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Colfer, Eoin Eternity Code (Artemis Fowl Ser., Bk. 3)
New York, NY, U.S.A. Hyperion Books for Children 2003 0786819146 / 9780786819140 1st Edition. 1st Impression. Hard Cover New New Signed by Author
New in new DJ covered with Brodart. Flat-signed by author on full title page. From The Critics Publisher's Weekly Even better than The Arctic Incident, this third fantasy thriller starring Artemis Fowl pits the 13-year-old criminal mastermind against his most cunning adversary yet-American billionaire Jon Spiro, owner of the high-tech firm Fission Chips. Artemis Fowl's father, while recuperating from the brush with death he suffered in the last installment, makes a stunning announcement: he wants the family to turn over a new leaf and hew to the straight and narrow. Fortunately for readers, Artemis has other plans. "One last adventure, then the Fowls could be a proper family," he decides. After all, what could go wrong? Everything, as it turns out. Artemis's scheme to extract one metric ton of gold from Spiro, in exchange for keeping the C Cube-a beyond-state-of-the-art computer he's built using pirated fairy technology-off the market, backfires spectacularly. In order to save Butler, his bodyguard, and set things back to rights in the fairy world, Artemis joins forces with Butler's sister Juliet and drafts the help of the usual suspects (elf captain Holly Short, computer-geek centaur Foaly, flatulent dwarf Mulch Diggums). Once again, Colfer serves up a high-intensity plot involving cryogenics and a mobster mentality as the action hurtles toward the climactic break-in at Chicago's Spiro Needle. Agile prose (Jon Spiro is "thin as a javelin" ), rapid-fire dialogue and wise-acre humor ("Goblins. Evolution's little joke. Pick the dumbest creatures on the planet and give them the ability to conjure fire") ensure that readers will burn the midnight oil to the finish. (The ending leaves the door wide open for yet another sequel.) Ages 12-up. (May) FYI: A one-day laydown on May 6 and a 10-city author tour are planned. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information. Sample picture available at abnormalbooks dot com.
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Emshwiller, Carol Mount: A Novel
Northampton, Massachusetts, U.S.A. Small Beer Pr 2002 1-931520-03-8 / 9781931520034 1st Edition. 1st Impression. Trade Paperback New
As new. Purchased direct from publisher. Unread. Trade Paper. SYNOPSIS Charley is eleven. He¹s an athlete and very proud of his body. He¹s got style‹he knows everybody¹s eyes follow him wherever he goes. But he wants more. He wants to be the fastest runner in the world, like his father before him. He wants to be loved, adored, worshipped. He wants to be painted crossing the finishing line far ahead of anyone else, or maybe to be painted in his racing silks, with a medal around his neck‹on top of the world! But Charley isn¹t a runner, he¹s a mount. Charley lives in a stable. He belongs to the Hoots. The Hoots are alien invaders who now own the world‹but the humans want it back. Charley hasn¹t seen his mother for years, and his father is hiding out on a mountain somewhere, with the other Free Humans, planning a rebellion. Charley knows how to be a good mount, but now he¹s going to have to learn how to be a human being. The Mount is a literary fable for the ages. It¹s a major science fiction novel, and the strangest coming-of-age story you¹ll ever read. It¹s about freedom, loyalty, humanity, and growing up in a world that doesn¹t belong to you. In a novel that will appeal to both adult and young adult readers, Carol Emshwiller explores the relationships between children and parents, refugees and invaders, and the ruled and the rulers. Nothing, not even Charley, is simple and clear cut in The Mount. Neither side is completely right or wrong, and it will fall to Charley -- and his Hoot rider, Little Master -- to somehow begin fashioning a future where the Hoots and the humans can live together in peace. About the Author Carol Emshwiller is the author of four short story collections, The Start of the End of it All (Winner of the 1991 World Fantasy Award), Verging on the Pertinent, Joy in Our Cause, and Report to the Men's Club, and four novels, Carmen Dog, Ledoyt, Leaping Man Hill, and The Mount. She lives in New York and teaches writing at the New York University continuing education program. In summer she lives in a shack in Bishop, CA. FROM THE CRITICS Publishers Weekly Like Emshwiller's startlingly perceptive short fiction and her previous novel, Carmen Dog (1990), where women begin to degenerate into animals and animals start evolving upward into womanhood, this novel turns our supposed certainties into beautiful and