarian suggests Beckett retire to a private room. Disgusted by the other people's behavior, Miller approaches Beckett, reviews the material Beckett has gathered, and takes the case.
As the case goes before the court, the partners of the firm take the stand, each claiming that Beckett was incompetent and that he had deliberately tried to hide his condition. The defense repeatedly suggests that Beckett had invited his illness through his homosexual acts and was therefore not a victim. In the course of testimony, it is revealed that the partner who had noticed Beckett's lesion had previously worked with a woman who had contracted AIDS after a blood transfusion and so should have recognized the lesion as relating to AIDS. According to that partner, the woman was an innocent victim, unlike Beckett, and further testified that he did not recognize Beckett's lesions. To prove that the lesions would have been visible, Miller asks Beckett to unbutton his shirt while on the witness stand, revealing that his lesions were indeed visible and recognizable as such.
Beckett eventually collapses during the trial. After Beckett is hospitalized, the partner who noticed Beckett's lesions confesses that he suspected Beckett had AIDS but never gave him the opportunity to explain himself. The partner remorsefully confesses that he would regret betraying Beckett for the rest of his life. During his hospitalization, the jury votes in his favor, awarding him back pay, damages for pain and suffering, and punitive damages. Miller visits the visibly failing Beckett in the hospital after the verdict and overcomes his fear enough to touch Beckett's face. After Beckett's family leaves the room, he tells his partner Miguel (Antonio Banderas) that he is ready to die. At the Miller home, Joe and his wife are awakened by a phone call from Miguel, presumably to tell them that Beckett has died. The movie ends with a reception at Beckett's home following the funeral, where many mourners, including Miller, view home movies of Beckett as a happy child.

Question: Why does Beckett think the paperwork was lost?

He thinks the firm hid the paperwork so they could fire him.

Beckett believes the paperwork was lost deliberately to give the Firm an excuse to fire him because he had AIDS.


As with his previous novels, Richardson prefaced the novel by claiming to be merely the editor, saying, "How such remarkable collections of private letters fell into the editor's hand he hopes the reader will not think it very necessary to enquire". However, Richardson did not keep his authorship secret and, on the prompting of his friends like Samuel Johnson, dropped this framing device from the second edition.
The novel begins with the character of Harriet Byron leaving the house of her uncle, George Selby, to visit Mr. and Mrs. Reeves, her cousins, in London. She is an orphan who was educated by her grandparents, and, though she lacks parents, she is heir to a fortune of fifteen thousand pounds, which causes many suitors to pursue her. In London, she is pursued by three suitors, Mr. Greville, Mr. Fenwick and Mr. Orme. This courtship is followed by more suitors: Mr. Fowler, Sir Rowland Meredith and Sir Hargrave Pollexfen. The final one, Pollexfen, pursues Byron vigorously, which causes her to criticise him over a lack of morals and decency of character. However, Pollexfen does not end his pursuits of Byron until she explains that she could never receive his visits again.
Pollexfen, unwilling to be without Byron, decides to kidnap her while she attended a masquerade at the Haymarket. She is then imprisoned at Lisson Grove with the support of a widow and two daughters. While he keeps her prisoner, Pollexfen makes it clear to her that she shall be his wife, and that anyone who challenges that will die by his hand. Byron attempts to escape from the house, but this fails. To prevent her from trying to escape again, Pollexfen transports Byron to his home at Windsor. However, he is stopped at Hounslow Heath, where Charles Grandison hears Byron's pleas for help and immediately attacks Pollexfen. After this rescue, Grandison takes Byron to Colnebrook, the home of Grandison's brother-in-law, the "Earl of L."
After Pollexfen recovers from the attack, he sets out to duel Grandison. However, Grandison refuses on the grounds that dueling is harmful to society. After explaining why obedience to God and society are important, Grandison wins Pollexfen over and obtains his apology to Byron for his actions. She accepts his apology, and he follows with a proposal to marriage. She declines because she, as she admits, is in love with Grandison. However, a new suitor, the Earl of D, appears, and it emerges that Grandison promised himself to an Italian woman, Signorina Clementina della Porretta. As Grandison explains, he was in Italy years before and rescued the Barone della Porretta and a relationship developed between himself and Clementina, the baron's only daughter. However, Grandison could not marry her, as she demanded that he, an Anglican Protestant, become a Catholic, and he was unwilling to do so. After he left, she grew ill out of despair, and the Porrettas were willing to accept his religion, if he would return and make Clementina happy once more. Grandison, feeling obligated to do what he can to restore Clementina's happiness, returns to Italy; however, Clementina determines she can never marry a "heretic", and so Grandison returns to England and Harriet who accepts him. They are married; and everyone is accorded their just deserts.
In a "Concluding Note" to Grandison, Richardson writes: "It has been said, in behalf of many modern fictitious pieces, in which authors have given success (and happiness, as it is called) to their heroes of vicious if not profligate characters, that they have exhibited Human Nature as it is. Its corruption may, indeed, be exhibited in the faulty character; but need pictures of this be held out in books? Is not vice crowned with success, triumphant, and rewarded, and perhaps set off with wit and spirit, a dangerous representation?" In particular, Richardson is referring to novels of Fielding, his literary rival. This note was published with the final volume of Grandison in March 1754, a few months before Fielding left for Lisbon. Before Fielding died in Lisbon, he included a response to Richardson in his preface to Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon.

