The book opens with a bloody discovery: the corpse of a young soprano who has been skewered with a prop from the WNO's soon-to-premiere production of Puccini's Tosca. As the media swarm, the company sets up its own task force, and Annabel asks Mac to be involved. Life imitates opera, and suddenly all the performers seem to have something to hide: passions for one another, histories better left uncovered, and even connections to foreign terrorists.
Gerald had an affair. And an illegitimate child. He carried these secrets for decades, doing his best to blot them from memory. He failed–but he achieved something far greater…
The End of the World began on a Thursday night in October, just after eight in the evening… The Amok is driving people out of their minds, turning them into zombies and causing riots in the streets. A solitary diner leaves a Cardiff restaurant, his mission to protect the Principal leading him to a secret base beneath a water tower. Everyone has a headache; there's something in Davey Morgan's shed; and the church of St Mary-in-the-Dust, demolished in 1840, has reappeared – though it's not due until 2011.
Donna Noble is back home in London, catching up with her family and generally giving them all the gossip about her journeys. Her grandfather is especially overjoyed - he's discovered a new star and had it named after him. He takes the Doctor, as his special guest, to the naming ceremony. But the Doctor is suspicious about some of the other changes he can see in the Earth's heavens. Particularly that bright star, right there. No, not that one, that one, there, on the left...
The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Quandary Phase
The Earth has miraculously reappeared and, even more miraculously, Arthur Dent has found it. Returning to his cottage after...well...ages, he falls in love with the girl of his dreams. But Ford Prefect is on to something, which might well burst Arthur's bubble. There is, after all, something very fishy about his girlfriend's feet, and what has happened to all the dolphins? Perhaps, at last, all will be revealed in God's Last Message to His Creation...