Entertainment Science

Thirty years after the Demon Wars, peace has returned to the land of Lodoss--but darkness looms. After defending his village against a horde of goblins, a headstrong young warrior named Parn sets out on a quest to restore his father's honor and save the realm. Joining Parn are Deedlit the high elf, Slayn the wizard, Etoh, a fledgling priest, Ghim, a grizzled dwarven warrior, and Woodchuck, a wily thief. Along their journey, Parn and his companions discover an evil witch who, for eons, has been manipulating events from the shadows.

The "Social Group" training camp has been announced, and this year it's going to focus on social interaction between grades and hands-on educational activities with no expulsion penalties or effect on class points at all. Pretty cool, huh? Well, not really, because behind the scenes of this relaxed atmosphere, Horikita is planning a grudge match against Amasawa—and she's not the only one cooking up some trouble! With the end of the school year quickly approaching, every class is making their move to come out on top!

Ten years ago, Calamity came. It was a burst in the sky that gave ordinary men and women extraordinary powers. The awed public started calling them Epics. But Epics are no friend of man. With incredible gifts came the desire to rule. And to rule man you must crush his will. Nobody fights the Epics...nobody but the Reckoners. A shadowy group of ordinary humans, they spend their lives studying Epics, finding their weaknesses, and then assassinating them. And David wants in. He wants Steelheart - the Epic who is said to be invincible. The Epic who killed David's father.

In Ivy's world, stars are everything. She's a Tamer, born to subdue monsters and animals, but she was also born starless! With her life in danger, Ivy flees into the forest where she befriends a weak little slime named Sora--the one creature she can tame. Together, the unlikely pair set off on a journey, salvaging rubbish to survive. Along the way they'll win hearts, evade danger, and discover there's more to starless Ivy than meets the eye!

An ordinary boy encounters the paranormal when a photo of the same girl starts inexplicably showing up in every book he opens. One day, the girl reaches out and pulls him into the photo to her location: a cell in a top-secret facility belonging to the SCP Foundation, an organization dedicated to the research and containment of people, objects and phenomena that defy reality!

Back in January 1995 in Los Angeles, California, a Singaporean pornstar named Annabel Chong took cultural rebellion to an extreme, on terms that had never been negotiated before. She was filmed having sex with a long receiving line of men, servicing them 251 times over a ten-hour period to set a new world record: The World’s Biggest Gangbang.

Hunting pirates is hard…especially when your only assets are an unarmed ship, two ex-naval officers, a makeup artist, and a couple of pistols. But that’s exactly what Brad Mendoza and Jessica Lin have signed up to do on the edge of the Fringe: to help a bunch of farmers on a dead-end planet fight the pirate threat! Quickly, they find that they really don’t know what they’re doing…and not everything is what it seems.

As time marches on, relics of the past are cast away and the people of Japan turn their attention to the marvels of modern technology. In year eleven of the Taisho era, Akitsu Somegorou the Fourth visits Tokyo to partake in a party hosted by the Nagumo, a famous spirit-hunting family. Like Akitsu, the Nagumo family slay demons for a living, but with the fear of demons slowly fading from the hearts of man, they've joined hands with their foes in a bid for survival.

Kaori lives in an otherworldly bookstore with her adoptive father. Together, they provide books to the strange denizens of the spirit realm. But Kaori's peaceful days come to an end when she rescues an injured boy from the streets--a human, like her, from the mortal realm. The boy's name is Suimei, and he's an exorcist, the natural enemy of all spirits. Can Kaori convince Suimei that the line between human and spirit is far hazier than he thinks? A touching supernatural tale where humanity and Japanese folklore intertwine!

As Ayanokouji and his classmates begin their second year at the Advanced Nurturing High School, they're greeted by a fresh gauntlet of exams and a fresh batch of rather unique first-year students. They'll have to get to know each other quickly, because the first special exam pairs the first-years with the second-years on a written test--with only the second-years facing expulsion if their team performs poorly! Worse yet? It seems one of the new first-years is also from the White Room. Can Ayanokouji avoid expulsion while sussing out the identity of this hidden foe?

