The Iron Heel

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A scholar from the year 2600 AD reviews the unfinished manuscript of Avis Everhard, the daughter of well-known academic John Cunningham. Father and daughter belong to the upper echelons of the wealthy, which is why she is quick to disagree with the socioeconomic and political views of socialist Ernest Everhard, her future husband. Oozing with charisma and gift of gab, Ernest becomes the poster boy of socialism, leaving his audience either in denial or enlightened. Among them are Bishop Morehouse, and Avis herself who decides to investigate the living conditions of factory workers and the unjust treatment of their employers. Ernest warns of the Iron Heel, a catchphrase referring to oligarchs and plutocrats who will eventually rule the country for the next three centuries. As father and daughter get ostracized for their socialist sympathies, Avis and Ernest get married and dive deep into a counter movement to defend the proletariat.

A Dance with Dragons

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Across the Narrow Sea, Daenerys faces revolt as Meereen is racked by rebellion in the form of the Sons of the Harpy, who murder at least one of her soldiers every day, leading to suggestions of marrying a noble to tame the locals, all while facing the repercussions of her ever growing dragons. Tyrion finds himself in Essos as an exile, taken in by a strange group of boatmen who seem to be hiding a secret. Arya continues her training as a faceless assassin in Braavos. Meanwhile, in Westeros, Jon Snow deals with new challenges every day as Lord Commander of the wall, especially now that he is hosting Stannis’ men as well as his demanding queen, and the red priestess Melisandre, too. The Boltons regroup with northmen at Winterfell where Stannis directs his men after defeating the iron born at Deepwood Motte and taking Asha captive. Cersei confesses her sins and is ordered to do a walk of shame as atonement.

A Feast for Crows

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Cersei Lannister assumes her role as Queen Regent to her son, newly-crowned King Tommen. A childhood prophecy from an eastern witch continues to hound her, however, that of dying in the hands of a younger sibling and being eclipsed by a younger and prettier queen. She believes the prophecy to be referring to Margaery, and so begins her schemes to get rid of her son’s queen. Meanwhile, Brienne leaves King’s Landing to keep her oath and find Lady Catelyn’s daughters: Sansa who is masquerading as Petyr Baelish’s bastard daughter Alayne at the Eyrie; and Arya, training to be a faceless assassin in Braavos on the other side of the Narrow Sea. Samwell accompanies a dying Aegon Targaryen and Gilly on a ship that will take them to Oldtown where they intend to seek refuge, but they encounter difficulties along the way. All this while the death of Balon Greyjoy embroils the Iron Islands in a succession crisis as Prince of Doran down south in Dorne deals with his own royal family squabbles.

A Storm of Swords

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Jon finds his way back to the Wall but is pursued by the Wildlings he has double crossed. The death of the Old Bear sparks a succession issue. As the Wall is about to fall, Stannis and his men come to the rescue. In the Riverlands, Robb attempts to repair House Stark’s relationship with the Freys after he reneges his commitment to marry one of Walder’s daughters. Catelyn accompanies her son to the Twins for Edmure’s wedding. Joffrey and Margaery are to wed in a grandiose feast while Tyrion is left with the problem of funding after being named Master of Coin. Daenerys double crosses the slavers of Astapor and upon acquiring the Unsullied, leads a campaign to free the cities of Essos, starting at Mereen. Brienne leads Jaime back to King’s Landing in an oath to bring back Sansa and Arya, but things don’t go according to plan.

A Clash of Kings

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The death of Robert Baratheon sparks a succession crisis in Westeros as various kings lay claim to the throne. Robb declares himself King of the North while Stannis and Renly duke it out: the former with a red sorceress from the east; and the latter, with the forces of the south backing him. Joffrey sits on the Iron Throne but it is really his uncle Tyrion who pulls the strings as his Hand. Arya is stuck in Harrenhal and gains the good graces of its new ruler after helping instigate a coup, while her brothers in Winterfell face an uncertain fate as Theon defects and takes his adoptive northern home hostage. As Catelyn travels south to wager an alliance, to no avail, she earns a new knight in her service in the person of Brienne of Tarth. Meanwhile, Daenerys impatiently waits for her trio of dragons to grow stronger as she tours the east searching for allies that could help her cross the Narrow Sea.

