Leisure Reading — Literature

A stunning anniversary edition of Alice's adventures, illustrated by Salvador Dalí Commemorating the 150th anniversary of one of the most beloved classics of children's literature, this illustrated edition presents Alice like you've never seen her before.

Who doesn't love dragons? Whether they're breathing fire or thrashing their tails, frightful or friendly, gigantic or tiny, their adventures are always filled with magic and surprises -- and sometimes even humor.

A sweeping, lyrical debut about the love and longing between humanity and the earth itself, by a major new literary talent from India

Most everything has dried up: water, the womb, even the love among lovers. Hunger is rife and survival desperate, except across the border. One night, a village is bombed for attempting to cross the border.

One day, a handsome teenage boy named Satan appears in the village. He explains that he is an angel and the nephew of the fallen angel whose name he shares. Young Satan performs several magical feats. He claims to be able to foresee the future and informs the group of unfortunate events that will soon befall those they care about. The boys do not believe Satan's claims until one of his predictions comes true.

In this dystopian tale of a future Chicago, workers are sent off to sell property on Mars to those who can afford to leave, leaving what's left to those who have little choice but to make do with what's left behind: burnt out neighborhoods, black helicopters policing the streets, flash mobs, the unemployed in their scruffy suits, robots taking the few jobs that remain, and clones who replace those workers who do find work so that a modicum of family stability can be maintained. It is a story about the impact of work on family. How work warps our best intentions. And how everything we think we know about ourselves looks different during a recession.

One of the most successful and beloved of Victorian fairy tales, George Macdonald’s The Princess and the Goblin tells the story of young Princess Irene and her friend Curdie, who must outwit the threatening goblins who live in caves beneath her mountain home. Macdonald’s pioneering use of fanstasy as a literary medium had a great influence on Lewis Carroll, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Madeleine L’Engle, all great admirers of his work, which has remained popular to this day. "I write, not for children," he wrote, "but for the child-like, whether they be of five, or fifty, or seventy-five."

The story of the creation of the world and of the the First Age, this is the ancient drama to which the characters in The Lord of the Rings look back and in whose events some of them, such as Elrond and Galadriel, took part.

It is the first of the Doctor Dolittle book series about a man who learns to talk to animals and becomes their champion around the world.

In one of the most beloved fantasy stories ever, a girl's dream world comes to life as the cyclone lifts Dorothy from Kansas, depositing her in the enchanted land of the Munchkins. H ere she meets the famous Oz characters: the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman, the Cowardly Lion, and the Wicked Witch of the West. Her adventures along the Yellow Brick Road to the Emerald City and the Wizard himself evoke the rich, universal appeal of a classic fairy tale.