Adventure begins here.

CONTENTS Chapter 1 REPITION 2 Chapter 2 BILLY BLACK 12 Chapter 3 AIRBOURNE 22 Chapter 4 NEW SKIES 31 Chapter 5 HOURS OF DARKNESS 37 Chapter 6 FAMILY HISTORY 42 Chapter 7 APPARITIONS 50 Chapter 8 TARGET 54 Chapter 9 CITY LIGHTS 60 Chapter 10 BLOOD DRINKER 68 Chapter 11 TRUTH 73 Chapter 12 ILLUSIONAL 78 Chapter 13 MEET THE FAMILY 85 PREFACE SMOKE BELLOWED FROM MY UNEVEN FLOORBOARDS, FLAMES LICKED around my bedroom walls. The smoke made screaming harder so I closed my eyes and rolled up into a ball on the floor, my arms wrapped tightly around my legs. Just as I had reached unconsciousness I felt my body being picked up. My rescuers arms were stone cold and sent a sharp pain pulsating through my arm. My eyelids felt as heavy as lead as I fought for a glimpse of my rescuer. The first thing I noticed about him was his livid eyes - a liquid topaz colour that sparkled in the firelight. His dark tousled moonlight shaded hair glinted in the limited light of the flames. His face was set like stone into a scowl, anger filled in his beautiful eyes. He was wearing dark jeans and a black t-shirt. It was as if he were an ice sculpture, carved by the gods. I reached out to touch the back of his hand but resisted; he looked down at me with intelligent eyes. He looked at me for a second studying my face, my eyes, my hair but then his head quickly snapped back as his eyes locked

  • Word count: 53878
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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A Christmas Carol - Marley's Ghost.

A Christmas Carol Stave One Marley's Ghost Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a doornail. Mind! I don't mean to say that I know of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a doornail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the country's done for. You will, therefore, permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a doornail. Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain. The mention of Marley's funeral brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly

  • Word count: 29008
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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To Kill A Mockingbird Full Summary

Part One: Chapter 1 Summary The chapter opens with the introduction of the narrator, Scout Finch, her older brother Jem (Jeremy), and their friend and neighbor, Dill (Charles Baker Harris). It quickly moves into an overview of Finch family history. Their ancestor, a Methodist named Simon Finch, fled British persecution to eventually settle in Alabama, where he trapped animals for fur and practiced medicine. Having bought several slaves, he established a largely self-sufficient homestead and farm, Finch's Landing, near Saint Stephens. The family lost its wealth in the Civil War. Scout's father, Atticus Finch, studied law in Montgomery while supporting his brother, John "Jack" Hale Finch, who was in medical school in Boston. Their sister Alexandra remained at Finch's Landing. Atticus began his law practice in Maycomb, the county seat of Maycomb County, where his "office in the courthouse contained little more than a hat rack, a spittoon, a checkerboard, and an unsullied Code of Alabama." His first case entailed his defense of two men who refused to plead guilty for second-degree murder. They instead pleaded not guilty for first-degree murder, and were hanged, marking "probably the beginning of my father's profound distaste for criminal law." Scout then presents Depression-era Maycomb ("an old tired town when I first knew it"), describing the summer heat and the slow pace

  • Word count: 23079
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891) by Thomas Hardy.

Context Thomas Hardy was born on June 2, 1840, in Higher Bockhampton in Dorset, a rural region of southwestern England that was to become the focus of his fiction. The child of a builder, Hardy was apprenticed at the age of sixteen to John Hicks, an architect who lived in the city of Dorchester. The location would later serve as the model for Hardy's fictional Casterbridge. Although he gave serious thought to attending university and entering the church, a struggle he would dramatize in his novel Jude the Obscure, declining religious faith and lack of money led Hardy to pursue a career in writing instead. He spent nearly a dozen years toiling in obscurity and producing unsuccessful novels and poetry. Far from the Madding Crowd, published in 1874, was the author's first critical and financial success. Finally able to support himself as a writer, Hardy married Emma Lavinia Gifford later that year. Although he built a reputation as a successful novelist, Hardy considered himself first and foremost a poet. To him, novels were primarily a means of earning a living. Like many of his contemporaries, he first published his novels in periodic installments in magazines or serial journals, and his work reflects the conventions of serialization. To ensure that readers would buy a serialized novel, writers often structured each installment to be something of a cliffhanger, which

