Andrew "Ender" Wiggin thinks he is playing computer simulated war games; he is, in fact, engaged in something far more desperate. The result of genetic experimentation, Ender may be the military genius Earth desperately needs in a war against an alien enemy seeking to destroy all human life. The only way to find out is to throw Ender into ever harsher training, to chip away and find the diamond inside, or destroy him utterly. Ender Wiggin is six years old when it begins. He will grow up fast.

But Ender is not the only result of the experiment. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway almost as long. Ender's two older siblings, Peter and Valentine, are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. While Peter was too uncontrollably violent, Valentine very nearly lacks the capability for violence altogether. Neither was found suitable for the military's purpose. But they are driven by their jealousy of Ender, and by their inbred drive for power. Peter seeks to control the political process, to become a ruler. Valentine's abilities turn more toward the subtle control of the beliefs of commoner and elite alike, through powerfully convincing essays. Hiding their youth and identities behind the anonymity of the computer networks, these two begin working together to shape the destiny of Earth—an Earth that has no future at all if their brother Ender fails.

The evil minions of the undead Sithi Storm King are beginning their final preparations for the kingdom-shattering culmination of their dark sorceries, drawing King Elias ever deeper into their nightmarish, spell-spun world.

As the Storm King’s power grows and the boundaries of time begin to blur, the loyal allies of Prince Josua struggle to rally their forces at the Stone of Farewell. There, too, Simon and the surviving members of the League of the Scroll have gathered for a desperate attempt to unravel mysteries from the forgotten past.

For if the League can reclaim these age-old secrets of magic long-buried beneath the dusts of time, they may be able to reveal to Josua and his army the only means of striking down the unslayable foe....

Following All the Pretty Horses in Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy is a novel whose force of language is matched only by its breadth of experience and depth of thought. In the bootheel of New Mexico hard on the frontier, Billy and Boyd Parham are just boys in the years before the Second World War, but on the cusp of unimaginable events. First comes a trespassing Indian and the dream of wolves running wild amongst the cattle lately brought onto the plain by settlers - this when all the wisdom of trappers has disappeared along with the trappers themselves. So Billy sets forth at the age of sixteen on an unwitting journey into the souls of boys, animals and men.

Having trapped a she-wolf he would restore to the mountains of Mexico, he is long gone and returns to find everything he left behind transformed utterly in his absence. Except his kid brother, Boyd, with whom he strikes out yet again to reclaim what is theirs - thus crossing into "that antique gaze from whence there could be no way back forever."

What they find instead, is an extraordinary panoply of fiestas and circuses, dogs, horses and hawks, pilgrims and revolutionaries, grand haciendas and forlorn cantinas, bandits, gypsies and roving tribes, a young girl alone on the road, a mystery in the mountain wilds, and a myth in the making.

And in this wider world they fight a war as rageful as the one neither, in the end, will join up for back home. One brother finds his destiny, while the other arrives only at his fate.

An essential novel by any measure, and the transfixing middle passage of Cormac McCarthy's ongoing trilogy, The Crossing is luminous and appalling, a book that touches, stops, and starts the heart and mind at once.

Nearly five centuries ago, a fleet of boats landed mysteriously on an island in an inland sea. There, an ancient Andean people hid a golden hoard greater than that of any pharaoh, then they and their treasure vanished into history -- until now.

Fast forward to 1998, the Andes Mountains of Peru. DIRK PITT dives into an ancient sacrificial pool, saving two American archaeologists from certain drowning. But his death-defying rescue is only the beginning, as it draws the intrepid Pitt into a vortex of darkness and danger, corruption and betrayal.

A sinister crime syndicate has traced the long-lost treasure -- worth almost a billion dollars -- from the Andes to the banks of a hidden underground river flowing beneath a Mexican desert. Driven by burning greed and a ruthless bloodlust, the syndicate is racing to seize the golden prize...and to terminate the one man who can stop them: DIRK PITT!

In the shadowy recesses of Whitehall and Washington, an unholy alliance operates between the intelligence community and the secret arms trade. Jonathan Pine is ready to stand up and be counted in the fight against this ultimate heart of darkness.

His mission takes him from the cliffs of west Cornwall, via northern Quebec and the Caribbean, to the jungles of post-Noriega Panama. His quarry is the worst man in the world.