Question: Where is Harriet Byron when leaving for London?


Lloyd Christmas (Jim Carrey) and Harry Dunne (Jeff Daniels), two unintelligent men, are best friends and roommates living in Providence, Rhode Island who struggle at every aspect of life. Lloyd, a limousine driver, falls in love with Mary Swanson (Lauren Holly), a woman he is driving to the airport. She intentionally leaves a briefcase in the terminal; Lloyd, unaware that it contains ransom money for her kidnapped husband, Bobby, retrieves it and tries to return it to her, but her Aspen-bound plane has already departed, leading to Lloyd running through and falling out of the jetway.
Fired from his job, Lloyd returns to his apartment and learns that Harry has also been fired as a dog groomer after delivering dogs late to a show and accidentally getting them dirty. Bobby's kidnappers, Joe "Mental" Mentalino (Mike Starr) and J.P. Shay (Karen Duffy), follow Lloyd home from the airport in pursuit of the briefcase. Mistaking the crooks for debt collectors, the duo flee the apartment and return later to find that Mental and Shay have decapitated Harry's parakeet. Upset about their situation, Lloyd suggests they head to Aspen to find Mary and return the briefcase, hoping she can "plug them into the social pipeline." At first Harry opposes the idea, but eventually agrees and the duo leave the next day. Mental and Shay learn about their plans and follow them.
Mental and Shay catch up to the duo at a motel that night. Posing as a hitchhiker, Mental is picked up by Harry and Lloyd the next day only to be driven crazy by their childish antics, while Shay secretly follows them. During a lunch stop, the duo prank Mental with chili peppers in his burger and then accidentally kill him with rat poison pills (which he planned to use on them) after mistaking it for his medication. Nearing Colorado, Lloyd takes a wrong turn and ends up driving all night through Nebraska. Upon waking up and realizing Lloyd's mishap, Harry gives up on the journey and decides to walk home, but Lloyd later persuades him to continue after trading the van for a minibike.
The two arrive in Aspen but are unable to locate Mary. After a short scuffle over some gloves that night, the briefcase breaks open and they discover the money, and "borrow" it for a hotel suite, clothes and a Lamborghini Diablo. They learn that Mary and her family are hosting a gala and prepare to attend. At the gala, Harry, attempting to lure Mary over to Lloyd, reluctantly agrees to go skiing with her the next day and lies to Lloyd that he got him a date. The next day, Lloyd finds out Harry lied to him after waiting all day for Mary at the hotel bar.
In retaliation, Lloyd pranks Harry with coffee spiked with laxatives, leading to him to defecate in a broken toilet at Mary's house. Lloyd then arrives at Mary's house and informs her he has her briefcase. He takes her to the hotel and shows her the briefcase and confesses his love after some initial struggle, but is rejected. Nicholas Andre, an old friend of the Swansons and the mastermind behind Bobby's kidnapping, arrives with Shay and, upon learning most of the ransom money has been spent by Harry and Lloyd and replaced with IOUs, takes Lloyd and Mary hostage, as well as Harry when he returns. Before Nicholas can kill them, an FBI team raids the suite and arrests him and Shay. After the incident, Mary and Bobby are reunited, much to Lloyd's jealousy, in which he fantasies of shooting him dead when he realizes he came all this way for nothing.
The next day, Harry and Lloyd begin walking home. All of the items they bought were confiscated and their moped has broken down. The two unknowingly decline the chance to be oil boys for a group of bikini girls, after which Harry ironically tells Lloyd that they will get their "break" one day. Harry and Lloyd then play a friendly game of tag as they continue to walk back home.