terrible insights. Writing in skeletal prose from the adolescent point of view of Charley, a boy who dreams of becoming a famous racer (ridden by his alien Little Master, the reptilian? avian? marsupial? Future-Ruler-of-Us-All), Emshwiller picks up human history several generations after a successful Hoot invasion has turned most of humanity into "mounts," bred for speed and beauty and trained with whips and savage bits to do their masters' will. In the mountains, though, a few wild humans lurk, led by Charley's father, plotting to rise up against the Hoots and take back the world they lost. Glimpses of arresting sorrow meld here with teenage dreams and hopes and anguish, shaped subtly with a poet's sure touch into finely crafted characterizations of human-as-not-quite-animal, Hoot-as-not-quite-monster, coming together through heartbreak and abandonment of previously hard-held prejudices. Brilliantly conceived and painfully acute in its delineation of the complex relationships between masters and slaves, pets and owners, the served and the serving, this poetic, funny and above all humane novel deserves to be read and cherished as a fundamental fable for our material-minded times. Agent, Wendy Weil. (Aug. 1) Forecast: Blurbs from Glen David Gold, Kim Stanley Robinson, Maureen McHugh and Connie Willis, among other big names, will ensure lots of attention for this small press item, which should go quickly into reprint. It's a natural for classroom adoption at the high school or college level. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information. School Library Journal Adult/High School-This veteran science-fiction writer is known for original plots and characters, and her latest novel does not disappoint, offering an extraordinary, utterly alien, and thoroughly convincing culture set in the not-too-distant future. Emshwiller brings readers immediately into the action, gradually revealing the takeover of Earth by the Hoots, otherworldly beings with superior intelligence and technology. Humans have become the Hoots' "mounts," and, in the case of the superior Seattle bloodline, valuable racing stock. Most mounts are well off, as the Hoots constantly remind them, and treated kindly by affectionate owners who use punishment poles as rarely as possible. No one agrees more than principal narrator Charley, a privileged young Seattle whose rider-in-training will someday rule the world. The adolescent mount's dream is of bringing honor to his beloved Little Master by becoming a great champion like Beauty, his sire, whose portrait decorates many Hoot walls. When Charley learns that his father now leads the renegade bands called Wilds, he and Little Master flee. This complex and compelling blend of tantalizing themes offers numerous possibilities for speculation and discussion, whether among friends or in the classroom.-Starr E. Smith, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information. WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING Willis I've loved everything Carol Emshwiller has ever written, but in her new novel, The Mount, she outdoes herself. This story of mounts and riders has so much to say about slaves and masters, humans and animals, parents and children, cruelty and kindness‹and about tunnel vision and tricks and tears and society and history and the world‹that it¹s impossible to believe she¹s gotten it into one small, simple, unforgettable book. A true original by a true original! - author of Passage We are all Mounts and so should read this book like an instruction manual that could help save our lives. That it is also a beautiful funny novel is the usual bonus you get by reading Carol Emshwiller. She always writes them that way. - Kim Stanley Robinson, author of The Years of Rice and Salt Luis Alberto Urrea Carol Emshwiller's The Mount is a wicked book. Like Harlan Ellison's darkest visions, Emshwiller writes in a voice that reminds us of the golden season when speculative fiction was daring and unsettling. Our world suddenly seems wrought with terrible ironies and a severe kind of beauty. When we are the mounts, who -- or what -- is riding us? - author of Six Kinds of Sky Maureen McHugh This novel is like a tesseract, I started it and thought, ah, I see what she's doing. But then the dimensions unfolded and somehow it ended up being about so much more. - author of Nekropolis Glen David Gold I've been a fan of Carol Emshwiller's since the wonderful Carmen Dog. The Mount is a terrific novel, at once an adventure story and a meditation on the psychology of freedom and slavery. It's literally haunting (days after finishing it, I still think about all the terrible poetry of the Hoot/Sam relationship) and hypnotic. I'm honored to have gotten an early look at it. - author of Carter Beats the Devil