Welcome to a new era of espionage, where the habits and rules forged in the darkest days of the Cold War are applied to an even more harrowing end. This is Roper's world—a world of illegal arms dealers and drug smugglers, men whose ruthlessness is matched only by their hunger for unlimited wealth.

Enter Leonard Burr, former British intelligence officer turned international policeman. Burr recruits Pine to his cause, launching him on an undercover odyssey that takes him from Zurich to the desolate coast of Cornwall, and eventually to a village in Quebec where he obtains the identity that will be his ticket of entry to Roper's island hideaway in the Bahamas.

In what is perhaps John le Carré's greatest work to date, The Night Manager brings to life a whole new era of intrigue, brilliantly conceived by the undisputed master of the genre.

Other children get given xylophones. Susan just had to ask her grandfather to take his vest off. Yes. There's a Death in the family.

It's hard to grow up normally when Grandfather rides a white horse and wields a scythe – especially when you have to take over the family business, and everyone mistakes you for the Tooth Fairy.

And especially when you have to face the new and addictive music that has entered Discworld.

It's lawless. It changes people.

It's called Music With Rocks In.

It's got a beat and you can dance to it, but...

It's alive.

And it won't fade away.

From the pages of Neil Gaiman's SANDMAN comes the young, pale, perky, and genuinely likable Death. One day in every century, Death walks the Earth to better understand those to whom she will be the final visitor.

Today is that day. As a young mortal girl named Didi, Death befriends a teenager and helps a 250-year old homeless woman find her missing heart. What follows is a sincere musing on love, life and (of course) death.

When humans start cutting down trees and digging holes in peaceful Dunlath Valley, the wolves know that something is wrong. They send a messenger to the only human who will listen -- Daine, a fourteen-year-old girl with the unpredictable power of wild magic. Daine and her closest companions heed the wolves' cry for help. But the challenge they are about to face in the valley is greater than they can possibly imagine...

Sally Lockhart's friend and partner-in-adventure, Jim Taylor, has just solved a mystery. For years, he's been searching for Adelaide, the little girl enslaved by the toothless crone, Mrs. Holland, in The Ruby in the Smoke. And now he's found her—just as she's about to become a princess.

Crown Princess of Razkavia, to be exact, and a princess in danger. Her future husband is desperate to protect his bride and employs Jim as their bodyguard. Razkavia's quaint little streets are full of danger.

This thrilling conclusion to the Sally Lockhart series follows Sally's good friend Jim Taylor. Now a dashing detective, Jim has spent years looking for Adelaide, the young girl who helped Sally and her friends so long ago. The last time Jim Taylor saw Adelaide, her life was in grave danger, and when a carriage mysteriously explodes outside her new home, it seems nothing's changed.

But Adelaide is no longer a frightened orphan from the slums of England, for she has recently married a prince of a small nation—a nation at the heart of an international power struggle. When her husband is assassinated, Adelaide finds herself crowned queen—a position that seems to require all of the survival skills she learned on the streets. With Jim's help, Adelaide rules the country until political intrigue has them both on the run for their very lives, as the fate of the nation hangs in the balance.

The dwarfish, fetally-damaged yet brilliant Miles Vorkosigan has more than his share of troubles. Having recently escaped an assassination plot whose tool was a brainwashed clone of himself, Miles has set the clone, Mark, free for a new chance at life.

But when he decides to let his clone brother assume his secret identity and lead the Dendarii Free Mercenary on an unauthorized mission to liberate other clones from the outlaw planet of Jackson's Whole, things start to get really messy. The mission goes awry, Miles's rescue attempt goes even more wrong, and Miles ends up killed and placed in cryogenic suspension for future resuscitation.

Then, as if that weren't bad enough, the cryo-container is lost! Now it is up to the confused, disturbed Mark to either take Miles's place as heir of the Vorkosigan line or redeem himself by finding and saving Miles.

If a big hungry moose comes to visit, you might give him a muffin to make him feel at home. If you give him a muffin, he'll want some jam to go with it. When he's eaten all your muffins, he'll want to go to the store to get some more muffin mix.

In this hilarious sequel to If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, the young host is again run ragged by a surprise guest. Young readers will delight in the comic complications that follow when a little boy entertains a gregarious moose.