Question: Why was Harry fired from his job as a dog groomer?

He delivered the dogs late to the dog show and got them dirty.

Delivering dogs late and dirty to the dog show.


The People That Time Forgot is a direct sequel to The Land That Time Forgot and continues the lost world saga begun in the earlier story. Burroughs continues the revelation of his lost world's unique biological system, only hinted at in the previous installment, in which the slow progress of evolution in the world outside is recapitulated as a matter of individual metamorphosis. This system forms a thematic element serving to unite the three otherwise rather loosely linked Caspak stories.The novel begins with the organization of an expedition to rescue Bowen J. Tyler, Lys La Rue, and the other castaways marooned on the large Antarctic island of Caprona, whose tropical interior, known to its inhabitants as Caspak, is home to prehistoric fauna of all eras. Tyler's recovered manuscript detailing their ordeal is delivered to his family, and the relief effort is put together by Tom Billings, secretary of the Tyler shipbuilding business. The expedition's ship, the Toreador, locates Caprona, and while the bulk of the crew attempts to scale the encircling cliffs Billings flies over them in an aircraft.
Billings' plane is attacked by flying reptiles and forced down in the interior of Caspak. He saves a native girl named Ajor from a large cat and a group of ape-men, and undertakes to accompany her back to her people, the fully human Galus, while she educates him in the language and mysteries of the island. They travel north, encountering various creatures of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras, as well as additional primitive subhuman races. They pass through the lands of the Neanderthal Bo-lu (club men) and the more advanced Sto-lu (hatchet men), who are easily cowed by gunfire. But in the country of the Band-lu (spear men) he is taken captive, and despairs until rescued in turn by Ajor. They resume their journey, re-encountering and befriending Tomar, a Band-lu newly become Kro-lu (bow man). Tomar and his mate So-al are the first examples Billings has actually seen of Caspakian evolutionary metamorphosis in action.
After an interlude in which Ajor's back story is related the new friends separate. Billings and Ajor enter Kro-lu territory and save Chal-az, a Kro-lu warrior, from a group of Band-lu. Visiting the Kro-lu village as his guest, they are parted again when Billings is attacked through the machinations of the chief Du-seen, who has designs on Ajor. They escape individually, making for the Galu country. Du-seen goes after Ajor with some of his warriors.
Billings catches and tames an ancestral horse, with the aid of which he rescues Ajor from Du-seen. Pursued, they resign themselves to death, but are relieved by a force consisting of Bowen Tyler, Galu warriors, and the rescue crew from the Toreador, which had successfully scaled the cliffs and entered Caspak after Billings' ill-fated airplane flight. All are reunited in the Galu village, where Tyler and Lys La Rue have been formally married by the captain of the Toreador. Billings and Ajor also desire to wed, but Ajor may not leave Caspak due to her status as cos-ata-lo â she was born a fully evolved Galu rather than attaining that form through metamorphosis, and hence is treasured by her people. Billings elects to remain in Caspak to be with her.

Question: Which sort of creatures live in Caspak?