A Game of Thrones

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The game of thrones continues in the western landmass of Westeros, even more than a decade after the defeat of house Targaryen. The house of the dragon’s last remaining heirs with legitimate claim to the throne, Viserys and Daenerys, have fled to Essos and are forging alliances there to gain an army to reclaim their birthright. Meanwhile, Robert Baratheon, the usurper, sits on the iron throne and is in need of a new Hand of the King after Jon Arryn of the Vale is murdered. He takes his entire family, among them Cersei Lannister, his queen, north to Winterfell to convince his old friend Eddard Stark to serve the kingdom as his Hand. Eddard is apprehensive, but duty calls. He leaves behind his eldest son Robb to rule in his stead while taking his daughters Sansa and Arya to live at court. As for his bastard Jon Snow, he is sent to the wall in the north, where the threat of a long winter is looming.

The Catcher in the Rye

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16-year-old Holden Caulfield is kicked out of school, the third he has transferred to so far in the last few years. He has flunked all of his subjects except English, which he believes to be his strongest suit. He gets a bloody nose after getting in a fight with his roommate Ward Stradlater as he pesters him regarding the details of his date with a girl he once knew. He then decides to pack his bags and leave for New York but keeps it a secret from his parents who are not expecting him until Wednesday. Luckily, he has some cash to spare which he uses to pay for a hotel room, a prostitute, and drinks after calling some acquaintances in the city to accompany him for a few nights. A few days later, he sneaks into their house to visit his little sister Phoebe to say goodbye to her for good because he is thinking of running away.

Rich People Problems

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A heart attack leaves family matriarch Shang Su Yi bedridden. As she fights for survival while on life support, members of the clan acknowledge that the time is near. Knowing that his cousin Nick, heir apparent to Tyersall Park, is still banned from the estate, Eddie flies his entire family on a private jet from Hong Kong to jockey for position, while Astrid is busy in India entertaining a marriage proposal from Charlie Wu in the midst of her divorce proceedings with Michael Teo. Encouraged by his wife Rachel, Nick eventually flies back to Singapore to find the family in complete disarray. Meanwhile, Kitty still finds herself shut out from Singapore high society despite her husband’s billions at her disposal. To make matters worse, her stepdaughter Colette, now married to a titled aristocrat in England, is moving back to Asia for their environmental activism, eclipsing her stepmother at every society get together.

China Rich Girlfriend

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A few years after the debacle in Singapore, Nick and Rachel are in California preparing for their wedding, the only invitees from his family being his cousins Astrid and Alistair. Eleanor Young exhausts all of her resources to find out about the venue and the schedule not because she wants to stop the wedding. In fact, she has something important to tell Rachel. While on a shopping spree in London with her friends, Eleanor runs into Eddie whose filthy rich mainland client Bao Shaoyen is worrying about her problem child Carlton, who is the striking image of Rachel. Inviting the family to Singapore, she gets to meet Bao Gaoliang, a top Beijing politician whom she later proves to be Rachel’s biological father. Soon, Nick and Rachel find themselves in Shanghai meeting a brother she never knew she had and a father she’s been trying to find in vain in the last few years.

Crazy Rich Asians

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NYU Economics professor Rachel Chu is happy with her life so far. She is tenured and lives a life of romantic bliss with her boyfriend Nick Young, who is teaching at the History department. He comes up with a suggestion one boring day, asking her if she wants to go with him for summer vacation back to his native Singapore. Apparently, his best friend is getting married and he will be the best man. Rachel reluctantly agrees and is in for a rude awakening. It turns out that her boyfriend, who almost never talks about his family, is not just rich, but rather crazy rich. The ancestral home he grew up in looks like a palace and his grandmother has Gurkhas as personal bodyguards. Nick’s arrival with Rachel in tow results in gossip overdrive from almost everyone in his social circles, his girlfriend being tagged as a gold digger left and right. How is he supposed to propose to her now?