Fables & Reflections is the sixth collection of issues in the DC Comics series, The Sandman. This captivating volume was penned by the renowned author Neil Gaiman and brought to life by a talented team of illustrators including Bryan Talbot, Stan Woch, P. Craig Russell, and many others. The artistry is further enhanced by the vivid colors of Danny Vozzo and Lovern Kindzierski/Digital Chameleon, and the precise lettering of Todd Klein.

The collection features four tales under the banner of "Distant Mirrors", which includes Issue #29 "Thermidor", #30 "August", #31 "Three Septembers and a January", and #50 "Ramadan". These stories weave a rich tapestry of historical and fantastical narratives that are both thought-provoking and visually stunning.

Also included are single-issue short stories from the Convergence arc, such as Issue #38 "The Hunt", #39 "Soft Places", and #40 "The Parliament of Rooks". Additionally, the collection presents the Sandman Special "The Song of Orpheus", a retelling of the classic Greek myth.

The embattled Republic reels from the attacks of Grand Admiral Thrawn, who has marshaled the remnants of the Imperial forces and driven the Rebels back with an abominable technology recovered from the Emperor's secret fortress: clone soldiers.

As Thrawn mounts his final siege, Han and Chewbacca struggle to form a coalition of smugglers for a last-ditch attack against the empire, while Leia holds the Alliance together and prepares for the birth of her Jedi twins.

Overwhelmed by the ships and clones at Thrawn's command, the Republic has one last hope—sending a small force, led by Luke Skywalker, into the very stronghold that houses Thrawn's terrible cloning machines.

There a final danger awaits, as the Dark Jedi C'baoth directs the battle against the Rebels and builds his strength to finish what he had already started: the destruction of Luke Skywalker.

The Day After Tomorrow is a gripping thriller that intricately weaves together three stories of international intrigue. In the first, a doctor must bravely confront the man who killed his father. Meanwhile, a detective is on the trail of a series of horrific murders, each more shocking than the last. Finally, a shadowy international organization is devising a master plan of apocalyptic dimensions, threatening to change the world forever.

This novel spans two continents and five decades, drawing the reader into a world of suspense and adventure. It's a tale of conspiracy and mystery that will keep you on the edge of your seat from start to finish.

Three of a Kind

Betsy and Tacy are best friends. Then Tib moves into the neighborhood and the three of them start to play together. The grown-ups think they will quarrel, but they don't. Sometimes they quarrel with Betsy's and Tacy's bossy big sisters, but they never quarrel among themselves.

They are not as good as they might be. They cook up awful messes in the kitchen, throw mud on each other and pretend to be beggars, and cut off each other's hair. But Betsy, Tacy, and Tib always manage to have a good time.

Ever since their first publication in the 1940s, the Betsy-Tacy stories have been loved by each generation of young readers.

Probably the most popular book in the history of the Far East, this classic sixteenth-century novel is a combination of picaresque novel and folk epic that mixes satire, allegory, and history into a rollicking adventure.

It is the story of the roguish Monkey and his encounters with major and minor spirits, gods, demigods, demons, ogres, monsters, and fairies.

This translation, by the distinguished scholar Arthur Waley, is the first accurate English version; it makes available to the Western reader a faithful reproduction of the spirit and meaning of the original.

Pierrot Mon Ami, considered by many to be one of Raymond Queneau's finest achievements, is a quirky coming-of-age novel concerning a young man's initiation into a world filled with deceit, fraud, and manipulation.

From his short-lived job at a Paris amusement park where he helps to raise women's skirts to the delight of an unruly audience, to his frustrated and unsuccessful love of Yvonne, to his failed assignment to care for the tomb of the shadowy Prince Luigi of Poldevia, Pierrot stumbles about, nearly immune to the effects of duplicity.

This "innocent" implies how his story, at almost every turn, undermines, upsets, and plays upon our expectations, leaving us with more questions than answers, and doing so in a gloriously skewed style (admirably re-created by Barbara Wright, Queneau's principal translator).

A disease of unparalleled destructive force has sprung up almost simultaneously in every corner of the globe, all but destroying the human race. One survivor, strangely immune to the effects of the epidemic, ventures forward to experience a world without man. What he ultimately discovers will prove far more astonishing than anything he'd either dreaded or hoped for.

