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No one is left to mourn Giles except a courageous peasant girl named Marty South,who has always loved him. Marty is a plain girl whose only attribute is her beautiful hair. She is persuaded to sell this at the start of the story to a barber who is procuring it for Mrs Charmond, after Marty realises that Giles loves Gra...
This plot summary is based on a text published ca. 1760 by John Cotton and Joshua Eddowes, which in its turn was based on a chapbook ca. 1711, and reprinted in 'The Classic Fairy Tales' by Iona and Peter Opie in 1974.
The tale is set during the reign of King Arthur and tells of a young Cornish farmer's son named Jack who is not only strong but so clever he easily confounds the learned with his penetrating wit. Jack encounters a cattle-eating giant called Cormoran (Cornish: 'The Giant of the Sea' SWF:Kowr-Mor-An) and lures him to his...
On a trip into Wales, Jack tricks a two-headed Welsh giant into slashing his own belly open. King Arthur's son now enters the story and Jack becomes his servant. They spend the night with a three-headed giant and rob him in the morning. In gratitude for having spared his castle, the three-headed giant gives Jack a magi...
Jack ventures forth alone with his magic shoes, sword, cloak, and cap to rid the realm of troublesome giants. He encounters a giant terrorizing a knight and his lady. He cuts off the giant's legs then puts him to death. He discovers the giant's companion in a cave. Invisible in his cloak, Jack cuts off the giant's nose...
Growing weary of the festivities, Jack sallies forth for more adventures and meets an elderly man who directs him to an enchanted castle belonging to the giant Galigantus (Galligantua, in the Joseph Jacobs version). The giant holds captive many knights and ladies and a Duke's daughter who has been transformed into a wh...
At the court of King Arthur, Jack marries the Duke's daughter and the two are given an estate where they live happily ever after.
The story is set in 13th century England and concerns the fictional outlaw Norman of Torn, who purportedly harried the country during the power struggle between King Henry III and Simon de Montfort. Norman is the supposed son of the Frenchman de Vac, once the king's fencing master, who has a grudge against his former ...
Otherwise, all goes according to plan. By 17, Norman is the best swordsman in all of England; by the age of 18, he has a large bounty on his head, and by the age of 19, he leads the largest band of thieves in all of England. None can catch or best him. In his hatred for the king he even becomes involved in the civil wa...
Finally brought to bay in a confrontation with both King Henry and de Montfort, Norman is brought down by the treachery of de Vac, who appears to kill him, though at the cost of his own life. As de Vac dies, he reveals that Norman is in fact Richard, long-lost son of King Henry and Queen Eleanor and brother to Prince E...
Instead of Sherlock Holmes being the main character, the story follows Jack Colder, who claims his only notable childhood experience was when he accidentally prevented a burglary during an attempt to escape a boarding school. This event caught Jim Horscroft and the two become friends. Once Jim goes off to medical scho...
Gregory Lunn and Mrs Juno are in love, having met during a sea voyage. On a sofa in a hotel where both are staying, they discuss their feelings. They are both already married, so they decide they must part, but are unable to do so. They then recognise the voices of their respective spouses, apparently staying together ...
The story centres on the relationship between Mrs Kitty Warren and her daughter, Vivie. Mrs. Warren, a former prostitute and current brothel owner, is described as "on the whole, a genial and fairly presentable old blackguard of a woman." Vivie, an intelligent and pragmatic young woman who has just graduated from univ...
In a small Kansas town, Betty (Renée Zellweger), a kind and considerate diner waitress, is a fan of the soap opera A Reason to Love. She has no idea that her husband, Del (Aaron Eckhart), a car salesman, is having an affair with his secretary and that he intends to leave Betty to pursue a relationship with her. She al...
Two hitmen, Charlie and Wesley (Morgan Freeman and Chris Rock), show up at the house with Betty's husband. The hitmen torture Betty's husband into revealing that he has hidden the drugs in the trunk of a car, but Wesley scalps him anyway. Betty witnesses the murder and experiences a fugue state, escaping the reality of...
That evening, Sheriff Eldon Ballard (Pruitt Taylor Vince), local reporter Roy Ostery (Crispin Glover), and several policemen examine the crime scene while Betty calmly packs a suitcase. She seems oblivious to the murder, even with the investigation going on right in her house. At the police station, a psychiatrist exam...
Meanwhile, the two hitmen are trying to find her, as they have finally realized that she must have the car with the drugs. As they search, Charlie begins falling in love with his image of Betty, to Wesley's consternation. In Los Angeles, Betty tries to get a job as a nurse while looking for her long-lost "ex-fiancé". S...
Despite an injunction against touching any patients, Betty becomes popular with them and their families. She ends up living with Rosa (Tia Texada), a Hispanic legal secretary who has had a series of painful love affairs and offers to help Betty find her surgeon boyfriend. Rosa learns from a colleague that "David" is ju...
The lawyer has an idea and supplies tickets to a charity function where George McCord (Greg Kinnear), the actor portraying David, will be appearing. Betty meets George at the function. George is inclined to dismiss her as an overimaginative fan, but something about her compels him to walk back and talk to her some more...
