Classic Science

Young Otto is born into a warring household in a lawless age. Having no mother, he is sent by his father, a valiant robber baron, to be safely raised by the monks until the age of 12. But when he returns, gentle Otto can no longer escape the bitter blood feud between his father and the rival house of Trutz-Drachen. He is kidnapped by the rival family and his hand is cut off, to be replaced forever by a silver one. Can his brave father and his captor's kind daughter, Pauline, help him escape?

Oroonoko, the grandson of an African king, is madly in love with Imoinda, the daughter of the king's general. When the king - who is also in love with Imoinda - catches wind of their affair, he sells Imoinda as a slave. This betrayal sets off a chain of events that carries unforeseen consequences for everybody involved. Aphra Behn's Oroonoko has been hailed as one of the first great English novels and remains a classic of historical fiction.

It is the year 12,020 GE and Emperor Cleon I sits uneasily on the Imperial throne of Trantor. Here in the great multidomed capital of the Galactic Empire, 40 billion people have created a civilization of unimaginable technological and cultural complexity. Yet Cleon knows there are those who would see him fall - those whom he would destroy if only he could read the future.

When the supernatural nations of the world meet up to negotiate an end to ongoing hostilities, Harry Dresden, Chicago's only professional wizard, joins the White Council's security team to make sure the talks stay civil. But can he succeed, when dark political manipulations threaten the very existence of Chicago - and all he holds dear?

It was a world of airships and alchemy; clockwork carnivals; pirates; lost cities; a rigid Watchmaker who controlled every aspect of life; and his nemesis, the ruthless and violent Anarchist, who wanted to destroy it all. Anderson and Peart have returned to their colourful creation to explore the places and the characters that still have a hold on their imaginations.

The foundation for all modern economic thought and political economy, The Wealth of Nations is the magnum opus of Scottish economist Adam Smith, who introduces the world to the very idea of economics and capitalism in the modern sense of the words.

English magicians were once the wonder of the known world, with fairy servants at their beck and call; they could command winds, mountains, and woods. But by the early 1800s they have long since lost the ability to perform magic. They can only write long, dull papers about it, while fairy servants are nothing but a fading memory.

Area X has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. This is the 12th expedition, and their group is made up of four women. Part of their mission is to map the terrain and collect specimens, and, above all, to avoid being contaminated by Area X itself. They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers, but it's the surprises that came across the border with them, and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another, that change everything.

This is the way the world ends...for the last time. It starts with the great red rift across the heart of the world's sole continent, spewing ash that blots out the sun. It starts with death, with a murdered son and a missing daughter. It starts with betrayal, and long dormant wounds rising up to fester. This is the Stillness, a land long familiar with catastrophe, where the power of the Earth is wielded as a weapon. And where there is no mercy.

Tom and Huck have both ranged the length of the Mississippi, but, as Huck declares, "Do you reckon Tom Sawyer was satisfied after all them adventures?....No, he wasn't. It only just pisoned him for more." So the two boys head off to see the unveiling of a futuristic airship - only to be kidnapped by its mad inventor! But when the inventor goes overboard in a storm, it's up to Tom and Huck to take control of the airship as it heads out over the seething ocean toward the unknown.

Twelve short stories: "The Prussian Officer", "Goose Fair", "The Thorn in the Flesh", "The Shades of Spring", "Daughters of The Vicar", "A Fragment of Stained Glass", "Second Best", "The Shadow in the Rose Garden", "The White Stocking", "A Sick Collier", "The Christening", "Odour of Chrysanthemums".

The Light Princess is a short story that is warm and humorous, with a surprisingly poignant conclusion. A princess doomed by a witch to lose her "gravity" results in a silly heroine that has neither physical nor spiritual weight. George MacDonald's masterful teaching on the subject of sacrificial love is delivered eloquently in the events and characters of this engaging story.

Through the Looking Glass is a sequel of sorts to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Alice, now slightly older, walks through a mirror into the Looking-Glass House and immediately becomes involved in a strange game of chess. Soon, she is exploring the rest of the house and meets a sequence of characters now familiar to most: Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the Red Queen, Humpty Dumpty, and the Walrus, to name a few.

In the land of Ingary, where seven league boots and cloaks of invisibility do exist, Sophie Hatter catches the unwelcome attention of the Witch of the Waste and is put under a spell. Deciding she has nothing more to lose, she makes her way to the moving castle that hovers on the hills above Market Chipping. But the castle belongs to the dreaded Wizard Howl, whose appetite, they say, is satisfied only by the souls of young girls....

Kidnapped at an early age, Ansset has been raised in isolation at a mystical retreat called the Songhouse. His life is filled with music, and having only songs for companions, he develops a voice that is unlike any other. But Ansset's voice is both a blessing and a curse, for it reflects all the hopes and fears of his audience, and, by magnifying their emotions, can be used either to heal or to destroy.

Twenty years ago, a boy named Jack Sawyer traveled to a parallel universe called the Territories to save his mother and her “Twinner” from an agonizing death that would have brought cataclysm to the other world. Now Jack is a retired Los Angeles homicide detective living in the nearly nonexistent hamlet of Tamarack, Wisconsin. He has no recollection of his adventures in the Territories....

Harry Dresden, Chicago's only practicing professional wizard, should be happy that business is pretty good for a change. But he also knows that whenever things are going good, the only way left for them to go is bad. Way bad. Recent examples: A duel with the lethal champion of the Red Court, who must kill Harry to end the war between vampires and wizards...Hit men using Harry for target practice...The missing Shroud of Turin - and the possible involvement of Chicago's most feared mob boss.

Harry has faced terrible odds before. He has a long history of fighting enemies above his weight class. But this time it’s different. A being more powerful and dangerous on an order of magnitude beyond what the world has seen in a millennium is coming. And she’s bringing an army. The Last Titan has declared war on the city of Chicago and has come to subjugate humanity, obliterating any who stand in her way. Harry’s mission is simple but impossible: Save the city by killing a Titan.

Sancia Grado is a thief, and a damn good one. And her latest target, a heavily guarded warehouse on Tevanne’s docks, is nothing her unique abilities can’t handle. But unbeknownst to her, Sancia’s been sent to steal an artifact of unimaginable power, an object that could revolutionize the magical technology known as scriving. The Merchant Houses who control this magic - the art of using coded commands to imbue everyday objects with sentience - have already used it to transform Tevanne into a vast, remorseless capitalist machine.

When the beautiful and precocious sisters Sally and Gillian Owens are orphaned at a young age, they are taken to a small Massachusetts town to be raised by their eccentric aunts, who happen to dwell in the darkest, eeriest house in town. As they become more aware of their aunts' mysterious and sometimes frightening powers - and as their own powers begin to surface - the sisters grow determined to escape their strange upbringing by blending into "normal" society.