Succumb to one churchman's apocalyptic vision in this prophetic tale by the radical Nobel Laureate and author of Lord of the Flies, William Golding (recorded by Benedict Cumberbatch as an audiobook). There were three sorts of people. Those who ran, those who stayed, and those who were built in. Dean Jocelin has a vision: that God has chosen him to erect a great spire. His master builder fearfully advises against it, for the old cathedral was miraculously built without foundations. But Jocelin is obsessed with fashioning his prayer in stone. As his halo of hair grows wilder and his dark angel darker, the spire rises octagon upon octagon, pinnacle by pinnacle, watched over by the gargoyles - until the stone pillars shriek, the earth beneath creeps, and the spire's shadow falls like an axe on the medieval world below ... 'Astounding ... So recklessly beautiful, so sad and so strange ... Holds such a place in my soul that it's more or less a sacred text.' Sarah Perry 'A kind of miracle ... Genius.' Guardian ' Quite simply, a marvel.' NYRB ' Superb ... A classic.' Rebecca West 'A master fabulist .. An iconoclast.' John Fowles 'A visionary ... His masterwork [of] faith, folly and desperate desire ... Golding at his best.' Benjamin Myers

1361: Orphaned by the Black Death, all John possesses are the tools that belonged to his father, a carpenter, and an uncanny ability to work wood. His travels bring him to Chesterfield, where he finds work erecting the spire of the new church. But no sooner does he begin than the master carpenter is murdered and John himself becomes a suspect. To prove his innocence John must help the coroner in his search for the killer, a quest that brings him up against some powerful enemies in a town where he is still a stranger and friends are few. Chris Nickson brilliantly evokes the feeling of time and place in this story of corruption and murder.

A crafting LitRPG combining World of Warcraft with Die Hard.

This book showcases photographs taken from John Scurlock's home-built airplane, a Van's Aircraft RV6. In 2002, John embarked on a nine-year quest to fly to and photograph every corner of the North Cascade Range in the winter. The images he captured provide a breathaking vision of one of America's most magnificent mountain ranges in its most beautiful, dramatic, and savage season.

Threats against a televangelist lead Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin into a murder case in this “brisk and beguiling page-turner” (Publishers Weekly). Staten Island would be forgettable were it not for the gleaming Tabernacle of the Silver Spire, where thousands of congregants come every Sunday to hear the sermons of Barnabas Bay. Millions more tune in on television, giving the good Reverend international fame, and a chance to spread the gospel from New York City’s harbor all the way to South Korea. But threatening notes have been appearing in the collection bag, suggesting that one of the faithful has decided it’s time this good shepherd get the hook. Believing organized religion is nothing more than a scam, rotund sleuth Nero Wolfe refuses to investigate the threats, instead recommending veteran investigator Fred Durkin for the case. But when Durkin is accused of murdering the Reverend’s assistant, Wolfe fights to clear his name. He may not be a Christian, but he will always help a brother in need.

Winner of the PEN Open Book Award * Winner of the Whiting Award * Longlisted for the National Book Award and Aspen Words Literary Prize * Nominated for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize * Finalist for the Kirkus Prize and Los Angeles Times Book Prize Named a Best Book of the Year by Refinery29, NPR, The Root, HuffPost, Vanity Fair, Bustle, Chicago Tribune, PopSugar, and The Undefeated In one of the season’s most acclaimed works of fiction, Nafissa Thompson-Spires offers “a firecracker of a book...a triumph of storytelling: intelligent, acerbic, and ingenious” (Financial Times). Nafissa Thompson-Spires grapples with race, identity politics, and the contemporary middle class in this “vivid, fast, funny, way-smart, and verbally inventive” (George Saunders, author of Lincoln in the Bardo) collection. Each captivating story plunges headfirst into the lives of utterly original characters. Some are darkly humorous—two mothers exchanging snide remarks through notes in their kids’ backpacks—while others are devastatingly poignant. In the title story, when a cosplayer, dressed as his favorite anime character, is mistaken for a violent threat the consequences are dire; in another story, a teen struggles between her upper middle class upbringing and her desire to fully connect with so-called black culture. Thompson-Spires fearlessly shines a light on the simmering tensions and precariousness of black citizenship. Boldly resisting categorization and easy answers, Nafissa Thompson-Spires “has taken the best of what Toni Cade Bambara, Morgan Parker, and Junot Díaz do plus a whole lot of something we’ve never seen in American literature, blended it all together...giving us one of the finest short-story collections” (Kiese Laymon, author of Long Division).