In Los Angeles, a hot Hollywood director, high on PCP, turns a city street into a fiery apocalypse. Heroic LAPD officer Jac McGarvey is badly wounded and will not walk for months. His wife and child are left to fend for themselves against both criminals that control an increasingly violent city and the dead director's cult of fanatic fans.

In a lonely corner of Montana, Eduardo Fernandez, the father of McGarvey's murdered partner, witnesses a strange nocturnal sight. The stand of pines outside his house suddenly glows with eerie amber light, and Fernandez senses a watcher in the winter woods. As the seasons change, the very creatures of the forest seem in league with a mysterious presence. Fernandez is caught up in a series of chilling incidents that escalate toward a confrontation that could rob him of his sanity or his life—or both.

As events careen out of control, the McGarvey family is drawn to Fernandez's Montana ranch. In that isolated place, they discover their destiny in a terrifying and fiercely suspenseful encounter with a hostile, utterly ruthless, and enigmatic enemy, from which neither the living nor the dead are safe.

Sacred Hunger is a stunning and engrossing exploration of power, domination, and greed. Filled with the "sacred hunger" to expand its empire and its profits, England entered fully into the slave trade and spread the trade throughout its colonies. In this work, Barry Unsworth follows the failing fortunes of William Kemp, a merchant pinning his last chance to a slave ship; his son, who needs a fortune because he is in love with an upper-class woman; and his nephew, who sails on the ship as its doctor because he has lost all he has loved.

The voyage meets its demise when disease spreads among the slaves and the captain's drastic response provokes a mutiny. Joining together, the sailors and the slaves set up a secret, utopian society in the wilderness of Florida, only to await the vengeance of the single-minded, young Kemp.

Pleasure of a Dark Prince by Kresley Cole is a seductive tale that will enrapture readers with its intense romance and thrilling adventure. This novel follows the story of a fierce werewolf prince, Garreth MacRieve, who will stop at nothing to protect the lovely archer he covets from afar.

A Dangerous Beauty...
Lucia the Huntress: as mysterious as she is exquisite, she harbors secrets that threaten to destroy her—and those she loves.

An Uncontrollable Need...
Garreth MacRieve, Prince of the Lykae: the brutal Highland warrior who burns to finally claim this maddeningly sensual creature as his own.

That Lead to a Pleasure So Wicked...
From the shadows, Garreth has long watched over Lucia. Now, the only way to keep the proud huntress safe from harm is to convince her to accept him as her guardian. To do this, Garreth will ruthlessly exploit Lucia's greatest weakness—her wanton desire for him.

Rama Revealed is a science fiction novel that concludes the Rama series, co-authored by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee. This final installment picks up immediately after the cliffhanger ending of The Garden of Rama.

The story follows Nicole Wakefield as she escapes from imprisonment. The colony, once a hopeful settlement, has turned into a brutal dictatorship, terrorizing both humans and their alien neighbors. Nicole's journey takes her across the Cylindrical Sea to the mysterious island called New York, where she reunites with her husband and family.

However, their reunion is short-lived as they are pursued and forced to flee into the subterranean corridors inhabited by the enigmatic octospiders. As they delve deeper, they face the challenge of determining whether these creatures are allies or adversaries.

This epic adventure is filled with massive scope and extraordinary revelations, offering a stunning conclusion to the generations-long odyssey of the Rama starship.

In 2025, with the world descending into madness and anarchy, one woman begins a fateful journey toward a better future.

Lauren Olamina and her family live in one of the only safe neighborhoods remaining on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Behind the walls of their defended enclave, Lauren’s father, a preacher, and a handful of other citizens try to salvage what remains of a culture that has been destroyed by drugs, disease, war, and chronic water shortages. While her father tries to lead people on the righteous path, Lauren struggles with hyperempathy, a condition that makes her extraordinarily sensitive to the pain of others.

When fire destroys their compound, Lauren’s family is killed and she is forced out into a world that is fraught with danger. With a handful of other refugees, Lauren must make her way north to safety, along the way conceiving a revolutionary idea that may mean salvation for all mankind.

Charles Darwin's Autobiography was first published in 1887, five years after his death. It was a bowdlerized edition: Darwin's family, attempting to protect his posthumous reputation, had deleted all the passages they considered too personal or controversial. The present complete edition did not appear until 1959, one hundred years after the publication of The Origin of Species.