Memoirs of a Geisha

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Chiyo and her older sister Satsu are taken away from their rural cliffside home by the sea and sent to Kyoto where they are separated. Chiyo ends up at an okiya, which is a lodging house for geisha. She wasn’t really born to be one, but it seems to be the destiny life has in store for her. Her rise from maid to one of Gion’s top geisha is not without problems. For one, her okiya’s primary geisha, Hatsumomo, has vowed to make her life a living hell. Even then, she gains allies from unexpected people like Hatsumomo’s rival Mameha who takes her under her wing as well as the Chairman of Iwamura Electric who becomes her inspiration to succeed so she would be noticed by him. As fortunes are reversed and life’s adversities come one by one, Chiyo transforms into Nitta Sayuri, one of the most successful geisha of all time. This is her story.

Dark Places

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Libby Day has run out of luck, specifically the money that has been fueling her existence for the last two decades or so. Now in her early 30’s, Libby is one of two siblings who made it out of a massacre alive twenty years prior, when her mother Patty as well as her sisters Debby and Michelle were brutally killed in their very own farm home. She managed to make a run for the woods and hide under a thick blanket of snow, resulting in the amputation of two of her toes due to frostbite. The murders were all pinned on her then teenage brother Ben, who has been in prison for two decades now. The family massacre has been popular among crime and whodunnit clubs. When Libby is approached by Lyle, a member who promises money through her appearances and memorabilia, she is forced to recall what really happened that night and even come to doubt the very statement she made that put her brother in jail.

Angels & Demons

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Harvard professor Robert Langdon receives a call from an unknown number in the middle of the night. The caller claims to be Maximilian Kohler, director of CERN aka the European Organization for Nuclear Research. One of their top scientists Leonardo Vetra has been murdered, one eyeball gouged out, and branded on the chest with the word ILLUMINATI. His daughter Vittoria Vetra flies back home to the lab once she finds out and meets Langdon and Kohler there. According to her, she and her father were not only spearheading a secret research about antimatter, they actually managed to produce it. The canister with a sample enough to obliterate any matter it interacts with within a half mile radius, they hid sub terra. It is nowhere to be found and later materializes on live CCTV footage within the walls of the Vatican. The problem? The canister runs out of battery within a few hours just as the Holy See is preparing for a conclave to replace the recently deceased pope.

The Da Vinci Code

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Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon receives a call from French police captain Bezu Fache who invites him to the Louvre after hours. Langdon was supposed to meet the museum’s curator Jacques Saunière there earlier that evening but the meeting was canceled. Langdon arrives at a crime scene with the murdered body of the curator spread eagle on the floor mimicking the pose of Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, along with scribbles containing numbers and verses that do not make any sense. Sophie Neveu, a cryptologist from the French police, arrives and distracts the captain, claiming to have an answering machine message for Langdon from the American embassy. What Langdon doesn’t know is that he is Fache’s main suspect for the curator’s death. As he almost falls into his trap, new information from the recording convinces him to cooperate with Neveu in a race across two countries in search for the Holy Grail.

The Witching Hour

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Rowan Mayfair is a successful neurosurgeon who grows up in San Francisco in a life of comfortable existence, not knowing much about the family drama and secrets of her biological family waiting back for her in New Orleans. Her biological mother Deirdre has spent most of her life as an invalid stationed on a screened porch in a huge mansion at First Street where she is accompanied by her grandmother’s sister Carlotta and a malevolent spirit that has been haunting the family for three generations. His name is Lasher. When Deirdre succumbs to the call of death, the spirit, along with the Mayfair legacy worth billions and which includes an emerald necklace, passes on to Rowan. She crosses paths with Michael Curry, a house builder who gains psychometric abilities after a near death drowning experience. Together, they head back to Louisiana to confront the ghosts of their past, but are they strong enough to defeat them?

