One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. In ancient times the Rings of Power were crafted by the Elven-smiths, and Sauron, the Dark Lord, forged the One Ring, filling it with his own power so that he could rule all others. But the One Ring was taken from him, and though he sought it throughout Middle-earth, it remained lost to him. After many ages it fell into the hands of Bilbo Baggins, as told in The Hobbit. In a sleepy village in the Shire, young Frodo Baggins finds himself faced with an immense task, as his elderly cousin Bilbo entrusts the Ring to his care. Frodo must leave his home and make a perilous journey across Middle-earth to the Cracks of Doom, there to destroy the Ring and foil the Dark Lord in his evil purpose.

An exhilarating, twisted tale of desire, suspicion, and obsession between two women staying in the same house in the Dutch countryside during the summer of 1961—a powerful exploration of the legacy of WWII and the darker parts of our collective past. A house is a precious thing... It is 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the war is truly over. Living alone in her late mother’s country home, Isabel knows her life is as it should be—led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis brings his graceless new girlfriend Eva, leaving her at Isabel’s doorstep as a guest, to stay for the season. Eva is Isabel’s antithesis: she sleeps late, walks loudly through the house, and touches things she shouldn’t. In response, Isabel develops a fury-fueled obsession, and when things start disappearing around the house—a spoon, a knife, a bowl—Isabel’s suspicions begin to spiral. In the sweltering peak of summer, Isabel’s paranoia gives way to infatuation—leading to a discovery that unravels all Isabel has ever known. The war might not be well and truly over after all, and neither Eva—nor the house in which they live—are what they seem. Mysterious, sophisticated, sensual, and infused with intrigue, atmosphere, and sex, The Safekeep is a brilliantly plotted and provocative debut novel you won’t soon forget.

An exhilarating, twisted tale of desire, suspicion, and obsession between two women staying in the same house in the Dutch countryside during the summer of 1961—a powerful exploration of the legacy of WWII and the darker parts of our collective past. A house is a precious thing... It is 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the war is truly over. Living alone in her late mother’s country home, Isabel knows her life is as it should be—led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis brings his graceless new girlfriend Eva, leaving her at Isabel’s doorstep as a guest, to stay for the season. Eva is Isabel’s antithesis: she sleeps late, walks loudly through the house, and touches things she shouldn’t. In response, Isabel develops a fury-fueled obsession, and when things start disappearing around the house—a spoon, a knife, a bowl—Isabel’s suspicions begin to spiral. In the sweltering peak of summer, Isabel’s paranoia gives way to infatuation—leading to a discovery that unravels all Isabel has ever known. The war might not be well and truly over after all, and neither Eva—nor the house in which they live—are what they seem. Mysterious, sophisticated, sensual, and infused with intrigue, atmosphere, and sex, The Safekeep is a brilliantly plotted and provocative debut novel you won’t soon forget.

When the scientist Victor Frankenstein attempts to create life in his laboratory, he sets in motion tragic forces beyond his control and faces losing everything he loves. No reader in the grip of Mary Shelley’s novel, with its mythic-minded hero and its highly sympathetic monster who reads Goethe and longs to be at peace with himself, can fail to notice how much more excellent the original is than all the countless adaptations, imitations, and homages which have followed in its ample wake. In her first novel, written at the instigation of Lord Byron and published in 1818 (and revised in 1831), the teenaged Shelley managed to produce English Romanticism’s finest prose fiction. This edition reproduces her original 1818 text.

