Sophisticated, witty, and ingeniously convincing, Susanna Clarke's magisterial novel weaves magic into a flawlessly detailed vision of historical England. She has created a world so thoroughly enchanting that eight hundred pages leave readers longing for more.
English magicians were once the wonder of the known world, with fairy servants at their beck and call; they could command winds, mountains, and woods. But by the early 1800s they have long since lost the ability to perform magic. They can only write long, dull papers about it, while fairy servants are nothing but a fading memory.
But at Hurtfew Abbey in Yorkshire, the rich, reclusive Mr Norrell has assembled a wonderful library of lost and forgotten books from England's magical past and regained some of the powers of England's magicians. He goes to London and raises a beautiful young woman from the dead. Soon he is lending his help to the government in the war against Napoleon Bonaparte, creating ghostly fleets of rain-ships to confuse and alarm the French.
All goes well until a rival magician appears. Jonathan Strange is handsome, charming, and talkative-the very opposite of Mr Norrell. Strange thinks nothing of enduring the rigors of campaigning with Wellington's army and doing magic on battlefields. Astonished to find another practicing magician, Mr Norrell accepts Strange as a pupil. But it soon becomes clear that their ideas of what English magic ought to be are very different. For Mr Norrell, their power is something to be cautiously controlled, while Jonathan Strange will always be attracted to the wildest, most perilous forms of magic. He becomes fascinated by the ancient, shadowy figure of the Raven King, a child taken by fairies who became king of both England and Faerie, and the most legendary magician of all. Eventually Strange's heedless pursuit of long-forgotten magic threatens to destroy not only his partnership with Norrell, but everything that he holds dear. Views: 4 270
The Invisible Man is a science fiction novella by H. G. Wells. Originally serialized in Pearson's Weekly in 1897, it was published as a novel the same year. The Invisible Man of the title is Griffin, a scientist who has devoted himself to research into optics and invents a way to change a body's refractive index to that of air so that it neither absorbs nor reflects light and thus becomes invisible. He successfully carries out this procedure on himself, but fails in his attempt to reverse it. Views: 4 181
Here was once a velveteen rabbit, and in the beginning he was really splendid. He was fat and bunchy, as a rabbit should be; his coat was spotted brown and white, he had real thread whiskers, and his ears were lined with pink sateen. On Christmas morning, when he sat wedged in the top of the Boy\'s stocking, with a sprig of holly between his paws, the effect was charming... Views: 4 104
"Special Circumstances": The words have sent chills down Tally's spine since her days as a repellent, rebellious ugly. Back then Specials were a sinister rumor -- frighteningly beautiful, dangerously strong, breathtakingly fast. Ordinary pretties might live their whole lives without meeting a Special. But Tally's never been ordinary.And now, in the third book in the series, Tally's been turned into a Special: a superamped fighting machine, engineered to keep the uglies down and the pretties stupid. The strength, the speed, and the clarity and focus of her thinking feel better than anything Tally can remember. Most of the time. One tiny corner of her heart still remembers something more. Still, it's easy to tune that out -- until Tally's offered a chance to stamp out the rebels of the New Smoke permanently. It all comes down to one last choice: listen to that tiny, faint heartbeat, or carry out the mission she's programmed to complete. Either way, Tally's world will never... Views: 4 020
What happens when two people who are meant to be together can't seem to get it right?
Rosie and Alex are destined for each other, and everyone seems to know it but them. Best friends since childhood, they are separated as teenagers when Alex and his family relocate from Dublin to Boston.
Like two ships always passing in the night, Rosie and Alex stay friends, and though years pass, the two remain firmly attached via emails and letters. Heartbroken, they learn to live without each other. But destiny is a funny thing, and in this novel o f several missed opportunities, Rosie and Alex learn that fate isn't quite done with them yet. Views: 4 015
When Sergeant Major Morris brings a mummified monkey\'s paw to the White family, they embrace it as a morbid curiosity. When they learn that an old Fakir has enchanted the paw, they continue to treat the thing lightly. But the workings of the paw, once set in motion, cannot be undone, no matter what they try. Views: 3 997
Can Thursday find a Shakespeare clone to stop the hostile takeover of Hamlet by Orphelia? Can Swindon win the world croquet championship and thus prevent the end of the world? All this and more is revealed in this, the 4th volume in the Thursday Next series.
