Classic Fantasy

Published in chronological order, with extensive story and bibliographic notes, this series not only provides access to stories that have been out of print for years, but gives them a historical and social context. Series editors Scott Conners and Ronald S. Hilger excavated the still-existing manuscripts, letters and various published versions of the stories, creating a definitive "preferred text" for Smith's entire body of work. This third volume of the series brings together 21 of his fantasy stories.

Why we think it’s a great listen: It’s easy to say that when it comes to sci-fi you either love it or you hate it. But with Ender’s Game, it seems to be you either love it or you love it.... The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Enter Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, the result of decades of genetic experimentation.

Blood of Elves: Booktrack Edition adds an immersive musical soundtrack to your audiobook listening experience! The New York Times best-selling series that inspired the international hit video game: The Witcher. For over a century, humans, dwarves, gnomes, and elves have lived together in relative peace. But times have changed, the uneasy peace is over, and now the races are fighting once again. The only good elf, it seems, is a dead elf. Geralt of Rivia, the cunning assassin known as The Witcher, has been waiting for the birth of a prophesied child.

A little magic can take you a long way. After James Henry Trotter's parents are tragically eaten by a rhinoceros, he goes to live with his two horrible aunts, Spiker and Sponge. Life there is no fun, until James accidentally drops some magic crystals by the old peach tree and strange things start to happen. The peach at the top of the tree begins to grow, and before long it's as big as a house. Inside, James meets a bunch of oversized friends - Grasshopper, Centipede, Ladybug, and more. With a snip of the stem, the peach starts rolling away, and the great adventure begins!

When Lenina and Bernard visit a savage reservation, we experience how Utopia can destroy humanity. Cloning, feel-good drugs, anti-aging programs, and total social control through politics, programming, and media: has Aldous Huxley accurately predicted our future? With a storyteller's genius, he weaves these ethical controversies in a compelling narrative that dawns in the year 632 A.F. (After Ford, the deity). When Lenina and Bernard visit a savage reservation, we experience how Utopia can destroy humanity.

"Fino a che non diventeranno coscienti del loro potere, non saranno mai capaci di ribellarsi e, fino a che non saranno liberati, non diventeranno mai coscienti del loro potere." L'azione si svolge in un futuro prossimo del mondo (l'anno 1984) in cui il potere si concentra in tre immensi superstati: Oceania, Eurasia ed Estasia. Al vertice del potere politico in Oceania c'è il Grande Fratello, onnisciente e infallibile, che nessuno ha visto di persona ma di cui ovunque sono visibili grandi manifesti.

Willy Wonka's famous chocolate factory is opening at last! But only five lucky children will be allowed inside. And the winners are: Augustus Gloop, an enormously fat boy whose hobby is eating; Veruca Salt, a spoiled-rotten brat whose parents are wrapped around her little finger; Violet Beauregarde, a dim-witted gum-chewer with the fastest jaws around; Mike Teavee, a toy pistol-toting gangster-in-training who is obsessed with television; and Charlie Bucket, our hero, a boy who is honest and kind, brave and true, and good and ready for the wildest time of his life!

Jim and his literal shoulder demon have survived, so far, by the skin of their teeth. After finding a long-abandoned starter village, Jim has begun the process of rebuilding his town. Unfortunately for our favorite adventurer, the threats he now faces are far more complicated than mere monsters. The poor Noob has to deal with angry townsfolk, trade negotiations, and a talking badger. With goblins and bandits also sniffing around, will Noobtown - I mean Windfall - survive?

The Return of the King is the towering climax to J. R. R. Tolkien’s trilogy that tells the saga of the hobbits of Middle-earth and the great War of the Rings. In this concluding volume, Frodo and Sam make a terrible journey to the heart of the Land of the Shadow in a final reckoning with the power of Sauron. In addition to narrating the prose passages, Rob Inglis sings the trilogy’s songs and poems a capella, using melodies composed by Inglis and Claudia Howard, the Recorded Books studio director.