Leon may have saved Noelle from a life in chains, but her future is far from certain. Bound as she is to the Sacred Tree Sapling, she is a prize for every nation in the world. Worse, Leon's fiancees disagree over her fate: does Noelle have a responsibility to serve a nation, or should she be free to choose how she lives her life? Meanwhile, Noelle's own villainess, Louise, faces the same dire question. It seems the Sacred Tree has demanded a sacrifice in exchange for continuing to protect the Republic--and it wants Louise.

In this eloquent and persuasive book, Neil Postman examines the deep and broad effects of television culture on the manner in which we conduct our public affairs, and how "entertainment values" have corrupted the very way we think. As politics, news, religion, education, and commerce are given less and less expression in the form of the printed word, they are rapidly being reshaped to suit the requirements of television.

Yoshio is thirty years old, and his life is a mess. A shut-in living with his parents, he has no job, no relationship, and no prospects. When he receives a new sim computer game that boasts characters created with a new kind of A.I., he doesn't think much of it--until he gets drawn into a fantasy world so vibrant and lifelike that its residents can't just be game characters. Suddenly finding himself the benevolent god of a scrappy fantasy village is a lot for Yoshio to handle, but it might be the key to the change he is desperate for.

Growing a perfect moustache, grilling red meat, wooing a woman - who better to deliver this tutelage than the always charming, always manly Nick Offerman, best known as Parks and Recreation's Ron Swanson? Combining his trademark comic voice and very real expertise in woodworking - he runs his own woodshop - Paddle Your Own Canoe features tales from Offerman's childhood in small-town Minooka, Illinois, to his theater days in Chicago, beginnings as a carpenter/actor and the hilarious and magnificent seduction of his now-wife Megan Mullally.

When sarcastic loner Haruka gets transported with his class to another world, he's not wild about adventuring, but he wouldn't mind having some cool powers. Unfortunately, he's last in line when the magic cheat skills get divvied up, so by the time it's Haruka's turn, there are no good choices left. Now Haruka will have to take on this fantasy world the hard way—on his own, with a hodgepodge of bizarre skills! When infighting and chaos break out among his classmates, can this loner come to the rescue?

For generations, a shrine has stood in the mountain village of Kadono, and for each generation the shrine has had an Itsukihime--its shrine maiden--and the maiden has had her guardian. During the Edo period, a young man named Jinta protects the town and the Itsukihime. When he confronts a strange demon in the nearby forest, it tells him that in the distant future a Demon God will threaten all people, everywhere, and it claims that the Demon God's rise to power springs from this very time and place, in the village of Kadono.

Severely wounded in battle with Armaros, Shinji struggles to shoulder the responsibility of being Earth's savior yet again. Meanwhile, Asuka adjusts to her strange new body, and the clones Trois and Quatre continue their quest for their own identity. But their enemy wields the power of a god, and it's going to take every single one of them working together to prevent a reprise of the Human Instrumentality Project.

Lyra is rushing to the cold, far North, where witch clans and armored bears rule. North, where the Gobblers take the children they steal—including her friend Roger. North, where her fearsome uncle Asriel is trying to build a bridge to a parallel world. Can one small girl make a difference in such great and terrible endeavors? This is Lyra: a savage, a schemer, a liar, and as fierce and true a champion as Roger or Asriel could want. But what Lyra doesn't know is that to help one of them will be to betray the other.

Kanata is making his way in the wider world of Locklore, despite the lich Lunaere's warnings about its dangers. But after Lunaere's intensive training, everyone he runs into seems strangely...weak? Still, you can't be too careful, so Kanata and his new friends make their way toward the city of Manaloch to get some alchemy ingredients. But danger lurks nearby in the form of an infestation of giant spider monsters! And somewhere in the world, Lunaere is slowly making her way back to Kanata...

When journalist Steve Lopez sees Nathaniel Ayers playing his heart out on a two-string violin on Los Angeles' skid row, he finds it impossible to walk away. More than 30 years ago, Ayers was a promising classical bass student at Juilliard - ambitious, charming, and also one of the few African-Americans there - until he gradually lost his ability to function, overcome by schizophrenia.

Over time, the two men form a bond and Lopez imagines that he might be able to change Ayers' life. The Soloist is a beautifully told story of devotion in the face of seemingly unbeatable challenges.