After her peaceful life in an Imperial Province is wrecked by barbarian invasions, the young Cheon dedicates herself to revenge. Nurtured by a black sorceress, honed to a killing machine by an old Northern soldier, she murderously stalks the wasted landscape of southern Hyperborea with her servant, a former Imperial lady, whom she has freed from slavery. Despite her inexperience she looks indomitable until captured in battle by the barbarian horde that raped her land. Stripped naked before its duke and his concubine she seems lost. But in a mutually benficial bargain she is freed. Her growing fame as a warrior of demonic strength makes her a coveted prize for the slave market. The vain Cheon is about to see her wish to visit the Old Imperial Lands come true but not in the way she imagined. So begins the saga of Cheon who ultimately comes to hold the fate of a world in her hands: she must become the lone bringer of dawn or perish with all who will not join the forces of darkness.

The story of how humanity first came to the Witch World—and almost doomed themselves as they discovered the dangers of their new home. Long ago, after the Elder People deserted the place known as Witch World, a portal opened from another realm, bringing the people of Hallack to colonize the abandoned lands. But although the old inhabitants had gone, the Old Gods still existed to confound the new mortals beneath them. This is the story of the first ones: Elron the Clanless and Gathea the Wise Woman, who sought their own separate fates in this new mountainous country; Iynne of Garn whose clan ventured into an unknown land of power and was seduced by sinister magic; and Gunnora, the Amber Lady, and her fight against Raidhan, Lady of the Dark Moon. For any fan of the Witch World novels by Science Fiction Writers of America Grand Master Andre Norton, this is the must-have origin story for the adventures that have gripped lovers of sword and sorcery for generations. Horn Crown is the 5th book in the Witch World: High Hallack Cycle, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

In The Real North Korea, Lankov substitutes cold, clear analysis for the overheated rhetoric surrounding this opaque police state. Based on vast expertise, this book reveals how average North Koreans live, how their leaders rule, and how both survive

“[Pynchon's] funniest and arguably his most accessible novel.” —The New York Times Book Review “Raunchy, funny, digressive, brilliant.” —USA Today “Rich and sweeping, wild and thrilling.” —The Boston Globe Spanning the era between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I, and constantly moving between locations across the globe (and to a few places not strictly speaking on the map at all), Against the Day unfolds with a phantasmagoria of characters that includes anarchists, balloonists, drug enthusiasts, mathematicians, mad scientists, shamans, spies, and hired guns. As an era of uncertainty comes crashing down around their ears and an unpredictable future commences, these folks are mostly just trying to pursue their lives. Sometimes they manage to catch up; sometimes it's their lives that pursue them.