The daring and restless mind, the integrity and simplicity of Darwin's character are revealed in this direct and personal account of his life—his family, his education, his explorations of the natural world, his religion, and philosophy. The editor has provided page and line references to the more important restored passages, and previously unpublished notes and letters on family matters and on the controversy between Samuel Butler appear in an appendix.

The Calculus Affair is a thrilling adventure featuring Tintin, the Captain, and Snowy as they embark on a daring mission to rescue Dr. Calculus.
He has been kidnapped by the Bordurians, and it's up to our heroes to save him.

Join them in this exciting journey full of mystery, humor, and classic comic thrills!

Zounds! Spaceman Spiff, Stupendous Man, the ferocious tiger Hobbes, and the rest of Calvin's riotous imagination are all included in The Days Are Just Packed.

Calvin, the self-proclaimed "Boy of Destiny," continues to save the universe with his alter egos, Spaceman Spiff and Stupendous Man, at least until Miss Wormwood or his mother bring him back to reality.

Susie, Calvin's nemesis and love interest, remains Calvin's favorite target. And when he's not recovering from a ferocious tiger attack, Calvin creates hideous snowmen, plays a moral cat-and-mouse game with Santa, conducts his infamous Dad polls, and combats the monsters under his bed.

Nobody knew where it had come from, or what it wanted. Not even Jaive, the sorceress, could fathom the mystery of the fabled beast. But Tanaquil, Jaive's completely unmagical daughter, understood it at once. She knew why the unicorn was there: It had come for her. It needed her.

Tanaquil was amazed because she was the girl with no talent for magic. She could only fiddle with broken bits of machinery and make them work again. What could she do for a unicorn?

With her talent for mending things, sixteen-year-old Tanaquil reconstructs a unicorn which, brought to life, lures her away from her desert fortress home and her sorceress mother to find a city by the sea and the way to a perfect world.

For Kivrin, preparing an on-site study of one of the deadliest eras in humanity's history was as simple as receiving inoculations against the diseases of the fourteenth century and inventing an alibi for a woman traveling alone. For her instructors in the twenty-first century, it meant painstaking calculations and careful monitoring of the rendezvous location where Kivrin would be received.

But a crisis strangely linking past and future strands Kivrin in a bygone age as her fellows try desperately to rescue her. In a time of superstition and fear, Kivrin--barely of age herself--finds she has become an unlikely angel of hope during one of history's darkest hours.

Connie Willis draws upon her understanding of the universalities of human nature to explore the ageless issues of evil, suffering, and the indomitable will of the human spirit.

The world of Athera lives in eternal fog, its skies obscured by the malevolent Mistwraith. Only the combined powers of two half-brothers can challenge the Mistwraith’s stranglehold: Arithon, Master of Shadow and Lysaer, Lord of Light.

Arithon and Lysaer will find that they are inescapably bound inside a pattern of events dictated by their own deepest convictions. Yet there is more at stake than one battle with the Mistwraith – as the sorcerers of the Fellowship of Seven know well. For between them the half-brothers hold the balance of the world, its harmony and its future, in their hands.

Postcards is the mesmerizing tale of Loyal Blood, a man who spends a lifetime running from a terrible crime that forever incapacitates him from forming intimate connections. Blood's journey begins in 1944, taking him from his hardscrabble Vermont hill farm across the vast landscapes of America.

From New York to California, passing through Ohio, Minnesota, Montana, British Columbia, North Dakota, Wyoming, and New Mexico, Loyal must live a hundred lives to survive. He delves into mining gold, growing beans, hunting fossils, prospecting for uranium, and ranching. Meanwhile, his family suffers great losses, particularly the hard-won values of endurance and pride, legacies of generations rooted in intimacy with the land.

Postcards chronicles the lives of the rural and the dispossessed, mapping their world with the historical accuracy and narrative skill reminiscent of Cather, Dreiser, and Faulkner. It stands as a new American classic.

The Books of Magic introduces readers to a mesmerizing tale of the dangers and opportunities of youth, and its endless possibilities. The story follows Timothy Hunter, a young boy who could become the most powerful magician in the world, but he must decide if he truly wants that destiny.

