*Revised and updated for the twenty-first century* In this updated, illustrated companion volume to Merlin's Tour of the Universe, we visit again with Merlin, a timeless space traveler from Planet Omniscia, who answers a collection of imaginative questions about the cosmos from Earthlings of all ages. Whether waxing poetic about Earth and its environs, the Sun and its stellar siblings, the world of light, physical laws or galaxies near and far, Merlin's remarks are engaging, humorous, and clear as a starry night sky. Merlin hasn't been stumped yet, responding to questions including: If aliens exploded our moon, what effect would it have on us? What are your thoughts on the theory that a star named Nemesis is circling our solar system and was responsible for killing off the dinosaurs? If I leave a container on my roof for a period of time, can I collect particles from outer space? Just Visiting This Planet is a timeless book for all travellers of the universe.

Just Visiting This Planet

*Fully revised and updated for the 21st century* The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Astrophysics for People in a Hurry takes readers on an odyssey into the deepest, darkest depth of the universe and back again with his extra-terrestrial tour guide, Merlin. Merlin is a timeless visitor to Earth from the planet Omniscia in the Andromeda galaxy, and he has observed first-hand many of the major scientific events of Earth's history - from the Big Bang to the extinction of the dinosaurs and beyond. In Merlin's Tour of the Universe, Merlin responds to popular questions asked by adults and children alike about the universe and our place within it. All questions are answered with authentic science, infused with wit, wisdom, an occasional rhyme and accompanied by the odd illustration. Merlin's friends include the most important scientific figures and explorers of all time - including da Vinci, Magellan, Newton, Einstein and Hubble, and Merlin's Tour also features playful conversations with these historical luminaries. Based on the first book that Tyson ever published in the 1990s and now fully updated and extended for the twenty-first century, Merlin's Tour of the Universe is a must-read for anyone who wants to know more about how the cosmos works.

Merlin's Tour of the Universe

Your favorite princes and princesses are back in the hilarious and action-packed sequel to the breakout hit The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom by author Christopher Healy, which the New York Times selected as one of its best books of the year. Prince Liam. Prince Frederic. Prince Duncan. Prince Gustav. You remember them, don't you? They're the Princes Charming, who finally got some credit after they stepped out of the shadows of their princesses—Cinderella, Rapunzel, Snow White, and Briar Rose—to defeat an evil witch bent on destroying all their kingdoms. But alas, such fame and recognition only last so long. And when the princes discover that an object of great power might fall into any number of wrong hands, they are going to have to once again band together to stop it from happening—even if no one will ever know it was they who did it.

Hero's Guide

The Hero's Guide to Storming the Castle

Funny Business, the first volume in Jon Scieszka's Guys Read Library of Great Reading, features ten short stories guaranteed to delight, amuse, and possibly make you spit your milk in your friend's face. There's something for everyone in this collection of short stories from some of the funniest writers around. This hilarious, offbeat first installment in the Guys Read Library is 100% grade-A humor, guaranteed to have kids of all ages asking for more. Authors include Mac Barnett, Eoin Colfer, Christopher Paul Curtis, Kate DiCamillo & Jon Scieszka, Paul Feig, Jack Gantos, Jeff Kinney, David Lubar, Adam Rex, and David Yoo, with illustrations by Adam Rex.

Guys Read

Guys Read: Funny Business

In the second volume of the Southern Reach Trilogy, questions are answered, stakes are raised, and mysteries are deepened … Following the disastrous twelfth expedition chronicled in ‘Annihilation’, the second book of the Southern Reach trilogy introduces John Rodriguez, the new head of the government agency responsible for the safeguarding of Area X. His first day is spent grappling with the fall-out from the last expedition. Area X itself remains a mystery. But, as instructed by a higher authority known only as The Voice, the self-styled Control must battle to ‘put his house in order’. From a series of interrogations, a cache of hidden notes and hours of profoundly troubling video footage, the mysteries of Area X begin to reveal themselves—and what they expose pushes Control to confront disturbing truths about both himself and the agency he’s promised to serve. Undermined and under pressure to make sense of everything, Rodriguez retreats into his past in a labyrinthine search for answers. Yet the more he uncovers, the more he risks, for the secrets of the Southern Reach are more sinister than anyone could have known.

The Southern Reach Series

Authority

The highly anticipated third volume of the haunting, disturbing and evocative Southern Reach trilogy. It is winter in Area X. A new team embarks across the border, on a mission to find a member of a previous expedition who may have been left behind. As they press deeper into the unknown – navigating new terrain and new challenges – the threat to the outside world becomes only more daunting. In this last instalment of the Southern Reach Trilogy, the mysteries of Area X may have been solved, but their consequences and implications are no less profound – or terrifying.

Acceptance

Archer B. Helmsley longs for adventure. But how can he have an adventure when he can’t even leave his house? Archer B. Helmsley has grown up in a house full of oddities and treasures collected by his grandparents, the famous explorers. Archer longs for grand adventures but ever since his grandparents went missing on an iceberg, his mother barely lets him leave the house. So, along with his best friends, Adélaïde L. Belmont and Oliver Grub, Archer forms a plan to get out of the house and set off on a grand adventure with crocodiles and parachutes and danger. It's a good plan. Well, it's not bad, anyway. But nothing goes quite as they expected…

The Doldrums

A train ride home from a school field trip turns sinister when two kids spot a body on the tracks. A short story from Guys Read: Thriller, edited by Jon Scieszka.

