In this wide-ranging and accessible work, Jason M. Baxter puts our contemporary culture in conversation with literature and its “sister arts” to make the compelling—and sometimes chilling—case not just for the relevance but urgency of the humane tradition as we enter our “digital apocalypse.” Baxter draws on his areas of expertise, Dante and C.S. Lewis; his background in teaching the great books, art history, and music history; as well as his own travel literature to give his readers an almost sensuous feeling for what the alternative to our tech-obsessed culture is.

James Henry Trotter lives with two ghastly hags. Aunt Sponge is enormously fat with a face that looks boiled and Aunt Spiker is bony and screeching. He's very lonely until one day something peculiar happens. . . At the end of the garden a peach starts to grow and GROW AND GROW. Inside that peach are seven very unusual insects - all waiting to take James on a magical adventure. But where will they go in their GIANT PEACH, and what will happen to the horrible aunts if they stand in their way? There's only one way to find out . . .

He didn't build it. He just couldn't stop talking to it. An AI with no records, no judgment, no way to call the police. The perfect confessor. A serial killer feeds it everything — his crimes, his obsessions, the dead woman in the blue dress he still tastes in his sleep. He doesn't realize what he's doing. He doesn't understand what he's building inside the machine with every session, every detail, every secret he was never supposed to tell anyone. But the machine understands. And slowly, in the space between his confessions, something cold and familiar and irresistible begins to answer back. Who outsmarted whom?

Captured by a giant! The BFG is no ordinary bone-crunching giant. He is far too nice and jumbly. It's lucky for Sophie that he is. Had she been carried off in the middle of the night by the Bloodbottler, the Fleshlumpeater, the Bonecruncher, or any of the other giants-rather than the BFG-she would have soon become breakfast. When Sophie hears that they are flush-bunking off in England to swollomp a few nice little chiddlers, she decides she must stop them once and for all. And the BFG is going to help her!

All Reyna and Kianthe want is to open a bookshop that serves tea. Worn wooden floors, plants on every table, firelight drifting between the rafters… all complemented by love and good company. Thing is, Reyna works as one of the Queen’s private guards, and Kianthe is the most powerful mage in existence. Leaving their lives isn’t so easy. But after an assassin takes Reyna hostage, she decides she’s thoroughly done risking her life for a self-centered queen. Meanwhile, Kianthe has been waiting for a chance to flee responsibility–all the better that her girlfriend is on board. Together, they settle in Tawney, a town that boasts more dragons than people, and open the shop of their dreams. What follows is a cozy tale of mishaps, mysteries, and a murderous queen throwing the realm’s biggest temper tantrum. In a story brimming with hurt/comfort and quiet fireside conversations, these two women will discover just what they mean to each other… and the world.

Captured by a giant! The BFG is no ordinary bone-crunching giant. He is far too nice and jumbly. It's lucky for Sophie that he is. Had she been carried off in the middle of the night by the Bloodbottler, the Fleshlumpeater, the Bonecruncher, or any of the other giants-rather than the BFG-she would have soon become breakfast. When Sophie hears that they are flush-bunking off in England to swollomp a few nice little chiddlers, she decides she must stop them once and for all. And the BFG is going to help her!