Download or read book Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell written by Susanna Clarke and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2010-06-05 with total page 1098 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Hugo-award winning, epic New York Times Bestseller and basis for the BBC miniseries, two men change England's history when they bring magic back into the world. In the midst of the Napoleonic Wars in 1806, most people believe magic to have long since disappeared from England - until the reclusive Mr. Norrell reveals his powers and becomes an overnight celebrity. Another practicing magician then emerges: the young and daring Jonathan Strange. He becomes Norrell's pupil, and the two join forces in the war against France. But Strange is increasingly drawn to the wild, most perilous forms of magic, and he soon risks sacrificing his partnership with Norrell and everything else he holds dear. Susanna Clarke's brilliant first novel is an utterly compelling epic tale of nineteenth-century England and the two magicians who, first as teacher and pupil and then as rivals, emerge to change its history.
Download or read book The Ladies of Grace Adieu written by Susanna Clarke and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2009-12-21 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gorgeously illustrated book of short stories from the world of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, the 4-million-copy global bestseller 'These tales read as if Jane Austen had rewritten the Brothers Grimm ... wonderful' Spectator Faerie is never as far away as you think. Sometimes you find you have crossed an invisible line and must cope, as best you can, with petulant princesses, vengeful owls, ladies who pass their time embroidering terrible fates or with endless paths in deep, dark woods and houses that never appear the same way twice. The heroines and heroes bedevilled by such problems in these fairy tales include a conceited Regency clergyman, an eighteenth-century Jewish doctor and Mary, Queen of Scots, as well as two characters from Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell: Strange himself and the Raven King.
Download or read book Killer on the Road written by Ginger Strand and published by Univ of TX + ORM. This book was released on 2012-04-04 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: True crime meets cultural history in this story of how America’s interstate highway system opened a world of mobility and opportunity . . . for serial killers. Starting in the 1950s, Americans eagerly built the planet’s largest public work: the 42,795-mile National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. Before the concrete was dry on the new roads, however, a specter began haunting them: the highway killer. He went by many names: the “Hitcher,” the “Freeway Killer,” the “Killer on the Road,” the “I-5 Strangler,” and the “Beltway Sniper.” Some of these criminals were imagined, but many were real. The nation’s murder rate shot up as its expressways were built. America became more violent and more mobile at the same time. Killer on the Road tells the entwined stories of America’s highways and its highway killers. There’s the hot-rodding juvenile delinquent who led the National Guard on a multistate manhunt; the wannabe highway patrolman who murdered hitchhiking coeds; the record promoter who preyed on “ghetto kids” in a city reshaped by freeways; the nondescript married man who stalked the interstates seeking women with car trouble; and the trucker who delivered death with his cargo. Thudding away behind these grisly crime sprees is the story of the interstates—how they were sold, how they were built, how they reshaped the nation—and how we came to equate them with violence. Through the stories of highway killers, we see how the “killer on the road,” like the train robber, the gangster, and the mobster, entered the cast of American outlaws, and how the freeway—conceived as a road to utopia—came to be feared as a highway to hell. “Strand . . . Explores the connection between America’s sprawling highway system and the pathology of the murderers who have made them a killing ground. . . . The grim stories of murder on the highway may do for road trips what Jaws did for surfing. An interesting detour into a true-crime niche.” ―Kirkus Reviews “Strand’s cross-threaded tales of drifters, stranded motorists, and madmen got its hooks into me. Reading Ms. Strand’s thoughtful book is like driving a Nash Rambler after midnight on a highway to hell.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times “A titillating, clever volume that mixes the sweeping sociological assertions of an urban-studies textbook with the chilling gore of true-crime stories.” —Bookforum “Ginger Strand is in possession of a sharp eye, a biting wit, a beguiling sense of fun—and a magnificent obsession.” —Bloomberg