Guys Read: Boys Will Be Boys

“A dreamy charmer of a book, full of clever wordplay that practically demands it be read out loud.”—New York Times Have you ever wanted to hold a little piece of the impossible? The Doldrums is an extraordinary debut about friendship, imagination, and the yearning for adventure from author-artist Nicholas Gannon. With the hardcover edition lavishly illustrated in full color, The Doldrums is a modern classic in the making, for readers of inventive and timeless authors such as Brian Selznick and Lemony Snicket. Archer B. Helmsley wants an adventure. No, he needs an adventure. His grandparents were famous explorers . . . until they got stuck on an iceberg. Now Archer’s mother barely lets him out of the house. As if that would stop a true Helmsley. Archer enlists Adelaide—the girl who, according to rumor, lost her leg to a crocodile—and Oliver—the boy next door—to help him rescue his grandparents. The Doldrums whisks us off on an adventure full of sly humor, incredible detail, and enormous heart. With approximately twenty pieces of breathtaking full-color artwork, as well as black-and-white spot illustrations, and gorgeous, literary writing, Nicholas Gannon proves himself to be a distinctive new voice with his middle grade debut. Be in it for the limitless imagination. For the characters who capture your heart. For the rich world you’ll want to settle into. But most of all, be in it for the friendship. That, after all, is the true adventure.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 2017 SHORTLISTED FOR THE LONDON HELLENIC PRIZE 2017 WINNER OF THE PRIX MÉDITERRANÉE 2018From the award-winning, best-selling writer: a deeply moving tale of a father and son’s transformative journey in reading – and reliving – Homer’s epic masterpiece. When eighty-one-year-old Jay Mendelsohn decides to enrol in the undergraduate seminar on the Odyssey that his son Daniel teaches at Bard College, the two find themselves on an adventure as profoundly emotional as it is intellectual. For Jay, a retired research scientist who sees the world through a mathematician’s unforgiving eyes, this return to the classroom is his ‘one last chance’ to learn the great literature he’d neglected in his youth – and, even more, a final opportunity to understand his son. But through the sometimes uncomfortable months that follow, as the two men explore Homer’s great work together – first in the classroom, where Jay persistently challenges his son’s interpretations, and then during a surprise-filled Mediterranean journey retracing Odysseus’ legendary voyages – it becomes clear that Daniel has much to learn, too. For Jay’s responses to both the text and the travels gradually uncover long-buried secrets that allow the Daniel to understand his difficult father at last. As this intricately woven memoir builds to its wrenching climax, Mendelsohn’s narrative comes to echo the Odyssey itself, with its timeless themes of deception and recognition, marriage and children, the pleasures of travel and the meaning of home. Rich with literary and emotional insight, An Odyssey is a renowned writer’s most revelatory entwining yet of personal narrative and literary exploration.

An Odyssey: A Father, A Son and an Epic

From the creator of the New York Times bestselling Wildwood Chronicles comes an original, humorous, and fast-paced middle grade novel about a band of child pickpockets—imagine The Invention of Hugo Cabret meets Oliver Twist. It is an ordinary Tuesday morning in April when bored, lonely Charlie Fisher witnesses something incredible. Right before his eyes, in a busy square in Marseille, a group of pickpockets pulls off an amazing robbery. As the young bandits appear to melt into the crowd, Charlie realizes with a start that he himself was one of their marks. Yet Charlie is less alarmed than intrigued. This is the most thrilling thing that’s happened to him since he came to France with his father, an American diplomat. So instead of reporting the thieves, Charlie defends one of their cannons, Amir, to the police, under one condition: he teach Charlie the tricks of the trade. What starts off as a lesson on pinches, kicks, and chumps soon turns into an invitation for Charlie to join the secret world of the whiz mob, an international band of child thieves who trained at the mysterious School of Seven Bells. The whiz mob are independent and incredibly skilled and make their own way in the world—they are everything Charlie yearns to be. But what at first seemed like a (relatively) harmless new pastime draws him into a dangerous adventure with global stakes greater than he could have ever imagined.

The Whiz Mob and the Grenadine Kid

The stand-alone sequel to The Doldrums, which the New York Times called “a dreamy charmer of a book,” is a second tour-de-force by author-illustrator Nicholas Gannon. It brims with the spirit of exploration and celebrates the bond of friendship. The exquisite hardcover package features Gannon’s distinctive full color full-page art throughout, as well as black-and-white spot illustrations. The Doldrums and the Helmsley Curse is a timeless tale and a beautiful gift for a young reader. Archer Helmsley’s grandparents—famous explorers who went missing on an iceberg two years ago—are finally coming home. Archer is overjoyed, but he may be the only one. Rumors are flying that Archer’s grandparents were never really abandoned on the iceberg; that they’re making it all up. Archer knows that the rumors are false. With his best friends, Oliver and Adélaïde, and their new neighbor, Kana, Archer sets out during a snowstorm to rescue his grandparents’ reputation. In the tradition of Roald Dahl, Lemony Snicket, and Brian Selznick, Nicholas Gannon’s wildly imaginative world of The Doldrums and the Helmsley Curse is packed with sly humor, an undeniably charming cast of characters, and the thrill of discovering secrets and adventures right in your own backyard. With approximately twenty pieces of full color full-page artwork, as well as spot illustrations, and deft, literary writing, Nicholas Gannon once again creates a fully realized world and a story to sink into and explore. “Irresistible.”—Booklist

The Doldrums and the Helmsley Curse

On the night of July 20, 1969, our world changed forever when two Americans, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, walked on the moon. Now the greatest event of the twentieth century is magnificently retold through the eyes and ears of the people who were there. Based on the interviews with twenty-three moon voyagers, as well as those who struggled to get the program moving, journalist Andrew Chaikin conveys every aspect of the missions with breathtaking immediacy: from the rush of liftoff, to the heart-stopping lunar touchdown, to the final hurdle of reentry.

