Showing results by author "Terry Pratchett" in All Categories

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a policeman taking a holiday would barely have had time to open his suitcase before he finds his first corpse. And Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch is on holiday in the pleasant and innocent countryside, but not for him a mere body in the wardrobe. There are many, many bodies and an ancient crime more terrible than murder. He is out of his jurisdiction, out of his depth, out of bacon sandwiches, and occasionally snookered and out of his mind, but never out of guile. Where there is a crime there must be a finding, and a chase....

Somewhere on the frontier between thought and reality exists the Discworld, a parallel time and place that might sound and smell very much like our own, but that looks completely different. It plays by different rules. Certainly it refuses to succumb to the quaint notion that universes are ruled by pure logic and the harmony of numbers. But just because the Disc is different doesn't mean that some things don't stay the same.

For members of the City Watch, life consists of troubling times, linked together by periods of torpid inactivity. Now is one such troubling time. People are being murdered, but there's no trace of anything alive having been at the crime scene. Is there ever a circumstance in which you can blame the weapon not the murderer? Such philosophical questions are not the usual domain of the city's police, but they're going to have to start learning fast.

Authorised by Mr Lipwig of the Ankh-Morpork and Sto Plains Hygienic Railway himself, Mrs Georgina Bradshaw’s invaluable guide to the destinations and diversions of the railway deserves a place in the luggage of any traveller, or indeed armchair traveller, upon the Disc.

Moist von Lipwig is a con artist and a fraud and a man faced with a life choice: be hanged, or put the ailing postal service of Ankh-Morpork back on its feet. It's a tough decision. The post is a creaking old institution, overshadowed by new technology. But there are people who still believe in it and Moist must become one of them if he's going to see that the mail gets through, come rain, hail, sleet, dogs, the Post Office Workers Friendly and Benevolent Society, an evil chairman...and a midnight killer. Getting a date with Adora Bell Dearheart would be nice, too.

Most of us grew up having always known when to touch wood or cross our fingers, and what happens when a princess kisses a frog or a boy pulls a sword from a stone, yet sadly some of these things are beginning to be forgotten. Legends, myths, and fairy tales: Our world is made up of the stories we told ourselves about where we came from and how we got here. It is the same on Discworld, except that beings, which on Earth are creatures of the imagination - like vampires, trolls, witches and, possibly, gods - are real, alive and, in some cases kicking, on the Disc.

When the very fabric of time and space are about to be put through the wringer, in this instance by the imminent arrival of a very large and determinedly oncoming meteorite, circumstances require a very particular type of hero. Sadly, what the situation does not need is a singularly inept wizard, still recovering from the trauma of falling off the edge of the world. Equally it does not need one well-meaning tourist and his luggage, which has a mind of its own¿which is a shame, because that's all there is.

Los alquimistas del Mundodisco están haciendo de las suyas nuevamente. Esta vez han descubierto el secreto para obtener oro de la plata... o, mejor dicho, de la pantalla plateada. Y siguiendo el canto de sirena de Holly Wood estará Victor Tugelbend, un proyecto de mago reconvertido a figurante. No canta, no baila, pero sabe manejar la espada (un poco) y ahora quiere ser famoso. También acudirá Theda Wuthel, una mujer ambiciosa proveniente de una pequeña ciudad de la que probablemente nadie haya oído hablar nunca.

It's 2045-2059. Human society continues to evolve on Datum Earth, its battered and weary origin planet, as the spread of humanity progresses throughout the many Earths beyond. Lobsang, now an elderly and complex AI, suffers a breakdown and, disguised as a human, attempts to live a "normal" life on one of the millions of Long Earth worlds. His old friend, Joshua, now in his 50s, searches for his father and discovers a heretofore unknown family history.

Thirteen-year-old Mau is the only one left after a giant wave sweeps his island village away. But when much is taken, something is returned, and somewhere in the jungle, Daphne - a girl from the other side of the globe - is the sole survivor of a ship destroyed by the same wave.