Download or read book What Makes This Book So Great written by Jo Walton and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2014-01-21 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As any reader of Jo Walton's Among Others might guess, Walton is both an inveterate reader of SF and fantasy, and a chronic re-reader of books. In 2008, then-new science-fiction mega-site Tor.com asked Walton to blog regularly about her re-reading—about all kinds of older fantasy and SF, ranging from acknowledged classics, to guilty pleasures, to forgotten oddities and gems. These posts have consistently been among the most popular features of Tor.com. Now this volumes presents a selection of the best of them, ranging from short essays to long reassessments of some of the field's most ambitious series. Among Walton's many subjects here are the Zones of Thought novels of Vernor Vinge; the question of what genre readers mean by "mainstream"; the underappreciated SF adventures of C. J. Cherryh; the field's many approaches to time travel; the masterful science fiction of Samuel R. Delany; Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children; the early Hainish novels of Ursula K. Le Guin; and a Robert A. Heinlein novel you have most certainly never read. Over 130 essays in all, What Makes This Book So Great is an immensely readable, engaging collection of provocative, opinionated thoughts about past and present-day fantasy and science fiction, from one of our best writers. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Download or read book Piranesi written by Susanna Clarke and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Bestseller Winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction World Fantasy Awards Finalist From the New York Times bestselling author of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, an intoxicating, hypnotic new novel set in a dreamlike alternative reality. Piranesi's house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house. There is one other person in the house-a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known. For readers of Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane and fans of Madeline Miller's Circe, Piranesi introduces an astonishing new world, an infinite labyrinth, full of startling images and surreal beauty, haunted by the tides and the clouds.
Download or read book Under the Pendulum Sun written by Jeannette Ng and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the John W Campbell Award for Best New Writer, Jeannette Ng brings a stunningly different Victorian fantasy that mixes Crimson Peak with Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Victorian missionaries travel into the heart of the newly discovered lands of the Fae, in a stunningly different fantasy that mixes Crimson Peak with Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Catherine Helstone’s brother, Laon, has disappeared in Arcadia, legendary land of the magical fae. Desperate for news of him, she makes the perilous journey, but once there, she finds herself alone and isolated in the sinister house of Gethsemane. At last there comes news: her beloved brother is riding to be reunited with her soon but the Queen of the Fae and her insane court are hard on his heels. File Under: Fantasy [ In Arcadia | Seek and Hide | The Queen of Moths | Lands of the Damned ]
Download or read book Under a Starlit Sky written by EM Castellan and published by Feiwel & Friends. This book was released on 2021-11-16 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spring 1662. In the wake of Fouquet’s defeat, Henriette is keeping her promise to the Sun King and helping him build the enchanted Palace of Versailles he’s always dreamed of. But when her poor health worsens, her magic wanes and her husband Philippe fears for her well being to such an extent that he forbids her to remain Louis’ Source. Forced to step aside, Henriette witnesses the swift rise of a new player at the French court: the handsome and self-assured Chevalier de Lorraine quickly becomes both Louis’s new Source of magic—and Philippe’s latest lover. With her ladies Louise and Athénaïs now both vying for the king’s attention, Henriette is more isolated than ever, and her place at Versailles has never felt more in jeopardy.
Download or read book Summer in Orcus written by T. Kingfisher and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Summer is a perfectly ordinary 11 year old girl with a perfectly ordinary, needy, over protective single mother. Summer loves her mother and would never dream of running away, but wonders deep down if it wouldn't be nice to escape for a little while and do something adventurous...maybe? Baba Yaga comes along in her magical walking house and offers Summer her heart's desire. Summer has no idea what this might be, but with the lighting of a frog-shaped beeswax candle she finds herself transported to the strange would of Orcus with nothing but a weasel in her pocket. She's read a lot of fantasy books about people thrust into strange lands; but they usually seemed to have has some idea what they were supposed to do there." -- back cover
Download or read book Lud in the Mist written by Hope Mirrlees and published by Courier Dover Publications. This book was released on 2023-06-14 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An enchanting novel intertwining folklore, the magical realm of the fairy folk, mysterious intrigue, and superstition with drug addiction, smuggling, and possibly murder. A delightful discovery for lovers of fantasy.
