Fantasy Book Place

Little, Big by John Crowley

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John Crowley’s masterful Little, Big is the epic story of Smoky Barnable, an anonymous young man who travels by foot from the City to a place called Edgewood—not found on any map—to marry Daily Alice Drinkawater, as was prophesied. It is the story of four generations of a singular family, living in a house that is many houses on the magical border of an otherworld. It is a story of fantastic love and heartrending loss; of impossible things and unshakable destinies; and of the great Tale that envelops us all. It is a wonder.

Buy Little, Big by John Crowley Here

A Wizard of Earthsea (The Earthsea Cycle Series Book 1) by Ursula K. Le Guin

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Originally published in 1968, Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea marks the first of the six now beloved Earthsea titles. Ged was the greatest sorcerer in Earthsea, but in his youth he was the reckless Sparrowhawk. In his hunger for power and knowledge, he tampered with long-held secrets and loosed a terrible shadow upon the world. This is the tumultuous tale of his testing, how he mastered the mighty words of power, tamed an ancient dragon, and crossed death’s threshold to restore the balance.

Buy A Wizard of Earthsea (The Earthsea Cycle Series Book 1) by Ursula K. Le Guin Here

The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin

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This science fiction classic by the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author is “a rare and powerful synthesis of poetry and science, reason and emotion” (The New York Times).

In a near-future world beset by war, climate change, and overpopulation, Portland resident George Orr discovers that his dreams have the power to alter reality. Upon waking, the world he knew has become a strange, barely recognizable place, where only George has a clear memory of how it was before. Seeking escape from these “effective dreams,” George eventually turns to behavioral psychologist Dr. William Haber for a cure. But Haber has other ideas in mind.

Seeing the profound power of George’s dreams, Haber believes it must be harnessed for the greater good—no matter the cost. Soon, George is a pawn in Haber’s dangerous game, where the fate of humanity grows more imperiled with every waking hour.

As relevant today as it was when it won the Locus Award in 1971, The Lathe of Heaven is a true classic, at once eerie and prescient, entertaining and intelligent. In short, it does “what science fiction is supposed to do” (Newsweek).

Buy The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin Here

Steel, Blood & Fire by Allan Batchelder

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Steel, Blood & Fire by Allan Batchelder

On the march, around the campfire, and in the taverns, they tell incredible stories about Tarmun Vykers, the Reaper – how he’s never been cut in battle, how he once defeated hundreds of men by himself, how he exterminated an entire people over an insult. These stories make Vykers seem like a god, but he is a man, an arrogant, ruthless and bloodthirsty man. For all that, he may be the only thing standing between the human race and utter annihilation at the hands of the mad wizard who calls himself the End-of-All-Things. Against this backdrop, smaller, lesser folks struggle to fulfill their own destinies, folks like Aoife, burdened with a secret so dark she is driven to do the unimaginable and seek an alliance with fey powers no mortal has ever encountered.

[Read more…] about Steel, Blood & Fire by Allan Batchelder

Jimmy Crikey’s Adventures in the Sky Islands by Wallace Briggs

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Jimmy Crikey’s Adventures in the Sky Islands by Wallace Briggs

Jimmy Crikey’s Adventures in the Sky Islands
This stand-alone story is the second in the series of Jimmy Crikey’s adventures.
Jimmy Crikey is the orphan alien brought up by a loving lady who lived on the edge of the forest close to Esh Village.
Once bullied beyond endurance because of his strange appearance, Jimmy ran away, searching for a place where he could fit in. He found himself in the town of Roombelow, where Jimmy developed his abilities to protect his new home from the dangers that threatened. Jimmy chose to remain on Earth with his new family of friends, which included Gemma, the little lady he found at the bottom of the well but didn’t know how she got there. The four witch guardians became an integral part of his life, as did Lord Oron, the Weatherman who roamed the world in his cloud.
Far above Earth, a war-like, galactic race of Zyrons invade the Sky Islands.
[Read more…] about Jimmy Crikey’s Adventures in the Sky Islands by Wallace Briggs

Liveship Traders Trilogy (3 book series) by Robin Hobb

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Bingtown is a hub of exotic trade and home to a merchant nobility famed for its liveships—rare vessels carved from wizardwood, which ripens magically into sentient awareness. Now the fortunes of one of Bingtown’s oldest families rest on the newly awakened liveship Vivacia.

For Althea Vestrit, the ship is her rightful legacy. For Althea’s young nephew, wrenched from his religious studies and forced to serve aboard the ship, the Vivacia is a life sentence. But the fate of the ship—and the Vestrits—may ultimately lie in the hands of an outsider: the ruthless buccaneer captain Kennit, who plans to seize power over the Pirate Isles by capturing a liveship and bending it to his will.