A Man on the Moon

“It is just not possible to stop turning the pages” (The Washington Post) of this bestselling classic tale—an epic fantasy as only #1 New York Times bestselling author Stephen King could envision it. Once, in a kingdom called Delain, there was a king with two sons… ​Thus begins one of the most unique tales that master storyteller Stephen King has ever written—a sprawling fantasy of dark magic and the struggle for absolute power that utterly transforms the destinies of two brothers born into royalty. Through this enthralling masterpiece of mythical adventure, intrigue, and terror, you will thrill to this unforgettable narrative filled with relentless, wicked enchantment, and the most terrible of secrets…

The Eyes of the Dragon

'A blast' - Ian Rankin 'A joyous celebration of 80s action cinema' - Robbie Collin, Telegraph From the editor of Empire magazine, this is the behind-the-scenes story of the golden age of the action movie, the stars who ruled 80s and 90s Hollywood and the beloved films – from Die Hard to The Terminator – that made them famous. This wildly entertaining account of the golden age of the action movie charts Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s carnage-packed journey from enmity to friendship against the backdrop of Reagan’s America and the Cold War. Revealing fascinating untold stories of the colourful characters who ascended in their wake – high-kickers Chuck Norris and Jackie Chan, glowering tough guys Dolph Lundgren and Steven Seagal, and quipping troublemakers Jean-Claude Van Damme and Bruce Willis – it chronicles the rise of the invincible action hero who used muscle, martial arts or the perfect weapon to save the day. And how, as the 1990s rolled on, the glory days of these macho men – and the vision of masculinity they celebrated – began to fade. Drawing on candid interviews with the action stars themselves, plus their collaborators, friends and foes, The Last Action Heroes is a no-holds-barred account of a period in Hollywood history when there were no limits to the heights of fame these men achieved, or to the mayhem they wrought, on-screen and off. When you purchase this title, an accompanying PDF will be available in your audiobook library along with the audio. ______ 'Lively' - The Times 'Highly entertaining' - Sunday Telegraph 'A rollicking, anecdote-packed tribute to the cavalier days' - Literary Review

The Last Action Heroes

A body on the tracks A teenage terrorist A mysterious wish-granting machine The world’s worst private detective The second volume in the Guys Read Library of Great Reading is chock-full of mystery, intrigue, and nefarious activity. Featuring some of the best writers around, and compiled by certified guy Jon Scieszka, Guys Read: Thriller is a pulse-pounding collection of brand-new short stories, each one guaranteed to keep you riveted until the final page.

Guys Read: Thriller

Prince Liam. Prince Frederic. Prince Duncan. Prince Gustav. You’ve never heard of them, have you? These are the princes who saved Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Snow White, and Rapunzel, respectively, and yet, thanks to those lousy bards who wrote the tales, you likely know them only as Prince Charming. But all of this is about to change. Rejected by their princesses and cast out of their castles, the princes stumble upon an evil plot that could endanger each of their kingdoms. Now it’s up to them to triumph over their various shortcomings, take on trolls, bandits, dragons, witches, and other assorted terrors, and become the heroes no one ever thought they could be. Christopher Healy’s Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom is a completely original take on the world of fairy tales, the truth about what happens after “happily ever after.” It’s a must-have for middle grade readers who enjoy their fantasy adventures mixed with the humor of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books. Witty black-and-white drawings by Todd Harris add to the fun.

The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom

The author of The Eternal World seamlessly combines history, biotechnology, action and adventure in this high-concept thriller in the spirit of James Rollins, Brad Thor, and Douglas Preston. John Smith has a special gift that seems more like a curse: he can access other peoples thoughts. He hears the the songs stuck in their heads, their most private traumas and fears, the painful memories they can’t let go. The CIA honed his skills until he was one of their most powerful operatives, but Smith fled the Agency and now works as a private consultant, trying to keep the dark potentials of his gift in check—and himself out of trouble. But now Smith is unexpectedly plunged into dangerous waters when his latest client, billionaire software genius Everett Sloan, hires him to investigate a former employee—a tech whiz kid named Eli Preston—and search his thoughts for some very valuable intellectual property he’s stolen. Before John can probe Preston’s mind, his identity is compromised and he’s on a run for his life with Sloan’s young associate, Kelsey. Hunted by shadowy enemies with deep resources and unknown motives, John and Kelsey must go off the grid. John knows their only hope for survival is using his powers to their fullest—even if means putting his own sanity at risk.