  • Word count: 22025
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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Sins of the Past

Sins of the Past Jackson Jones Prologue President Gregory Taylor sat at his ornate desk in the Air Force One equivalent of the Oval Office. Taylor looked weary, his jet black hair was growing greyer by the day and his black suit was crumpled. He was only 58, but at this point in time he looked in his seventies. There was a knock at the door and Taylor looked up through his wire rim glasses, "come in." The door opened and a beautiful young woman stepped in. Rachel Fletcher was thirty years old, she had dark brown hair which stretched down, just past her shoulders and her sparkling blue eyes were dazzling. She held her chin up, not in an arrogant way, but just so she could be taken seriously. "Good morning Mr. President," she smiled. Taylor sat up and looked at her, "hello Rachel." Rachel was holding a brown envelope and she held it against her black suit. She stepped forward and gave the envelope to Taylor; he took it and opened it. "That is an email; Senator Clay sent to his PA Trish Dunne," Rachel explained, "it appears he already knows who has won this election." Taylor read the sheet of white paper, "Trish, I looked at the current polls and Taylor is way in front. I don't think we can come back from this." Taylor sighed and Rachel frowned, "is that not good news sir?" Taylor got to his feet and stepped over to the window and stared out at the Alaskan landscape.

  • Word count: 20928
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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Cruel Inventions By Roger Kumble

CRUEL INVENTIONS by Roger Kumble based on the novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Choderlos De Laclos February 10, 1998 EXT. MANHATTAN SKYLINE - DAY 1 We circle around the island of Manhattan moving closer and closer till we're looking down on Fifth Avenue. As the melody continues to play we MOVE towards a building and ZOOM into a window. 2 INT. THERAPIST'S OFFICE - DAY 2 A fifty-year old female therapist (DR. GREENBAUM) sits at her desk, frowning as she takes notes. Books of Jung and Freud line the shelves. A young man (SEBASTIAN VALMONT) sits in a chair in front of her looking impatient. The therapist continues to write notes. DR. GREENBAUM Jesus. We've been at this for six months. SEBASTIAN I know. DR. GREENBAUM And you haven't made an ounce of progress. SEBASTIAN I know. Sebastian takes out a cigarette. DR. GREENBAUM (not looking up) There's no smoking in my office. Sebastian sneers at her then puts the cigarette away. Dr. Greenbaum finishes her notes and looks up at him, shaking her head. SEBASTIAN What do you want me to say? That I'm supposed to feel remorse because I act the way I do? The truth is I don't. Dr. Greenbaum shakes her head and takes notes. SEBASTIAN (cont'd) Look, I'm not like all the other kids in high school. I don't care about book reports and

  • Word count: 18653
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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Jack the Ripper - Whitechapel in the 1880's.

Introduction It was the month of August, the year of 1888, the destination of Whitechapel, a killer who got the name as Jack the Ripper for his horrifying murders. The name "Ripper" associated well with what he actually did to his victims, he didn't just murder them, he had to go further. He brutally murdered five women in the East End of London. The women he aimed at were around the age 40, apart from one of his victims, who were only 25 years of age. These victims were prostitutes that sold their body for money so that they could sleep inside in the warm for just one night. Well the five victims weren't so lucky on the nights they were murdered. Whitechapel in the 1880's It was mainly Jewish people who lived in the area of Whitechapel. This was because the rent for houses was very low, as the area had very bad living conditions. Also, few questions were asked about the Jews as well, so the Jews had another reason to be in the grotty area. The living conditions of Whitechapel during this time were terrible. "Filthy men and women living on gin, where collars and clean shirts are unknown; where every citizen wears a black eye and never combs his hair." This shows how both men and women drunk alcoholic drinks, well lived on the drink. This also shows how their shirts were always dirty and never washed and showed the average appearance of a man "wears a black eye...never

  • Word count: 18020
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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Animal Farm.

