Written by Jeanne DuPrau
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

The City of Ember
Unidentified architects and engineers, referred to as "the Builders", designed an underground city with supplies for its inhabitants to survive for 200 years. During that time, the Earth would be uninhabitable for an unspecified reason, although the books prequel, The Prophet Of Yonwood'', points at that reason being a devastating nuclear war. After completion of the city, the Builders give the first mayor of the city a locked box that was to be passed down from one mayor to the next. Unknown to the mayors who were to pass it down the line, the box was set to open after 200 years and provide instructions to the city's inhabitants on how to return to the surface.
For several generations, the box is faithfully passed down from one mayor to the next until the seventh mayor who, hoping that the box might contain a cure for the deadly cough that was infecting many citizens of the city at the time, takes the box home and tries to break it open. He fails, and dies before he is able to return the box to its rightful place, or inform anyone else of its importance.
The story moves forward to the year 241 where the town is running out of supplies and the massive generator that provides the light and power for the city is on its last legs. At a graduation ceremony where young people are assigned their jobs,Lina Mayfleet is assigned the job of “Pipeworks Laborer", while Doon Harrow gets to be a “Messenger.” Both are unhappy with their assignments, and the two decided to switch jobs.
At home, Lina finds an old piece of paper she salvaged from inside a box. Unknown to her, it is the box that was passed from mayor to mayor. Currently, many people referred to as the "believers" believe that the Builders would come back and guide the citizens of Ember out of the city. Lina attempts to decipher the letter, but her little sister chewed on it and the letter has holes and is ripped. Finally, she asks Doon to help her reconstruct the letter. After much trial and error they realize it's instructions from the builders on how to exit the city.
Doon Harrow and Lina Mayfleet explore the tunnels in the pipeworks, trying to find the exit. Soon, they find an underground river, where they discover boats meant to be used by the community. They go on a wild boat ride and when the boat finally stops, they find an old journal explaining the history of Ember. The Builders decided to protect 100 adults and 100 children to ensure that the human race would survive. After they find the journal they are faced with a very steep climb that takes hours, but when they get to the top they discover the outside world, and through a series of events they find a cave leading to a cliff that shows the city miles below. In a scene reminiscent of Plato's Allegory of the Cave, they are shocked when they see the dim, glimmering lights of the city beneath them; they never knew they were living underground. They throw a piece of paper with instructions down to the city in hope that the people of Ember will escape. The novel ends with Mrs. Murdo, Lina's guardian, finding the bundle containing the note, which they tied to a rock.

The People of Sparks
Having to leave from living in an underground city for 241 years, the 417 survivors of the city of Ember can't go back and have no idea how to survive on the surface. Wandering for days, exhausted and hungry, they come across the village of Sparks. The people of this small village reluctantly agree to take in the refugees for 6 months, just long enough to teach them to survive on their own.
There is not enough food for everybody in Sparks, leaving a disaster for both the people of Sparks and the Emberites. The starving Emberites don't seem to know anything about the surface, and the villagers soon begin to resent having to take care of them. Lina, Poppy and Mrs. Murdo are told to live at the doctor's house, where there is a whiny boy named Torren living there too. As tensions mount a mysterious series of acts of vandalism against the people of Ember heightens the anger on both sides, until conflict seems inevitable.
The people of Ember are growing restless and the people of Sparks want to get rid of them, as they are not being very civil to each other. Soon the food the Emberites open is more and more unpleasant. They are unwelcome and they know it, they are forced into an old hotel, the Pioneer Hotel, which was once grand but has now fallen into disrepair. The Emberites are told that at the end of the month they will have to leave and start their own civilization. Meanwhile, Lina leaves with a group of roamers who go to old cities to find treasure, hoping to find the city she has been dreaming of and drawing. There she finds not a beautiful city like she expected, but a ruined and crumbling metropolis. She arrives back to Sparks disappointed.
The climax occurs when Sparks' town hall catches on fire. The Emberites watch passively as the people of Sparks try to save the building, most hoping the building will burn down. But Lina decides to help the people of Sparks, upon which most of the Emberites decide to pitch in and they all succeed in putting out the fire. As this happens, Doon sees that a young boy is trapped in the burning tree by the building, rushes in, and bravely saves him before he catches on fire. This act turns around the spiral of resentment and it is discovered that it was in fact a person belonging to the people of Ember, Tick Hassler, who perpetrated the acts of vandalism against the people of Ember. This results in a bright future for both the people of Ember and the people of Sparks, symbolized by Doon's rediscovery of electrical currents, partly due to a school science book describing how to create one, and Torren's light bulb, given to him by his older roamer brother Caspar.