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Emshwiller, Carol Mount: A Novel
Northampton, Massachusetts, U.S.A. Small Beer Pr 2002 1-931520-03-8 / 9781931520034 1st Edition. 1st Impression. Trade Paperback As New
As new. Purchased direct from publisher. Unread. Trade Paper. SYNOPSIS Charley is eleven. He¹s an athlete and very proud of his body. He¹s got style‹he knows everybody¹s eyes follow him wherever he goes. But he wants more. He wants to be the fastest runner in the world, like his father before him. He wants to be loved, adored, worshipped. He wants to be painted crossing the finishing line far ahead of anyone else, or maybe to be painted in his racing silks, with a medal around his neck‹on top of the world! But Charley isn¹t a runner, he¹s a mount. Charley lives in a stable. He belongs to the Hoots. The Hoots are alien invaders who now own the world‹but the humans want it back. Charley hasn¹t seen his mother for years, and his father is hiding out on a mountain somewhere, with the other Free Humans, planning a rebellion. Charley knows how to be a good mount, but now he¹s going to have to learn how to be a human being. The Mount is a literary fable for the ages. It¹s a major science fiction novel, and the strangest coming-of-age story you¹ll ever read. It¹s about freedom, loyalty, humanity, and growing up in a world that doesn¹t belong to you. In a novel that will appeal to both adult and young adult readers, Carol Emshwiller explores the relationships between children and parents, refugees and invaders, and the ruled and the rulers. Nothing, not even Charley, is simple and clear cut in The Mount. Neither side is completely right or wrong, and it will fall to Charley -- and his Hoot rider, Little Master -- to somehow begin fashioning a future where the Hoots and the humans can live together in peace. About the Author Carol Emshwiller is the author of four short story collections, The Start of the End of it All (Winner of the 1991 World Fantasy Award), Verging on the Pertinent, Joy in Our Cause, and Report to the Men's Club, and four novels, Carmen Dog, Ledoyt, Leaping Man Hill, and The Mount. She lives in New York and teaches writing at the New York University continuing education program. In summer she lives in a shack in Bishop, CA. FROM THE CRITICS Publishers Weekly Like Emshwiller's startlingly perceptive short fiction and her previous novel, Carmen Dog (1990), where women begin to degenerate into animals and animals start evolving upward into womanhood, this novel turns our supposed certainties into beautiful and terrible insights. Writing in skeletal prose from the adolescent point of view of Charley, a boy who dreams of becoming a famous racer (ridden by his alien Little Master, the reptilian? avian? marsupial? Future-Ruler-of-Us-All), Emshwiller picks up human history several generations after a successful Hoot invasion has turned most of humanity into "mounts," bred for speed and beauty and trained with whips and savage bits to do their masters' will. In the mountains, though, a few wild humans lurk, led by Charley's father, plotting to rise up against the Hoots and take back the world they lost. Glimpses of arresting sorrow meld here with teenage dreams and hopes and anguish, shaped subtly with a poet's sure touch into finely crafted characterizations of human-as-not-quite-animal, Hoot-as-not-quite-monster, coming together through heartbreak and abandonment of previously hard-held prejudices. Brilliantly conceived and painfully acute in its delineation of the complex relationships between masters and slaves, pets and owners, the served and the serving, this poetic, funny and above all humane novel deserves to be read and cherished as a fundamental fable for our material-minded times. Agent, Wendy Weil. (Aug. 1) Forecast: Blurbs from Glen David Gold, Kim Stanley Robinson, Maureen McHugh and Connie Willis, among other big names, will ensure lots of attention for this small press item, which should go quickly into reprint. It's a natural for classroom adoption at the high school or college level. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information. School Library Journal Adult/High School-This veteran science-fiction writer is known for original plots and characters, and her latest novel does not disappoint, offering an extraordinary, utterly alien, and thoroughly convincing culture set in the not-too-distant future. Emshwiller brings readers immediately into the action, gradually revealing the takeover of Earth by the Hoots, otherworldly beings with superior intelligence and technology. Humans have become the Hoots' "mounts," and, in the case of the superior Seattle bloodline, valuable racing stock. Most mounts are well off, as the Hoots constantly remind them, and treated kindly by affectionate owners who use punishment poles as rarely as possible. No one agrees more than principal narrator Charley, a privileged young Seattle whose rider-in-training will someday rule the world. The adolescent mount's dream is of bringing honor to his beloved Little Master by becoming a great champion like Beauty, his sire, whose portrait decorates many Hoot walls. When Charley learns that his father now leads the renegade bands called Wilds, he and Little Master flee. This complex and compelling blend of tantalizing themes offers numerous possibilities for speculation and discussion, whether among friends or in the classroom.-Starr E. Smith, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information. WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING Willis I've loved everything Carol Emshwiller has ever written, but in her new novel, The Mount, she outdoes herself. This story of mounts and riders has so much to say about slaves and masters, humans and animals, parents and children, cruelty and kindness‹and about tunnel vision and tricks and tears and society and history and the world‹that it¹s impossible to believe she¹s gotten it into one small, simple, unforgettable book. A true original by a true original! - author of Passage We are all Mounts and so should read this book like an instruction manual that could help save our lives. That it is also a beautiful funny novel is the usual bonus you get by reading Carol Emshwiller. She always writes them that way. - Kim Stanley Robinson, author of The Years of Rice and Salt Luis Alberto Urrea Carol Emshwiller's The Mount is a wicked book. Like Harlan Ellison's darkest visions, Emshwiller writes in a voice that reminds us of the golden season when speculative fiction was daring and unsettling. Our world suddenly seems wrought with terrible ironies and a severe kind of beauty. When we are the mounts, who -- or what -- is riding us? - author of Six Kinds of Sky Maureen McHugh This novel is like a tesseract, I started it and thought, ah, I see what she's doing. But then the dimensions unfolded and somehow it ended up being about so much more. - author of Nekropolis Glen David Gold I've been a fan of Carol Emshwiller's since the wonderful Carmen Dog. The Mount is a terrific novel, at once an adventure story and a meditation on the psychology of freedom and slavery. It's literally haunting (days after finishing it, I still think about all the terrible poetry of the Hoot/Sam relationship) and hypnotic. I'm honored to have gotten an early look at it. - author of Carter Beats the Devil
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Fforde, Jasper Well of Lost Plots : A Thursday Next Novel
New York, NY, U.S.A. Viking Penguin 2004 0-670-03289-1 / 9780670032891 1st Edition. 1st Impression. Hard Cover Fine Fine Signed by Author
Fine in fine DJ protected by Brodart mylar dj cover. Signed simply 'Jasper' on full title page. Purchased as signed directly from the publishers. From the Publisher Jasper Fforde has done it again in this absolutely brilliant feat of literary showmanship. Join Thursday Next as she encounters some of the greatest characters in literature and battles deadly villians who literally leap off the page. When it comes to sheer wit, literate fantasy, and effervescent originality, nobody can touch this new Ffordian tour de force. -Lost in a Good Book appeared on The New York Times extended bestseller list and was a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller -The Eyre Affair was a New York Times bestseller and a Book Sense 76 Pick -Penguin will publish Lost in a Good Book simultaneously -The fourth book in the series is forthcoming from Viking From The Critics Publisher's Weekly In this delicious sequel to The Eyre Affair and Lost in a Good Book, Fforde's redoubtable (and now throwing-up-pregnant) heroine Thursday Next once again does battle with philistine bibliophobes, taking a furlough from her duties as a SpecOps Literary Detective to vacation in the Well of Lost Plots, the 26 noisome sub-basements of the Great Library. Pursued by her memory-modifying nemesis Aornis Hades, Thursday joins Jurisfiction's Character Exchange Program, filling in for "Mary," sidekick to the world-weary detective hero of Caversham Heights, a hilariously awful police procedural. At the imminent launch of UltraWord, the vaunted "Last Word" in Story Operating Systems, Thursday's friend and mentor Miss Havisham is gruesomely killed, and Thursday gamely sets out to restore order to her underground world, where technophiles ruthlessly recycle unpublished books and sell plot devices and stock characters on the black market. Meanwhile, Aornis is doing her fiendish worst to make Thursday forget Landen, her missing husband and father of her child. If this all sounds a bit confusing, it is-until the reader gets the hang of Fforde's intricate mix of parody, social satire and sheer gut-busting fantasy. Marvelous creations like syntax-slaughtering grammasites and the murderous Minotaur roam this unusual novel's pages, and Fforde's fictional epigraphs, like his minihistory of "book operating systems," are worth the cover price in themselves. Fforde's sidesplitting sendup of an increasingly antibookish society is a sheer joy. (Feb.) Forecast: Despite the rarefied nature of his spoofing, Fforde has attracted a substantial and loyal readership. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information. Library Journal Thursday Next (The Eyre Affair; Lost in a Good Book) needs a vacation. After saving Jane Eyre, stopping two criminal masterminds, and being hounded by the Goliath Corporation, she just wants to lie low until she can rescue her missing husband. Taking refuge in an unpublished police procedural, she continues working for Jurisfiction, investigating a murder that involves the highest levels of literary police. While Thursday learns the ropes of BookWorld, including managing nursery-rhyme characters on strike and conducting anger-management sessions for the protagonists of Wuthering Heights, she tries to keep her memories of Landen alive and her pulp novel from being stripped and thrown into the Text Sea. Fforde has settled comfortably into series mode, producing another fun romp in an alternate universe where books are more real than reality; there's a pun on every other page and a galaxy of literary and pop references to keep the reader's head spinning. Escaped minotaurs, spelling viruses, problems with software upgrades, and Spam for footnotes all contribute to the fun. This U.S. version includes a bonus chapter detailing yet another of Thursday's adventures. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 10/15/03.]-Devon Thomas, Hass MS&L, Ann Arbor, MI Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information. Kirkus Reviews Third course in a feast of hyperliterary alternate-reality thrillers (The Eyre Affair, 2002, etc.) may prove too rich for some stomachs. Fforde's story takes place in several parallel universes that manage, against all laws of logic and geometry, to intersect at many, many points. Our heroine, literary detective Thursday Next, is the nexus of this strangely wired cosmos. Thursday has just returned from the pages of Jane Eyre, in which she foiled archvillain Acheron Hades' attempt to steal the ending. Now pregnant (by a dead veteran of the Crimean War) and badly in need of rest, she requests an assignment in the Character Exchange Program and is sent to fill in for Mary Jones, detective in a dreadful unpublished thriller. Like all unpublished books, Caversham Heights exists in a kind of limbo in the Well of Lost Plots, a warren of sub-basements in the Great Library where all books are born, but few see the light of day. Thursday works her way through Mary's role in the hopeless plot, glad of a safe job for change, but she soon finds plenty of extratextual distractions that hint at trouble ahead. Within the ranks of Jurisfiction (a kind of FBI of the text world), a string of murders begins to claim the lives of various authorities connected with a new process of plot development. Thursday learns that her late husband is not dead at all but was in fact "eradicated" at the behest of rogue elements within Jurisfiction. Between teaching her "generic" houseboys Ibb and Obb how to cook, fending off hostile grammasites (literary parasites that infest a plot with gerunds), and facing Jurisfiction charges that she changed the ending of Jane Eyre, Thursday still has to find the time to solve thevarious crimes now springing up within and without the text. For instance, who stole the commas from Joyce's Ulysses? Like anchovies, Wagner, and Helmut Newton: will greatly appeal to people with unusual tastes-and befuddle everyone else. Agents: Eric Simonoff & Tif Loehnis/Janklow & Nesbit.
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Froud, Wendy and Windling, Terry Winter Child, The
New York, NY, U.S.A. Simon a& Schuster 2001 0-7432-0234-1 / 9780743202343 1st Edition. 1st Impression. Hard Cover As New As New 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall Froud, Wendy (illustrator); Froud, Brian (illustrator)
As new in as new dj covered with Brodart except for bumping on lower outside corners. Using Wendy's fanciful dolls, another fairy tale is told. By authors of 'A Midsummer Night's Faery Tale'. 59pp. Strunning full color illustrations throughout the text. Tight, clean, unread copy with minimal DJ wear prior to covering. No bumps, marks, or blems.