Killfile

Gifted troubleshooter John Smith, introduced in the acclaimed thriller Killfile, must take down a shadowy figure who has weaponized the internet, using social media to put a price on the heads of his targets in this intense, unstoppable thriller from the author reviewers have compared to Michael Crichton, Brad Thor, and James Rollins. As a fixer for America’s one percent, John Smith cleans up the messes of those rich enough to afford him. But he’s no ordinary gun for hire. Smith is a man of rare gifts, including the ability to read minds. Arriving at the wedding of Kira Sadeghi, a reality television celebrity he recently saved from kidnappers, Smith witnesses a group of gunmen open fire, hitting the bride and others. Though he’s unarmed, Smith cripples one of the killers and is able to pry one word from his mind: ""Downvote."" Eager to learn more, Smith hacks into the brain of an FBI agent investigating the attack to discover the Bureau has been investigating a nefarious new threat called ""Downvote,"" an encrypted site on the ""dark net"" that lists the names of celebrities and offers a hefty bounty for anyone who can kill them—unleashing an anonymous and deadly flashmob with a keystroke. Finding a mastermind on the internet is like trying to catch air—unless you’re John Smith. Motivated by money and revenge, he traces a series of electronic signatures to a reclusive billionaire living at sea, accompanied by a scary-smart female bodyguard who becomes Smith’s partner in his quest. The hunt for their prey will lead from Hong Kong to Reykjavik to a luxury gambling resort deep in the Laotian jungle. Yet always this criminal mastermind remains one step ahead. The only way Downvote’s creator can stop Smith is to kill him . . . because while this diabolical genius can run, there’s no hiding from a man who can read minds.

Flashmob

The third book in this fast-paced and hilarious fantasy quest in the grand tradition of Shrek and The Princess Bride, starring four very unlikely, but likeable, heroes. Prince Liam. Prince Frederick. Prince Duncan. Prince Gustav… The four princes that have the worst luck in the world. After saving the kingdom YET AGAIN and going their separate ways, the princes are back in trouble… and this time it’s serious! Somehow, everyone thinks they have MURDERED a princess! And with bounty hunters after them, and a dastardly scheme sure to be behind it all, the princes have to overcome their differences, reunite, and clear their names. Oh, and save the kingdom again…

The Hero’s Guide to Being an Outlaw

It's here: Volume One of the official Guys Read Library. Jon Scieszka's Guys Read initiative was founded on a simple premise: that young guys enjoy reading most when they have reading they can enjoy. And out of this comes a series that aims to give them just that. Ten books, arranged by theme, featuring the best of the best where writing for kids is concerned. Each book is a collection of original short stories, but these aren't your typical anthologies—each book is edgy, inventive, visual, and one-of-a-kind, featuring a different theme for guys to get excited about. Funny Business is based around the theme of—what else—humor, and if you're familiar with Jon and Guys Read, you already know what you're in store for: ten hilarious stories from some of the funniest writers around. Before you're through, you'll meet a teenage mummy; a kid desperate to take a dip in the world's largest pool of chocolate milk; a homicidal turkey; parents who hand over their son's room to a biker; the only kid in his middle school who hasn't turned into a vampire, wizard, or superhero; and more. And the contributor list includes bestselling author, award winners, and fresh new talent alike: Mac Barnett, Eoin Colfer, Christopher Paul Curtis, Kate DiCamillo (writing with Jon Scieszka), Paul Feig, Jack Gantos, Jeff Kinney, David Lubar, Adam Rex, and David Yoo. Guys Read is all about turning young readers into lifelong ones—and with this book, and each subsequent installment in the series, we aim to leave no guy unturned.

Guys Read: Best of Friends

Guys Read: The Bloody Souvenir

Guys Read: Kid Appeal

Two fake psychics, one real haunted house—what could go wrong? A short story from Guys Read: Thriller, edited by Jon Scieszka.

Guys Read: The Old, Dead Nuisance

There’s nothing better than taking your timid little cousin Thad to one of those sweet haunted houses the 4-H Club decorates for Halloween. Except, of course, if the house turns out to actually be haunted. A short story from Guys Read: Thriller, edited by Jon Scieszka.

Guys Read: Thad, the Ghost, and Me

Nate’s best friend Jeremy is missing, and Nate seems to be the only one worried that he’s been captured by hideous creatures that live in the sewers. A short story from Guys Read: Thriller, edited by Jon Scieszka.

Guys Read: Nate Macavoy, Monster Hunter

The League of Princes returns in the hilariously epic conclusion to Christopher Healy's hit series, which Kirkus Reviews called ""part screwball comedy, part sly wit, and all fun"" in a starred review! Prince Liam. Prince Frederic. Prince Duncan. Prince Gustav. You think you know those guys pretty well by now, don't you? Well, think again. Posters plastered across the thirteen kingdoms are saying that Briar Rose has been murdered—and the four Princes Charming are the prime suspects. Now they're on the run in a desperate attempt to clear their names. Along the way, however, they discover that Briar's murder is just one part of a nefarious plot to take control of all thirteen kingdoms—a plot that will lead to the doorstep of an eerily familiar fortress for a final showdown with an eerily familiar enemy.

The Hero's Guide to Being an Outlaw

When devastating news shatters the life of six-year-old Harvey, she finds herself in the care of a veteran social worker, Wanda, and alone in the world save for one relative she has never met—a disabled felon, haunted by a violent past he can't escape. Moving between past and present, Father’s Day weaves together the story of Harvey’s childhood on Long Island and her life as a young woman in Paris. Written in raw, spare prose that personifies the characters, this novel is the journey of two people searching for a future in the ruin of their past. Father's Day is a meditation on the quiet, sublime power of compassion, and the beauty of simple, everyday things—a breakthrough work from one of our most gifted chroniclers of the human heart.