A quartet of fallen mystics, known as the TrenchCoat Brigade, including John Constantine, the Phantom Stranger, Dr. Occult, and Mister E, guide Timothy through the magical realms. Along the way, he meets Vertigo's greatest practitioners of magic and faces the ultimate choice of whether to join their ranks.

Illustrated by four of comics' most accomplished artists, including John Bolton, Scott Hampton, Charles Vess, and Paul Johnson, the book collects all four issues of the original miniseries that introduced Timothy Hunter and set the stage for his continuing adventures.

This tale is a dizzying, breathtaking tour through the beautiful and terrifying worlds of magic, as Timothy explores the magical realms from the beginning of time, guided by the DC Universe magicians. Will he embrace his gift, or will the choice be made for him?

Better than Life is a wild and wacky science fiction novel that continues the adventures of the beloved Red Dwarf crew. Inspired by the popular BBC-TV series, this book is reminiscent of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

The story follows Lister, who finds himself in a peculiar predicament. After passing out drunk in London, he awakens in a locker on a moon of Saturn. Now, Lister is trapped in a computer game that transports players to the perfect world of their imaginations. However, this is no ordinary game; it’s a game people are literally dying to play.

Join Lister, Rimmer, Kryten, Holly, and the Cat as they navigate through this addictive virtual reality called Better Than Life. Each character experiences their own version of paradise: Lister lives in a replica of Bedford Falls from It's a Wonderful Life, Rimmer is married to a supermodel, and the Cat lives in Denmark in a palace surrounded by a moat of milk. Life's good on Earth. Or is it?

To escape this perilous paradise, the crew must face the ultimate challenge: they have to want to leave. This book promises a journey through frontal-lobe knotting realities where none dare venture but the bravest of the brave, the boldest of the bold, and the feeblest of the feeble-minded.

He was one of the best Marine snipers in Vietnam. Today, twenty years later, the disgruntled hero of an unheroic war, all Bob Lee Swagger wants is to be left alone and to leave the killing behind.

But with consummate psychological skill, a shadowy military organization seduces Bob into leaving his beloved Arkansas hills for one last mission for his country, unaware until too late that the game is rigged.

The assassination plot is executed to perfection—until Bob Lee Swagger, alleged lone gunman, comes out of the operation alive, the target of a nationwide manhunt, his only allies a woman he just met and a discredited FBI agent.

Now Bob Lee Swagger is on the run, using his lethal skills once more—but this time to track down the men who set him up and to break a dark conspiracy aimed at the very heart of America.

In the middle of the twenty-first century, life as we know it has changed for all time. Shira Shipman's marriage has broken up, and her young son has been taken from her by the corporation that runs her zone, so she has returned to Tikva, the Jewish free town where she grew up.

There, she is welcomed by Malkah, the brilliant grandmother who raised her, and meets an extraordinary man who is not a man at all, but a unique cyborg implanted with intelligence, emotions—and the ability to kill.

From the imagination of Marge Piercy comes yet another stunning novel of morality and courage, a bold adventure of women, men, and the world of tomorrow.

High above the planet Harmony, the Oversoul watches. Its task, programmed so many millennia ago, is to guard the human settlement on this planet—to protect this fragile remnant of Earth from all threats. To protect them, most of all, from themselves. The Oversoul has done its job well. There is no war on Harmony. There are no weapons of mass destruction. There is no technology that could lead to weapons of war.

By control of the data banks, and subtle interference in the very thoughts of the people, the artificial intelligence has fulfilled its mission. But now there is a problem. In orbit, the Oversoul realizes that it has lost access to some of its memory banks, and some of its power systems are failing. And on the planet, men are beginning to think about power, wealth, and conquest.

In Red Mars, award-winning author Kim Stanley Robinson presents the first installment of his acclaimed Mars Trilogy. The novel chronicles the ambitious endeavor of terraforming Mars, beginning in 2026 with the arrival of a group of 100 colonists. Among them are leaders such as John Boone, Maya Toitavna, Frank Chalmers, and Arkady Bogdanov, who carry the burden of their mission's success and the dreams of humanity.

The colonists embark on a monumental task to transform the barren, hostile climate of the red planet into a habitable environment. Their plans include orbiting giant satellite mirrors to reflect sunlight, sprinkling black dust on the polar caps to capture warmth, and drilling massive tunnels into the mantle to release hot gases.