Buy Liveship Traders Trilogy (3 book series) by Robin Hobb Here

The Left Hand of Darkness: 50th Anniversary Edition (Ace Science Fiction) by Ursula K. Le Guin

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50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION—WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY DAVID MITCHELL AND A NEW AFTERWORD BY CHARLIE JANE ANDERS

Ursula K. Le Guin’s groundbreaking work of science fiction—winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards.

A lone human ambassador is sent to the icebound planet of Winter, a world without sexual prejudice, where the inhabitants’ gender is fluid. His goal is to facilitate Winter’s inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the strange, intriguing culture he encounters…

Embracing the aspects of psychology, society, and human emotion on an alien world, The Left Hand of Darkness stands as a landmark achievement in the annals of intellectual science fiction.

Buy The Left Hand of Darkness: 50th Anniversary Edition (Ace Science Fiction) by Ursula K. Le Guin Here

The Farseer Trilogy (3 book series) by Robin Hobb

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From Book 1: A gorgeously illustrated anniversary edition of the book that launched the epic Farseer Trilogy, praised by George R. R. Martin as “fantasy as it ought to be written” and Lin-Manuel Miranda as “an incredible series,” featuring a new foreword by Robin Hobb and ten illustrations.

Twenty-five years ago, Robin Hobb’s first novel featuring FitzChivalry Farseer and his mysterious, often maddening friend the Fool struck like a bolt of brilliant lightning. Thus began a beloved saga spanning multiple series, full of adventure, magic, and sinister plots. To celebrate a quarter-century of wonder, this special edition of Assassin’s Apprentice presents a modern classic as it’s never been seen before: in hardcover, with ten beautiful illustrations by Magali Villeneuve.

Young Fitz is the bastard son of the noble Prince Chivalry, raised in the shadow of the royal court by his father’s gruff stableman. He is treated as an outcast by all the royalty except the devious King Shrewd, who has him secretly tutored in the arts of the assassin. For in Fitz’s blood runs the magic Skill—and the darker knowledge of a child raised with the stable hounds and rejected by his family.

As barbarous raiders ravage the coasts, Fitz is growing to manhood. Soon he will face his first dangerous, soul-shattering mission. And though some regard him as a threat to the throne, he may just be the key to the survival of the kingdom.

Buy The Farseer Trilogy (3 book series) by Robin Hobb Here

The Forever War (The Forever War Series Book 1) by Joe Haldeman

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Winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards: A futuristic masterpiece, “perhaps the most important war novel written since Vietnam” (Junot Díaz).

In this novel, a landmark of science fiction that began as an MFA thesis for the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and went on to become an award-winning classic—inspiring a play, a graphic novel, and most recently an in-development film—man has taken to the stars, and soldiers fighting the wars of the future return to Earth forever alienated from their home.

Conscripted into service for the United Nations Exploratory Force, a highly trained unit built for revenge, physics student William Mandella fights for his planet light years away against the alien force known as the Taurans. “Mandella’s attempt to survive and remain human in the face of an absurd, almost endless war is harrowing, hilarious, heartbreaking, and true,” says Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Junot Díaz—and because of the relative passage of time when one travels at incredibly high speed, the Earth Mandella returns to after his two-year experience has progressed decades and is foreign to him in disturbing ways.

Based in part on the author’s experiences in Vietnam, The Forever War is regarded as one of the greatest military science fiction novels ever written, capturing the alienation that servicemen and women experience even now upon returning home from battle. It shines a light not only on the culture of the 1970s in which it was written, but also on our potential future. “To say that The Forever War is the best science fiction war novel ever written is to damn it with faint praise. It is . . . as fine and woundingly genuine a war story as any I’ve read” (William Gibson).

This ebook features an illustrated biography of Joe Haldeman including rare images from the author’s personal collection.

Buy The Forever War (The Forever War Series Book 1) by Joe Haldeman Here

Alas, Babylon: A Novel (Harper Perennial Olive Edition) by Pat Frank

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“Alas, Babylon.” Those fateful words heralded the end. When the unthinkable nightmare of nuclear holocaust ravaged the United States, it was instant death for tens of millions of people; for survivors, it was a nightmare of hunger, sickness, and brutality. Overnight, a thousand years of civilization were stripped away.

But for one small Florida town, miraculously spared against all the odds, the struggle was only just beginning, as the isolated survivors—men and women of all ages and races—found the courage to come together and confront the harrowing darkness.

This classic apocalyptic novel by Pat Frank, first published in 1959 at the height of the Cold War, includes an introduction by award-winning science fiction writer and scientist David Brin.

