Tales of the Marvellous and News of the Strange

Tales of the Marvellous and News of the Strange
Author: Anonymous
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 549
Release: 2014-11-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0141395052

On the shrouded corpse hung a tablet of green topaz with the inscription: 'I am Shaddad the Great. I conquered a thousand cities; a thousand white elephants were collected for me; I lived for a thousand years and my kingdom covered both east and west, but when death came to me nothing of all that I had gathered was of any avail. You who see me take heed: for Time is not to be trusted.' Dating from at least a millennium ago, these are the earliest known Arabic short stories, surviving in a single, ragged manuscript in a library in Istanbul. Some found their way into The Arabian Nights but most have never been read in English before. Tales of the Marvellous and News of the Strange has monsters, lost princes, jewels beyond price, a princess turned into a gazelle, sword-wielding statues and shocking reversals of fortune.

Stuff Matters

Stuff Matters
Author: Mark Miodownik
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2014
Genre: History
ISBN: 0544236041

An eye-opening adventure deep inside the everyday materials that surround us, from concrete and steel to denim and chocolate, packed with surprising stories and fascinating science.

The Marvellous Land of Snergs

The Marvellous Land of Snergs
Author: Edward Augustin Wyke Smith
Publisher:
Total Pages: 236
Release: 1927
Genre: Adventure stories
ISBN:

Human children Joe and Sylvia have magical adventures in the land of the snergs, a race of people only slightly taller than the average table.

The Starlit Wood

The Starlit Wood
Author: Dominik Parisien
Publisher: S&S/Saga Press
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2017-10-17
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 148145613X

This “first rate anthology of reimagined fairy tales” (Locus Magazine) features an all-star lineup of award-winning and critically acclaimed writers. Once upon a time. It’s how so many of our most beloved stories start. Fairy tales have dominated our cultural imagination for centuries. From the Brothers Grimm to the Countess d’Aulnoy, from Charles Perrault to Hans Christian Anderson, storytellers have crafted all sorts of tales that have always found a place in our hearts. Now a new generation of storytellers has taken up the mantle that the masters created and shaped their stories into something startling and electrifying. Packed with award-winning authors, this “fresh, diverse” (Library Journal) anthology explores an array of fairy tales in startling and innovative ways, in genres and settings both traditional and unusual, including science fiction, western, and post-apocalyptic as well as traditional fantasy and contemporary horror. From the woods to the stars, The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales takes readers on a journey at once unexpected and familiar, as a diverse group of writers explore some of our most beloved tales in new ways across genres and styles. Contains stories by: Charlie Jane Anders, Aliette de Bodard, Amal El-mohtar, Jeffrey Ford, Max Gladstone, Theodora Goss, Daryl Gregory, Kat Howard, Stephen Graham Jones, Margo Lanagan, Marjorie Liu, Seanan McGuire, Garth Nix, Naomi Novik, Sofia Samatar, Karin Tidbeck, Catherynne M. Valente, and Genevieve Valentine.

Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries

Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries
Author: Heather Fawcett
Publisher: Del Rey
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2023-01-10
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0593500148

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A curmudgeonly professor journeys to a small town in the far north in this “incredibly fun journey through fae lands and dark magic” (NPR), the start of a heartwarming and enchanting new fantasy series. “A darkly gorgeous fantasy that sparkles with snow and magic.”—Sangu Mandanna, author of The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, PopSugar Cambridge professor Emily Wilde is good at many things: She is the foremost expert on the study of faeries. She is a genius scholar and a meticulous researcher who is writing the world’s first encyclopaedia of faerie lore. But Emily Wilde is not good at people. She could never make small talk at a party—or even get invited to one. And she prefers the company of her books, her dog, Shadow, and the Fair Folk to other people. So when she arrives in the hardscrabble village of Hrafnsvik, Emily has no intention of befriending the gruff townsfolk. Nor does she care to spend time with another new arrival: her dashing and insufferably handsome academic rival Wendell Bambleby, who manages to charm the townsfolk, muddle Emily’s research, and utterly confound and frustrate her. But as Emily gets closer and closer to uncovering the secrets of the Hidden Ones—the most elusive of all faeries—lurking in the shadowy forest outside the town, she also finds herself on the trail of another mystery: Who is Wendell Bambleby, and what does he really want? To find the answer, she’ll have to unlock the greatest mystery of all—her own heart. Book One of the Emily Wilde Series

