Classic Science

The beloved King Ik is dead, and there was barely time to check his pulse before the royal throne was supporting the suspiciously shapely backside of an impostor pretending to be Ik's beautiful, long-lost daughter. With the land's heroic hunks busy drooling all over themselves, there's only one man left who can save the kingdom of Jenair. His name is Dungar Loloth, a rural blacksmith turned innkeeper, a surly hermit, and an all-around nobody oozing toward middle age, compensating for a lack of height, looks, charm, and tact with guts and an attitude.

Every year in the great Temple City of Duvalpore, the image of the Wheel of the Infinite must be painstakingly remade to ensure another year of peace and harmony for the Celestial Empire. Every hundred years the sacred rite takes on added significance. For it is then that the very fabric of the world must be rewoven. Linked by the mystic energies of the Infinite, the Wheel and world are one. Should the holy image be marred, the world will suffer a similar injury. But a black storm is spreading across the Wheel.

Midnight and dawn, Elena's wings are unique among angelkind - and now they are failing. The first mortal to be turned into an immortal in angelic memory, she's regressing. Becoming more and more human. Easier to hurt. Easier to kill. Elena and Raphael must unearth the reason for the regression before Elena falls out of the sky. Yet even as they fight a furious battle for Elena's very survival, violent forces are gathering across the world. In China, the Archangel Favashi is showing the first signs of madness.

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.

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?

Is it easy to survive in the game world? You could say yes, if you didn't know what the additional conditions were. They are unusual: it's the real world in which you have lived all your life. The enemy, craving to destroy you. Your own class who couldn't care less about you. Are you still sure that survival is easy? Then welcome to The Game! It will prove you wrong.

The Lost History of Liberalism challenges our most basic assumptions about a political creed that has become a rallying cry - and a term of derision - in today's increasingly divided public square. Taking listeners from ancient Rome to today, Helena Rosenblatt traces the evolution of the words "liberal" and "liberalism", revealing the heated debates that have taken place over their meaning. In this timely and provocative book, Rosenblatt debunks the popular myth of liberalism as a uniquely Anglo-American tradition centered on individual rights.

In a world of elves and dwarves and sprites and mages, Tane Carver is a human with no gift but his wits. Which, to be fair, did get him into the world's most prestigious university of magical technology. For a while. Until his lack of magic was discovered. And then it all came crashing down. But when a student is murdered on campus behind unbreakable wards, Tane gets a second chance. Solving an impossible crime should be easy for the man who fooled the university's best mages for years. Except he's not counting on the head constable being an old flame who isn't so fond of him anymore.

Bryan Jenson is a former Marine who's been running from his past. When an acquaintance comes to him with a job, he takes it. He doesn't care about the pay or the job specifics. He just wants to escape the nightmares. But in trying to run from his past, he runs into an even more terrifying nightmare when he and four others journey into the Rift Plains - a dimension connected to hundreds of other worlds. His party is overwhelmed, and Bryan is taken prisoner. Now, he must team up with an archangel who has lost more than half her power and a low-level succubus to escape.

This book is considered a prophetical novel foretelling the advent of nuclear weapons. A constant theme in Wells’ work, such as his 1901 nonfiction book Anticipations, was the role of energy and technological advance as a determinant of human progress. The novel opens with this: "The story of mankind is the history of the attainment of external power. Man is the tool-using, fire-making animal...."

The Death Star has been destroyed, but the battle is far from over. Princess Leia, Luke Skywalker, and the rest of the Rebel Alliance are on the run from the evil Imperial forces. In this next chapter, they must battle giant space slugs, angry snow creatures, and Darth Vader.

The foundation for all modern economic thought and political economy, The Wealth of Nations is the magnum opus of Scottish economist Adam Smith, who introduces the world to the very idea of economics and capitalism in the modern sense of the words.

Gary Leger thought life after college would bring great things. Instead, he's stuck in a dead-end job and finding that the real world isn't all it's cracked up to be. But when he walks into the woods behind his house one day, Gary finds a world beyond the "real world"---a realm of elves and dwarfs and witches and dragons. There he discovers that he is the only one who can wear the armor of the land's lost hero---and wield a magical spear. And if he doesn't, he can never go home again.

É 1984, e a vida está irreconhecível. Pista Aérea Um, antes conhecida como Grã-Bretanha, é um lugar onde o Grande Irmão está sempre de olho e é impossível se esconder. Exceto, talvez, para Winston Smith. Enquanto trabalha reescrevendo a história no Ministério da Verdade, ele nutre sonhos secretos de liberdade. E, num mundo onde o amor e o sexo são proibidos, onde é difícil distinguir os amigos dos inimigos, ele conhece Julia e O’Brien e decide se rebelar.

It is the year 12,020 GE and Emperor Cleon I sits uneasily on the Imperial throne of Trantor. Here in the great multidomed capital of the Galactic Empire, 40 billion people have created a civilization of unimaginable technological and cultural complexity. Yet Cleon knows there are those who would see him fall - those whom he would destroy if only he could read the future.

Stranger in a Strange Land is the epic saga of an earthling, Valentine Michael Smith, born and educated on Mars, who arrives on our planet with “psi” powers—telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, telekinesis, teleportation, pyrolysis, and the ability to take control of the minds of others—and complete innocence regarding the mores of man. After his tutelage under a surrogate father figure, Valentine begins his transformation into a kind of messiah.

It all began when the wizards of the White League were under attack by their opponents of the Black League and one of their most powerful members cast a spell to bring forth a mighty wizard to aid their cause. What the spell delivered was master hacker Walter "Wiz" Zumwalt. But spells are a lot like computer programs, and, in spite of the Wiz's unprepossessing appearance, he was going to defeat the all-powerful Black League, win the love of a beautiful red-haired witch, and prove that when it comes to spells and sorcery, nobody but nobody can beat a Silicon Valley computer geek!

Through the Looking Glass is a sequel of sorts to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Alice, now slightly older, walks through a mirror into the Looking-Glass House and immediately becomes involved in a strange game of chess. Soon, she is exploring the rest of the house and meets a sequence of characters now familiar to most: Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the Red Queen, Humpty Dumpty, and the Walrus, to name a few.

Claire Hansen was a Keeper, gifted - or cursed - with the job of being one of Earth's Guardians, "summoned" to areas where anomalies existed, where rifts had opened - or had been opened. Such places were the world's danger spots where, if they weren't sealed in time, all the minions of hell might break through. After she'd closed the portal into hell at the Elysian Fields Guest House, Claire and her talking cat, Austin, found they'd acquired a new companion - Dean.

Penniless graduate Blair Wilkes has always felt one step behind everyone else. Unemployed and out of luck, with the uncanny ability to cause havoc wherever she treads, when she receives a job offer from a strange town called Fairy Falls, she's certain it's too good to be true. It turns out Fairy Falls isn't just eccentric: it's magical...and so is Blair.