On a bright, summer day, a cyclone suddenly sweeps across the Kansas sky. A young girl named Dorothy and her dog, Toto, are carried up into the terrible storm. Far, far away, they crash down in a strange land called Oz. To return home, Dorothy must travel to the Emerald City and meet the all-powerful Wizard of Oz. But the journey won't be easy, and she'll need the help of a few good friends.

Harmon Cooper presents Book 8 in the Cherry Blossom Girls series.

For 12,000 years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Seldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future - to a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that will last thirty thousand years. To preserve knowledge and save humankind, Seldon gathers the best minds in the Empire - both scientists and scholars - and brings them to a bleak planet at the edge of the galaxy to serve as a beacon of hope for future generations. He calls his sanctuary the Foundation.

Having learned a lesson about thwarting the will of the gods, Imriel and Sidonie publicly confess their affair, only to see the country boil over in turmoil. Younger generations, infatuated by their heart-twisting, star-crossed romance, defend the couple. Many others cannot forget the betrayals of Imriel's mother, Melisande, who plunged their country into a bloody war that cost the lives of their fathers, brothers, and sons.

S.F. Namora is a literary periodical magazine focusing on genre-based short science fiction stories. Our aim is to satisfy your daily need of science fiction. Short stories are the perfect medium for science fiction. There's something about short-form sci-fi that has the potential to be especially mind-blowing. In just a few pages, the author must set up an entire new world (or a world that is just ever so slightly different than our own), and then deftly twist this new world into some kind of satisfying (or devastating) conclusion. It's no mean feat. Lucky for us, though, some of the ...

This is the way the world ends...for the last time. It starts with the great red rift across the heart of the world's sole continent, spewing ash that blots out the sun. It starts with death, with a murdered son and a missing daughter. It starts with betrayal, and long dormant wounds rising up to fester. This is the Stillness, a land long familiar with catastrophe, where the power of the Earth is wielded as a weapon. And where there is no mercy.

Winston Smith works in the Ministry of Truth—or Minitrue as it is called in Newspeak—where he alters newspapers and reports to follow the arbitrary dictates of Big Brother’s propaganda. Beneath his outward conformity, however, Winston dreams of sharing his treasonable thoughts and breaking through the loneliness in which he lives. Thus he takes his first dangerous steps, writing a diary of his doubts and then falling in love with a woman of the Party, the beautiful and brave Julia.

When the beautiful and precocious sisters Sally and Gillian Owens are orphaned at a young age, they are taken to a small Massachusetts town to be raised by their eccentric aunts, who happen to dwell in the darkest, eeriest house in town. As they become more aware of their aunts' mysterious and sometimes frightening powers - and as their own powers begin to surface - the sisters grow determined to escape their strange upbringing by blending into "normal" society.

The second novel in Isaac Asimov’s classic science-fiction masterpiece, the Foundation series. Led by its founding father, the psychohistorian Hari Seldon, and utilizing science and technology, the Foundation survived the greed and barbarism of its neighboring warrior-planets. Now cleverness and courage may not be enough. For the Empire - the mightiest force in the Galaxy - is even more dangerous in its death throes. Even worse, a mysterious entity called the Mule has appeared with powers beyond anything humanly conceivable. Who - or what - is the Mule?

Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are unquestionably two of the greatest epic masterpieces in Western literature. Though more than 2,700 years old, their stories of brave heroics, capricious gods, and towering human emotions are vividly timeless. The Iliad can justly be called the world’s greatest war epic. The terrible and long-drawn-out siege of Troy remains one of the classic campaigns. The Odyssey chronicles the many trials and adventures Odysseus must pass through on his long journey home from the Trojan wars to his beloved wife.

Valya, a young elven mage recently recruited into the Wardens, has been tasked with studying the historical record of previous Blights in order to gain insight into newly reported and disturbing darkspawn phenomena. Her research into the Fourth Blight leads her to an encoded reference scrawled in the margins of an ancient map and to the hidden diary of Issenya, one of the last of the fabled griffon riders. As the dark secrets buried in Isseyna's story unfold, Valya begins to question everything she thought she knew about the heroic Grey Wardens.