Shots rang out in Savannah's grandest mansion in the misty, early morning hours of May 2, 1981. Was it murder or self-defense? For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberated throughout this city of moss-hung oaks and shaded squares. John Berendt's narrative reads like a thoroughly engrossing novel, and yet it is a work of nonfiction. Berendt interweaves a first-person account of life in this isolated remnant of the Old South with the unpredictable twists and turns of a landmark murder case. The story is peopled by a gallery of remarkable characters: the well-bred society ladies of the Married Woman's Card Club; the turbulent young redneck gigolo; the hapless recluse who owns a bottle of poison so powerful it could kill every man, woman, and child in Savannah; the aging and profane Southern belle who is the "soul of pampered self-absorption"; the uproarious black drag queen; the acerbic and arrogant antiques dealer; the sweet-talking, piano-playing con artist; young blacks dancing the minuet at the black debutante ball; and Minerva, the voodoo priestess who works her magic in the graveyard at midnight. These and other Savannahians act as a Greek chorus, with Berendt revealing the alliances, hostilities, and intrigues that thrive in a town where everyone knows everyone else.

From the Booker-winning author of Shuggie Bain and Young Mungo comes a vivid, moving, and beautifully crafted novel following a young man returning to his Hebridean island home, a portrait of a close-knit community and a fraying family, of a father’s expectations and a son’s desires Out of money and with little to show for his art school education, John-Calum Macleod takes the ferry back home to the island of Harris to find that little has changed except for him. In the windswept croft where he grew up, Cal begrudgingly resumes his old life, stuck between the two poles of his childhood: his father John, a sheep farmer, tweed weaver, and pillar of their local Presbyterian church, and his maternal grandmother Ella, a profanity-loving Glaswegian who has kept a faltering peace with her son-in-law for several decades. Cal wonders if any lonely men might be found on the barren hillsides of home, while John is dismayed by his son’s long hair and how he seems unwilling to be Saved. As lambing season turns to shearing season, everything seems poised to change as the threads holding together the fragile community become increasingly knotted. John of John is a singular novel about duty and patience and the transformative power of the truth. It is a magnificent literary work that shows Douglas Stuart working at an even higher level of artistic creation.

From the acclaimed author of the Vorrh Trilogy comes an epic odyssey following a group of mercenaries hired to escort a divine oracle on a long journey amidst a war between the living and the dead. Sheltering beneath Das Kagel, the cloud-scraping structure rumored to be the Tower of Babel, the sacred Monastery of the Eastern Gate descends into bedlam. Their ancient oracle, Quite Testiyont--whose prophesies helped protect the church--has died, leaving the monks vulnerable to the war raging between the living and the dead. Tasked by the High Church to deliver a new oracle, Barry Follett and his group of hired mercenaries are forced to confront wicked giants and dangerous sirens on their mission, keeping the divine creature alive by feeding it marrow and confessing their darkest sins. But as Follett and his men carve their way through the treacherous landscape, the world around them spirals deeper into chaos. Dominic, a young monk who has mysteriously lost his voice, makes a pilgrimage to see surreal paintings, believing they reveal the empire's fate; a local woman called Mad Meg hopes to free and vindicate her jailed son and becomes the leader of the most unexpected revolution; and the abbott of the monastery, influential as he is, seeks to gain even more power in this world and the next. Rich with action and fantastic creatures, Hollow ushers the reader through a world of ruin where holy secrets are unearthed, art mirrors life through a glass darkly, and death looms over everything. It is B. Catling's most accomplished and gripping tale yet. A VINTAGE ORIGINAL

When the scientist Victor Frankenstein attempts to create life in his laboratory, he sets in motion tragic forces beyond his control and faces losing everything he loves. No reader in the grip of Mary Shelley’s novel, with its mythic-minded hero and its highly sympathetic monster who reads Goethe and longs to be at peace with himself, can fail to notice how much more excellent the original is than all the countless adaptations, imitations, and homages which have followed in its ample wake. In her first novel, written at the instigation of Lord Byron and published in 1818 (and revised in 1831), the teenaged Shelley managed to produce English Romanticism’s finest prose fiction. This edition reproduces her original 1818 text.

Ever since Harry Potter had come home for the summer, the Dursleys had been so mean and hideous that all Harry wanted was to get back to the Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. But just as he’s packing his bags, Harry receives a warning from a strange impish creature who says that if Harry returns to Hogwarts, disaster will strike.And strike it does. For in Harry’s second year at Hogwarts, fresh torments and horrors arise, including an outrageously stuck-up new professor and a spirit who haunts the girls’ bathroom. But then the real trouble begins – someone is turning Hogwarts students to stone. Could it be Draco Malfoy, a more poisonous rival than ever? Could it possibly be Hagrid, whose mysterious past is finally told? Or could it be the one everyone at Hogwarts most suspects… Harry Potter himself!

