Enchantment is the story of a Ukraine-born, American grad student who finds himself transported to the ninth century to play the prince in a Russian version of Sleeping Beauty. Early in the story, he muses that in a French or English retelling of the tale, the prince and princess would live happily ever after. But, […]
Since his debut in 1951 as The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield has been synonymous with “cynical adolescent.” Holden narrates the story of a couple of days in his sixteen-year-old life, just after hes been expelled from prep school, in a slang that sounds edgy even today and keeps this novel on banned book […]
The year 1984 has come and gone, but George Orwells prophetic, nightmarish vision in 1949 of the world we were becoming is timelier than ever. 1984 is still the great modern classic of “negative utopia”–a startlingly original and haunting novel that creates an imaginary world that is completely convincing, from the first sentence to the […]
William Goldings classic tale about a group of English schoolboys who are plane-wrecked on a deserted island is just as chilling and relevant today as when it was first published in 1954. At first, the stranded boys cooperate, attempting to gather food, make shelters, and maintain signal fires. Overseeing their efforts are Ralph, “the boy […]
Yann Martels imaginative and unforgettable Life of Pi is a magical reading experience, an endless blue expanse of storytelling about adventure, survival, and ultimately, faith. The precocious son of a zookeeper, 16-year-old Pi Patel is raised in Pondicherry, India, where he tries on various faiths for size, attracting “religions the way a dog attracts fleas.” […]
Just a few chapters into Inkspell, Mo (a.k.a. “Silvertongue”) sagely says to his daughter, “Stories never really end, Meggie, even if the books like to pretend they do. Stories always go on. They dont end on the last page, any more than they begin on the first page.” A fitting meta-observation for this, the unplanned […]
Back cover description: Nathaniel is eleven years old and a magicians apprentice, learning the traditional arts of magic. All is well until he has a life changing encounter with Simon Lovelace, a magician of unrivaled ruthlessness and ambition. When Lovelace brutally humiliates Nathaniel in public, Nathaniel decides to speed up on his education, teaching himself […]
An Epic of Two WorldsIn a world as rich and real as our own, Richard Rahl and Kahlan Amnell stand against the ancient forces which besiege the New World– forces so terrible that when last they threatened, they could only be withstood by sealing off the Old World from whence they came. Now the barrier […]
Here are the confessions of a vampire. Hypnotic, shocking, and chillingly erotic, this is a novel of mesmerizing beauty and astonishing force??a story of danger and flight, of love and loss, of suspense and resolution, and of the extraordinary power of the senses.