Set against a backdrop of massive planetary changes, the narrative delves into the personal lives of the colonists, exploring their rivalries, loves, and friendships. As some become consumed by their passion for Mars, others see the planet as a chance for profit or a laboratory for genetic breakthroughs. However, not everyone is in favor of altering Mars, leading to conflicts that could jeopardize the entire mission.

Red Mars is a brilliant and imaginative epic that combines cutting-edge science with human drama, exploring the complexities of colonization and the ethical dilemmas of altering an entire world.

In this best-selling new book, his first in seventeen years, Robert M. Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, takes us on a poignant and passionate journey as mysterious and compelling as his first life-changing work. Instead of a motorcycle, a sailboat carries his philosopher-narrator Phaedrus down the Hudson River as winter closes in. Along the way he picks up a most unlikely traveling companion: a woman named Lila who in her desperate sexuality, hostility, and oncoming madness threatens to disrupt his life.

In Lila Robert M. Pirsig has crafted a unique work of adventure and ideas that examines the essential issues of the nineties as his previous classic did the seventies.

Operation Doomsday is now active. Commander Robert Bellamy of US Naval Intelligence is dispatched on a top secret mission. A weather balloon carrying sensitive military information has crashed in Switzerland. Bellamy must locate the ten witnesses to the incident so that they can be sworn to secrecy.

But as he conducts his search, Bellamy begins to suspect that he, too, is being hunted by an unknown and lethal force. What he was told about the balloon was only one part of an almost unbelievable happening...

From Washington to Zurich, Rome, and Paris, the story unfolds to reveal Bellamy's past: why the woman he loves the most cannot return his love, why his friends become his deadly enemies, and why the world must never learn the incredible secret hidden on the Swiss Alps.

Deep in the African rain forest, near the legendary ruins of the Lost City of Zinj, an expedition of eight American geologists is mysteriously and brutally killed in a matter of minutes. Ten thousand miles away, Karen Ross, the Congo Project Supervisor, watches a gruesome video transmission of the aftermath: a camp destroyed, tents crushed and torn, equipment scattered in the mud alongside dead bodies — all motionless except for one moving image — a grainy, dark, man-shaped blur.

In San Francisco, primatologist Peter Elliot works with Amy, a gorilla with an extraordinary vocabulary of 620 “signs,” the most ever learned by a primate, and she likes to fingerpaint. But recently, her behavior has been erratic and her drawings match, with stunning accuracy, the brittle pages of a Portuguese print dating back to 1642 . . . a drawing of an ancient lost city. A new expedition — along with Amy — is sent into the Congo where they enter a secret world, and the only way out may be through a horrifying death.

Join New York Times bestselling author Douglas Adams and zoologist Mark Carwardine as they take off around the world in search of exotic, endangered creatures. Encounter the animal kingdom in its stunning beauty, astonishing variety, and imminent peril: from the giant Komodo dragon of Indonesia, the helpless but loveable Kakapo of New Zealand, to the blind river dolphins of China, and the white rhinos of Zaire. Hilarious and poignant—as only Douglas Adams can be—Last Chance to See is an entertaining and arresting odyssey through the Earth’s magnificent wildlife galaxy.

The Wheel of Time turns and Ages come and go, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth returns again.

In the Third Age, an Age of Prophecy, the World and Time themselves hang in the balance. What was, what will be, and what is, may yet fall under the Shadow. The seals of Shayol Ghul are weak now, and the Dark One reaches out. The Shadow is rising to cover humankind. In Tar Valon, Min sees portents of hideous doom. Will the White Tower itself be broken?

In the Two Rivers, the Whitecloaks ride in pursuit of a man with golden eyes, and in pursuit of the Dragon Reborn. In Cantorin, among the Sea Folk, High Lady Suroth plans the return of the Seanchan armies to the mainland. In the Stone of Tear, the Lord Dragon considers his next move. It will be something no one expects, not the Black Ajah, not Tairen nobles, not Aes Sedai, not Egwene or Elayne or Nynaeve. Against the Shadow rising stands the Dragon Reborn...