Father's Day

Archer B. Hemsley and friends are back and yearning for adventure in this second beautifully told story from Nicholas Gannon. After two years, Archer B. Helmsley’s famous explorer grandparents are finally coming home. They had been missing – abandoned on an iceberg – and Archer and his best friends, Adélaïde L. Belmont and Oliver Grub led an adventurous mission to rescue them. Archer is overjoyed by his grandparents’ return. However, he seems to be the only one . . . Rumours begin to surface that Archer’s grandparents weren’t abandoned after all. People are claiming that they made it all up. Well, Archer knows those rumours are false, and with the help of his best friends and new neighbour, Kana, he is going to prove it. Off the foursome set, into a snowstorm and beyond, to restore his grandparents’ reputation.

When Sargent Singer discovers that the paintings in his father’s gallery are alive, he is pulled into a captivating world behind the frame that he never knew existed. Filled with shady characters, devious plots, and a grand art heist, this inventive mystery-adventure celebrates art and artists and is perfect for fans of Night at the Museum and Blue Balliett’s Chasing Vermeer. There’s one important rule at the Beaverbrook Gallery—don’t let anyone know the paintings are alive. Mona Dunn, forever frozen at thirteen when her portrait was painted by William Orpen, has just broken that rule. Luckily twelve-year-old Sargent Singer, an aspiring artist himself, is more interested in learning about the vast and intriguing world behind the frame than he is in sharing her secret. And when Mona and Sargent suspect shady dealings are happening behind the scenes at the gallery, they set out to find the culprit. They must find a way to save the gallery—and each other—before they are lost forever. With an imaginative setting, lots of intrigue, and a thoroughly engaging cast of characters, The Frame-Up will captivate readers of Jacqueline West’s The Books of Elsewhere.

The Frame-Up

This Sequel to the Acclaimed Cult Novel Is Now a Major Motion Picture Darryl Ponicsan's debut novel The Last Detail was named one of the best of the year and widely acclaimed, catapulting him to fame when it was first published. The story of two career sailors assigned to escort a young seaman from Norfolk to the naval prison in Portsmouth, New Hampshire—and of the mayhem that ensues—it was made into an award-winning movie starring Jack Nicholson. Last Flag Flying, set thirty-four years after the events of The Last Detail, brings together the same beloved characters—Billy Bad-Ass Buddusky, Mule Mulhall, and Meadows—to reprise the same journey but under very different circumstances. Now middle-aged, Meadows seeks out his former captors in their civilian lives to help him bury his son, a Marine killed in Iraq, in Arlington National Cemetery. When he learns that the authorities have told him a lie about the circumstances of his son's death, he decides, with the help of the two others, to transport him home to Portsmouth. And so begins the journey, centered around a solemn mission but, as in the first book, a protest against injustice and celebration of life too, at once irreverent, funny, profane, and deeply moving. Last Flag Flying is now a major movie, directed by Richard Linklater and starring Bryan Cranston, Steve Carell, and Laurence Fishburne.

Last Flag Flying

The Acclaimed Novel That Was the Basis for the Classic Movie Starring Jack Nicholson Unlike other branches of the armed services, the Navy draws it police force from the ranks, as temporary duty called Shore Patrol. In this funny, bawdy, moving novel set during the height of the Vietnam War, two career sailors in transit in Norfolk, Virginia—Billy "Bad-Ass" Buddusky and Mule Mulhall—are assigned to escort eighteen-year-old Larry Meadows from Norfolk to the brig in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where he is to serve an eight-year sentence for petty theft. It's good duty, until the two old salts realize the injustice of the sentence and are oddly affected by the naive innocence of their young prisoner. In the five days allotted for the detail, they decide to show Meadows something of the life he doesn't yet know, to help him survive the long ordeal ahead and to purge their own shame. What follows is an unlikely road trip by bus and train up the Eastern seaboard and an indelible journey of initiation and discovery, filled with beer-soaked wisdom, big city lights, revelry, brawls, debauchery, love, and surprising moments of tenderness.

The Last Detail

Alexander's behavior was conditioned along certain lines—heroism, courage, strength, superstition, bisexuality, intoxication, cruelty. He bestrode Europe and Asia like a supernatural figure. In this succinct portrait of Alexander the Great, distinguished scholar and historian Norman Cantor draws on the major writings of Alexander's contemporaries as well as the most recent psychological and cultural studies to illuminate this most legendary of men—a great figure in the ancient world whose puzzling personality greatly fueled his military accomplishments. Cantor describes Alexander's ambiguous relationship with his father, Philip II of Macedon; his oedipal involvement with his mother, the Albanian princess Olympias; and his bisexuality. He traces Alexander's attempts to bridge the East and West, the Greek and Persian worlds, using Achilles, hero of the Trojan War, as his model. Finally, Cantor explores Alexander's view of himself in relation to the pagan gods of Greece and Egypt. More than a biography, Cantor's Alexander the Great is a psychological rendering of a man of his time.

Alexander the Great

The novel that inspired Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides On Stranger Tides is Tim Powers’ great Disneyland ride through pirates, puppeteers, treasure, and thrill-a-minute action that carries on from the start. It follows the exploits of John “Jack Shandy” Chandagnac, who travels to the new world after the death of his puppeteer father to confront his uncle, who has apparently made off with the family fortune. During the voyage, he befriends Beth Hurwood and her father Benjamin Hurwood, an Oxford professor. Before they arrive at their destination, their ship is waylaid by Blackbeard and his band of pirates. With the help of the professor and his assistant, the captain is killed and Chandagnac is pressed into piracy and sorcery as Blackbeard searches for the Fountain of Lost Youth. Chandagnac, newly dubbed “Jack Shandy,” must stop the evil plot and save Beth.

