The second book in the breathtaking epic fantasy of heritage, vengeance, and destiny A decade has passed since the barbarian Loethar brutally conquered the last remaining, most powerful realm in the Denova Set—though the coveted Valisar Enchantment, the irresistible ability to coerce and control, eludes him still. Ten years since the warlord butchered the Set's royals and feasted on their blood. But he did not kill them all.
Literary sleuth Thursday Next is out to save literature in the fifth installment of Jasper Fforde's wildly popular series Beloved for his prodigious imagination, his satirical gifts, his literate humor, and sheer silliness, Jasper Fforde has delighted book lovers since Thursday Next first appeared in The Eyre Affair, a genre send-up hailed as an instant classic. Since the no-nonsense literary detective from Swindon made her debut, literature has never been quite the same. Neither have nursery rhymes, for that matter.
Facial Justice is a dystopian novel by L. P. Hartley, published in 1960. The novel depicts a post-apocalyptic society that has sought to banish privilege and envy, to the extent that people will even have their faces surgically altered in order to appear neither too beautiful nor too ugly. The novel was included in Anthony Burgess's Ninety-nine Novels: The Best in English Since 1939: A Personal Choice. Burgess described the novel as "A brilliant projection of tendencies apparent in the post-war British welfare state ...
Lanark, subtitled A Life in Four Books, is the first novel of Scottish writer Alasdair Gray. Written over a period of almost thirty years, it combines realist and dystopian fantasy depictions of his home city of Glasgow. Its publication in 1981 prompted Anthony Burgess to call Gray "the best Scottish novelist since Walter Scott". The book, still his best known, has since won the Saltire Society Book of the Year and David Niven awards, and has become a cult classic. In 2008, The Guardian heralded Lanark as "one of the landmarks of 20th-century fiction."
An anthropologist and an admissions officer at Boston University, Brigette is having a streak of bad luck. First, her archaeologist boyfriend of six years announces that he’s finally gotten his own dig in Egypt and there’s no place for her there. Then she loses her job. At loose ends, Brigette goes home to her mother, who is zealously pursuing her family’s genealogy. Brigette has no interest in her ancestors, but since she has nothing else to do, she agrees to help her mom with the research, and what Brigette finds out about their past changes the course of her life.