Out of Africa is Isak Dinesen's memoir of her years in Africa, from 1914 to 1931, on a four-thousand-acre coffee plantation in the hills near Nairobi. She had come to Kenya from Denmark with her husband, and when they separated she stayed on to manage the farm by herself, visited frequently by her lover, the big-game hunter Denys Finch-Hatton, for whom she would make up stories like Scheherazade. In Africa, "I learned how to tell tales," she recalled many years later. "The natives have an ear still. I told stories constantly to them, all kinds." Her account of her African adventures, written after she had lost her beloved farm and returned to Denmark, is that of a master storyteller, a woman whom John Updike called "one of the most picturesque and flamboyant literary personalities of the century."

Stephen King cranks up the suspense in a different kind of bedtime story. A game of seduction between a husband and wife goes horribly awry when the husband dies. But the nightmare has just begun...

Gerald and Jessie Burlingame have gone to their summer home on a warm weekday in October for a romantic interlude. After being handcuffed to her bedposts, Jessie tires of her husband's games, but when Gerald refuses to stop, she lashes out at him with deadly consequences. Still handcuffed, she is trapped and alone. Painful memories from her childhood bedevil her. Her only company is a hungry stray dog and the sundry voices that populate her mind.

As night comes, she is unsure whether it is her imagination or if she has another companion: someone watching her from the corner of her dark bedroom.

In a world of extraordinary imagination, a final battle is waged against a power of unimaginable proportions.

Five men and women from our world face a battle with an evil beyond imagining in the deeply moving conclusion to Guy Gavriel Kay’s acclaimed Fionavar Tapestry. As the Unraveller’s armies assemble, those resisting him must call upon the most ancient of powers, knowing that if this realm of gods and magic is conquered by evil, the ripples of destruction will be felt across all worlds.

But despite the sacrifices made and courage shown, all may be undone because of one child’s choice. For that one has been born of both Darkness and Light, and he alone must walk the darkest road as the fate of worlds hangs in the balance...

In the year 2130, a mysterious spaceship, Rama, arrived in the solar system. It was huge—big enough to contain a city and a sea—and empty, apparently abandoned. By the time Rama departed for its next, unknown destination, many wonders had been uncovered, but few mysteries solved. Only one thing was clear: everything the enigmatic builders of Rama did, they did in threes.

Eighty years later, the second alien craft arrived in the solar system. This time, Earth had been waiting. But all the years of preparation were not enough to unlock the Raman enigma.

Now Rama II is on its way out of the solar system. Aboard it are three humans, two men and a woman, left behind when the expedition departed. Ahead of them lies the unknown, a voyage no human has ever experienced. And at the end of it—and who could tell how many years away that might be?—may lie the truth about Rama.

One of Faulkner's comic masterpieces, The Reivers is a picaresque that tells of three unlikely car thieves from rural Mississippi.

Eleven-year-old Lucius Priest is persuaded by Boon Hogganbeck, one of his family's retainers, to steal his grandfather's car and make a trip to Memphis. The Priests' black coachman, Ned McCaslin, stows away, and the three of them are off on a heroic odyssey, for which they are all ill-equipped, that ends at Miss Reba's bordello in Memphis.

From there, a series of wild misadventures ensues—involving horse smuggling, trainmen, sheriffs' deputies, and jail.

Lara Cameron is a famous, powerful, and wealthy New York building developer. She struggled from brutal poverty in Glace Bay, where a banker took her body as part of her first deal, to Chicago, where she took banker Keller's love lightly for granted. As her skyscrapers and boutique hotels tower on earth, she is at the top of a male-dominated field.

She lies and cheats to close a deal, making cruel enemies. At forty, she is beautiful, glamorous, insecure, ruthless, vulnerable, secretly generous, and rich—and still wants more. She marries an international concert pianist, the Lochinvar of her childhood dreams, but someone puts him in the hospital and threatens to take down her empire.

In a dazzling global setting from London to New York, Reno to Rome, Lara will find everything she has won—her fortune, her fame, and the man she loves—shockingly endangered by a secret with the devastating power to destroy her.

Sam Spade is hired by the fragrant Miss Wonderley to track down her sister, who has eloped with a louse called Floyd Thursby. But Miss Wonderley is in fact the beautiful and treacherous Brigid O'Shaughnessy, and when Spade's partner Miles Archer is shot while on Thursby's trail, Spade finds himself both hunter and hunted: can he track down the jewel-encrusted bird, a treasure worth killing for, before the Fat Man finds him?