Prehistoric animals.
Prehistoric creatures


God creates the world in six days and consecrates the seventh as a day of rest. God creates the first humans Adam and Eve and all the animals in the Garden of Eden but instructs them not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. A talking serpent, portrayed as a deceptive creature or trickster, entices Eve into eating it anyway, and she entices Adam, whereupon God curses them and throws them out in the fall of man. Eve bears two sons, Cain and Abel. Cain kills Abel after God accepts Abel's offering but not Cain's. God then curses Cain. Eve bears another son, Seth, to take Abel's place.
After many generations of Adam have passed from the lines of Cain and Seth, the world becomes corrupted by the sin of man and Nephilim, and God determines to wipe out mankind. First, he instructs the righteous Noah and his family to build a huge boat and put examples of all the animals on it. Then God sends a great flood to wipe out the rest of the world. When the waters recede, God promises that he will not destroy the world a second time with water with the rainbow as the symbol of his promise. But upon seeing mankind cooperating to build a great tower city, the Tower of Babel, God divides humanity with many languages and sets them apart with confusion.
God instructs Abram to travel from his home in Mesopotamia to the land of Canaan. There, God makes a covenant with Abram, promising that his descendants shall be as numerous as the stars, but that people will suffer oppression in a foreign land for four hundred years, after which they will inherit the land "from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates." Abram's name is changed to Abraham and that of his wife Sarai to Sarah, and circumcision of all males is instituted as the sign of the covenant. Because Sarah is old, she tells Abraham to take her Egyptian handmaiden, Hagar, as a second wife. Through Hagar, Abraham fathers Ishmael.
God resolves to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah for the sins of their people. Abraham protests and gets God to agree not to destroy the cities if 10 righteous men can be found. Angels save Abraham's nephew Lot and his family, but his wife looks back on the destruction against their command and is turned into a pillar of salt. Lot's daughters, concerned that they are fugitives who will never find husbands, get him drunk to become pregnant by him, and give birth to the ancestors of the Moabites and Ammonites.
Abraham and Sarah go to the foreign land of Gerar, pretending to be brother and sister (they are half-siblings). The King of Gerar takes Sarah for his wife, but God warns him to return her, and he obeys. God sends Sarah a son to be named Isaac, through whom the covenant will be established. At Sarah's insistence, Ishmael and his mother Hagar are driven out into the wilderness, but God saves them and promises to make Ishmael a great nation.
God tests Abraham by demanding that he sacrifice Isaac. As Abraham is about to lay the knife upon his son, God restrains him, promising him numberless descendants. On the death of Sarah, Abraham purchases Machpelah (believed to be modern Hebron) for a family tomb and sends his servant to Mesopotamia to find among his relations a wife for Isaac, and Rebekah is chosen. Other children are born to Abraham by another wife, Keturah, among whose descendants are the Midianites, and he dies in a prosperous old age and is buried in his tomb at Hebron.
Isaac's wife Rebecca gives birth to the twins Esau, father of the Edomites, and Jacob. Through deception, Jacob becomes the heir instead of Esau and gains his father's blessing. He flees to his uncle where he prospers and earns his two wives, Rachel and Leah. Jacob's name is changed to Israel, and by his wives and their handmaidens he has twelve sons, the ancestors of the twelve tribes of the Children of Israel, and a daughter, Dinah.
Joseph, Jacob's favorite son, is sold into slavery in Egypt by his jealous brothers. But Joseph prospers, after hardship, with God's guidance of interpreting Pharaoh's dream of upcoming famine. He is then reunited with his father and brothers, who don't recognize him but who plead for food. After much manipulation, he reveals himself and lets them and their households into Egypt, where Pharaoh assigns to them the land of Goshen. Jacob calls his sons to his bedside and reveals their future before he dies. Joseph lives to an old age and exhorts his brethren, if God should lead them out of the country, to take his bones with them.

Question: Which man is tested by God when he is told to sacrifice his son?


In 1976, Jackie Moon is a singer who used the profits from his one-hit wonder, "Love Me Sexy," to buy a basketball team in the American Basketball Association, the Flint Tropics, becoming the owner, head Coach, and starting power forward. The ABA Commissioner announces a plan to merge the league with the National Basketball Association, but only four teams will move to the more established league. The Tropics, the worst team in the league, are in danger of dissolving. Jackie argues that the teams with the four best records should be merged and the Commissioner accepts.
Jackie trades the team's washing machine to the Kentucky Colonels for Ed Monix, former backup point guard for the Boston Celtics. The Commissioner reveals that the Tropics will also need at least 2,000 fans at every remaining home game.
Jackie begins to stage extremely desperate stunts, like wrestling a bear named Dewie. The Tropics begin playing better with Monix, as well as the increased intensity of Clarence Withers. Monix takes over as offensive and defensive coordinator and starting point guard, leaving Jackie as the head coach. Monix trains the team rigorously with a play he calls the "Puke" as the players are to run it, until they throw up.
From Monix's training, the Tropics go on a winning run, moving from last to fifth. Jackie gets a visit from the Commissioner. The NBA does not think that Flint has a large enough media market and will not allow the Tropics into the league even if they beat the first place San Antonio Spurs. Jackie admits that he stole "Love Me Sexy" from a napkin his mother wrote on three weeks before she died. Realizing that all his assets are basically stolen, Jackie trades Withers to the Spurs so that he may realize his dream in the NBA. Monix inspires the team to leave everything on the court, while they may not be able to continue the franchise after this season, they have come very far and still have a lot to prove.
Going into the Spurs game, which Moon declares the "MegaBowl", the Tropics are in fifth place and with a win they would make it into fourth, although they have no chance in making it into the NBA. The game begins and the Tropics fall behind quickly. In the closing seconds of the first half, Jackie gets fouled hard by Petrelli while going up for a shot and is injured. Withers decides he has seen enough and rushes in to the Tropics locker rooms with the rest of the team, which angers the Spurs.
During halftime, an unconscious Jackie imagines that he is in heaven with his mother. He apologizes for stealing her song and she gives him a weapon in order to win. On the court, the Tropics reveal their new weapon: the alley-oop. With the return of Withers, it is very effective and he leads the charge. The referee calls the play a foul, but after some persuasion by Jackie and Monix, is soon convinced that it is a legitimate score. The Tropics take advantage of this new strategy and begin coming back. After the Spurs start defending against the Alley-Oop, Monix calls a time-out and calls for them to run the "Puke" with 12 seconds left and down by two points, 115â117. The play gives Jackie the ball, but he gets fouled hard again with two seconds left. Shooting granny style, Moon sinks the first basket. The second rebounds off and Monix tips it in right at the buzzer for two points to win.
The Spurs' coach offers Withers his position back. The now-former ABA Commissioner offers Jackie a position on the staff of the NBA Assistant Commissioner, as a marketing director. As Jackie is about to accept, the Commissioner is mauled by the Dewie the bear.