Detective Thursday Next has had her fill of her responsibilities as the Bellmanin Jurisfiction, enough with Emperor Zhark's pointlessly dramatic entrances, outbreaks of slapstick raging across pulp genres, and hacking her hair off to fill in for Joan of Arc. Packing up her son, Friday, Thursday returns to Swindon accompanied by none other than the dithering Danish prince Hamlet. Caring for both is more than a full- time job and Thursday decides it is definitely time to get her husband Landen back, if only to babysit. Luckily, those responsible for Landen's eradication, The Goliath Corporation— formerly an oppressive multinational conglomerate, now an oppressive multinational religion— have pledged to right the wrong.
But returning to SpecOps isn't a snap. When outlaw fictioneer Yorrick Kaine seeks to get himself elected dictator, he whips up a frenzy of anti-Danish sentiment and demands mass book burnings. The return of Swindon's patron saint bearing divine prophecies could spell the end of the world within five years, possibly faster if the laughably terrible Swindon Mallets don't win the Superhoop, the most important croquet tournament in the land. And if that's not bad enough, The Merry Wives of Windsor is becoming entangled with Hamlet. Can Thursday find a Shakespeare clone to stop this hostile takeover? Can she prevent the world from plunging into war? Can she vanquish Kaine before he realizes his dream of absolute power? And, most important, will she ever find reliable child care? Find out in this totally original, action-packed romp, sure to be another escapist thrill for Jasper Fforde's growing legion of fans. escapist. (The New York Times Book Review) Views: 3 948
In this delicious sequel to The Eyre Affair and Lost in a Good Book, Fforde's redoubtable heroine Thursday Next once again does battle with philistine bibliophobes.
The eagerly anticipated third installment in the bestselling Thursday Next series—a genre-bending blend of crime fiction, fantasy, and top-drawer literary entertainment
Thursday Next definitely needs some down time. After two rollicking New York Times bestselling adventures through the Western literary canon, Britain's Prose-Op is literally and literaturally at her wits' end—not to mention pregnant. Her job as Miss Havisham's apprentice at Jurisfiction is as hectic as ever—and not just because she has to moderate rage counseling sessions in Wuthering Heights. So what could be more welcome than a restful stint in the Character Exchange Program down in the hidden depths of the Well of Lost Plots?
She's supposed to relax while filling in for a sidekick in an unpublished (and unpublishable) detective procedural socked away below the Great Library in the Well of Lost Plots. But a vacation remains elusive. In no time, Thursday discovers that the Well of Lost Plots is a veritable linguistic free-for-all where grammasites run rampant, plot devices are hawked on the black market, and lousy books (like the one she has taken up residence in) are scrapped for salvage. To top it off, a murderer is stalking Jurisfiction personnel and nobody is safe, least of all Thursday herself.
Fforde has done it again in this absolutely brilliant feat of literary showmanship. When it comes to sheer wit, literate fantasy, and effervescent originality, nobody can touch this new tour de Fforde. Views: 3 916
Dear Reader,
Unless you are a slug, a sea anemone, or mildew, you probably prefer not to be damp. You might also prefer not to read this book, in which the Baudelaire siblings encounter an unpleasant amount of dampness as they descend into the depths of despair, underwater.
In fact, the horrors they encounter are too numerous to list, and you wouldn't want me even to mention the worst of it, which includes mushrooms, a desperate search for something lost, a mechanical monster, a distressing message from a lost friend, and tap dancing.
As a dedicated author who has pledged to keep recording the depressing story of the Baudelaires, I must continue to delve deep into the cavernous depths of the orphans' lives. You, on the other hand, may delve into some happier book in order to keep your eyes and your spirits from being dampened.
With all due respect,
Lemony Snicket Views: 3 893
Fifteen years ago, Robert Fulghum published a simple credo--a credo that became the phenomenal #1 New York Times bestseller All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. Now, seven million copies later, Fulghum returns to the book that was embraced around the world. He has written a new preface and twenty-five essays, which add even more potency to a common, though no less relevant, piece of wisdom: that the most basic aspects of life bear its most important opportunities. Here Fulghum engages us with musings on life, death, love, pain, joy, sorrow, and the best chicken-fried steak in the continental U.S.A. The little seed in the Styrofoam cup offers a reminder about our own mortality and the delicate nature of life . . . a spider who catches (and loses) a full-grown woman in its web one fine morning teaches us about surviving catastrophe . . . the love story of Jean-Francois Pilatre and his hot air balloon reminds us to be brave and unafraid to... Views: 3 744
Brilliant, illuminating, and immensely absorbing, Collapse is destined to take its place as one of the essential books of our time, raising the urgent question: How can our world best avoid committing ecological suicide?