Buy Alas, Babylon: A Novel (Harper Perennial Olive Edition) by Pat Frank Here

Dune by Frank Herbert

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SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE directed by Denis Villeneuve, starring Timothée Chalamet, Josh Brolin, Jason Momoa, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Javier Bardem, Dave Bautista, Stellan Skarsgård, and Charlotte Rampling.

Frank Herbert’s classic masterpiece—a triumph of the imagination and one of the bestselling science fiction novels of all time.

Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, heir to a noble family tasked with ruling an inhospitable world where the only thing of value is the “spice” melange, a cipla drug capable of extending life and enhancing consciousness. Coveted across the known universe, melange is a prize worth killing for….

When House Atreides is betrayed, the destruction of Paul’s family will set the boy on a journey toward a destiny greater than he could ever have imagined. And as he evolves into the mysterious man known as Muad’Dib, he will bring to fruition humankind’s most ancient and unattainable dream.

A stunning blend of adventure and mysticism, environmentalism and politics, Dune won the first Nebula Award, shared the Hugo Award, and formed the basis of what is undoubtedly the grandest epic in science fiction.

Buy Dune by Frank Herbert Here

Featured Book: Home: Interstellar (Hope’s War) by Ray Strong

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intersteller book cover
About Featured Book: Home: Interstellar (Hope’s War) by Ray Strong

* Free on Amazon June 23-24/2001 *

To protect the ones she loves, Meriel Hope will have to face the inner demons she’s been running from, and the monsters who created them.

For Meriel, evil sounds like her mother’s scream. It smells like burning flesh and tastes of iron. It’s a slow, sticky wetness, oozing under the door. As much as she wishes it weren’t so, Meriel knows evil intimately.

In the pirate’s wake, she inherited a busted ship, a traumatized sister, and a bunch of orphaned kids. But deep within Meriel lurk memories that challenge the official account of what happened. Clues that hint at an insidious conspiracy too vast and horrible to believe.
[Read more…] about Featured Book: Home: Interstellar (Hope’s War) by Ray Strong

Dragonsbane (Winterlands Book 1) by Barbara Hambly

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An idealistic young prince convinces an aging warrior and a struggling witch to help him kill the dragon that is terrorizing his kingdom
As a vicious dragon stalks the Southlands, Crown Prince Gareth ventures to the forbidding North in search of the only man who can kill it. He is Lord Aversin, the Dragonsbane, whose dragon-slaying days have won him renown across the land. But when Gareth finds Lord Aversin, he discovers the mighty hero is squat and bespectacled, the ruler of a mud-village who admits that he killed the dragon not with a lance, but with ignoble poison. Still, he’ll have to do. Gareth and Aversin set off in company with Jenny Waynest, a witch with great ambitions but disappointingly puny powers—a ragtag crew destined to become legendary, or die in the attempt. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Barbara Hambly, including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.

Buy Dragonsbane (Winterlands Book 1) by Barbara Hambly Here

The Mysterious Stranger: A Tale of Young Satan by Mark Twain

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In 1590, three boys, Theodor, Seppi, and Nikolaus, live relatively happy simple lives in a remote Austrian village called Eseldorf. One day, a handsome teenage boy named Satan appears in the village. He explains that he is an angel and the nephew of the fallen angel whose name he shares. Young Satan performs several magical feats. He claims to be able to foresee the future and informs the group of unfortunate events that will soon befall those they care about. The boys do not believe Satan’s claims until one of his predictions comes true.

Buy The Mysterious Stranger: A Tale of Young Satan by Mark Twain Here

The Darwath Series: The Time of the Dark, The Walls of Air, and The Armies of Daylight by Barbara Hambly

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As a student of medieval history, Gil Patterson is a woman familiar with dark stories. She knows the Crusades, the Black Death, and the other horrors of the Middle Ages all too well, but it is another kind of atrocity that has begun to haunt her dreams. She sees forces of evil assaulting a beleaguered kingdom, whose kind people are on the brink of annihilation, and awakes each morning in a cold sweat. In The Time of the Dark, Gil dismisses the dreams until a wizard appears in her apartment. He has crossed into her dimension, passing through the fraying fabric of the universe, to ask her help. For mankind to survive he must protect an infant prince, whom he plans to hide in Gil’s world. She is about to get much closer to evil than she ever imagined. In The Walls of Air and The Armies of Daylight, Gil and Rudy know the world is no longer safe and there is nowhere to hide from the Dark. Since the Dark Ones returned, the world has been laid to waste. The land’s wizards have been slaughtered, its cities destroyed, and its people scattered in terror. Few have witnessed more of the destruction than Gil and Rudy, and both of them will need all their strength to survive this final challenge. Ingold, the master wizard, has devised a spell to hide the user from the deathly stare of the Dark, and he intends to use it to strike at their very heart. Finally, Gil, Rudy, and the rest of mankind’s survivors will take the offensive, bringing an end to this terrible war, for better or for worse.