The Prophet of Yonwood
The story begins with a young girl named Nickie travelling with her Aunt Crystal to an old house in Yonwood, North Carolina[2]. Nickie's great-grandfather has died, and the house where he lived, known as Greenhaven, is inherited by Crystal and Nickie's family, who plan to sell it. Nickie's mom is working in Philadelphia and her father is assigned to a secret government project (the City of Ember) and communicates with Nickie via short postcards.
In Yonwood, a local woman named Althea Tower sees a vision of the future with the world in burning flames and smoke, and subsequently spends months in a dream-like semi-conscious state, in which she mutters indistinct phrases and words. Brenda Beeson, a woman in the town, calls them instructions from God and requires townspeople to comply with her interpretation of the words, and insists that the entire city quit their "wrong" ways and start to be good people, so God would be with them. As a prominent community leader she directs the police in the town to enforce the 'war against evil', hi Althea's ramblings as admonitions from God. Those who fail to follow God's words are fitted with buzzing bracelets and ostracised. Mrs Beeson's interpretations gradually become more and more strict and unreasonable: beginning with 'no sinners' and 'no singing', they progress to 'no lights' and eventually 'no dogs'.
During this time, Nickie has discovered a girl and a dog living in the third floor nursery of Greenhaven. When the girl, Amanda, leaves to take care of Althea, Nickie keeps the dog hi she falls foul of Mrs Beeson's ban on dogs. A local boy, Grover, whom Nickie has befriended is also a target of the war against evil and the majority of the book deals with Nickie's struggle with her own desires to be 'good' and do what is 'right'.
The book features a fierce under-current outlining the verbal conflict between the U.S. and the 'Phalanx Nations'. Fears that the Phalanx Nations are sending terrorists and spies to the U.S. results in the imposition of a deadline for action against the enemy and preparations for the coming crisis (i.e. war).
Through Nickie's actions, Althea Tower is brought back to her senses and the actions of Mrs Beeson are overthrown. The story concludes with Nickie returning to her parents who are moving to California to be near her father's work.
In the final chapters it is revealed that Nickie's father is one of the builders of Ember and that eventually Nickie, in her sixties, is offered a place as one of the founders of the city. On her way to Ember, Nickie writes a brief journal that she hides behind a rock for someone to read in the future. This is the journal Lina Mayfleet and Doon Harrow find in The City of Ember.

The Diamond of Darkhold
200 years before The City of Ember, The story begins with the Builders discussing what the Emberites should do when they are released from the city. The chief builder decides they should give them a piece of their own technology, but it is not found by the citizens of Ember because the vault door is covered by trees. Nine months later Lina and Doon are curious when a roamer comes into town with a mysterious book. They trade the roamer a match for the book and discover it only contains eight pages. On the front of the book the words "For the People of Ember" are printed in gold letters. Since they can't make sense of the book, they decide to go back to Ember. When they return, a family of squatters has taken over the darkened city. The Troggs (Washton, Kanza, Minny, Yorick and an adopted boy called Scawgo, who are named after various American cities) believe they own Ember, and rename it Darkhold. They capture Doon while Lina goes back to Sparks for help. Meanwhile, Lizzie (from Ember), Torren, and Kenny (both from Sparks) realize that the two are gone, and decide to go and try to find them. They don't succeed and a search party goes to look for them. While Doon is with the family they show him a diamond they found just outside Ember. Doon steals the diamond and escapes from Ember with help from Scawgo. While escaping, he also breaks the pipe connecting the generator to a waterwheel that created power for Ember, therefore shutting down Ember's lights for good. He finds Lina, who is being attacked by a pack of wolves. Doon throws the diamond at the wolves to frighten them away but shatters it in the process. Lina treats his wound and takes Doon up to where the book with eight pages and the original diamond was discovered.
They find a switch that uncovers shelves filled with hundreds of diamonds. Lina and Doon figure out that the diamonds are solar-powered sources of electricity. A lot of people decide to help them go back to Ember and look for other things to help in the winter. Doon thinks about going back to his old home and recover his book of bugs, but changes his mind, stating he can create a new one filled with the unique bugs in Sparks. Lina, however, looks for her drawings of her dream city at her old home but it isn't there. She than goes to City Hall and stands on top of the mayor's building and says "Goodbye Ember, forever." They bring back thousands of new inventions, which earns the town money and food to last the winter. A weary group of roamers, who are actually the Troggs, come into town one day, and the diamond is returned to them. But soon they learn the truth. There are hundreds (maybe thousands) of them and they can power all sorts of electronic devices as well as start fires. They also learned that Doon and many others lived in Ember before them, and that they left and evacuated because Ember was dying. So the Troggs come to live in Sparks as well. In the end, it is revealed that in the future, cities are rebuilt with the power of the diamonds and Lina, Doon, and Poppy all live together in a house in Sparks. It is implied Lina and Doon are married. Lina gets a horse named Fleet and becomes a messenger between towns and Doon goes on to study the diamonds. The story ends with an interesting vantage point of an alien spacecraft. This is explained more in The Prophet of Yonwood.