It's a hot, lazy day, perfect for a cookout, until you see those strange dark clouds. Suddenly a violent storm sweeps across the lake and ends as abruptly and unexpectedly as it had begun. Then comes the mist...creeping slowly, inexorably into town, where it settles and waits, trapping you in the supermarket with dozens of others, cut off from your families and the world. The mist is alive, seething with unearthly sounds and movements. What unleashed this terror? Was it the Arrowhead Project---the top secret government operation that everyone has noticed but no one quite understands? And what happens when the provisions have run out and you're forced to make your escape, edging blindly through the dim light?

The Ice Dragon is an enchanting tale of courage and sacrifice for young readers and adults by the wildly popular author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Song of Ice and Fire series, George R.R. Martin. Lavish illustrations by acclaimed artist Luis Royo enrich this captivating and heartwarming story of a young girl and her dragon. In the world of A Song of Ice and Fire the ice dragon was a creature of legend and fear, for no man had ever tamed one. When it flew overhead, it left in its wake desolate cold and frozen land. But Adara was not afraid. For Adara was a winter child, born during the worst freeze that anyone, even the Old Ones, could remember. Adara could not remember the first time she had seen the ice dragon. It seemed that it had always been in her life, glimpsed from afar as she played in the frigid snow long after the other children had fled the cold. In her fourth year she touched it, and in her fifth year she rode upon its broad, chilled back for the first time. Then, in her seventh year, on a calm summer day, fiery dragons from the North swooped down upon the peaceful farm that was Adara's home. And only a winter child—and the ice dragon who loved her—could save her world from utter destruction. This new edition of The Ice Dragon is sure to become a collector's item for fans of HBO's megahit Game of Thrones. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

**An intimate journey across and in search of America, as told by one of its most beloved writers, in a deluxe centennial edition** In September 1960, John Steinbeck embarked on a journey across America. He felt that he might have lost touch with the country, with its speech, the smell of its grass and trees, its color and quality of light, the pulse of its people. To reassure himself, he set out on a voyage of rediscovery of the American identity, accompanied by a distinguished French poodle named Charley; and riding in a three-quarter-ton pickup truck named Rocinante. His course took him through almost forty states: northward from Long Island to Maine; through the Midwest to Chicago; onward by way of Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana (with which he fell in love), and Idaho to Seattle, south to San Francisco and his birthplace, Salinas; eastward through the Mojave, New Mexico, Arizona, to the vast hospitality of Texas, to New Orleans and a shocking drama of desegregation; finally, on the last leg, through Alabama, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey to New York. *Travels with Charley in Search of America* is an intimate look at one of America's most beloved writers in the later years of his life—a self-portrait of a man who never wrote an explicit autobiography. Written during a time of upheaval and racial tension in the South—which Steinbeck witnessed firsthand—*Travels with Charley* is a stunning evocation of America on the eve of a tumultuous decade. This Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition also features French flaps and deckle-edged paper. For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. *From the Trade Paperback edition.* ** ### Review “Pure delight, a pungent potpourri of places and people interspersed with bittersweet essays on everything from the emotional difficulties of growing old to the reasons why giant sequoias arouse such awe.” **—The New York Times Book Review** “Profound, sympathetic, often angry . . . an honest moving book by one of our great writers.” **—The San Francisco Examiner** “This is superior Steinbeck—a muscular, evocative report of a journey of rediscovery.” **—John Barkham, Saturday Review Syndicate** “The eager, sensuous pages in which he writes about what he found and whom he encountered frame a picture of our human nature in the twentieth century which will not soon be surpassed.” **—Edward Weeks, The Atlantic Monthly ** ### From the Back Cover In September 1960, John Steinbeck and his poodle, Charley, embarked on a journey across America. A picaresque tale, this chronicle of their trip meanders along scenic backroads and speeds along anonymous superhighways, moving from small towns to growing cities to glorious wilderness oases. Travels with Charley is animated by Steinbeck's attention to the specific details of the natural world and his sense of how the lives of people are intimately connected to the rhythms of nature - to weather, geography, the cycles of the seasons. His keen ear for the transactions among people is evident, too, as he records the interests and obsessions that preoccupy the Americans he encounters along the way.

In Book Two of the Heechee Saga, Robinette Broadhead is on his way to making a fortune by bankrolling an expedition to the Food Factory--a Heechee spaceship that can graze the cometary cloud and transfor the basic elements of the universe into untold quantities of food. But even as he gambles on the breakthrough technology, he is wracked with the guilt of losing his wife, poised forever at the "event horizon" of a black hole where Robin had abaondoned her. As more and more information comes back from the expedition, Robin grows ever hopeful that he can rescue his beloved Gelle-Klara Moynlin. After three and a years, the factory is discovered to work, and a human is found aboard. Robin's suffering may be just about over.... THE HEECHEE SAGA Book One: Gateway Book Two: Beyond the Blue Event Horizon Book Three: Heechee Rendezvous Book Four: The Annals of the Heechee From the Paperback edition.

A short follow-up to 'The Last Question' by Asimov.

