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Rare Books
While seeking the Ropemaker to restore the ancient magic that will protect their valley, Saranja, Maja, and Ribek must outwit twenty-four of the empire's most powerful and evil magicians.
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Rare Books
When cut off from their kin and lost in the desert 200,000 years ago, Suth and five other orphans struggle to survive and to find their way to safety.
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Rare Books
"Changelings, gryphons, and gods get in the way of us mortals who are struggling to find someone to fall in love with, something interesting to do, somewhere to run to"--
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Dirzhan is a strange little country up among the mountains way out east. It has one foot in the middle ages and one in the age of the internet, and its President Kahn is a ruthless modern dictator who lives in a fantastic old palace riddled with secret passages. Only the old eunuch who looks after the Kahn's daughter Taeela knows where they can run. Nigel is on a visit to his parents when he is asked to spend time with Taeela to improve her English accent, so he is actually present when the Kahn is assasintated in from of their eyes. Now those haunted passages come into their own, allowing them to escape from the palace and make their way through a country in turmoil, find allies up in the mountains and return to the palace by the way they came with a band of followers, so that Taeela can avenge her fathers death.
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Manuscripts
These manuscripts are three letters written by H.O. Comstock to his family, describing his journey from New York to California. The first letter is dated 1849, February 17 (HM 24501) and addressed to "Father", and finds the younger Comstock in good spirits, setting sail from New York in fine weather aboard the brig "Empire." The ship is bound for Vera Cruz, Mexico, which Comstock believes should be reached in about fifteen days, and then on to Cape Horn, and finally to California. In HM 24502 (1849, March 1-12, and addressed to "Father, Mother, Brother, & Sister"), Comstock is 360 miles out from Vera Cruz. The sea voyage has been very cold, cramped, and unpleasant, but he is in good health, and he describes the journey at length. The "Empire" reaches Vera Cruz on March 12. Comstock and the other travelers are relieved to exit the ship, and he marvels at a castle built on a coral reef, and other details of the Mexican coast, such as the buildings, flora, and fauna. He finds the local fare to be exotic and delicious. He thinks the Mexicans all look similar, with the same hair, skin, and noses, and the noise of animals and watchmen keeps him awake at night. He writes that so far, he and his companions "have not found half the difficulty so far that we expected & unless we find hardship more than is common, we shall have nothing but a pleasant jaunt through to the country." He promises to write again once he reaches San Francisco. Comstock writes to his parents from San Francisco in HM 24503 (1849, June 5) that he has "arrived at the 'Promised Land' with health unimpaired." He is thankful that his voyage has been uneventful, compared with others that he has heard of which were fraught with misfortune. On April 28, Comstock visited San Blas, which he describes as "a miserable little village, composed chiefly of mud huts," and finds San Francisco much more agreeable. He describes the city and its inhabitants in considerable detail, as he wishes to give his father "a true account (as far as I am able)," and includes description of gold mines. He wishes he could write to family letters individually, but has not had time. As he closes, Comstock writes that he is heading for the mines, and says he may not write or receive letters for six months, until his return to San Francisco.
mssHM 24501-24503
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Rare Books
The last book of Lewis's sci-fi trilogy is a breakneck journey of suspense in which Dr. Ransom must choose sides in a battle between science and ethics. Like Perelandra and Out of the Silent Planet, this is a compelling work of fiction that is also, at its heart, a timeless allegory of good and evil. Written during the dark hours immediately before and during the Second World War, C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy, of which That Hideous Strength is the third volume, stands alongside such works as Albert Camus's The Plague and George Orwell's 1984 as a timely parable that has become timeless, beloved by succeeding generations as much for the sheer wonder of its storytelling as for the significance of its moral concerns. For the trilogy's central figure, C. S. Lewis created perhaps the most memorable character of his career, the brilliant, clear-eyed, and fiercely brave philologist Dr. Elwin Ransom. Appropriately, Lewis modeled Dr. Ransom on his dear friend J. R. R. Tolkien, for in the scope of its imaginative achievement and the totality of its vision of not one but two imaginary worlds, the Space Trilogy is rivaled in this century only by Tolkien's trilogy The Lord of the Rings. Readers who fall in love with Lewis's fantasy series The Chronicles of Narnia as children, unfailingly cherish his Space Trilogy as adults; it, too, brings to life strange and magical realms in which epic battles are fought between the forces of light and those of darkness. But in the many layers of its allegory, and the sophistication and piercing brilliance of its insights into the human condition, it occupies a place among the English language's most extraordinary works for any age, and for all time. In That Hideous Strength, the final installment of the Space Trilogy, the dark forces that have been repulsed in Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra are massed for an assault on the planet Earth itself. Word is on the wind that the mighty wizard Merlin has come back to the land of the living after many centuries, holding the key to ultimate power for the force that can find him and bend him to its will. A sinister technocratic organization that is gaining force throughout England, N.I.C.E. (the National Institute of Coordinated Experiments), secretly controlled by humanity's mortal enemies, plans to use Merlin in their plot to "recondition" society. Dr. Ransom forms a countervailing group, Logres, in opposition, and the two groups struggle to a climactic resolution that brings the Space Trilogy to a magnificent, crashing close.
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