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Huckleberry Finn, the friend of Tom Sawyer in his own adventure. A true boy’s adventure.
He has it bad with his father and when things really get from bad to worse, he decides to stage his own death and go south in his boat. On his way he meets a slave he knows, who is going towards his freedom. As of then they travel together. They become friends and look out for each other even when it is made hard by people and circumstances.
Will they both reach their goal?
In a not too distant future, being f*t (read fat) is illegal. Laws to imprison people who have a too high percentage of body f*t have been made and a Health Enforcement team is working the streets of New York to spot anyone who is overweight (‘humonsters’). Matt Devlin is one of the agents working for this team, and he’s content writing out tickets for f*t people. But his routine is shattered when a dead body is found near an illegal ‘eateasy’; the body only wearing a bikini of the best, rarest and purest chocolate (‘brown’). And of course chocolate is an illegal substance to posses and eat. So, the question that arises is this: Who’s crime is this…is it a case for homicide or the mellow Health Enforcement? Or can both apartments work this case together?…f*t chance!
Two universities, one in the USA (Euphoria State) and one in Britain (Rummidge) have an annual exchange scheme. Normally this exchange passes without a hitch, but this year the two ‘priviliged’ ones are Philip Swallow and Professor Morris Zapp and everything will be different. The two academics arrive in tumult and changing times in the academic world. Philip Swallow is hoping to renew his pleasant feelings for the USA from the time he was there over twenty years ago, but he soon realises twenty years is a long time ago and everything is different. Morris Zapp has never been in Britain and would have had no problems keeping it that way, but now that he is, his ironical and sarcastic ways aren’t much of use to him. Both men are in for the biggest shock of their lives.
Frankie is a pediatrician in the Upper East Side of New York. Her clients are the high society of the city and throughout the book Frankie is the binding factor for all of the other characters we get to meet. There is Judy the wannabe, Samantha the accomplished and Barry the Hollywood movie-maker, amongst others. Per chapter we get to hear from them, about their struggles to get to the top or the tiresome task of staying there. At some point their lives aren’t as real anymore as they all might have thought and that is when everything starts to crumble down. How do they cope when their society as they know it seize to exist.
A nameless protagonist works at The Scheme. All day he drives an UniVan from one depot to another. What is in the UniVans? Spare parts for the UniVans. So in the complete economical scale of things, this scheme doesn’t really contribute, but it aims to be the solution for full employment. With very strict rules everybody that works there is happy. But what happens when the workers start to doubt each others workmanship?
Paul has lost his Jenny, Mary lost her David. Two years along the road they both are struggling with their loss still. How to move on when you lost your soulmate, your reason for living? What to do if you want to live in reality, but can’t see it, being stuck in the past, in dreams you don’t want to dream? You will breath in and out, but without the notion you’re doing so. You talk to your best friends, who hate to see you like that and are trying with all their might to make you understand you really have to start living again. But how? Paul and Mary have a mission: they have to stop living in the past and take on the reality of the present. And they need each other to do that, somehow they know, they knew all along, but how to meet when you still have Jenny and David to deal with? What then?
Lily lives with T. Ray, her father. Her mother died when she was four years old. Despite Lily’s efforts towards T. Ray to get some love and attention from him, all he gives in return is for her to work in the peach stall without books and her knees in grit on the ground when she does something she shouldn’t. The summer of 1964 is not any different until there are some bees in Lily’s room. These bees, Lily thinks, are sent to her for a reason.
When Rosaleen, the help T. Ray hired to mother Lily, is being arrested and thrown in jail for no more reason than the fact that Rosaleen is black, Lily takes control. She frees Rosaleen and they run away towards a place Lily knows holds the secret to the life of her mother: Tiburon. In that town live three black eccentric sisters by whom Lily and Rosaleen are taken in and learn what real freedom is.
Eric has a great idea: going on holiday with his wife and two teenage children. The children will be leaving the nest soon and Eric wants one last vacation with all four of them together as a family. So off they go to the Trallee and caravan park. Eric decides to keep a journal of this last trip with his whole family to keep the good memories for future times. What Eric didn’t know was that all the things he has to write in his journal aren’t happy times, but are situations that go from bad to worse. And just when he thinks there isn’t any worse to come, he gets disappointed again, because there seems to be no limit to what he has to endure. It surely turns out to be a hell of a vacation!