The Time Traveler's Wife

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Six-year-old Clare is playing alone at the meadow behind her house when a slight rustling of leaves leads her to 36-year-old Henry who is naked behind the bushes. There and then begins an odd friendship between the two who will end up getting married when he is 28 and she is 20. Sorry, how? Henry has a rare genetic condition that sends him involuntarily traveling through time, appearing in his birthday suit each time because only his body can complete the journey, before vanishing into thin air back to his own time as if he was never there. As Clare turns 20, it has been a long wait for the love of her life. For Henry as a 28-year-old, though, he doesn’t really have any idea who she is since it is his older selves who actually met her. As they eventually get married and decide to start a family, their greatest fear is a child who will have to suffer from the very same condition.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

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Tom Sawyer is an orphan and living with his Aunt Polly and half-brother Sid in the town of St. Petersburg in Missouri. His stubbornness often gets him in trouble, even more so when he hangs out with the town outcast Huckleberry Finn, who is almost the same age as he is. In terms of romantic interests, Tom is infatuated with Becky Thatcher, the new girl in town who also happens to be a judge’s daughter. His adventures include disappearing with Huck Finn and another boy for a few days and being believed by the townsfolk to have drowned, only for them to reappear at church during their supposed funeral. But perhaps their greatest adventure yet is witnessing a murder at a cemetery in which an innocent drunkard is framed up and ends up in jail. Will the young boys have the courage to side with justice despite the danger?

The Scarlet Letter

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In mid-1700’s Puritan Boston lives a young woman named Hester Prynne who gains notoriety by giving birth to a child whose father remains unknown. Hester crossed the Atlantic as a married woman, but her husband is believed to have been lost at sea. She is led to the gallows for public shaming and forced to wear a scarlet letter A, which stands for Adultery, embroidered on her clothing for the rest of her life. She also refuses to name the man who sired the child, despite constant harassment from the townsfolk. In prison, she is visited by a physician named Roger Chillingworth whom she eventually recognizes as her long lost husband assuming a new identity. She also refuses to name her lover when he asks and the two strike a deal to not reveal one another’s secrets. As Chillingworth worms his way into the household of church minister Arthur Dimmesdale, he gets closer to finding the answers to his many questions about his wife.

Sharp Objects

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Camille Preaker has been living her life far away from home in Chicago as a police beat reporter for a newspaper that nobody really reads. She is forced to go back to Wind Gap and confront the ghosts of her childhood when news of two teen murders catch the attention of her editor. Both teenage girls were strangled and had all their teeth removed, some sort of modus operandi pointing to a possible serial killer. The townsfolk are quite convinced that Jon Keene, the older brother of one of the victims, is guilty of the crime. As Camille investigates, she goes back home to the family mansion and gets into a weird family reunion with her mother Adora, stepfather Alan as well as her 13-year-old younger half-sister Amma, who has grown up so fast she doesn’t even recognize her the first time they stumble upon each other around town. Camille struggles with her mental health as traumas of the past return, with a vengeance, to haunt her.

The Devil Wears Prada

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Fresh out of Brown, 23-year-old Andrea Sachs leaves the comfort of her home state and moves to Manhattan so she can begin her quest for a career in journalism. Her main goal is to work for The New Yorker, but prospects have been rather slim after she sends out her CV to dozens of companies but receives close to no interview callbacks. When she gets a call from Elias-Clark for a potential position at fashion magazine Runway, Andrea is reluctant but left without much of a choice. She eventually gets hired as the second assistant of Miranda Priestly, a British-born editor-in-chief, whose snooty demeanor and bad track record of emotional abuse of her subordinates should have been a glaring red flag. However, as first assistant Emily Charlton would like to say, “it’s a job a million girls would die for.” Add the assurance that a year at Runway means guaranteed recommendation from Miranda to whichever company a former employee would like to move to and Andy is convinced, not knowing that she might as well be working for the devil herself.