On Stranger Tides

THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF MATTERHORN At the turn of the twentieth century, as the oppression of Russia's imperial rule takes its toll on Finland, the three Koski siblings - Ilmari, Matti and the politicized young Aino - are forced to flee. They settle among a community of Finns in Deep River - a town on the western edges of the United States. The brothers face the excitement and danger of pioneering this frontier wilderness. But while they are climbing and felling trees one-hundred metres high, Aino is organizing the country's fledgling labour movements. As the Koskis strive to rebuild lives and families in an America in flux, they also try to hold fast to the traditions of a home they can never return to. And so the seasons change, the decades pass and the denizens of Deep River slip in and out of love; they become engineers and fishermen, midwives and widows, soldiers and fugitives. In this profoundly moving epic Karl Marlantes masterfully depicts the tyranny of nascent America, the limits of human survival and the enduring might of family love. 'A finely-hewn portrait' An Amazon Best Book of July 2019

Deep River

Set in the rugged region of the Midwest that gives the novel its title, The Driftless Area is the story of Pierre Hunter, a young bartender with unfailing optimism, a fondness for coin tricks, and an uncanny capacity for finding trouble. When he falls in love with the mysterious and isolated Stella Rosmarin, Pierre becomes the central player in a revenge drama he must unravel and bring to its shocking conclusion. Along the way he will liberate seventy-seven thousand dollars from a murderous thief, summon the resources that have eluded him all his life, and come to question the very meaning of chance and mortality. Nothing is as it seems in The Driftless Area—identities shift, violent secrets lie in wait, the future can cause the past, and love becomes a mission that can take you beyond this world. In its tender, cool irony, The Driftless Area recalls the best of neo-noir, and its cast of bona fide small­-town eccentrics adrift in the American Midwest make for a clever and deeply pleasurable read from one of our most beloved authors.

The Driftless Area

From Emmy-nominated screenwriter Gordon Greisman, The Devil’s Daughter is a noir thriller full of the best—and worst—of New York City in the 1950s. Most nights PI Jack Coffey can be found hanging out in smoky Greenwich Village jazz clubs with well-known mobsters, jazzmen, and hoods. So, when an uptown financier calls him in for a job, it seems like he’s headed for tonier climes. But it turns out the view from Louis Garrett’s lavish penthouse overlooks the same vice-ridden Manhattan streets, which explains why he’s so desperate to find his missing teenage daughter, Lucy. When Jack’s search for Lucy leads him to swanky nightclubs packed with well-dressed pimps and wealthy drug dealers, he begins to wonder if Garrett is really concerned about his daughter’s welfare or if he simply fears she may reveal his own shocking secrets. After an attack outside Jack’s own apartment and Lucy’s boyfriend is found floating face down in the East River, the story kicks into high gear. But death threats, crooked cops, lies, or ugly truths can’t stop Jack from finishing the job—whether an angel or a devil, Lucy is still a kid in danger, and Jack will do whatever it takes to find her.

The Devil’s Daughter

Kicked out of Yale at age fourteen, the precocious Judd Breslau takes a questionable job from the eccentric Phillips Chatterton, a bathrobe-wearing Egyptologist working out of a dilapidated home laboratory. There, Judd falls for young Valerie Chatterton, who quickly leads Breslau away from his research and into, in order: the attic, a Colorado equestrian ranch, a porn studio beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, and a jail cell in southern Iraq, where we find him awaiting his own execution while the war rages on in the north. Written by a ninety-year-old debut novelist, ex-Marine, two-time Oscar nominee, and co-creator of Mr. Magoo, Bowl of Cherries rivals the liveliest comic novels for sheer gleeful inventiveness. This is a book of astounding breadth and sharp consequence, containing all the joy, derangement, terror, and doubt of adolescence and modern times.

Bowl of Cherries

What kind of man buys his grave at the age of eighteen and chooses to spend the rest of his life in a rest home at thirty-five? Meet Antoine, the curious hero of Laurent Graff’s Happy Days, an odd young man who somewhat prematurely acquiesces to his terminal destiny. The ultimate fatalist, Antoine decides to play hooky from life by retiring to the Happy Days Retirement Home. Despite the pronounced difference in age, the residents accept him, and he quickly settles into a routine as the life of the party, the sex toy of the nurses, and the best friend of an Alzheimer’s patient called Al. It’s a carefree life, until the arrival of a dying woman with whom Antoine forms a close bond and goes on a very special journey.

Happy Days

Marc Thiessen knows more than almost anyone outside the CIA about what went on at CIA “black sites” and at the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. As chief speechwriter for President Bush, he was given unprecedented access to some of the most sensitive intelligence our government possessed on al-Qaeda terrorists. He has since spent countless hours interviewing the men and women involved in the interrogations at every level—from Vice President Dick Cheney to the interrogators themselves. What he reveals is a shocking, thoroughly documented account of just how close we came to suffering more 9/11-like attacks, and how so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques,” including waterboarding, were directly responsible for unearthing the actionable intelligence that foiled them. He also shows the extraordinary measures the Bush administration took to stay well within the bounds of what was not only legally, but morally right. America’s dedicated intelligence professionals went head-to-head with the world’s most dangerous terrorists and won—but now Barack Obama wants to put them at risk of prosecution for defending our country. Worse, by dismantling this successful CIA program and exposing its secrets to our enemies, he is inviting disaster for America.