Finding himself alone on a desert island when everything and everyone he knows and loved has been washed away in a huge storm, Mau is the last surviving member of his nation. He's also completely alone - or so he thinks until he finds the ghost girl. She has no toes, wears strange lacy trousers like the grandfather bird and gives him a stick which can make fire. Daphne, sole survivor of the wreck of the Sweet Judy, almost immediately regrets trying to shoot the native boy.

Not just another science audiobook and not just another Discworld novella, The Science of Discworld is a creative, mind-bending mash-up of fiction and fact, that offers a wizard’s-eye view of our world that will forever change how you look at the universe.

Change is in the air for Moist von Lipwig, swindler, con-man and (naturally) head of the Royal Bank and Post Office. A steaming, clanging new invention - a steam locomotive named Iron Girder, to be precise - is drawing astonished crowds. Suddenly it's a matter of national importance that the trains run on time. Moist does not enjoy hard work. His input at the bank and post office consists mainly of words, which are not that heavy. Or greasy. And it certainly doesn't involve rickety bridges, runaway cheeses or a fat controller with knuckledusters.

En el desquiciado Mundodisco nace un brujo. No se trata de un brujo cualquiera, sino de uno tan poderoso que tendrá capacidad para destruir el mundo. Alguien debe impedirlo. Pero ¿quién? El resto de brujos no puede competir con él. Sin embargo, cuando todos los caminos parecen cerrarse, surge una remota posibilidad de salvación....

Football has come to the ancient city of Ankh-Morpork - not the old fashioned, grubby pushing and shoving but the new, fast football with pointy hats for goalposts and balls that go gloing when you drop them. And now, the wizards of Unseen University must win a football match, without using magic, so they're in the mood for trying everything else. The prospect of the Big Match draws in a street urchin with a wonderful talent for kicking a tin can, a maker of jolly good pies, a dim but beautiful young woman who might just turn out to be the greatest fashion model there has ever been, and the mysterious Mr Nutt.

One rat, popping up here and there, squeaking loudly, and taking a bath in the cream, could be a plague all by himself. After a few days of this, it was amazing how glad people were to see the kid with his magical rat pipe. And they were amazing when the rats followed hint out of town. They'd have been really amazed if they'd ever found out that the rats and the piper met up with a cat somewhere outside of town and solemnly counted out the money.

A Blink of the Screen charts the course of Pratchett's long writing career: from his schooldays through to his first writing job on the Bucks Free Press and the origins of his debut novel, The Carpet People, and on again to the dizzy mastery of the phenomenally successful Discworld series.

Eric is the Discworld's only demonology hacker. Pity he's not very good at it. All he wants is his three wishes granted. Nothing fancy: to be immortal, to rule the world, and have the most beautiful woman in the world fall madly in love with him. The usual stuff. But instead of a tractable demon, Eric calls up Rincewind, the most incompetent wizard in the universe, and his extremely intractable and hostile travel accessory, the Luggage.

Un nuevo día, sereno y apacible, empieza en el Mundodisco. Como es habitual, la gran tortuga navega por el éter entregada a reflexiones inescrutables, sosteniendo en su caparazón a los cuatro elefantes sobre los que descansa el mundo. Sin embargo, se avecina una inexorable colisión con una malévola estrella roja, y solo una persona puede poner remedio al inminente desastre: Rincewind, el inepto y cobarde hechicero. Por desgracia, Rincewind fue visto por última vez cuando caía por el borde del mundo...

The Western Front, 1916. Private Percy Blakeney wakes up. He is lying on fresh spring grass. He can hear birdsong and the wind in the leaves. Where have the mud, blood, and blasted landscape of no-man's-land gone? For that matter, where has Percy gone? Madison, Wisconsin, 2015. Police officer Monica Jansson is exploring the burned-out home of a reclusive - some say mad, others allege dangerous - scientist who seems to have vanished. Sifting through the wreckage, Jansson find a curious gadget.