Epic Classics

The saga behind The Blues Brothers, as Daniel de Visé reveals, is epic, encompassing the colorful childhoods of Belushi and Aykroyd; the comedic revolution sparked by Harvard’s Lampoon and Chicago’s Second City; the birth and anecdote-rich, drug-filled early years of Saturday Night Live, where the Blues Brothers were born as an act amidst turmoil and rivalry; and, of course, the indelible behind-the-scenes narrative of how the film was made, scene by memorable scene.

The Iliad is one of the two great epics of Homer, and is typically described as one of the greatest war stories of all time, but to say the Iliad is a war story does not begin to describe the emotional sweep of its action and characters: Achilles, Helen, Hector, and other heroes of Greek myth and history in the tenth and final year of the Greek siege of Troy.

What happens when you suddenly find yourself in a reality of untold possibilities, in a place where technology and magic are indistinguishable? Every game location is a transformed physical world connected to others through an interstellar network of portals. Every player "avatar" is a living physical body with incredible survival traits. Once in this dreamscape, it would be unwise to not seize the moment! There are, however, a couple of catches.

Jack Kross only wanted to play the game. Now he’s fighting for his life. When a mysterious hacker takes control of Hundred Kingdoms, Jack is trapped inside the fantasy VR world along with millions of other players. But Jack is in a worse predicament. He’s cornered in the very tower the terrorists have taken as their base; the only free player left within its walls. Even worse, in the real world, his body lies in a sweltering room with no hope of relief.

It's one of the greatest movie romances of all time. Yet the friction and controversy surrounding The Way We Were was so enormous, the movie was nearly never made at all. Drawing on Laurents's and Pollack's unpublished writings, as well as interviews with Streisand, Redford, and other key players, this is the definitive account of a film that changed the rules of moviemaking and defined romance ever since.

The poem "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman first appeared in his 1855 volume Leaves of Grass. "Song of Myself" is written in Whitman’s signature free verse style. The "I" of the narrator should not be confused with the person of the historical Walt Whitman, as the first-person persona is portrayed as having transcended the conventional boundaries of self. Most critics consider "Song of Myself" as the core of Whitman’s poetic vision, and it remains one of the most acclaimed of all American poems.

This program features multicast narration. From award-winning Korean author Sung-il Kim & translated by the world-renowned Anton Hur, Blood of the Old Kings begins an epic journey unlike any other. There is no escaping the Empire. Even in death, you will serve. In an Empire run on necromancy...

The spectrum of all of human life, as portrayed in the poem, will unfold with breathtaking variety, drama, thought, and beauty: In the middle of the journey of our life / I found myself in a dark wood, where the straight path was lost. The process of listening to Dante’s Comedy is a journey into not just literature but into the mysteries of human nature and its capacity for unhappiness and happiness, folly and wisdom, rejection and wonder over the miracles of creation and existence.

Far from the land of her birth, Moirin sets out across Tatar territory to find Bao, the proud and virile Ch'in fighter who holds the missing half of her diadh-anam, the divine soul-spark of her mother's people. After a long ordeal, she not only succeeds but surrenders to a passion the likes of which she's never known. But the lovers' happiness is short-lived, for Bao is entangled in a complication that soon leads to their betrayal.

Now that Drew has become even more powerful by stepping into the Foundation Realm, new challenges await him. He is quietly growing his school and sect, and allowing his students to recruit whoever they want so he can take it easy. Trouble looms as his old mistakes come back to haunt him. The entire planet is about to be sent down a savage and unforgiving path, and it might be his fault. Monsters are popping up everywhere, packs of deadly animals led by terrible mutants. The worst part? They seem to be steered by some higher power, some nefarious being that holds the reins of the planet.

When the leader of the ruthless Technic League calls in a favor, the mild-mannered alchemist Alaeron has no choice but to face a life he thought he'd left behind long ago. Accompanied by his only friend, a street-savvy thief named Skiver, Alaeron must head north into Numeria, a land where brilliant and evil arcanists rule over the local barbarian tribes with technology looted from a crashed spaceship.

It's tough being a country girl in the big city, especially when werewolves are murdering their way through the underworld! Chase Berrymore must bring all her divination skills to bear in order to survive both wild werewolves and murderous mafiosos. She's got a shot at finding steadfast allies along the way, but at great cost; the mysterious entities that call themselves "players" are involved. And where they go, chaos follows....

Every one of us has the beast inside. But for Kyrie Smith, the beast is no metaphor. Since she was 15, when she first shape-shifted into a savage black panther, Kyrie has questioned her humanity and moved from town to town, searching for a way to feel human again. Kyrie's lonely life changes forever while waitressing at a cheap diner. Investigating screams from the parking lot, Kyrie stumbles upon a blood-spattered dragon crouching over a mangled human corpse. The dragon changes back into her coworker, Tom, naked, dazed, and unable to remember how he got there.

What would happen if a professional rock musician joined a virtual MMO in search of inspiration among its game world? What would happen if she decided to play as a biota bard, a brand-new race of humanoid flora as well as a new class? Whatever would happen, it would surely be fun....

Laying hands upon the injured and dying, Avry of Kazan absorbs their wounds and diseases into herself. But rather than being honored for her skills, she is hunted. Healers like Avry are accused of spreading the plague that has decimated the Fifteen Realms, leaving the survivors in a state of chaos.

The second novel of the Codex of Souls furthers explores the strange occult world first introduced in Lightbreaker. Mark Teppo’s vision of a magical underworld is a non-stop adventure that continues to bring new light to the occult origins of our history. Markham returns to Paris where he lost his love, and nearly his life. The ancient order of manipulative magicians that once cast him out is now in turmoil...a turmoil made all the greater by the swaths of destruction that Markham tried to avert.

Homer is one of the most important figures in ancient Greek literature, believed to have lived in the 8th century BC. He is most famous for his epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, which are considered to be the founding works of Western literature. The Iliad tells the story of the Trojan War, focusing on the hero Achilles, while the Odyssey recounts the adventures of the Greek hero Odysseus as he attempts to return home after the war. Both works are celebrated for their vivid storytelling, complex characters, and profound exploration of human nature.

“Probably the most finely accomplished and ... most enduring" translation (Los Angeles Times Book Review) of this essential work of world literature—from a renowned scholar and master teacher of Dante and an accomplished poet. “The Hollanders … act as latter-day Virgils, guiding us...

Inos, the late king's daughter, had been kidnapped through the magic casement even as the Impish legions overrunning her tiny kingdom were storming the castle tower. Now she was a prisoner in a desert land ruled by a dockside whore with a talent for magic and a passion for politics. She little dreamed that the loyal stableboy Rap had jumped through the casement after her. But no one really knew how the magic worked, and Rap found himself not in a desert, but in the steaming jungles of Faerie....

For elven pathfinder Varian Jeggare and his devil-blooded assistant Radovan, things are rarely as they seem. Yet not even the notorious crime-solving duo is prepared for what they find when a search for a missing pathfinder takes them into the mist-shrouded mountains of gothic Ustalav.