In his million-copy bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond examined how and why Western civilizations developed the technologies and immunities that allowed them to dominate much of the world. Now in this brilliant companion volume, Diamond probes the other side of the equation: What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to collapse into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates?
As in Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond weaves an all-encompassing global thesis through a series of fascinating historical-cultural narratives. Moving from the Polynesian cultures on Easter Island to the flourishing American civilizations of the Anasazi and the Maya and finally to the doomed Viking colony on Greenland, Diamond traces the fundamental pattern of catastrophe. Environmental damage, climate change, rapid population growth, and unwise political choices were all factors in the demise of these societies, but other societies found solutions and persisted. Similar problems face us today and have already brought disaster to Rwanda and Haiti, even as China and Australia are trying to cope in innovative ways. Despite our own society's apparently inexhaustible wealth and unrivaled political power, ominous warning signs have begun to emerge even in ecologically robust areas like Montana.
Brilliant, illuminating, and immensely absorbing, Collapse is destined to take its place as one of the essential books of our time, raising the urgent question: How can our world best avoid committing ecological suicide? Views: 3 602
Mother Nature has a way of making the most unlikely couples ‘fit’. And what could be more unlikely than a sassy, independent President’s daughter who doesn’t know when to keep her mouth shut and a loner Coyote Breed with a hunger for a cute rosebud mouth that he’s determined to still. The vote for Breed Law is coming down the pike. Kiowa’s job is to watch Amanda, the President’s daughter—look, but not touch. Just make sure the Goof Troop, the Secret Service detail assigned to protect her, do their job until the law is passed. But when they don’t and the bad guys move in to take her out, Kiowa reluctantly slips in to the rescue, snatching her away to safety. But she isn’t going to come easy and it takes more than smooth talking to make her see his point of view. For a man who’s had nothing, Amanda Marion is food for the hunger that has tortured him, the reality to every dream Kiowa never dared believe in. What he feels for her is more than heat, more than love. She breathes life into his hardened heart, melting the icy chill that has protected him all his life, and touches a part of him that he thought had died—his soul. And now he’ll kill anyone who tries to take her away from him. But the one person he can’t fight is Amanda, and when she wants to leave… Views: 3 554
They've waited a decade to come together. Long years filled with unbearable pain, and soul-wrenching torment that have changed them both and left wounds that have laid their souls bare. Wounds that stand one chance of healing -- if only they could stop fighting each other long enough for the truth to work its healing balm. Kane, a relentless warrior, lost more than his heart to Sherra in a night of mating passion that marked them both for life. But news of her death ripped his soul apart. For years he has fought to avenge the death of the woman he loved more than his own life, by revealing the deceit and cruelty of the Council that created the Breeds. But Sherra didn't die. In a cruel and evil twist she was convinced by her sadistic handlers that the man she had given her body, heart and soul to had betrayed not only her, but the child she carried -- and lost. Amid the rapidly escalating violence against the Feline Breeds, Kane and Sherra learn that there's more to mating than just the "heat", just as there's more to love than just the sex. . . Views: 3 400
From the acclaimed author of My Name Is Red ("a sumptuous thriller"--John Updike; "chockful of sublimity and sin"--New York Times Book Review), comes a spellbinding tale of disparate yearnings--for love, art, power, and God--set in a remote Turkish town, where stirrings of political Islamism threaten to unravel the secular order.Following years of lonely political exile in Western Europe, Ka, a middle-aged poet, returns to Istanbul to attend his mother's funeral. Only partly recognizing this place of his cultured, middle-class youth, he is even more disoriented by news of strange events in the wider country: a wave of suicides among girls forbidden to wear their head scarves at school. An apparent thaw of his writer's curiosity--a frozen sea these many years--leads him to Kars, a far-off town near the Russian border and the epicenter of the suicides.No sooner has he arrived, however, than we discover that Ka's motivations are not purely... Views: 3 331