Question: What team was Ed Monix with prior to the Flint Tropics?


At the beginning of this book, the journalist father of Robert, Anthea, Cyril, and Jane has gone overseas to cover the war in Manchuria. Their mother has gone to Madeira to recuperate from an illness, taking with her their younger brother, the Lamb. The children are living with an old Nurse who has set up a boardinghouse in central London. Her only remaining boarder is a scholarly Egyptologist who has filled his bedsit with ancient artefacts. During the course of the book, the children get to know the "poor learned gentleman" and befriend him and call him Jimmy.
Cook's house is in Fitzrovia, the district of London near the British Museum, which Nesbit accurately conveys as having bookstalls and shops filled with unusual merchandise. In one of these shops the children find the Psammead. It had been captured by a trapper, who failed to recognise it as a magical being. The terrified creature cannot escape, for it can only grant wishes to others, not to itself. Using a ruse, the children persuade the shopkeeper to sell them the "mangy old monkey," and they free their old friend.
Guided by the Psammead the children purchase an ancient amulet in the shape of an Egyptian Tyet (a small amulet of very similar shape to the picture can be seen in the British Museum today), which should be able to grant them their hearts' desire: the safe return of their parents and baby brother. But this Amulet is only the surviving half of an original whole. By itself, it cannot grant their hearts' desire. Yet it can serve as a portal, enabling time travel to find the other half.
In the course of the novel the Amulet transports the children and the Psammead to times and places where the Amulet has previously existed, in the hope that â somewhen in time â the children can find the Amulet's missing half. Among the ancient realms they visit are Babylon, Egypt, the Phoenician city of Tyre, a ship to "the Tin Islands" (ancient Cornwall), and Atlantis just before the flood. In one chapter, they meet Julius Caesar on the shores of Gaul, just as he has decided that Britain is not worth invading. Jane's childish prattling about the glories of England persuades Caesar to invade after all.
In each of their time-jaunts, the children are magically able to speak and comprehend the contemporary language. Nesbit acknowledges this in her narration, without offering any explanation. The children eventually bring "Jimmy" (the "Learned Gentleman") along with them on some of their time trips. For some reason, Jimmy does not share the children's magical gift of fluency in the local language: he can only understand (for example) Latin based on his own studies.
In one chapter the children also come to the future, visiting a British utopia in which H.G. Wells is venerated as a prophet. Wells and E. Nesbit were both members of the Fabian political movement, as was George Bernard Shaw, and this chapter in The Story of the Amulet is essentially different from all the other trips in the narrative: whereas all the other adventures in this novel contain scrupulously detailed accounts of past civilisations, the children's trip into the future represents Nesbit's vision of utopia. This episode can be compared to many other visions of utopian socialist futures published in that era; Nesbit's is notable in that it concentrates on how the life of children at school would be radically different, with economic changes only appearing briefly in the background. (It seems somewhat akin to William Morris's News from Nowhere.) It also mentions a pressing danger of Edwardian England: the number of children wounded, burned, and killed each year. (This concern was addressed in the Children Act 1908, and later in the Children's Charter.)

Question: What wish do the children want the amulet to grant them?

Safe return for their parents and brother.

The safe return of their parents, and brother.