From the award-winning author of The Animus Chronicles and the novelizations for Wishmaster, Titan Find and Vamp comes this new tale of YA terror. "An exciting new talent'" says Tom Holland (the creator of Child's Play and Fright Night) of Christian Francis. The woods were dead, and had been for as long as the townsfolk could remember. Sitting on the edge of the town, it was an expanse of sinister and leafless rot. Those unlucky enough to find themselves alone and scared in those woods may have seen the thick yellowing mist that came first. They may have seen the shadows that appeared to watch them as they tried to escape. They then may have seen the faces of those long since past, approaching them with a hungry grin. But that would probably be the last thing they would ever see. Few escaped seeing the truth in the evil that lay in wait in the dead woods, and those that were lucky enough, were never the same again.

In the distant future, society has all but eliminated the need for a sentient workforce. Thanks to an all-powerful AI network known collectively as Titan, humanity is now free to indulge in an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity. But one day, hobbyist psychologist Seika Naisho gets a job offer from a mysterious man by the name of Narain Srivastava--one of only a handful of people in the entire world who is still traditionally employed. Narain wishes to enlist her expertise in the wake of a sudden and inexplicable malfunction in the AI network: as a therapist for Titan itself.

Let the games begin! In their (overabundance of) free time, the gods grew bored and decided to create challenging battles of wits to spice things up! Their opponent? Humanity! A select few players called “apostles” meet the gods on the spiritual realm’s playing field to beat the deities at their own games. A former god named Leshea has woken after sleeping for thousands of years, and her first demand is to meet “this era’s very best player!” She is introduced to Fay, an acclaimed rookie apostle. Together, they plan to challenge the gods and win the ultimate prize, but no one in human history has managed to clear ten games—because the gods can be capricious, outrageous, and sometimes downright incomprehensible! In the face of absurdity, what can the apostles do but enjoy the contest to its fullest?

Winner of the Christian Gauss Award for excellence in literary scholarship from the Phi Beta Kappa Society Having excavated the world's earliest novels in his previous book, literary historian Steven Moore explores in this sequel the remarkable flowering of the novel between the years 1600 and 1800-from Don Quixote to America's first big novel, an homage to Cervantes entitled Modern Chivalry. This is the period of such classic novels as Tom Jones, Candide, and Dangerous Liaisons, but beyond the dozen or so recognized classics there are hundreds of other interesting novels that appeared then, known only to specialists: Spanish picaresques, French heroic romances, massive Chinese novels, Japanese graphic novels, eccentric English novels, and the earliest American novels. These minor novels are not only interesting in their own right, but also provide the context needed to appreciate why the major novels were major breakthroughs. The novel experienced an explosive growth spurt during these centuries as novelists experimented with different forms and genres: epistolary novels, romances, Gothic thrillers, novels in verse, parodies, science fiction, episodic road trips, and family sagas, along with quirky, unclassifiable experiments in fiction that resemble contemporary, avant-garde works. As in his previous volume, Moore privileges the innovators and outriders, those who kept the novel novel. In the most comprehensive history of this period ever written, Moore examines over 400 novels from around the world in a lively style that is as entertaining as it is informative. Though written for a general audience, The Novel, An Alternative History also provides the scholarly apparatus required by the serious student of the period. This sequel, like its predecessor, is a “zestfully encyclopedic, avidly opinionated, and dazzlingly fresh history of the most 'elastic' of literary forms” (Booklist).

This annotated bibliography covers approximately 400 novels published from 1838 through 2007. A substantial introduction to the history and development of the genre precedes the chronologically arranged entries, which provide bibliographic details and extensive annotations on plot, themes, and compositional strengths and weaknesses. Mainstream novels by writers such as Hemingway, Wolfe, Roth, and DeLillo are included. Appendices provide historical overviews for the primary baseball subgenres, including mystery, fantasy, and science-fiction; lists for novels that foreground issues of race or ethnicity (or both, as in Winegardner's Vera Cruz Blues), gender (Gilbert's A League of Their Own), and class (Hay's The Dixie Association); and the author's rankings of great baseball novels overall and by subgenre.

A new prophecy leads to a dangerous quest. When Percy receives an urgent distress call from Grover, he immediately prepares for battle. He knows he'll need his powerful demigod allies, Annabeth and Thalia, at his side; his trusty bronze sword, Riptide; and...a ride from his mom. The demigods race to the rescue, only to find that Grover has made an important discovery: two new powerful half-bloods, whose parentage is unknown. But that's not all that awaits them. The Titan lord, Kronos, has set up his most devious trap yet, and the young heroes have just fallen prey. Now, Percy and his friends are faced with their most dangerous challenge—the chilling prophecy of the Titan's Curse. They must rescue the goddess Artemis by the Winter Solstice, or all will be lost...including Annabeth. Rick Riordan's internationally best-selling The Titan's Curse becomes a graphic novel in the hands of comic-book luminaries Robert Venditti, Attila Futaki, and Greg Guilhaumond.

Reproduction of the original. The publishing house Megali specialises in reproducing historical works in large print to make reading easier for people with impaired vision.