George begins falling in love with her, and he and his producer decide to bring her onto the show as a new character: Nurse Betty. When Betty arrives on set, she falls out of her fantasy world back into real life, as seeing the inner workings of a television show snaps her back into reality. After two failed takes, she...
Now recovered, Betty begins to tell Rosa what happened when the two hitmen come into the house to decide what to do with them after they find the car with the drugs outside Rosa's house. The killers are interrupted by the reporter and Sheriff Ballard from Betty's hometown who have also tracked her down. A standoff ensu...
George offers Betty a job on the show. She appears in 63 episodes and takes a vacation in Rome. Betty later plans to pursue nursing as a career.
The story revolves around a struggle to determine which of Satan's (Harvey Keitel) three sons will succeed their father as ruler of Hell. Adrian (Rhys Ifans) is the most intelligent, Cassius (Tom Lister Jr.) is the toughest, and Nicky (Adam Sandler) is their father's favorite, even though Nicky has had a speech impedi...
Having been the "prince of darkness" for ten thousand years, Satan assembles his sons to decide which of them will succeed him, but instead he keeps the throne for himself because his sons are not yet ready to be his successor and tells them that they need to learn to keep the balance between good and evil. Angered by ...
At first, Nicky has trouble staying alive on Earth. He is killed several times, landing in Hell and returning to New York each time. While learning how to eat and sleep, he meets a talking bulldog named Mr. Beefy (voice of Robert Smigel) (a friend of Nicky's father), rents an apartment with an actor named Todd (Allen C...
Nicky's first encounter with his brothers occurs when Adrian sees him with Valerie, takes mental control of his body and makes him scare her away. Then Nicky sees Cassius on television, possessing the referee (Dana Carvey) of a Harlem Globetrotters game. When he goes to the court and tricks Cassius into the flask, meta...
The next day, Adrian possesses the chief of the NYPD (Michael McKean) and accuses Nicky of mass murder using a rather badly edited scene from Scarface. Not knowing what to do, Nicky has Todd kill him so he can go back to Hell and ask his father for advice, but his father has trouble hearing because his ears have fallen...
Arriving in Hell just minutes before midnight, Adrian dethrones his weakened father and takes over, rising into Central Park and starting a riotous party while all of the demons except Satan's assistant Jimmy (Blake Clark) join Adrian on Earth. Meanwhile, Nicky wakes up in Heaven as a reward for sacrificing himself and...
With his brothers captured, Nicky is ready to save his father. After he sins to make sure he goes to Hell by setting bees on Henry Winkler, he and Valerie express their love for each other and she kills him with a boulder given to her by Ozzy. With the flow of souls restored in Hell, Satan regains his body and recommen...
When satellite-tracking stations around the world begin receiving radio signals from deep space, Joe Burke, owner of a small engineering company, is about to propose marriage to Sandy Lund, a woman he has known since high school. The signals consist of a repeated series of flute-like notes, which Joe recognizes. Joe pl...
Meanwhile astronomers trace the signal to an asteroid, M-387, and send a radio signal to it. In response the asteroid changes its signal. With the help of Holmes, a yacht builder, Keller, an electronics expert, and several workmen, Joe builds a small spaceship propelled by a reactionless drive based on his modification...
After eleven days of travel they arrive at the asteroid and see only a radio mast and the entrance to a tunnel. When they fly their ship into the tunnel a door closes behind them, lights come on, and the tunnel fills with air and artificial gravity. Finding the air breathable, the five impromptu astronauts explore the ...
In one room Joe finds thousands of small black cubes. When he dozes off next to one he has a lucid dream of taking part in a weapons drill. He understands that the dream that has obsessed him since childhood must have come from a fragment of a similar cube that had been found in a Cro-Magnon cave with artifacts dated t...
Using a procedure that Keller develops, Joe, Holmes, and Keller modify three hundred of the torpedoes they find in the fortress and launch them. The ten-foot spheres accelerate toward the enemy squadron at 160-gees, approaching the speed of light in little over two days. The torpedoes obliterate the Enemy's squadron an...
After writing an unfortunate article under a pseudonym (Machiavelli, Jr.) and having it published in a prestigious journal read by diplomats, Stephen Silk is to be banished from the Solar League's capitol on Luna for a time. He is assigned to be the Solar League's new ambassador to the people of Capella IV, New Texas. ...
On the starship taking him to his new posting Silk meets his secretary/bodyguard, a native New Texan named Hoddy Ringo. The briefing books that were given to him tell him little about the New Texans and their culture and the contents of the trunk that was put aboard the ship for him appall him: contrary to the practice...
Silk is welcomed to New Texas with a giant barbecue, where he sees a trial and learns that assassination of politicians is a legitimate part of the New Texan political process as long as the assassin can show that his victim “needed killin'”. Back at the embassy he learns more about the murder of Silas Cumshaw, in part...