Animal Farm Context George Orwell was the pen name of Eric Blair, a British political novelist and essayist whose pointed criticisms of political oppression propelled him into prominence toward the middle of the twentieth century. Born in 1903 to British colonists in Bengal, India, Orwell received his education at a series of private schools, including Eton, an elite school in England. His painful experiences with snobbishness and social elitism at Eton, as well as his intimate familiarity with the reality of British imperialism in India, made him deeply suspicious of the entrenched class system in English society. As a young man, Orwell became a socialist, speaking openly against the excesses of governments east and west and fighting briefly for the socialist cause during the Spanish Civil War, which lasted from 1936 to 1939. Unlike many British socialists in the 1930s and 1940s, Orwell was not enamored of the Soviet Union and its policies, nor did he consider the Soviet Union a positive representation of the possibilities of socialist society. He could not turn a blind eye to the cruelties and hypocrisies of Soviet Communist Party, which had overturned the semifeudal system of the tsars only to replace it with the dictatorial reign of Joseph Stalin. Orwell became a sharp critic of both capitalism and communism, and is remembered chiefly as an advocate of freedom and a

  • Word count: 17458
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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Dickinson's BECAUSE I COULD NOT STOP FOR DEATH

Dickinson's BECAUSE I COULD NOT STOP FOR DEATH It has been the general difficulty with critical exegeses of Emily Dickinson's "Because I could not stop for Death-" that (1) "Death" and "Immortality" in the first stanza seem unaccountably syncopated, and (2) the "I first surmised the Horses' Heads/Were toward Eternity-" of the end of the poem remains equally enigmatically without derivation. I offer the following interpretive possibility. The crux of the poem's meanings, I suggest, is in the first two lines, "Because I could not stop for Death-/He kindly stopped for me-". We have tended mechanically to read this to mean that since the narrative subject of the poem finds herself rather too involved in the humdrum of living, with no thought of death, Death like a civil gentleman-suitor stops by in his chaise and four to take the busy -11- persona out for the final ride, paradoxically, to the accompaniment of "Immortality." I think the lines lead us into a simplistic literalness because of the deceptive surface. Read them as you would a prototypical "romantic" utterance and the problem begins to solve itself. To wit, translate the persona's not stopping for death into an imaginative perception of the nonreality of death. Death is death only to those who live within the time-bound finite world outside of the imaginative infinity of consciousness. That being so, the

  • Word count: 16974
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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How does Henry demonstrate his skills as an orator in his speeches at Farfleur and Agincourt.

Matthew Russell 11WDW Henry V How does Henry demonstrate his skills as an orator in his speeches at Farfleur and Agincourt. The play of Henry V was originally created by Shakespeare in 1600 and was produced to support the Queens decisions at the time when England was at war with Ireland , with this in mind Shakespeare wanted to create the play with encouraged patriotism and Nationalistic feelings between the public. He did this because Henry V had supposedly done the same to his people. Henry V was one of the greatest warrior Kings that ever lived. When parliament gave the church a bill that would take away a lot of the churches land, they turned for Henry V for help. They would pay him a large sum of money to stop the bill going through. Henry agreed and understood that the only way he could do this was by overtaking France. The church turned to Henry for help because he was an accomplished soldier. He fought his first battle at the age of fourteen and at the age of sixteen he commanded his fathers army at the battle of Shrewsbury. In 1415 Henry proposed to marry Catherine, also demanding for the old Plantagenet lands of Normandy and Anjou as his dowry. Her father, Charles ll refused this and Henry V declared war. With England being in war with Ireland as well he set off to France with only a quarter of the English army, leaving the other three quarters to fight in case

  • Word count: 16960
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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