Buy The Darwath Series: The Time of the Dark, The Walls of Air, and The Armies of Daylight by Barbara Hambly Here

The Sun Wolf and Starhawk Series Books 1–3: The Ladies of Mandrigyn, Witches of Wenshar, and The Dark Hand of Magic by Barbara Hambly

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Three fantasy novels of war and wizardry by a “fabulously talented” New York Times–bestselling author (Charlaine Harris).
In The Ladies of Mandrigyn, a brilliant mercenary must lead his army against the forces of the most powerful wizard alive. Gifted with courage, strength, and the intelligence to know when to fight, Sun Wolf is the greatest mercenary in a land overrun by war. With his first lieutenant, Starhawk, at his side, he has laid waste to countless cities, taking the best of their treasures for himself, and distributing the rest among his bloodthirsty crew.
Then a woman comes to him, an emissary from the town of Mandrigyn, a lush port city recently sacked by a powerful, mad wizard of unmatched abilities. She offers Sun Wolf untold riches for the use of his army, but the captain is not fool enough to wage war against a magician. He refuses her offer, but that is not the end of it. The women of Mandrigyn can be very persuasive.
In The Witches of Wenshar, to harness his newfound magical powers, Sun Wolf must cross the desert in search of a witch who can teach him the ways of sorcery. Accompanied by his lieutenant, Starhawk, he travels across the forbidding desert to the land of Wenshar, where witchcraft is said to flourish. There he seeks out a witch with powers far beyond her years, who is rumored to have mastered the ancient art of white magic. But when he and Starhawk finally reach her, there is evil in the air—an evil against which all their might is useless. Sun Wolf must learn to harness his newfound powers—or be taken by this sinister trap.
In The Dark Hand of Magic, Sun Wolf must use his immature magical powers to rescue his old army from an evil wizard’s curse. A string of rotten luck has befallen his old crew’s latest campaign, and they have begun to suspect a curse. Their arrows break; their food rots; their tunnels cave in. They have heard rumors of Sun Wolf’s magical abilities, and beg for his help. But when he goes after whatever is targeting his men, he finds himself up against the deadliest force he has ever encountered.

Buy The Sun Wolf and Starhawk Series Books 1–3: The Ladies of Mandrigyn, Witches of Wenshar, and The Dark Hand of Magic by Barbara Hambly Here

Chronicles of Narnia (7 book series) by C.S. Lewis

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From Book 1:
Don’t miss one of America’s top 100 most-loved novels, selected by PBS’s The Great American Read.

Narnia . . . a land frozen in eternal winter . . . a country waiting to be set free

Witness the creation of a magical land in The Magician’s Nephew, the first title in C. S. Lewis’s classic fantasy series, which has captivated readers of all ages for over sixty years

On a daring quest to save a life, two friends are hurled into another world, where an evil sorceress seeks to enslave them. But then the lion Aslan’s song weaves itself into the fabric of a new land, a land that will be known as Narnia. And in Narnia, all things are possible.

This ebook contains the complete text and art. Illustrations in this ebook appear in vibrant full color on a full-color ebook device and in rich black-and-white on all other devices.

This is a stand-alone novel, but if you want to journey back to Narnia, read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the second book in The Chronicles of Narnia.

Buy Chronicles of Narnia (7 book series) by C.S. Lewis Here

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

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Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a gothic novella by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, first published in 1886. The work is also known as The Strange Case of Jekyll Hyde, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, or simply Jekyll & Hyde. It is about a London legal practitioner named Gabriel John Utterson who investigates strange occurrences between his old friend, Dr Henry Jekyll, and the evil Edward Hyde. The novella’s impact is such that it has become a part of the language, with the phrase “Jekyll and Hyde” entering the vernacular to refer to people with an unpredictably dual nature: usually very good, but sometimes shockingly evil.

A True Classic that Belongs on Every Bookshelf!

Buy The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson Here

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Annotated) by Jules Verne

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Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (French: Vingt mille lieues sous les mers) is a classic science fiction novel by French writer Jules Verne published in 1870. It tells the story of Captain Nemo and his submarine Nautilus as seen from the perspective of Professor Pierre Aronnax. The original edition had no illustrations; the first illustrated edition was published by Hetzel with illustrations by Alphonse de Neuville and Édouard Riou.

Includes a biography of the Author

Buy 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Annotated) by Jules Verne Here