Epic Classics

Jack Kross only wanted to play the game. Now he’s fighting for his life. When a mysterious hacker takes control of Hundred Kingdoms, Jack is trapped inside the fantasy VR world along with millions of other players. But Jack is in a worse predicament. He’s cornered in the very tower the terrorists have taken as their base; the only free player left within its walls. Even worse, in the real world, his body lies in a sweltering room with no hope of relief.

When sleep was at its deepest, night at its blackest, up from the mist-filled marsh came Grendel stalking. Thus begins the battle between good and evil, for lying in wait and anxious to challenge the ogre Grendel is a young man, strong-willed and fire-hearted. This man is Beowulf, whose heroic dragon-slaying deeds were sung in the courts of Anglo-Saxon England more than a thousand years ago.

Davie is a normal girl trying to live a normal life. Except that she can see the future and has visions that make her seem crazy. When she meets a man who immediately seems too perfect to be real, her quest for a normal life quickly ends. She soon learns the world is full of mythical creatures including shape-shifting dragons, dwarves, and mystical oracles. Can Davie adapt to the new world that has dropped her into the middle of a mythical war that could tear the world apart?

Hall had thought he knew everything about the game, but he’s finding every day that things are different in this new, broken version of Sky Realms Online. There are new game elements, new enemies, and even new locations. After just barely surviving his first boss fight, Hall finds himself in one of those new locations. He's become the lord of a ruined and isolated village called Skara Brae, deep in the middle of hostile territory. Hall and his companions must make the long trek to the city of Silverpeak Keep for much-needed supplies, or they'll risk losing everything.

Pizza, coffee, and a library full of unplayed games. That's the plan, or at least it was supposed to be. Instead, an average gamer finds himself seemingly transported into the world of his favorite game. While some might appreciate that, it's quickly apparent that he isn't in some sort of virtual reality experiment, all of his downloaded mods are active, and the world is likely set to its highest difficulty with permadeath enabled.

When reading and writing are the most important things in the world. Jevick, the pepper merchant's son, has been raised on stories of Olondria, a distant land where books are as common as they are rare in his home - but which his mother calls the Ghost Country. When his father dies and Jevick takes his place on the yearly selling trip to Olondria, Jevick's life is as close to perfect as he can imagine. Just as he revels in Olondria's Rabelaisian Feast of Birds, he is pulled drastically off course and becomes haunted by the ghost of an illiterate young girl.

The Iliad and The Odyssey are epic poems traditionally attributed to Homer, of which the written versions are dated to the 8th century BCE. Chronicling events in the Greek Bronze Age, this magnificent pair of poems forms the cornerstone of Western literature. If The Iliad is a classic war story, The Odyssey is symbolic of the individual’s journey through life.

As an Ender, one of my father's Elite guards, it's my job to do as I'm told. When my older sister is sent as an ambassador to the realm of the water elementals - the Deep - I have no choice but to accompany her as her bodyguard. There are only a few things I know for sure. The ocean may be beautiful, but lurking in its depths are monsters to fear, the water I tread is teaming with danger and I am on my own. With no one to help, and no one to trust, I have to find a way to keep my sister safe, and stop a civil war.

A few years have passed since the conquering of the Mein, and Queen Corinn is firmly in control of the Known World---perhaps too firmly. With plans to expand her empire, she sends her brother, Daniel, on an exploratory mission to the Other Lands. There Daniel discovers a lush, exotic mainland ruled by an alliance of tribes that poses a grave danger to the stability of the Known World. Is Queen Corinn strong enough to face this new challenge?

Samuel Pickwick, founder and chairman of the Pickwick Club, engages three fellow members to accompany him on a journey. By coach they’ll travel to the outreaches of London to explore, observe, and report back on the quaint wonders of the English countryside. What transpires is a picaresque romp of misadventures, hair-raising challenges, and romantic follies entangling the fates of a riot of colorful characters - a passel of villains, spinsters, poets, and sportsmen - and the unworldly Pickwick himself, who has much to learn about life outside his gentleman’s club.

This story takes place in the Darkness Within Saga world and is book 1 of a spin-off Origins series. After the death of Sokn’s High King and the theft of several volatile bloodstone runes by rebel Ama Taugr necromancers, Jarl Engier War-Blood unites the northern clans in an effort to defend a rundown fortress situated over the last Sokn bloodstone mine. The rare mineral is the only source of power known to raise the dead and when the necromancers come for it, Engier and his allies quickly find themselves cornered and outnumbered by an army of walking dead.

We survived the land of the Witch’s Reign - that much is true. But our arrival home is far from welcome. My idiot brother has taken it upon himself to ride off in search of a mythical healer, someone who might help him walk again. Assuming she doesn’t eat him first. Because she’s a dragon and happens to reside in the deepest reaches of the Dragon’s Ground. Like I said, idiot. I’d go after him myself, but his leaving is not the only problem I face. My mentor has forbidden me to leave the safety of the Stockyards. Her reasoning? That I am too weak to weather the coming storms.

It is said that Lord Dunsany wrote his stories with a handmade quill in a single draft, and The King of Elfland’s Daughter is widely regarded as one of his greatest works. A fantasy classic which has influenced some of the most popular fantasy writers of all time, including J. R. R. Tolkien and Neil Gaiman, and one of the landmark pre-Tolkien fantasy stories written. It is noteworthy not only for its poetic literature and picturesque imagery, but also its exploration of Elfland, a land of fancy, immortality, and forbidden love.

Almost before the last echoes of the famous guns have died away, the three Navarone heroes are parachuted into war-torn Yugoslavia to rescue a division of partisans and fulfil a secret mission, so deadly that it must be hidden even from their own allies.

Dante’s conception of Purgatory involves principles of comparative awareness and the possibility of change. To course over better waters the little boat / of my imagination raises her sails, / and leaves behind her that sea so cruel. The process of listening to Dante’s Comedy is a journey into not just literature but into the mysteries of human nature and its capacity for unhappiness and happiness, folly and wisdom, rejection and wonder over the miracles of creation and existence.

Rhiow, Urruah, and Arhu, the wizard cats who saved New York City in "The Book of Night with Moon", are summoned to London to deal with a crisis which affects the very fabric of time.

Twice upon a time, Prince Rupert and Princess Julia saved the Forest Kingdom. They have earned the right to live happily ever after. But there' s a blue moon on the rise... Hawk and Fisher, famous for their years of keeping the peace in Haven, are really quite happy being legends. They gave up the hero business when they decided they'd grown too old for it. Now they run the Hero Academy, training young hopefuls to be heroes. Legends never die, but it seems they cannot retire, either.

Here is Old Man's War author John Scalzi's sendup of the heroic fantasy genre, now a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Short Story.

Hesiod's Theogony is a large-scale synthesis of a vast variety of local Greek traditions concerning the gods, organized as a narrative that tells how they came to be and how they established permanent control over the cosmos. It is the first Greek mythical cosmogony. The initial state of the universe is chaos - a dark, indefinite void considered a divine primordial condition from which everything else appeared.

In the remote village of Mandryn, Tessia serves as assistant to her father, the village Healer - much to the frustration of her mother, who would rather she found a husband. Despite knowing that women aren't readily accepted by the Guild of Healers, Tessia is determined to follow in her father's footsteps. But her life is about to take a very unexpected turn.