Along with Wit, Charm, Health, and Courage, Princess Amy of Phantasmorania receives a special fairy christening gift: Ordinariness. Unlike her six beautiful sisters, she has brown hair and freckles, and would rather have adventures than play the harp, embroider tapestries . . . or become a Queen. When her royal parents try to marry her off, Amy runs away and, because she's so ordinary, easily becomes the fourteenth assistant kitchen maid at a neighboring palace. And there . . . much to everyone's surprise . . . she meets a prince just as ordinary (and special) as she is! "This delightful fairy tale is sure to please young romantics . . . Neither Kaye's princess nor her book should be considered ordinary." (School Library Journal)

When Tryfan, son of Bracken and Rebecca, returns to the sacred Burrows of Uffington, he finds dreadful signs of death and destruction. For out of the chilly North have swarmed the grikes, a fanatical tribe of warrior moles bent on destroying all believers in the powers of the Stone. Tryfan’s duty is clear – to muster and protect the few remaining Stone followers from the evil that seems certain to engulf them. With only a frail and timid mole named Spindle for company, he sets off on an epic journey… But can he save his friends?

Distant Relations begins in the elegant Automobile club de France as an elderly Count tells a story to the unnamed narrator. But the book does not remain here in the cafe, nor even in France. Instead, as the Count speaks, the story moves across time and space, from Latin America to Europe, from generation to generation. We hear of Hugo, a noted Mexican archeologist, and of his young son, Victor, who were once the Count's houseguests. He tells of their time in France, of their complicated pasts and their uncertain relationships. This is a story of lost memory and failed promises, one about the past's unbending influence on the present. Distant Relations is an ambitious novel whose tale of confused familial relations explodes into one about the conflict between the Old World and the New.

For thirty-five years, Bruno Frye has lived in the shadow of the mother who made his heart beat with constant fear. And even though she died five years ago, the whispers still haunt him in the dark…enough to make him kill—and kill again… Hilary Thomas is one of his intended victims. And she’s about to learn that even death can’t keep a bad man down…

Ordinary Heros, Extraordinary Deeds The bestselling author of Kane & Abel, The Prodigal Daughter and Honor Among Theives once again astonishes, delights, and electrifies his legions of fans. From London to China, and New York to Nigeria, Jeffrey Archer takes the reader on a tour of ancient heirlooms and modern romance, of cutthroat business and kindly strangers, of lives lived in the realms of power and lives freed from the gloom of oppression. Fortunes are made and squandered, honor betrayed and redeemed, and love lost and rediscovered. Embracing the passions that drive men and women to love and to hate, the short stories in A Quiver Full of Arrows will captivate the hearts and souls of readers of everywhere.

My Guru and His Disciple is a sweetly modest and honest portrait of Isherwood's spiritual instructor, Swami Prabhavananda, the Hindu priest who guided Isherwood for some thirty years. It is also a book about the often amusing and sometimes painful counterpoint between worldliness and holiness in Isherwood's own life. Sexual sprees, all-night drinking bouts, a fast car ride with Greta Garbo, scriptwriting conferences at M-G-M, intellectual sparring sessions with Berthold Brecht alternated with nights of fasting at the Vedanta Center, a six-month period of celibacy and sobriety, and the pious drudgery of translating (in collaboration with the Swami) the Bhagavad-Gita. Seldom has a single man been owed with such strong drives toward both sensuality and spirituality, abandon and discipline; out of the passionate dialectic between these drives, My Guru and His Disciple has been written.

From the back cover: The lore of the planet of the Bloody Sun, Darkover, with its human and semi-human peoples, its science of emntal powers, its loves and hates, its feuds and favors -- all have grown into one of the greater classics of the imagination, comparable only to the Middle Earth of Tolkien. For so deep and complex has been the creation of this worlds that readers have sought to fill in the unknown spots of its saga. They, forming the Friends of Darkover, have joined with Marion Zimmer Bradley to create this anthology of new stories of Darkover, written by its most talented followers. Here are stories that span the whole of Darkover history -- from the days after the original landfall, through the Ages of Chaos, the Pact of the Comyn, and the coming of the Terrans. Included are three original stories by Marion Zimmer Bradley and her editorial commentaries on each story.

"An almost flawless story of love...Morgan emerges as a true hero." LOS ANGELES TIMES Morgan Gower works at Cullen's hardware store in north Baltimore. He has seven daughters and a warmhearted wife, but as he journeys into the gray area of middle age, he finds his household growing tedious. Then Morgan meets two lovely young newlyweds under some rather extreme circumstances--and all three discover that no one's heart is safe.... From the Paperback edition.

The Boy Who Followed Ripley, the fourth novel in the Ripley series, is one of Patricia Highsmith's darkest and most twisted creations. Tom Ripley meets a young American runaway who has a dark secret that he is desperate to hide. Soon this unlikely pair is drawn into the seamy underworld of Berlin and a shocking kidnapping. In this masterful thriller, Highsmith shatters our perceptions of her most famous creation by letting us glimpse a more compassionate side of this amoral charmer. "Ripley is an unmistakable descendant of Gatsby, that 'penniless young man without a past' who will stop at nothing." —Frank Rich, New York Times Magazine

Blatty's tale concerns John "Wrong-Way" Goldfarb, a former college football star who once ran 95 yards for a touchdown in the wrong direction. Now a U-2 pilot, his plane malfunctions and crashes in the mythical Arab kingdom of Fawzia. The country's leader threatens to turn him over to the Soviets unless he agrees to coach a football team.