Download or read book English Magic and Imperial Madness written by Peter D. Mathews and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2021-10-27 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Regency England was a pivotal time of political uncertainty, with a changing monarchy, the Napoleonic Wars, and a population explosion in London. In Susanna Clarke's fantasy novel Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, the era is also witness to the unexpected return of magic. Locating the consequences of this eruption of magical unreason within the context of England's imperial history, this study examines Merlin and his legacy, the roles of magicians throughout history, the mythology of disenchantment, the racism at work in the character of Stephen Black, the meaning behind the fantasy of magic's return, and the Englishness of English magic itself. Looking at the larger historical context of magic and its links to colonialism, the book offers both a fuller understanding of the ethical visions underlying Clarke's groundbreaking novel of madness intertwined with magic, while challenging readers to rethink connections among national identity, rationality, and power.
Download or read book The Weird and the Eerie written by Mark Fisher and published by Watkins Media Limited. This book was released on 2017-01-31 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A noted British cultural critic takes on some of the strangest works of art from the 20th century and dissects our fascination with the unsettling in popular music, film, and writing What exactly are the Weird and the Eerie? Two closely related but distinct modes, and each possesses its own distinct properties. Both have often been associated with Horror, but this genre alone does not fully encapsulate the pull of the outside and the unknown. In several essays, Mark Fisher argues that a proper understanding of the human condition requires examination of transitory concepts such as the Weird and the Eerie. Featuring discussion of the works of: H. P. Lovecraft, H. G. Wells, M.R. James, Christopher Priest, Joan Lindsay, Nigel Kneale, Daphne Du Maurier, Alan Garner and Margaret Atwood, and films by Stanley Kubrick, Jonathan Glazer and Christopher Nolan.
Download or read book The Quincunx written by Charles Palliser and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 1990-11-27 with total page 802 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An extraordinary modern novel in the Victorian tradition, Charles Palliser has created something extraordinary—a plot within a plot within a plot of family secrets, mysterious clues, low-born birth, high-reaching immorality, and, always, always the fog-enshrouded, enigmatic character of 19th century—London itself. “So compulsively absorbing that reality disappears . . . One is swept along by those enduring emotions that defy modern art and a random universe: hunger for revenge, longing for justice and the fantasy secretly entertained by most people that the bad will be punished and the good rewarded.”—The New York Times “A virtuoso achievement . . . It is an epic, a tour de force, a staggeringly complex and tantalizingly layered tale that will keep readers engrossed in days. . . . The Quincunx will not disappoint you. It is, quite simply, superb.”—Chicago Sun-Times “A bold and vivid tale that invites the reader to get lost in the intoxicating rhythms of another world. And the invitation is irresistible.”—San Francisco Chronicle “A remarkable book . . . In mood, color, atmosphere and characters, this is Charles Dickens reincarnated . . . It is an immersing experience.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review “To read the first pages is to be trapped for seven-hundred odd more: you cannot stop turning them.”—The New Yorker “Few books, at most a dozen or two in a lifetime, affect us this way. . . . For sheer intricacy and ingenuity, for skill and clarity of storytelling, it is the kind of book readers wait for, a book to get lost in.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer
Download or read book City of Saints and Madmen written by Jeff VanderMeer and published by Picador. This book was released on 2022-01-11 with total page 674 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Jeff VanderMeer, the author of Borne and Annihilation, comes the paperback reissue of his cult classic City of Saints and Madmen. In this reinvention of the literature of the fantastic, you hold in your hands an invitation to a place unlike any you’ve ever visited—an invitation delivered by one of our most audacious and astonishing literary magicians. City of elegance and squalor. Of religious fervor and wanton lusts. And everywhere, on the walls of courtyards and churches, an incandescent fungus of mysterious and ominous origin. In Ambergris, a would-be suitor discovers that a sunlit street can become a killing ground in the blink of an eye. An artist receives an invitation to a beheading—and finds himself enchanted. And a patient in a mental institution is convinced that he’s made up a city called Ambergris, imagined its every last detail, and that he’s really from a place called Chicago . . . By turns sensuous and terrifying, filled with exotica and eroticism, this interwoven collection of stories, histories, and “eyewitness” reports invokes a universe within a puzzle box where you can lose—and find—yourself again.
