Sixth Grade Secrets
By Louis Sachar
Inspired by George Washington, sixth grader Laura Sibbie aspires to be the first woman President of America. Just for fun she decides to start a secret club with her friends at school. She names it Pig City after the words on a cap she purchases for 50 cents at a garage sale. This club comes complete with a clandestine meeting place and strange rituals. To ensure that no one “blabs”, Laura makes all the members offer “Insurance” - something embarrassing which will be revealed if they break the “Pig” rules. As she recruits new members, the “insurances” get bolder. When her classmate Gabriel tries to join the club, a terrible misunderstanding occurs with the result that Gabriel starts his own rival secret club called Monkey Town. Soon things spiral out of control and as the pranks between the clubs get nastier, one thing is certain – no one’s insurances are safe.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
By J K Rowling
A skinny, black-haired bespectacled boy spends most of his summer holidays waiting for news of an attack. He turns edgy as the airwaves remain deafeningly silent. The oppressive, warm summer air begins to weigh heavily on his nerves. The boy doesn’t see it coming. He finds himself facing an unexpected enemy. He fights, defends, and he protects but he’s punished. He’s threatened with the possibility of being expelled from the one place that he can call home. One night, when he’s alone at home, the boy finds himself face-to-face with a group of visitors—The Advance Guard—assigned to retrieve him. The group fly on brooms over London until they arrive in a neighbourhood filled with grimy house fronts and broken windows. The boy is given a piece of paper that reads: The Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix may be found at number twelve, Grimmauld Place, London.
Second Foundation
By Isaac Asimov
The Mule is a mutant who is one of the greatest conquerors of the galaxy. He is a mentalic. He achieved this all by himself owing to his special mental ability: he can control his own emotions and control others’ minds too, no matter how many people there are. However, he is not the only one who has this ability. The Second Foundation, if it exists at all, is a group of mentalics.
The Galactic Empire is heading for ruin. The person who realizes this is Hari Seldon, a professor of Mathematics at Steerling University, Tantor. The societies in the galaxy are soon to become barbaric for a 30000 year span. Seldon develops a science called Psychohistory that mathematically combines knowledge of history, sociology, statistics, and psychology to understand how people act in various situations. He recruits a small secret group of scientists who work with psychohistory. These people work incognito to help the Foundation reduce the period of ruin to a thousand years. The Mule and a few persons from the Foundation plot against this.