Penguins and Other Seabirds

Penguins and Other Seabirds
Author: Matt Sewell
Publisher: Ten Speed Press
Total Pages: 130
Release: 2016-09-06
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0399578676

Penguins are among the world’s most beloved birds. In this enchanting guide, Matt Sewell captures 50 species of penguins and other sea bird favorites like puffins and albatrosses. From the Little Penguin, who is only 13 inches tall, to the Fiordland Crested Penguin, who sports bushy yellow eyebrows, these charismatic birds are sure to delight both young and old.

Clever Polly And the Stupid Wolf

Clever Polly And the Stupid Wolf
Author: Catherine Storr
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2015-08-06
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0141360240

CLEVER POLLY AND THE STUPID WOLF by Catherine Storr has twelve stories written for the author's daughter, who was scared of the wolf under the bed! Drawing occasionally on well-known fairy tales, and skillfully blending fantasy and reality, these stories are bursting with humour, originality and charm. And Polly, not scared at all, outwits the wolf on each and every occasion! There is a sequel called POLLY AND THE WOLF AGAIN, also published in the A Puffin Book series of children's modern classics.

Rhialto the Marvellous

Rhialto the Marvellous
Author: Jack Vance
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 167
Release: 2011-12-19
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0575109815

Rhialto the Marvellous takes up the personal and political conflicts among a conclave of two dozen magicians of Ascolais and Almery in the 21st Aeon. The shocking appearance of the Llorio the Murtha, a powerful female force from an earlier aeon threatens to unbalance nature by "ensqualming" or feminizing the magicians. This triggers a tremendous struggle for power and the other mages turn against Rhialto. Hoping to reestablish his rightful place, Rhialto travels to other aeons to restore the missing Perciplex which projects the Mostrament, the constitution of the association. In his final adventure, Rhialto must, ultimately, travel to the very ends of time and space to confront an old adversary whom he had wronged and must commit further misdeeds to restore order.

Nuns and Soldiers

Nuns and Soldiers
Author: Iris Murdoch
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 520
Release: 2002-07-30
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780142180099

A dazzling meditation on love and honor, greed and generosity, passion and death, from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea, The Sea Set in London and in the South of France, this brilliantly structured novel centers on two women: Gertrude Openshaw, bereft from the recent death of her husband, yet awakening to passion; and Anne Cavidge, who has returned in doubt from many years in a nunnery, only to encounter her personal Christ. A fascinating array of men and women hover in urgent orbit around them: the "Count," a lonely Pole obsessively reliving his émigré father's patriotic anguish; Tim Reede, a seedy yet appealing artist, and Daisy, his mistress; the manipulative Mrs. Mount; and many other magically drawn characters moving between desire and obligation, guilt and joy. This edition of Nuns and Soldiers includes a new introduction by renowned religious historian Karen Armstrong.

Sleepy Stories

Sleepy Stories
Author: Mario Levrero
Publisher: Elsewhere Editions
Total Pages: 39
Release: 2021-07-06
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1939810841

A buoyant account of the nightly tug-of-war between a sleepy father and his son, and the richly imaginative "sleepy stories" they create Each story told in Sleepy Stories drifts deeper into a beguiling dream world, telling of an elastic gentleman who stretches his body across town to effortlessly slip into bed, or of another sleepy young man who curls inside an upside-down umbrella to take a snooze. In Diego Bianki's magical universe, the waking world is made small (a French press and a red top hat shrink before our eyes), while the dream world Levrero and his son Nicolás build together (a land of sly frogs, giant apes, and smiling squids) waltzes across the page. On the last of Bianki's whimsical illustrations, Nicolás holds the book over his father's nodding head and says, "Another." This is a book to giggle with and curl up with, to take on every sleepy adventure.