Download or read book The Penguin Book of Mermaids written by Cristina Bacchilega and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-10-08 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes "The Little Mermaid," now a major motion picture from Disney starring Halle Bailey and directed by Rob Marshall* Dive into centuries of mermaid lore with these captivating tales from around the world. A Penguin Classic Among the oldest and most popular mythical beings, mermaids and other merfolk have captured the imagination since long before Ariel sold her voice to a sea witch in the beloved Disney film adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid." As far back as the eighth century B.C., sailors in Homer's Odyssey stuffed wax in their ears to resist the Sirens, who lured men to their watery deaths with song. More than two thousand years later, the gullible New York public lined up to witness a mummified "mermaid" specimen that the enterprising showman P. T. Barnum swore was real. The Penguin Book of Mermaids is a treasury of such tales about merfolk and water spirits from different cultures, ranging from Scottish selkies to Hindu water-serpents to Chilean sea fairies. A third of the selections are published here in English for the first time, and all are accompanied by commentary that explores their undercurrents, showing us how public perceptions of this popular mythical hybrid--at once a human and a fish--illuminate issues of gender, spirituality, ecology, and sexuality. For more than seventy-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 2,000 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Download or read book Hovering written by Rhett Davis and published by Hachette Australia. This book was released on 2022-02-23 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The city was in the same place. But was it the same city? Alice stands outside her family's 1950s red brick veneer, unsure if she should approach. It has been sixteen years, but it's clear she is out of options. Lydia opens the door to a familiar stranger - thirty-nine, tall, bony, pale. She knows her sister immediately. But something isn't right. Meanwhile her son, George, is upstairs, still refusing to speak, and lost in a virtual world of his own design. Nothing is as it was, and while the sisters' resentments flare, it seems that the city too is agitated. People wake up to streets that have rearranged themselves, in houses that have moved to different parts of town. Tensions rise and the authorities have no answers. The internet becomes alight with conspiracy theories. As the world lurches around them, Alice's secret will be revealed, and the ground at their feet will no longer be so firm. A spectacular debut novel from one of Australia's most exciting new writers. Winner of the Victorian Premier's Unpublished Manuscript Award, Hovering crosses genres, literary styles and conventions to create a powerful and kaleidoscopic story about three people struggling to find connection in a chaotic and impermanent world. 'Every now and then a book comes along that resists a neat definition. Hovering is just such a read . . . this fascinating, compelling novel will challenge readers' Good Reading 'in the mould of Jennifer Egan or AM Homes . . . [a] slick debut' The Guardian 'Original and blackly funny' Toni Jordan, The Age 'transformative' ArtsHub 'immediately striking on both a conceptual and a formal level' Sydney Morning Herald 'This is such an original novel, and Davis's writing is exhilarating, surprising but never heavy-handed . . . one of the most exciting books of this year' Kill Your Darlings 'a compassionate, surreal, clear-eyed exploration of modern Australia and the place of art in the national conversation' PS News
Download or read book Fortunately the Milk written by Neil Gaiman and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From multi-award-winning Neil Gaiman comes a spectacularly silly, mind-bendingly clever, brilliantly bonkers adventure with lip-smackingly gorgeous illustrations by Chris Riddell
Download or read book The Winter Duke written by Claire Eliza Bartlett and published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2020-03-03 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: She survived the curse. Now she must survive the throne. All Ekata wants is to stay alive—and the chance to prove herself as a scholar. Once Ekata's brother is finally named heir to the dukedom of Kylma Above, there will be nothing to keep her at home with her murderous family. Not her books or her experiments, not her family's icy castle atop a frozen lake, not even the tantalizingly close Kylma Below, a mesmerizing underwater kingdom that provides her family with magic. But just as escape is within reach, her parents and twelve siblings fall under a strange sleeping sickness, and no one can find a cure. In the space of a single night, Ekata inherits the title of duke, her brother's captivating warrior bride, and ever-encroaching challengers from without—and within—her ministry. Nothing has prepared Ekata for diplomacy, for war, for love . . . or for a crown she has never wanted. If Kylma Above is to survive, Ekata must seize her family's magic and power. And if Ekata is to survive, she must quickly decide how she will wield them both. The Winter Duke is an enchanted tale of intrigue by Claire Eliza Bartlett, author of the acclaimed young adult fantasy novel We Rule the Night.