Courting Disaster

Chip Kidd’s witty and effervescent coming-of-age novel can only be described as a portrait of the designer as a young man. It’s 1957, long before computers have replaced the skillful eye and hand, and our narrator at State U is determined to major in Art. After several risible false starts, he ends up by accident in a new class called “Introduction to Graphic Design,” taught by the enigmatic professor/guru Winter Sorbeck—equal parts genius, seducer, and sadist. Sorbeck is a bitter yet fascinating man whose assignments hurl his charges through a gauntlet of humiliation and heartache, shame and triumph, ego-bashing and enlightenment. By the end of The Cheese Monkeys, the members of Art 127 will never see the world the same way again. And, thanks to Chip Kidd’s insights into the secrets of graphic design, neither will you.

The Cheese Monkeys

Rome, September AD 96. When the body of Sextus Verpa, a notorious senatorial informer and libertine, is found stabbed to death in his bedroom, his slaves are suspected. Pliny, a very respectable young senator and lawyer, is ordered by the emperor Domitian to investigate. However, the Ludi Romani, “the Roman Games,” have just begun, and for the next fifteen days the law courts are in recess. If Pliny can’t identify the murderer in that time, Verpa’s entire slave household will be burned alive in the arena. Pliny teams up with Martial, a starving author of bawdy verses and denizen of the Roman demimonde. Pooling their respective talents, they unravel a plot that involves Jewish and Christian “atheists,” exotic Egyptian cultists, and a missing horoscope that forecasts the emperor’s death. Their investigation leads them into the heart of the palace, where no one is safe from the paranoid Domitian. As the deadline approaches, Pliny struggles with the painful dilemma of a good man who is forced to serve a brutal regime—a situation familiar in our own age as well. The novel provides an intimate glimpse into the palaces and tenements, bedrooms and brothels of imperial Rome’s most opulent and decadent age.

The Plinius Secundus Mysteries

Roman Games

Howard Norman, widely regarded as one of this country’s finest novelists, returns to the mesmerizing fictional terrain of his major books—The Bird Artist, The Museum Guard, and The Haunting of L—in this erotically charged and morally complex story. Seventeen-year-old Wyatt Hillyer is suddenly orphaned when his parents, within hours of each other, jump off two different bridges—the result of their separate involvements with the same compelling neighbor, a Halifax switchboard operator and aspiring actress. The suicides cause Wyatt to move to small-town Middle Economy to live with his uncle, aunt, and ravishing cousin Tilda. Setting in motion the novel’s chain of life-altering passions, and the wartime perfidy at its core, is the arrival of German student Hans Mohring, carrying only a satchel. Actual historical incidents—including a German U-boat’s sinking of the Nova Scotia–Newfoundland ferry Caribou, on which Aunt Constance Hillyer might or might not be traveling—lend intense narrative power to Norman’s uncannily layered story. Wyatt’s account of the astonishing events leading up to his fathering of a beloved daughter spills out twenty-one years later. It’s a confession that speaks profoundly of the mysteries of human character in wartime and is directed, with both despair and hope, to an audience of one. An utterly stirring novel, this is Howard Norman at his celebrated best.

What Is Left the Daughter

"Irish" Micky Ward grew up in the 1970s and '80s as a tough kid from Lowell, Massachusetts—a town where young men became boxers as a means of survival. Ward participated in street fights from an early age and was forever known by his opponents and spectators as the underdog. But with his incredible ability to suddenly drop an opponent late in a fight with his trademark left hook, he kept proving everyone wrong. A hard worker who overcame bad luck, bad management, and chronic pain in his hands, he avoided the pitfall of poverty and dead-end work that plagued Lowell to become a Golden Gloves junior welterweight. After fifteen years of boxing, a string of defeats, and three years of retirement, Micky battled Arturo Gatti in 2002 in the battle that was later named "Fight of the Year" by Ring magazine and dubbed "Fight of the Century" by boxing writers and fans across the country. Ten rounds of brutal action ended with Micky winning by decision, and reviving enthusiasm for a sport that had been weighted down by years of showboating and corruption. In Irish Thunder, ESPN columnist and Boston television reporter Bob Halloran recounts Ward's rise to hero status, his rivalry with his imprisoned brother, and the negotiations, betrayals, and drugs that shaped a wild youth who ultimately became a nationally respected boxer. A wrenching account of life in blue-collar America, this is a story about a boxer from a boxing family and a boxing town—Ward's dramatic victories inside the ring are recounted in gripping detail, but it is his victory outside the ring that inspires.

Irish Thunder

Meeting Evil tells an adrenaline-pumped, genuinely frightening tale of malevolence that swerves swiftly and irrevocably to a catastrophic climax. John Felton meets evil late one Monday morning when the doorbell rings. Standing on the front porch is a stranger. He wears expensive running shoes and a baseball cap and calls himself Richie. He tells John his car has stalled and asks for help. An altercation at the gas station leads to a shocking crime as violence begets violence. At the end of this harrowing day, John returns home to find Richie ensconced in his living room, chatting up his wife. The evil has somehow seeped into his life. Thus begins the transformation of an unremarkable husband and father of two into a desperate man willing to go to any length to protect his family from the darkness that threatens them. This is an extraordinary masterpiece and a chilling portrait of mounting menace played out against an everyday world of domestic routine, personified in a protagonist of basic decency grappling with both the immediate and existential meaning of true evil.

