The Jackal, an English assassin hired by the OAS to kill French President Charles de Gaulle, gets within one shot of success on Liberation Day in Paris in 1963, but de Gaulle bends forward at the last moment and the bullet misses.

Soviet submarine captain Marko Ramius defects to the United States with the Red October, a silent nuclear submarine.

Graduate students Chris Hughes, Kate Erickson and André Marek travel back to 1357 France with quantum technology to rescue their professor, Edward Johnston.

Karen Ross, Peter Elliot and his signing gorilla Amy reach the lost city of Zinj in the Congo, where they find diamonds and a breed of killer gray gorillas trained by humans long ago.

Ian Malcolm, Sarah Harding and their team escape Isla Sorna, the secret “Site B” where InGen bred dinosaurs, after a rival group led by Lewis Dodgson tries to steal eggs.

Jeannette Walls, who grew up in poverty with a brilliant but alcoholic father, Rex, and an eccentric artist mother, Rose Mary, escapes to New York and becomes a successful writer.

Kevin, called “Freak,” a brilliant boy with a rare growth disorder, dies suddenly when his enlarged heart gives out.

Yeong-hye, who stopped eating meat after a disturbing dream, wastes away in a psychiatric hospital, believing she is becoming a tree.

Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, a serious novelist frustrated that publishers want stereotypical Black stories, writes a parody under the name Stagg R.

Todd Bowden, a bright California teenager who blackmailed a hidden Nazi war criminal, Kurt Dussander, into telling him about the death camps, is himself turned into a killer.