World Fiction

Spearpoint, the last human city, is an atmosphere-piercing spire of vast size. Clinging to its skin are the zones, a series of semi-autonomous city-states, each of which enjoys a different---and rigidly enforced---level of technology. Following an infiltration mission that went tragically wrong, Quillon has been living incognito, working as a pathologist in the district morgue.

After more than two hundred years as a corpsicle, Jaybee Corbell awoke in someone else’s body and under threat of instant annihilation if he made a wrong move while they were training him for a one-way mission to the stars. But Corbell bided his time and made his own move. Once he was outbound, where the society that ruled Earth could not reach him, he headed his starship toward the galactic core.

Celtic mythology, Arthurian romance, and an intriguing interpretation of British history - these are just some of the themes embraced by the anonymous authors of the eleven tales that make up the Welsh medieval masterpiece known as The Mabinogion. They tell of Gwydion the shape-shifter, who can create a woman out of flowers; of Math the magician whose feet must lie in the lap of a virgin; of hanging a pregnant mouse and hunting a magical boar.

One day, 14-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find two notes in her mailbox, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl.

Magnolia, South Carolina, 1980: Austin Foster is barely a teenager when her mama dies giving birth to twins, leaving her to pick up the pieces while holding her six siblings together and doing her best to stop her daddy from retreating into his personal darkness.

Elianna is a young girl crushed by guilt. After her only brother is killed while in her care, Elianna tries to earn forgiveness by working for her father's textile trade and caring for her family. When another tragedy places Elianna in sole charge of the business, her talent for design brings enormous success but never the absolution she longs for. As her world unravels, she breaks off her betrothal to the only man she will ever love. Then illness strikes, isolating Elianna from everyone, stripping everything she has left.

The car crash was the last thing I remembered...then I woke up here. Where "here" was felt like an impossible nightmare. I died, but this wasn't what I'd expected to find when they said I'd meet my maker. The afterlife is just like a video game, except I didn't start in a noob world like everybody else. I started out on one of the most challenging dungeon worlds meant only for ancient souls who've been dead much longer than I have.... Welcome to Epoc.

After renowned fashion designer Cressida Westcott loses both her home and her design house in the London Blitz, she has nowhere to go but the family manor house she fled decades ago. Praying that her niece and nephew will be more hospitable than her brother had been, she arrives with nothing but the clothes she stands in, at a loss as to how to rebuild her business while staying in a quaint country village.

Those in power do not believe in the possibility of triumph against the will of the gods, and instead squander their time and effort in indulging their needs and desires as the world quickly rots away around them. Mankind’s only hope rests on the shoulders of a man they hate the most. A man who has taken every possible measure, both accepted and forbidden, to attain power. Sungchul Kim, the man who reached the pinnacle of strength, now stands alone against the Calamities. Not because he is a hero, but because of a promise.

An attitude? Why not? After all, what would you do if you were abducted by aliens and transported into a strange new universe away from your home, your family - everything familiar to you? Would it make you happy? Not likely! Now imagine you're stronger, faster, and more coordinated than every alien species you encounter. Would you start kicking some ass? Of course you would! This is the story of human superiority in the galaxy, a gritty, realistic profile of a young Navy SEAL who doesn't like aliens very much - and he makes them pay for the bad mood he's in.

When the ork hordes of Warlord Snagrod lay waste to the planet of Badlanding and wipe out the Crimson Fists Space Marines sent to halt their advance, Chapter Master Pedro Kantor must prepare the defense of the Chapter's home planet, Rynn's World. Tragedy strikes when an errant missile destroys the Space Marines' Chapter monastery, killing many of their remaining warriors. With only a handful of Crimson Fists left, Kantor must fight the campaign of his life, to defeat Snagrod's orks and prevent his Chapter's annihilation.

A modern classic in the African literary canon and voted in the Top Ten Africa’s 100 Best Books of the 20th Century, this novel brings to the politics of decolonization theory the energy of women’s rights. An extraordinarily well-crafted work, this book is a work of vision. Through its deft negotiation of race, class, gender, and cultural change, it dramatizes the "nervousness" of the "postcolonial" conditions that bedevil us still.

It is 1936, and Nancy Wake is an intrepid Australian expat living in Paris who has bluffed her way into a reporting job for Hearst newspaper when she meets the wealthy French industrialist Henri Fiocca. No sooner does Henri sweep Nancy off her feet and convince her to become Mrs. Fiocca than the Germans invade France and she takes yet another name: a code name. As Lucienne Carlier, Nancy smuggles people and documents across the border and earns a new nickname from the Gestapo for her remarkable ability to evade capture: The White Mouse.

At age 15, Ned Halloran lost both of his parents - and almost his own life - when the Titanic sank. Determined to keep what little he has, he returns to his homeland of Ireland and enrolls at Saint Edna's school in Dublin. Saint Edna's headmaster is the renowned scholar and poet Patrick Pearse - who is soon to gain greater fame as a rebel and patriot. Ned becomes deeply involved with the growing revolution...and the sacrifices it will demand.

An elusive courtesan, Marthe de Florian had cultivated a life of art and beauty, casting out all recollections of her impoverished childhood in the dark alleys of Montmartre. With Europe on the brink of war, she shares her story with her granddaughter, Solange Beaugiron, using her prized possessions to reveal her innermost secrets. Most striking of all are a beautiful string of pearls and a magnificent portrait of Marthe painted by the Italian artist Giovanni Boldini.

Haunted by vivid nightmares, 17-year-old Clara Blackwell suffers a miserable and downtrodden life in Great Britain. When a simple act of kindness leads her astray, a chance encounter casts her across the dimensional barrier between worlds. Clara is thrust into a captivating realm of vampires and magic that is desperate to tear her apart. Awaking in a mysterious castle under a cosmic sky, she quickly learns that the beauty of this new world is matched only by its immense peril. If word of her arrival spreads, the entire world could erupt into a brutal war over Clara’s fate.

The machine races demand a turn at the job, but the organics refuse to allow it. For more than a century, the Galactics have battled for supreme power. War and instability reign in place of peace, with every species spread over a hundred billion stars suffering as the Empire decays. James McGill discovers a scheme is underway. A new power is rising, determined to snatch the Throne from all the rest. Will this unite the Galactic Empire, or destroy it utterly?

In April 1942, Lale Sokolov, a Slovakian Jew, is forcibly transported to the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. When his captors discover that he speaks several languages, he is put to work as a Tätowierer (German for tattooist), tasked with permanently marking his fellow prisoners. Imprisoned for more than two and a half years, Lale witnesses horrific atrocities and barbarism - but also incredible acts of bravery and compassion. Risking his own life, he uses his position to exchange jewels and money from murdered Jews for food to keep his fellow prisoners alive.

What is poetry? If music is sound organized in a particular way, poetry is a way of organizing language. It is language made special so that it will be remembered and valued. It does not always work - over the centuries countless thousands of poems have been forgotten. This little history is about some that have not. John Carey tells the stories behind the world’s greatest poems, from the oldest surviving one written nearly four thousand years ago to those being written today. Carey looks at poets whose works shape our views of the world.

"I didn't realize how much I would miss grocery shopping until it was gone." Life was pretty good. The love of Alice's life had proposed, they were proud new homeowners, and she'd just landed a great promotion at work. Things were going to plan. Well, they were, until the Red Death struck. Billions dead in a matter of weeks. The survivors are few and far between. No one is safe. Life will never be the same again.