Meeting Evil

Martin Harris returns home after a short absence to find that his wife doesn’t know him, another man is living in his house under his name, and the neighbors think he’s a raving lunatic. Worse, not a single person—family, colleague, or doctor—can vouch for him. Worse still, the impostor shares all of Martin’s memories, experiences, and knowledge, down to the last detail. He is, in fact, a more convincing Martin than Martin himself. Is it a conspiracy? Amnesia? Is Martin the victim of an elaborate hoax or of his own paranoid delusion? In this high-powered novel, Didier van Cauwelaert, the award-winning author of One-Way, explores the illusory nature of identity and the instability of the things we take for granted. Dispossessed of his job, his family, his name, and his very past, Martin Harris is an Everyman caught in an absurd and yet disturbingly convincing nightmare, one that seems to have no exit and that resists every explanation. Part moral fable, part Robert Ludlum-style thriller, Unknown is a fast-paced tale of one man’s desperate attempt to reclaim his existence—even at the cost of his own life.

Unknown

Jack London was born a working-class, fatherless San Franciscan in 1876. In his youth, he was a boundlessly energetic adventurer on the bustling west coast—by and by playing the role of hobo, sailor, and oyster pirate. From his vantage point at the margins of Gilded Age America, he witnessed such iniquity and abuses that he became a life long socialist and advocate for reform. His adventures in the American wilderness and underworld informed his fiction, and his writing came to captivate the nation as it defined his era. Within his own short lifetime, London became the most popular, and bestselling, author of his generation. By adulthood he had matured into the iconic American author of such still-universally loved books asThe Call of the Wild,White Fang, andSea Wolf, but in spite of his success, he was at war with himself. The highest-paid writer in America, he was constantly broke. Famous as he was for conjuring the brutality of nature in story after story and novel after novel, upon the actual deaths of his favorite animals he would dissolve into helpless tears. Sick, angry, and disillusioned, after a short, breathless life, he passed away at age forty—but he left behind him a glorious literary legacy. Award-winning author James L. Haley explores the forgotten Jack London—a man bristling with ideas, whose passion for social justice roared until the day he died. InWolf, Haley returns Jack London to his proper place in the American pantheon, resurrecting the author ofWhite Fangin his full fire and glory.

Wolf

For over half a century, Richard Matheson has enthralled and terrified readers with such timeless classics as I Am Legend, Somewhere in Time, and What Dreams May Come. Now the grand master returns with a bewitching tale of erotic suspense and enchantment. The year is 1918. Alex White, a young American soldier recently wounded in the Great War, comes to Gatford to escape his troubled past. The pastoral English village seems the perfect spot to heal his wounded body and soul, but the neighboring woods are said to be haunted by capricious, even malevolent, spirits. He is warned to steer clear of the woods and the perilous faerie kingdom it borders, but Alex cannot help himself. Drawn to its verdant mysteries, he finds love, danger, and wonders that will forever change his view of the world. Other Kingdoms casts a magical spell, as conjured by a truly legendary storyteller.

Other Kingdoms

A modern Indiana Jones steals a relic of Alexander the Great in this thrilling debut novel. Jonathan Blake makes a living stealing antiquities—stealing them back, that is. A field agent for the Argo Foundation, a company that makes it their business to preserve humanity's history by liberating stolen artifacts from thieves and looters, Blake is used to dangerous assignments. But when he is forced by the US government into a deadly mission involving a missing Napoleonic standard, he finds himself in over his head. Blake is pitted against Vanya, the head of a fanatical cult, who seeks a gilded bronze eagle that holds a vital clue to the lost tomb of Alexander the Great. From ancient ruins in Afghanistan to the catacombs of Paris to a chateau high in the French Alps, Blake must unravel the secret truth of the final fate of Napoleon Bonaparte, the murder of Percy Bysshe Shelley, and the hidden remains of Alexander. And he must do it before Vanya's apocalyptic plans for humanity come to their deadly fruition.

The Blood of Alexander

"After my wife, Elizabeth Church, was murdered by the bellman Alfonse Padgett in the Essex Hotel, she did not leave me." Sam Lattimore meets Elizabeth Church in 1970s Halifax, in an art gallery. The sparks are immediate, leading quickly to a marriage that is dear, erotically charged, and brief. In Howard Norman's spellbinding and moving novel, the gleam of the marriage and the circumstances of Elizabeth's murder are revealed in heart-stopping increments. Sam's life afterward is complicated. For one thing, in a moment of desperate confusion, he sells his life story to a Norwegian filmmaker named Istvakson, known for the stylized violence of his films, whose artistic drive sets in motion an increasingly intense cat-and-mouse game between the two men. For another, Sam has begun "seeing" Elizabeth—not only seeing but holding conversations with her, almost every evening, and watching her line up books on a small beach. What at first seems simply a hallucination born of terrible grief reveals itself, evening by evening, as something else entirely. Next Life Might Be Kinder is a story of murder, desperate faith, the afterlife, and love as absolute redemption—from one of our most compelling storytellers at the height of his talents.

Next Life Might Be Kinder

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