Harry Potter has no idea how famous he is. That's because he's being raised by his miserable aunt and uncle who are terrified Harry will learn that he's really a wizard, just as his parents were. But everything changes when Harry is summoned to attend an infamous school for wizards, and he begins to discover some clues about his illustrious birthright. From the surprising way he is greeted by a lovable giant, to the unique curriculum and colorful faculty at his unusual school, Harry finds himself drawn deep inside a mystical world he never knew existed and closer to his own noble destiny.

A diabolical, haunting, and unforgettable horror short story collection from USA TODAY bestselling author Nat Cassidy, featuring his unique blend of gleefully terrifying fiction, and including his Bram Stoker Award–nominated novella Rest Stop. “[A] platter of phobias...Luckily, for every scare, there is a sense of resilience and a laugh in the face of fear to get you there.” —Fangoria Magazine, on Rest StopThere are locations in this world where the light doesn’t seem to reach. Where, no matter how illuminated the place might be, shadows creep in too strongly to fight back. A suspiciously empty gas station rest stop in the middle of the night, littered with googley eyes... A doctor’s office, where a bottle of booze and a tear-stained folder wait on the desk... A tech millionaire’s haunted kitchen... A Bible-quoting ventriloquist’s dingy apartment... A yoga retreat in the middle of the desert, silent except for the screaming... These supernatural and sinister locations are your destination, and bestselling author Nat Cassidy will be your guide. Featuring the Bram Stoker Award–nominated, critically acclaimed novella Rest Stop (one of Esquire’s Best Horror Books of 2024), along with a number of other original short stories, some which have never been published before, I Know A Rest Stop and Other Dark Detours is a travelogue down twisting side streets and through alleyways where the darkness has eyes...and teeth. Let’s hope you make it home in one piece—if the ghosts, gory visions, and splatterpunk nightmares don’t get you first. “A blood-soaked freakout that does for gas stations what Jaws did for beaches.” —Kirkus Reviews, on Rest Stop

A gripping and lushly illustrated tale of love and lies set between 1930s Chicago and New York’s criminal underworld, perfect for fans of manga like Banana Fish and readers of graphic novels like Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me who are looking for adult LGBTQIA+ fiction Chicago, 1930. Jules Tivoli is a penniless Italian immigrant doing odd jobs to make ends meet. A twist of fate causes him to cross paths with Adam, a kingpin in Chicago’s criminal underworld who sees something in Jules that nobody else does—something special. Under Adam’s wing, Jules becomes somebody and falls in love hard with the man who made him. But after an FBI crackdown, Adam and Jules must flee to New York to escape being caught in the ensuing chaos. In New York, Jules’s Italian heritage gains him access, recognition, and power in the Cosa Nostra crime family. As he becomes more important in a city where Adam can’t seem to catch a break, he meets Eufrasio—his handsome, violent, and ambitious new partner who insists that Adam is holding Jules back. But Jules would be nothing without Adam—wouldn’t he? Torn between his past and his future, a sudden betrayal forces Jules to find a way to protect his love and prove his loyalty—if he can even manage to make it out alive.