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19.90 USD
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Hearn, Lian Across the Nightingale Floor
New York, NY, U.S.A. Riverhead Books/G.P.Putnam & Sons 2002 1-57322-225-9 / 9781573222259 1st Edition. 1st Impression. Hard Cover New New
This is a thoroughly entertaining and beautifully written novel. It was first brought to my attention by a review in Book magazine. Classified as either young adult or fantasy (depending on the reviews), I thought it was neither. I am far from my 'young adult' years and there are no trolls, dragons, wizards or witches; no hobbits nor elves; not even, as the September 2002 issue of Locus magazine review of the book may suggest, magic. It is an adventure; a coming of age story taking place in the likes of feudal Japan. As is the author's name, Across the Nightingale Floor is simply fiction. Perhaps borderline Speculative Fiction, and perhaps not so simple. The only magiks are those of the Tribe, a secret sect who now hire themselves out assassins to the highest bidder. This is a wonderful read. Hearn's prose is compact yet extremely visual. You can set the book aside, reluctantly, for a few days, return to it and the entire story leaps back to mind and imagination. There is hardly a single paragraph that does not elicit a dramatic image. I marveled at Hearn's ability as a writer to conjure such images so vividly. I will not reveal any of the storyline, but suffice it to say Across the Nightingale Floor was very satisfying. The conclusion was complete, though surprising, and enough 'loose ends' remain to make me wait for the next installment as soon as it comes out. R.D.Kedd. A.B.Normal Books. From The Critics Publishing News It has a magical quality and the power of the story is truly awesome. Publisher's Weekly Mystical powers and martial arts rampage through this pseudo-Japanese story, the first of a projected trilogy by newcomer Hearn, with an abandon that's head spinning. From the entrance of the 16-year-old hero, Takeo, as he is about to be swatted down by a mounted horseman and the way he can become invisible or make a duplicate of himself when he needs to, to the head-rolling decapitations that follow interminably, the impossible becomes the semiplausible. Takeo, who joins the Otori clan, is a religious outcast, and also, surprisingly, a member of "the Tribe," a secretive race that has unusual mental and physical powers that lend them an unworldly air. Takeo learns how to control his burgeoning talents just in time to avenge the death of his mentor, while politics and clan rivalries lead to an increasing amount of graphic bloodshed. Takeo enjoys a few blissful moments with the fetching Lady Kaede Shirakawa but, unfortunately, she is not destined to be his, now or in the future. For fans of Japanese samurai warrior fantasy, this novel is right in the ballpark, filled with swords, clan in-fighting, love affairs, invisibility and magical Ninja powers. However, for those looking for something with a bit of depth, the author tends to gloss over the details of why and how. Takeo learns the craft of the Tribe offstage and all the political maneuvering that goes into the clan warfare is rather murky. Hopefully, the next book will show what Hearn is really capable of. (Sept. 2) Forecast: With movie rights sold to Universal Studios and foreign rights sold in 11 countries, this one seems a sure bet for genre bestseller lists. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information. Library Journal Born as one of the Hidden, a pacifistic group opposed to any sort of violence, Takeo meets brutality head-on when a local warlord destroys his villages and murders his family. Rescued by a rival warlord, Takeo becomes the adopted son of Lord Shigeru and learns of his true heritage as one of the Tribe, a clan of assassins with supernatural powers. When his adopted father becomes the victim of treachery, Takeo faces a choice between loyalty to his past and to his new and perilous future. This first novel, a series opener, brings a fantasy Japan to vivid life with a minimum of frills. A good addition to most fantasy collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/1/02.] Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information. School Library Journal Adult/High School-Fleeing the slaughter of his village and pursued by Lord Iidu's warriors, Tomasu, 16, expects to die. Raised among the Hidden, he is forbidden to kill and is expected to forgive his enemies, tenets he sets aside in favor of revenge. When Otori Shigeru steps into his path, Tomasu thinks the worst; instead Shigeru kills one pursuer and seriously wounds another. Given the name Takeo by Shigeru, the grieving teen gives up speaking for a time and finds that his hearing becomes preternaturally sharp. Other strange abilities manifest themselves as well, marking him as a member of the Tribe, five families resembling ninjas. Shigeru also desires revenge upon Iidu for the loss of much of the Otori ancestral lands and the death of his younger brother. Takeo allies himself with Shigeru and accepts formal adoption. Meanwhile, Lady Shirakawa Kaede, tarnished with a reputation for bringing death to men, is contracted to marry Shigeru. These story lines converge just as Takeo's life begins to fly apart. His situation is complicated, and his unique talents and background mark him as a hero of epic proportions. Although much about this tale seems to place it in feudal Japan, Hearn states that this is an imaginary country. In this riveting first entry in a trilogy, all major characters are introduced and the various conflicts defined, but readers will have to wait for future volumes to reach the final resolution. This book should be popular with many readers, not just those who admire well-written and intriguing fantasy.