A glass mountain sits in the middle of a city and at the top sits a 'beautiful, enchanted symbol'. Seeking to disenchant it, the narrator must climb the mountain. Confronted by the jeers of acquaintances, the bodies of previous climbers and the claws of a guarding eagle he, slowly, begins to ascend. In true postmodernist form, subject and purpose collide as Donald Barthelme uses one-hundred fragmented statements to destabilise a symbol of his own - literature's conventional forms and practices. With a quest, a princess and an array of knights, Barthelme subverts that most traditional of genres, the fairy-tale; irony, absurdity, and playful self-reflexivity are the champions of this short story.

A king builds a glass mountain which any man who wants to marry his daughter must climb--but when Princess Raina tries to help one special suitor succeed, she falls through a deep crack and is trapped in an underground world. Full color.

Ossie is an outcast - he is the cat that walks alone. This is, until he crosses paths with Mrs Esther Ellis and he is caught up in a world of shadows and secrets - a world in which the legend of a freakish mountain tells a story that will become his own. A very powerful crossover novel for young adults and adults alike from the award-winning author of The Killing of Mud-Eye.