At the barbecue Silk meets Gglafrr Ddespttann Vuvuvu, the ambassador of the z'Srauff, humanoid aliens that look like they evolved from dogs. Part of Silk's mission involves convincing the New Texans to join the Solar League so that the Space Navy can base ships near their planet to counter the threat from the z'Srauff....
Silk has determined that he cannot allow the Bonneys to be convicted in the Court of Political Justice, but it's too late to have them tried as common criminals. A conviction would produce a precedent that would devastate the Diplomatic Corps by making every diplomat a legitimate target. Likewise, the Solar League cann...
The last quarter of the story lays out the trial of the Bonney brothers. As amicus curiae Silk introduces evidence to show that the Bonneys assassinated Ambassador Cumshaw at the behest of the z'Srauff. He then persuades the court that it should not have tried the case, because Ambassador Cumshaw was not a politician w...
Shortly thereafter a z'Srauff battlefleet jumps into Capellan space only to be ambushed by the Solar League's Space Navy and effectively destroyed. After working out a treaty between New Texas and the Solar League, Silk resigns his post, marries a local girl, and takes up residence on New Texas.
The first-person narrative is told from the point of view of Alexei Ivanovich, a tutor working for a Russian family living in a suite at a German hotel. The patriarch of the family, The General, is indebted to the Frenchman de Criet and has mortgaged his property in Russia to pay only a small amount of his debt. Upon ...
Alexei is hopelessly in love with Polina, the General's stepdaughter, and swears an oath of servitude to her. He told her while on a walk on the Schlangenberg (a mountain in the German town) that all she had to do was give the word and he would gladly walk off the edge and plummet to his death. This leads to her asking...
One day while Polina and Alexei are on a walk they see Baron and Baroness Wurmerhelm. Polina dares him to insult the aristocratic couple and he does so with little hesitation. This sets off a chain of events that details Mademoiselle Blanche's interest in the General and gets Alexei fired as tutor of the General's chil...
After being ushered to the roulette table, she plays and wins 13,000 Friedrich's d'ors (7000-8000 roubles), a significant amount of money. After a short return to the hotel, she comes back to roulette tables and she starts to get the bug; before she leaves the town, she's lost over a hundred thousand roubles in three d...
When Alexei gets back to his room after sending Grandmother off at the railway station, he's greeted by Polina. She shows him a letter where de Criet says he has started legal proceedings to sell Generals' properties mortgaged to him, but he is returning properties worth fifty thousand roubles to General for Polina's b...
After learning that the General wouldn't be getting his inheritance and that Prince Nilski is penniless, Mademoiselle Blanche leaves the hotel with her mother/chaperone for Paris and seduces Alexei to follow her. Alexei goes with them, and they stay together for almost a month, he allowing Mlle Blanche to spend his ent...
Alexei starts to gamble to survive. One day he passes Mr. Astley on a park bench in Bad Homburg and has a talk with him. He finds out from Astley that Polina is in Switzerland and actually does love him. Astley tells that Grandmother has died and left Polina and the children financially secured. The General has died in...
A woman identifying herself as Evelyn Mulwray hires private investigator J. J. "Jake" Gittes to surveil her husband, Hollis Mulwray, chief engineer for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. Gittes tails him, hears him publicly oppose the creation of a new reservoir, and shoots photographs of him with a young ...
Realizing he was set up, Gittes assumes that Mulwray's husband is the real target. Before he can question him, Lieutenant Lou Escobar fishes Mulwray, drowned, from a freshwater reservoir. Under retainer to Mrs. Mulwray, Gittes investigates his suspicions of murder and notices that, although huge quantities of water are...
Gittes learns that Mulwray was once the business partner of his wife's wealthy father, Noah Cross. Over lunch at his personal club, Cross warns Gittes that he does not understand the forces at work, and offers to double Gittes's fee to search for Mulwray's missing mistress. At the hall of records, Gittes discovers that...
Gittes deduces that the water department is drying the land so it can be bought at a reduced price, and that Mulwray was murdered when he discovered the plan. He discovers that a former retirement home resident is one of the valley's new landowners, and seemingly purchased the property a week after his death. Evelyn an...
After fleeing Mulvihill and his thugs, Gittes and Evelyn hide at Evelyn's house and sleep together. Early in the morning, Evelyn has to leave suddenly; she warns Gittes that her father is dangerous. Gittes follows her car to a house, where he spies her through the windows comforting Mulwray's mistress. He accuses Evely...
The next day, an anonymous call draws Gittes to Ida Sessions's apartment; he finds her murdered and Escobar waiting for his arrival. Escobar tells him the coroner's report found salt water in Mulwray's lungs, indicating that he did not drown in the freshwater reservoir. Escobar suspects Evelyn of the murder and tells G...
Gittes arranges for the women to flee to Mexico and instructs Evelyn to meet him at her butler's home in Chinatown. He summons Cross to the Mulwray home to settle their deal. Cross admits his intention to annex the Northwest Valley into the City of Los Angeles, then irrigate and develop it. Gittes accuses Cross of murd...