-Jody Sharp, Harford County Public Library, MD Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information. Kirkus Reviews Mythical medieval Japan never seemed so attractive as in this breezy epic, the first in a trilogy, about a boy with strange powers who gets caught up in a long-simmering inter-clan conflict. The village is doomed, but British-born newcomer Hearn still makes you care about it and its inhabitants. In a preface, he admits using "echoes of Japanese customs and traditions" as he sets his action in a resolutely imaginary country where warring clans battle for supremacy. The village in question is in Dairyo country, ruled by Iida Sadamu, a devil in warrior's garb, and many of the villagers belong to a secretive, Christian-like cult called The Hidden, which has aroused Iida's wrath with its subversive talk of kindness. When Iida shows up to destroy the village, 16-year-old Takeo is wandering in the hills, though even then he would have been killed by Iida's soldiers if it hadn't been for the fortunate appearance of Shigeru, a lord of the Dairyo's rival clan, the Otori, who was doing some wandering of his own and demonstrated his handy way with a sword. Shigeru spirits the traumatized boy back to Otori lands and adopts him after noting a strong resemblance between Takeo and his own late brother. It's also revealed that Takeo is a member of an ancient clan of pseudo-magical beings with sorcerous ninja-like powers-useful during an assassination attempt on Shigeru. A secondary storyline follows 15-year-old Kaeda, who, since childhood, has been held hostage by an overlord who wants to keep her father, a less powerful lord, in check. Once a marriage is arranged for her to help cement a political alliance, her path and Takeo's wind closer and closer together in a complex plot that Hearn carries usthrough with the greatest of ease. What could have been a Shogun-like exercise in bloat becomes a rousingly muscular piece of romantic adventure, replete with shadowy assassins, fluttering battle flags, and doomed love. Film rights to Universal
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Helprin, Mark City In Winter, A
Viking Ariel 1996 0-670-86843-4 / 9780670868438 1st Edition. 1st Impression. Hard Cover Fine Fine Van Allsburg, Chris
Minimal shelf wear prior to covering with Brodart. No marks, bumps or blems. Cloth boards a little loose. Beautifully illustrated by Chris Van Allsburg. 4to. Dust jacket covered with Brodart 'just-a-fold' dj cover.
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16.00 USD
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Helprin, Mark City In Winter, A
Viking Ariel 1996 0-670-86843-4 / 9780670868438 1st Edition. 1st Impression. Hard Cover Very Fine Very Fine Van Allsburg, Chris
Cloth boards a little loose. Minimal shelf wear prior to covering with Brodart. No marks, bumps or blems. Beautifully illustrated by Chris Van Allsburg. 4to. Dust jacket covered with Brodart 'just-a-fold' dj cover.
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17.00 USD
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Pearson, Ridley Peter And The Starcatchers
Scranton, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. Disney Editions 2004 0786854456 / 9780786854455 1st Edition, 1st Impression Hard Cover New New Signed by Author
As new in as new DJ covered with protective clear 'brodart' DJ cover. Unread, tight, clean copy. Signed by BOTH authors on FULL TITLE page. Autographs guaranteed authentic. Purchased from a collector that I have bought from for some time now. Ask for pictures if interested.
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69.00 USD
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Van Allsburg, Chris Probuditi!
Houghton Mifflin 2006 0618755020 / 9780618755028 1st Edition. 1st Impression. Hard Cover New New Van Allsburg, Chris Signed by Author
As new in as new DJ cvered with Brodart. Signed by author on full title page. Unread, tight, clean copy. Signed by author on FULL TITLE page. Autograph guarateed authentic. Purchased from bookstore where author toured for signing. Includes this bookstore's flyer announcing the signing event. Ask for pictures if interested.
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76.70 USD
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Van Allsburg, Chris Probuditi!
Houghton Mifflin 2006 0618755020 / 9780618755028 1st Edition. 1st Impression. Hard Cover As New New Van Allsburg, Chris Signed by Author
As new in as new DJ cvered with Brodart. Signed by author on full title page. Unread, tight, clean copy. Signed by author on FULL TITLE page. Autograph guarateed authentic. Purchased from bookstore where author toured for signing. Includes this bookstore's flyer announcing the signing event. Ask for pictures if interested.
Price:
76.70 USD
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