¶ Originally published in Polish [as Rękopis Znaleziony w Saragossie, 1847], later translated into French as Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse, the work is a supposed translation of a manuscript from the time of the Napoleonic Wars which depicts events several decades earlier. As for the plot - the plot! The Manuscript Found in Saragossa collects intertwining stories, all of them set in whole or in part in Spain, with a large and colorful cast of Gypsies, thieves, inquisitors, a cabbalist, a geometer, the cabbalist's beautiful sister, two Moorish princesses (Emina and Zibelda), and others. Alphonse, a young Walloon officer is travelling to join his regiment in Madrid in 1739. But he soon finds himself mysteriously detained at a highway inn in the strange and varied company of these thieves, brigands, cabbalists, noblemen, coquettes and gypsies. He records their stories over sixty-six days. The resulting manuscript is discovered some forty years later in a sealed casket, from which the tales of the characters, transformed through disguise, magic and illusion, of honour and cowardice, of hauntings and seductions, leap forth to create a vibrant polyphony of human voices. The novel's stories quickly overshadow van Worden's frame story. The bulk of the stories revolve around the Gypsy chief Avadoro, whose story becomes a frame story itself. Eventually the narrative focus moves again toward van Worden's frame story and a conspiracy involving an underground - or perhaps entirely hallucinated - Muslim society, revealing the connections and correspondences between the hundred or so stories told over the novel's sixty-six days. Jan Potocki (1761-1812) used a range of literary styles - gothic, picaresque, adventure, pastoral, erotica - in his novel of stories-within-stories - which provides entertainment on an epic scale. The stories cover a wide range of genres and as a whole the novel reflects Potocki's far-ranging interests, especially his deep fascination with secret societies, the supernatural, and "Oriental" cultures. These "stories-within-stories" sometimes reach several levels of depth, and characters and themes - a few prominent themes being honor, disguise, metamorphosis, and conspiracy - recur and change shape throughout. Because of its rich and varied interlocking structure, the novel echoes favorable comparison to many celebrated literary antecedents such as the ancient BCE Jatakas and Panchatantra as well as the medieval Arabian Nights and Decameron.

From the #1 bestselling author of THE BINDING‘The Face calls things to it,’ Phoebe said, ‘and this house is in their path. You have to be careful.’ Florence has been summoned to live with her widowed brother-in-law and wayward niece in Haltington, a village with something uncanny in the air. According to locals, the chalk face carved into the hillside protects them from malevolent spirits. So long as it is maintained, all will be well. The First World War has decimated the men of the village, and when the Face’s last caretaker dies, her sons both lost in France, there is nobody to replace her. Still, it’s only an old wives’ tale. Isn’t it? Kit is an artist – unconventional, androgynous and traumatised by the events of the war. She seeks peace, and a muse – will she find both in the shape of Florence? Under the chalk, something is stirring… From the #1 bestselling author of THE BINDING, this is a dark, compelling and deeply moving novel about grief, identity and forbidden desires. Bridget Collins's book 'The Silence Factory' was a Sunday Times bestseller w/c 2024-04-29.

Fenrir is a mask. Before his fall from grace, he was Ashtin, a lauded surveyor responsible for containing distortions, corrupted pockets of space-time that twist all they touch into horrid creatures. Five years prior, Ashtin defied the teachings of the Church he once served, costing him privilege, purpose, and his old name. Now, he is Fenrir, a shadow of his former self, reduced to ringing a bell for his livelihood.When a distortion claims Fenrir’s bell tower, the Church sends Surveyor Sophie to assess and contain the threat. She is a painful reminder of all that Fenrir has lost, but as the weeks slip by, Fenrir falls for her. And her him, even after learning his true identity.But Sophie harbors an even darker secret. Her only hope of salvation? Commit an unforgivable sin by descending into ancient ruins festering with distortions and their horrifying victims. Fenrir accompanies Sophie on the journey, but the truths they uncover are heinous in their own right. He must make a choice—abandon Sophie to fate or throw the world into chaos.Blessed is the Rot is a dark science fantasy novel, the first in the Bit Trilogy and part of the Alfom shared universe.

Harry Potter has no idea how famous he is. That's because he's being raised by his miserable aunt and uncle who are terrified Harry will learn that he's really a wizard, just as his parents were. But everything changes when Harry is summoned to attend an infamous school for wizards, and he begins to discover some clues about his illustrious birthright. From the surprising way he is greeted by a lovable giant, to the unique curriculum and colorful faculty at his unusual school, Harry finds himself drawn deep inside a mystical world he never knew existed and closer to his own noble destiny.